Truly Madly Awkward

by Beth Garrod

  She chewed her lip. “I guess so.”

  “I know so.”

  Protesting slightly, but not enough to not actually do it, she headed back towards them. I watched her telling Mikey and Rach, both of them reacting exactly how I did – shock followed by big unauthorized hugs.

  I was so certain that next year we’d be hugging her to congratulate her. And this time, we’d be able to support her properly to get there.

  I sat back down trying to take it all in. What. A. Day. Tegan’s news really put my moans into perspective. At least being the most despised person in school meant I got space at the bathroom mirror, and didn’t get stopped by anyone handing out flyers. Plus I finally had some peace and quiet, because the only person, other than Rach, Tegan, Mikey, Ava and Boxer Boy, who made any effort to speak to me was Mrs Hitchman.

  She summoned me to her office that afternoon.

  I thought I’d be nervous when I walked in, but I was too surprised to fret. Had she been crying?

  Mrs Hitchman saw me eye the box of tissues on her desk and swiped them out of view.

  “I just wanted to say thank you.” She sniffed. “I know you tried your best.”

  I checked under the table, and took comfort from the fact that normal footwear had resumed.

  “Sorry it wasn’t good enough.”

  “Trying your best is always good enough.” She didn’t sound like she believed it, but she smiled a little. “Was Lis as captivating in real life as she seems?”

  I nodded. “Even more so.”

  But that made Mrs Hitchman blink even more furiously. She spun round and walked to the window. When she turned back, her normal hard stare had returned.

  “So yes. Thank you. And I’ve cancelled the TV crew. And … that’s all.” She waved me to the door.

  She got more confusing every day.

  Getting back to the safety of my home couldn’t come quick enough. Despite Tegan’s news, my two amazing friends walked me all the way home and didn’t leave me till I was on the sofa, a Tunnock’s Teacake in hand. Rach, who had wanted St Mary’s to win the gig more than anyone, even unwrapped it. I just about managed my own chewing. And when they had to head off for their tea, Tegan made sure Jo tagged in on Bella-sitting.

  Even though I only had half a bedroom when she was home, I was glad she was sticking around for a few days.

  “C’mon,” she hit me in the stomach with a cushion. “At least you didn’t do anything that embarrassing. I’ve heard your hicburps – it could have been way worse.”

  Shay looked up from flicking through a magazine that was thicker than my biology textbook. “Think they would have turned her mic down if that happened.”

  Jo raised an eyebrow. “Not that you were there to offer that advice when it was needed.” Yup, Shay had officially replaced me as the person who annoyed her most in the house. It was liberating. But Shay wasn’t having any of it.

  “Not that you students would know what it’s like having a proper job that you can’t say no to.” In fairness, I’d hardly seen Shay since Saturday, but whenever I had, she’d apologized on repeat. “Oh … Bells.” She pulled something out of her bag. “Meant to give you this. To say sorry. Again.”

  Woah – it was a new bottle of the gold nail varnish she always wore that I loved.

  I gave her a thank-you hug, blocking out Jo’s eye-roll in my periphery. It was now or never to ask Shay the question that had been on my mind.

  “Shay – did you … did you have anything to do with the band keeping me in the comp, even after I said I broke the rules?”

  She looked up with a naughty look in her eye. “Well, that would be telling?!”

  I didn’t know if that made me feel worse or better. Yes, it meant the band had been willing to do me a favour, but it also meant I hadn’t got second place on my own merit.

  BLEURGH. Why had I asked?

  I gave up putting on a brave face. The only face I could manage was my real one – and it was thoroughly fed up. I headed to the kitchen to see if there were any emergency crisps left, but it was like a crime scene. All the pots and pans were out, and Mum’s bag was thrown on the table. But there was no actual mother.

  Something caught my eye. A letter underneath her bag.

  Although I get mad when Mum even sets foot in my room without asking, I figured this only works one way (surely mums don’t have anything interesting enough worth hiding) and peeked inside the envelope.

