Passion for Fashion

by Coleen McLoughlin

  “Well,” Miss O’Neill began.

  “But that top would look horrible on Summer, Miss!” I wailed.

  Summer zoomed across the room to join in the discussion.

  “I’ve been waiting for ages for that top too, Miss,” she simpered. “I asked my dad especially if he could send it in, just so I could wear it in the show—”

  “She’s lying,” I shouted. “I’m the one who—”

  “Enough!” Miss O’Neill shouted, waving her arms in the air.

  We both ground to a halt. Everyone fell silent and swung round to stare at us.

  “Let’s take a vote,” Miss O’Neill said, passing her hand over her forehead like she always does when she’s stressed. “You both model each garment, and the whole class will decide who should wear what.”

  I reached for the top, but Summer snatched it off me and ran behind the big painted beachscape scenes that were stood up against the back wall of the classroom. Slowly I took the silver dress and followed her. What if the class decided against me? What if I had to actually wear the helium balloon?

  Nine

  For once, Summer and I were silent as we got changed. This was too important for bickering. To my horror, the blue top looked quite good on Summer, even with her grey school skirt on the bottom. I slid into the crinkly silver folds of the dress, wincing at the scratchy feel of the fabric. I was so not into the whole logo-crazy astronaut look.

  Then I saw Summer looking hard at the silver dress. Something that looked a bit like envy was flickering across her eyes. It dawned on me that she actually liked it, and this whole thing was just about getting one over on me!

  As I was processing this thought, Summer pushed past me and walked out from behind the screens. There was a round of applause. I could hardly bear the suspense as I inched out from behind the screen and walked up and down the classroom behind Summer. Everyone’s eyes were on us. Me and Summer’s eyes were everywhere but on each other.

  “Next,” said Miss O’Neill.

  It was as tense as a cowboy shoot-out back behind the screens. Summer and I silently exchanged outfits. I slid into the top, and couldn’t help a sigh of pleasure as the silk jersey rippled all cool across my skin. Summer fiddled with the scrunchy silver hem on the dress. Even considering that it was totally disgusting, the dress looked much better with Summer’s long legs than it had with my little ones. Then we were out again, walking up and down like prize penguins.

  “Thank you,” said Miss O’Neill at last. “Let’s take that vote. Who thinks Coleen should get the silver dress?”

  I hid my eyes. I wasn’t going to try and count the hands.

  “And who thinks it looks better on Summer?” Miss O’Neill continued.

  I stayed firmly behind my hands. The top wrapped snugly around me, like a big silk hug.

  “That’s decided then,” I heard Miss O’Neill say. “Summer gets the dress and Coleen gets the top.”

  My legs wobbled under me, but thankfully didn’t buckle. I almost couldn’t believe it. The top was mine.

  “The top looked so much better on you than that bit of kitchen foil!” Mel said enthusiastically as she rushed over to give me a hug.

  “Summer’s welcome to it,” Lucy agreed, patting me on the back.

  “No one gets one over on me,” snarled Summer. “Especially you, Coleen. You wait. I’ll get you back. You’ll see.”

  The rest of the week picked up speed like a skateboard on a hill. There was still so much to do that I didn’t have time to worry about Summer Collins and her nasty little threat. To tell you the truth, I totally forgot about it – which gives you some idea of how busy we all were. The days blurred into one as we spent every second we were out of class doing all the last-minute things that were needed for it to run smoothly on Saturday night. We still had the dress rehearsal on Friday afternoon, and then that was that. Show time!

  Even if you weren’t in Year Eight, it wasn’t hard to work out who was doing what for the show. The setpainters were the kids permanently covered in yellow and blue paint. The musicians wandered around with frowns of concentration on their faces and humming the same tunes over and over. The models were practising strutting down the corridors (me included). Everyone was excited. You could practically taste it in the air.

  And then it was Friday afternoon and school was out. We stood in a huddle outside the hall for our dress rehearsal as all these totally over-excited kids raced past, off to start half-term as fast as they could.

