It's a Girl Thing (17 page)

If I have to remember one classic moment in the Blackwell Live story, this may possibly be my favorite: the LBD all hanging out of the top window of 39 Disraeli Road, shouting and laughing, the EZ Life Syndicate rapping and dancing their hearts out on the tarmac below . . . and Paddy Swan running around among them, waving his fist, threatening to call the police and the Noise Abatement Society if EZ Life didn't immediately halt that “infernal racket”: Paddy's face so angry that his bald head looks exactly like a beetroot.

Priceless.

Thankfully, EZ Life got the message pretty sharpish and started to leave, taking their sound system and their eight-strong crew with them.

“But how will we find you?” shouts Fleur from her bedroom window, thus infuriating Paddy even more.

“What do you want to find them for?” Paddy shouts up at her.

“Text me!” shouts the Cypriot lad, yelling his cell phone number for the whole road to hear. “Drop me a line when you've had a think,” he continues.

“But what's your name?” shouts Fleur.

“Killa Blow,” shouts the lad, without a hint of embarrassment.

“Oh my good God,” says Paddy.

Chapter 7

It seems, when I was little, I was an extremely joyless child.

According to Ripperton clan folklore, during my formative years I never got enthusiastic about anything, to the huge annoyance of my parents, who expected, nay, demanded their full payback of kiddie wonderment for the stuff they did for me.

Trips to the park? Bags of sweets? Helium-filled balloons? Being allowed to stay up past bedtime to catch the end of a TV show? All these things, and more, were at best met with a noncommittal shrug and a blank expression.

“Ronnie,” my father once said after I'd single-handedly ve toed a family trip to Chessington World of Adventure, “having your six-year-old daughter force a withering smile for you is an extremely demoralizing experience for a dad.”

And I've no doubt it was, especially when accompanied by my curt explanation: “That sounds like fun, Daddy. But maybe it's more yours and Mummy's type of fun. You go instead. I'll stay at home.” (Cue much slapping of foreheads and threats to drive me to the nearest orphanage.)

But I wasn't a miserable kid. In fact, far from it.

It was just that I simply wouldn't display the requisite amounts of joy that, say, a long balloon bent into the shape of a sausage dog, or a bowl of jelly and ice cream, was supposed to induce. And, believe me, that freaks parents right out. In truth, the only thing I got truly excited about back then was Christmas Eve, but then the fact that one day a year, an old-age pensioner would break into the house, with my parents' full consent, leaving £200 worth of toys and chocolate . . . well, that would make anyone grin.

But anyway, this isn't some lame trip down memory lane. I'm telling you this because it seems that now, aged fourteen and a half, I'm in trouble for “being too happy.” To my mind, this is conclusive proof that to be a parent, you've got to be vaguely schizophrenic, or at least prone to huge memory lapses and mental delusions.

My parents can't believe how jovial I've been this week, ever since Blackwell Live started coming together. I've been smiling nonstop and chatting everyone's legs off. I've been positive about life and the future. I've not mentioned the possibility of germ warfare once (I get a bit obsessed with stuff I see on the news sometimes). I've even been running out the door to Blackwell early some mornings because the LBD have tons of stuff to sort out. It wasn't a conscious decision on my part to cheer up, but considering the LBD's initial reasoning behind organizing Blackwell Live was to, ahem, perhaps “meet some boys” . . . and here, only weeks later, we seem to have a flood of men all wanting to chat to us and come to our houses, well, yeah, I suppose I am a bit chipper! I mean, we've even met the EZ Life Syndicate, who are from another school entirely! Yes, we're now
importing
boys from other areas, for crying out loud! And okay, sure, we've had some hard times over the last days with Panama Bogwash and her Goblins, but I've managed to keep my chin up regardless.

“You're on drugs, aren't you?” announces my mother, throwing down a bowl of mush onto the kitchen table before me. I surmise this mess was Frosted Krispies when she poured them for me over an hour ago.

“What?” I say.

