Live and Fabulous!

by Grace Dent

  (For more wisdom refer to the appendix.)

  Then suddenly, we hear some footsteps on the stairs.

  JIMI STEELE! HOSANNNNNA!!! LET’S PARTY!

  Er, not quite.

  “Ahoy, ladies!” says my father, Lawrence “Loz” Ripperton, proprietor of the Fantastic Voyage, appearing in the doorway with a vast grin plastered across his face. My five-month-old baby brother, Seth Otis Ripperton, is strapped to his chest in a powder-blue papoose, snoozing.

  “Howdy!” chirps Loz. “Ah, it’s good to see the womenfolk of the Fantastic Voyage all present and accounted for.”

  My father has somehow missed that while his daughter is sobbing, his wife is dressed as an insane parachute commander.

  “We menfolk have been to a meeting,” Dad says, patting Seth’s tiny head.

  I look at Dad with total bemusement. “You’ve just attended the Garstang Brewery summer finance general meeting with Seth strapped to your front in a pastel papoose?” I ask witheringly.

  “I know!” says Dad proudly.

  What is happening to my life? Here is a man who, until a year ago, wouldn’t drink a wine cooler in public for fear it made him look “a bit gay.” Now he’s waltzing about like Mary flipping Poppins.

  It’s a world gone mad, I tell you.

  I want my old, predictable parents back.

  This is yucky.

  Everything these days pivots around the desires of Seth Ripperton.

  Night and day. Day and night. It’s like they’ve converted to an obscure religious cult, worshipping a fourteen-pound pink lump. And don’t get me wrong, Seth is totally, like, the most gorgeous baby you have ever seen. I mean, he’s far better looking than some of the freaky-looking things you see on the high street, but right now, he never does anything remotely news-worthy aside from cry, poo, cry while pooing, sleep. (He still manages to squeeze poos out while snoring, don’t worry.) No, I tell a lie: Very recently he’s begun sitting upright with his head lolling about like a helium balloon.

  There was never this fuss when I was a child.

  Oh, no, believe me.

  When Loz and Magda brought me home from the maternity ward, they simply pushed my buggy into the backyard and left it beside some old Garstang Pale Ale crates. I was raised by a family of benevolent passing owls. All I ate was mice and worms till I was eleven, which raised eyebrows in the school dinner hall when I got my packed lunch out.

  No wonder I get stood up on a Friday night.

  “You have a very vivid imagination,” sighs Flight Field Marshal Magda, standing up and unhooking Seth from Dad. “I remember hugging you at least twice,” she adds dryly.

  “Hee hee, the orphanage kept sending her back, didn’t they, love?” chuckles Dad. “They knew we were still alive. They kept spotting us, pulling away in the car!”

  Ooh, my sides.

  send in the reinforcements

  BRRRRRRRR BRRRRRRRR

  At last my phone rings!

  I swoop toward it, in a rugby tackle move, praying it’s not Nana calling me to discuss what she had for her supper. However, the screen reads:

  LIAM ANSWER?

  Why’s Liam “Blackwell bad boy but dead nice really” Gelding calling me?

  I press “Yes.”

  “Hello?” I say.

  “What do you mean, hello? How, hello?” begins Fleur “Operation Shock and Awe” Swan, sounding excessively cross. “Right, this better be good, Ronnie. Very good indeed. This party started almost two hours ago! I’ve been asked for, like, two songs already ... And Carson Dewers in lower sixth has bought me a Coke and asked for my mobile number! Where the flipping heck are you, butt crack?”

  “I’m ...”

  “Look, just tell me you’re just walking in the front door now, or I am going to burst an artery. Just tell me you’re almost here.”

  “Mmm ... er wah ... well, I’m at home ... ,” I begin, but talk is futile.

  “You’re still at hoooooooome!? Claude, CLAUDE ... she’s still at home! At home!” shrieks Fleur.

  “No way! Is she okay?” I hear Claude ask in the background.

  “I was waiting for ... ,” I begin.

  “The Fusia mobile phone network has been down, like nationally, since six P.M., did you know?” shouts Fleur. “We couldn’t get a signal until now. Everyone’s on Fusia except Liam, who’s on G5 Network. He just turned up, we just borrowed his phone...”

  “I’m on Fusia too,” I try to say.

  “So where are you?” shouts Fleur again. “I’ve seen Jimi trying to call you loads of times too. He’s got a Fusia phone, hasn’t he?”

