“So,” I finished, feeling more cheerful, “we’ll do Wave Like You Mean It for the qualifiers and write our own song later for the final. What do you think?”
“Won’t there be hundreds of people listening to us?” Lucy asked nervously.
“Yay,” Mel grinned.
Lucy was looking pale. Even though she’s got a brilliant voice, she’s never very confident about it.
“You sang in front of all those people at our fashion show,” I reminded her. “So you can do it again for sure. And remember – me and Mel are going to be right there singing with you this time.”
“The Three Mates,” Mel said grandly, sticking her fist in the air. “One for all and all for one!”
“And all for winning,” I said, beaming as I thought about the cheering crowds that I knew were going to love us. “Think of the trophy! We can share it, with each of us having it for a week at a time or something.”
“OK,” said Lucy reluctantly. “If you really think we can do it.”
“I’ll register our names, and let’s all go over to mine after school on Wednesday,” Mel suggested. “We can work on Wave Like You Mean It.”
She and Lucy then went into this big debate about a dance routine to go with the song. Me? I’d slid right off my happy perch again. I was thinking about how Wednesday came after Tuesday, which came after me having to tell my family tonight that I wasn’t going to make Em’s match.
“OK,” I said, back at home that night. “Here’s the thing.”
It wasn’t looking good. Mum, Dad and Em all stood there looking at me with their arms folded while I rambled through how I’d ended up with a detention the next day. I had a feeling that if Rascal had been able to balance on his back legs, he’d have been folding his arms at me too.
Mum sucked in a deep breath and started on me. “Of all the irresponsible, thoughtless things to do…Em’s really been counting on us all being at the match tomorrow, and now you tell us…You knew about this homework on Friday night and you still hadn’t done it by Sunday…”
I tried to picture Mum’s words like a big wave that I just had to let wash over me. It would be over in a minute. But it was pretty cold, wet and nasty all the same.
“I’m really sorry,” I said humbly when Mum had run out of breath.
Em stalked out of the room. Dad just gave me his Look. I’d have preferred it if he’d drenched me with another wordy wave like Mum’s. But the Dad Look was more like the cold wind that blows at you just after you get drenched by the wave, and you realise you forgot to bring your towel to the beach.
Tuesday afternoon was bright and gorgeous. Trying not to think about Em kicking off in the sunshine while Mum and Dad shared their usual jokes and a flask of tea on the touchline without me, I stared at the maths questions on my desk and groaned. My homework. Recipes. Percentages. I mean, who cared if your apple pie was only big enough for four instead of six? Resisting the urge to write “just serve extra custard”, I did my best to work out the problems. The big clock ticked quietly on the wall above Mr Hughes’ head, the hands moving as slowly as treacle.
I’d finished the questions after twenty minutes. I still had twenty-five minutes to kill before Mr Hughes would let me go. Staring around the classroom in desperation, my eyes settled on a tattered poster of a beach that hung on the wall beside the door. The picture was old and the beach looked wet and windy, but it was much nicer to look at than Mr Hughes.
I’d like to hear the sea, I thought. The sea and me…
Sea. Now that was a perfect word for a song. It rhymed with practically everything! Grabbing a piece of paper, I jotted down some random seaside thoughts. The last minutes of my detention whizzed away as rhymes tumbled through my head.
“Thank you, Coleen.” Mr Hughes’ voice startled me as he took up the paper I’d written my maths answers on. “It’s four o’clock. You can go.”
I snatched up my lyrics and stuffed them into my bag. “Thanks, Mr Hughes!”
The sea, the sea, I repeated to myself as I barrelled out of the door. The words bounced through my head in a thumping rhythm that had come out of nowhere: ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-diddly-dum, ta-diddly-diddly-diddly-dum…
The way from Mr Hughes’ classroom to the main corridor takes you past a row of music practice rooms. Kids sometimes work in them after school, practising for music lessons or just jamming for fun. I could hear some drums pounding out a rhythm that made me want to dance. Peeping through the glass window in the door of practice room three, I almost fell over. It was Ben.
