Friends Forever!

by Grace Dent

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - she treats this house like a hotel

  Chapter 2 - three—the magic number

  Chapter 3 - a good turnout

  Chapter 4 - thumbs-up

  Chapter 5 - cometh the mailman

  Chapter 6 - booty camp

  Chapter 7 - more tea, cressida?

  Chapter 8 - booty quake

  Chapter 9 - the morning after

  Friends forever?

  As tears dribble down my face, my mind is racing. Claude, Fleur and I have hung out together since, like, Day 1 of Blackwell School. Ever since the gangly blonde chick and the little prim black girl with her hair in bunches sat down beside me in Year 7 French. We’re like sisters. We’re a team. We live our lives together! If they’re sad, I’m sad. If I’m sad, well, they try to sort things out for me. And, sure, we’ve had bust-ups before, but that’s just because sometimes we can all be extra-specially infuriatingly annoying! Like when Fleur falls in love with a different aftershave-drenched drongo every ten minutes. Or when Claude gets all swell-headed about her straight-A grades. Or when I forget birthdays or turn up late for stuff. Or, say, when Claude and Fleur post pictures of me all over the Internet, taken at a sleepover, asleep with my mouth open, wearing Blu-Tack devil horns. Oh, how I laughed.

  But we always make friends in the end. Don’t we?

  OTHER BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY:

  SPEAK

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published in Great Britain in 2006 by Puffin UK, London.

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007

  Copyright © Grace Dent, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Dent, Grace. LBD : friends forever / by Grace Dent. p. cm. Summary: Now sixteen years old,

  Ronnie, Fleur, and Claude try to repair an unexpected rift in their friendship by getting summer

  waitressing jobs together at a seaside resort. [1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Waiters and waitresses—

  Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.

  5. England—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.D4345Lam 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005023963

  eISBN : 978-1-440-68433-3

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To jon wilkinson.

  Chapter 1

  she treats this house like a hotel

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Three abrupt knocks on my bedroom door, then I’m invaded by the sleep police.

  “Ronnie? Ronnnnnnie? Are you under there?” my mother quacks, lifting up a corner of the duvet, letting cold air surge over my limbs.

  She knows how much that annoys me.

  “Ronnie! Helllllloooo?! Earth calling Veronica Ripperton? Wake up!”

  “Gnnnngnn! Go away!” I groan, whipping the quilt back from her and wrapping myself up like a sausage roll.

  “Ugh! What do you do in this room?” she says sniffily, flinging back the curtains so the morning sunlight scorches my face. “How can you make a room so messy!”

  I lie very still, praying for her to leave.

  “You’ll have rats in here before long,” continues Mum, picking up a half-eaten chocolate chip muffin discarded on my desk. “Rats, I tell you! With big tails and sharp teeth! Well, not that rats would put up with this mess,” she mutters under her breath.

  “Uggghhh,” I groan, hiding my face in the pillow.

  “Ronnie! Can you hear me? What’s this? What’s going on here?” Mum says.

  I sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes. Mum’s peering at the front of my iMac like it’s an extraterrestrial. “The front of this thing is flashing! Is it on? You’ll start a fire in here! Why do you always leave things switched on?”

  “Don’t touch it,” I mumble, watching Mum jabbing the power button, probably crashing the computer and corrupting all the files. “It’s in sleep mode.”

  “Sleep mode! Pghhh!” she mutters. “You’re in sleep mode, you lazy lump! Get up!”

  “Gnngnn . . . ,” I grumble, catching sight of myself in the mirror with pointy morning hair and a pillow crease down my face. “What is wrong with you? Are you a complete freak?”

  I look at my bedside clock. It’s 7:58 A.M.

  “Ha!” Mum snorts. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you, more like?! You lie in your pit all day, then gawp at TV and play bass guitar all night long. Your body clock’s upside down! You hardly see the sun. It’s like living with a bat!”

