Live and Fabulous!

by Grace Dent

  “Yeah, let’s do it!” I say, sounding reckless. Fleur lets out a little victorious squeak.

  We begin weaving our way through the excited crowds in the direction of the front barriers, Damon with his arm around Claude’s shoulder, Franny and Nico forging ahead, clearing our path, Fleur in her black miniskirt drawing wolf whistles and appreciative glances at her henna tattoo as she tiptoes through the bodies. Joel bringing up the rear, being rather protective of me, which is sweet, but feels a bit odd. Soon we’re about ten rows from the front, as far as we can possibly go, as by now there’s no more room to move. We’re all squashed against each other’s backs, guarding our spaces territorially. Right then, Joel lifts me up by the waist and turns me around to see the view behind us ...

  There must be about 100,000 faces spanning as far as the eye can possibly see.

  Unbelievable.

  I feel a little woozy ...

  And then the stage lights plunge to darkness and the audience erupts, whooping excitedly as the familiar opening bars of Color Me Wonderful’s “Swamp Song” explode through the speakers, saturating the air with a cacophony of noise, making all the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up. I seem unable to stop smiling. All around us, people are dancing, jumping and crashing into each other in a nonnegotiable frenzy.

  “Er, thank you kindly,” remarks Lester Ossiah, the meek, one-man music machine during a quieter interlude in the track, the crowd quieting to hear him speak. “I wasn’t sure if anyone would turn up,” he adds dryly. Everybody laughs and cheers.

  A few meters away, the irrepressible Fleur, who’s been dancing and cheering wildly with the demeanor of a chick possessed for the last ten minutes, has now persuaded some poor, gullible bloke nearby to allow her to climb up on his shoulders, where she jiggles and joggles and waves frantically at Lester Ossiah, blowing him kisses. Eventually the timid star notices the flurry of hands and blonde hair in front of him and blows her a kiss back! Amazingly, Fleur’s elated face fills the huge video screens on either side of the stage. She looks like she’s going to cry with total happiness.

  Incredibly, Lester then makes “Swamp Song” blend effortlessly into his worldwide number one hit “Looking Glass,” an infectious tune that’s been used on tons of film soundtracks, sports car ads and video games. Gahhhh! I love that tune! The crowd seems to be surging forward more strongly now, there’s hardly any room to breathe and the security guards are yelling at us to move backward. This is beginning to get quite scary ... especially as Fleur has now propelled herself off the guy she was perched on, making her fledgling crowd-surfing attempt.

  “Oh my God! Claude! Look at Fleur!” I scream, pointing upward.

  “Weeeeeeeee-hah!” squeals Fleur. “I’m flyyyyyyyying!”

  “Fleur, get down! You’ll hurt yourself!” shouts Claude pointlessly as Fleur travels about on a sea of hands above our heads, supported by numerous partied-out individuals who I don’t place a hell of a lot of trust in.

  My heart is in my mouth. I’m jealous, but I wish she’d get down.

  Thankfully, after a few minutes, Fleur descends gracefully back to Earth, kindly positioned on both feet by a hulking guy with a kindly face and a nose ring who looks like an amiable bull.

  “Wooooo-hooo! Rock ’n’ roll, baby!” yells Fleur, throwing both hands in the air in devil horn signs. “That was sooooo fantastic! Did you see me?! Agggh! I want to go again!”

  Claude and I roll our eyes, relieved our daft mate’s back in one piece. However, right that instant another faster, louder track known worldwide as “Dead Zone” bursts to life and we’re dismayed to see Fleur tapping bull guy on his sweaty shoulder, flirtatiously requesting a leg up.

  “Noooooo!” says Claude, but by this point, we’re just staring at Fleur’s underwear as she climbs aboard.

  Claude and I both watch dubiously, fighting to keep ourselves upright as Fleur crowd-surfs past, in her absolute element, squealing and giggling. Occasionally she disappears downward into the crowd, then appears again upon another stranger’s shoulders, punching the air riotously. Claude and I try to keep an eye on her, but it’s getting more difficult now; she keeps disappearing completely as the crowd surges forward and falls backward.

  I’m not certain we’re in the same place Fleur left us now.

