Bex is right – I’m sad, missing Mum, feeling lost all over again.
Missing. What does that word even mean? A person vanishes and the person left behind misses them. Who is missing, really? Mum or me? Who is really lost?
I can’t ask my friends about this, explain how anxious I feel every time I have to do or say something that might end up on the radio or TV, or in the Millford Gazette. Bex would tell Mandy, and she’d tell Josie my social worker, and I’d end up back in counselling with a well-meaning therapist asking me to act out my feelings with rag dolls or drawings or lumps of play dough. No thank you.
‘It had better not be Marley Hayes making you sad,’ my foster sister declares. ‘I’ll kill him!’
‘That probably wouldn’t help,’ Jake tells her. ‘If things are a bit up and down with Marley, you just need to talk it through. I’m not really an expert, but isn’t that what they always say?’
‘None of us are experts,’ Bex concedes. ‘But we do care about you!’
‘Is he too pushy?’ Happi wants to know. ‘Boys like Marley can be. Stick to holding hands … these things can escalate. I’ve been reading about it in one of my church pamphlets!’
‘Church pamphlets?’ Jake checks. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Deadly serious,’ Happi insists. ‘Better safe than sorry! Look at the figures for teenage pregnancy.’
‘Excuse me!’ I interrupt. ‘Just so you know, that will not be an issue. Seriously. I can’t work out how Marley feels about me, that’s all. If he sees me as a friend, a girlfriend, a writing partner or something else completely. Maybe I’m not ready for this whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing.’
‘Let’s face it – it was never going to be easy,’ Bex says. ‘Having Marley Hayes as your first boyfriend is a bit like picking Tolstoy’s War and Peace as your first reading book. Jake’s right – talk to him, Lexie. Sort it out, or end it on good terms because if you two fall out then we’re all in trouble. The Lost & Found is stuffed if one of you leaves, and that can’t happen. Not before the festival, anyway!’
‘No pressure then,’ I note, cracking a smile.
‘Definitely no pressure,’ Bex says, and winks.
I look towards the window by the kettle, but the steamed-up glass has long since cleared, and my message has gone.
The next day, Year Ten tough girl Sharleen Scott grabs me by the collar of my blazer as I’m putting some science books back in my locker in a deserted school corridor.
‘Tell your boyfriend to back off,’ she growls, her face so close to mine that I can smell stale cigarette smoke on her breath. ‘He’s an animal; flew at my Darrel last night and attacked him for no reason at all! Marley’s just jealous because we’re not together any more, and because I won’t join your poxy band. He’s been nagging me to get involved for weeks, but he won’t get the message. I. Am. Not. Interested. Not in him, not in the band. Understand?’
I understand that she’s crazy, possibly delusional, but I have the sense not to say this. She lets me go with one last shove just as the bell rings for lunch and Jake and Happi come miraculously round the corner.
‘Oi!’ Jake yells, breaking into a run. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing that need concern you, Scruff Boy,’ Sharleen sneers, swaggering away.
‘What did she do?’ Happi demands, straightening my blazer and giving me a hug. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine, honest,’ I say, picking up my scattered books. ‘Just a bit shocked – and confused. She reckons Marley attacked her boyfriend last night. She made out he’s jealous because she’s with someone else, and that he’s been pestering her to join the band!’
‘In her dreams,’ Jake mutters. ‘But she’s right about one thing – Dylan just told me the reason they didn’t show last night. Marley got in a fight on the way home from school. Again …’
A whole raft of emotions fizz through me: fear, anger, confusion, disappointment. I don’t know what to think or how to feel. I take out my mobile, and there are six unread texts from Marley in the last hour telling me he needs to talk, needs to see me fast before Sharleen Scott starts shooting her mouth off.
Too late.
Where are you? I text back. What happened?
Meet me behind the gym, five minutes, he replies, and like an idiot I tell Jake and Happi not to stress and trudge off to find him.
The back of the gym is out of bounds. It’s not difficult to spot the lone figure sitting beneath an oak tree beside the perimeter fence, reading the Ked Wilder library book. I almost turn back there and then because I can see his beautiful face is bruised and swollen, and I can’t be sure whether I am sympathetic or furious.
