Accidental Superstar

by Marianne Levy

  Come on, Katie. Spread the love.

  ‘Hey, everyone. Mind if me and the very awesome Lacey Daniels sit with you? She’s so great.’

  Which earned me some very strange looks.

  ‘We’re party planning,’ said Sofie.

  How much planning could one party take?!

  ‘How much planning can one party take?’ I said.

  ‘Just because your parties are three people dancing to an ancient NOW album doesn’t mean everyone else’s are,’ said Lacey, in a way that, frankly, sounded a little critical.

  ‘Mellow down, girlfriend,’ said Savannah. Then, to me, ‘Have you got my Karamel tickets? How was the recording? And have you got my Karamel tickets?’

  ‘Sorry, no tickets yet,’ I told Savannah. ‘But the recording was amazing. It was in this little studio in Soho and I did it in three takes.’

  ‘I bet you have the most amazing pictures,’ said Sofie.

  ‘It’s annoying, but actually, I don’t. Stupid Neanderthal phone. But it was so interesting down there. They had all these framed platinum albums on the walls and a signed photo of the Rolling Stones. I mean, I’d have paid just to look round, and there I was, actually getting to record my own music.’ I shook my head. ‘It blows my mind.’

  ‘Amaze,’ said Savannah, wiggling her perfect little toes. I noticed that each nail had been topped with a sparkly stone. ‘You know what? Even though you don’t have any Karamel tickets for me I think we should play your single at my party.’

  ‘That would be pretty groovy,’ I said, which was supposed to sound casual and laid-back and super-chilled but didn’t due to my using the word ‘groovy’. I mean, who says that? Other than me? ‘I’ll send you the MP3.’

  ‘Can we hear it now?’ said Paige.

  ‘I haven’t got it yet,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘But I thought it was all recorded?’

  ‘These things take time,’ I told her.

  ‘So you don’t know when it’s out?’

  ‘Er, no. They didn’t say. Soon, though. Because of momentum.’

  ‘But it’ll be ready for the party?’

  ‘Definitely.’ Then, because we seemed to be straying quite a long way from my original purpose: ‘I missed you at the studio, Lace. It’s like, where was my entourage?!’

  ‘Lacey didn’t come to the studio with you?’

  ‘She had netball,’ I said.

  ‘Which we won,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Well, that’s good!’ I said. ‘Classic Lacey! You are a total winner! Hey, we should mark the occasion! What are you doing tonight? Let’s celebrate!’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Lacey. ‘It’s not that big a deal.’

  ‘It is. You won! You were the winning team!’ I shook my invisible pompoms. ‘Go, Lacey! Go, Lacey!’

  ‘Katie, are you OK? Is Katie OK? She looks like she’s having an epileptic fit.’

  I looked down from the top of my imaginary cheerleading pyramid to see – oh no – Mad Jaz, who was suddenly just there. Maybe she’d always been there. Or maybe she’d materialized, like a sort of a demon. She was dressed quite demonically, her school uniform accessorized with an enormous black velvet scarf and ripped lace gloves.

  ‘I was just bigging up Lacey,’ I said. ‘She’s the best.’

  Jaz’s head swivelled from me to Lacey and back again.

  ‘The best,’ I repeated. ‘I cannot imagine having a better friend.’

  And maybe it was my imagination or did Jaz look the tiniest bit put-out? Come to think of it, probably, it was my imagination. That, plus Jaz’s face permanently looks a bit put-out.

  ‘So, back to my party,’ Savannah was saying. Only, Jaz wasn’t listening.

  ‘I just came over to tell you that your video has had one and a half million views.’

  ‘Honestly,’ said Lacey. ‘Can we please stop talking about that stupid embarrassing video, OK? It’s old news.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking again about the lighting,’ said Savannah.

  ‘Not that old,’ I said. ‘One and a half million? That’s amazing! When you think of it in terms of the population of Harltree it’s . . . loads!’

  ‘Yup,’ said Jaz. ‘Bet you’re glad you didn’t take it down now.’

  ‘More like, you didn’t take it down,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Only because Katie told me not to,’ said Jaz.

