by Bell Davina
But then we turn around to look at the clubhouse, and it’s like we’re seeing it for the first time, or with different eyes, or something like that. The white paint is peeling off the wood. The bright blue door is hanging off its hinge. A couple of the windows are cracked and one doesn’t even have glass in it. Looking through it we can see that the place is chock-a-block with random bits of furniture. The stairs where we ate the cupcakes are crumbling on the sides and one has a huge crack running across the middle that looks sort of like a freaky evil clown mouth.
‘Whoa. This is a real dump,’ Maisie says with wonder in her voice. ‘When did it get like this? Weren’t we just here for something recently? Oh …’ Her voice trails off as she remembers the thing I am always trying to forget. It was the start of summer, four months ago. Almost exactly.
‘Maybe we didn’t notice then,’ Lola says gently, looking over at me. ‘Maybe we were thinking about other things and it wasn’t quite as bad.’
‘You can’t do this without informing the public,’ Belle says to Mr Morrison. ‘The residents of Sunnystream have a right to know.’
‘We’ve told them,’ says Mr Morrison sadly. ‘Put a notice up at Handkerchief Place, and it’s on the council website, too. But nobody’s seemed too fussed so far. It’s such a shame, because the building’s filled with junk, sure, but it’s still –’
‘What do you mean junk?’ Belle asks sharply. ‘What is all that stuff?’
‘A while ago, the mayor sent over everything that was in the council building’s basement so it could be stored here instead. All kinds of old things. It’s free to a good home now. You girls can have first pick if you like. If you can lift it, you can take it. Then I’ll get someone to clear the rest out before the building gets bulldozed.’
BULLDOZED! It seems so brutal, imagining our sweet Corner Park Clubhouse being ripped apart and flattened. It makes my tummy hurt to think about it. ‘But why?’ I say. I want to yell, but it only comes out as a whisper.
Mr Morrison frowns. ‘Mayor Magnus says there’s no money to do the repairs. But you know, there’s actually nothing wrong with this place,’ he says. ‘I mean, structurally. Apart from that broken door and a few new bits of glass, it just needs a lick of paint, new steps, and a bit of spit and polish.’ He pauses and looks up at the row of little windows above the door. They each have different coloured panes – yellow and orange and pink. ‘I got married here, in fact, the winter that the roof of the church blew in. And the thing about this place,’ he adds, ‘is the acoustics.’
‘We’re getting a little off topic here,’ says Belle. ‘About the bulldozing. When –’
‘The acoustics are phenomenal,’ Mr Morrison says a little dreamily. ‘My barber-shop quartet actually recorded an album here, back in the day.’
‘Which day?’ Maisie asks curiously. I would describe Maisie as a very curious person.
‘The 1960s,’ says Mr Morrison. ‘Those were different times.’
‘Was your band good?’ asks Lola. ‘Like, famous?’
Belle clicks her tongue. ‘I think we should probably go back to discussing –’
‘I don’t mean to brag,’ interrupts Mr Morrison, ‘but people did say we were the Beatles of Sunnystream. Yes siree, we had some good times at this clubhouse.’
‘So did we,’ I say, remembering our year two ballet concert here, when we were dressed as red robins in The Magic Faraway Tree and I accidentally fell off the stage. I think of Girl Guides and afternoon tea after Dad’s cricket matches and the end-of-season picnics for Gracie’s baseball team, the Comets. I remember listening from backstage when Belle won her big public-speaking competition with a speech about how good the world would be if we could educate girls in poor countries. That’s how she got to do her TED Talk. (You should google it – it’s pretty inspiring.) I remember singing Christmas carols by candlelight the year it rained and we had to hold them inside. How cosy it felt with the sound of the rain on the tin roof and everyone’s faces glowing and Gracie singing the harmony for Silent Night next to me. I think about the red Japanese maple and the handprints out by the back door and my parents coming here to sit on the steps at the end of their wedding night when my mum had taken off her high heels. Gracie used to love that story. She would always get Mum to tell it on long car rides. I think of Maisie doing flips on the fence rail – how she gets braver every year. How we’ve all grown up here, little by little, and got braver in our own ways. ‘Can’t you do something?’ I swallow. ‘Please?’
He looks at me like he really is sorry, but shakes his head. I start to feel panicky, like I’m trying to breathe through cotton wool.
