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Gaby Book 1 - The Anime Days Drew is just an ordinary thirteen year old. Well perhaps not that ordinary.
The girls challenge him to wear an anime costume to the Easter dance, however they forgot to mention that he'd be going as a girl! Enter Gaby! First it was his friends, then it's his family — everyone seems to want Gaby around except Drew. Or will he get dragged ever deeper into girldom?
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I was unaware until I stepped into the shower later of my sunburn! Ouch did that hurt!
“Jules have you got any sunburn lotion?”
“Yes”
“Er can you put some on my back please?”
Jules came into my room armed with her cream.
“Lets have a look then”
I turned round so she could see my poor back. I was not prepared for her response a barely contained snort of laughter.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“Well you might not want to show this off”
“What?”
“Well it’s sort of obvious what you’ve been wearing”
“What do you mean?”
“Your swimming cozzie?”
“No! It’s not? It has?”
“Yep you’ve got a lovely stencil of a regulation cozzie!”
“Bugger!”
“It could be worse, you could have had a bikini on”
“No I couldn’t, this is bad enough!”
Some days are just not meant to be fun. I guess I would just have to try to keep covered in PE at least until my ‘stencil’ faded! And on top of that I was not going to get a very good nights sleep either.
I managed to get through Monday’s school day without alerting any of my peers to my sunburn; I had suffered the deliberate back slapping before! For various reasons our regular Monday meeting was at the Peters’ again so we all walked there straight from school.
“Jules says you got sunburn Drew?” Ally enquired
“Yeah, a bit”
“You should really take more care Drew” Maddy offered
“I take it none of you got burnt then”
“We put sun block on before we left just in case” Bernie advised
“Well that’s not the worst of it”
“Why?” Rhod queried
“Well you can see what I was wearing”
“So?”
Rhod wasn’t there was he.
“It’s a long story, but I ended up wearing a girls cozzie”
“Get off!”
“It’s true Rhod, Jules picked up the wrong bag” Maddy told him
“So you’ve got...”
I cut him off
“Yes the outline of a girls swimsuit”
“Oh boy Drew, you don’t make your life easy do you” Ally put in.
“Can we leave it now?” I pleaded
“Ok but what else can we talk about?” Maddy asked
“Hey have any more emails come back?” Bernie asked
“They hadn’t last night but we can check after tea” Maddy replied
We reached Castle Peters and Mrs Peters already had our tea well under way, baked potatoes with salad; I was disappointed that she wasn’t doing Italian! After eating we decamped to the computer desk and waited whilst the machine booted.
“Come on Maddy”
“Patience Rhod”
Maddy’s mailbox certainly had some new messages and we waited impatiently as she flipped through the list.
“Here’s one, it’s for Rhod”
She clicked it open and Rhod scanned the content.
“Well it’s from Dan, he says he had to wait to use the school computer as he’s no on line at home”
“Has he sent a picture?” Bernie asked
“Yeah” Rhod opened the attachment.
Dan
“He looks a bit of alright” Ally offered
“Bagsy first dibs!” Bernie demanded
“Give over guys” Rhod requested
“Oh come on, Rhod, don’t go all jealous on us” Bernie replied
“I’m not!”
“Coulda fooled me”
“Is there one from Darla Mad? ” Ally asked
“Let me check”
Maddy reclaimed the mouse and perused the rest of the list.
“I think this ones from her” she opened a mail and relinquished the controls.
We read over Ally’s shoulder as she worked through a long missive from Darla. Like Dan she had had to wait to use the school equipment and similarly she had attached a picture.
Darla
“Looks like she’s going to be a bundle of fun” Bernie mentioned
“Yeah like she’s gonna bore us to death” Rhod suggested
“Give her a chance guys” Ally flew to the girls defence.
“Yeah you go on a bit sometimes Bernie” I had to duck to avoid a cushion.
We decided to reply to our respective ‘partners’ mails and that kept us occupied until it was time to leave.
I told Britney about the weekends events, thanked her for the picture and like the others, asked her what sort of stuff she’d like to do when she came over. We thought that if we knew what they wanted to do we could suggest the right sort of stuff to Mr Wood.
Only nine schooldays before I go to Germany! I got home in time to catch mum ringing from Spain.
“Hi Drew”
“Hi Mum”
“Your Dad said you’d done another personal”
“Yeah just three seconds”
“It’s better than nothing, you just need to keep chipping away”
“Yeah. How’s your race going?”
“The team’s in second place and I’m in tenth place overall”
“Cool”
“Well it’s not too shabby I guess”
“When does it finish?”
“Tomorrow in Seville”
“Will you ring?”
“I’ll try but no promises ok?”
“’Kay”
“Your Dad said you had a chat at the weekend?” she was hinting at me to enlarge on Dad’s comments.
“Yeah”
“What about?”
“You know school and stuff” I was being particularly evasive
“Look Drew, I know about the modelling, I had to agree to it before Mr Wood asked you”
“Everything?”
“Yep, what I don’t know is why you did it and if I should have allowed it.”
“I guess it was mostly the money”
“Mostly?”
“Well the idea of fooling everyone at school seemed pretty cool too”
“You said you hated dressing up at Christmas” she stated
“Well I guess things have changed a bit since then”
“Anything to do with the earrings? On second thoughts I don’t want to know!”
“I’ll tell you next week right?”
“Ok, you’re off the hook till then. Put your father back on.”
“Okay, bye Mum”
“Guten nacht Drew”
I passed the handset to Dad and retired to my room. Things were just getting real weird, as if they weren’t already! My dreams were going to be weird as well, I just knew it.
I wasn’t disappointed on that score, I dreamt that I was riding in Mum’s team, as a girl! Aargh! Less of that Drew, I cautioned myself.
Well Tuesday dawned bright and clear and my back was feeling better if a bit itchy. I didn’t see much of the girls instead Clive and Paul occupied any spare moments interrogating me about Britney. There wasn’t much to tell so I soon tired of this although they didn’t.
Tuesday is usually ten night but this week it was replaced by a fifteen-mile circuit. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it but in the end I decided what the heck it would be good training for next weekends race. I made sure I looked as much like me as possible to try and convince them I was not a girl, but as my skinsuit tends to hide rather than promote my manhood, I was on a hiding to nothing. I was Dee Bond and that was that!
I don’t want to bore you with another blow by blow account, suffice to say the circuit was pretty hard especially the second ‘leg’ toward Sheffield. I was well done by the finish but my forty-one was on a par with everyone else so I was quite chuffed still.
I missed Mum's call; she finished sixth today which took her to eighth overall. Pretty cool huh. I dreamt bizarre things again about racing with Mum, not for me the Tour de France; no I had to dream of the ladies races! Sheesh.
Maddy Bell 22.05.03
