by Beth Garrod
Tegan popped her head out of the curtain. “Guys. Honest opinions. What do you think of this one?”
I clapped my hands like an excited fashion-loving seal as Tegan flung back the curtain like a sexy matador. Woah, she looked HA-MAZ-ING. The fitted, slash neck dress clung to every bit of her body, only stopping at the floor, and she looked so sophis, I swear she was actually gliding around the changing room.
“Wow, Tegan, just wow.” I snapped a picture of her. “See? You look increds.”
She beamed at our reactions.
“High-five to this. And it’s in the sale!” Her voice got muffled as she dived back into the changing room and wriggled the dress off over her head. “Maybe I could sew some black tasselly things on the shoulders. But in a good way.” She didn’t need to clarify; she always had a knack of making things look customized in all the right ways.
We headed to the till happy one of us was sorted. Tegan fished out all of her change.
“Woohoo for me managing to find something I could afford. Mum was a total no-go for lending me any money after she’d got that detention letter!”
I winced.
“You know mine never arrived, right? I’m living in total fear!”
Rachel shook her head.
“You’re so jammy. Did you train Mumbles to eat post or something?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. The other day she tried to eat a bee, but it stung her in the mouth and made her look like she’d had doggy botox.”
Rachel looked impressed.
“She might be on to something there. Dogs are well wrinkly. Anyway, enough TALK. I’m fading here. Is it TIME yet?!”
Rachel was referring to our ritual, and the answer was ‘yes’. So the three of us, Tegan happily swinging her new purchase, headed off to our routine shopping stop-off, Froth, a converted old church with sofas so big you could lie on them. We ordered three hot chocolates (obvs with marshmallows), plus an extra-large bowl of potato wedges and mayonnaise. Surely that ticked all the nutritious food groups? We left on a marshmallow high, with new enthusiasm to attack the racks, only detouring to pop into the shoe shop where a boy Rachel likes works. Turns out they only sell man shoes, so he ended up recommending some slippers for her granddad. By the time we left, Rachel was completely in love. And the proud owner of three pairs of size 11 odour eaters.
“Did. You. See. Him?” Rachel was talking half-speed like some kind of love zombie. I grabbed her hand to stop her walking into a tree, and pulled her into a discount clothes shop before she had time to notice.
“Er, yes, Rach. We were literally standing next to you, and weirdly we didn’t have our eyes closed the whole time.”
Tegan was more matter of fact.
“I wish that lads we knew were as decent as that. All the ones we know act like they’re twelve.” Tegan never normally talked about boys unless she was telling us how she slayed them on the pommel horse (which I pointed out sounds like some sort of rubbish jousting). Maybe I should take the opportunity to bring up Mikey again?
“Well some of the lads we know are all right.” I pretended to think, like this wasn’t all one big set up. “I mean –” more fake think – “what about someone like Mikey?”
Tegan laughed. “What about him? I’ve told you a gazillion times, we’re nothing but friends.” And we’ve told her a billion times she’s wrong. “I mean yeah, you know I love hanging out with him, but he sees me as one of the lads. And I’m cool with that. Guys and girls can be friends you know, so will you two stop stirring!”
We were back in our no-win sitch. Play unwanted cupid and annoy Tegan, or back off, and get frustrated at what could have been. Rachel went for the second option.
“What about you, Bells? What are we going to do about your boy sitch?” She prodded me accusingly with a coat hanger. “And I don’t mean no-go-son-of-a-teacher-man, I mean the original love of your life: MIAGTM. What’s going on there?”
I OTT huffed. Boys were a touchy subject with me. Well, technically untouchy, as I’d probably never make physical contact with any of them ever again.
“Absolute zero. Less than zero.”
“Well, look,” said Rachel, “if we manage to get our dresses sorted before five, Dan can go the long way home, and we can squeeze in a park perv.”
Tegan prodded me.
“MIAGTM won’t even recognize the car, so we could proper crawl along the hedge.”
Rachel grinned.