  Oh no.

  ‘And whether I should have different colours for different zones,’ said Savannah.

  ‘Katie asked you to take it down,’ said Lacey. ‘Because of how embarrassing it was for me.’

  ‘That is the most selfish thing I have ever heard in my life,’ said Jaz. ‘It’s lucky that she changed her mind.’

  ‘No, she didn’t. She wanted you to take it down and you said no.’

  ‘I never said that,’ said Jaz, who, to be fair, had never said that. Except in my version of events.

  I was coming to realize I’d made a fairly serious error. Or, several very serious errors.

  ‘Er, Jaz, don’t you remember how I said could you take it off the internet and you said you wouldn’t?’ I gabbled. ‘Maybe not. Oh well, moving on . . .’

  ‘I do remember. You said you wanted it to stay up,’ said Jaz.

  ‘Did I?’ I said.

  ‘Did you?’ said Lacey, getting to her feet. ‘Because that’s not what you told me. That’s not what you told me at all.’

  Even Savannah had stopped talking.

  ‘You . . . lied to me,’ said Lacey. ‘I know you’re mates with her now. But I can’t believe you’d actually lie.’

  ‘I never had you down as a liar, Katie,’ said Savannah, looking very severe, but still pretty. ‘Because if we can’t believe you on this . . .’

  ‘I’m not a liar! I mean, technically, in this particular instance, then yes, I am, but it is an absolute one-off, it really is. I mean, honestly, Lace. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I couldn’t take it down just because you found it very slightly embarrassing. Could I? I mean, really?! Come on.’

  ‘I just wanted the truth,’ said Lacey, teetering on the edge of tears. And then going over the edge altogether.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you, Lace,’ I said, as Savannah, Paige and Sofie went into a whispery cluster. ‘When I get famous – which will be incredibly soon – I’ll give you concert tickets, and if I get any clothes, they’re all yours, as soon as I’m done with them, obviously, I mean, just because they’ll probably be giving them to me for a photoshoot or a concert but if that happens I’ll have them dry-cleaned, I’ll do . . . whatever you want, Lacey.’

  Lacey snuffled.

  ‘Lacey, babes,’ said Savannah. ‘Come sit with me a moment, yes?’ She patted the grass next to her.

  Something about Savannah’s words worked where mine hadn’t. Lacey sat back down again. Now it was the four of them, in the sunshine, and me and Jaz in the shade. It couldn’t have been more symbolic if it tried.

  ‘Want to know what I’m thinking?’ said Savannah.

  Lacey did a little shrug.

  ‘It’ll cheer you up. Promise.’

  Then Savannah said something into her ear, probably about how much of a loser I was, or that I was looking especially chubby today or something. Whatever it was, Lacey’s eyes widened.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and she did look happier. Much happier. It was kind of good but also, if I’m being honest, a bit disturbing, how quickly she’d cheered up. Then, ‘It’s fine, Katie. And I cannot wait until your single comes out. I really can’t.’

  Paige smirked.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Sofie.

  At which point the sun went in and the bell rang and lunchtime was over.

  Oh, and on the way back inside I even saw a clump of bluebells.

  Everywhere I went, people were talking about Savannah’s party. Even Mad Jaz wasn’t immune.

  ‘It’s going to be the worst party anyone has ever had,’ she told m
e as the bus fought through the morning traffic. ‘There won’t be anything proper to drink, and Fin says that she’s going to have relatives.’

  Jaz managed to make the word ‘relatives’ sound like norovirus.

  ‘So you’re not going to be there tonight?’

  Mad Jaz looked at me as though I was mad. ‘Of course I’m going.’

  ‘She invited you?’

  ‘No.’

  My understanding of the inner workings of Jaz was still at beginner level.

  ‘And Nicole’s bringing this home brew she made with a recipe from this dodgy Spanish website. It’s got stuff in it that you should no way ever drink.’

  ‘Er, great.’ The bus went around the corner by the garden centre and did this sort of lurchy, belchy thing that sent a backwaft of fumes up and into my lungs. I tried not to breathe, and failed, and felt a bit sick.

