Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier Page B

eyes.
    Suddenly there were butterflies dancing in my stomach. It was odd, watching yourself kiss someone. I thought I did it pretty well. I realized that the girl was kissing the boy only to take his mind off me. Nice of her, but why was she doing it? And how was I going to get past them unnoticed?
    The butterflies in my stomach turned to a flock of birds in flight, and the picture of the couple kissing blurred before my eyes. And then, suddenly, I was in the Year Six classroom with my nerves in shreds.
    All was still.
    I’d expected an outcry from all the students when I suddenly appeared, and someone—maybe Mrs. Counter—falling down in a faint with the shock of it.
    But the classroom was empty. I groaned with relief. At least I’d been lucky this time. I dropped into a chair and put my head down on the desk in front of it. What had just happened was more than I could take in for the moment. The girl, the gorgeous guy, the kiss.…
    The girl hadn’t just looked like me.
    The girl was me.
    There was no possible mistake. I’d recognized myself, beyond any shadow of doubt, by the little birthmark in the shape of a half-moon on my temple, the one Aunt Glenda always called Gwenny’s funny little banana.
    There couldn’t be two different people who looked so much alike.

 
     
    The first pair Opal and Amber are,
    Agate sings in B flat, the wolf avatar,
    A duet— solutio! —with Aquamarine.
    Mighty Emerald next, with the lovely Citrine.
    The Carnelian twins of the Scorpio sign,
    Number Eight is digestio, her stone is Jade fine.
    E major’s the key of the Black Tourmaline,
    Sapphire sings in F major, and bright is her sheen.
    Then almost at once comes Diamond alone,
    Whose sign of the lion as Leo is known.
    Projectio! Time flows on, both present and past.
    Ruby red is the first and is also the last.
    F ROM THE SECRET WRITINGS OF
    C OUNT S AINT- G ERMAIN

 
     
    SIX
     
    NO. IT COULDN ’ T HAVE been me.
    For one thing, I’d never kissed a boy.
    Well, not really. Not like that. There was that boy Miles in the year above ours. I’d gone out with him last summer. Not so much because I was in love with him as because he was best friends with Max, Lesley’s boyfriend at the time, so it seemed kind of convenient. But Miles wasn’t really into kissing. What he liked was leaving love bites on my throat to distract my attention from his creeping hand. I had to go about with a scarf around my neck when the temperature was ninety degrees in the shade, and I was constantly trying to keep Miles’s hands out of my shirt. (Especially in the darkness of the cinema, where he seemed to grow at least three extra.) After two weeks and a half day, our so-called relationship was terminated by mutual consent. I was “too immature” for Miles, and Miles was too … well, let’s say affectionate for me.
    Apart from him, I’d only kissed Gordon, on our class outing to the Isle of Wight, but that didn’t count because it was (a) part of a game called Truth or Kiss (I’d told the truth, but Gordon had insisted it was a lie) and (b) not a real kiss. Gordon hadn’t even taken his chewing gum out of his mouth first.
    So except for the love-bite affair, as Lesley called it, and Gordon’s pepperminty performance, I was entirely unkissed. And possibly also immature, as Miles claimed. I knew that at sixteen and a half, it was getting late, but Lesley, who had stayed with Max for a whole year, thought kissing in general was overrated. Maybe she’d just had bad luck, she said, but the boys she’d kissed so far definitely did not have the knack for it.
    Kissing, said Lesley, ought really to be taught as a school subject, preferably instead of religious studies, which nobody needed.
    We often discussed what the ideal kiss would be like, and there were any number of films we’d watched over and over again just because of the good kissing scenes in them.
    “Ah, Miss Gwyneth. Will you condescend to speak to me today, or are you going to ignore