“Yeah and who knows – he might see you through the window, and chase down the car until you agree to a hot new goalkeeping-based date?”
I spluttered on the chewy fried egg I was eating.
“AS IF, guys! It only takes peeps ten minutes to realize that I’m a human disaster. So I might as well just carry on looking from afar and start planning for when I’m old and take loved-up selfies with my twelve dogs and spend the rest of my time decorating my walls with plates that have paintings of cottages on them.”
The others laughed. But it was weirdly comforting to be back to my totally undesirable self. At least I knew how this version of me functioned. Free to squeeze spots on my face and waste my evenings watching slo-mo dog-running videos.
Four exhausting hours of speed shopping later, Rachel finally found the dress, shoes, necklace, strapless bra, perfume and lipstick of her dreams, and I’d managed to convince myself I’d find something back home in my wardrobe. Right on time Dan picked us up, and despite protesting that he felt like a cross between an OAP and a ice-cream seller, he delivered on the world’s slowest drive along the playing field. MIAGTM was in full football flow, and I was treated to over two glorious minutes of uninterrupted viewing pleasure before we headed back to Rachel’s at normal car speed.
Back in her room we laid out our prom haul, already a bit giddy with excitement. What on earth were we going to be like next Friday on actual prom day?!
All that was standing between us and the night of our lives was finishing what we’d promised Mr Lutas. And that was going to be a breeze.
Shame it was going to be accompanied by a hurricane of disaster.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
I had three messages from Tegan – and she’d only sent two the day one of her front teeth had got kicked out by one of her students attempting to do a backflip. Something must be seriously up. But what? And why tell us she wanted to talk, and not just say the thing that she wanted to talk about? It wasn’t like I wasn’t already on edge, what with today being a guaranteed Luke sighting in our final detention. We agreed to meet outside the post office, and for once I wasn’t the last one to arrive. It was a worried-looking Tegan who turned up late.
“Please don’t shout.”
Not the reassuring first words I was hoping she’d say. Was she moving? Or dating Zac? Or been secretly filming for a Channel 4 documentary on friend groups where one friend is a bit weirder than all the others, and they were going to tell me I was about to be sent to a camp in Ohio for six weeks?
“Enough of the weirdness. What’s up?”
She grimaced and looked at her left foot, which was kicking a lamp post.
“Honestly, you’re going to kill me.”
Rachel put her arm around Tegan affectionately.
“We’re honestly not. What. Is. It?”
Tegan took a deep breath.
“So you know when you left yesterday?”
Rachel and I nodded. As planned, we’d finished up our bits of final decoration prep at lunchtime and had popped in to see Tegan after school. She’d been working flat out on the banners, sewing so quickly she looked like she was in fast-forward. “And I still had half the letters for the two big welcome banners to do?”
“That you wouldn’t let us help with?” Rachel glared at her, although we’d all agreed that us trying to sew would end up taking Tegan even longer to fix.
“Well, I wish I had.”
Uh-oh. This didn’t sound good.
“Just after you left, Mum turned up
– apparently they needed a stand-in gymnastics teacher, and she said I’d do it. She didn’t even ask! She just dragged me away. We spoke to the caretaker, and he promised I could come back after to finish up, Mum even offered to help. So I thought it was under control. But when we came back, everywhere was locked up. . .” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “There was nothing I could do.”
Rachel looked confused.
“So, what are you saying?”
Tegan patted her eyes like she was trying to block a tear coming out. Although on closer look, they looked like they might have been doing a lot of crying recently.
“That I’m nowhere near finished, and Mr Lutas is going to hit the roof. And after EVERYTHING, I’m totally not getting to prom after all. I’ve probably ruined it for everyone.”
I tried to say something positive, but all I felt was positively gutted. Out of the three of us, Tegan had worked the hardest and deserved to go the most. It was only because she’d been trying to do such an amazing job that she was late finishing. Maybe we could work like maniacs at lunch and get it finished? Because it was all of us going, or none.
But after we got to school, that glimmer of hope got completely un-glimmered. There was a lunchtime exam resit in the art room and it was firmly out of bounds.