“You're taking drugs,” she continues. “I can tell. I just can't work out which drug. You won't stop smiling.” Mum grabs my face and pulls down one eye bag. “See! Red-rimmed eyes. Drugs,” she says.

My mother must have taken the same medical degree as Panama Goodyear.

“Mother, could you at least clean your teeth before you get so close in the morning?” I splutter, shaking her off before she spies a spot she wants to squeeze while she's there.

“I don't believe this,” I squeak. “You've spent the last fourteen years badgering me to smile more and look enthusiastic, and now you're giving me jip for smiling too much! You're mad, you are. You're a couple of chicken drumsticks short of a buffet, you are.”

“Pah,
you
are,” says Mum.

“No, lady. I think you'll find
you are,
” I say.

(Since I've become a teenager, me and Mum's arguments have taken a really profound turn.)

“Veronica, don't call your mother mad,” shouts my father from another room.

“And he's unhinged too,” I say, nodding toward Dad's voice.

“Alas, I can't argue with you there,” agrees Mum, wrinkling her nose in the direction of Dad. “You get your defective genes from his side of the family, but let's keep your father out of this.”

Dad, knowing what was good for him, decides to stay silent in the living room with his tea and not attempt to argue his defense.

I thought, for about five minutes last night, that Mum and Dad might have ironed out this weird problem they're having. When I got back from school, they were sitting in the kitchen together, talking quite civilly about pub business. Talking
to each other,
no less. Not telling me to say things to the other one. Just like they were friends, almost.

Well, this was until Dad mentioned that next year could be a good year to do the renovations to the Fantastic Voyage's backyard. Dad's had a bit of a dream to convert the back of the pub into a beer garden for about five years now, but it will cost about a squillion quid, according to builders.

“We've got bigger priorities than spending our savings on a stupid beer garden, Lawrence,” snarled Mum.

“I'd have thought you'd be in favor, Magda. I could get a tent and live in it. Then you wouldn't have to look at me,” shouted Dad.

Thankfully, I was meeting the LBD at Fleur's. We were cooking a big stir-fry and going over Blackwell Live business. It was great to get out of the house and be doing something that didn't involve thinking about them.

When I look up from my Frosted Mush next, Mum is peering at me, waiting for me to confess my rampant drug problem.

“Look, give me a break,” I say, shaking my head. “I'm just really really okay at the moment. Everything's going really well with Blackwell Live, it's all just flowing at the moment. . . .”

Mum is still peering.

“I mean, yes, last week I may have been really stressed . . . ,” I continue.

“Stressed and depressed,” corrects Mum, eating a pickled onion.

“Okay, yeah, stressed and depressed, but now I'm happy and—”

“Happy and ecstatic?” says Mum, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah!”

“Hmmmm,” she says.

“But I'm NOT on drugs. In fact, I wouldn't even know where to get drugs from, so how would I be on drugs?” I say, totally truthfully.

“Well, there's all those drug dealers that wait outside your school every night, peddling their wares,” says Mum, who has taken to reading the
Local Daily Mercury
very closely of late.

“Oh, God, Mother, those drug dealers don't even exist!” I moan. “In fact, me and Claude once hung around after school in Year Eight specifically to spy on a real-life drug dealer in action. The only person out there was Mrs. Baggins, the crossing patrol woman!” I say.

“Now, she's
definitely
on drugs,” says Mum, beginning to smile in a relieved way.

“Oh, yeah, totally, she's mad as a goat,” I agree, happy my interrogation is over. As ever, though, Mum wants the last word.

“Well, all I'm saying is: I'm watching you, Veronica Ripperton,” Mum concedes. “I've got your card marked. And if I see anything I don't like, I'll be down on you like a ton of bricks.” Mum's pointing her finger at me now.

“Well, watch away, you mad old crone,” I say under my breath as Mum tucks into another pickle. “Cos I'm not on drugs.”

“And I bet that Fleur Swan will have something to do with all this,” she continues to whoever is listening. “She's at the root of any misdemeanor. Ooh, If I were Patrick Swan, I'd have locked her in the attic long ago.”

