on to the chair to keep up the pretense that I was standing.
“Everyone calls it Gob-botty. Botty, you know?”
“Oh, of course,” I laughed with him. “Botty. Hahahahahahah.” What the heck is a botty? What is with these people and their obscure jokes? GAH!
(An FYI...I just did an Internet search. Seems “botty” is slang for “butt.” Oh, great. My new school's name means butt-mouth. Lovely. In Piddle City. Can I die now, please?)
“I'm in the sixth form. I'll do two years of study, then I'll be going to Magdalen.”
“Magdalen!” I said, brightly and with much coolness and not at all like I hadn't the slightest idea who or what Magdalen was, which you know I didn’t, but as I said, appearance is everything when you’re trying to convince someone you’re fabu. “That's totally rufous! What are you...um...going to do there?”
“Law,” he said. “Dad is a Magdalen man. Rufous? Doesn't that mean red?”
“Yeah, red, you know, as in, coolio? Kind of like green, but much better.”
“Coolio?” He tipped his adorable little head to the side and scrunched up his gorgeous grey eyes.
“Cool is cool, but very cool is coolio.”
He grinned. “I like the way you talk.”
He likes the way I talk! He likes the way I talk! Maybe it won’t be so bad here after all!
“Yeah, well, I do come from Seattle. We're very tight out there. So if you're going to GobBottom, too, that means we might...um...you know, see each other. In classes and stuff.”
He batted his lashes over his big, gray eyes and smiled at me. SMILED! A hottie with a mustache smiled at me! Do you think it's too early to sign up at the bridal registry?
“I'm sure we will. You're in the sixth form then, too?”
“I think so. Brother said something about the school. I'm sixteen, so that sounds about right.”
“Brother?”
“My father. Everyone calls him Brother, even my mom and my grandma. He hates his real name. We humor him..”
He nodded. “Sounds like you will be in the sixth form, too. Maybe I could show you around the school before term begins.”
Are you insanely jealous with my femme fatale-ness yet? You should be! I only met Aidan (and how cool is that name? AIDAN! Aidan and Emily...has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) for a few minutes and already he was asking me out on a date!
“I'm sure Emily would like that,” Brother said, nosing into my conversation as if he had a right to. He had his boring old dean to talk to. Who told him he could snag my hottie, too? “She's been a bit nervous about starting school in a country well known for its academic excellence.”
Brother told Aiden the mega hottie that I was nervous? Death, take me now!
“I'm sure she'll have no difficulties whatsoever,” the dean guy said, giving me one of those old-people smiles (you know, the kind where their dry old lips peel back to expose dentures. Uck!). “Going into the sixth form, too, are you, young lady?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but Brother slapped a big old hammy hand down on my shoulder and hauled me up to his side. Honest to Pete, Dru, I just about died of embarrassment...until he totally and completely ruined my life with what he said next.
“Fifth form, actually, dean, old bean.” Or something like that. Brother is taking this living in England thing way too seriously. “Her mother and I thought she wouldn't be ready for the GSCE yet, and the headmaster at Gobottle agreed.”
“What's the fifth form?” I asked, digging my elbow into his side so he'd let go of me. “What's a GSCE?”
“Fifth form?” Aidan asked, stroking a finger over his 'stache. It was such a very cool move, I almost piddled...I mean, puddled up right there. “But she's sixteen. She should be in the sixth form, not the fifth. The fifth formers are younger.”
A horrible, awful, ghastly, terrible thought occurred to me then. I turned on Brother andtried to sound like I wasn’t holding back a shriek. “Wait a minute, wait just one minute, here! You want to stick me back a year? With...” I couldn’t believe it! Not only was I yanked from my friends and home and school and everything just so Brother could do the scholar exchange thing, not only was I going to have to start a whole new school where I had no friends, but I had to be put back a year, too? Aaaaack! The idea was so horrible, I almost couldn't