to her, nobody had ever dared teasing him, even when they had discovered that he found school hard because of slight dyslexia, which the school speech therapist and psychologist hadn't been able to certificate because the boy's father had hushed it up, as soon as they had started talking about back-up teachers and facilitated tests to help his son face his handicap in a better way.
That word, handicap, was exactly the one which had stirred up a mess, sending the speech therapist to hospital with a broken nose.
That day the powerful Darren Scott hadn't been able to get off very easily and had been forced to pay a lot of money in order to avoid being formally denounced
“You're very handsome,” Kira stated keeping her eyes on the t-shirt.
“Handsome?” the boy repeated amused and uneasy, as he wasn't used to such compliments.
Kira immediately regretted using that word.
“Jane says you are handsome,” she underlined, very ashamed since she had just revealed her friend's secret.
“Jane? Jane Hartwood?”
“Yes. I believe she would like to pair off with you,” Kira whispered, keeping cursing herself and wondering how the hell she could have told Lucas those things.
“Really?” Lucas asked her, turning suddenly serious.
That change in his voice deeply annoyed Kira, who felt suddenly very irritated and angry.
“You don't like her, do you? Lucas, don't tell me you want to pair off with her too! You want to kiss her and...” she squealed in a shrill and raving voice.
“No, I don't! I'm just curious. I didn't think Jane liked me,” Lucas stopped her.
“If that's the question, Roxy is crazy for you too,” Kira was going to reply, but a poisonous feeling of jealousy shut her lips.
“What's the problem now?” Lucas immediately got worried as he knew what that small, heart-shaped mouth could hide when it turned still smaller and thinner.
“Nothing.”
“You're angry,” Lucas could understand since he knew her very well.
“I'm not angry at all!”
“Is it for Jane's fault? I think she is nice, but she isn't the one for me.”
Of all his words, Kira could just hear “nice.”
“So, you like her!”
“I just said she's nice, not that I like her!”
“Well, so just get you next Super Mario's t-shirt from her!” Kira burst out furiously; her mind was hazy and she went out of the room slamming the door.
“Kira!” Lucas called her, upset. Kira had never left him alone in all those years they had spent together, so he was feeling deeply guilty at that moment, as if he was responsible for her reaction.
Kira couldn't understand her own behaviour, but she felt shuttered while her chest was hurting.
When she got to her bedroom, she started crying.
She let herself fall onto the bed, feeling miserable and lost because of her deep emotions.
Someone knocked at the door soon after.
She didn't answer, but the door opened anyway.
Her mother was there.
“Can you tell me what happened, darling? Lucas was crying when he walked away! I hadn't seen hin crying for such a long time...Kira, you too! Are you crying?” Elizabeth immediately got worried, because she wasn't used at all to seeing her daughter shedding tears. Kira had always been very Zen and not very emotional, excepted before some injustice.
“I'm not crying!” she sobbed, her face drenched with tears.
“Kira, darling, what happened to you? Did you and Lucas quarrel?”
“I don't know...I...I don't know what seized me” Kira tried to explain and kept whining. “I gave him the t-shirt we bought at the market and then...he said that he finds Jane nice and I...I...”
“Are you jealous of Jane?” her mother suggested, trying to hold back an amused smile in front of what seemed to be quite a jealousy scene. She had been wondering in the bottom of her heart what that very particular friendship between Kira and Lucas would turn into, when the two of them left puberty to enter teenage. Could her daughter's fondness towards him accept the presence of another girl next to Lucas? Would he ever be able to part from his best friend?
She had gotten more and more certain in the last years that the tie between those two children could never break up and that sooner or later she would find them petting behind the garden hedge.
And now, seeing that her daughter had fallen victim to jealousy and was suffering for her first love pain, she couldn't avoid smiling and feeling pleased with her excellent intuition which had never disappointed her.
“I'm not jealous!” Kira got into a huff.
“So, why are you crying? Tell me the truth, are you falling in love with Lucas?” Elizabeth supposed, pretending to be indifferent to the evident blush on her daughter's pale face.
“No, I'm not! What are you saying, mum?”
“I'm just saying that getting so angry because Lucas likes another girl is very strange... By the way, you've grown up now and it had to happen sooner or later. To him or to you...” she teased her.
“Lucas is mine!” Kira got dejected and started crying her eyes out again. “I'm not going to share him with anybody!”
“Kira,” her mother whispered, getting moved and troubled.
“I don't want to lose him! I love him, mum.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Elizabeth sighed and hugged her daughter to comfort her.
They kept hugging each other for a long time, till the girl stopped crying.
“Was Lucas really crying?” Kira asked after a while.
“Yes, he was. I hadn't seen him crying for ages” her mother told her with sorrow, making her daughter feel terribly guilty. “You should apologize to him.”
“Yes, you're right. I didn't mean to make him cry” she just mumbled as she felt very ashamed of her behaviour.
“What about making banana biscuits with chocolate drops and bringing them to him?” her mother suggested, trying to cheer her up.
“Lucas loves those biscuits!”
Wiping away sadness, Kira and her mother started making a large baking tray full of flower-shaped biscuits. Being busy in making perfect biscuits, Kira forgot her conversation with Lucas and just focused on making peace with him.
The biscuits were almost perfectly baked in
