Seven
“It’s all gone wrong!” I wailed at my family over tea that night. “We haven’t even rehearsed properly yet and there’s just two weeks left, and Jasmine, who wasn’t speaking to Ben much anyway, now totally won’t come within a hundred yards of him since she slipped on that banana skin and fell in the yoghurt, and Mel is furious with me for laughing – not to mention she’s wound up anyway about her mum missing that promotion – and Lucy’s really upset because her brother’s upset, and—”
“Calm down, Coleen,” Dad protested, waving a forkful of cabbage at me. “We can’t hear a word. The band’s gone wrong?”
“So aren’t you playing in the Battle any more?” Em said, looking disappointed.
“It’s just a little spat,” said Mum. “Bands have them all the time. It’ll blow over, love.”
I shook my head. “Believe me, Mum, this one won’t,” I said hopelessly. “And it’s all my fault.”
Dad was frowning, obviously going through my garbled story in his head. “Jasmine slipped on a banana skin?” he said at last.
“Yes,” I sniffed.
“And…” Dad was struggling not to laugh, “then fell in some yoghurt?”
“Pink yoghurt,” I said. Like it mattered? “A bit even sploshed on her nose.”
If you ever wondered where I get my famous giggles from, you want to see my dad. He gets so bad that he can’t speak. He ends up taking a run at the same sentence about ten times, like he’s trying to pole-vault over a wall but ends up smacking his nose against it each time instead.
“She slipped…she slipped…slipped…” Dad choked. “She…she…she…”
Mum had started laughing now. Em was already halfway off her chair laughing, because Dad’s giggles are the most infectious thing in the world. Our dog Rascal crept out of his basket and sat nervously by the back door as my whole family totally lost it.
“It’s not funny,” I said, my lips twitching. “It’s…”
And then I joined in.
When we’d all got our breath back, me and Em cleared and washed the plates as Mum and Dad went next door to recover.
“What do you think we should do, Em?” I said, drying the plates and stacking them in the cupboard. I was that desperate, I was turning to a seven-year-old footie freak for help.
“Write a letter,” Em said, lining up the cutlery in the cutlery drawer. “No – write two letters. One from Ben to Jasmine, and one from Jasmine to Ben. You can be all sorry-sorry, lovey-lovey, I promise never to mention it again and all that. They’ll never know the other person didn’t write it, see?” She plonked the last fork in the drawer and flipped the tea towel over her shoulder. “It works in movies,” she concluded.
I stared at her. Was this maybe the best idea I’d heard all day? “You’re a genius, Emma!” I said, fighting the urge to sweep my little sister off the ground and kiss her.
“I know,” Em said. Then she did one of her big show-off burps, which kind of spoiled the moment.
On Monday over dinner I pulled the letters I’d done on my computer that weekend out of my bag and spread them across the table so Lucy and Mel could see them. Mel made out she was still angry with me, but she started thawing when she realised that I had a plan to save our band from extinction.
“See?” I explained. “This one’s from Ben, saying how sorry he is for laughing at Jasmine, and how pretty she is even with yoghurt on her nose. And this one’s from Jasmine, saying sorry for running off.”
Mel and Lucy studied the letters, giggling as they read the soppy stuff I’d added in.
“You can forge Ben’s signature, can’t you?” I said to Lucy hopefully. “And I’ll just do a squiggle for Jasmine and hope Ben doesn’t know what her handwriting looks like.”
“They’ll kill us if they find out…” said Lucy tentatively. “But I guess things can’t get much worse…” She pulled out her pen and signed Ben’s letter with a flourish, while I did the same with Jasmine’s. Then we put them both in envelopes.
“We can put them in the Year Ten pigeonholes,” Mel said, completely into my plan now. “And then I guess we just hope for the best.”
“We’ve been doing a lot of that lately,” Lucy sighed.
It’s amazing how slowly time goes when you’re desperate for it to speed by. Every time we moved between classrooms, I was on alert for Ben and Jasmine. Had they got the letters yet? Had they read them? And most importantly – did they believe them? A small part of my brain did the usual stuff: writing down homework, shooting evils at Summer (who seemed to be smirking a whole lot more than normal), planning the band’s outfits for the Battle and practising our song. But the rest of my head was completely caught up in the Ben and Jasmine drama. The big question was: did we still have a band?
“You wanna practise at mine now?” Mel asked as we headed out of school at the end of the day.
“What’s the point without Ben and Jasmine?” Lucy said with a shrug.
“We’ve got to believe it’ll work out,” Mel said. “There’s less than two weeks left until the gig, guys.”