  “All right for some,” said Andrew Donovan, watching everyone screeching out the gates. He and Daniel Thorburn had been put back on lighting duty for the show, and they were trying really hard not to look too pleased about it.

  Miss O’Neill appeared, jingling a set of keys. “Hopefully this won’t take too long,” she said, unlocking the hall so we could all file inside out of the wind. “We’ll just run all the lighting cues, get our models to take a turn down the catwalk in the correct order, and listen to the music as well. Mr Collins has taken the clothes for safekeeping overnight, and will bring them back at six o’clock tomorrow, ready for kick-off at seven.”

  Mel and I glanced at Lucy. She was looking up for it, standing with the other band members and humming gently under her breath. A great feeling of relief swept over me. Lucy was going to be fine. There was no need to worry.

  Even though I’d seen everything a million times during our drama lessons, I couldn’t help gasping when I saw the hall. Everything was finished, and it looked unbelievable.

  The catwalk stretched from the stage steps right down the middle of the hall. A few cute beachy things like starfish, seaweed and fish had been painted on it for that extra seaside touch. Huge green, yellow and blue banners hung around the walls. The surfboards, fishing nets and baskets were propped up beside the catwalk as well, plus piles of pebbles and seashells. Up on the stage, a massive white curtain hung down. It was going to swish like the sea behind the models, and a bunch of brilliant lights were going to shine on the curtain and change colour through the show – from pale mistymorning colours through to yellows and blues and bonfire oranges and reds until, last of all, a special filter would scatter stars across the curtain like the night sky.

  Mr Rat’s computer was all set up, and a couple of the lads were in charge of cueing up the recorded music. The rest was down to the band, who were setting up in a special corner of the stage.

  “Good luck, Lucy,” I said, giving my mate a massive hug.

  “You’re going to be the best,” Mel added.

  Lucy looked pale but determined. She grinned bravely at us and headed across to join the band. I grabbed Mel’s hand and pulled her up on to the stage as well. We took our places in the line of models all waiting impatiently behind the curtain.

  “Andrew!” Miss O’Neill shouted, peering backstage at the lighting desk where Andrew and Daniel were fiddling with switches. “Are you and Daniel ready? A lot of this stuff will be new to you. Let me know if the instructions aren’t clear. The most important thing of all to remember is that you should never have more than three lights on together. Our old lighting rig can’t take the current. OK?”

  “No problem, Miss,” said Andrew, who was peering in confusion at a bunch of switches somewhere near the top of the lighting desk.

  “I don’t think Andrew Donovan and Daniel Thorburn could find their own bedroom light switches,” said Mel to me in a low voice. “Let alone a switch in the middle of a hundred others.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” I said, giving her a push. “Go on. You’re in the bonfire part. That’s just ahead of me.”

  As part of the beach-party section, I was going on last – along with Summer Collins, Hannah Davies and…

  “All right?”

  Ben Hanratty was standing right next to me, grinning. Behind him, Ali Grover and Dave Sheekey stood balancing on the end of the stage, daring each other to stand a bit closer to the edge and not to topple over. Everyone was trying not to goggle at th
em, like Year Tens helped out Year Eights all the time. Well, most of them were trying not to. Summer, Hannah and Shona were goggling like a tank of tropical fish.

  “Hiya!” I said breezily, enjoying every second of being the person that Ben was talking to. Boing, boing, boing. My beach-ball was bouncing so hard that I could feel it squeezing up my throat. Mel flipped a wink at me, like she knew exactly how I was feeling.

  “Hi there.”

  Me and Ben both turned round to see Summer fluttering her long black eyelashes at him. And I mean really long, and really black. No way were they for real. She was stood with her hands on her hips and her body swivelled just a bit, like she was a celebrity out on some red carpet instead of a kid in school uniform.

  Mel started making a ringing noise like a telephone. “Hello, Hartley High make-up police?” she said into an imaginary handset. “Send a squad car. There’s a set of eyelashes here that are totally criminal.”

  I burst out laughing. Summer flushed angrily. Then, before things could turn nasty, we heard the first chords of the band’s opening number, Walking on Sunshine, blasting out across the hall. The rehearsal was underway.