Lucy had often said how her brother played drums, but I’d never heard him. Trying not to let him see me, I stood out in the corridor and watched as Ben Hanratty whirled his sticks over the school drum kit. Wham! Wham! Wham! The ground jumped beneath my feet. It was wicked. I closed my eyes and ran my new lyrics alongside the thundering rhythm that Ben was crashing out. It didn’t really work – but it gave me the most incredible idea.
What if we asked Ben to play in our band? How cool would that be? And you always hear about band romances, right? Maybe Ben would take me more seriously if we were in a band together!
As soon as I’d thought this, I sighed and tried to forget it. Ben Hanratty would never play for his kid sister’s band. But there again, we had persuaded him to model in our charity catwalk show…If you don’t ask, you never get.
I moved slowly away from Ben’s practice room, so deep in thought about how to persuade Ben Hanratty to join our band that it took about three seconds of staring dopily through the next practice room window to realise that Summer, Hannah and Shona were all staring straight back at me.
Summer flung open the door, nearly scaring me out of my mind. “Spying, Coleen?” she challenged, folding her arms and glaring at me.
“Huh?” I said in confusion.
“If you think sneaking a listen to our song will get you ahead of us in the Battle of the Bands, you can forget it,” Summer said. “I heard you and your two loser mates talking about entering at dinner yesterday.”
My brain whizzed into fifth gear. Summer was entering the Battle!
“I don’t need to listen to your song to win,” I said, quick as a flash.
“Let’s hear you say that when we make it through the qualifiers and you don’t,” Summer snapped back. Doing this totally insincere smile, she put her fingers to her forehead to make an L shape and mouthed “Loser” at me, before slamming the door again and pulling the little curtain across the window.
“Says who?” I snapped at the closed door.
This Battle of the Bands was going to be a battle, all right. Summer Collins had just made sure of that!
Three
“So how did Em’s match go?” Mel asked the next day as we sat up high on the playground wall and watched the kids flowing around below us like shoals of blue and grey fish.
“Hartley Juniors won,” I said. “Em even scored the winning goal. Everyone was so chuffed that they forgot to give me the silent treatment over tea.”
Chuffed wasn’t the word. Dad had carried Em into the house on his shoulders, forgetting about the lintel over the door. And by the time I got downstairs with the bruise cream for Em’s head, we were all best mates again – like I’d never had a detention in the first place. Families, eh?
“Good one,” said Lucy.
We sat quietly for a bit and watched the playground. There’s always something to see. A game of rule-less football, maybe, or some complicated game that involves lots of screaming and running around. Some really loud yelling seemed to be coming from the far corner of the playground near the basketball nets. Loads of Year Tens were all clustered together, cheering about something. I craned my neck to get a view of what was happening.
“You’ll never guess what,” I said suddenly, almost falling off the wall as I saw what was going on. “Your brother’s in a fight, Lu!”
Lucy looked shocked. “What? Where?”
I pointed across the playground. Ben could now be clearly se
en. He was rolling around on the ground with his fists hammering at someone.
“I don’t believe it!” Mel squealed as the teachers on duty realised what was going on and started legging it towards the fight. “He’s only fighting Dave!”
“Dave Sheekey?” Lucy echoed in disbelief. “But he’s Ben’s best mate!”
“They don’t look much like best mates to me,” I said, watching as Ben and Dave got to their feet with their arms still locked around each other’s necks. I could hear Dave pleading with Ben about something. Jasmine was running up and down, wailing at them both to stop.
“Give over, mate!” Dave yelled, pushing at Ben’s hands. “It’s just a rumour, yeah? I’d never – oof…”
Ben had barrelled into Dave again, knocking him to the ground like a ninepin. Now the whole playground was surging towards the fight like paperclips towards a magnet.
“BREAK IT UP!” Mr Bulford the deputy head teacher roared at Ben, seizing him by the scruff of the neck and hauling him on to his feet while our form teacher Mr Andrews pulled up a relieved-looking Dave. “Hanratty, Sheekey – my office, now!”
