The Time of Your Life

by Isabella Cass

  Oops, Holly thought. You don't call Miss Morgan 'dude'.

  But to her surprise, Miss Morgan laughed. 'Stoked indeed, young man. Stokissimo!' she replied, cackling at her own joke; the first joke Holly had ever heard her make.

  The boys guffawed, but the girls all stared openmouthed in amazement.

  'Don't know what you girls are talking about,' Zak whispered. 'Fierce? Miss M's a total pussycat!'

  'Try telling that to my toes,' Gemma groaned. 'They're killing me!'

  After a quick change, Holly rushed off for band practice. She found Belle and Cat already setting up with Mason and Ben. 'I got the keys from Mrs Butterworth,' Belle explained. 'We're not wasting time waiting for Felix to show up!'

  Cat laughed. 'Belle's been reading my copy of Time Management for Dummies.'

  'Sounds like Belle probably wrote it!' Ben quipped.

  Belle looked worried for a moment, then grinned when she realized he was only teasing.

  Holly smiled as she adjusted the microphone. It was great to see Cat back to her old self, laughing her infectious, bubbly laugh. Her meeting with Mr Fortune last week had been a real turning point. She was full of life again.

  'Ah, here comes Felix,' Ben said as they heard the tap, tap, tap of his crutches in the corridor.

  Mason struck up a drum roll. 'At last,' he cried, with a crash of the bell cymbal as Felix appeared. 'The man we've all been waiting . . . and waiting . . . for!'

  'OK,' he said. 'Sorry I'm late. Let's work through the list Carly gave me. We have to start with this really slow, schmaltzy song where the bride and groom get up and lead the dance – do you know Eternal Flame by The Bangles?'

  'Of course,' Belle replied. 'I love that song!'

  'I was hoping you'd say that' – Felix grinned at her – 'because we'd like you to sing lead vocals. There's no way I'd get those high notes . . .' And he launched into a warble, missing the notes by several light-years to prove the point.

  'Sure, OK!' Belle replied, grimacing and putting her hands over her ears.

  She said it as if it were no big deal, but Holly could tell from the sparkle in her lavender eyes that she was deliriously happy to be asked.

  Stokissimo, in fact!

  *

  Two days later, Holly woke up early. She peeped out of the window. A cruel wind was stripping away the last few leaves clinging to the branches of the plane trees in Kingsgrove Square. The sky was saucepan-lid grey. It would be the perfect Saturday morning to climb back under the duvet, but she'd promised she'd watch Ethan lead the Garrick All-Stars out onto the football pitch in a crucial Cup match against their arch-rivals, the Westminster Wolves.

  As she pulled on her thermal vest and a pair of dance tights under her jeans, Holly had yet another Great Idea. Jack Thorne was playing in the match – she had told Ethan about Pirate Boy being a top scorer and Ethan had given him a trial: he'd been so impressed he'd selected Jack for the team straight away. If Belle came along to watch the match, it would be a chance for her to meet Jack without Bianca buzzing around like a wasp at a picnic. Holly knew that Bianca liked to have a lie-in on Saturday mornings.

  Holly knocked on Belle's door. Belle was awake, of course: she'd already been out for her morning run. She loved Holly's idea, and pulled on a thick cream cashmere poncho.

  'Have fun!' Cat mumbled from under her duvet.

  *

  Holly and Belle stood with the other home spectators and Felix hobbled over to join them. They all cheered as Ethan led the Garrick All-Stars out in their red and white strip and the referee blew his whistle. The Westminster team were big and strong – several of their players looked like stand-ins for the Incredible Hulk – but the Garrick team were faster and more creative.

  It was bitterly cold and Holly's feet were feeling frozen by the time they entered the last few minutes, with the score at one–nil to Westminster. When Ethan headed a long ball in past the keeper to equalize, the crowd roared. Holly thought her heart would burst with pride. But a moment later, the Garrick supporters were cheering again as Jack took the ball and sprinted the length of the pitch, weaving his way round three defenders. Wow! Holly thought. Pirate Boy should be a dancer. That was like Billy Elliot meets Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain. He lined up for the shot – and scored, just seconds before the referee blew the full-time whistle.