“How’s your mum, Mel?” I asked, suddenly remembering.
Mel shook her head. “Not great,” she said. “She was applying for a bunch of other jobs over the weekend.”
“Jasmine,” Lucy suddenly hissed in my ear.
I whirled around. Jasmine Harris was walking down the corridor, flanked by a couple of her mates.
“And Ben!” Mel squeaked, lurching to a halt as we saw Lucy’s brother walking towards us from the opposite direction.
We slammed ourselves back against the lockers that lined the corridor.
“I want a word with you, Ben Hanratty,” Jasmine said.
“Is that good?” Lucy whispered nervously as we watched Ben and Jasmine walking towards each other like cowboys in some kind of high-noon shoot-out. “It doesn’t sound good.”
Jasmine’s two mates slid away from her side like well-oiled spacepods leaving the mother ship. Was it my imagination, or had the whole corridor gone quiet?
“Ew,” said Mel, as Ben and Jasmine suddenly ran into each other’s arms. “What is it with these two doing stuff so publicly?”
The corridor started cheering and whooping. Totally oblivious, Ben and Jasmine kissed. I tried not to stare. Seeing them like that was doing something very weird to my stomach. I’d never kissed anyone. I wondered what it would feel like – and if I’d ever do it and not even notice the whole school was watching?
“OK,” said Lucy as we got off the bus the next day. “I’m officially grossed out.”
“It’s all for the good of the band,” Mel pointed out.
I was wishing I had little earflaps I could lower over my ears to cut out the smoochy noises going on behind us. Ben and Jasmine weren’t going to let a little thing like arriving at school stop them now.
“I’ve rebooked practice room three for dinnertime today,” Mel said. “Now we just have to tell the lovebirds to meet us there so we can do some serious work on our song. We’ve got so much to do.”
“You’ll tell Ben, won’t you, Lu?” I said.
Lucy glanced back at her brother and Jasmine and shuddered. “No way am I interrupting that,” she said. “I’ll text him.”
“By the way, how are you getting on with our outfits, Col?” asked Mel.
I’d been working out a scheme for our outfits since the weekend, and it was looking great. “Trust me,” I said, tapping my nose. “I’m working on it.”
And with that sorted, we made our way to our classroom. Summer pushed past us as we got to the door, making Mel lose her footing and bang into the wall.
“What is your problem, Summer?” I demanded. Summer Collins was really winding me up now.
Summer smirked at me. “I’m not the one with the problem,” she said.
“I don’t like the way Hannah and Shona laughed just then,” I said to Mel in a low voice as we took our seats. Something was going on with Summer, and it was making me nervous.
“Forget them,” Mel said. “They’re just jealous of our five-piece band.” She said five-piece band extra loudly, just to make sure Summer could hear her. “With that and our brilliant song, Summer’s little Fashionistas haven’t got a hope in the Battle.”
“Summer might have written a good song,” I pointed out. Summer and her mates were certainly looking confident about something.
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed.
“They haven’t got an original idea in their heads,” Mel scoffed. “You’ve only got to look at them to know that.”
We gazed at the way Summer, Hannah and Shona had all done their hair in side ponytails today. I don’t mean to be unkind, but Mel had a point.
So what exactly was Summer looking so pleased about?
Most dinnertimes, if the weather’s OK, the hall isn’t too busy. But because of the rain today, it was heaving. Practically all the tables were full and we had to queue for ages to get our food.
“That’s ten minutes gone from our rehearsal time,” Mel said fretfully, banging her tray down on the last table we could find – the one right by the kitchens, which no one ever wants to sit at because of the smell. “Everyone eat fast, yeah?”
We all turned to gaze at where Jasmine was sitting on Ben’s lap two tables down, feeding him bits of pasta and roaring with laughter. Eating like that was going to take ages. I was wondering how we could get their attention when Summer, Hannah and Shona stopped at the table in between us and Ben.
“I see you got your letters then,” Summer said conversationally to Ben and Jasmine.
The food in my mouth turned to dust as Ben and Jasmine looked round at Summer in surprise. A bit of pasta was still hanging off Ben’s lip.
“Only,” Summer continued, “I guess no one told you that you didn’t write them. They were from your tragic little band mates.”
How—?
Summer shot me a look of blazing triumph. “You really shouldn’t blab your plans all over the dinner hall, Coleen,” she said. “I mean – anyone could be listening.”
We just gawped at her in horror.
“Sorry about your five-piece band, Mel,” Summer added silkily as Ben and Jasmine suddenly pushed away from each other. “Looks like you might just be down to three.”