“Mum’s going to go mental!” Lucy wailed as we all wriggled off the wall and rushed over to join the throng of kids all pushing around Dave, Ben, Mr Bulford and Mr Andrews.
Rumours and reasons were already flying thick and fast through the crowd. Dave had dissed Ben’s mum. Ben had dissed Dave’s dad. Dave had tried it on with Jasmine. Jasmine had dumped Ben for Dave. Trying to make sense of it all was impossible.
Things were even worse by the end of the day. If you believed half the rumours that were flying round the Hartley High corridors, Ben Hanratty had been physically carried off the school premises by Mr Bulford and thrown out of the gates, while Dave Sheekey had broken four teeth and was going to take Ben to court.
“It’s so embarrassing,” Lucy groaned as we left to catch the bus to Mel’s after a full school day of crazy speculation. “Everyone’s been after me like I know what it’s all about.”
“Are you totally sure you don’t?” I checked as we boarded the bus.
Lucy just gave me this look.
“All right,” I protested, waving my hands at her. “Just – you know. Being his sister and that.”
“Do you know everything Em does?” Lucy demanded.
I scratched my head. “Mostly, yeah,” I said.
“Well, I guess boys are different, aren’t they,” Mel said diplomatically.
Lucy looked fed up. “Can we drop it now?” she said. “I’m sick to death of talking about my brother.”
I sank back against the bus seat as Mel pulled out a bag of sweets and offered them to Lucy to calm her down. By the time the bus had reached the edge of the town centre and was rumbling towards Mel’s flat, everything was cool again.
“So,” I said, munching through my fifth jelly baby, “what’s that tune you’ve been humming all week, Lucy? You’re doing it now, you know. It’s totally got on my brain.”
Lucy stopped humming. She looked oddly embarrassed. “Nothing,” she said. “Just – a tune.”
“It’s great,” Mel said.
“Thanks,” Lucy replied.
Thanks? That was a weird thing to say. Unless…
“Did you write it?” I said, suddenly twigging.
Lucy went a bit red. “I didn’t write anything. It just sort of…came into my head last week.”
My brain immediately went into hyperdrive. “But it’s really good,” I said in excitement. “We could use it for our original song for the Battle of the Bands. Don’t you think, Mel?”
Mel nodded. “It’s funky,” she said. “It could work – if we had some words for it. Did you do any words, Lucy?”
Lucy shook her head.
“I did!” I burst out, realising. “I wrote some lyrics which fit your tune, Lucy. I wrote them in detention yesterday, and they just sort of – came out in your rhythm.”
“You really must’ve had it on the brain,” said Mel as the bus whooshed to a halt and we all piled out.
I took the steps up to Mel’s flat three at a time, pounding out the rhythm in my head. The sea, the sea…Ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-diddly-dum…And as soon as we got through Mel’s front door I sang my lyrics to Lucy’s tune.
“The sea, the sea,” I went, “the sea and me, the sea is true and wild and free, the gulls may call, the rain may fall, it don’t matter, not at all – you gotta, gotta stay in reach of paths that take you to the beach!”
It fitted brilliantly.
“I like it,” Mel said as I bounced around the living room doing the gotta, gotta part again. “Is that bit the chorus?”
“Yes,” I panted, flopping down on Mel’s couch. “It needs another verse, but that shouldn’t be too hard. What do you reckon, Lucy?”
“Not bad,” said Lucy thoughtfully. “It needs something, though. A guitar, or drums maybe?”
“Yes!” I pointed triumphantly at my mates. “So how about we ask Ben to drum for our band? The rules say that you can still compete even if your lineup changes – so long as at least two of your band members are the same.”
I could imagine Ben pounding out a heavy backing rhythm on his drums as me and my mates sang our song at the Battle final. The audience would go bananas and sing the gotta, gotta chorus part back at us. It would be wild! But Lucy’s next words popped that little dream like a sharp pin in a large balloon.
“Sorry, Col,” she said. “Ben’s already entering with Jasmine, Dave and Ali.”