  Jack punched the air and back-flipped into a celebration dance with the rest of the team. Then he and Ethan ran over to where Holly, Belle and Felix were standing for a round of high-fives. 'Respect!' Felix grimaced. 'Looks like I might be out of a job!'

  Ethan laughed. 'Hey, don't worry, we'll keep your place on the team!'

  Still caught up in the victory, Jack scooped Belle up by the elbows and swung her round in a triumphant whirl. 'Thanks for coming to watch. Hey, I love this cape-thingy,' he said as he returned her to her feet. 'It's toasty-warm! I'm freezing. It's not like playing in Singapore – there's less risk of frostbite there for one thing!'

  'It's a poncho,' Belle told him, blushing furiously.

  'It must be our lucky cape-thingy!' Ethan said. 'We've never beaten Westminster before!'

  'Come on. Let's go to the common room for hot chocolate,' Felix suggested. 'Can't have players keeling over with hypothermia!'

  Holly sipped her hot chocolate and chatted with Belle, drowsy and contented in the warmth of the common room, as the boys regaled each other with blow-by-blow accounts of the match, each re-telling more heroic than the last. Eventually the group started to break up as everyone wandered off to get on with the rest of their day.

  'See you at the bonfire party tonight!' Ethan called to Holly as he left.

  'See you there, Belle?' Jack asked as he followed him towards the door.

  'Sure!' Belle smiled, her face glowing with pure, undiluted rapture.

  Which was certainly not the expression on Bianca's face as she entered the common room at that precise moment. She glanced from Jack to Belle and back to Jack again. Yep, that look could definitely give you frostbite! Holly thought.

  'Ooh, bless,' Bianca sneered. 'The footballers and their WAGs. How sweet!' Her smile was as brittle and dangerous as a crack in the ice on a frozen lake.

  'Since the wives and girlfriends are usually glamorous models or pop stars,' Jack said, winking at the girls, 'I'd take that as a compliment!'

  'Oh, we will,' Holly said, although she was quite sure it hadn't been intended as one, 'won't we, Belle?'

  But Belle just smiled a dreamy over-the-hills-and-far-away smile.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Belle: The Washing-powder Plot

  After lunch Belle went back to her room with Holly and Cat to help Cat practise her Lady Macbeth lines.

  'But screw your courage to the sticking place,' Cat was reciting, 'And we'll not fail . . .'

  But, unusually for her, Belle was having trouble concentrating. Her head hadn't stopped spinning since Jack whirled her round at the soccer match. She could still feel the gentle grip of his hands on her arms.

  And now there was the bonfire party!

  She could still hear him saying, See you there, Belle?

  See you there! That was almost a date!

  Belle had dated before, of course. Whenever she stayed with her mother, Mom would magically produce an eligible boy. She had friends in every city in the world – at least, the fashionable ones – and many of these friends had sons, perfect for accompanying Belle to a film premiere in Cannes or the opening of a new restaurant in Milan. Some of the boys had been nice and she'd dated a few, but none of them had x-ray eyes like Jack Thorne.

  'So what exactly is Bonfire Night?' Belle asked, as soon as Cat paused to scribble some notes on her script. 'We don't have it in America.'

  'Well, there's a bonfire . . .' Holly said.

  'I could probably have guessed that part,' Belle said, grinning.

  'And fireworks . . .'

  'Sounds great. What's it all about though?' Belle asked.

  'The Gunpowder Plo
t!' Holly told her. 'It's meant to be on the fifth of November really, but the celebrations take place on any weekend around November. This guy called Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament in sixteen hundred and something . . .'

  'Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't sound like much of a cause for celebration,' Belle pointed out.

  'It's, er, complicated . . . They caught him, anyway . . .' Holly mumbled vaguely as she flopped down on a beanbag and opened a carton of orange juice.

  'O-kay,' Belle said. She still wasn't much clearer, but a party was a party, and Jack had said, See you there! and that was all that mattered! 'So, let's get down to the important stuff. What's the dress code?'

  'Well, you're standing outside in the cold, so it's pretty much wellies and woollies' – Holly laughed – 'and a hat!'

  'Wellies and woollies?' Belle asked. Were they speaking the same language here?

  'You know, gumboots and baggy sweaters,' Cat mumbled, looking up from her notes, a pencil in her mouth.

