Girl vs. Boy Band Page 9

  “Snogs?”

  “You know, kisses,” Max explained. “But for Jade it was just a casual thing. Nothing more.”

  “So where does Ollie come in?”

  “Not long after we made our video, Jade and her friends came to see us play at a battle of the bands competition in Brighton. Ollie was singing lead vocals, as usual. We were trying out a new song he’d written, a love song. When Jade heard Ollie singin’ that love song, she was a goner. Fell for him head over heels.”

  “Oooh,” said Lark. “That’s not good.”

  “She dumped Aidan straightaway, wouldn’t take his calls or even acknowledge him at school. I’m not Aidan Harrington’s biggest fan, but even I felt bad for the guy. He was crushed.”

  “And Ollie started going out with Jade.”

  Max shook his head. “No. I think he fancied her, but he kept his distance. For Aidan’s sake.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  “Aidan didn’t see it that way. Things between Ollie and Aidan haven’t been the same since. The band would have probably split up, but when Donna offered us a deal, we decided to stick together.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the sound of the crashing surf and the squeals of swooping seagulls. Lark snuck a glance at Max and saw that he was still thinking about his friends. Clearly, being caught in the middle was making him miserable. She decided to change the subject.

  “Did you always want to be a rock star, Max?”

  “Sure. But to be honest, I would have rather waited a bit. You know, finish school, be a kid for a while.”

  Lark gave him a confused look. “So why did you agree to sign with my mom’s label and come to LA?”

  “Because,” said Max, squirming uneasily. “My family could really use the money. Dad and Mum work real hard, but they’re always behind with bills. If I can make it in the music world, I’ll be able to help them out.”

  Lark nodded, understanding perfectly. For Max, just like for Donna and Lark, there was a lot riding on the success of Abbey Road.

  “How about a swim?” Max suggested.

  Lark didn’t have to be asked twice. She was on her feet and dashing toward the surf even before Max had put down his bottle of root beer. It never occurred to her to feel self-conscious about being in a bathing suit, either. Max was starting to feel like the big brother she’d never had.

  As Lark and Max dove into the crystal-clear ocean, they sang the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” at the top of their lungs. It almost seemed as if the classic song had been written for this very moment, as the warm ocean water and California sunshine helped dissolve the sadness in their hearts.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  Lark woke up on Monday morning feeling relaxed and with just the tiniest sunburn across the bridge of her nose. Checking her reflection in the mirror, she smiled. The extra color made her green eyes “pop,” as the beauty magazines would say. She wondered if Teddy Reese would notice when they met after school to rehearse.

  She hurried down to the kitchen, where she found her mother in a terrible mood.

  “Now what?” asked Lark, not really wanting to know the answer. Today was going to be a great day and she didn’t want anything to mess it up. She couldn’t wait to get to school. It was the day of the school’s International Fair. There were tables set up all around the gym with parents and grandparents offering foods and displaying examples of their cultures of origin. Since most kids in LA thought of the Deep South as practically a foreign country, Lark had considered asking her mom to whip up a batch of homemade biscuits and Southern fried chicken. But Donna hadn’t fried anything since they’d arrived in California. Lark suspected this was only partly due to the new image her mother was cultivating; the other reason was that a person probably couldn’t even find chicken with the skin still on it anywhere within the city limits of Los Angeles . . . let alone a tub of Crisco!

  “Some music blogger was at that club where Holly appeared on Saturday night,” Donna reported. “He wrote a great piece about Holly, but he also recognized Aidan from the footage of Holly that Mimi posted online. There’s a whole paragraph about a member of a band called Abbey Road acting obnoxious and trying to get into the club.”

  Lark stuffed a water bottle into her backpack. “Oh, no.”

  “‘Oh, no’ is an understatement. The boys are supposed to be behaving themselves. That’s the marketing angle I’m aiming for. Wholesome. Clean-cut. I want them to be the sort of boys a mother wouldn’t be afraid to let her daughter date.”

  “They’re normal teenagers, Mom. They have personalities, not PR agendas. Aidan just made a mistake.” She was surprised to hear herself sticking up for Aidan, but Max’s story about Jade had caused her to see the group’s “bad boy” in a different light. He had feelings, just like anyone else. His broken heart didn’t excuse his actions or make him any less of a jerk for sneaking out, but she couldn’t help defending him. “Besides, what are the chances anyone’s going to read that blog anyway?”