By the time detention rolled around, we were defeated. When we walked in, I tried to catch Zac’s eye in a way that said, ‘Hey, FRIEND. Please don’t think that we’re not grateful to your dad, just cos we haven’t finished everything, but Tegan had a gym-ergency.’ I think Zac interpreted it as ‘hello’.
When Mr Lutas arrived, he was the most upbeat I’d ever seen him. He got even more worryingly joyous after he unlocked the storeroom and saw inside. Was he actively looking forward to moaning at Tegan? I knew his good side couldn’t have been rrrrreal.
“Gather round, gather rrround. It’s time to see the results of our little prrroject.”
Mikey gave us an excited thumbs-up. Tegan hadn’t been able to warn him what was about to happen. Luke just looked like his usual annoying self. He was going to love this.
Mr Lutas cleared his throat, like he was about to deliver the kind of defining speech we’d recount to future generations. Or at least post quotes from on the internet.
“I have to say, I am VERRRY disappointed in ALL of you.”
I braced for impact.
“Because if you’d only worked as hard as you have these last few weeks in the rest of the term, you’d be a bunch of grade-A students all rrrrrrround.”
Er, what?
He pushed the door fully open. Inside was the wooden picture frame, but now it was sprayed gold and surrounded by finished signs, all different shapes, sizes and designs. Luke must have worked 24/7 to get them finished. Damn his skills. I wish his woodwork would not have worked.
But there was something even more weird above them. There, dangling from the ceiling, were the banners that Tegan hadn’t finished. Except they were. All the letters sewn on, and all finished to perfection.
I dug my elbow into her ribs. If this had been a joke, it was a really weird and unfunny one, which would technically make it not one. But she looked more baffled than me.
“Wasn’t me!” She mouthed behind Mr Lutas’s back.
“So . . . I take back what I said last week. I’m delighted to say that you have all fully earned your tickets to prrrom. I’m sure you’re as excited as Zac and I to see it all in action!”
I wasn’t sure how, but we’d done it. We’d all done it. Together. Not quite the way I’d dreamt of, but I was going to prom, and so were my friends. And so was Zac. Even if he was my new supervisor friend. I think the technical term for what happened next was ‘whooping’. Tegan, Rachel and I flung our arms around each other and jumped around in a tiny circle, while Mikey awkwardly tried to join in but ended up sort of patting us on the back like upright dogs. Zac couldn’t hide his massive grin, and as we hopped around, even Mr Lutas’ face began to contort into something unrecognizable. Oh gosh. Was he actually smiling too?! And was I accidentally smiling back at him because I was so relieved?
Hello, weirdest school incident of my life. People are so confusing. We should totally do lessons in them, and not stuff like history, which you can just look up on the internet.
But there was one person who wasn’t clapping along. Luke. Despite all of his efforts to ruin it, Tegan, Rachel and I had ended the terms as friends – friends who were going to prom. IN YOUR FACE, PUKE.
“Simmer down. Come on. . .” Mr Lutas flapped his hands up and down to wind down the jumping, but just looked more like he was at a really fast hip-hop gig. “While I’m very imprrressed you got it done in the nick of time, there is one more thing to do.” He reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a dusty projector. “See what it looks like in action! Bella, have you got your camera?”
I nodded and ran to my bag. “And get those special pens for the signs while you’re there. Luke left them on the side.”
I spotted the pile of pens by Luke’s things, stuffed them in my pocket and grabbed the sponges beside them. Mr Lutas then talked through how the logistics and set-up would work, before leaving us alone with Zac to do a dress rehearsal with the props.
I played with my camera settings, as Tegan set up my tripod, laughing at Mikey who was pulling major poses in the frame.
“Don’t laugh at a genius at work, please, Tegan.” He stuck his tongue out and his fingers up. “Just call me Mikey Cyrus.” He then attempted some sort of bum wiggle that looked suspiciously like he might have practised way too many times in the privacy of his own home.