  And the next time I spot Fleur, she’s about eighty meters away, perched on some guy’s shoulders, chatting to a girl on shoulders next to her, laughing her head off.

  But then the guy carrying Fleur seems to stumble and I see Fleur’s face change. She looks scared, then plummets clumsily into the crowd.

  I wait for her to surface and for everything to be okay again, but this time it doesn’t happen.

  Claude, Josh and I fight our way sideways to try to rescue her, but when we reach the spot, sweating and panting, Fleur’s just not there.

  Or on anybody’s shoulders.

  Or crowd-surfing.

  Or in any of the places that we were standing.

  Or back at the tent.

  Or even at the missing persons marquee.

  Not anywhere.

  Fleur has completely disappeared.

  Chapter 7

  the pits

  “What time is it now?” I whisper.

  “Er ... Four fourteen A.M.,” whispers Claude, sitting up in her sleeping bag, illuminating her face with her mobile phone’s glowing screen.

  “Pggghhh ... this is getting ridiculous now,” I say, sitting up and placing my head deeply in both hands. “We’ve got to own up that she’s gone.”

  Claude sighs, nodding slowly in agreement.

  “I know,” she says. “Let’s face it, we should have done it hours ago. Have we made things worse, d’you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper, genuinely confused. “I just don’t know.”

  Outside our tent, the gentle tippy-tap of rain bounces off the tarpaulin. It’s drizzled for the best part of four hours now, which means that wherever Fleur Swan is, she’s soaked through and freezing cold as well as lost.

  Claude peers at the signal bar on her mobile phone for the zillionth time, rattles the handset, holds it up above her head, anything to get a connection. Why can’t the flipping Fusia network mechanics get a move on and restore the signal? Then Fleur could give us a call, text or sign of any kind. We’re not fussy. But for now, the network is still very much kaput and Claude and I are plummeting into the most maudlin genre of despair.

  It’s not like we’ve not tried to find her. We searched for Fleur high and low tonight, the length and breadth of Astlebury, for hours and hours on end, Claude and Damon combing the Hexagon Stage field, scanning every face, tattooed back and long pair of legs for distinguishing Fleur characteristics. Joel and I wandered the various other fields, where I kept “seeing” Fleur, hanging off the arms of random musicians, or holding court elegantly at numerous bonfire parties, or just sitting by herself, sipping a drink in the beer tent.

  But I didn’t really see her—it was just my mind playing tricks. So then we hunted through every boutique and stall in the main shopping thoroughfare, where I’d have given my right arm to see Fleur just one more time, trying on some ostentatious pair of sparkly stilettos, wrapped in a feather boa, being her usual absolute limit of cheekiness, convincing stallholders she’s a celebrity and needs a 40 percent discount.

  But we didn’t see her there either.

  Or in the fun fair, or the skate park, or the casino or the dance tent. Then we climbed up Briggin Hill to Astlebury’s makeshift medical center, hoping maybe we’d find her wrapped in a bandage, flirting with the male medics; but when we got there, the nurses showed us a logbook full of lads who’d plummeted over guy ropes, or battered their thumbs with camping mallets, or stage dived off the new-bands stage and found the audience had parted and they were nosediving into the hard earth. But the medics had seen no girls that evening at all.

  “Is there any chance that we wouldn’t know she was a girl?” asked one nurse. “It can
be quite hard to tell sometimes,” she smiled.

  Joel and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  The missing persons marquee was the worst bit.

  As Joel and I began to write Fleur a “Calling Fleur Swan!” note to stick on the board, oodles of people swarmed all around us, reuniting with their friends and family. People were hugging, kissing and even crying. Everyone was blaming the Fusia phone network for ruining their entire schedule, then rushing off as fast as their feet would carry them to catch up on fun. Kids were literally jumping for joy when they spotted their buddies, grabbing each other and twirling each other about in wild elation.

  But my friend didn’t show up.

  I wasn’t reunited.

  And instead of thinking up something useful to write, I found myself reading some of the more serious “missing persons” posters plastered over the marquee’s walls. There were faces of girls, just as pretty and sassy looking as my Fleur, grinning ghoulishly down at me, accompanied with blood-chilling captions such as:

  MISSING: IMELDA SMITH, AGED 15, LAST SEEN SIXTEEN MONTHS AGO. HER PARENTS AND FRIENDS MISS HER DESPERATELY. LAST SEEN SPEAKING TO AN UNKNOWN MAN (BROWN HAIR, 6’, GLASSES) AT A HOT-HOUSE LIZARD CONCERT AT THE SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE. DO YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION AT ALL? CALL THE CRIMESTOPPERS HOTLINE.

