“I saw it last night,” Lucy explained. “Mum and Dad, me and Ben went out for dinner at Luigi’s, and it was there in the shop window next door, staring at me.”
“Special occasion, was it?” I asked, hoping Lucy might say something like: “Ben needed cheering up because Jasmine dumped him on the phone last night.”
“Mum’s fortieth birthday,” Lucy told us.
My birthday radar went beep-beep-beep. “What did you get her?” I asked eagerly. “I’m looking for something really special for my nan’s sixtieth.”
“Tea towels,” Lucy said.
“Tea towels?” Mel repeated. “Man, I hope I don’t get given tea towels when I’m forty.”
“They were special ones,” Lucy protested as I burst out laughing. “She did ask for them – honest!”
We were walking down Foxton Row, the best street in Hartley for gorgeous fashion. I stared around at the windows with a sigh of pleasure. There was so much to look at. Millions of ideas swooshed around in my head as I looked at what was on display.
“We’re not going in here!” Mel spluttered as Lucy stopped outside Forever Summer – the chicest and most expensive boutique on the street – that just happens to belong to Summer Collins’ dad.
“Course not,” said Lucy, sounding shocked. “I just need to fix my shoelace!”
Our budget was a lot less than the cheapest thing in Forever Summer. Lucy hurried us on around the corner. Standing beside Luigi’s Pizzeria was a little charity shop that often had quirky things on its rails.
“There,” Lucy said breathlessly.
“Good choice, Lu!” I said, staring at the little jacket that hung on the window dummy.
“And only four ninety-nine,” said Mel, staring at the label approvingly. “That’s my kind of bargain.”
Charity shops rock. You always find unusual stuff that no one else has got, they’re cheap and you’re doing your bit for charity. Win-win, as my dad would say.
We went in and Lucy tried on the jacket. It looked even better on her than I had hoped. It was a pale blue linen, with short flared sleeves and a wide tiebelt. It looked like it dated back to the sixties, but was so totally now.
“Put it over a long-sleeved white tee and jeans,” I suggested, as Lucy twirled around the shop. “You’ll look super-cool, but not overdressed. Perfecto!”
“Overdressed would be better than not dressed at all,” Mel said suddenly, her eyes widening as she caught sight of the clock over the till. “It’s eleven o’clock already, guys. We’ve only got an hour to get back to Lucy’s, get Lucy changed and get her to The Music Place!”
As Lucy squealed and paid for the jacket extra fast, Mel glanced at me and raised her eyebrows. I patted the large rucksack I was carrying and winked.
When Lucy had refused to let us join her on her date with Frankie, me and Mel had come up with a different plan. Secrecy was essential if it was going to work. But if it did work, whatever Frankie Wilson was planning wouldn’t get past us. Me and Mel were on Mate On Date Alert.
Six
“I…think…I’m…going…to…die…” I wheezed, collapsing against the wall outside Lions’ Walk forty-five minutes later. “I’ve got a stitch and my T-shirt’s all gross and sweaty!”
Lucy looked at the rucksack I had dumped on the pavement. “No wonder you’re out of breath,” she said. “That thing looks like it weighs a ton. What’s in there, Coleen?”
“Just stuff,” I said quickly. I really didn’t want Lucy looking at my rucksack too closely. It held the key to me and Mel’s big plan.
“The main thing is that we made it,” Mel said before Lucy could ask any more tricky questions. “You look fantastic, Lu, and we’re even fifteen minutes early. How about that?”
It was true. Lucy looked totally brilliant, even after pegging it from the bus stop in record time. We’d done her hair in these two cute bunches, and her eyes were all sparkly from running. I would like to think that I looked sparkly-eyed too, but one glance in the nearest shop window told me that I was bright red in the face.
“I’m getting really nervous now,” Lucy giggled, tweaking her bunches. “Will you come in with me – until Frankie gets here?”
“Sure, Lu. But don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” I panted. “Trust us.”
“We’ll make sure of it,” Mel whispered to me as we walked into the shopping arcade together. “Right, Coleen?”
“Right.”