  “Ugh!” I groan, hiding my face under the covers again. “Look, you insane old goat! My last GCSE exam was on Wednesday. Two days ago! And I studied really hard for them too! And I’m not back at school till September. I’ve nothing to get up for!”

  “Oh, there’s plenty to get up for, young lady!” Mum hoots, clearly elated that I’m rising to her bait. “When I was sixteen years old, I’d be up with the lark on a glorious June morning like this. I’d be making breakfast and doing housework, really helping my mother out!”

  “Oh, pur-lease,” I groan.

  “And you can start by minding Seth for me while I go to the wholesaler’s. I’ll be gone two hours,” Mum twitters, poking me a bit. “Oh, c’mon, Ronnie, please? He’s dying for you to play with him. He’s been so miserable since he caught that tummy bug.”

  “Is he still projectile pooing?” I frown.

  “Mmm . . . no, that seems to have cleared up,” Mum sniggers. “But, y’know, best wear something wipeable, just to be safe.”

  “Euuuh!” I grimace, swinging my legs out of bed.

  Mother has won again. She always wins.

  “Hey, and when I get home . . . ,” Mum says, “I’ll help you fill out that waitressing application form for the Wacky Warehouse.”

  “Er, pardon?” I splutter. “I’m not working at a Wac . . .”

  “It’ll teach you the value of money!” Mum snaps back. “You’re not freeloading off me and your dad until September.”

  “Huh! I know the value of money, thank you!” I say, beginning to raise my voice. “Listen, Mother, I am not working in a Wacky Warehouse! I’m not mopping up the ice cream and vomit at children’s birthday parties! Cynthia Morris from Blackwell School had a Saturday job there, and they made her dress up in a squirrel costume and jump up and down on a mini trampoline playing the bongos for six hours a day. I’m not that wacky!”

  Mum just rolls her eyes at me, then heads for the door. “Well, you better start feeling wacky s
oon, Lady Muck,” she snaps crossly. “Or you’re working downstairs with me as the Fantastic Voyage’s dishwasher. I’m not paying an extra body while you laze about up here!”

  “What? Aaaagh!” I howl, imagining the prospect of nine weeks trapped in the basement of our family pub, unblocking hair from the waste disposal and gutting fish. “That is so unfair!”

  “Veronica, life isn’t fair,” clips my mother. “Now, I want you up, dressed and in the den, frolicking with an incontinent toddler in ten minutes. Or else! Oh, and if you’re bored, I’ve left notes about other chores on the fridge.”

  “I’m not going to be your slave for the summer!” I yell, getting angrier by the second. “And I won’t work at the Wacky Warehouse either! I’d rather die! In fact, I’m going to fling myself out of my bedroom window . . . straight after breakfast.”

  “Mmm . . . don’t do that, sweetheart,” Mum says dryly, opening my bedroom door. “You’ll make a terrible mess.”

  Mum trots out, smashing the door shut behind her. I’ve been awake less than forty-five seconds and we’ve already had our first bust-up. This is impressive, even by our standards.

  “But this was meant to be . . . ,” I yell as she clomps away down the landing, “my summer break!”

  I strip off my nightgown, pulling on a hoodie and some baggy jeans, dragging my long auburn hair into a pink bobble, pausing to look at a photograph on my noticeboard. It’s a picture of me, Fleur Swan and Claudette Cassiera, or Les Bambinos Dangereuses, as we’re universally known, taken last summer when we had a fabulous adventure at the Astlebury Music Festival. Spike Saunders and tons of other bands played. The whole thing totally rocked. In the photo, I’m grinning like a demented hobbit, my arms wrapped around my two friends’ shoulders. Fleur, as ever, looks fabulously, nauseatingly pretty. Blonde hair, perfect skin, big blue eyes, she’s doing her typical “rabbit ears” trick behind my head. Next to her, Claude’s goofing about, pulling one of her daftest faces. We look so happy.