‘Lexie,’ he calls. ‘Over here!’
As I get closer, I see the blue-black bruises blooming on his right cheek, the split lower lip with its blister of dark, dried blood.
‘Oh, Marley, what have you done?’
‘I know, I know … I’m an idiot,’ he says. ‘I just walk into it, every single time. It’s like I can’t help it.’
I notice that a few slats of wood in the fence have worked loose, making a gap that a person could fit through.
‘This is my escape route when school is bugging me,’ he tells me. ‘One side of the fence is rules and tests and snarky teachers, and the other side is freedom. Cool, right?’
‘What will you do when they mend the gap in the fence?’
Marley grins. ‘They’ve mended it twice already,’ he argues. ‘I just make sure it never stays mended for long …’
I sit down beside him, and it’s quiet and peaceful after the madness of school, where too many kids push and shove their way though the day. Sunlight filters through the dappled leaves and somewhere in the distance birds are singing.
‘About Sharleen,’ I say. ‘Too late. We had a chat …’
Marley swears under his breath. ‘Whatever she said, it’s probably lies,’ he tells me. ‘She’s a spiteful little troublemaker; don’t know what I ever saw in her. She’s been hassling me for the last few weeks to put her in the band, and I’ve just laughed it off … Like I said, she’s got a voice like a bag of rusty nails. Then, walking home from school last night me and Dylan bumped into her with her boyfriend. He’s this big thug from St Michael’s High: six foot tall, total bonehead. Not sure what she’s been telling him about me, but he wasn’t exactly friendly.’
‘Her story was a bit different,’ I say. ‘She reckons you’ve been nagging her to join the band, that you still fancy her …’
Marley snorts, outraged. ‘That’s rubbish! You know that,’ he tells me. ‘They were winding me up. He called me a load of stuff and Sharleen egged him on. You can’t let that kind of thing go, can you?’
‘You can, actually,’ I say. ‘You just hold your head up and walk past, and tell yourself you’re better than all that. You should try it some time.’
Marley sighs. ‘Maybe.’
I grit my teeth, exasperated. ‘What is it with you, Marley? Your face is a mess! What if this had happened just before the festival? Our big chance? What if he’d stamped on your fingers or broken your wrist so you couldn’t play guitar? Or actually kicked your guitar to splinters?’
‘Dylan ran off with the guitar,’ Marley says. ‘Raised the alarm, found some lads who chased the kid away. It could have been worse.’
‘You have to stop this,’ I tell him. ‘Seriously, you do. For my sake, if not your own. For the band’s sake. Put the music first, the way you expect us to!’
Marley is silent, folorn. A part of me feels sorry for him, but a bigger part feels scared and daunted. Do I really know this boy at all? He keeps so much of himself hidden it’s difficult to work out what’s real and what isn’t.
The fighting thing – it’s scary, messed up.
‘I’m trying,’ he says eventually. ‘For you, because I know it bugs you.’
‘It doesn’t bug me, Marley,’ I say. ‘That makes it sound trivial, and it isn’t, OK? It matters. You have
this reputation for being tough and stupid and never walking away from a fight. It’s like you deliberately pick people who are bigger and harder than you too – you know you’ll come off worst and you just don’t care.
‘One day you’re going to get more than a few bruises and a fat lip – you’ll get properly hurt! Do you like getting beaten up? Because I don’t like it, Marley, I really, really don’t!’
As I speak, Marley looks out into the distance, impassive. I can’t tell if he’s listening, if he understands or cares. And then he turns to me, and his blue eyes are damp with tears. My anger evaporates, like it was never there at all.
‘Lexie, I’m sorry,’ he says, and he puts his arms round me, holding me tight. ‘You’re right. I’ll stop, I promise. I will. For you, and for the band.’
We hang on to each other forever maybe, or maybe it’s just a few seconds. I press my lips softly against the bruises on his face, slide my fingers over his ruined mouth, wipe away the tears.
Somewhere in the distance, the bell rings to signal the end of lunch, but when I ask Marley if he’s coming to lessons he just shakes his head, stands and slips quietly through the gap in the fence.