  And wished I hadn’t.

  The bank’s logo. I’d been so wrapped up in my stuff I hadn’t asked Mum about hers. Still, that’s what I could do right now.

  First thing on my Fixing My Failure Of A Life list. I sat and waited. But five minutes later there was no sign of her.

  Swinging by the lounge to double-check she hadn’t been camouflaged with a cushion the whole time (she’s got a kaftan in the exact same floral) I headed upstairs. A light was on in her room.

  Tiptoeing to the door I heard a sniff, and a quiet voice doing the thing I always did: a self-pep talk when I needed to pull myself together.

  Using her own technique against her, I knocked and walked in.

  And wanted to run straight back out.

  Mum was sitting on the edge of the bed, tissues in hand, mascara running down her face.

  She looked at me like I look at her when she walks in to my room and catches me playing Puppy Dash when I’d promised her I was doing my homework. Total innocence.

  “You all right, love? Dinner won’t be long.” She tried to secret-sniff. “Fishless fingers and chips.”

  She wasn’t fooling anyone. I sat down and put my arm around her. It was meant to cheer her up, but just opened the floodgates on not-so-secret sniffing. Crying like I’d never seen her do.

  First Mrs Hitchman, now this.

  It was way weirder seeing a parent cry. And by weird, I think I mean totally and utterly horrible.

  When she finally caught her breath, she looked more frustrated than upset.

  “Sorry, you shouldn’t be seeing this.” She dabbed away at her eye.

  “Is this GADAC related?”

  She nodded. And cried some more. I guess things at the bank hadn’t gone so well.

  “I think I owe you both an apology.” She glanced at the photo of Jo and I on her bedside table. “I’ve really messed this one up.”

  I squeezed my arm tighter. “Jo’ll understand about the trip.”

  Mum turned to face me. “It’s not even that…” She was looking from eye to eye, as if trying to work out if I could handle what she wanted to say. I probably couldn’t, but I knew I needed to.

  “You can tell me, Mum.”

  She took my hand in hers. She hadn’t done this to tell me news since Granddad died. “Unless things change in the next three weeks…” Her voice wobbled. “The shop … the shop will have to close.”

  OOF. I hoped more than anything it wasn’t going to come to this.

  “But you’re getting more followers online? And we had people in yesterday?”

  “Oh, Bella. Thank you. But…” she paused. “It’s not enough.”

  “I can work extra shifts?! There must be something?”

  She squeezed my hand. “Bells, sweetheart, it’s not something an extra shift or two can change.” She exhaled like someone stuck between the biggest fight of their life, and giving up entirely. “And if I don’t figure it out, we might have to…” The sobs started again. “We might have to…”

  She never finished her sentence. Instead she looked around the room and muttered, “What have I done?”

  I knew what she was going to say. We might have to move house. Where I’d lived my whole life.

  I knew the mortgage had been tight which is why Shay had moved in. And she was off in a month.

  If Mum hadn’t already used all the tissues, I might have joined in with the blubbing.

  I wished Jo was up here, not down there, to handle this better than I was.

  I wanted to tell Mum how
proud I was of her. That she had nothing to apologize for. But all I managed was an, “I love you, Mum.”

  She did an almighty snort and shook her face out. “Sorry, Bells.” She was managing her normal, breezy-chat voice. “I don’t know what came over me?” She jumped up. And with a let’s-pretend-that-didn’t-happen-isn’t-life-great cry of, “Better get that oven on,” headed downstairs.

  I stayed sitting in the low light of her room, listening to Jo shouting anagrams at the TV and the clanging of baking trays in the kitchen. If we were going to lose everything we weren’t going to do it without a fight.

  I’d had enough of seeing everyone so miserable. I was NOT going to stand by and do nothing. Let something else go wrong.

  I might not be able to undo what had happened at school, but no one could stop me putting everything I had into trying to fix things for my family.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  I knew one thing: as unlikely as it seemed, I needed the Helicans.

  They’d helped me out before – maybe they’d do it again?