  ‘It will be.’ Jaz looked pleased. ‘If anyone can mix something mental, it’s Nicole.’ She scrolled down on her phone. ‘Hey, so apparently she tried to give herself a lovebite last night. She’d read you get a good one if you suck really hard, so she used a Dyson.’

  ‘I might not have any of Nicole’s home brew,’ I said. ‘I probably need to protect my voice. What with my single coming out soon. They’ll be needing me to do some live gigs.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Jaz, peering at her screen.

  ‘I know, isn’t it incredible that I have a single coming out?’ I said. Then, because the year sevens were shouting about something and Jaz didn’t seemed to have heard, I said it again. ‘A single coming out.’

  ‘Good.’ She was still on her phone.

  ‘Um, what time are you getting to Savannah’s?’

  ‘Around eleven.’

  Eleven? Eleven was when I would be leaving. I tried not to let this show on my face as I said, ‘OK, cool, yeah, I might be a bit earlier but not much. Late nights and pop stars don’t mix.’

  ‘Yeah they do,’ said Jaz.

  ‘Just, you know, with the single coming out and everything . . .’

  Jaz did this epic sigh. ‘All right, fine. Play it.’

  Another corner and now we were on the fast bit of road leading up to school, where all the trees hang low over the road and three years ago a bit of the bus roof got caught on one and came off. There were pictures all over the Harltree Gazette. I hadn’t thought about it at all since then but I did now. Because presumably I’d be on the front of the Harltree Gazette again soon. I was just as newsworthy as a broken bus. Maybe even more so.

  Except . . .

  ‘They still haven’t sent it to me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, wishing I’d had the sense to ask. ‘I’m probably going in again soon, though, to talk about the album and the tour and everything. They must be waiting for that.’

  ‘When?’ Funny how, when I wanted Jaz to listen, she never would. But the very second we got into stuff that I would rather have left alone, she grabbed and hung on and wouldn’t let go, like when next-door’s dog got under the fence and dug up the body of Manda’s hamster.

  ‘They haven’t said. Soon. It’s got to be soon. At the meeting Tony said time was really important. We have to keep up the momentum. You know how it is.’

  And then we were at school, or, to give its proper title, Savannah’s Pre-Party Warm-Up Zone.

  And if I’d had someone to get ready with later, then maybe I’d have been excited too.

  Me and Lacey were so good at getting ready for parties. The getting-ready part was always the best bit, too. Having Lace do my liquid eyeliner with flicky bits coming up at the ends and me glueing fake eyelashes on to her and once pretending one was a spider so she screamed and covered us both in a bowl of vegetable crisps. Trying on every last thing in whoever’s house we were at, or dancing to Beyoncé in our heels and tights.

  I wasn’t going to let this . . . thing . . . go on any longer, I decided. Being a celebrity was a lonely business and I didn’t want to end up in a humungous mansion all on my own, collecting shoes I couldn’t walk in and probably having a ton of plastic surgery because there wouldn’t be anyone around to tell me I shouldn’t.

  I’d sort it out at the party. Whether she wanted to or not.

  As it was, I did have someone to get ready with. A brown furry thing that came scuttling across the floor while I was trying to squeeze myself into Amanda’s green dress. For a second I thought it was a huge spider and then I realized it was either a mouse or a baby rat and that this was both better and also worse. Especially when I then saw a spider two minutes later, hanging next to the door.

  I pulled on my sparkly tights. It certainly was quicker, getting ready this way. Even the flicky eyeliner worked first time. I’d not yet got to the end of Single Ladies and I was hot to trot.

  Then, because it was still only half past seven and Jaz had made it clear that arriving at a party in the first hour is literally the most embarrassing thing anyone can do, I sat back down on my bed and contemplated going downstairs for something to eat. There were definitely fish fingers in the kitchen, and I thought I remembered a punnet of eggs, too. Not quite the chocolate fountains and candy floss and personalized pizzas that the rest of my form were currently enjoying. But then, like Jaz said, you don’t go to a party to eat. Or have fun.

  Exactly what you do go to a party for, she’d not said.