  I let out a long sigh. I really have got nothing to get up for today.

  “Les Bambinos Dangereuses,” I mutter, reaching my fingers out and touching Claude’s ebony cheek, “what on earth has happened to us?”

  radio ripperton

  “Ah! You’re up!” Dad chuckles, looking at his watch for comic effect. “Good afternoon.”

  It’s 9:15 A.M. and Lawrence “Loz” Ripperton is on the sofa upstairs at the Fantastic Voyage, having a quiet half hour before his bartending duties begin.

  “Oh, don’t you start,” I groan, sitting on the sofa, grabbing the remote and flicking on MTV, which is showing a rerun of last year’s Big Beach Booty Quake party in Destiny Bay. On the TV, Big Doggy the rapper is performing on stage while hunks in trunks and a zillion perfect girls in thong bikinis quake their booties to a ragga beat.

  I take a slurp of my coffee. Dad peers at the screen, which is full of undulating flesh, making a face that indicates he’d be outraged if he had the energy, before carrying on with his sports section.

  “I’ve just been frog-marched out of bed by Attila the Mum,” I grumble.

  “Ah yes,” smiles Dad, nodding toward the bedroom next door where Mum’s dressing. “She’s in fine form this morning, isn’t she?”

  My father accepts my mother’s ruthless dictatorship with exceptional good grace. It’s almost as if he enjoys his day being spelled out for him in yellow Post-it notes. He stays here through choice! I’d be gone tomorrow if I had any other option.

  “Wonnie! Wonnie . . . Beawblooooo!!” burbles Seth, my seventeen-month-old brother, crawling toward me with a grin. “Wonnie!” he gargles again, attempting to stand up, but somehow pirouetting and falling headfirst toward the coffee table.

  “Whooooah there, little fella!” I gasp, leaping up to grab him. “God, Dad, can’t we get him a crash helmet or something?”

  “Wonniebeawblue?” repeats Seth, wrapping his tiny arms around me.

  I kiss the top of his little blond head, inhaling that great baby smell. “Beawblue?” I repeat, finding it impossible to stay cross.

  “Ahhh,” says Dad, who’s a pro at translating baby babble. “He means the Bear in the Big Blue House DVD. Don’t you, Sunny Jim?”

  “Beablah!” Seth gurgles.

  “Er, the one with the colors and shapes and stuff?” I ask. “Does he understand that?”

  “I don’t know,” Dad announces solemnly. “But he’s silent when it’s on, Veronica. That’s enough for me.”

  “Good point,” I say as Seth wriggles around in his powder-blue baby suit, desperate to be put down on the floor.

  “Beaw-tance!” Seth says rather forcefully. “Tance!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dad adds. “He only likes the first six minutes, when the big hairy fella dances. He gets grouchy after that and wants it rewound.”

  “Tance!” Seth squeals excitedly.

  A stripe of brown goo is beginning to ooze from the back of his suit. Dad spots this, quickly rustling his newspaper in front of his face.

  “That’s chocolate sauce . . . right?” I groan.

  “Yeah, right,” Dad says dryly.

  Right that instant, my mobile phone starts squeaking and shuddering on the coffee table, playing a polyphonic version of Carmella Dupris’s latest hit “KrazyGirl.” That’s the ring tone I’ve assigned to Fleur! Hurray!

  The screen fills with a jpeg of a beautiful blond girl wearing a stripey T-shirt and a powder-pink beret, marred somewhat by the chopstick jammed firmly up each nostril.

  “Oh, yeah, that reminds me,” Dad says distractedly. “Your phone’s been ringing for the last two hours. Me and Mum tried to open it. But we couldn’t find the bit to talk into. It’s all Star Trek to us, those things.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” I fume.

  “Ronnie, you’re not a morning person,” Dad says, chuckling. “I leave the wake-up calls to your mother. She’s braver than me.”

  I wrinkle my nose at him, then press “answer.”

