Rock that Frock!. Coleen McLoughlin

thing.”

      It wasn’t looking good. Mum, Dad and Em all stood there looking at me with their arms folded while I rambled through how I’d ended up with a detention the next day. I had a feeling that if Rascal had been able to balance on his back legs, he’d have been folding his arms at me too.

      Mum sucked in a deep breath and started on me. “Of all the irresponsible, thoughtless things to do…Em’s really been counting on us all being at the match tomorrow, and now you tell us…You knew about this homework on Friday night and you still hadn’t done it by Sunday…”

      I tried to picture Mum’s words like a big wave that I just had to let wash over me. It would be over in a minute. But it was pretty cold, wet and nasty all the same.

      “I’m really sorry,” I said humbly when Mum had run out of breath.

      Em stalked out of the room. Dad just gave me his Look. I’d have preferred it if he’d drenched me with another wordy wave like Mum’s. But the Dad Look was more like the cold wind that blows at you just after you get drenched by the wave, and you realise you forgot to bring your towel to the beach.

      Tuesday afternoon was bright and gorgeous. Trying not to think about Em kicking off in the sunshine while Mum and Dad shared their usual jokes and a flask of tea on the touchline without me, I stared at the maths questions on my desk and groaned. My homework. Recipes. Percentages. I mean, who cared if your apple pie was only big enough for four instead of six? Resisting the urge to write “just serve extra custard”, I did my best to work out the problems. The big clock ticked quietly on the wall above Mr Hughes’ head, the hands moving as slowly as treacle.

      I’d finished the questions after twenty minutes. I still had twenty-five minutes to kill before Mr Hughes would let me go. Staring around the classroom in desperation, my eyes settled on a tattered poster of a beach that hung on the wall beside the door. The picture was old and the beach looked wet and windy, but it was much nicer to look at than Mr Hughes.

      I’d like to hear the sea, I thought. The sea and me…

      Sea. Now that was a perfect word for a song. It rhymed with practically everything! Grabbing a piece of paper, I jotted down some random seaside thoughts. The last minutes of my detention whizzed away as rhymes tumbled through my head.

      “Thank you, Coleen.” Mr Hughes’ voice startled me as he took up the paper I’d written my maths answers on. “It’s four o’clock. You can go.”

      I snatched up my lyrics and stuffed them into my bag. “Thanks, Mr Hughes!”

      The sea, the sea, I repeated to myself as I barrelled out of the door. The words bounced through my head in a thumping rhythm that had come out of nowhere: ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-diddly-dum, ta-diddly-diddly-diddly-dum…

      The way from Mr Hughes’ classroom to the main corridor takes you past a row of music practice rooms. Kids sometimes work in them after school, practising for music lessons or just jamming for fun. I could hear some drums pounding out a rhythm that made me want to dance. Peeping through the glass window in the door of practice room three, I almost fell over. It was Ben.

      Lucy had often said how her brother played drums, but I’d never heard him. Trying not to let him see me, I stood out in the corridor and watched as Ben Hanratty whirled his sticks over the school drum kit. Wham! Wham! Wham! The ground jumped beneath my feet. It was wicked. I closed my eyes and ran my new lyrics alongside the thundering rhythm that Ben was crashing out. It didn’t really work – but it gave me the most incredible idea.

      What if we asked Ben to play in our band? How cool would that be? And you always hear about band romances, right? Maybe Ben would take me more seriously if we were in a band together!

      As soon as I’d thought this, I sighed and tried to forget it. Ben Hanratty would never play for his kid sister’s band. But there again, we had persuaded him to model in our charity catwalk show…If you don’t ask, you never get.

      I moved slowly away from Ben’s practice room, so deep in thought about how to persuade Ben Hanratty to join our band that it took about three seconds of staring dopily through the next practice room window to realise that Summer, Hannah and Shona were all staring straight back at me.

      Summer flung open the door, nearly scaring me out of my mind. “Spying, Coleen?” she challenged, folding her arms and glaring at me.

      “Huh?” I said in confusion.

      “If you think sneaking a listen to our song will get you ahead of us in the Battle of the Bands, you can forget it,” Summer said. “I heard you and your two loser mates talking about entering at dinner yesterday.”

      My brain whizzed into fifth gear. Summer was entering the Battle!

      “I don’t need to listen to your song to win,” I said, quick as a flash.

      “Let’s hear you say that when we make it through the qualifiers and you don’t,” Summer snapped back. Doing this totally insincere smile, she put her fingers to her forehead to make an L shape and mouthed “Loser” at me, before slamming the door again and pulling the little curtain across the window.

      “Says who?” I snapped at the closed door.

      This Battle of the Bands was going to be a battle, all right. Summer Collins had just made sure of that!

       Three

      “So how did Em’s match go?” Mel asked the next day as we sat up high on the playground wall and watched the kids flowing around below us like shoals of blue and grey fish.

      “Hartley Juniors won,” I said. “Em even scored the winning goal. Everyone was so chuffed that they forgot to give me the silent treatment over tea.”

      Chuffed wasn’t the word. Dad had carried Em into the house on his shoulders, forgetting about the lintel over the door. And by the time I got downstairs with the bruise cream for Em’s head, we were all best mates again – like I’d never had a detention in the first place. Families, eh?

      “Good one,” said Lucy.

      We sat quietly for a bit and watched the playground. There’s always something to see. A game of rule-less football, maybe, or some complicated game that involves lots of screaming and running around. Some really loud yelling seemed to be coming from the far corner of the playground near the basketball nets. Loads of Year Tens were all clustered together, cheering about something. I craned my neck to get a view of what was happening.