  'Sounds like a fashion nightmare!' Belle said. How am I going to look cute, alluring and sophisticated in gumboots? she wondered.

  'What about that poncho you wore for the football match?' Holly suggested.

  'Oh, yeah, my Armani cashmere,' Belle said, taking the cream poncho from its hanger.

  Cat nodded. 'That would be perfect!'

  'And you know how much Jack liked it,' Holly added. 'Toasty-warm I think were his exact words.'

  'Toasty-warm!' Cat snorted. 'What was going on at that football match? I thought you went to cheer the players on, not cuddle them!'

  Belle laughed. 'I don't usually wear the same outfit twice in one day,' she mused, holding the poncho up in front of her. Now that Jack had admired it, it was her favourite garment in the entire universe. 'But I think I'll make an exception this time.'

  'And it is your lucky cape-thingy. You have to wear it – you want to be lucky in lu-u-u-rve, don't you?' Holly teased, raising her orange juice in a toast.

  Belle watched in horror as Holly's elbow – which had been resting on the coffee table – slipped. The carton jerked sideways, spraying luminous orange liquid all over the front of the beautiful cream poncho.

  'Oh, no, I'm so sorry!' Holly cried. 'Quick, let's run down to the laundry room and I'll wash it for you!' She grabbed the poncho and hared off down the corridor.

  Belle jogged after her. She hoped Holly knew what she was doing. Did orange juice stain? She had no idea, but as she ran, she crossed her fingers and muttered fervently, 'Please, please let it come out.' Now that she had set her heart on wearing that lucky poncho, nothing else would be quite the same.

  By the time she caught up with Holly in the laundry room – a cavernous basement below the kitchens, which always smelled of hot irons and washing powder – Holly was in conversation with Miss Candlemas.

  'Miss Candlemas says we can put it in the washing machine on the cold/delicates cycle,' Holly told Belle.

  'When it's finished, stretch it out flat to dry and it'll be right as rain!' Miss Candlemas beamed at them, before reaching inside an industrial-sized tumble-dryer with a screwdriver. 'Boys! More trouble than they're worth!' she grumbled, her voice echoing from inside the drum.

  Belle exchanged a confused shrug with Holly. 'What's the matter with boys?' she asked.

  'Always leaving coins in their pockets!' the housemistress said, holding up a pound coin. 'I'm forever fishing them out. Never had this problem when I worked in a girls' school!'

  Belle was singing as she skipped down the steps to the laundry room half an hour later: 'Greensleeves was all my joy . . .' She'd just read in her history book that Henry VIII was thought to have composed Greensleeves for Anne Boleyn, and now she couldn't get the tune out of her head . . .

  She pulled open the door of the washing machine and felt around inside for her poncho. 'Greensleeves was my delight . . . Greensleeves wa—' Was this the wrong machine? She was sure it was this one, but she couldn't feel her poncho in there – only some little wadded thing stuck to the side. Was it an old abandoned sock or . . .

  . . . or a tiny, miniature poncho?

  It was stiff and matted – and the perfect size for a three-year-old.

  Belle checked the dial on the machine. It was no longer pointing to COLD/DELICATES.

  Someone had turned it to BOIL WASH.

  Belle groaned as she turned the shrivelled garment over in her hands. Well, the orange stains had certainly gone – but so had any chance of her wearing her lucky poncho tonight, or ever again!

  She knew it was childish to be upset over something so silly, but she felt tears sting her eyes as she climbed slowly back up the laundry-room steps.

  By the time Belle met up with Holly and Cat in the common room a few hours later she'd totally recovered from the disappointment of the Shrunken Poncho. She'd borrowed the accompaniment to Eternal Flame on CD from the music library and had spent the rest of the afternoon practising her big song for the wedding gig. She was really pleased with how it was sounding. And when her singing was going well it always made her happy.

  'And, anyway, I've picked out a gorgeous black rollneck sweater to wear instead,' she told Cat and Holly as they walked back upstairs after an early supper to get ready for the bonfire party.

  'Well, I'm still baffled as to how a washing machine can switch itself to boil wash!' Cat commented.

  'Don't!' Holly groaned. 'I feel terrible. I bet that poncho cost a fortune as well – it was Armani!'