Luke looked away, disgusted and, ignoring my snort-laughing, handed out his signs and the sponges to wipe them clean.
“Here, guess we might as well use these. See how they look when they’ve got stuff on them.” He couldn’t have sounded more unenthusiastic. It was annoying how good all his signs looked – my favourite was a giant thought-bubble shaped one, and a big arrow that reminded me of the first time I met Zac. I grabbed them both.
Ignoring Luke’s standard bad mood, I handed out the pens and we all got sketching.
Rachel went first, and pretended to pout as she held up her sign. It was star-shaped and had gold polka dots all around the edge. In the middle, on the whiteboard-painted area, she’d written ‘HANDS OFF HOB’. Tegan almost cried with laughter as I snapped away on my camera, pretending not to get the Dan reference. The props all looked so cool on my screen. It had been a good idea after all!
I waited till last for my turn. I’d used the two biggest signs. On one I’d drawn a pigeon. And on the other a massive bird poo. Luke looked bemused. But it wasn’t for his benefit. Zac couldn’t help but grin. It was a nice to have something to look back and smile about.
Together we all flicked through the pictures on my camera. They looked awesome – the rest of our year was going to LOVE it, especially when they were projected up on the wall. Hyped that we’d pulled it off, we started to pack everything up to be taken to the hall. But as Tegan and I were folding up her banner, there was a yell from the storeroom.
“BELLA. What the HELL have you done?!”
It was Luke. And he was raging.
But what had I done?! We ran to see what the problem was. Luke was crouched on the floor, signs around his feet, sponge in his hand, furious look on his face.
“I can’t believe you’d do this, you absolute. . .”
Zac barged in and cut him off before he could say something he definitely shouldn’t.
“Oi. Language. What’s up?”
Luke shoved my arrow sign into Zac’s chest. “This.”
Zac took hold of it, but like me, couldn’t see the problem.
Luke pointed the other sign right at me.
“She did this on purpose. I KNOW she did.”
“Did what exactly?”
Luke rubbed at the sign.
“Gave everyone permanent markers.” He kicked one of the signs with his foot. “These are R
UINED.”
Permanent? But I’d just grabbed what Mr Lutas told me to?
“No, that can’t be right.”
I picked up Rachel’s sign and rubbed at it with my jumper and thumb, like my mum does to my face when I’ve forgotten to check for over friendly-toothpaste.
But her words didn’t budge. All that was disappearing was my good mood. What had I done?
“Luke. This was a mistake. Honest. A mistake.”
Annoying Luke was normally the most fun I could have in the day, but this didn’t feel right. This was an accident. I didn’t mean to ruin his signs. To ruin our project.
“You don’t have an honest bit in your body, Blob. So quit pretending this isn’t your way of getting back at me.”
He threw one of the signs against the wall in frustration.
I looked above where it landed to where I’d put the wipe-clean pens down. And my stomach knotted. They were still there. Next to a half-empty box of permanent-markers I must have grabbed when I’d handed them out. What. An. Idiot.
I pointed to the mix-up.
“Honestly, I’m SO sorry. Look, I must have grabbed the wrong ones. I had NO idea?!”
Luke didn’t react. He looked gutted. As much as I hated him for it, I knew he’d put his heart and soul into this project. He dropped his head into his hands.
Zac put a supervisor-ly hand on his back.
“C’mon, surely we can sort this out?”
Luke threw his shoulder up, throwing Zac’s hand off.
“Well, unless you want to give up every second of your spare time to repair them with skills you don’t have, then no, I guess there’s nothing you can do.” He looked up at me. “You’ve gone too far this time, Blob. And you know it.”
The room was silent. No one knew what to say. Especially me. I apologized on loop, but Luke didn’t want to hear it. I even offered to help sand the signs down and repaint them. It wasn’t much, but as it was all I could do I left Luke with my camera so he could use the pictures we’d just taken as a base for any new designs he was going to have to repaint. With conversation going nowhere, Zac ushered the rest of us out, to finish up the packing up and head home. When we left, Luke was still working away in the storeroom.