Lions’ Walk was built in the sixties. It’s not the prettiest place you ever saw, but someone recently had the bright idea of painting the shops all different colours. Now it feels like stepping inside a crazy rainbow. It has some brilliant shops that are all way cheaper than Foxton Row, and what’s not to like about that?
Today, the whole place had that fab Saturday buzz. People were strolling about carrying bags, chatting to mates, laughing and talking on their phones.
The Music Place was about halfway down the mall. Back when it had been plain Vinny’s Vinyl, the shop front had been painted black. I guess it had been cool once, but it had got dead tatty. Now it was a rocking red, with a huge cream and black coloured sign with The Music Place written in this funky sixties lettering hanging over the big glass doors.
Inside there were two different levels. The lower bit had these cream-coloured listening booths with swing doors like changing rooms all lined up along the back wall, which was painted a maroon colour. Computer stations stood at the far end, and the rest of the floor was filled with racks of CDs and DVDs. Then you went up these steps to the café, which stood on its own level behind shiny chrome railings. The tables and chairs were all bright red, the floor was black and white, and this gorgeous multicoloured old Wurlitzer jukebox stood in pride of place beside the counter.
“Wow!” Mel gasped as we gawped around like tourists. “This place looks so different!”
“It’s brilliant,” I said happily.
Lucy dashed to the CD racks while Mel went to check out the computers. I walked to the back of the store and peeped inside one of the listening booths. Two sets of headphones hung beside two tall swivelly stools covered in shiny white material. A CD player was built into the wall.
“Try before you buy,” said a voice behind me. “Choose a CD in the store and come and listen to it with a friend. It’s the way we always used to do it.”
I turned round to see a plump old man with white hair that stuck up like a dandelion clock, smiling at me over the swing doors.
“It’s a great idea,” I said.
“The old ideas are always the best ideas,” said the man. “When I first opened this place, we had booths. Then they went out of fashion. I’m so glad my son has decided to bring back a touch of the old days.”
“Are you Vinny?” I asked cautiously. “As in, Vinny’s Vinyl?”
“Vincent O’Hara, at your service,” said the old man. “My son runs this place now I’ve retired.”
“My nan used to come here in the sixties,” I said, stroking one of the white plastic stools.
“Maybe she sat on that very stool,” Mr O’Hara laughed. “We brought them out of retirement for the store’s new look. They’ve been in my garage for over thirty years, and they look as good as new, don’t they?”
“They’re really cool,” I agreed.
Fashion could be very weird sometimes, I decided as Mr O’Hara gave me a little wave and disappeared. It was hard to believe that these gorgeous stools had once been so uncool that they’d been stuck in a garage. I was really glad they were back again.
Mel’s head appeared over the swing doors of the booth. “Five to twelve, Coleen,” she said urgently. “Lucy’s getting restless.”
Lucy had found a place at one of the café tables. A pile of about ten sugar lumps stood in a little tower on the table in front of her.
“What if he doesn’t come?” she gabbled, adding another sugar lump to her tower. “What if he’s forgotten? What if—”
“Chill, Lucy,” I said. “Every
thing’s going to be fine.”
“We’ll just – er – pop around the shops for a bit,” said Mel, shooting me a glance. “We’ll come back later. OK?”
“OK, thanks,” Lucy whispered, fiddling frantically with the sugar lumps. “Oh…”
“She’s losing it,” Mel whispered to me as we both bent down to pick up the scattered sugar lumps off the floor. It was two minutes to twelve.
“See you then, Lu!” I said, giving my green-faced mate a cheerful wave. “Have a great time! I’m sure Frankie’ll be here any minute!”
Me and Mel made a big thing of heading for the doors. Then, as Lucy bent down to get her bag off the floor, we sprinted for The Music Place’s toilets instead.
“Do you think she saw us?” Mel panted.
“Hope not,” I grinned back, upending my rucksack on to the washbasin counter.
Two hats, two pairs of sunglasses, a black tee, a blue shirt and a blonde wig fell out.
“You can have the wig,” Mel said, wriggling into the black T-shirt. She grabbed my hairbrush and pulled it through her crazy curls until she had more or less got her hair flat enough to slip under the black trilby I’d brought.