  I felt utterly bilious just looking at that one.

  Is this how it feels when somebody goes missing forever? It all has to begin somewhere. Those terrible things you see on the news that happen only in other people’s lives. When loved ones just go completely missing, and years go by, and still nothing, and eventually other folk tell you to get on with your life, ’cos, hey, it’s what they would have wanted, blah, blah, blah ... yet instead you never give up wondering what became of them. I’d be like that with Fleur. I couldn’t ever forget her.

  To add to the mood, the marquee was also displaying posters warning festivalgoers about various religious cults recruiting in the vicinity. Twisted freaks who brainwash you, so it seemed, into moving abroad, giving them all your money, and breaking all contact with your friends and family forever.

  “Oh, come on,” Joel said quietly. “Fleur wouldn’t be as totally stupid as to speak to weirdos like that, would she?”

  In all honesty, I wasn’t too sure. I mean, Claude? Never. Not a chance. But Fleur? Jeez ... if they had a good-looking lad recruiting for them, then ... Ugh. I couldn’t even think about that.

  I was at rock bottom.

  But the problem with “rock bottom” is that there’s always room left for a few layers of sludge underneath it.

  I felt a bony finger jabbing my shoulder blade from behind. “Ronnie!” came the insipid voice. “Fancy seeing you here!”

  I couldn’t flipping believe it.

  One hundred and twenty thousand people standing in a field, and in my hour of need I bump into Panama flipping Goodyear!

  “Ooh, you look a bit shell-shocked!” she rasped. “Weren’t expecting to see me, were you?”

  Was I hallucinating? No, she really was there, standing in front of me, looking vaguely ragged around the edges after her day in the great outdoors, although still slappably glamorous in camel Hessian trousers, a pale pink vest and open-toed sandals revealing an expensive paraffin pedicure. One small mercy was that she seemed to be alone.

  “Uggghh ... hi, Panama,” I said quietly.

  “Eh?” smiled Joel, looking at both of us. “You two know each other?”

  “We go to school together! Small world, eh?” chuckled Panama warmly, looking deeply into Joel’s hazel eyes and holding out her hand. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  “I’m Joel,” he told her.

  “I’m Panama Goodyear. Pleased to meet you,” cooed Panama, shaking his hand, radiating oodles of charm.

  She can do that so well when she wants to.

  “Have you guys been having a good festival?” she asked.

  “Mmm ... well ... not at the moment,” I muttered, nodding at the Missing Persons sign. I hated allowing Panama the pleasure of knowing the mess we were in, but there was a tiny chance she could help.

  “We’ve lost Fleur,” I said. “Have you seen her?”

  “Who?” said Panama, sneering ever so slightly.

  Panama knew full well who Fleur was. She’s known who Fleur was from the very moment my friend, who’s taller and prettier than Panama, walked into Blackwell on day one of Year 7. She’s made life uncomfortable enough for Fleur for the last four years. Funnily enough, Panama’s memory seemed to be failing her.

  “Fleur,” I repeated, sighing deeply. “Fleur Swan.”

  “Tall girl?” Joel added, trying to jog her memory. “Blonde hair?”

  “Oh, right, her,” said Panama, rolling her eyes. “Sorry! Not seen her, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, well, never mind,” I sighed, feeling even more deflated.

  Joel put his arm around my shoulder reassuringly.

  “So, er, how long’s she been gone?” asked Panama, feigning concern.

  “About three hours,” I told her through very tight lips.

  “Oh, well,” chuckled Panama. “Still a glimmer of hope then, eh?”

  “Of course there is,” said Joel assertively. “It’s not been long. She’ll turn up.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Panama insincerely. “But y‘know, I’d inform the police before it gets too late. I mean, they’ll find her, won’t they? Or y’know ... whatever’s left of her.”

  At this point, Joel glared at Panama, slightly taken aback by her tactlessness.