That brought me down off my little rock-star cloud. “Really?” I said in disappointment.
“You didn’t honestly think we’d be able to get Ben to play for us, did you?” Mel said. “There’s no way any self-respecting Year Ten would play in a Year Eight band.”
“That’s what we said about Ben and his mates helping our Year Eight fashion show,” I reminded her. “And look what happened. We totally pulled it off, with a little teamwork and persuasion, right?”
“Yes, but Ben wasn’t already entered in that,” Lucy reminded me before I got too carried away. “He wouldn’t let his friends down on something like this.”
“Aha, but perhaps they won’t be entering now because of Ben and Dave’s fight today?” I said hopefully.
“Don’t count on it, Coleen,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “Not until we know for sure what that fight was about. You know what boys are like – enemies one minute, friends again the next.”
“Let’s forget about the final and get on with practising for the qualifiers anyway,” Mel suggested.
She went over to the stereo in the corner of the living room and put on her Bubbly CD. Soon we were jumping all over the place. The final was forgotten in the fun of putting together a routine for Wave Like You Mean It.
“We have to be original,” Lucy reminded me as I tried to do Lori and Jammie’s kangaroo leap.
“And careful!” Mel squealed as I jumped the other way and knocked a photo frame off Mel’s mum’s windowsill.
Mel was one to talk! Halfway through the song she did this wild move that knocked into her mum’s huge ceramic fireplace elephant. The elephant didn’t break thanks to this last-minute shimmy that Mel pulled off, but it moved. We shifted it back as best we could – it was dead heavy – and hoped that Mrs Palmer wouldn’t notice. Apparently the elephant was her favourite thing in the whole flat.
In the end, we practised our routine for about an hour. We worked out pogo jumps, a sidewinder move – that’s where you move sideways by putting your feet one across the other – these brilliant air-guitar moves, and this one where you crunch yourself up with one knee raised and your elbows touching your knee before pulling your arms down and out to the side and putting your foot back down with a toss of your head. We couldn’t really see how our feet looked as Mel’s mum only had a mirror above the fireplace, but we had some real rock-star expressions going on!
The sound of a key in the lock made us all realise the time.
“Hell
o, girls,” said Mrs Palmer, dropping her keys on the hall table and putting her bag down.
“Hiya!” Mel said enthusiastically. “We’ve done this brilliant dance routine that we’ve got to show you after tea. You…”
Mel tailed off as she clocked her mum’s face. Mrs Palmer looked as gloomy as a cloudburst on Blackpool Pier.
“Mum?” Mel said, worried. “Is everything OK?”
“Everything’s fine,” Mrs Palmer sighed.
Me and Lucy looked at each other. No way did everything sound fine.
“Did something go wrong at work?” Mel persisted, helping her mother to take off her coat.
“There was just this promotion that I thought they were considering me for, that’s all,” Mrs Palmer said, trying to look like she was shrugging it off. “Seems like I was wrong. They promoted someone else.” Shaking off the gloom, she smiled bravely at us. “Now, who’s for some tea? I’ve got some lovely ham in today.”
It was a weird meal, with Mrs Palmer acting like she didn’t really mind about the promotion at work when it was clear that she minded a lot. To be honest, it was a relief when we cleared the dishes and Mel suggested that her mum should come and watch our routine.
Mrs Palmer settled down on the couch as me, Lucy and Mel all stood in a line. The Bubbly track kicked in. Jump, jump, jump – and down, jump, jump, jump – and around, sidewinder all along the carpet and back again with a yeah! and a twist. We had our arms perfectly together on the elbows-to-the-knee move, and Mel even managed to work in a version of the little shimmy she’d used to avoid the fireplace elephant.
“Wave, wave, wave like you mean it,” we sang as the song pumped up to the finish. “If there’s a better way, better way, we ain’t seen it, whoo!” And on the closing crash-crash-crash of the drums we all pogoed into the air, landing back on the carpet more or less together.
Rock That Frock! Page 2
