Nine
I don’t know how we managed it, but an hour later, me, Mel and Lucy were heaving Jasmine’s elephant – we’d decided to call her Nelly – off the bus and staggering towards Mel’s block of flats.
“Don’t anyone dare drop Nelly now,” Mel begged, sweat breaking out on her forehead as she struggled backwards down the pavement. “We didn’t go through an hour of sore arms for her to end up in pieces on the road, right?”
We sidled carefully into the stairwell.
“Nice elephant,” said a bloke we met on the stairs. “Where d’you get it? A jumbo sale?”
“Ha ha,” Mel said in a sour voice as he headed on past us, laughing his head off.
“And thanks for offering to help us carry it!” I added sarcastically.
“Plonker,” muttered Lucy – which is about as rude as Lucy ever gets.
When we reached Mel’s front door on the third floor, we put Nelly down with a massive sigh of relief. My arms felt really weird, like my hands were going to float up to the sky all by themselves.
“I hope your mum likes Nelly after all that,” said Lucy, collapsing against the wall as Mel fiddled with her keys.
“She’ll love her,” Mel said, managing to look both dead pleased and totally knackered at the same time. “She’s been looking for a matching one for the fireplace for ever! I still can’t believe we found Nelly. I honestly—”
The door opened and Mel’s mum reached out to sweep Mel into a hug. Me and Lucy glanced at each other in surprise. She hadn’t even looked at Nelly yet!
“I got a new job!” Mrs Palmer said in excitement, kissing Mel all over the top of her head. “It’s an extra three pounds an hour, and it’s right on the bus route! They just rang to tell me!”
“Wow, that’s brilliant, Mum!” Mel gasped. “Looks like your cheering-up present just turned into a celebration present!” She stepped aside and revealed Nelly with a flourish and a grin that went from ear to ear. “Ta-da!”
And I think the whole block heard Mrs Palmer’s scream of delight.
Every time we saw Summer and her mates in the last week leading up to the Battle of the Bands final, we made this big thing of saying “Shh!” to each other, like we’d been discussing something really secret – even if we’d just been talking about homework or last night’s TV or whatever. We also used the words “red”, “yellow” and “green” as often as we could, knowing that Summer was desperate for more details about our “secret” look for Saturday’s show.
“Enough about Summer Collins,” Jasmine snapped at our last school dinnertime rehearsal the day before the gig. “What about our look? Or have you been too busy doing one of your special set-ups to remember you’ve got a real band to style?”
“Give over, Jas,” Ben said as me and the others stopped giggling about Summer and turned to look guiltily at Jasmine.
Jasmine had been in a funny mood most of the week. I hoped she wasn’t building up to one of her mega flounce-offs. We were so close now, I could almost feel the cool metal of the trophy between my fingers.
“I’ve got the best look for us,” I said, keen to head Jasmine off at the mardy crossroads. “Don’t worry about Summer. We’re going – pink!”
“Oh no, we’re not,” Ben said at once.
“Hear me out,” I begged. “We’re talking hot pink, almost red, right? I’m doing a T-shirt for Ben. Me, Lucy and Mel can all wear pink tops with black footless tights – and Jasmine? Is there any way you can get some hot-pink skinny jeans? The rest is up to you – but the pink touches pull us together as a band.”
“I’m not wearing pink,” Ben repeated stubbornly.
“Don’t be so boring, Ben,” said Jasmine, fiddling with her guitar. “It’ll look great. Topshop have pink skinny jeans in at the minute. I’ve been after a pair for ages. Mum’ll give me some money if I tell her they’re for the Battle.”
Ben went into a sulk and didn’t say anything else for the rest of the rehearsal. He just hit the drums so hard that the walls shook around us.
“Is it just me,” said Mel as we wound up and agreed to meet at Lucy’s place tomorrow afternoon for the dress rehearsal, “or are those two going off the boil?”
We watched Ben stalking off down the corridor. Jasmine was making no attempt to catch him up.
“Don’t say that,” I said anxiously. “We can’t have them splitting up and leaving the band, not now we’re so close to the gig.”
And not now I’ve borrowed one of Dad’s white T-shirts, tied it up in a bunch of rubber bands and stuck it in a bucket of pink dye either, I thought privately to myself.
“Coleen,” Dad said, standing in his PJs on Saturday morning and frowning at the dye-bucket that was sat by the back door. “Please tell me that’s not blood in there.”
“Gross,” Em mumbled through a mouthful of chewed-up Weetabix.
“Course not, Dad,” I said, steering him back towards the breakfast table. “Here you go. Look, a lovely cup of tea for you. And I’ve done Marmite on toast, just how you like it.”
“It is blood, isn’t it?” Dad asked suspiciously. “That’s why you’re being nice.”
“Come on,” I protested. “Where am I going to get a whole bucket of blood from?”