  “High, given that it includes a link to Mimi’s footage of Holly Rose. I need to do some damage limitation to improve their image. But that’ll take time. And I didn’t budget for it.”

  “Well, how about you dress them in white robes and angel wings and let them hand out signed photos of themselves on the corner of Hollywood and Vine?” She knew her tone was snippy, but what difference did it make? Her mother never listened to her anyway. “Maybe you can send them off to plant trees in the rain forest, or figure out a way for them to single-handedly save the whales?” Lark picked up her backpack and headed for the foyer. “Oh, I’ve got it!” she called over her shoulder sarcastically. “Since today is my school’s International Fair day, you can have them play a free concert to benefit the youth of America.”

  “What did you say?” came her mother’s voice from the kitchen.

  “Nothing, Mom. Nothing at all,” said Lark. Then she headed out the door before Donna could say another word.

  At school, Lark saw the opportunity for a little fun from halfway down the hall. Mimi was standing at her open locker, focused on something inside as if she were in a trance. Lark tiptoed until she was mere inches away, then poked her head around Mimi’s locker door, and shouted, “Boo!”

  Mimi jumped and let out a little yelp, dropping her history textbook and quickly closing her locker door. “Lark! O-M-G! Way to sneak up on a person and give her a heart attack!” But she was smiling. And maybe even blushing.

  “Sorry,” said Lark, laughing. “But you were totally zoned out. What are you doing so intently?”

  “Um . . . you know . . . just redecorating.”

  This was odd. Lark knew that lots of kids bedecked the interior of their lockers with small posters, magazine cut-outs, or bumper stickers. She would bet her boots that Alessandra Drake had a photo of Teddy Reese in hers. And a mirror, of course. Lark herself had an old family photo pinned to the inside of her locker door with a magnet in the shape of a treble clef. But Mimi was a minimalist. She liked to keep her locker neat and streamlined, so as not to clutter her mind and prevent creative thinking.

  “Decorating, hmm?” Lark grinned. “Can I see?”

  Mimi sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay . . . go ahead.”

  Lark opened the locker and wasn’t surprised to see that Mimi had printed out one of the pictures of Ollie she’d taken over the weekend. It was a great shot of him holding his guitar. “I had a feeling,” she said, giggling. “It’s an awesome photo.”

  Mimi smiled. “Well, it would be hard to take a bad picture of Oliver. He’s gorgeous. But it’s more than just his looks. He’s so funny. And so talented! And that accent is adorable. He’s, like, the perfect guy.”

  Lark gave her friend a serious look. “You know he’s fifteen, right?” she said gently. “I mean, it’s okay to have a crush and all, but he’s a lot older than you are.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Mimi lightly. “
But it’s fun to . . . ya know . . . daydream.”

  Lark certainly couldn’t argue with that. She’d been daydreaming about Teddy Reese since the day she first laid eyes on him.

  “How’s Oliver’s cheek?” Mimi asked. “Is there a mark? And Aidan’s nose? Is it still swollen?”

  As the girls made their way toward their first-period classes, Lark filled her friend in on Aidan’s latest escapade. Mimi was appalled, although pleased to hear that a blogger was sharing her footage of the band.

  “That could have been a disaster,” she said as they reached the junction of the science hall and the foreign language corridor. This was where they parted ways every morning, Mimi heading off to French class and Lark to chem lab. Ordinarily, they’d meet up again at lunch, but today the whole school would enjoy an abbreviated schedule to accommodate the International Fair festivities.

  “Meet me at the origami booth,” Mimi said, dashing off down the hall. “Trevor Yoshida promised me his grandma would teach me how to make a tiny movie camera out of folded paper.”

  “I think he might be pulling your leg!” Lark called after her. “But okay!”

  The first three classes of the day were basically useless. Everyone was either excited to get to the caf-a-gym-a-torium to sample the tacos and eggrolls and baklava, or else they were worrying about the presentations they had to deliver about those tacos and eggrolls and baklava. Emma DiGiorgio, Lark’s lab partner, was slated to give a talk about how to make the perfect antipasto, and the thought of it had her so distracted, she nearly burned off the end of her ponytail with the Bunsen burner. “What if I mispronounce ‘prosciutto’?” she whispered to Lark. “What if I forget to mention that the anchovies are optional? Always optional!”

  Finally, it was time for the International Fair to begin. As Lark filed into the space with the rest of her classmates, she caught an image of Alessandra Drake . . . wearing a tiara!

  “What’s that about?” she whispered to Emma.

