Hattie moaned like hell about moving, which was typical. Hattie complains about everything, her so-called friends, Hugh and me. The weather. Her favourite phrase is, "It's not fair", and she habitually acts as if the entire world should organise itself purely for her convenience. In other words, she your quintessential little sister. The parents usually treat her by veering wildly between brisk chivvying along (Mum) and indulgent spoiling (Dad), but on this occasion they both tried patiently to talk around her, which honestly did my head in. Anybody would have thought they were proposing to send her to a Romanian orphanage, not moving to a whacking great semi- palace with massive rooms and a garden the size of the pentagon, OK so maybe I'm exaggerating, but you doubtless get my point.

'But what about all of my friends!' she whined for the zillionth time, 'When am I going to see them again?'

'You'll see them in the holiday dear.' Mum said and she groaned.

'Great, that's just another saying for saying I'm never going to see them again!' she hued. Hattie liked to pretend her whole life was in a state of unbearable flux; acknowledging that she'd still be able to contact them through phone, Skype, web cam, and holidays would just have spoiled the illusion.

'Hattie, darling, they can come and stay over – we have the space and if their parent's allow them they can come over as much as they want – you can't start having the pyjama parties you've wanted for so long.' Dad tried again and I sighed, knowing that it wouldn't work.

'Yeah right, like they're going to get in their cars and drive over and anyway they're called overnighters. Pyjama parties are for kids!'

'But Harriet,' I put in, with my sweetest voice, 'you are a kid, remember?'

She turned on me then, her jaw square, like a mutinous toddler. 'You can butt out Allison!' she said sweetly. Cue Mum.

'Come on now, you two. Sonny, stop winding your sister up,' she sighed. But it's so easy I felt like saying, and such fun. I kept my mouth shut though. I know when to avoid hassle, even if Hattie doesn't.

'Look Hattie darling, it's not the end of the world – I'll pay for you to fly over and back and I'll even drive them here and back to Wisconsin and I'll cook breakast, how's that?' he cooed and I rolled my eyes as he put an affectionate arm around her shoulders. He was doing his best, so I'll play fair to him. He must of been reading one of those "How to Help Your Kids Through Times Of Change" books. But Hattie wasn't having any of it, as usual.

'I hate cooked breakfasts!' she hissed furiously, shrugging his arm off, 'I've been your daughter for 12 years and you don't even know that about me! You and Mum are trying to ruin my life and it's JUST SO UNFAIR!' she flounced theatrically from the room, slamming the door behind her for maximum dramatic effect. God only knows what she'll be like when she's actually a teenager.

Things did improve once we'd actually moved in, though, despite Hugh instantly commandeering the big attic room, which nearly set Hattie off on another rampage. But mum said "he's the oldest", in a voice that broached no argument and that was that – sorted. After a bit, Hattie aw the benefits of living in LA such as shopping and this stopped her whinging about the movem which to say was a miracle in itself, although it didn't last too long. She managed to make new friends at our new school, as did Hugh and I and I was happy, in fact I loved moving to LA.

I loved all the space, and the privacy, the fact that we could go and hang the washing out the back or put the bin without Mr Nosy from next door wanting to know what we'd all been up to over the weekend. I was away from my old school's bullying. I enjoyed being able to go home after school without tripping over Mum's private piano pupils, who she grapples with after teaching music all day at her new job in a posh private school just down the road from the one which the three of us attend, which is neither private nor posh. There had been no escaping her old ones in our last house where the rooms were so tiny it was hard to get to the stairs.

But the thing I loved most about our new house was that I had my own room. A bedroom all to myself! Sharing with my 12 year old sister is pants enough itself, but when you take into account just who that sister is, you start approaching nightmare territory. One of the problems with Hattie is that she has no conception of privacy. She'd throw a mental if I ever touched anything of hers, but she seems to consider my things air game. So it was something of a novelty to be able to leave my make up and CDs and stuff lying around the room, sae in the knowledge that when I returned they would still be there. I didn't even have to keep my diary under lock and key any more, although as things turned out it might have been better all round if I had.