  “What? Jimi is at Blackwell?!”

  “Yes, Jimi is at flaming Blackwell. He’s been here for an hour with Naz and Aaron. Everyone’s here.”

  “But ... whatttttt? I’ve been ...”

  “He’s over at the other side of the hall now. I’ll just go and get him ...”

  I can hear Fleur begin to move through what sounds like a pretty hectic crowd.

  “But he was picking me up!” I say, getting all blubbery again.

  “He was what? Picking you up? Tonight?! He was picking you up from the Voyage. So you’re there waiting? I knnnnnnnnnnew it!” Fleur has reached eruption level.

  “Is that Jimi?” asks my mother, also sounding rather cross.

  “No, it’s Fleur,” I mouth, keeping extra tight hold of my phone.

  “Let me speak to her,” instructs my mother.

  “Back off!” I say, swatting her away.

  “Oh, dear, is this another Jimi Steele misdemeanor?” says Dad, opening a jar of pureed apple and prodding Seth awake with a spoon.

  “Leave it, Lawrence,” snaps Mum.

  “Hoo-hoo! What’s the poor bloke done to you all this time?” chuckles Dad.

  “Right, he’s crossed an LBD line this time. There will be repercussions,” snarls Fleur, moving up on her prey. “Oi, Steelo, what do you think you’re doing, standing up my best mate?”

  Fleur sounds very irate. I wouldn’t mess with her.

  “Er, what? She’s ... ,” I hear Jimi’s husky voice begin.

  “Speak to her, not me, loser,” shouts Fleur, slinging the phone at him.

  “Ronnie!” begins Jimi.

  It just feels great to hear his voice. Gggnngn. I’m such a sap.

  “Why aren’t you here, Ron? I was meeting you here after sixish and ...

  “Owwwwwww, Fleur, that hurt! Ronnie, your friend just kicked me! Owwwww! My shin!”

  “Fleur, stop kicking Jimi,” I hear Claude saying rather half-heartedly.

  “We were meeting HERE at the pub,” I say. “We said we’d go together.”

  “Did we ... ?”

  “You said you were going across town to look at that secondhand skateboard you saw in the Local Daily Mercury.”

  “Yeah,” says Jimi, “and you said time would be tight so I’d not have time to pick you up then.”

  “Nooooooo, you great useless sack of poo! I said time would be tight, but I’d wait for you to pick me up.”

  Why does he never listen?

  “Oh,” says Jimi.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Sorry, Ronnie,” Jimi says meekly. “I got a bit mixed up ... But hey, just come anyway!”

  “I can’t get in after eight P.M.! That’s McGraw rules. No entry after eight P.M.,” I yell.

  “Damn. You’re right ... you can’t.”

  “Right, time’s up with that phone, Steelo,” I hear Liam Gelding complaining. “Three other people want to make a call ... I can make some money here.”

  “Ronnie. Gotta go. I’ll call you later,” says Jimi.

  Then the phone goes dead.

  I feel like someone’s just punched me in the stomach.

  “Ready to rock?” asks Mum, jangling her keys.

  “Mmm,” I sigh. “Can’t get in after eight. Phone networks were down and ...”

  And then I start crying again. Big proper tears.

  “Awwwww,
love. I’ll sort it out,” says Mum. “Do you want me to go down and argue with Mr. McGraw?”

  No, I do not. I’d rather take all my clothes off and run around the school ground with my bottom blowing in the breeze. That would be less embarrassing.

  “Nah ... I’ll just stay here.” I sniffle.

  Mum, Dad and I all stand in silence. There is nothing left to be said. I wish I’d never been born.

  “Hey, Ronno, we’re ordering in tonight!” announces Dad, somehow imagining that crispy kung pao chicken changes anything.

  “And a DVD?” suggests Mum. “We can get a movie out too.”

  I know they’re just trying to be nice, but I wish they’d both shut up.

  “Oh, Ronnie, don’t take it too badly. It’s just one night,” says Mum, beginning what seems like a long meaningful speech. “I mean, you’re only fifteen, and there’ll be stacks of other nights-out to come.”

  I stare at her crossly.

  “Believe me, I had a lot of nights go bottoms up like this when I was a kid. And well, I look back now and giggle about it, ’cos, well, it’s all part of growing up and ... OH MY GOD, LOZ, loook!”

