Buch lesen: «And the Rainbow Hearts»

Chapter two

“No way. Not in a million zillion, trillion years. Nu-uh. No. Nada. Not a chance,” Bella picks up her electric guitar and without plugging it in, plays an annoying noise that hurts my ears a little bit.

It appears we have been brutally re-buffed.

It was to be expected, but I just hadn’t planned on it happening quite so early on in the whole ‘Project-Win-Bella-Over-So-We-Can-Meet-Tom Tootie’ proceedings.

But Project-Win-Bella-Over-So-We-Can-Meet-Tom Tootie was set to fail from the get-go.

Why?

Because in our initial excitement at seeing the ad in Missy, we had ran straight from my house to hers—it’s next door, so there wasn’t a whole lot of physical exertion involved—and just blurted out the need for the Pink Ladies to make a demo so we could meet Tom Tootie.

This was a huge faux pas. Y’see, Bella takes her music making VERY seriously. She wants to be the next Joan Jett. (JJ was this really cool guitar girl in the seventies and in the same way that I take props from retro film girls, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, Bella’s inspir-o girl is guitar goddess, Joan Jett): Now, in times of crisis or self-doubt, the Pink Ladies each have an inspiro-girl to who they utter the immortal words:

“What would____________(insert name of inspir-o girl here) do?”

Well it turns out that Joan Jett would not perform at a Missy gig. She would not want to meet what Bella terms as a ‘boyband’ and apparently, under no circumstances, would Joan Jett want to meet Tom Tootie either. Right now, Joan Jett is not my kinda girl.

Sadie and I pull our best glum-girl faces, complete with jutting bottom lips and everything, in the hope that it will be enough to change her mind. But we should never underestimate The Bella. She’s a tough cookie. She has a super-mellow-yellow side, that’s thanks to her yoga-dad who, as his title might suggest, is a bendy wendy yogini guru. But there is no denying that Bella is every inch the punk rock princess she claims to be. Today for example, her look says it all. She is working a must-have rock girl snarl painted with a thick slick of Gwen Stefani red lipstick and is wearing a Sadie-made tutu with big chunky black boots and a Care Bear t-shirt. Let’s face it, a girl this cool was never going to agree to Tom Tootie Time, was she?

I almost kick myself at not taking time out to really think this through, but I didn’t, ‘coz that would hurt. Sadie, seeing that Bella is not planning to budge on her decision anytime soon, resigns herself to a future filled with No-Tom-Tootie-Time and sulks. As in legs crossed, arms folded, real-life sulking.

This is a first.

Sadie is usually a total ball of fun-filled energy and fabulousness, no matter what. But it seems that everyone, including Sweet Sadie, has something that makes them glum. I have to admit that I too was feeling a li’l un-pink, but despite suffering from Tom Tootie fever too, I was actually more upset about the idea that we weren’t going to rock it up.

Hold up, I’m a pink-thinkin’ genius—that’s it! If only I had thought of this earlier, Miss Sades would not be glum and Bella would not be playing that really annoying noise that is still coming from her guitar. Y’see, since our one-night-only appearance as The Pink Ladies, Bella has had big plans for a girl-rock revolution.

Which we would front, natch.

Now Sadie and Bella used to be in a band with Jo-Jo, a Japanese version of Emily Strange. She was a bit scary-looking because her punk-girl snarl was a permanent one. Her family run a yummy-scrummy Japanese restaurant in town and they made her give up the band to work in the shop with them in her spare time. Bella kept threatening to bust her out under the cover of darkness, but every time we went to eat there, Jo-Jo seemed so un-snarly and nearly even happy, that Bella decided against it. But Jo-Jo’s departure left a guitar-shaped space in the band, and Bella says that if I keep practicing, she really thinks I could fill it. I am all about rocking out. I love it, in fact, I plan on getting so good I get to do a really screechy guitar solo—that’s the stuff of my pink-tinted dreams.

“Bell, can you stop a minute, please?” I ask, trying to make it sound like a simple request and not a desperate plea from the noise police. Surprisingly, she does.

“If it’s about meeting your boyband Lo, I don’t want to hear it.”

Oh.

“No, it’s not,” I lie, only a teeny weeny li’l white one. “I do want to talk about the band though, our band.”

Bella puts her guitar down. Ok, she means business. I better make this good. “So, sock it to me, kiddo,” She’s American-o, she says crazy things like that all the time.

“I L-O-V-E being on stage, Bell,” I tell her, channelling the very best persuasive Marilyn Monroe to help me deliver a prize-winning performance. “I know we’ve only done it once, but I loved looking out at the audience and seeing people clapping and cheering, I loved making a pretty noise with my guitar, but most of all I had loved looking across the stage and seeing my BFFs.” I paused. She seemed to be listening. “I remember thinking this is where I belong. Not necessarily on stage, although being on stage is a total high-energy buzz, no, I mean, three girls of total and utter amazingness—each totally different but when put together, make the perfect team. We rock, right?”

Sadie leaps to her feet and whoops in agreement coming over to hug us both but Bella stares right at me, her big eyes fix my gaze and I know she’s checking me out for fibs but that’s okay, there’s nothing to read because I actually really mean it.

“Right?” I ask again looking for confirmation.

Bella purses her lips and moves them from side to side as she thinks.

“I guess it would be good practice for you,” she ponders.

“Exactly!” I say trying not to show too much excitement. “And it would be great exposure for the Pink Ladies if we win too.”

Bella sat up. “What do you mean if we win?” she asks pulling her Debbie Harry platinum blonde hair into a tight pony-tail. “If we enter this competition, Lola Love, we will absolutely win!”