I yanked on the wig and checked myself out in the mirror. “I’ve always wanted to be blonde,” I said happily. “Em gave me this as a joke for Christmas. I can’t believe I’m actually going to wear it!”
“A bit too Summer Collins for my liking,” Mel joked. “Here, put this on.” She passed me the baseball cap, which I tugged over the wig. Then I buttoned up the blue shirt and and admired the result in the mirror.
“We look totally different,” Mel said, twirling beside me. “So long as we don’t catch her eye, there’s no way Lu’ll spot us. This is an excellent idea, Col.”
“Cheers,” I said modestly, cramming on one pair of sunglasses and handing Mel the other. “Now, let’s hang around the CD racks and try not to look obvious, yeah?”
Lucy was still on her own at the table. I checked my watch. Five past. We sidled out of the ladies and up to the Jazz section, discreetly eyeing both the front door and the café every now and again.
“Ten past,” Mel said in a low voice over the top of a CD with some dude in sunnies and an old saxophone on the front. “He’s not coming.”
“Yes he is,” I said in excitement. “Look!”
Frankie was jogging down the mall towards The Music Place, checking his watch.
“Wonders will never cease,” said Mel, looking gobsmacked as Frankie pushed open the door of the The Music Place and looked around.
One-nil to Coleen and her faith in humankind! I thought to myself. “I told you it would be OK, Mel,” I said triumphantly.
Lucy half-rose from her seat and waved to get Frankie’s attention. And then it all went wrong.
“SuckER!” Frankie crowed, pointing at Lucy and bursting into raucous laughter. He backed out of The Music Place, ran off down Lions’ Walk and disappeared from sight.
The Music Place doors swung shut with the clang of doom. Lucy burst into tears as the other customers gawped. And as me and Mel pulled off our hats and raced over to our mate, I knew I’d just seen the cruellest trick in the world.
Lu didn’t comment on the way we’d changed our clothes. She didn’t seem to notice my blonde wig either, which tells you what kind of state she was in.
“I…I…I…” she sobbed. “He…he…he…”
“C’mon, Lu,” I said as gently as I could. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Frankie Wilson is a snot-filled, zit-splattered, greasy-haired flea,” Mel spluttered as we helped Lucy out of The Music Place. “We should never have trusted him!”
“Let’s go back to mine,” I suggested. “Mum’ll do us tea and biscuits. A bit of custard cream first aid, yeah?”
“And a nice long list of the ways we’re gonna get back at the flea,” Mel added. “No one treats a mate of ours like that and gets away with it!”
“We’ll start by coating his socks in superglue,” I said, squeezing Lucy tightly round the shoulders.
“And putting maggots in his lunchbox,” Mel snarled.
“And telling everyone at school that he’s got nits,” I said.
Mel stabbed the air with her finger. “And writing in massive chalk letters all over the playground: Frankie Wilson’s breath stinks.”
Me and Mel went on like this the whole way back to mine. It’s amazing how many horrible tricks you can think of when you want to. Lucy just hung her head and let us babble on. She never said a word.
“And finally,” I said with a flourish as I pushed open our front door, “we’ll put some of Em’s special muscle rub in his gym shorts. It burns like crazy. Frankie Wilson’ll be hopping all over the place in total agony.”
“Right on,” Mel agreed.
“Whatever,” Lucy said dully.
It was the first thing Lucy had said since leaving The Music Place. OK, so it wasn’t much. But it was a start.
“Mum!” I called, dropping my keys on the hall table. “Dad? Em? Anyone here?”
The house was empty. I suddenly remembered: they were all at Em’s match.
The kitchen door creaked open, making us all jump.
“Hello Coleen, love,” said Nan, smiling at me. “And Mel and Lucy, isn’t it?”
Lucy sniffed and wiped her eyes.
Without missing a beat, Nan held open the kitchen door. “There’s a nice Battenburg in the cupboard,” she said as we trooped in, me and Mel still with our arms wrapped around Lucy. “A bit of cake’ll set you right.”