  Mum is pointing frantically at Seth, perched in his vibrating baby chair.

  “Loooooook, Loz! Look at Seth! Seth’s picking his nose!! He’s picking his nose! He’s never done that before, has he!?”

  “Ha ha! Go on, my son!” shouts my absolutely elated dad. “Pick us a winner, Seth!”

  “Ronnie, Seth’s picking his nose! How great is that?” laughs Mum.

  And at that point, I decided to spend the Friday night of Blackwell Summer Disco in my boudoir. Alone.

  the party that never was postmortem

  “Pggh, cheer up, Ronnie, it wasn’t that good anyway,” instructs Fleur Swan, perched on her bed in LBD Headquarters on Disraeli Road, dabbing menthol toothpaste on what is ripening into a juicy love bite beneath her left ear. “Now, did anybody notice if scarves were ‘In’ or ‘Out’ for summer?” she says. “Claudette, chuck me Glamour magazine.”

  That’ll teach Fleur to chop her blonde locks into a raunchy bob, I think with small satisfaction. She’s never going to hide that hickey.

  “Scarves are totally last season,” I say crossly. “So’s looking like you’ve been attacked by a killer weasel.”

  “Declan is a bit like a weasel, isn’t he?” groans Fleur. “But it all happened so fast! One minute I was dancing and the next minute ... well, we were properly snogging!”

  Fleur flaps herself with one carefully manicured hand.

  “Oh, that was sooo hilarious!” hoots Claudette Cassiera, bouncing on Fleur’s futon, her ebony plaits jiggling gleefully. “Especially later on when that other lad Mikey asked you to dance, and you said ... er, ahem, cough ... splutter ...”

  Claude has noticed my dark countenance.

  “Well, actually it wasn’t that funny,” Claude corrects herself. “It was more ... er, boring.”

  I sigh deeply.

  Fleur called this emergency Saturday morning LBD meeting to cheer me up. It is not working.

  “Exactly, Claudette, the whole night was très dull,” agrees Fleur, “thanks to that Jimi Steele. It felt dead weird without you there, Ronnie.”

  “Too right,” says Claude with a half smile. “We missed you, Ron.”

  “Ta,” I say quietly.

  “So anyway,” says Fleur, prancing across to her tangerine-colored iMac and flicking the mouse to online, with a whiz and a crash as the modem dials up, “I’ve gathered us here today for a very important discussion ...”

  “Uh-oh, it’s going black in the middle already,” Claude interrupts, helpfully pointing at the hickey.

  “Well, we’ll make my neck bite point of order three, shall we?”

  “Point three?” I say with a jolt. I’ve been on top of Fleur’s cream suede beanbag for more than an hour now, wallowing in misery thinking about Jimi Steele. “Did I miss two?”

  “Excellent question, Veronica,” says Fleur. “Sorry to wake you up there ... well, point one is obvious: Jimi Steele.”

  “Boo, hiss!” says Claude, cupping her mouth theatrically.

  “Exactly. That so-called boyfriend of yours, Jimi Steele. We are very displeased at his behavior, Veronica,” announces Fleur.

  “Pggghhh, me too,” I whisper. “I’m not speaking to him.”

  “Ever again?” says Fleur hopefully.

  “Well. Not since last night anyhow,” I mumble.

  I’m omitting to mention Jimi’s twenty-two missed calls since 10 P.M. last night I’ve been dying to pick up.

  And the increasingly frantic voice messages he’s left. One of which sounded like he was blubbering.

  (I want to ring him back so much.)

  “Good. You’ve not spoken to him! Freeze him out!” says Fleur gleefully. “My mum once blanked Paddy for an entire month and she got, like, a BMW convertible at the end of it.”

  “Yeah, Ron, you should hold out for a pair of Rollerblades at least,” says Claude dryly.

  I knew I could trust the LBD to take my side, but it doesn’t make me feel any more certain what to do.

  “So you think I should dump Jimi over ruining Blackwell Disco?” I say, already aware of what Fleur’s answer will be.

  “Yes. Immediately,” she says, without consideration. “This is just one of a laughable catalogue of offenses the toad has inflicted upon you. Can him.”

  “Thank you, Fleur,” I say, turning to Claude. “Cassiera, your turn.”

  Claude pauses, ever the cautious bambino. “Mmm ... dunno,” she says. “He certainly needs to be taught a lesson. I’m sure of that.”

