Live and Fabulous! (9 page)

“Oooh, they all kill themselves, those artistic sorts,” Mum says. “I can't be doing with sensitive types.”

“No, I don't think he ...”

“Anyway, enough about suicide,” says Dad, picking up a copy of the Local
Daily Mercury
newspaper and opening it theatrically at the local sports pages at the back. “Now you're here, you can point out to your mum and me where you're standing in this group photo!”

“Eh?” I say.

“The Blackwell End-of-Year Sporting Achievements Round-up!” smirks Dad, reading the caption beneath a nauseating group shot of jocks and glossy-haired girls holding balls and bats.

“Ugggghh,” I sigh, tossing my hair moodily.

“Yeah! Where are you, love?” giggles Mum. “We've looked and looked! Which prize did you get?”

“Prize for invisibility!” guffaws Dad, holding the page up really close to his face. My mother's laughing so heartily by this point, she has to hold on to the kitchen table to steady herself.

“Shuttttup,” I groan.

“Special commendation for sulking!” Mum finally catches her breath to say, before collapsing in fits again.

“Right! That's it! I'm going to my boudoir,” I snap. “And I don't want to be disturbed.”

“Oh, well, nice chatting,” says Dad, wiping his eyes. “See ya when you next surface.”

“Oh, and no writing poetry while you're in there,” shouts Mum after me. “It's the slippery slope!”

“I won't, don't worry,” I assure her, flouncing away.

“Ooh, and Ronnie, before I forget,” says Dad, sticking his head around the kitchen door as I head for my room, “you got a letter today. Dunno who it's from.”

“Ooh, we never got that one steamed open, did we?” mutters Mum in the other room.

Dad winks, then begins searching about on the telephone table, passing me a package.

“Eh?” I say, looking at the bright red thick envelope with its glamorous London postmark.

“Oooh, come on then,” says Dad. “Open it!”

I grab the envelope and scurry into my lair.

After putting on my new Kings of Kong CD, I sit down on the bed and begin opening the letter. This is very irregular. Nobody writes to me, ever. As I tear open the outer package, I notice that inside the first large red envelope is a smaller, pale yellow envelope. Upon the yellow envelope, in ink, is written:

 

 

Weird. The yellow envelope feels as though it may have something chunky inside it. I put it to one side and concentrate on the piece of white paper. A letter! As I begin reading, my breathing becomes unsteady and my heart begins to beat a big hole through my chest. It says.

 

Errrrrrr, eh? What on earth is going on?

Kari who?! And Spike who?

Spike?

SPPPPPPIKE! !

Nooooooo, she can't possibly mean the Spike Saunders!? I read the letter again, then another time looking for any evidence that this might be a hoax from Liam Gelding or some other satanic being.

But the letter looks very, very genuine.

I grab the yellow envelope and carefully rip it open, reaching inside, suddenly feeling a strong urge to go to the toilet.

Is it possibly possible, even in a parallel wonky universe, that Spike “so beautiful it actually hurts, multimillionaire, Duke of Pop” Saunders actually remembers meeting the LBD (or the BDL, as he puts it) last year, and has got his personal assistant to send us something?

Surely not.

From the yellow envelope, I pull out four, thick, shiny gilt-edged pieces of paper with a silver hologram of a tent perched upon a hill glittering on each one. And then I gaze at them, totally spellbound by their majestic beauty.

In my hands!

Four “with compliments of Spike Saunders” Astlebury Festival tickets!!!

I look at them and begin to laugh.

And then I begin to really roar.

And then I lie back on my bed and laugh so flipping much, I actually begin to cry.

“I knew it! I knnnnnnnew it!” squeals Fleur Swan, clapping her hands and jumping around her bedroom, causing her
Mega Beats and Breaks
CD to skip and legions of teddies to rain down from the top of her bulging wardrobes. “I knew it!”

“So ... they're ... for ... us?” says Claudette Cassiera slowly, with a look of total dumbfoundment, clutching the four tickets. “They're, like, really for us?”

“Yes!” I say. “They're for us. Reeee-ally, really all for us! Spike Saunders remembered meeting us! He sent us some tickets!”

“No ... they can't be for us,” says Claude, wrestling with the nonlogic of the situation. “It's probably a mail mix-up and ... it's probably ...”

“No, Claude. Believe me,” I say. “I called the number and spoke to a girl called Jo in the Funky Monkey offices. The tick ets are totally, nonnegotiably for us! We were put on the guest list.”

“I knew it!” squeaks Fleur for the twenty-eighth time, her voice especially triumphant this time. “I knew Spike Saunders fancied me!”

Fleur pirouettes past us with a euphoric smile, then leaps up onto her bed and begins to bounce, shouting in time with each jump: “Spike ... Saunders ... fancies ... me!”

And then, in a posher, more hoity-toity accent: “Well, helllloooooo there, Ronnie and Claude! I'm Mrs. Fleur Saunders ! Soooooo terribly pleased to meet you!”

