Strawberry Crush. Jean Ure

car park, checking on the cars to see whether Jake was still there or whether he’d already left; and then when she discovered he hadn’t left she purposely dawdled all the way down Sheepcote Road to the bus stop, hoping he would come by and see us waiting there.

      I lectured her about it, but there is nothing you can do when someone is in the grip of an obsession. Water off a duck’s back, as my dad would say. I’m not sure she even really listened. Or if she did she didn’t actually hear.

      “I’ll tell you one thing,” I said as we finally got on the bus, “you’re not dragging me along to that music thing again.”

      She turned, all innocent, her eyes wide with disbelief. “Didn’t you enjoy it?”

      I immediately retorted, “Don’t pretend that you did! You just enjoyed staring at Jake.”

      Pinkly, she protested, “It wasn’t anything to do with Jake! I didn’t even know he was going to be there.”

      Oh, no? What did she think, I was stupid or something?

      “Honestly,” said Maya, “it was the lovely music. I found it so interesting.”

      “Go on, then,” I said. “Sing me some!”

      Needless to say, she couldn’t. She said that she was still learning and that was why she wanted to become a member, so that she could go along every week and hear something new.

      “You know you’re wasting your time,” I said.

      She crinkled her nose. “How d’you mean?”

      “Going all soppy over him when he’s sitting there with Hope Kennedy.”

      “But they’re in the same class.”

      I said, “I know they’re in the same class! And they like the same music, and she’s absolutely gorgeous!”

      I knew I was being a bit mean, rubbing it in like that, but I was still feeling sore about the way she’d tricked me. Plus it was entirely for her own good. My mum is always saying that things are “for your own good” and it is extremely annoying; but just because it’s annoying doesn’t make it any less true. When Maya gets one of her crushes they take over her entire life.

      She sat there beside me, fiddling with the strap of her school bag. Her face had gone all puckered, so that I immediately felt – as I so often do with Maya – that I had been too harsh. Whatever a person might think of someone else’s daydreams it is not very kind to trample on them.

      “I’m just saying,” I muttered.

      “Whatever.”

      Maya turned, deliberately scrunching herself up against the window with her back towards me. Omigod, she was looking for Fiats again! I might just as well not have bothered.