It's a Girl Thing (21 page)

“It's grrrreat!” says Frankie, pressing PLAY on the Wake-Up Crew Tape.

“Woooo-hooo!!!” goes “the crew.”

On the recording, a party-popper explodes and someone honks a kazoo merrily. This all sounds faintly ridiculous now that I'm standing beside it.

“Yup, it's seven forty-seven A.M. and we're over the moon to have these amazing kids with us live in the studio,” continues Warren. “They're putting on a krrrazy-cool live music event to rival Astlebury or Reading Rock Festival on July twelfth in the school grounds, and they wanna spread the word. Don't you, kids?”

“Yeah,” we all murmur, fully aware we're Live On Air and the entire town is listening. Jimi is hiding at the back of the group with Liam, whose face is bright red. Ainsley is just peering at “Fun Time Frankie” as if he's an alien.

Fleur and I aren't much use either, we're just grinning. “Thanks for having us! We're so glad to be here!” pipes up Panama.

“Yeah, really happy,” butts in Claude.

“So, Panama Goodyear, we've seen a lot of you in the past year along with your very talented group, Catwalk. Blackwell Live must be an exciting opportunity for you guys to perform,” asks Warren.

“Oh, amazing, yeah!” purrs Panama. “I mean, after we won the Wicked FM Star Search quarterfinals, we all remarked on how there's just not enough live music in our community.”

“Totally,” agrees Warren.

“So that's where we came up with the idea for Blackwell Live . . . ,” says Panama.

This is the most shockingly blatant lie I've heard since Fleur claimed her last lovebite was an allergic rash.

“Splagh pghhhh!”
grunts Claude, trying to think of a polite way to call Panama a sniveling little liar on live radio.

“Grrrreat!” shrieks Frankie, slightly pointlessly, while also picking a lump of sleep out of his eye.

“But there's something for everyone at Blackwell Live too,” announces Claude. “I mean, as well at Catwalk, we've got five other brilliant local bands. Like Lost Messiah and Death Knell.”

“Yes, I see you've got quite a lineup. Have you all been practicing, then, kids?”

“
Murrr, mmm,
yeah,” mumbles our gang, our shyness simply giving Panama Motor-Mouth more chance to warble on and on.

“Catwalk practice every single day!” shrills Panama. “We're absolute perfectionists when it comes to
our art
.”

“Oh,
purlease,
” mutters Ainsley, finally finding his tongue.

“Well, good to hear that, Panama,” says Frankie. “And we've got to go to a record now, so we'll get back to the Blackwell Live gang later.”

“Woo-hoo! Yeah!! Part-eeeeee!!” cheer the imaginary posse.

“But just one quick question,” cheeps Warren. “I'm assuming that Catwalk, being the local celebs they are, will be the headlining act on the twelfth?”

Warren grins at the Blackwell gang, not understanding the gravity of his question.

After four seconds of silence—which is a very long time indeed when you're Live On Air—both Panama and Claude speak at exactly the same time.

“Yeah, of course!” squeaks Panama, shaking her glossy brown hair behind her.

“No, not necessarily,” contradicts Claude. “We've got so much talent to choose from, it's really undecided at the moment.”

Claude and Panama turn to each other, scowling.

Ouch.

“Ooooh, listeners! A little bit of controversy there to go with your cornflakes. We seem to have a disagreement!”

“There's no disagreement,” says Panama. “Claudette is just a bit confused. Catwalk WILL be the headline act, no one needs to worry about that—”

“Well, actually,” begins Claude, “I think you'll find—”

“Oh, don't make me have to come over there and slap you,” snarls Panama.

“Don't threaten me, you bully,” snaps Claude back.

“Oh, that's great, kids, but there's no more time!” butts in Warren, sensing a fight about to break out. “Now, on 86.4, here's the grrrreat sound of the Happy Clappers with ‘La La La Love!' ”

And then we're off air.

Along with the entire town, I think I just witnessed Claudette Cassiera very nearly lose her cool.

Big time.

 

 

It's an exceedingly long, quiet journey back to Blackwell School.