  “Fleur!” I say. “All right, babe? What are you doing?”

  “Hey, Ronnie!” Fleur giggles. “Guess where I am?”

  “Dunno,” I say.

  “Give you a clue,” Fleur says, sounding excited. “I’ve just bought that fabulous cerise polka-dot bikini. This month’s ‘hot buy’ in June’s Elle Girl magazine!”

  “Er, you’re on High Street?” I guess. “Or the Westland Park Shopping Mall?”

  Fleur giggles a bit more. “I’m at Emerald Green Shopping City! I’m in It’s a Girl’s World at Emerald Green Shopping City!”

  “Emerald . . . Green! Emerald Green Shopping City!” I say, feeling rather rattled. “Fleur, that’s, like, two hundred miles away.”

  “I know,” she laughs.

  “Who are you with?” I say suspiciously.

  “I’m, er . . . all alone,” Fleur says, sounding a little less jubilant now. “Dad was driving down really early for the Motor Show at the Exhibition Center nearby. I only found out last night, so I nabbed a lift.”

  “Oh,” I say. “That’s . . . er, cool.”

  “Yeah, sort of,” says Fleur. “On the downside, Paddy’s bent my ear for two hundred miles about getting a summer job. Apparently I need ‘direction in my life.’ ”

  “Gnnnngnn . . . don’t even go there,” I groan.

  There’s a small awkward silence.

  Why didn’t she ask me to go?

  Emerald Green Shopping City, aside from being literally a “city of shopping,” is home to Britain’s flagship It’s a Girl’s World store. IGW totally rocks! It’s the LBD’s own personal mecca, to which we’re always planning a pilgrimage. As well as six whole floors of amazing clothes and accessories, the store runs daily catwalk shows and features its own TV station broadcasting on huge banks of plasma TVs. You can book personal shoppers who’ll make you look like a pop star, plus there’s a sweets shop, a nail bar, hair boutique and a floor devoted to sunglasses, hair clips and hats. There’s also an entire basement
of customized antique and retro designer clothes. (It’s Claude’s favorite floor. Last Christmas she found an amazing black sixties Mod dress for £20!)

  “Hey, Ronnie,” Fleur says, sounding slightly lonely. “I’m standing at the bottom of the ground floor escalator.”

  “Where the Million Dollar Models scouts always are?” I say, grabbing the DVD remote control and pressing “play.” Seth’s eyes light up as the dancing bear fills the screen.

  “Yeah,” Fleur says. “This is where they found Devan Davies, the Joop girl. No luck for me today, though.”

  “It’ll happen one day,” I tell her.

  “Hope so,” Fleur sighs.

  There’s that sad, awkward silence again.

  I know the LBD have been having some major problems recently, but this has got way out of hand now. Fleur going to Emerald Park without us just seems so final.

  The LBD always go to Emerald Park together! Ever since Year 7, when we got our first proper allowances.

  “Are you okay?” Fleur asks sheepishly.

  I’m trying to swallow my feelings, but the words just flood out. “No . . . I’m not really, Fleur!” I say. “Why didn’t you call me to go with you? I’ve got Girl’s World vouchers to spend!”

  “I called you this morning,” Fleur argues. “Three times! Your folks kept picking the phone up, but they couldn’t work out what bit to speak into.”

  “Oh God,” I groan, clutching my head.

  “And then they couldn’t hang it up,” Fleur says. “I could hear them chatting to each other for ages.”

  “What about?” I gasp.

  “Errr . . . nothing really,” Fleur says. “But, er, did you know your mum’s nipples are almost back to normal after breast-feeding?”

  “Shut. Up,” I grimace. “You’re kidding me?”

  “Er, no,” Fleur says. “You might want to go through your phone’s memory and check out who else Radio Ripperton has been broadcasting to.”

  “I’m going to kill them,” I say quite seriously. My parents will not be satisfied until I literally die of shame. I’d happily divorce them.