“Why Fleur?” I say, collecting my schoolbag. “Why not Claude? Maybe she's my drug dealer,” I add mischievously.

“Ha ha ha! Oh, don't make me laugh, Ronnie.” Mum snorts. “Claude would never get involved with anything like that. She's got far too much sense. She's such a lovely girl, is Claude . . .”

(Let it be noted that if it wasn't for the fact Claudette Cassiera is a completely different color to me, and has Mrs. Cassiera to look after her, my mother would be passing off Claude as her own flesh and blood after abandoning me on a motorway. Mum loves Claudette like the daughter she wishes she'd really had. How does Claude Cassiera do it?)

“Right. Can't hang about,” I say breezily. “I'm off to school now to get high on drugs.”

Mum looks up from the pickle jar, where she's spooning vinegar into her mouth.

“No, hang on, forget that,” I continue. “I'll probably just go to double science and be bored to death, then grab a baked potato for lunch instead.”

“Good girl,” says Mum.

“See ya later, loonytoons,” I say, giving Mum a peck.

“No, you're the mad one,” she says, quickly closing the pub door behind me so I can't reply.

My mother is sooo childish.

I love the smell of the drama studio.

Mr. Gowan uses this unbelievably great-smelling deep oak polish on the floors to keep the wood all smooth and shiny. It smells amazing. I suppose if I had to sniff any sort of strange substances, in a bid to give my mother the drug-related family crisis she so desperately seeks, I'd probably just sit in the drama studio, inhaling its lovely, rich, varnishy aroma . . . until I got trampled by a load of Year 7 kids pretending to be “sprouting trees” or “soaring birds” to the rhythmic beat of a tambourine.

I didn't believe for one second if we invited all of the chosen Blackwell Live bands to the drama studio for a “General Meeting” (as Claude rather officiously refers to it), they'd all simply show up, no questions asked. Thirty kids? Many of whom don't even like each other? All with different timetables and after-school commitments?

That's a lot of folk to schedule into one place.

You're always going to get one boy who remembers an urgent appointment with his Nintendo GameCube (e.g. Aaron), or one girl who'll need to go and tend to her pony (e.g. Abigail from Catwalk). Yet, with Claude at the helm, sprinting around the cloakrooms between lessons, threatening musicians under pain of death that they MUST be in the drama studio at 4:00 P.M. sharp, everything has come together.

“I told them exactly how it was,” said Claude as the LBD were en route to the studio. “No-show means ‘no show.' If I can't trust them to turn up tonight, I'm not relying on them for July twelfth.”

“Claude, you're a real Scary Mary sometimes,” says Fleur.

“Yeah, I know.” Claude smiles. “But you're calling me that like it's some kind of bad thing . . . I mean, look, I got them all here, didn't I?”

“Yep, Little C.” Fleur chuckles, sticking her head into the studio and spotting a flurry of faces looking back at her. “You certainly did.”

All twenty-nine faces, present and correct. What a sight this is to behold!

So we've got Death Knell, all five of Blackwell's nu-goth speed reggae pioneers, sitting directly beside Guttersnipe, Liam's three-piece guitar act. While Liam waits patiently for the meeting to kick off, Tara, Guttersnipe's blond bass player, gossips with the huge heap of hair which is Benny Stark. Benny, as ever, is managing to wear his Blackwell uniform like some sort of ironic fashion statement. I don't know how, he just does. It's something to do with Benny's tie perpetually being a little thinner than other kids' and his shirt collars a little pointier and his trousers a touch tighter than other lads' (they're always from secondhand shops too, but Panama somehow leaves Benny out of her bitching). A neat row of badges across Benny's blazer lapel, heralding New York guitar bands that nobody else has ever heard of, seals Benny's “Too Cool for School” look. In all honesty, I can't work out whether Benny actually works hard to be cool or not . . . he's so flipping laid-back, he looks like removing the top from a jar of pickles would fatigue him for an entire week.