Warren and Frankie never did “get back to us” after the Happy Clappers. In fact, we were ushered rapidly out of the studio by a Wicked FM researcher.

In a bid to “make it obvious” to Jimi I think he's hot, I planned to nab a seat in the minibus beside him; however, Panama's tiny bottom was already perched in place. For once she wasn't speaking. She was simply staring at her reflection in the minibus window, reapplying glistening pink lip gloss to her luscious, full lips. And sort of smiling at herself.

Bizarrely enough, at Blackwell's school gates, a gaggle of Year 7 kids have gathered to wave and cheer as we pass by. Panama perks up when she sees some fans and waves graciously. In the middle of the throng stand two unlikely Catwalk devotees: Benny Stark and Tara from Guttersnipe lurking on the curb, smiling from ear to ear.

“Nice one, girls!” says Tara, clapping me on the shoulder as I tumble out of the bus.

Claude sighs.

“Everyone is talking about Wicked FM this morning, man,” begins Benny.

“Yeah, that was really funny. I almost peed my pants!” chips in Tara.

“Hmmm, maybe,” mutters Claude, “I think we let ourselves down a bit.”

“Nah . . . you didn't,” argues Benny, beckoning us to follow him in the direction of the drama studio. “That's what we came to tell you. Come and see what's happening . . . it's brilliant.”

We all look at him with perplexed expressions.

“Those two Bellringing dudes,” mumbles Benny, “the ones you left in charge of selling Blackwell Live tickets this morning . . . they're a bit, er, stressed-out. Mrs. Guinevere has been making them cups of sweet tea and trying to instill a bit of order down there—”

“What do you mean?” Fleur asks.

“Well, have you ever heard that saying ‘All publicity is good publicity'?” asks Tara, cocking her head to the side rather coolly.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, since your little spat with Panama this morning, they've already sold 487 Blackwell Live tickets—”

“Four hundred and eighty-seven!” mouths Claude.

“It's all gone a bit freaky-disco,” sniggers Benny, his ringlets shaking as he chuckles.

“What?” we all gasp, spying queues of kids reaching right out of the drama studio and past the gym.

And when I look back around, Liam is twirling Claude round and round shrieking, and Fleur . . . well, Fleur is glued to the spot, for the first time fully realizing the sheer gravity of what the LBD have created.

Chapter 9

How the
Look Live
TV crew condensed an entire day of filming around Blackwell School into
three and a half measly minutes
was astounding. And they also sandwiched our story between a clip about local otters and the pollen forecast!

This was not how I'd envisioned my TV debut.

I thought we were going to at least be a news headline. Serves me right for spending the entire day clutching a clipboard, trying to look professional, aiming to get my schneck into every shot. For all my dramatic efforts, the
Look Live
crew eventually reduced the whole Blackwell Live scoop down to some footage of Catwalk's Leeza and Abigail shimmying in tight-fitting fuchsia leotards, a bit of Death Knell's Ainsley Hammond and Candy wailing and hitting steel drums with wooden spoons, plus two seconds of Claude saying: “Er, please buy a ticket. It'll probably be quite good, honest!”

“I didn't say it like that!” moaned Claude. “That was me messing about. I said it another ten times after that in a really sensible way. Ooh, I can't belieeeve they used that take . . .”

Thank Jehovah Paddy Swan wedged his face into the report. We never heard the last of it after we totally forgot to mention him on Wicked FM. “The ink's not even dry on that check, and already I'm yesterday's news!” he'd grumbled.

Luckily Paddy's face filled the screen for almost twelve seconds at the end of the
Look Live
report (yes, he did count them). He was billed as “a local entrepreneur and music fanatic,” and was shown harping on about giving something back to the community that had given so much to him.

Ha ha ha. “Music fanatic”? This is the man who actually
cut the plug off
Fleur's stereo when she refused to study for the Year 8 exams.

“I look fantastic, don't I?” announced Paddy to Mrs. Swan, rewinding the video to make us all watch him for the tenth time.

“Yes, darling. You look outrageously handsome,” Saskia Swan concurred.

“Shall we watch it again?”

