by Bell Davina
‘What have I told you about stealing my stuff?’ Tally says, trying to literally pull the shorts off Lola, who’s trying to dodge away. Tally has the coolest green velvet headwrap over her hair. I sort of want to try one on, but I bet it would look stupid. ‘I need those for filming today.’
‘What are you filming, Tally?’ asks Belle, which is a distraction tactic – I can tell by her ‘innocent listening’ face. And it works.
Tally stops trying to dack her sister and comes over to explain. ‘You know that song Moon River?’ she asks. The others all nod but I’m clueless about music.
‘Oh Soph, seriously? From that old movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s?’ she asks. ‘It’s a classic. You gotta come over for more movie nights. Well, I’m playing that on the uke and then my friend Brendan –’
‘Boyfriend,’ says Lola cheekily.
‘Whatever, brat. He’s beatboxing underneath it while I sing and then at one point he’s going to do freestyling over the top. We’re doing it live, though, so it’s sort of scary.’
That surprises me. Tally isn’t the kind of person who seems like she’d ever be scared. She has so many subscribers on YouTube that I thought she’d be used to this kind of thing. ‘Exactly how many subscribers do you have now?’ I ask.
‘The numbers don’t matter,’ Tally says to me.
‘Ha!’ says Lola. ‘Liar! You check them, like, every twenty minutes.’
Tally growls and goes back to trying to get the shorts. Then she and Lola start sort of clawing at each other’s faces and wrestling. Eventually Lola breaks free.
‘You can’t – take – the shorts,’ she pants. ‘I’m wearing – saggy – undies.’
‘Should have thought of that before,’ says Tally, making a snatch.
They sprint off into the clubhouse.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Belle grumbles as we follow. ‘We’re businesswomen on the verge of a funding breakthrough.’
‘Whoa,’ Tally says, stopping in the middle of the hall and looking round at all the broken bits of floorboards and the cobwebs and grime and broken plaster, and the stage curtains that are ragged like torn ship sails. ‘When did this place become such a dump?’
And then, as she hears what her voice sounds like, ‘WHOA! Listen to these acoustics! I’d forgotten how great they are.’ She pauses. ‘You know, this was the first place I ever sang solo on stage?’ She sings the first few lines of Moon River really loudly and they ring all around us, strong and pure and clear. Like we’re standing inside a speaker. I do recognise it after all. We all stop to listen – even the dogs. It’s beautiful.
‘What are you guys doing here, anyway?’ Tally asks when we’ve finished clapping, and she sounds like she’s genuinely curious.
We look at each other cautiously, not sure how Lola will react. She can get weird about Tally. I think it’s a jealousy thing.
‘You can tell her,’ says Lola. ‘She’s actually pretty great with advice.’
We all sit down on the edge of the stage and take turns with the story. By the time Tally’s finished hearing about the Muscle Tower and Pony Soprano and the bulldozer, she is pretty wild with anger. ‘You only have how long? Five days? And you need how much money?’ We tell her and she whistles in disbelief. ‘No offence,’ she says slowly, like a plan is forming in her mind that second, ‘but I think you’re doing this all wrong. You need to get people involved now – before you’ve finished the whole clean-up. This needs to go viral. You need an action campaign. You need a petition to present to that buttwipe mayor to show that people aren’t gonna put up with this sh– … kind of thing. This clubhouse, it’s like a little palace of memories. It’s like …’ She trails off and looks around. ‘Can I record in here? Today, I mean? Is there anywhere I could hang upside down? I know it won’t have my towel rail, but is there something else?’
We all start hunting. It’s Maisie who spots an old trapeze hanging from the ceiling above the stage.
‘It’s perfect,’ Tally says.
‘How would you get up there?’ I ask.
‘Is it safe?’ Lola asks as she scratches Sergeant’s belly. ‘We need someone who knows about trapezes or, like, circus things.’
The same thought hits us all at the exact same moment: PUNK SHERMAN.
‘No,’ says Belle. ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t involve him in my life. I can’t owe him anything.’
‘Think about Pony Soprano,’ says Maisie.
‘Think about the clubhouse,’ says Lola.
‘Think about what we’re trying to do,’ I say. ‘He might be the only person in the whole town who knows this sort of stuff. Please?’
