[This collection features fictional stories inspired by memories, emotions, and the beautiful mess of teenage longing. Names are changed, characters blended, and moments reimagined. The goal is to explore youthful desire and confusion, not to present historical fact. These stories invite the same curiosity you’d show your younger self.]
DAY ONE: Tuesday 28 March 1978
Setting: Robbie’s bedroom, Gosforth.
Visual: Robbie returns from the dentist, brace finally removed. A gap-toothed smile. He sighs. Bowie on vinyl.
Scene: Kizzy bursts in holding her Form Photo—It is supposed to show seventeen girls, arranged in rows, but three girls are off, and bunching was the best they could do.
Kizzy: “Pick one.”
Robbie: “What for?”
Kizzy: “Just pick one.”
She pins the photo to the back of the door and hands him three darts. The experiment begins.
Cue theme tune. “Love is the drug, and I need to score.” Roxy Music.
A moment later, a dart hit the picture and stuck.
Robbie squinted at it. “You might hit someone!” he protested.
“That’s the point,” Kizzy said, with that maddening mixture of logic and mischief she had perfected before she turned thirteen. “If you’re not going to pick someone, I will.”
Robbie has always been ‘Robbie’, never Robert or Bob. He was named Robbie at his his christening, while his twin sister (born six minutes after him) is called Kizzy. She started life as Katherine, which transformed into Katy and then Kathy. However, with uncontrollably fizzy hair sprouting at age nine, her name eventually shifted to Kizzy. It has stuck ever since, even though a good haircut, from time to time, along with regular washing and conditioning, has helped.
“What if you hit the teacher?”
“There’s a challenge for our sunshine boy. Miss Rowbotham’s OK. She’s got a boyfriend. Still at university. A PhD or something.”
Robbie frowned. “What if you hit you?”
“I won’t.”
Her tone made it clear she considered this a stupid question. Of course, she wouldn’t hit herself.
Robbie stepped closer.
“So you’re aiming. That’s not random. You should let Fate decide. Give me a go.”
“Nope,” said Kizzy, already positioning another dart.
“You’re good at darts. You’ll just pick Cecelia, or Katie or Helen.”
Robbie takes a closer look at the photograph. He should recognise a few of them. Who’s that at the back?”
Kizzy put a few names to faces, “Helen Laidlaw, Donna, India … Sharon Fox, Julie-Anne, Jane Uldal.”
“And that one tucked in at the back, trying to hide?” Robbie asks.
“A German exchange student”, Kizzy explains. “I have no idea how she got in on the act. Wanted the full English, I suppose. I can’t remember her name. Helga von Hosenflap or something equally tragic.”
“Which one is Diana?” Robbie asks, holding back a snigger, thinking that ‘hosenflap’ sounds like something he might have read about in the copy of Shere Hite’s ‘Hite Report’ he purchased, redfaced, from a bookshop in Kendal while out on a school swimming trip only a few weeks before.
Kizzy pointed. Robbie followed her finger to a girl in the second row with a tight smile and the hairstyle of someone who owned at least two curling tongs. He shook his head.
“I think not.”
He lunged for the remaining two darts in Kizzy’s hand; he sought some agency in this, but she turned away, defending them with a strength forged in years of sibling warfare. For a moment, the situation edged toward unpleasantness.
Robbie, taller but wary of going too far, paused. Kizzy knew he wouldn’t hurt her. She also knew he’d eventually win in any fight—usually by sulking until she lost her will to live.
“At least use your left hand,” he said, dropping his attack.
They locked eyes. Apologies unspoken passed between them.
“Sorry.”
“Then.”
“All right.”
They said the words in unison—an old ritual, performed word-perfectly, like a mime rehearsal from their eleven-year-old selves.
Kizzy handed him a dart—one each. Together, they shifted their hands. Kizzy put the dart in her left hand, and Robbie mirrored her.
He was just about to throw when she stopped him.
“Not with your dominant hand! I have to use my left—you have to use your right.”
“Hey. This is serious stuff. I have someone in mind; now you’ve got me thinking.”
Kizzy is having none of it. She takes the dart from Robbie’s left hand and folds the fingers of his right hand around it.
“There you go, petal,” she says.
Kizzy had another thought. She took out a piece of chewing gum and carefully layered it over one of the girls, her face and her torso.
“Not Momo,” she says.
Robbie wonders why.
“You know Momo. You might remember her as Mimi Mackesy, were’nt you at school with her younger brother?” Kizzy explains, “She rides Pablo most Saturday mornings”.
Robbie’s mouth drops. He shakes his head in bewilderment.
“Who’s Pablo?” He asked, convinced Momo must have acquired a waiter boyfriend on her last summer holiday to Ibiza.
“Her horse! Her horse” Kizzy insists, adding “You have a mind like a sewer”.
“What’s your horse called?” Robbie asks. He should know.
“Mr Wilson,” Kizzy says, deadpan. Robbie is aching to make a joke, but resists. Barely. If he’s going to get any riding on a Saturday morning, he needs to concentrate.
“Now. Together. One, two, three!”
One dart hit Miss Rowbotham square between the eyes.
“Shit,” Kizzy said automatically.
“Sorry,” she added, addressing the photo—both for the damage and because it now meant Robbie was supposed to ask Miss Rowbotham out if they stuck with the rules.
Robbie’s dart landed on a girl in the middle row, striking her squarely on the nose—marking her as someone experiencing a sudden, painful epiphany.
“Miss Cecilia S. Noble!” announced Kizzy, as if Robbie had just won a deluxe caravan on ‘Sale of the Century’ . She then added, “Good one. Good one. March birthday.” After a moment of thought, she recalled that she knew most of their birthdays. They had been throwing parties for each birthday since the reception. “You’ve missed it by a week. What a shame. You could have bought her a colourful ‘hair accessory’ from Woolworths or a large bag of ‘pick n’ mix’ , though it’s a mystery if that girl ever eats. She’s very ‘plant-based.’ I mean, she looks like a piece of bamboo.”
Robbie raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“You’ll see. Thingey’s sister. They live next door. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. She does have a dog.”
Robbie leaned in. The dart had pierced the photo clean through.
“Why isn’t she smiling?”
Kizzy shrugged. “I think most of the class were having their period. Maybe she was having a bad time of it.”
Robbie takes a look at the ‘chosen one’. “She’s… alright.” He says.
“Unless you’d prefer to go on a date with Miss Rowbotham.”
He ignored that. “So, how do I go about meeting Cecelia ?”
“Let’s call her ‘Cece.’ Everyone calls her that. Cecelia is what her mum yells when she’s found three pairs of tights stuffed under the bed.”
Kizzy then ticked off options on her fingers.
“Take the dog to the Town Moor. Hope you bump into her. Or go to Woolworths the day a new Roxy Music single comes out—she’ll be there. Or I could ask Thingey’s sister.
And one more thing. The Rules are:
You must speak to her.
You must try to make her laugh.
You may kiss her — but only if it feels right.“
Robbie headed back to his bedroom with things on his mind: he needed a haircut, how did his teeth look after their recent release from braces? What scent would he choose? Was that spot on his chin going to erupt? This dart thing was serious. It placed his love life in the hands of the gods.
At her bedroom desk, Kizzy turns to a well-thumbed copy of ‘The Naked Ape’ resting beneath her Biology and Chemistry revision notes. “Extended sexuality ensures bonding,” she reads. ‘I doubt there’ll be much of that’ she ponders.
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