  One foot in front of the other. Sway the hips. Don’t fall over. I recited my instructions carefully as I shuffled up the line of models, imagining how it would feel to be wearing the midnight-blue top tomorrow night, with the silver belt that I’d made over the weekend. I could feel Summer’s eyes boring into my back, but I refused to let her put me off. This was way too important. One foot in front of the other. Sway the hips. Don’t fall—

  There was a bang and the shattering sound of glass. Somebody screamed. Smoke started stealing around us as the band faltered and stopped like a bagpipe running out of air. Miss O’Neill raced through the curtain.

  “What happened?” she gasped as everyone coughed and waved their hands in front of their faces.

  Andrew Donovan peered sheepishly over the top of the lighting desk. “Was it four lights that shouldn’t go on together, Miss?” he asked. “Or three?”

  And then the fire alarm went, and it was the end of the shortest dress rehearsal in history.

  “So you and Mel never got to practise your parts?” Dad asked, frowning over his cup of tea as I explained to everyone back at home what had happened.

  I shook my head. “And Lucy hasn’t done her song either,” I said miserably. “The lights blew out half the electricity in the hall, including all the wires for the band’s mikes and instruments. It’s going to take them hours to fix it. And the fire brigade came and told us we couldn’t go back inside until they’d checked it all, and then we ran out of time, and now everything’s a total mess.”

  “Is the show still going ahead?” Mum said.

  I nodded. “So long as they can mend the lights and replace the fuses in time. But there’s no way we’ll be able to fit in another dress rehearsal.”

  “Those lads on the lighting desk should be fired,” Dad said. “Sounds like they couldn’t find a piece of coal in a bag of flour.”

  I was feeling really wobbly all of a sudden. “It’s going to be scary doing it all without a proper rehearsal,” I said, chewing my lip. “Not knowing whether we’re going to make mistakes, or whether the lighting’s going to work for real, or whether Lucy’s going to be brave enough to sing her song for the first time to a full hall.” I looked up at my family in despair. “What if everything goes wrong, and we all look really stupid?”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Em unexpectedly, looking up from the apple she was busy crunching. “It’s like a football match.”

  “Not everything compares to footie, Em,” I snapped.

  “You can’t plan the best matches,” Em said between crunches, ignoring me. “They just happen. You’ve got to have that unpredictable thing, or it’s just a load of boring rubbish.”

  She finished her apple and handed the core to Rascal. Rascal loves apple cores. He gobbled it up like it was steak. We have one seriously weird dog.

  “There’s no point worrying about it,” said Mum in her practical voice. “I’m sure everything will be fine. And we’ll love it whatever happens.”

  Trailing up to my room after tea, I tried to think about the show the way Em had described it. My little sister can be quite wise for a seven-year-old with zero sense of style and a blinding left foot. Maybe everything would be OK after all. She shimmies…she shoots…she swooshes…she scores…GOOOOAALLL!! But somehow, I was having a problem believing it.

  Coleen, fashion star or fashion flop? Only tomorrow would tell.

  Ten

  It was ten to seven on Saturday night, and “Beach Time: The Show” was about to begin.

  The place was packed out, and the murmur of voices out in the hall sounded like the rhythmic swooshing of waves against our catwalk. The bust lights had been replaced and the electricity problem sorted. Backstage, there’d been a panic half an hour earlier when Shona Mackinnon’s mum had called Miss O’Neill to say that Shona hadn’t eaten anything for three days and was now too ill and exhausted to do the show. Erm, what do you expect from stupid diets like that? But everything else was good to go.

  The first models were already wriggling into their outfits: some brilliant whites and greys and palest pink dresses and tops that billowed around exactly like dawn mist – at least, if you put your mind to it.

  On the far side of the stage, a group of lads stood around a canister of dry ice with Mrs Matthews, the science teacher, getting ready. When the chords of the intro music started up – a totally weird choice by Mr Rat, by some group called The Grateful Dead – they were going to open the canister and the dry ice was going to billow out across the catwalk and make it all misty and eerie. Music was already pumping out of Mr Rat’s speakers, and there was this hubbub out in the dark hall which sounded exciting and scary and wonderful all at the same time.