The rest, as they say, is history. We frantically scrub till our fingers are raw. Bit by bit, the place starts to sparkle, and two hours later, when the sun streams in through the little coloured windows, it makes patterns on the freshly mopped floor, like a kaleidoscope.
‘I could fix up all these old lights,’ says Punk when he’s tightened all the bolts and confirmed the trapeze could hold a gorilla, and brought a giant ladder with him to attack the cobwebs on the ceiling. ‘Get them all working again.’
‘No thanks,’ says Belle briskly. ‘Your work here is done. Goodbye.’
Punk looks kind of hurt. ‘Well, OK then, me bonny ladies,’ he says sadly. ‘I’ll be off.’ Punk Sherman calls us all kind of weird stuff like ‘me bonny ladies’ and ‘the old queen bees’. Belle says he’s using outdated gendered language. I think he might be trying to be friendly. I secretly like him because his front teeth stick so far out that he looks like a goofy beaver. I think she should give him a chance. Maybe he could make her mum really happy.
‘Belle, I think … It would be good to have the lights working, wouldn’t it?’ I ask. ‘In terms of, ah, making this a world-class performance space?’
‘Huh,’ says Belle. She loves things to be world-class. She can’t argue with that.
Punk knows how to make the lights project stars onto the back of the stage. Brendan arrives with his DJ decks and Tally’s ukulele. Tally hangs upside down in the moon shorts (after swapping clothes with Lola) and strums the ukulele like it’s the easiest thing in the world. When they do the practice run, Clover wanders into the shot and starts to howl along. You’d think that would be a disaster, but it’s weirdly beautiful and sort of haunting. So Brendan picks her up and sits her on a chair next to his decks so she can be on camera. She looks great on camera.
‘Can you do the filming, Loles?’ asks Tally. ‘Oh, and this might sound better with some back-up instruments. Maybe call Rishi and see if he’s free. Actually, can you get him to call Jules? I think the banjo would go well with this, too.’
‘Can you mention our dogwalking business?’ asks Belle. ‘It’s called Paws For Thought. People can start contacting us tomorrow via our website.’
‘I don’t usually do ads,’ says Tally. ‘It cheapens my personal brand. But I guess I could make an exception.’
Fifteen minutes later, the band boys are here. Apparently the album isn’t going that well and they’re looking for any excuse to get away from it.
‘I should go to gym,’ Maisie whispers to me as RexRoy are tuning up their instruments and I’m looking over at Rishi, who’s adjusting the height of the cymbal on his drum kit. She’s bouncing on her toes, up and down, up and down.
‘Stay,’ I whisper back and circle my fingers around her little wrist. ‘This is guaranteed never going to happen again. It’s going to be incredible.’
‘Can’t,’ she says, but I know from how she wrinkles her nose that she’s only pretending she doesn’t care. And also from the fact that when she’s halfway to the bus stop, she turns around and comes back and arrives at the exact perfect moment, just as Tally starts to sing.
Truly, this is one of the prettiest songs I have ever heard. My arms get goosebumps. When it comes to Brendan’s part, he does a rap about standing up for what you believe in with the banjo in the background. As the last note rings out,
we smile at each other, Lola and Maisie and Belle and me.
Tally is still hanging upside down as she explains that the mayor is going to bulldoze our town’s oldest building. ‘If you care about justice,’ Tally says, speaking straight into the camera. ‘If you care about the little guy. If you care about giant A-holes taking over our communities, you need to be involved. Sign our online petition. Maybe you can even donate to our crowdfunding campaign at tallyupsidedown. com. And starting from tomorrow, google Paws For Thought at Corner Park for expert canine care in the Sunnystream area. I’m Tally. It’s been real.’ That’s always her sign-off.
‘What’s “crowdfunding”?’ Maisie asks.
‘When anyone can give money to something by donating online,’ I explain.
Within an hour, we have 2000 signatures. Two thousand! There’s no guarantee that those people live in Sunnystream or even know where it is. It doesn’t mean they’ll actually show up at the rally – it’s easy to just click a button, my dad always says, and harder to get your butt off your chair. But we’re hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, this is going to all work out fine.
We’re pulling weeds out of the garden when an old dark-green ute pulls up to the clubhouse.
‘Is that Mikie?’ I ask, squinting. It sure looks like his truck.