‘That’s progress for you,’ Mr Morrison says, clipping his pen to his clipboard. ‘I guess we don’t need the clubhouse now we’ve got the Shark Tank. All the community groups meet there now – storytime and oldies’ yoga. And nobody’s come by to work in the garden for weeks.’
The Shark Tank is a giant new nine-storey building on the other side of Sunnystream, next to the highway. Mayor Magnus has his offices there, on the top floor. It was built SUPER quickly, and it just opened last year. My mum tells her clients the Shark Tank is a ‘multimedia entertainment complex’. It has the local library and a cinema and a huge theatre with red velvet seats. I guess that’s where the Sunnystream Players put on their shows now. It has a Japanese pancake parlour (Ja-Pancake Par-LA!) with an awesome ping-pong table. When it first got built, my dad vowed never to take us there. But the Japanese pancakes have this really delicious wasabi mayonnaise. Now, though, I sort of regret ever going. The building’s named after Mayor Magnus, whose nickname is The Shark because he’s big and scary. He thinks that’s a compliment, which tells you a lot about the kind of guy Mayor Magnus is.
‘But that’s not the same!’ Lola says. ‘This is where all our memories are.’
Lola is right – every tiny bit of this clubhouse holds a memory. Not just of Gracie, but of the times we were all together here, Belle and Lola and Maisie and I. Thinking about losing it makes me feel as if I’m about to be swamped by a giant wave, like in the disaster movies that Gracie loved but that I couldn’t watch before bed because of bad dreams.
‘Well, we’re heading to the Shark Tank this second,’ says Belle, bristling, ‘to see what Mayor Magnus has to say for himself.’
‘We are?’ asks Maisie. ‘Oh yeah – I guess we are. But what if he tries to hypnotise us?’
‘We’ll kick him,’ says Lola fiercely. ‘Right in the n–’
‘Bye, Mr Morrison,’ says Belle.
‘Be careful,’ Mr Morrison warns us. ‘That Mayor Magnus is a big old bully. You watch out.’
‘Do you guys have holiday homework?’ asks Lola. I recognise her ‘nervous but trying not to be nervous’ voice, and I bet she’s trying to distract us from what we’re about to do. We’re walking to the Shark Tank with our arms around each other, four in a row. You might think that sounds awkward, but Maisie’s really good at jumping over sprinklers and ducking around trees and dog leads while the rest of us stick to the footpath. Maisie’s the kind of person you want to run a three-legged race with – she’s got great reflexes.
Lola looks across at me and winks, and when I smile back, I feel myself relax a little. ‘I seriously can’t believe how much homework year sevens get,’ she continues. ‘It’s torture.’
‘Are you kidding?’ says Belle. ‘We get literally none. I have to make up my own to keep my mind sharp. I trade it with Pete. My boyfriend. And Matilda. Obviously. What about you, Soph? What’s it like at Sunnystream High?’
‘Some,’ I say, feeling myself blush. ‘Sometimes.’ The truth is, I haven’t done any all term. And none of the teachers have even asked me about it. I feel suddenly embarrassed, like I haven’t been maximising my opportunities.
‘We have so much I could spew,’ says Maisie. ‘Seriously, you have grown,’ she tells Lola. Maisie’s a shrimp, so her arm hardly reaches around Lola’s shoulders now.
‘Seriousl
y, you have not, little Killer,’ Lola says to Maisie, and strokes her hair.
‘My friend Matilda is pretty tall,’ says Belle. ‘We went apple picking and she didn’t even need a ladder. Did you know that apples are actually part of the rose family? It’s a fascinating –’
‘Who’s Matilda again?’ says Lola sharply. ‘I thought you said you had a boyfriend, but are you sure you’re not actually in love with her?’
‘Matilda’s my best friend from school,’ says Belle. ‘She is super smart. Even though she grew up on a pistachio farm and didn’t go to school till she came to Hollyoakes.’
‘Apples, pistachios. Sounds like you’re making this stuff up,’ says Lola.
‘I’m not! One of her mums is a famous actress. You’ve probably seen her on your stupid phone.’ Belle says the famous mum’s name and she is actually super famous. Heaps more famous, even, than Tally.
‘I might be going to the pistachio farm,’ Belle says happily. ‘Next holidays.’
