First Move

Juliet believes girls like her – girls with arthritis – don’t get their own love stories. She exists at the edges of her friends’ social lives, skipping parties to play online chess under a pseudonym with strangers around the world. There, she isn’t just ‘the girl with crutches’. Ronan is the new kid: good looking, smart, a bad boy plagued by guilt over what happened to his brother Ciaran. Chesslife is his escape; there, he’s not just ‘the boy with the brother’. Juliet thinks Ronan thinks someone like Ronan could never be interested in someone like her – and she wouldn’t want him to be anyway because he always acts like he’s cooler than everyone else. Whereas, Ronan thinks life is already too complicated for dating and just wants to keep his head down at school. Little do they know they’ve already discovered each other online, and have more in common than they think . . .]]>