“Where’s your mobile?” I ask, realising that there was no point in arguing with Bella, once she had her mind set on something, there really was no stopping her.
“Err, Lola, does this outfit look like it could accommodate a mobile?” she tuts. I scan Bella up and down. She really was just wearing an oversized tee, boots and an excessive amount of pearls, so no, apparently not.
Having found Sadie’s number, Bella presses the green button and puts it on loudspeaker.
After three rings, Sadie’s voice fills my room.
“Hey Lola, how you doing?” she asks, not realising my phone has been hijacked by Bella.
“So, Sadie,” Bella pipes up, “Lo has something she wants to tell you.”
I wave my hands at Bella, mouthing the word ‘no’ to make her stop, but it’s too late.
“Oh? What’s that? Sadie asks.
“Look, Sades,” Bella jumps in, not letting me even try to make this sitch sweeter, seriously, that girl really has no patience sometimes.
“Lo, has been offered an internship at Missy magazine…”
“No way!” screams Sadie. “That’s AMAZING!”
Okay, it was now or never, I took a big gulp of air and swallowed hard.
“Well, it would be,” I begin, “except it’s in the school holidays, like, next week, which means it’ll clash with the Sadie Soiree.”
I chew hard on my lip, Bella has found her nail varnish incredibly fascinating all of a sudden and Cat struts past with her nose in the air and a defiant look on her face.
The line goes silent and stays that way for what seems like a whole lot of forever.
“Look Sades, it’s no biggie,” I say breaking the silence. “I’ll email the ed-girl back and ask if I can intern another time.” Sadie is the official organiser of fun and I really, really don’t want to rain on her fun-time-Frankie parade.
“C’mon, she doesn’t have to do that, does she Sadie?” Bella asks. “Take MeSuki for example…”
As well as our band, The Rainbow Hearts, Bella is in another band called MeSuki. They formed when Suki came into J’adore, the shop Bella works in wearing a badge that said ‘wanna be in my band?’ Bella asked her who her band was exactly, and the girl replied, ‘Me, Suki!’ Ever since then Bella and Suki meet every month and make experimental electro-noise. Suki on keyboard and Bella on guitar. They’ve never played an actual gig or anything, but that’s okay. It’s just something Bella likes to do.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to be in The Rainbow Hearts,” continues Bella. “It’s just that MeSuki was a chance for me to try something new, to experiment with my passion for music. Just like this internship will give Lo-Lo the opportunity to explore her passion for writing, you’re cool with that aren’t you, Sades?”
“Of course,” Sadie says finally, “Look, I’m not going to pretend we won’t miss you Lola, because we will, but this is huge, of course you’ve got to do it. Carpe Diem!”
“Carp de what?” Bella exclaims.
“It means seize the day, Bella!” Sadie tuts. “Jeez Louise, do they teach you nothing at that school of yours?” We all laugh because Bella doesn’t go to a real school, she’s home-schooled by Yoga Dad.
I know. We’re super-jealous too. No uniform. No long division. More importantly, no Evil Eva Satine to heckle you in the playground.
Bella says that home-schooling is much harder than going to real school, but seriously, Sadie and I are still not entirely convinced.
“Are you absolutely sure you’re cool about this Sadie?” I ask hoping and wishing really hard that she meant what she had just said.
“Of course I am, Lola” Sadie confirms. “This is big stuff in Lola’s land of pink fabulousness, it would be rude and wrong of you NOT to go!”
I thank each and every one of my lucky pink-tinted stars that I’ve got such incredibly amazing friends.
“And to show you how totally cool I am about it, why don’t we have a cupcake bake here at mine on Sunday?”
“Sounds great, Sadie. Thank you so much, love you!” I say, feeling my insides fill up with the total loveliness that comes with having caring, sharing gal-pals who know what’s important to you.
“Love you too, see you Sunday—mwooah!”
I press the red button on my mobile, sit down next to Bella and rest my head on her shoulder.
Happy days.
This moment of girlkind bliss is rudely interrupted by a parental that appears to have lost the ability to knock, standing, hands-on-hip in my doorway.
The parental said yes.
No really, she did.
And I think, although I can’t be 100% sure, that she might even have been a little bit proud of me in her own hard-to-spot way.
Chica, I’m just as shocked as you are, but it seems Aunt Lullah is able to cast her special kind of fabulous magic all the way from NYC.
Lullah spoke with her BFF Skye, who is adorable and cute and basically a black-haired version of Lullah. They were just like two-peas-in-a-pod at University and in the holidays, Skye would come down to the coast to escape the big city. That’s why I think that when Skye rang to speak to the parental, the parental instantly agreed to let me go. She knows Skye, she’s met her and actually really likes her, which is really good news for me. And guess what? Not only is Skye super-lovely and nice and liked by the parental, she’s also editor at a new magazine based in the same building as Missy. I didn’t even know she was an ed-girl! So now I’ll be working with super cool ed-girl Tori by day, and I’ll be staying with super-cool ed-girl Skye at night, it’ll be inspir-o-girl city-hurrah!
IM to self
Q. Could life be any more fabulous?
A. No.
I’d been so ready to practise the new-found parental persuasion skills that I’d learned from an episode of this American-o show called Dr Grill, that I was the teeniest tiniest bit disappointed when I didn’t get to try them out for size. It had been a great episode too, with Dr Grill, who’s not a cook btw, but actually an agony uncle type dude, giving bratty American-o teens with ‘issues’, failsafe ways to get their parents to ‘understand’ them. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought the Mothership had watched it too, because getting her to agree to let me go was much less painful than I could ever, ever have imagined. Turns out that Lullah + Skye + Yoga Dad’s bendy-wendy, zen-like presence = a near normal parental able to make rational decisions that may change the course of her daughter’s future for the better.
Now that’s an equation that makes me think Maths might not be all that bad after all.
So you’d think I’d be worry-free, right?
Wrong.
My only real concern should have been creating a day-by-day outfit plan and figuring out how I could be the best intern-girl that Missy has ever seen, but there was still the smallest niggle in the back of my mind that I was letting Sadie and the Pink Ladies down.
Y’see, school breaks are the only time