And then, eventually: “Ha, back atcha Jimi Steeeeeele! Stick that up your trouser leg and smoke it, flobberlips! The LBD are going to Astlebury!”

I shake my head, suppressing a giggle. Fleur is not making this situation any less surreal.

“So, they're really for us!?” says Claude yet again, her hazel eyes as wide as dinner plates. “It doesn't seem possible! This is just like the part of a totally scrummy dream when it gets so good that you wake up and realize you're just in bed all along.” Claude looks at the tickets again, the silver holograms transforming slightly as she moves them. “It's just .. :”

“Amazing?!” I laugh.

“It's just ... ,” says Claude breathily, “the best thing that has ever happened to us in the whole history of the world ever! I mean, Spike Saunders must meet a zillion people every year! And those tickets are worth hundreds of pounds! It's just incrrrrredible!”

“I knooooooow!” I laugh, and we throw our arms around each other and jump up and down. (We'd have included Fleur in this LBD hug, but she seemed just as content bouncing and squawking on her bed.)

I'll give Fleur Swan her due here: She may be as mad as a hat stand, but she did predict that something amazing would happen if we asked our parents about Astlebury. I do love her sometimes.

“I'm going to mail Spike's message board tomorrow and tell him we're coming!” yells the squeaky blonde. “And go on the Astlebury website to find out where all the coolest people camp! Oh God, and I totally need my hair cut before we go, don't I? Ooh, have I got time? Claude, pass the calendar! Hey, and we'll have to travel down on the Friday morning, won't we? Because that's when the gates open! I mean, the bands aren't beginning till Saturday, but all the cool boutiques and small stages open on Friday! And the campfire parties all start on Friday night! And ...” Fleur is just gabbling now. “Oh my Lord! I don't fancy those festival porta-toilets, do you?! I'm not going to wee for the whole weekend! Or go to sleep! Oh my God, this is sooo great!”

I'm beginning to feel quite dizzy just watching her. There is so much to plan! When I look back at Claude, she's slumped on Fleur's futon, looking quite perplexed.

“What's up, Claude?” I say. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I'm more than okay, Ronnie, I'm wonderful,” says Claude. “I'm just, er, thinking ... look, Fleur, get down, I think we need to talk.”

“But I'm bouncing!” says Fleur, bouncing.

“We've still got a glitch to sort out,” Claude says.

“Pah! Spoilsport,” chuckles Fleur, climbing down. “This is sooooo excellent, though, isn't it?!”

“Yep!” I say. “Majorly excellent!”

You can tell that Claude would like to enjoy this moment, but I also know that two minutes' frivolity is all her brain allows before getting logical.

“Okay, so this is all totally fantastic,” says Claude. I can hear the “but” coming here. “But we've still got a teensy-weensy problem that needs to be ironed out.”

“Noooo ... Our problems are over! We have tickets!” says Fleur, grinning from ear to ear.

“Well, nearly over,” says Claude. “Look, I'm not trying to wee on the LBD bonfire here by being negative, but let's recap. None of our parents knows about these freebie tickets yet, do they?”

“Nah. Only us,” I say.

“So, despite the fact that Spike Saunders has officially invited us to a festival, we still need to get permission to go, don't we?”

“Yeah. I suppose so,” I say.

I've been quietly blocking this from my mind for the past few hours. You see, the free ticket/Spike Saunders hoopla was so fabulous, I suppose I was also hoping that magic dust might make the parents vanish.

“Oh, permission, permission!” scoffs Fleur, wrinkling her tiny freckled nose. “Look, let's ask the mumbly-grumblies, and if they all say no again, well, let's just go anyway! Come on! We only live once, don't we? Spike would be offended if we didn't go!”

Claude rolls her eyes. Sometimes it's almost like Fleur has just met Claude that very second.

“Yes, Fleur,” says Claude, “because leaving Astlebury Festival under police escort because our school pictures have been plastered all over Sky News as missing children would be totally noncringeworthy, wouldn't it?”

Fleur stops in her tracks and goes quite, quite pale. That is exactly the sort of humiliating stunt that Paddy Swan would pull. No question about it.

“Oh, bum cracks to them all!” says Fleur. “Well, I'm not letting anything get in the way of this one. We'll
have
to get the go-ahead. Somehow. Won't we, girls?”

“Yeah. Somehow,” I say rather weakly.

Claude says nothing. But then we all know that Gloria Cassiera is the candidate most likely to balls this up with a divine decline.

“Look, if you two can go and I can't, you'll just have to go without me,” says Claude genuinely. “I'll be okay. I'll just watch the highlights on MTV and ...”

“No way, Claudette!” says Fleur. “We all go together or not at all. That's the rule, isn't it?”

“Yep, together or not at all,” I repeat. “That was the point of Astlebury, wasn't it? An LBD adventure?” I grab Claudette's tiny brown hand and squeeze it. “We're not leaving you, C. That's the law.”