‘Pleasure,’ I whispered after him. That had felt good, to offer comfort in what had clearly been the right way.
CHAPTER28
‘It’s pretty high.’ Andrew looked up. The plane was lodged in the top branches of a very large, old oak tree.
‘I’m very good at climbing trees,’ I said.
‘Really?’ Andrew asked, looking unsure.
I nodded at him.
‘But your . . . dyspraxia?’
‘Oh no! That doesn’t include tree-climbing.’
‘How so?’ he asked.
‘When I was young, I spent a lot of time up trees,’ I said, thinking back to the many, many times I spent breaktime, playdates or even birthday parties away from everyone else and up a tree. For some reason, I was always better up high than on the actual ground.
I reached up, grabbed a branch and then swung my legs up and gripped on.
‘Besides, I’m also very supple. I’m hypermobile, actually.’
‘Right.’ Andrew still sounded unsure.
‘And swimming has given me excellent core strength, and karate has given me a lot of upper-body strength.’
‘No, I can’t let you do this,’ he said loudly. ‘If you fall out of a tree and break something and your parents find out you were climbing it to fetch my plane, I’ll no longer be their “favorite boyfriend”.’
I stopped climbing and hung on like a koala. ‘They said that? “Favorite boyfriend”?’
‘That’s what your mom called me.’
‘I can assure you, that’s not much of a compliment, since I don’t think I’ve ever brought a boyfriend home to my parents’.’ I continued climbing, and then stopped again. ‘That wasn’t meant as rude, by the way. I hope you weren’t offended?’ I peered down at him over my shoulder.
‘No offence taken.’
‘In fact, I should actually be the one who’s offended. Leroy told me that your last girlfriend was way prettier than me.’ I shuffled higher up the tree.
‘WHAT?! That’s crazy talk,’ he said from down below. ‘You’re the hottest real or fake girlfriend I’ve ever had.’
A little rush of warmth hit me, but I carried on. I climbed quickly and easily.
‘Youaregood at climbing.’
‘I never exaggerate my talents,’ I said.
‘What other talents do you have that I don’t know about yet?’
‘When I was younger, I became very good at ventriloquism.’
I heard a laugh from down below. ‘You never cease to amaze me. Military dogs, ventriloquism, black belt in karate, tree climber.’
‘I went through a stage where I preferred to speak through a puppet.’ I carried on climbing, and he didn’t answer back. I didn’t expect him to. When I said things like that, revealed something about myself that most people thought was odd, it tended to be met with silence. I now regretted telling him this and wondered why I had. But his response surprised me.
‘What did the puppet look like? Was it one of those creepy ones from horror movies?’
‘No. Not at all.’