I walk back into school alone.
25
Half-Term
‘Is this song about us?’ Marley wants to know the minute he’s listened to the GarageBand link. ‘If so, I think you should stay aboard the train. I’d miss you if you jumped.’
‘I won’t jump unless you push me,’ I promise.
‘Why would I do that?’
Too many reasons to mention, Marley. Way too many.
‘The song’s not about us, anyway,’ I bluff. ‘Just a story. The old railway carriage inspired it … I was thinking, playing with words.’
Fiction is definitely a skill of mine; the lies drip off my tongue like honey.
I save my truths, my secrets, for the lyrics of our songs … nobody would ever spot them there, hiding in plain sight.
Marley checks another three practices off on the calendar, and then somehow it’s half-term. We have four songs now, four songs that sound great on a good day in the railway carriage, but Marley isn’t satisfied.
He’s still reading the Ked Wilder biography and tells us that Wilder spent two years doing a gig a night in pubs and clubs all over the UK to perfect his sound. He played his set so many times, in so many places, that it became second nature. Practice, Marley says, is the key to success, and even though we are rehearsing three times a week it’s not enough.
‘We’re a new band,’ Marley tells us. ‘Still raw and rough around the edges, but we’ve been given a chance to get noticed. Maybe it’s too soon, maybe I’m crazy to think we can do it, but we’ve got to give it our best shot, surely? We have to try.’
‘What are you saying, Marley?’ Bex asks. ‘Four practices a week? Five?’
‘Every day,’ he says grimly. ‘Afternoons are no good because the treatment room has bookings, but if we get here at nine, that’s three good hours, plus the usual three evenings …’
‘Too much, dude,’ Dylan grumbles. ‘It’s half-term. I need my lie-ins!’
‘Fair enough,’ Marley says. ‘I’ve had offers from two other kids in the school who’d like to be our drummer if you drop out. Shall I get in touch?’
‘You can’t throw me out of the band!’ Dylan snorts. ‘For wanting a lie-in? For having a moan because you’re swapping school with five days of extra practice?’
‘Seven days,’ Marley corrects him. ‘Saturday and Sunday too.’
‘You’re havin’ a laugh, big brother. I’ll say it if they won’t – too much.’
Marley rakes a hand through his fringe and scans the practice room, his blue eyes determined.
‘I don’t think you understand what we’re doing here,’ he says. ‘What we’ve got. We have the best musical talent Millford Park has on offer, hand-picked – everything from classically trained musos like Happi, Romy and George to kids who’ve taken school music lessons and turned out to be amazing, like Soumia, Sasha, Bex and Lee, and self-taught talents like Sami, who totally blows me away, and even my annoying little brother. Then there’s me, a gobby pain with big dreams and slave-driver tendencies, but I can write music. Lexie here can pull lyrics out of thin air and wrap the music around them to bring it all alive, make magic. We need every one of you – even Jake, who might not play but holds us all together, sorts the techie stuff, takes the photos.
‘There is nothing quite like us out there in the world, nothing as weird and wonderful and cool, nothing with such great vocals, such haunting string and brass and woodwind sections. In three weeks’ time we have the chance to be seen and heard by thousands of people, to help the libraries, make a difference. And if we are good enough, maybe – just maybe – we will catch the eye of pop royalty Ked Wilder. Imagine if that happens – just imagine! It can’t happen, though, unless each and every one of us pulls our weight. So if I seem like a slave-driver, well, I’m sorry. That’s why.’
When Marley finishes speaking, he is greeted by whistles and cheers and one of Lee’s euphoric trumpet blasts. I think that if the Lost & Found don’t make it as a band, Marley has a future in TV or film, or possibly politics, because he knows exactly how to get an audience in the palm of his hand.
Jake steps forward, awkward and uncertain after Marley, but equally passionate.
‘I’m the one on the outside,’ he tells us. ‘I get to watch, to fix up the mics, check the sound, take the pictures. I see it from a distance, and Marley is right – there is something amazing going on here. So what if we lose a few lie-ins? So what if we have to actually work for this? It will be worth it just to know we tried our very best. I think we’d be mad to give up now!’