“Oh, yes, let's!” gushed Mrs. Swan.

Feigning homework, the LBD managed to escape.

Then, later this week, a
Daily Mercury
reporter and photographer showed up to snap the LBD for a Blackwell Live preview article. Very exciting, huh!? And, this time, with only three faces in the picture, it was a breeze stealing a more starring role . . . even though the very moment the newspaper plopped on the doormat of the Fantastic Voyage this evening, with the LBD plastered all over the front cover, I immediately regretted it.

I'd been quite nervous, you see, about looking good in the local paper. So nervous, in fact, that I'd spent my entire lunch hour preening my hair into something more fluffy . . . then changing my mind and combing it flat again. Then trying to work in a hip side parting. Then spraying ultrafine hair serum all over it to make it a bit more orderly . . . then eventually trying to breathe a bit of life and movement into it again. By this stage my hair was lying flat and rock hard against my skull like a fifty-year-old businessman's hairdo. It was at this point Fleur Swan, who once partook of a Fashion Modeling Course (which cost Paddy stacks of money and promised to make her a supermodel the second she finishes school) stepped in with some great advice.

“Never mind your hair,” she said. “When you're being photographed, the trick is to follow the golden rules of modeling if you want to look amazing.”

“Which are?” I said, trying to remove a comb tangled in the back of my head.

“Okay, well, number one, point your chin slightly down so you can't see any double chinnage.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to remember this.

“Then, two, swivel your hips to the side with your hands on your waist. This makes you look sleeker and also emphasizes your curves,” Fleur said, demonstrating the pose.

“Wow,” I gasped. Fleur looked like a real fox when she did that.

“Three: Hold your upper arms slightly away from your body,” advises Fleur. “This avoids chunky corned beef upper arms problem.”

“But I don't have—” I began.

“Oh, you will if you don't do this, believe me,” Fleur announced. “And try to look confident and enthusiastic, not so flaky. You really wind me up when you do that.”

“I'm
not
flaky! There's that word again! ‘Flaky.' Stop calling me fl—”

“Then, most importantly,” continued Fleur, “place your tongue gently behind your top teeth, open your mouth ever so slightly and SMILE!!!”

It seemed an awful load of trouble to go to for one photograph, but I was willing to give it a go. Especially as Jimi would no doubt see it.

Of course, when the
Daily Mercury
came out this evening, Fleur and Claude were standing completely normally, while I was standing like some sort of contorted, deeply disturbed circus sideshow escapee with a backward wig on.

“I'm going to keep this beside the cash register. It'll scare people from robbing my takings,” remarked my dad before giving me a big hug.

I really really hate Fleur sometimes.

But somewhere this week, between schmoozing reporters and TV crews, amongst the band practices and the battles with Panama, between flirting with Jimi and arguing about the worst-case scenario with Mr. McGraw, as well as stinging Paddy for a grand and fantasizing a whole lot about July twelfth . . . I seem to have overlooked something quite obvious.

I've not set eyes on my mother for four days.

In fact, it's only this moment, as I walked though the pub doors and noticed Muriel, our sous-chef, gazing at me pitifully before offering to make my a couple of nice poached eggs for my dinner, that I realize something is wrong.

“Where's my mother, Muriel?” I ask.

“Oh . . . well, I'm not too sure, darling,” lies Muriel. “Maybe you should ask your dad.”

“Well, why don't you tell me?” I say.

“Cos I don't know, honeypie. Now, those eggs . . .” Muriel turns her head and pretends to look for a saucepan.

“MURIEL!”

“Okay! Okay!! She's at your nan's house. She's moved out. Er, I think. I'm not sure, though. Oh, Veronica, go and ask your father, I shouldn't be telling you this, it's not my place,” Muriel says kindly but firmly.

“Where is he? Has he moved out too!? What does that make me? An orphan?” I say in a high-pitched tone.

“No, he's upstairs. Go and talk to him, Veronica, he needs you to be sweet to him. He's upset.”

“
He's
upset? What about me? I'm the one missing a mother!!” I storm upstairs, bypassing the den, where I can hear some excessively sad blues music flooding from the stereo.