Best Friends Rock!
Read Best Friends Rock! Online
Authors: Cindy Jefferies
About this book
Ellie's spending the summer holidays doing work experience at top teen magazine,
Heart
. It should be a dream come true for a wannabe journalist. But she's fallen out with her best friend, and an interview with the son of a rock star is a disaster. Nothing seems to be going right until she meets a gorgeous boy who puts the fun and friendship back into Ellie's summerâ¦
Contents
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For Emma
And for John
Ellie stared at her best friend. “But Hannah! Don't you see? I can't possibly come!”
Hannah folded her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. There was hardly anything that Ellie didn't like about Hannah, but she'd always hated it when she did that.
“I can't believe you don't want to come, Ellie. It's a chance for us both to have a cool holiday
together
! I know it's last minute, but how can you possibly say no? It's
brilliant
that my sister suddenly wants to swan off with her uni friends instead of having a family holiday. We'll have a great time! Besides,” Hannah was really piling on the pressure now, “I told Mum you'd
jump
at the chance to come to Spain with us. The room, flight, everything is booked. All we have to do is change the names. If you don't come, Mum will never offer to let me take a friend again.”
Hannah's voice was beginning to sound a bit whiny. “Instead of me sharing with my sister we'll be together. It'll be so much fun! You
know
you want to say yes!”
At any other time Ellie would have jumped at the chance. If only she'd known about this much earlier! Yes, it would be wonderful to spend a holiday in the sun with her best friend. She couldn't think of anything betterâ¦exceptâ¦except. Ellie had had her summer all planned out for weeksâ¦no, months before the end of the summer term, and it didn't include a beach holiday with Hannah. It
would
have done, if she'd known in time, but now, it was simply too late. She was working at her fave teen magazine,
Heart
. She'd replied with a thrilled YES, when she'd had the offer, and she'd already had an amazing time tracking down a reclusive author to interview. Nothing, but
nothing
would make her leave the job early. If she did, it would be very unprofessional. Besides, if she left, she might never be asked back again.
Ellie hated having to choose. Hannah knew how much this work meant to her friend. Ellie wanted to be a journalist more than
anything
, and she couldn't just abandon this amazing job. But Hannah was her best friend, and so Ellie hesitated in spite of herself. Then Hannah tried a different approach. “Come on,” she said. “Don't be horrible. Be a proper friend.”
Ellie was stung. “Don't say that! Of course I'm a proper friend. But this summer is my chance to make a real impression at
Heart
.” She shook the copy she was holding in Hannah's face and Hannah stepped back, pushing it away. “I've already agreed to work all summer,” Ellie went on in a rush. “I can't suddenly change my mind now. You know I have a list of celebrities to try and set up interviews with!”
“It's only a couple of weeks out of your precious six,” said Hannah in a sulk.
Ellie glared at her. “You're just not listening, are you? Working at
Heart
is really important to me. It could change my whole
life
.”
Hannah laughed bitterly. “More important than me? Okay, maybe it's quite glamorous, but it's just a holiday job. They don't even pay you anything. And I thought I was doing you a
favour
by inviting you to Spain. I thought you'd jump at the chance. It's not as if you've had many proper holidays, is it?”
The room suddenly went very quiet. Hannah looked as if she wished she could take the words back, but it was too late for that. Ellie felt ready to explode. Instead, she walked deliberately over to her friend's bedroom door and opened it. Her heart was thumping. She wanted to fling the door wide until it crashed against Hannah's wardrobe. She wanted to sweep all the china ornaments her friend had collected when she was little to the floor, but she didn't. She was so furious she was shaking, but she took a deep breath, and with great difficulty controlled herself.
How
dare
Hannah hint about Ellie's mum's difficulties? Having no dad had certainly made things hard for Georgia, Ellie's mum, but Ellie had almost
never
felt she was missing out. They'd had lots of fun on holidays at home, and it wasn't her mum's fault they couldn't often afford to go abroad.
Ellie turned to look at Hannah, her hand still on the door handle. She wanted to make a clever and wounding parting shot, but she was trembling too much to think of anything to say. She just stared mutely at her best friend for a few seconds, and when she felt angry tears begin to fill her eyes she looked away. Somehow she found her way downstairs and out of the front door, all the time expecting Hannah to run after her, or at least call, but there was silence. They had both gone too far. Their argument was too hurtful to make up easily, and where that left their friendship was anyone's guess.