  “Ha ha! Joke!” Panama giggled. “Oh, dear, looks like you both lost your senses of humor in the Ethnic Drumming Zone.”

  “Er, we’ve got to get going now anyway,” Joel said, grabbing my hand and leading me away.

  “Me too,” smiled Panama. “Gotta get back to the gang! I only nipped off to use the porta-loo. They’ll be sending out search parties for me! They’ll think I’ve been murdered!”

  I stared at Panama, feeling a lump begin to form in my throat.

  “Oooh!” giggled Panama, throwing her hand to her mouth. “No joke intended there, honest!”

  “Good-bye then, Panama,” said Joel quite forcefully.

  “Bye, Joel!” winked Panama, turning on her heel and flouncing off. “Oh and Ronnie ... good luck, y’know, finding whatsit!”

  “Fleur,” I said pointlessly.

  “Oh yeah, Fleur!” sighed Panama, skipping off. “See ya!”

  I wanted to break down and cry my eyes out right there and then. But Joel held my hand tightly and pointed out that I was probably just hungry and tired and getting things totally out of proportion. Then he force fed me sugary doughnuts and sweet tea until I could at least get it together to walk back to meet Claude.

  “Fleur will turn up, I just know she will,” Joel said, giving me a little cuddle. “She’ll have just met some people, ended up at a party and lost all track of time. She’ll probably pass by here any minute.”

  Joel and I waited for another half hour.

  But no one showed up.

  Eventually, Claude and I met back at our tent in the Magical Glade, feeling mutually defeated. By this point, we just wanted to be alone, so we thanked the lads for all their help and told them to go off and have some fun. It was time to make some tough decisions.

  And with hindsight, Panama was probably right: we should have informed the police. Or at least told Daphne her sister was missing the very second we saw her. But stupidly, we didn’t do that, because we both had this nagging feeling that we were betraying our friend. Fleur was going to be in so much trouble for getting lost, Daphne was bound to ring Paddy, Paddy would call the police, our folks would find out and make us all go home, what a total nightmare. But the longer we left it, the worse trouble we’d be in for not saying anything. It was a lose-lose situation.

  So we did something really dumb. Something, in fact, so retardedly idiotic that there are no prizes for guessing it was my idea. We borrowed
Franny’s blonde wig from the boys’ tent and decided to buy Fleur a little bit more time. Positioning the luscious, rather realistic blonde locks, pouring out of the top of her sleeping bag and stuffing pillows inside to form a body, we made a near-perfect fake bambino. It looked exactly like Fleur was sleeping soundly and had been since not long after Color Me Wonderful came off stage.

  At first Claude and I felt like the cleverest, most ingenious young women in the world, but then time passed, and Daphne stuck her head through the tent doors, saw us all “snoozing” and whispered a relieved “Good night, girls” to us. I was beginning to feel virtually satanic. Especially when Daphne placed her hands sentimentally on the foot of Fleur’s sleeping bag, then whispered to Rex, who towered behind her, “Aww, bless them, they’ve been so good! They’re so flipping sensible for fifteen-year-olds!” Then she shut the tent door carefully, and we heard her saying, “She’s a brilliant little sister, y’know, Rex? I love her to bits, really. Dunno know what I’d do without her.”

  That totally, completely sucked.

  What were we doing covering for her?

  “Right, Ronnie, here’s the sketch,” says Claude forcefully.

  “Go on,” I say.

  “We wait till it’s light, that’s about two hours away, then we get out there and look for Fleur again. We try all the different places we did last night. If she’s not appeared by nine A.M., we go straight to the police. She’s had her chance by then—we have to grass her up. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I nod.

  Claude was right. We could keep on lying, but we were just making things much worse.

  “This is like a nightmare,” Claude mutters. “I want to wake up.”

  I flounder about in my sleeping bag, trying to get comfy and perhaps even grab a bit of shut-eye, but the horrible star-shaped chasm between myself and Claude where Fleur should be is really choking me up. I can’t fight my tears any longer so I try to let them out very quietly, wiping them on my sleeping bag. Claude overhears me, sitting up with a start.

  “Hey! Come on, Ron, don’t blub!” she says, putting her arms around me, her voice faltering a bit. “We’ll get through this. It’s just another LBD adventure, isn’t it?”