“It’ll take more than cake, Nan,” I sighed as we settled down at the table. And I told her the whole sorry story.
Telling Nan stuff always feels different to telling Mum. Mum’s sympathetic most of the time, but I always know she’s got half an eye on the stove, or Rascal, or Em’s homework, or one of the million other things mums always have to think about. Nan’s got the time to really listen, and it’s like she’s right there in the story with you. She held Lucy’s hand the whole way through.
“It sounds like this lad wants a reaction,” Nan said when I finished speaking. “Are you going to give him one when you see him on Monday?”
“You bet,” I said fiercely.
“He’ll get a reaction right where it hurts,” Mel agreed.
“So you’re going to give him what he wants?” Nan asked.
I frowned. “Is that a trick question?”
“Nothing tricky about it,” said Nan, cutting another slice of cake and sliding it on to Lucy’s plate. “Just something you might want to think about.”
We all munched our cake for a bit.
“Tell me what you thought of Vinny’s Vinyl,” Nan said into the silence. “Or should I say, The Music Place?”
“It was great,” Lucy said quietly. “But I don’t want to go back there for a bit.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” Nan said, squeezing her hand.
“I met the old owner,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Mr O’Hara, I think he said.”
Nan beamed. “Vinny O’Hara? He’s still there then?”
“His son runs it now,” I said. “And guess what? They’ve got the original stools in the listening booths again!”
“Those tall white ones?” Nan asked with delight. “Your Pops and I carved our initials underneath one of those stools.”
“Nan!” I said, shocked. “You never!”
Nan twinkled at me. “Tucked up high, where no one else could see,” she said. “I wonder if they’re still there?”
So did I. In fact, at that very instant I decided that I would go back to The Music Place and check out the stools for myself as soon as I could. I had just had the most brilliant idea for Nan’s birthday.
Mel and Lucy stayed till the sky was getting dark, listening to Nan and her stories. I swear, Nan can talk anyone out of the dumps. Lucy wasn’t exactly dancing on the table when she and Mel headed for home, but she was definitely more cheerful than she’d been
all afternoon.
“Thanks, Nan,” I said, giving her a hug. Nan’s tiny, like me, so we fitted together perfectly.
“Nothing to thank me for, love,” said Nan, stroking my hair. “Things’ll work themselves out, you know. They always do.”
The door jangled. Mum, Dad and Em swept into the hall on a gust of freezing cold air.
“What happened to you today, Coleen?” Mum asked, hanging up her coat. “That Wilson lad was asking where you were. He seemed ever so upset that you and the others weren’t at the match.”
What?
“I never want to hear Frankie Wilson’s name mentioned in this house again,” I snarled, to Mum’s astonishment. “Tomorrow, he’s toast.”
Seven
Avenging angels had nothing on me when Monday morning came around.
“And then he has the nerve to ask my mum why we weren’t at the footie!” I stormed at Mel and Lucy on the bus. “I know Nan meant well when she said we shouldn’t give Frankie a reaction, but I can’t not say anything. I just can’t.”
“Me neither,” Mel spat.
Lucy was looking practically green with terror at the thought of seeing Frankie in class. “What if he’s been telling everyone?” she whispered as the bus whooshed to a halt outside school. “I’ll never live it down.”
“We’ll get to him first,” I snarled. “And he’ll be the one who isn’t living.”
I was so focused on getting to that classroom in order to give Frankie ‘Flea’ Wilson a piece of my mind that I barely registered Ben and Jasmine arguing on the school steps.
“But, Jas…”
“You’re the most selfish boy I’ve ever met…”
The words floated into my ears, but then floated out again. You’d think words like that would have me jumping for joy, wouldn’t you? But today, I hardly heard them.
But as soon as we crashed through the doors of our form room and glared up and down, it was clear that Frankie wasn’t there.
“And you are…?” said the supply teacher sitting in Mr Andrews’ chair.
It’s quite hard to give your name when your nostrils feel like they’re full of steam. The supply teacher looked a bit alarmed as me and Mel snapped out our names and marched over to our places. Lucy trailed behind us, hiding behind her hair the way she always does when she’s worried.
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