I feel my stomach scrunch up and my throat go all tight, like I might cry. And it’s not just because of what Belle just said about missing the holidays. It’s also because I haven’t made any new friends this year – not one. At lunch I just walk around so that I don’t have to sit alone. People do the weird looking-at-me-and-then-looking-away thing, or they whisper as I go past. I feel like a pale, freckly, red-headed ghost, floating around and making people awkward, like a dad wearing underpants outside of his jeans. In class, I don’t say anything. I sit on the sides of the classroom, hoping I fade into the walls.
Thinking about it makes me so ashamed that tears spring up in my eyes. What kind of loser doesn’t make a single friend – not even someone in the lunchtime Monopoly club? Luckily coz of how we’re walking, I don’t think the others notice the tiny tears. I haven’t told anyone, not even Maisie, how lonely I am at school. I need these holidays. I need my friends around me, like they always used to be.
As we get to the big revolving doors at the bottom of the building, I swallow and wipe my eyes. Full-Heart Day! I remind myself crossly, and join in taking turns to run through the doors, over and over. It sounds stupid but it’s actually a great way to burn off our fear till we’re ready to step into the lobby.
‘Remember when –’ Lola glances at me and stops. I know she’s remembering taking turns pushing Gracie’s wheelchair through the sprinklers at our year six graduation party but she doesn’t want to say. ‘Never mind. Where’s the elevator?’
From the top floor of the Shark Tank, you can see the whole town. As we walk from the lifts, I look out the window, wondering if I can see my mum driving her clients around, frantically pointing out all of Sunnystream’s great features. We come to a huge pair of glass doors. We all hesitate because they look so official. Also, I’m kind of scared of the hypnotising part. But Belle isn’t.
‘Ma’am!’ the secretary cries as Belle marches in and then goes straight past her shiny metal desk. Everything in this building is shiny and grey or shiny and gold. ‘Young lady! Do you have an appointment?’
I feel like I’m going to throw up, but Belle just turns and glares, and her eyebrows do the joining-together thing. Weirdly, the secretary sits back down and waves her through, like she knows her. Has Belle been here before? I wonder. Maybe this is where she dropped off the petition for her Say No To Straws campaign last year.
We follow her straight through the giant gold door and into the mayor’s office. I feel half terrified and half proud. Saving the clubhouse means saving part of our town’s history, and that will affect all kinds of people – not just us. But especially us. It might even bring the whole town back together.
Everything in here is so gold, it’s blinding – everything except the giant fish tank that takes up an entire wall. Mayor Magnus is sitting at his giant shiny gold desk with his deputy, Bart Strabonsky. He’s like Mayor Magnus’s sidekick – like how Batman’s sidekick is Robin. I suddenly remember that at Mayor Magnus’s hypnotism shows Bart Strabonsky used to be dressed as a cowboy. Partway through the shows, Mayor Magnus used to pretend to saw Bart Strabonsky in half. Bart Strabonsky also has a monocle. Do you know what that is? Like glasses but for only one eye. It’s like something from a cartoon. Lola says Bart’s creepy, but Belle thinks that’s judging on appearances, which is an immature way to approach personal relationships. For the record, I also think he’s creepy, but mainly because it’s creepy how much he sucks up to Mayor Magnus.
Mayor Magnus and Bart Strabonsky are playing cards. To be more accurate, they’re playing Snap. This doesn’t surprise me because, well, everyone in Sunnystream knows Mayor Magnus isn’t that smart. At least once in every single conversation he says, ‘Kaboom!’ Even when he opened the new wing of Sunny Heights, the nursing home, he said, ‘Kaboom!’ My mum thought it was very inappropriate but Gracie loved it. If she were here now, she wouldn’t be trembling. Gracie was always so brave.
Mayor Magnus is tall and his shoulders are SUPER wide. He reminds me of Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. But a man. With fluffy honey-blond hair. And a cap that says MEGA MAYOR. Oh, and he has his purple sparkly cape on. ‘Hey fans!’ he says, looking up for half a second before he yells, ‘SNAP!’ and giggles.
‘Looks like you guys are busy with important work,’ says Belle, crossing her arms and glowering at Mayor Magnus.
I don’t think Mayor Magnus gets sarcasm, though, because he says, ‘You bet!’ which was also his campaign slogan, alongside #biggerisbetter!
‘You know what you need to do?’ he says to Belle, like he’s going to offer her some deep and profound advice. ‘Girly, you gotta take that frown and turn it upside down.’
‘“Girly” is a very outdated word and quite disrespectful,’ says Lola. ‘We’re young women.’