  I emptied my rucksack and began picking out bits to take with me; lip gloss, wallet, lipstick, tissues, tinted lip balm . . . It all just about fitted into my evening bag, which was by far the best thing I’d ever found in Harltree Oxfam: a shiny black leather purse with a proper metal chain, far too small to take anything more than basic make-up essentials, which made it completely impractical but also really lovely. I was just pushing everything else into a heap when I saw some gold writing. A piece of card. Tony’s card. With his phone number on it.

  And then the feeling that had been nagging me since my conversation with Jaz came creeping back.

  Why hadn’t Tony sent me my single? Especially when playing it at the party would absolutely sort everything out, once and for all.

  All right, not quite everything.

  But most of the important stuff.

  Well, it would make me look cool and really, everything else was just details.

  Could I ring him, and ask for it, on a Friday night?

  Bit much.

  But then, this was an emergency.

  Then – of course – I knew. I wouldn’t do anything stupid, like wait until Monday.

  I’d send him a text!

  Hey Tony, it’s Katie here. I was just wondering if my single was ready because if you could maybe send it to me I could play it at this party I’m going to tonight. Thanks! Katie xo

  The reply took forever to come. Long enough to decide that the ‘xo’ had definitely been a mistake. Long enough for me to pluck my eyebrows, then overpluck my eyebrows, then draw them back in again with an eyebrow pencil.

  Finally, when my lower forehead was at pretty much the limit of what it could take, I got:

  Katie, good to hear from you! Sorry, it’s still being mixed at the moment. Sounds terrific though. You’re going to love it. T

  Well, it was something. Straight away I texted back:

  I don’t mind playing whatever version you have! Also, you said I was touring soon . . . ? Where? Want to invite my friends! So excited! Kx

  Another eternity, this time long enough for me to apply nail varnish and let it almost dry and then check to see if it had dried with just the lightest touch of my thumb and ruin it.

  Will be in touch about that soon. Got some great venues lined up. Madison Square Gardens. The Hollywood Bowl. And heard of a little place called Wembley?

  The spider-mouse-rat finished doing whatever it had been doing down under my bed and zoomed off back across my rug.

  ‘Mands?’ I shouted. ‘Mands, are you there? I have news. Manda?!’

  Nothing. Just the drip-pl
unk noise of the hot water tank filling up.

  I looked in the mirror and said, over and over again, ‘You are going to be a star.’

  Somehow, I wasn’t quite feeling it.

  In the end, I got to Savannah’s at nine thirty. Which was interesting, because I’ve never turned up late to a party before. I’ve only ever seen the late turner-uppers, who’ve always seemed just awesomely cool.

  Perhaps I wasn’t doing it quite right, or maybe I simply wasn’t cool enough, because turning up late wasn’t as much fun as Jaz had made it sound.

  The tent was off the chart, of course, completely enormous and filling up most of Savannah’s massive garden, almost like a proper room with lights and speakers and everything.

  Only it wasn’t a room, quite. The air was simultaneously cold and hot and smelled of trampled grass. There was a small tree in the middle, which someone had covered with pink crêpe paper to try to disguise the fact that it was a tree. And you could hear the generator even over the stereo.

  Plus, for all her catering talk, Savannah’s not the biggest eater and she’d clearly massively under-ordered. The chocolate fountains had run dry, the cupcakes had gone and there weren’t even any crisps left.

  Now, here’s the thing.

  According to every film and TV show and every article ever, it’s stupid to feel ugly and awkward at a party. Because everyone else there might look as though they are having a great time. They might seem as if they are confident and relaxed and gorgeous and happy. But actually, deep down inside, they’re completely miserable and insecure and not enjoying themselves any more than you are.

  I’d always been a bit suspicious of this.

  And I have to say that Savannah’s party proved once and for all that it is A COMPLETE LOAD OF RUBBISH.

  I know this because I spent a full fifteen minutes closely observing everyone in that tent and they were all having the most marvellous time. Ignoring me.

  After an infinity of staring at Sofie’s streakily self-tanned back I gave up trying to penetrate the Savannah Circle and went and stood next to Devi Lester and his mates. He, at least, would be grateful for a little of the Katie Cox stardust.