Rock that Frock!. Coleen McLoughlin

       Two

      “Coleen!” Mum shouted up the stairs. “Bed, now!” I stared hopelessly at the mountains of paper that lay all over my bedroom floor. I’d started about a million songs since tea and hadn’t got past the second or third line for each one. I mean, have you ever tried to find a rhyme for “orange”? Forget it! Even “love” is tough to rhyme after a bit.

      “Love is a dove in a glove,” I said mournfully, staring at my latest creation. “I don’t think so.”

      Mum knocked on the door. “It really is time for bed, Coleen,” she said. “You’ve got school in the morning.”

      “Do you think ‘enough’ rhymes with ‘love’?” I asked hopefully.

      “Not really,” said Mum, trying to be kind.

      “I’ve got to write a song if we’re going to win the Battle of the Bands trophy,” I said as I pushed back my chair and wandered reluctantly over to my bed. “But it’s way harder than it looks.”

      “You’ve still got to get through the qualifying round, haven’t you?” Mum pointed out. “Don’t you think you should be worrying about that first?”

      “I want to be prepared,” I yawned, snuggling down.

      “Prepare for school by sleeping,” Mum advised, tucking me in. “Night, love.”

      Something niggled vaguely in the back of my head as I tried to settle down and stop rhyming things in my mind – something I should have done…But I was too tired to work it out. I slid into a weird dream-world of doves in gloves instead. It wasn’t the most restful night of my life.

      “Earth to Coleen!” Mel poked me in the side ten minutes into our maths lesson the following day. “Anyone in there?”

      “Hmph?” I said, my eyes flying open.

      “You fell asleep, didn’t you?” Lucy said, looking at me with wide eyes.

      “This is maths,” Mel pointed out. “You can see Coleen’s point.”

      “Of course I didn’t fall asleep,” I said at once, though I had a nasty feeling that I had. “I was just – daydreaming.”

      “Coleen?” Mr Hughes the maths teacher was looming over me, holding out his hand and looking at me in this enquiring way.

      “Hi, Mr Hughes,” I said, shaking his hand. I was still only half awake, to tell the truth. The class roared with laughter. It took me a couple of seconds to work out what was so funny.

      “Your homework, Coleen,” Mr Hughes repeated. “Do you have it for me?”

      The bell of doom rang through my head with a mighty bonnggg. Last night’s niggling thought…homework! Everything flooded back to me. We were supposed to work out percentages on a list of revised recipes – you know the kind of thing, how much extra fruit you have to add to an apple pie to make it stretch to six people instead of four like the recipe said. I’d planned to do it on Sunday night. But the Battle of the Bands poster had totally knocked it out of my head. And I’d wasted my Sunday night thinking about doves in gloves.

      “You know, Mr Hughes,” I said, desperately fishing around for a decent excuse, “there’s a funny story about my homework.”

      “Don’t tell me,” said Mr Hughes. “Your dog ate it.”

      Summer Collins wasn’t even pretending not to laugh. She and her mates were cackling like chickens as I felt my face flood with heat. Mel and Lucy gazed sympathetically at me as I floundered about.

      “Not exactly,” I mumbled. “I mean, Rascal did once eat ten quid out of Dad’s wallet so he obviously likes the taste of paper – but…well…the truth is…”

      “You didn’t do it,” Mr Hughes said with a sigh. “Am I right?”

      I could see it was no good. “Yes, sir,” I said sheepishly.

      Mr Hughes shook his head. “I’m sorry, Coleen,” he said, “but you know what that means, don’t you?”

      I nodded sadly. Detention. I hadn’t had a detention in months. How could I have been so daft?

      “Tomorrow afternoon,” said Mr Hughes. Summer and her mates were almost wetting themselves with delight. “Straight after school in my classroom.”

      I gasped and clapped my hand over my mouth. Tomorrow?

      “Problem?” Mr Hughes asked.

      Oh yes. There was a problem all right. A huge one. It was just my luck that Em’s latest footie match was tomorrow at four o’clock, not Wednesday as normal. We don’t usually go to Em’s weekday matches as a whole family, but this was her twentieth match for Hartley Juniors so it was a special one. My parents were completely going to kill me.

      “No, sir,” I said dully. “No problem.”

      It was hard to concentrate for the rest of the day. I kept picturing Mum’s reaction when I told her what an idiot I’d been. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

      “Let’s talk about Battle of the Bands,” Mel said, trying to take my mind off things as I gloomily prodded my chicken pie across the plate.

      “What battle?” Lucy said, breaking off from this funky little tune she’d been humming most of dinnertime.

      We hadn’t told Lucy about the poster or our plans for it yet. She’d come into school with her dad that day, so we hadn’t seen each other on the bus – and break time was such a rush that we hadn’t got round to it. Tearing my thoughts from Mum, I explained as quickly as I could while Lucy’s eyes got rounder and rounder.

      “So,” I finished, feeling more cheerful, “we’ll do Wave Like You Mean It for the qualifiers and write our own song later for the final. What do you think?”

      “Won’t there be hundreds of people listening to us?” Lucy asked nervously.

      “Yay,” Mel grinned.

      Lucy was looking pale. Even though she’s got a brilliant voice, she’s never very confident about it.

      “You sang in front of all those people at our fashion show,” I reminded her. “So you can do it again for sure. And remember – me and Mel are going to be right there singing with you this time.”

      “The Three Mates,” Mel said grandly, sticking her fist in the air. “One for all and all for one!”

      “And all for winning,” I said, beaming as I thought about the cheering crowds that I knew were going to love us. “Think of the trophy! We can share it, with each of us having it for a week at a time or something.”

      “OK,” said Lucy reluctantly. “If you really think we can do it.”

      “I’ll register our names, and let’s all go over to mine after school on Wednesday,” Mel suggested. “We can work on Wave Like You Mean It.”

      She and Lucy then went into this big debate about a dance routine to go with the song. Me? I’d slid right off my happy perch again. I was thinking about how Wednesday came after Tuesday,