‘Hey, team!’ he calls as he jumps out of the ute and slips on a patch of mud, landing on his butt. He tries to stand up and he slips again, this time onto his belly. Rishi and Tally laugh so much, they’re actually crying, but not in a mean way, and Mikie smiles an aren’t-Ian-idiot smile.
‘I borrowed a cement mixer!’ he calls when he’s actually standing up again.
‘Mikie’s a carpenter,’ I whisper to Belle. ‘Does he know how to do cement? I don’t think it’s the same.’
‘I sent him some YouTube tutorials,’ says Belle. ‘I’ll supervise.’
As well as the cement mixer, Mikie’s brought the coffee cart on the back of his ute, and he makes us all a hot chocolate before he starts work on the steps. We all sit around chatting – Rishi and Jules, Tally and Brendan, Clover, Punk and Mikie, Lola and Belle and Maisie and Sergeant and me. Rishi leans over and swaps my white marshmallows for his pink ones. How does he even –? He winks at me and I might actually be dead. I am probably writing this from heaven and I don’t even realise.
But then we hear a beeping sound, like a giant alarm clock is going off in Corner Park. And then something massive comes into view …
A bulldozer – a giant one. Big and menacing, like a meat-eating dinosaur. It pulls up next to the clubhouse fence and shudders to a stop. My heart kind of shudders too.
‘There are eight dogs booked in on the website!’ Maisie says the next morning as we stand in the dapply autumn sun. ‘With Clover and Sergeant, that’s ten! Not bad for the first day.’
We celebrate by eating the white-chocolate-and-banana muffins that I made last night. I figured we’d need snacks to get us through Step 3: Operation Undercoat. Lola has made something too: little bulldozer earrings. I smile as I spot them. They’re only small, but somehow they make me feel stronger. Maisie has brought water bowls for the dogs and some rope for them to play tug-of-war. I’ve baked some doggy bone biscuits from a recipe online and brought my music box to hold the money, plus Togsley.
Four of the Eco Worriers have come to help out, and Belle is in full leadership mode as she prepares them for the task ahead.
‘It was Julius Caesar who said Veni, Vidi, Vici, which is Latin for I came, I saw, I conquered,’ she tells them. ‘And from his shining example, we –’
‘What’s Latin?’ asks a kid called Hattie.
Lola turns to me and Maisie and rolls her eyes as Belle launches into an explanation of dead languages. Sergeant begs me for a bit of my muffin. ‘Nope, not for you, buddy,’ I tell him. ‘And you neither,’ I tell Togsley, who is looking up at me with pleading eyes. ‘Chocolate is poisonous for dogs. Go play with Clover.’ Clover is trying to catch a fly in her mouth. Belle was right. She is actually really stupid.
Mikie arrives with his cart so he can serve coffee to our Paws For Thought customers. He parks it on the edge of the oval and comes over to check out the steps he finished yesterday. ‘Sweet. I didn’t even face-plant into the wet concrete or anything.’ He grins and steps backwards, admiring his handiwork. Unfortunately he steps on Clover’s paw and she yelps so loudly that Mikie jumps to the side and falls into a lavender bush.
‘You’re going to have to keep the dogs on leads at all times,’ Belle tells the Eco Worriers, frowning over at Mikie. ‘Or they’re going to get in the way of our important work. And keep them away from that bulldozer, too. Ten dogs means how many each?’ she quizzes.
The Eco Worriers just look at her with big eyes. Belle sighs.
But then we’re all distracted by what’s coming across the oval. Dogs. But not eight of them. There are … heaps. Like, I can’t even count them. This is like a scene from 101 Dalmatians. And they’re all headed for the clubhouse.
‘What the …’ breathes Lola.
Maisie grabs her iPad from her backpack. ‘The website said eight!’ she says frantically, tapping on things in a panic. ‘Unless – oh. It’s crashed. Error due to excess traffic.’
‘Traffic like cars?’ asks the Eco Worrier called Paige.
‘No, it means too many people tried to get onto the website and it had a meltdown,’ Lola explains. ‘Oh brother – here they come.’
The dogs and their owners, who must have all seen Tally’s YouTube video, pour into the garden as Belle clambers to the top of the steps and waves her arms. ‘Form an orderly queue,’ she yells, and to us she says, ‘Maisie, take down their details. Lola, fill up the water bowls. Soph, you handle the cash. Eco Worriers, stand next to Maisie and take the dogs once they’re checked in.’