‘What’s this about?’ says Bart Strabonsky, not looking up from the cards. ‘You’re wasting the mayor’s precious time.’
Belle looks like she’s about to explode.
So I follow my friends’ lead and screw up all my courage and jump in. ‘Is it true you’re bulldozing Corner Park Clubhouse?’
‘That dump? Of course. Should have done it years ago,’ says Mayor Magnus. ‘That place is way too small. It’s big things that will make Sunnystream great again.’
‘That clubhouse is dangerous,’ says Bart Strabonsky smoothly. ‘It’s ugly. It needs to go. Like a puppy that needs to be shot.’
‘In the head,’ adds Mayor Magnus, and he actually giggles.
‘WHAT?’ we all say together.
‘You know,’ says Mayor Magnus, ‘an old puppy. A sick one. Putting it to sleep. It’s the nice thing to do. You bet!’
‘Puppies are never old,’ I say. I know pretty much everything about puppies because of Togsley. ‘And you don’t put dogs to sleep by shooting them.’
‘Besides, what about the history?’ says Belle.
‘Of puppies?’ asks Mayor Magnus.
‘Of the clubhouse!’ says Belle. She pulls from her bag Sunnystream: A History. Does she carry that book everywhere?! ‘That clubhouse has been the site of many important moments in Sunnystream’s history. Completed in 1903 in the style of –’
Mayor Magnus closes his eyes, tilts his head back and acts like he’s snoring. Then he cracks himself up and Bart Strabonsky does this really fake nose laugh, like he thinks he’s on TV.
We all look at each other like, ‘VOMIT!’ These two are the literal worst.
‘I’m going to knock down that dirty little dog kennel and build a giant apartment block there called … “The Muscle Tower”,’ Magnus says, turning towards his giant fish tank. ‘I’ll put an aquarium in the lobby that’s five storeys tall. I’ll put a shark in it that’s as big as a submarine. Then I’ll put a submarine in there too, and I’ll drive it around. Might even give you a ride.’ He winks at Belle in this really goofy way.
URGH. Mayor Magnus is every bit as awful as everyone says. Truly, all he cares about is himself, and he doesn’t give a rat’s tail about all the
things that he’s destroying.
Hot anger starts bubbling up in my chest. I dig my nails into my hands so hard that I know they’ll be making dark little half-moon dents in my palms. Why does everything I love keep getting taken away?
‘The Muscle Tower is a fantastic name,’ says Lola like she totally doesn’t mean it.
‘Thanks, doll face,’ Mayor Magnus says. ‘Thought of it all by myself. And when I’ve finished with the clubhouse, I’ve got big plans for the whole park. Kaboom!’
‘You can’t get rid of the park,’ Maisie says calmly. ‘Everyone would go crazy. Where would anyone play sport? Or walk their dogs? And what about Pony Soprano? It’s where he runs around.’
‘That horse is too small to be the mascot of this town,’ complains Mayor Magnus. ‘We should have a rhino.’ He picks up his phone to record a voice memo. ‘BUY RHINO,’ he yells into the microphone.
Do you know who would be finding this pretty funny right now? Gracie Hargraves. Do you know who isn’t? Me.
Bart Strabonsky leans towards us and narrows his eyes. ‘Between you and me, I think Pony Soprano is going to have a very sad accident someday soon. You just wait.’
‘OMG,’ says Lola.
‘Is that a threat?’ says Belle.
‘You’re so evil,’ says Maisie.
‘Nobody would ever hurt Pony Soprano, you oaf,’ I say – except it comes out more as a squeaky yelp because I’m shaking with rage. ‘And nobody is going to buy your stupid apartments, either.’
Maisie puts her hand on my arm to calm me down.
‘No-one can hurt a rhino,’ says Mayor Magnus. ‘And when people hear about the Muscle Tower, they’ll give me a big pile of money to invest – you’ll see. They forgot about that clubhouse the day I opened the Shark Tank and started serving those dee-licious Japanese pancakes. Even the Sunnystream Knit-Wits don’t meet there anymore.’
Maisie and Lola turn to each other and roll their eyes, but you know what? I think he’s right. People do like new shiny things. The Knit-Wits are a knitting group who are all, like, eighty. Gracie used to follow them on Instagram, and they’d always post selfies from the lobby of the Shark Tank, where they were using the free wi-fi. Are we the only ones who still care about the clubhouse? My anger feels like it’s melting into a puddle of despair.