“Your vampire victims,” said Dad in a ghoulish voice. “You must’ve bitten half the street to get that much in there. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Mum this morning.”
“Mum’s at the supermarket, as you well know,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Stop talking about blood or I’m gonna BE SICK,” Em announced.
When Dad and Em had gone for their usual Saturday-morning footie training, I covered the floor with newspaper, put on Mum’s rubber gloves and carefully pulled Dad’s T-shirt out of the dye. Then I pulled off the rubber bands that had been holding the tee in place.
“Yes!” I said in triumph as I stared at the coolest hot-pink tie-dye pattern you ever saw. I bundled it into the washing machine along with a ton of salt like the instructions said, and set the machine to its hottest temperature. Ben was going to love it!
Mel and Lucy whooped as I held up the finished T-shirt for Ben to admire over at Lucy’s that afternoon.
“What do you think?” I asked Ben.
Ben looked like he had a right cob on today. “It’s OK,” he said in a grumpy voice, and took it off me.
“Ignore Ben,” Jasmine said. She was already wearing her outfit: new pink skinnies with a bright red T-shirt and these brilliant stacked-heel shoes on the bottom. “It’s cool. How did you do the pattern?”
“Secret,” I grinned. “So, d’you like it, Ben?”
OK, so maybe I shouldn’t have asked his opinion twice.
“I said it was OK, didn’t I?” Ben snapped.
“Let’s all get changed and meet back down here in ten minutes,” said Mel, trying to jolly things along.
“What’s eating Ben this week?” I asked Lucy as we all went into her room to get changed.
“The usual,” said Lucy.
Lucy nodded. “Ben’s heard more rumours. He doesn’t want to kick off about it because Jasmine got so mad at him last time, but it’s doing his head in.”
“Just so long as he can keep it together till the end of tonight’s gig,” I said, pulling on my footless tights beneath a long pink blouse of Mum’s that I had snipped here and there and pulled in at the waist with a belt. “Come on, is everyone ready? We look wicked!”
Me and my mates stood arm in arm and admired ourselves in Lucy’s wardrobe mirror. We looked brilliant. And just as I thought, our footless tights pulled everything together like a dream.
“Bounce Back rocks!” I shouted and punched the air.
“Yay!” Mel and Lucy squealed.
Bounce Back rocked all right. But if we’d known what was coming, we maybe wouldn’t have yelled quite so loudly.
There were now only a couple of hours left till the warm-up and the Battle, and my nerves were seriously starting to kick in. There was just one thing for it. Chocolate.
“Anyone fancy going into town?” I asked the others as we finished carefully packing away our costumes at the end of the dress rehearsal. Jasmine had wriggled off early with promises of seeing us at the Town Hall at a quarter to six, and Ben had stomped off to his bedroom where he was now playing heavy metal really loudly.
“You’re on,” said Mel.
“I’m getting dead nervous,” Lucy mumbled.
I knew what she meant. But as predicted, a chunky chocolate bar on a Hartley town bench cheered us all up no end, and we started to get seriously excited.
“Fame,” I said dreamily as we planned a gorgeous future for Bounce Back once we’d got our hands on the trophy. I closed my eyes between bites of chocolate, picturing it all. “Magazine front covers…”
“A massive recording contract and a sponsorship deal with Cadbury’s…” Mel added, and we squealed with delight at the thought of all the free chocs a deal like that would mean.
“Summer and her mates…” said Lucy.
I opened my eyes in confusion. What did Summer and her mates have to do with the future of our band?
Summer Collins, Hannah Davies and Shona Mackinnon had just appeared around the corner. They were carrying shopping bags and arguing about something – which meant they hadn’t seen us yet.
“Behind the bench!” I ordered the others, thinking fast.
A few passers-by looked weirdly at us as we slid off the bench and crept round behind it. Summer and her mates were getting closer now, and we could hear them talking.
“…much better on me,” Summer was saying. “Besides, Coleen’s wearing it, and as she’s the leader of that sad little crew, it’s only right that I get it.”
Behind our bench we gazed at each other in delight. Proof at last that Summer had fallen into our trap, hook, line and mascara!
“Are you calling us sad?” Hannah said in confusion.
Summer tutted in annoyance. “You can be dead thick sometimes, Hannah. I’m saying that I’m wearing the yellow, right? That’ll really show Coleen who’s queen of the scene! You can take the green and Shona can do red.”
“Are we definitely on before them?” Shona asked, trailing behind the other two as they walked right past our bench, their shoes millimetres from our noses. “Only, this is gonna look dead stupid if they go first.”
“I told you, dimwit,” Summer hissed, her voice fading away now. “I’ve got the running order. We’re sixth and they’re eighth…”
We all peered over the top of the bench, happily watching as the Fashionistas trotted on and out of sight.
“You know what?” Mel said. “I was looking forward to tonight before. But now – I can’t wait.”
And I knew exactly what she meant.