Belle really is a living, breathing Hermione Granger. Her plan works perfectly. The owners – including some who have come all the way from Cloud Town – start lining up neatly. The first twenty or so dogs get booked in, the Eco Worriers hold onto them like pros, and soon my music box won’t shut with all the five-dollar notes that are shoved in there. Lola hands out muffins and charms everyone into upgrading to the dog-styling service. The Lola Effect is in full force.
‘How are we going to have time to do all these mohawks?’ I whisper to her between customers.
‘Just think about the cash,’ she whispers back.
‘Hello, Tally,’ says an elderly woman in a bright pink padded jacket with a dog called Spider, who is the size of Pony Soprano. An Irish wolfhound, I think they’re called. ‘I heard about this business on your YouTube channel. I love the post where you sang about crumpets, too.’
Uh-oh. Lola and Tally do look kind of similar, and Lola HATES it when people mix them up. (The crumpet post was also one of my personal favourites.)
‘I’m not Tally. I’m Lola,’ says Lola politely.
‘Does Spider have any allergies?’ asks Maisie quickly, filling in his information sheet on the iPad.
‘Are you sure?’ the lady asks Lola, which, truth be told, is sort of a dumb question.
‘I’m sure,’ says Lola through gritted teeth, not quite so politely.
‘Well, are you and Tally twins?’ the lady asks. ‘I didn’t know she had a twin. I know about the famous brother, but there’s no twin on her Wikipedia page. Spider is allergic to bad cosmic energy,’ she tells Maisie as she hands his lead to Hattie, the Eco Worrier who is also holding onto the leads of a cavoodle, a bulldog and two chihuahuas.
‘How do I spell “cosmic”?’ Maisie whispers to me.
‘How it sounds,’ I whisper back.
‘That doesn’t help,’ says Maisie.
Lola glares at the lady. ‘Have a muffin,’ she says tightly, thrusting one into the lady’s face in a way that I’d describe as bordering on aggressive.
But because Spider is so tall, he just rips it right out of Lola’s hand. Hattie is so surprised, she drops his lead, as well as all the oth
er leads she’s holding. The dogs chase Spider and his muffin over to the sundial, where he bares his teeth. I don’t blame him. I don’t want to brag, but those muffins are sort of epic. A chow chow called Mavis bares her teeth back at Spider, and heaps of the dogs start yelping. The pups that the other Eco Worriers are holding start jumping and barking and straining at their leads. The dogs that are still in the queue – another twenty of them, maybe – start howling and yipping. Their owners start to call out things like, ‘Hey, calm down! It’s fine,’ but the whole place suddenly feels jangly. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it before, but now I realise that it’s full of bad cosmic energy.
Spider chomps down the last of the muffin and then turns and bounds over towards Mikie’s coffee cart. I bet he’s sniffed out the marshmallows. Clover joins him, and together they jump up, putting their paws on the edge where the milk jug is waiting.
‘Tally, don’t let Spider near the milk!’ his owner shrieks at Lola as she sprints after them. ‘He only drinks soy!’
But Lola is too late. Clover and Spider are BIG dogs, and the weight of their paws tips the coffee cart over backwards with a huge crash. The wheel axle breaks. The generator goes flying onto the grass. The sack of coffee beans splits open. Mavis and the chihuahuas and three different Labradors race over and start eating them, their leads flying behind them. The Eco Worriers panic and drop the leads they were holding, and canines go running everywhere.
Within three seconds, a husky called Montana is digging up the vegetable patch. I’m ashamed to say that Togsley joins him, and so do about ten other dogs, until dirt is flying around like sand in a desert storm. A Doberman called Prince William is trying to chew the side of the clubhouse – chew through the actual wood! Two beagles are playing tug-of-war with Olivia’s hoodie and she’s crying.
‘That’s my favourite hoodie,’ she weeps. ‘Please – do something!’
But when I try to pull it out of the dogs’ mouths, it rips in half. Eek.
People are tripping up. Leads are getting tangled around drainpipes and bannisters and fence posts. There’s snarling and whimpering and a LOT of barking. Mikie tries to tackle Spider, who is running off with an entire tin of seventy-per-cent-cocoa Dutch hot chocolate powder, which Judy imported specially from Belgium. Mikie misses and dives headfirst into one of the water bowls.