  “A lesson!? Pghhh,” huffs Fleur, flicking her mouse around her mouse pad, mesmerized by the flashing screen. “Ooh, hang on a second ... wooo-hooo! Claude, pass me that blank CD, please. I’ve just had an e-mail from Mad Mavis in Chicago.”

  Fleur’s breathing seems to have gone all wonky.

  “Mad who?” says Claude, rooting among the cacophony of magazines, makeup packaging and candy wrappers that makes up Fleur’s desk.

  “Mavis,” repeats Fleur, clearly totally elated. “Oh, she’s just this crazy Spike Saunders fan in Chicago. I chat with her in the Spike web chat rooms. She’s just tipping me off that the new Spike CD Prize is up as a file share on RippaCD.com! It’s not out in the UK or in the USA for six weeks yet!”

  “That’s illegal!” frowns Claude.

  “Oh, shut up! Spike won’t mind, we’re his friends!” laughs Fleur, waving at a poster on her wall featuring Spike stripped to the waist, slightly sweaty.

  “We met Spike only once, Fleur,” I say gently, recalling the admittedly wild, but once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that happened a year ago. “We’re hardly his best buddies.”

  Fleur rolls her eyes, then stares at several “signed” letters from our hero tacked up among the bum and pec montage above her bed. The treasured letters, replies to Fleur’s fan mail (plus a bizarrely real-looking thank-you note for her last Christmas gift) have been wafted under our noses by Fleur on many, many occasions. Of course, Fleur doesn’t just reckon Spike remembers us, she actually thinks he quite fancies her too.

  Obviously, Claude and I know the flipping letters are just photocopies from his fan club secretary, but you’ve got to humor Fleur sometimes. She’s not overly furnished with “living in the real world” skills.

  “And downloading Spike’s CD illegally helps him, er, how?” says Claude, teasing Fleur. “Please tell us, because I’m intrigued.”

  “Huh! I’m only making one copy!” Fleur grumps, frowning at the timer on her screen as the MP3s download slowly. “Flipping broadband dial-up! I’m changing ISPs this week. This is so slow it’s unreal. Anyway, I’ll e-mail Spike straightaway afterward and tell him it’s being hosted on RippaCD.com. Then he can get his lawyers onto it.”

  Claude and I stare at Fleur, trying to keep our faces straight.

  “And I bet he replies too!” Fleur persists.

 
; Claude shakes her head in disbelief.

  “Anyway, back to Jimi—that’s what we’re here for, aren’t we?” Claude says, turning to me seriously. “Now don’t get me wrong, Ron, I like him, I mean, he is dead lovely most of the time.”

  Claude’s being fair as ever ... but I sense a “but.”

  “But, the great poosplash has just ruined the biggest LBD shindig of the year. He thinks you’re quite happy to fritter your life waiting about for him.”

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  “Pah!” Fleur says. “The selfish loser reckons you’ve nothing better to do than play second best to his flipping skateboard ... which, may I remind you, is essentially just a child’s toy. He’s in the lower sixth form, for crying out loud! When’s he getting a car so he can at least drive us to gigs? Pgggh?! I mean, what is the point of him? He’s neither use nor ornament, as my granny would say.”

  “And he’s just too flaky,” adds Claude. “He should have double-checked about the Blackwell Disco arrangements. Then we wouldn’t be having to cheer you up, would we?”

  “S’pose so,” I mumble.

  They can discuss Jimi all they want, I think to myself, but they don’t know him like I do. They don’t know about all the funny conversations and in-jokes we have. Like the one where we text each other pretending to be lost elephants... like ... MURRRRRRRRRRRR! ... or about how he taught me to be excellent at chess on the huge life-sized chess game Dad’s installed in the pub’s new beer garden. And how we play backgammon together for money (he owes me £6.50). Or how we sometimes hint that we’d like to be kicking about together when we’re old and gray.

  And yes, I know that sounds totally berserk, but sometimes I think I do.

  And then he spoils it by being an earth-shatteringly thoughtless berk.

  “Well, whatever,” says Fleur, holding up her hand in a “speak to my wrist, it’s got an answering machine” sort of way. “All I’m saying, Ronnie, is that you need to take the reins. The ball’s always in his court these days, and he’s holding all the cards. It’s time you battened down the hatches and took the bull by the horns.”

  “We’re still talking about Jimi here,” Claude assures me, deadpan.