A couple of weeks after we moved in, Ruby and Nat, my two new best friends, came back with me on the school bus to give my room their seal of approval. I was quite confident that they would like what they saw and as we turned into the driveway, a strange car stood there. It was an old mini, it's racing green paintwork streaked grubbily with winter mud and salt from the lanes. In the back window, a red and white sign proclaimed "American Football Players Do It With Hookers"

Nat's face lit up and I looked at her strangely.

'OMG! I know that car.' She squealed excitedly.

'Yeah,' Ruby agreed, 'It's Danny Oldfield's. You never told us he was going to be here!'

'Who's Danny Oldfield?'

'OMG, Rubes she's been at school for two weeks and she still doesn't know who he is!' Nat gasped and she and Ruby grabbed my arms and dragged me in. 'You'll soon find out.' They giggled, like a couple of love struck groupies after an autograph.

Perhaps I ought to say a word here about Danny Oldfield. Or two actually. Sex Bomb just about sums it up. Six foot two, eyes of emerald green and glossy brown bed swept hair. What the women's mags called chiselled features and muscles to die for. Not really my type to be honest but I definitely could see why he was seen as attractive. Ruby and Nat obviously thought so – you could practically see the trail of drool they left on the tiles in the hallway.

'I can't believe your brother is friends with Danny, Sonny.' Nat whispered in my ear and I raised an eyebrow.

'Is that a good thing?'

'Yes, Danny is so popular, which means your brother is popular, which means you are popular!' Ruby explained and I laughed. Danny and Hugh were in the kitchen. My brother was lounging against the counter with his legs crossed and a mug of coffee in his hands and Danny had his head in the fridge. All that could be seen of him was his admittedly rather tasty jeans clad bum.

'And we were really whanging it along the lane.' He was saying. Sensing an audience, he withdrew his head and shut the fridge door with an elbow, a chunk for clingfilmed cheddar in one hand and two cold sausages in the other. Hugh never really hung out with guys like this back in Wisconsin and I suspected their friendship had been founded on the basis that Danny had wheels and no brains whereas Hugh had brains but no wheels, but then again that's probably me just being cynical.

Hugh saluted us with his coffee mug, slopping some of it on the floor, like he was drunk.

'Whotcha girls.' He grinned and I rolled my eyes.

'Shut up Hugh.' I groaned and Danny's mouth curved into a slow smile as he regarded each of us in turn.

'Well, hello.' He said, at last, giving the last syllable at least our O's and sounding like one o those old British actors who always played the part o the sleazy ladies man. He was looking directly at me as he said it, and it's a curious thing but I had the oddest sensation in the pit of my stomach, like a hamster running round on one of those little wheel things. Strange but true.

'Hello.' I said and smiled back.

'Hi.' Nat panted. I swear it – she was actually panting. 'What are you doing here?'

Ruby just scowled – she has attitude does Rube – but I could tell the two o them were well impressed that Mr Love Magnet was standing in my – my - kitchen. I suppose thats what made me say what I did next.

'Oh, he's Hugh's new BF aren't you Danny?' I said, airily to the room in general. In actual fact, this was the first time I had heard of Danny and the first time he had actually stepped foot into our house, but Danny didn't let on. He put the cheese and sausages down on the kitchen table and looked intently into my eyes.

'What makes you think I'm here because of Hugh?'

Off went the hamster again. My God I thought Sex Bomb is flirting with me!

'Well I just thought,' I floundered, irritatingly flustered all of a sudden, 'you know as we've been seeing a lot of you recently...' I stammered. Sonny you idiot – this is the irst time you've ever heard and seen of Danny Oldfield!

'Play your cards right, babe,' Danny growled with a wolfish grin, 'and you could be seeing a lot more of me.' And still holding my eye, he picked up one of the sausages and bit into it in a manner that could only be described as suggestive. I felt my face begin to turn an unflattering shade of pink. Luckily for me, Hugh interceded at that point. 'Oi, you.' He said to Danny mildly, 'stop chatting up my baby sister.'

'Less of the baby matey,' Ruby objected. 'we could show both of you a thing or two.'

'I'll bet.' Danny said, maintaining his wolfish grin. He put out an idle hand – not the one squeezing the sausage – and gave Nat's bum a squeeze which caused her to squeal like a stuck pig and at that moment the arpeggios stopped abruptly and the door to the music room opened.

'Hey guys.' Mum said, 'D'you think you could keep it down to a dull roar. B lat major's getting awfully tangled up in there.'