Bella’s positive ‘tude is one of the many reasons I adore her. She never entertains the idea that she might fail, yet if she did, fail that is, she’d pick herself up, dust herself off and start all over again. I love Bella. I love her even more now that she is entertaining the idea of Tom Tootie Time.

“So we are going to enter then, Bell?!” Sadie asks, totally unable to hide the desperation from her face.

Bella, like every good scene-stealer should, allows for a rather dramatic timely pause before making her final announcement. “Yes.”

Sadie squeals with delight and I am beside myself with excitement as we all fall to the floor in a group hug.

“Wait, I haven’t finished yet,” Bella says, milking her moment for all she can get, “we enter on the basis that I get to choose the band name, ok?”

I kinda liked The Pink Ladies, I thought it had a real ring to it but this was no Grease movie re-run. This was the next exciting instalment of My Movie, Starring Me, Lola Love. A movie that was to be filled with guitars, Tom Tootie and pink hairdye.

“You’re on!” I tell her.

Chapter three

So far, so not so good.

I am not yet able to even tick the first thing off on my Tom Tootie Time to-do list.

This is a sad, sad state of affairs.

It should be simple. Gather gal-pals, form a band. Tick off list. Move on to item number two. At no point was item one ever meant to be difficult. In fact, like I said, it should be stupidly simple.

Well, not if you’re Lola Love apparently. Because if she of the pink-tinted disposition, she being me, obviously, thought getting Bell on board was tough, well I hadn’t reckoned on the curveball that is Angel.

Now Angel, by her own omission, is an attention-demanding diva. It’s actual real-life factuality. She’ll happily tell anyone who’ll listen how fabulous she is. Not in a big-headed way, just in a ‘I’m completely cool with who I am’ way. And if they’re not listening, she’ll shout a li’l louder until they do. When she walks into a room, people look at Angel. Yes, she’s got an afro the size of my house, and yes, she wears outfits straight out the pages of high-end fashion magazines, but it’s not just that. It’s the fact that she can demand attention without saying a world, that, mes amies, is star quality and that makes her pretty dang awesome, right?

Wrong.

Well it does, except for when she uses all that head-swishin’ ‘tude of hers to tell you that her Tambourine Queen performance was strictly a one-off and it was not something she planned to repeat in the foreseeable future.

“No way, Lo,” she said. ‘I don’t do rock.”

I really hadn’t seen that coming. I thought Angel would be as excited as me about being in a band. We’ve always wanted to do the same things together, always. We always wore the same matching jumper and long knee-high socks in our first year at school together. We both ate marmalade sandwiches by eating the crusts off first. We both think spending an entire weekend watching My Super Sweet Sixteen in our pjs is a doable option. We have always always always liked the same things. Well, except for now that is, and if I’m honest, I didn’t like how it was making my belly feel.

I persevered because, c’mon, this is Angel we’re talking about, of course she wanted to be in a band really, who didn’t? But so talented in the field of head-swishing is Angel, that she is even able to do it over the phone.

“But Angel,” I had pleaded, when I rang her up for the fifth time to try to persuade her, “if, I mean, when we win, we’ll get to meet Tom Tootie, it’ll be ah-mazing!”

“Tom who?” she replied nonchalantly.

The funniest thing is, she wasn’t even being funny.

What Angel may have in fashion know-how, she totally lacks in music 101.

“Tom Tootie, y’know from the band The Tootie? Hence the name and all…”

The line went silent for nearly an entire minute as she searched the million really important fashion designers and brand names that filled her pretty little head. “Nope, never heard of them.”

Seriously, what do they teach these people at boarding school? Angel’s parental is paying big bucks for her to be there. I wonder how he’d feel if he knew his only daughter was missing out on a hugely significant part of her cultural teen experience by not knowing who Tom Tootie is? It should be against the law, it really, really should.

Okay, so if the promise of meeting Tom Tootie wasn’t enough to make her join the band, I had one last trick up my rather cute pink cardi sleeve. If this didn’t work then nothing would.

“You can totally be centre stage!” There. I said it. I couldn’t have delivered the line any better than if I was Audrey Hepburn herself in the movie Roman Holiday.

“I could? Even though I’d just be shaking a tambourine?” It seemed to work, as Angel’s tone had changed from total indifference to one of slight perky interest.

Of course, I had not run this whole ‘centre stage’ business past Bella yet, but surely, she wouldn’t mind, would she? She’s all about the music. If all the attention is on Angel, she can concentrate on delivering a kick-ass performance. And she’ll have a guitar solo. A really long one that will show any potential record makin’ dude or dudess that she is indeed the best guitar playin’ girl they will ever see.

I was beyond certain that I could win Bella over, and right at that moment, I wanted more than anything for my BFF to be in my band and putting her centre stage would make that happen, I just know it.

“Yes, yes, yes!” I say not thinking about Bell’s response right now. “What’s not to love about a tam-tam playing fashionista?” I tell her. “It would be a total unique selling point, for sure! C’mon Angel-cakes, whadya say?”

“I don’t know Lo, I really don’t think being in a band is…y’know, really my thing.”

I sigh. What’s it going to take to make it her ‘thing’? “What if you were in charge of wardrobe design too?”

It’s all I had left, and while I may be stepping on Sadie’s super-cute tippy-toes, what with her being the customising design-o girl of the group, I just knew that she’d be okay if it meant we got a band together and got that much sought after Tom Tootie Time.

“Okay Lo-Lo, I’m in! I’m back at the weekend—get the girls together, we’re going shopping!”

Hurrah.

Form a band

Me, Angel, Bella and Sadie