  'Don't worry,' Belle said. 'Someone gave it to my mom as a gift but she already had one the same. That's how I get half my wardrobe.'

  Bianca, Mayu and Lettie were chatting on the landing at the top of the stairs.

  Bianca turned to Belle, Holly and Cat with a big smile. 'So what are you guys all wearing to the party?' she asked casually.

  Belle was surprised – to say the least – that Bianca was making polite conversation. In fact, she couldn't have been more astonished if she'd surfed down the banister singing I'm a Little Teapot!

  Perhaps she's feeling guilty about the suit-of-armour trick, Belle thought. 'Well, I was planning to wear my cream poncho,' she replied as they all walked along the corridor towards their rooms, 'but it had, er, a bit of an accident.'

  'Yeah, I was that accident!' Holly said, rolling her eyes at her own clumsiness. 'And it would have to be orange juice!'

  Cat laughed. 'It looked as if someone had graffiti-tagged Belle's boob-zone!'

  'Well, perhaps you could still squeeze into it if you went on a crash diet,' Bianca suggested.

  'How did you know it shrank, Bianca?' Cat asked, stopping so abruptly that Holly bumped into her. 'No one said anything about shrinking.'

  'Oh, I just assumed . . .' Bianca blustered.

  'You know – cashmere, it's so prone to shrinking,' Mayu piped up.

  'Nobody mentioned cashmere either,' Belle added, no longer in any doubt as to the identity of the Phantom Poncho-boilers. One look at Cat and Holly told her they'd figured it out too.

  Bianca treated them all to an extra-frosty glare before darting into her room, followed by a bemused-looking Lettie.

  'How dare they!' Cat fumed.

  'It doesn't matter!' It was almost time for the party and not even Bianca and Mayu and their Washing-powder Plot could spoil Belle's excitement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Holly: Sparklers and Treacle Toffee

  Pulling on her boots ready for the party, Holly was still feeling terrible about the Poncho Affair.

  Why did she always have to be so clumsy?

  And why did Bianca always have to be so mean?

  Two of life's great unsolved mysteries! she thought as she wrapped her long pink and grey stripy scarf around her neck.

  Suddenly she had a brainwave. She ran to Belle's room and asked her to give her the shrunken poncho. Then she hurried to Serena's room for help. Luckily Serena hadn't left for the party yet – she was still doing her make-up and chatting with Gemma. S
he immediately grasped the idea Holly spilled out to her and quickly cut out a Barbie-sized poncho from the matted fabric. Then she hemmed it with tiny blanket stitches to stop it fraying, and Holly secured a safety pin to the back.

  'Look, we made you a brooch!' Holly cried breathlessly as she sprinted back into the room. She reached up and pinned it to Belle's jumper. 'Now you can wear your lucky cape-thingy, after all!'

  'Thanks, Holly – it's awesome!' Belle cried, giving her a big hug.

  'Wow! That's so cool!' Cat laughed. 'Could you shrink some of my clothes and make jewellery out of them for me too?'

  Holly felt much better. Now she could go to the bonfire party with a clear conscience.

  Holly linked arms with Cat and Belle and joined a group escorted by Mr Garcia to walk the short distance across the square to the bonfire party in Kingsgrove Park.

  Belle looked fabulous in her designer jeans and black jumper with her hair in two long thick plaits like a blonde Pocahontas. Cat looked great too, of course, in her leather jacket over a short red wool dress, worn with thick black tights and biker boots, and her auburn hair spilling out from under her black wool cap. It was a cold night and Holly was glad of her fluffy grey cable-knit jumper.

  Almost all the students from Superstar High were there, as well as several of the staff, who'd come along to make sure they were all safe – but the park was also open to the public, and was crowded with dads carrying small children on their shoulders and mums pushing toddlers in buggies. Holly closed her eyes and inhaled the magical Bonfire-Night smell: smoke, hot dogs, baked potatoes, toffee apples . . .

  She spotted their friends and they hurried over to join Nathan, Gemma, Serena, Nick, Lettie, Zak, Frankie and Mason, their faces all glowing orange in the blaze of the fire.

  A few moments later, Ethan arrived, with Ben Stein, pushing Felix in a wheelchair. Ethan was grinning. 'We borrowed it from the St John Ambulance people. They took pity on a poor invalid!'