  And I knew the exact person that could try and make it happen.

  I ran a brush through my hair and blinked through some mascara. If I was going to call in a favour this big, I needed to look serious – and on trend.

  Before I could run through all the reasons this was a terrible idea and wimp out of it, I marched out of my room and downstairs.

  Mum was still in the kitchen. Good. I needed her to not know what was happening.

  I strode into the lounge. Because I knew what I was about to do, it felt like a dramatic entrance. But Jo didn’t look up from the TV, nor Shay from her magazine.

  I cleared my throat. Still neither of them acknowledged me.

  Nice to know what authority I commanded.

  I went for a more direct approach and sat on the arm of Shay’s chair.

  She finally got my hint and closed her magazine.

  “There’s no easy way to say this…” I started. Although there was. WhatsApp. But I had to be brave.

  “What have you done this time?”

  “Nothing. But I WANT to do something.”

  Jo muted the TV. Now I had an audience of two.

  “Go onnnnnn.” Shay said it in a way that sounded like she didn’t really want me to.

  I took a deep breath and, with half my brain trying to stop my mouth, and the other half willing it on before it chickened out, I explained my plan. And that for it to work, it all rested on Shay getting back in contact with Lis to ask a massive favour.

  Jo did an impressed whistle through her teeth.

  But Shay said nothing.

  Please let her be thinking I was worth it.

  Please let her be thinking my family was worth it.

  But I wasn’t expecting what she said.

  “No can do.”

  Just like that. No sorry. Or explanation. Or tiny slither of hope that, in some alternate reality, it could work. That was it.

  “Well, thanks anyway,” I mumbled. But she was right. What had I been thinking?! As if failure me could have pulled something like this off.

  I headed towards the door trying to not finally give in to the burning feeling of wanting to cry.

  But Jo shouted after me. “You stop right there, Bella.” She sounded annoyed. I shouldn’t have asked Shay in front of her. Now I was going to get an earful from her about “overstepping boundaries” or whatever this week’s bee in her bonnet was.

  I didn’t want both of them mad at me. I turned back.

  “I literally cannot believe you sometimes.” Jo was doing the aggressive one-finger pointing like she was conducting half of a tiny orchestra. But it wasn’t pointed at me – it was pointed at Shay?!

  “How hard would it be for you to send one email?”

  Shay gave her a dead stare back. “How hard would it be for you to mind your own business?”

  They locked eyes so hard that if Mumbles stood up on two legs and started doing the Macarena they wouldn’t notice.

  “Would it really have killed you to not let my sister down … again?”

  Shay shrugged. “Would it kill you to try to understand how this industry works?”

  I’d never heard anyone talk so condescendingly to Jo, and fifteen years of experience meant I knew what would happen next. I braced for an outburst. A shoutburst. But instead Jo calmly looked at me, and micro-smiled. “Bells, could you give us a sec?”

  I nodded, grateful to be excused, and headed to my room.

  Well, I pretended to head to my room, but actually tiptoed straight back to the door, and pressed my ear to it. Jo didn’t waste a second before she unleashed everything.

  “Have you got ANY idea how much everyone’s put themselves out for you?” She was spitting her words out. But Shay wasn’t phased.

  “I’m paying good money, aren’t I?”

  “You’re paying for your room – not to make my mum put her stuff in boxes. Not to give her even more hangups about her life than she already has.” Jo lowered her voice. But as it was already really loud, it was still totally hear-able. “Not to kick my sister when she’s already down.”

  I looked around the hallway. The familiar life-size cardboard Benny from ABBA had been folded away (Shay had said it was weird. She was right). Mum’s childhood dreamcatcher had been taken down (when Shay put heels on, it did risk removing an eyeball, and they are quite important things to not take out of your head). The bed Mum had knitted for Mumbles had been replaced by a clean plastic one (Shay had made a good point that maybe not everyone loved the smell of woolly wet dog).

  Hmmm. They’d all seemed like good ideas when Shay had suggested them. But maybe Jo was right. It did look a little less like our home. And a bit more like anyone else’s.