  After a great morning shopping with Mum – we’d found the most perfect pair of sparkly flip-flops to go with the blue top and my white cut-offs – I was more or less back to my old self. Even without a rehearsal, I had decided that I was going to be positive and go with the flow. It wasn’t every day that you got the chance to model something as brilliant as my midnight-blue top, and I was determined to make the best of it. Plus, I was standing next to Ben Hanratty, wasn’t I?

  Just like we’d practised in class, we all stood in the order we were going on in. Ben was modelling his jacket in the beach-party section, like me (and Summer and Hannah too, worse luck), so we were right at the back of the line. Dave and Ali were modelling some surfy gear for the afternoon section, and were stood further up ahead of us. Mel was on for the sunrise part so she was supposed to be near the front – though right now, she was peeping through the curtains beside me. As there wasn’t enough room for everyone to change at the same time, we were supposed to shuffle up the line as each section went on to the catwalk, reach the clothes rail and then get changed around two songs before our entries. I’d come to school in my white cut-offs and flip-flops already.

  “There’s like, a thousand people out there, Coleen,” Mel gulped in excitement, still peeping through the curtain. “We’re really doing this!”

  “I feel sick,” Lucy muttered, pacing up and down beside Mel. The words to her song were clutched so tightly in her hand that they were all crumpled and the ink was running over her fingers.

  “Throw that bit of paper away, Lucy,” I said, peeking over Mel’s head at the sea of expectant faces out in the darkness of the hall. Mel’s mum was out there – she was wearing the yellow jacket we’d modelled for her at our sleepover! She even had a black belt cinched in around her waist. I felt a rush of total satisfaction that we’d given Mel’s mum the courage to wear her cool clothes again. Then I saw my parents and Em sitting near the edge of the catwalk, and my stomach squeezed up all tight and nervous.

  “I can’t throw my words away. I don’t know them yet.” Lucy’s teeth were actually chattering together.

  “You’ve been s
inging those words up in your room for weeks, Lucy,” said Ben. “You know those words back to front.”

  “Don’t say that,” Lucy said, sounding a bit hysterical. “I might sing them that way.”

  “Five minutes.” Miss O’Neill bustled past us, wearing – shock horror – quite a nice dark green dress with a crisscross thing going on over her back. “All dawn and morning models, please be sure to have your outfits on.”

  “Gotta go,” said Mel, and dashed up the line towards the rail and her fabulous orange and yellow dress.

  “I am going to be sick,” Lucy wailed.

  A hush fell over the hall. We could all hear someone speaking. It sounded like Mrs Gabbitas, our Head Teacher.

  “She’s introducing the lady from the hospice,” I heard someone saying further up the line.

  Lucy had gone as white as chalk. The paper with her words written on it drifted out of her fingers and landed on the stage. She took a step backwards.

  “I’m not going on,” she said.

  Everyone around us stopped dead. I recovered first.

  “You’ve got to, Lucy!” I hissed as fiercely as I could. “The band needs you!”

  Lucy burst into tears. “I can’t, I feel too nervous,” she sobbed.

  “But there’s nothing to feel nervous about,” I said. “You are totally brilliant. I would love to be able to sing like you.”

  “Me too,” Ben smiled and rubbed his sister’s shoulder encouragingly. “With a voice like yours I could even be the lead singer of Take That.”

  Lucy laughed and looked as though she was starting to feel a little better.

  “Here, wear this,” I said, reaching over to the clothes rail and grabbing a brooch from Shona Mackinnon’s dress. “For luck.”

  “For luck,” Lucy said, tracing the brooch with her fingers.

  “Leona Lewis, eat your heart out,” I cried.

  I could almost see Lucy standing up taller as she thought about what I’d said.

  There was a round of applause out in the hall. It sounded as if the hospice lady had stopped speaking. We were seconds away from starting the show.