Danny instantly stood to attention and went into the "Yes Ma'am" mode. 'Yes Mrs Munroe, Sorry Mrs Munroe.'

'Three bags full Mrs Munroe.' I muttered under my breath, pulling a face. 'B flats about right. How can you stand it?' I asked and Mum frowned at me lowered her voice.

'Don't be unkind darling, Philip is trying his best.' And with that she went back in and Philip's hapless arpeggios were replaced with some Bach being murdered into fortissimo. I took advantage o the situation to prise Ruby and Nat out o the kitchen and the three of us clattered up the as yet uncarpeted stairs, Nat squeaking all the while about Danny.

'He is so fit! God, Sonny you are so lucky!'

'Why's that?' I asked.

'You haven't been here two weeks and you've already got Danny Oldfield checking you out!' she cried as if I was stupid. 'I wonder how often he'll come round, that means I'll have to come around more...'

'Forget it.' Ruby declared.

'Forget what?' Nat asked.

'It's Sonny he fancies, not you.' She grinned and Nat and I both protested vigorously.

'No he doesn't!'

'Yeah! It was my bum he pinched, not Sonny's!' Nat pointed out.

'So? One bum pinch does not make a romance,' said Ruby, 'I saw the way he was looking at Sonny, even if you didn't.'

'Yeah? And what way was that then?' Nat demanded, a touch peevishly.

'You know like...' Ruby lowered her voice to try and imitate Danny's, 'Take me baby, I'm all yours.'

I bit back a giggle at the horrible impersonation that Ruby was doing of Danny.

'Oh he so was not!' Nat persisted but Ruby wouldn't be swayed and an hour or so later they had gone.

I went back downstairs and Hugh was sitting at the kitchen table watching Gray's Anatomy and making inroads into a plate of beans on toast.

'Your new little friends gone home?' he asked, shovelling in another mouthful.

'I was about to ask you the same thing.' I looked around the kitchen elaborately , 'where is he then? Oh I know – hiding in the fridge finishing off all the left overs.'

'Ha ha, I forgot to laugh.' He got up, the legs of his chair scraping across the kitchen floor and stacked his dirty dishes in the dishwasher. 'Us guys are growing lads. We need our grub.'

'Evidently.' I rolled my eyes and opened the ridge door. 'And so is everyone else apparently because by the looks of things, there's nothing left in here – it's like a plague of locusts has been visiting.'

Hugh just shrugged and picked up his school bag.

'Oh well, best get on with the homework, I suppose.' But at the door he stopped. 'Oh and by the way, I almost forgot. You've got an invite. To Danny's 18th.'

'Oh yeah?' Despite myself, I felt a little thrill of what? Excitement? Anticipation? Foresight? I guess it was because this would be my first party that I had been invited to since I was bullied so bad back in Wisconsin to the point I just slept with some random guy in the year above just so I wouldn't be teased for being a virgin. 'When is it?'

'Saturday week. The third. And your two new buddies too. He says he needs more girls to make up the numbers.'

He gave me a grin that implied we both knew that that couldn't possibly be the case and that Danny's motive for asking us all there must therefore be of the ulterior kind.

I had decidedly mixed the feelings abut the invitation. On the one hand, Danny Oldfield (from the ew minutes that I had spent in his company) wasn't my favourite person at that precise moment - his presence in the house having rather stolen my new bedroom's thunder. Ruby and Nat's response hadn't been unenthusiastic exactly, just uninterested because of Danny being downstairs.

But on the other hand, I couldn't deny that his attentions had left me feeling oddly revved up – that plus Ruby's assertation that he fancied me. Even though I knew t was hardly likely to be the case. : why on earth should he fancy me? The plain, boring, unpopular newbie from Wisconsin when he had all the other girls in the 11th and 12th grade.

Going to his party might be interesting thought – a chance for me to see whose instincts are correct – mine or Ruby's and also for me to start making sure that I socialise in order not to get bullied again. Back at my old school in Wisconsin, boys and girls were separated so we could learn better so Hugh couldn't do the "older brother" thing.

'Rught.' I said briskly, slamming two slices of bread in the toaster and reaching for the butter. 'Tell Danny that I will mention it to them. We'll see if we've got a window open.'

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