  I drifted back into listening to the argument. Shay was now accusing Jo of being jealous. Jo was saying that Shay believed her own hype. Shay retorted that everything was great when Jo wasn’t around. Jo told Shay she’d had enough and was leaving to talk to her sister.

  Which I almost-too-late realized meant me, and had to frantically tiptoe-sprint up the stairs, and dive under my duvet.

  When Jo came in I hoped she couldn’t see how fast my heart was beating under the covers. She looked all pumped up like she did when she finishes a race.

  “Sorry about that.” She looked embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have flipped out like I did.”

  “You don’t have anything to say sorry for?! Although, Shay probs wouldn’t agree.”

  Jo rolled her eyes. “She had it coming.” But I wasn’t so sure.

  “She’s not that bad, Jo. Just a bit flakey.” She had helped with the Helicans, just not the way we thought it was going to happen.

  “Nah – she’s been winding me up something chronic.”

  “Maybe it just doesn’t get to me as much – you’ve given me years of practice.”

  “Oi.” Jo poked me in the ribs. I leapt back as much as you can do when you’re lying down. “I won’t tell you the thing I came here to tell you then.”

  “Well, you’re here now…”

  Jo gave me a mischievous smile. Uni was really bringing out a new side of her. I liked it.

  “What with everything else, I forgot to mention it before…”

  She dug around in her jeans pocket and pulled out her phone.

  “C-L-A-R…” She began to spell. I stared at her blankly.

  “Don’t give me that look. Write it down!”

  I scrunched my face up. Write what down?!

  “The email address. For Clare… The Helicans’ manager.”

  WHAT THE WHAT?!

  Jo laughed at my stunned gawp.

  “Long story short, I lent her some cash for the car park at Radio Shire. We got chatting, turns out she did the same course as me at uni. She said I should get in touch if I ever needed anything and we ended up swapping emails.”

  THANK GOODNESS I WAS ALREADY LYING IN A FAINT POSITION.

  “I was going
to save it for seeing if she had free band merch and getting you birthday presents on the cheap … but figured this could be an early one instead?”

  MY BRAIN WAS. NOT. DEALING.

  Was Jo really showing me an arrangement of letters that meant I could get in touch with the inner Helicans circle? I gave her a hug that was so violent she asked me to stop.

  “This is between you and me only. Agreed?” I nodded. The fewer people who knew what I was up to, the better. And after her reaction to my plan, that meant Shay too.

  Did I owe it to Jo to tell her why I was plotting so hard? To admit how bad stuff had got with Mum and the business? No. Not yet. I had to see what I could make happen first. Mum had trusted me.

  But did I trust myself?

  Because this was my biggest idea yet. But the only thing I seemed to be any good at lately was getting things wrong.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  If the start of the week had been bad at school, today achieved the impossible and got even worse.

  It was Friday. The day the Helicans should be playing St Mary’s. But instead they were at Royal Orchard. Giving some other school the best day of their life. All I was getting were the kind of evil looks from my classmates that should be reserved for the person who actually invented school.

  At lunch I’d hidden out in the library – the rest of the school was either in the computer room, or huddled round phones (special permission granted from Mrs Hitchman) to watch the live stream of the gig. Apparently it “looked and sounded epic”. Two people at Royal Orchard had to get emergency oxygen, it was that good.

  When I’d bumped into Mikey later he told me that Boxer Boy had been spotted giving Ava a hug after she’d run to the bathroom in tears at missing out. Mikey realized too late that I probably didn’t want to know that detail.

  But I couldn’t feel any worse about everything than I already did. Not helped by the fact I’d still had zero contact from Adam.

  The only thing keeping me from joining Ava blubbing in the loo (other than the sanitary towel bins which take up most of the space) was focusing on channelling what little energy I had into my plan. Later today I was going to find out if my last ditch plan to Fix My Fam had worked. Despite all the work I’d put in, I had no idea if I’d done enough.