Looking around, I can see the fire in Marley’s eyes reflected in us all, even Dylan. We’re willing to go the extra mile, give it everything, because what he and Jake have said is true. The Lost & Found has something special, something amazing, and we’d be crazy not to push that as far as it can go.
Astonishingly, Lee is the only one of all of us to be away on holiday for the half-term week, and Jake promises to send him daily GarageBand links so he can keep up with where we’re at.
‘Take your trumpet,’ Marley instructs. ‘Play every day. Maybe a bit of Cornish sun will add something new to the mix!’
The rest of us turn up obediently every morning at nine. On the first day, Bex jokes around, pretending to take the register, but we all know that Marley is keeping tabs on us anyway, and that for him it’s not a joke. Three days in, he talks to Romy about her timekeeping; she arrives late every day. Remembering his past comments about Romy’s weight and clothes, I’m terrified he’ll say something harsh or hurtful, but the two of them wander off across the grass, talking quietly, and a few minutes later when I glance across they are hugging, Romy wiping her eyes.
‘What happened?’ I ask Marley later, in the Leaping Llama. ‘Is she going to turn up on time from now on?’
‘Hopefully,’ he tells me. ‘But if she can’t, we’ll manage. Special circumstances. Never let it be said that I’m some kind of tyrant!’
‘What special circumstances?’ I ask. Romy joins us for lunch at school every day, and I see her as a friend now, but she’s still quite shy and guarded. I’m surprised she’s confided in Marley.
‘She’ll tell you herself when she’s ready,’ he explains. ‘But basically Romy’s mum is ill and her dad’s not around, so she’s left to do most of the caring. This week, the two of them are struggling. I said a late start was OK as long as she was willing to put in the work once she gets here …’
He gets another hug for that, from me. Underneath the tough exterior, Marley Hayes has a kind heart. I think he cares about the Lost & Found in ways that aren’t just to do with music.
‘We’re all a bit messed up,’ he says. ‘One way or another. I know a little bit of Romy’s story, and the basics of Happi’s and Sami’s. I know that you and Bex are in foster and th
ere’ll be stories behind that, and you’ll tell me one day maybe, or maybe not. We all have stuff we keep hidden. You called us a band of misfits, and you were right – there’s probably not a single one of us who’s actually normal. Whatever normal is …’
‘It’s normal to be a bit messed up,’ I say. ‘Nobody’s perfect. Except Sasha perhaps, and Soumia, but even then I’m not so sure. So what? It’s OK.’
Marley laughs. ‘I’ll tell you something, Lexie. It’s not just OK – it’s our secret weapon. We’ve all been through something. We all know what it’s like to hurt, to feel lost and misunderstood. And we’re not afraid to take that feeling and feed it into the music. That’s where it comes from, the magic – from the things we hide away, the secrets, the sadness. That’s what I think, anyway!’
I think that Marley Hayes has the soul of a poet, that I will never meet any boy I like so much in the whole world. Then he spoils it all by telling me that Romy looks a mess, that I should have a word with her about her clothes and her weight.
‘I don’t have a problem with Romy’s weight!’ I argue. ‘You’re the only one who’s bothered about that – do your own dirty work!’
‘Two weeks and four days,’ he tells me. ‘Less than three weeks, and we have to stand up on a stage in front of thousands of people. Even before we open our mouths, they’ll be judging us. You know that, Lexie!’
‘Yes, but they’ll be there to see Ked Wilder, not us,’ I point out. ‘Or if they are there for us, then it’ll just be from curiosity, because of what they’ve seen in the papers and stuff. They’re not going to be judging us on appearances!’
‘You think?’ he challenges me. ‘How else do we make our first impressions on the world around us? We need a look, Lexie. Something basic, simple, to pull the band together visually. Ked Wilder put his backing band in black drainpipe jeans and turtlenecks and winklepicker boots …’
‘I am not wearing those horrible pointy boots!’ I grumble. ‘Or black jeans. Black leggings, maybe, and a skirt and T-shirt … What if we just have black as a theme? Maybe with a few bits of red to brighten it up a bit? Have Sasha in a red dress at the front?’
Love from Lexie Page 12