For the next few days Ellie kept opening her phone to text Hannah, but when it came to it she couldn't do it. She didn't want to be the first to apologize, and there were too many angry words between them for her to simply ignore them and move on. Something had to be said, but what? Maybe Hannah would do the apologizing, and then they could make up, but Ellie's phone stubbornly refused to ring, and no texts arrived.
The more time passed the harder it became. Soon there were only a couple of days to go before Hannah flew out to Spain. Ellie's mum, Georgia, had noticed that something was wrong, but
she
couldn't put things right.
“Have you and Hannah fallen out?” she asked one evening after work. “She hasn't been round for days.”
“She's busy,” mumbled Ellie unconvincingly. “Getting ready to go away. And she's annoyed that I can't go with her.”
“Well, it is a shame she didn't know her sister was pulling out before you'd accepted the job at
Heart
,” said Georgia. “You won't even be able to come with me to drop them off at the airport because you'll be working. But I know how much the job means to you, and I'm sure Hannah will get over it.”
It didn't seem very likely, but there wasn't a lot Ellie could do. And she didn't feel like forgiving her friend too quickly for the remarks she'd made about Ellie's lack of foreign holidays. She certainly wasn't about to tell her mum what Hannah had said. Hannah had also implied she was being selfish not to go. Had Ellie been selfish to forego a foreign holiday? A big part of Ellie wished she
could
go. How could denying yourself something be selfish? It was all such a muddle.
It wasn't until the day Hannah was due to go off on holiday that Ellie finally made a move. She still hadn't heard from her friend, but on the bus that morning, on the way to work, Ellie finally sent a text.
Have a great holiday!
She wondered about adding,
See you when you get back
, but what if Hannah didn't want to see her again? Adding that would make Ellie feel too vulnerable, so she didn't. She toyed with the idea of removing the exclamation mark as well. Her finger hovered over the delete button, but in the end she sighed and pressed send instead. For better or worse she'd made the first move. Now it was up to Hannah. The flight wasn't for another couple of hours, so she had plenty of time to pick up the text before she got on the plane and had to turn off her phone.
As the bus chugged along, stopping and starting on the congested road, Ellie thought about Hannah, sitting in the departure lounge with her parents. Hannah's parents were nice. It
would
have been fun to be together, but Ellie still hadn't changed her mind.
Heart
was
the magazine to die for
, and she was committed to working there. If she'd been able to holiday
and
not let
Heart
downâ¦well that would have been perfect! But Ellie was discovering that life was seldom perfect. This was just one of those occasions when you had to make the best of it. Besides, an idea had just popped into her head, and she couldn't wait to test it out on Francesca, the Deputy Editor.
Ellie loved the journey to work. It was exciting catching the buses that took her right into the middle of the city. Once there, she felt she belonged with these sophisticated people, who hurried purposefully into shiny, steel and glass office buildings that rose high into the air on both sides of the streets. In her bag was a pen and her beloved notebook, the one her father had written brief phrases in, shortly before he'd died while on a foreign assignment. That had been before Ellie was born, so she had never met her dad. But having his notebook made her feel close to him, and every day, as she went to work, she thought about the first phrase in the book,
You can do this!
It had become the mantra by which she tried to live her life. It made her feel strong, and capable, and that's what she intended to be.
The bus juddered to a halt at her stop, and Ellie fought her way to the exit. The
Heart
building was only a few metres along the pavement, so she was there within seconds. She paused to gather her thoughts, gazing at the imposing office block with its glass doors. Then she pushed the enormous stainless steel handle and went in, her heart thumping with excitement. She'd been coming here every weekday since school had broken up, but it was still a huge thrill.
Heart
shared this office building with other magazines owned by the same company, and the spacious lobby was busy with workers making their way to the lifts, the women's high heels tapping noisily on the marble floor.
Ellie hurried to join them. She never knew, from one day to the next, what she might be asked to do, and that all added to the excitement. She really hoped Francesca would love her idea.
Heart
was the coolest magazine
ever
, and the more of an impact she could make, the more Ellie would be right in the middle of it!
She was the same age as most of
Heart
's readers, and had been a fan for ages. Angel Makepiece, the Editor in Chief hadn't taken long to realize how useful it could be to have Ellie on board. Not only would they be able to ask her opinion, the readers would love to know that someone their own age was actually on the staff, even though they couldn't pay Ellie until she was older.