  “Alessandra claims she can trace her ancestry all the way back to fourteenth-century British nobility.”

  Lark frowned. “Does that make her a royal?”

  “Yeah,” said Emma with a grin. “A royal pain in the butt.”

  “Hey, Lark!” came Mimi’s voice from across the room.

  Lark wished Emma luck on her presentation, and headed through the crowd to where Mimi was waiting at the Japanese origami exhibit.

  “Wow,” said Lark, taking in the magical sight of miniature paper cranes and swans. “These are amazing!”

  “Turns out there’s no such thing as an origami camera after all,” Mimi huffed. “You were right. Trevor was just joking with me.”

  Lark smiled. “Maybe he just wanted to be sure you stopped by his booth. Maybe he likes you.”

  “Ya think?” Mimi beamed. “Well, he’s no Oliver Wesley, but he is kinda cute.” She picked up two squares of paper and handed one to Lark. “Let’s give it a shot.”

  Taking their cue from Baba Yoshida, the girls carefully folded the sheets of colored paper into delicate angular designs. Mimi, ever the creative one, produced a perfect pink horse, but Lark’s neon-green bunny rabbit was hopelessly lopsided.

  Their next stop was Emma’s booth, where they sampled delicious little cannolis from her nonno’s Italian bakery. Then they enjoyed a brief demonstration of Indian dance, performed by Alia Chopra and her two older sisters.

  “Her costume is beautiful,” Lark whispered, admiring Alia’s jangly bangles and wristlets, and her shimmering satin pants embroidered with golden thread.

  “She’s so graceful,” Mimi noted. “And their dresses look amazing when they spin around.”

  Lark knew her friend well enough to know that Mimi was already planning to ask Alia if she could film her doing one of these traditional dances.

  When the dance performance was over, Lark and Mimi moved on, following their noses toward the most delicious aroma in the whole gym.

  Gingerbread!

  “Whose stall is this?” Mimi wondered aloud, sidling up to the table that held platters piled high with gingerbread cookies. Some were cut in the shapes of little boys and girls, others were heart-shaped, but all of them looked equally yummy.

  Someone’s grandma, a pretty, white-haired woman in glasses, sat primly behind the gingerbread table, offering tubes of squeezable icing to her many eager cookie samplers.

  “Do we really have to waste time decorating them?” Mimi joked. “Can’t we just go straight to eating them?”

  “It’ll be fun,” said Lark, accepting a tube of pink icing and choosing a large, heart-shaped cookie.

  Mimi chose a gingerbread man and got busy icing his head with a sugary mass of yellow hair. Next, she dotted the face with two blue eyes.

  Lark giggled. “Did you seriously just decorate that cookie to look like Ollie?”

  Mimi nodded. “Not that I had to. The real Oliver is sweet enough.”

  Lark positioned her icing tube over her cookie. She willed herself not to inscribe it with the initials “L.C.” and “T.R.” Instead, she wrote her name in pink loopy script. Then she nibbled off the pointy bottom and let out a sigh of absolute delight.

  “How’s it taste?” asked Mimi, unable to bring herself to chomp into cookie-Ollie’s head.

  “It tastes . . . ,” said Lark, letting the spicy sweetness fill her mouth, “like a Christmas carol.”

  “What a wonderful compliment,” the grandma said. “I’ve never had my baking compared to music before.” She peered through her glasses at the pink writing on Lark’s cookie.

  “Lark?” she read. “Are you Lark Campbell?”

  The question took Lark by surprise. She’d never met this woman before, so there was no reason for her to know Lark’s last name. But she answered with a polite, “Yes, ma’am,” before taking another bite of her cookie.

  “Oh!” cried the woman, reaching out her dainty hand to shake. “I’ve heard so much about you from my grandson.”

  Lark wanted to ask who her grandson was, but her mouth was filled with cookie. She didn’t have to wonder long, because in the next moment, a voice behind her was saying, “Hey, Gran. Looks like your cookies are going down well.”

  Lark turned to see Teddy Reese approaching the gingerbread booth. He leaned down to kiss his grandma on the cheek. Then he turned back to Lark, who was discreetly attempting to brush the cookie crumbs from her lips and chin.

  “Eat up,” he advised with a grin. “You need plenty of energy for our rehearsal this afternoon.”

  Lark desperately wanted to offer a cute response, but if she attempted to gulp down her enormous mouthful of cookie, she’d probably choke to death. Fortunately, she was saved from having to speak by the squeal of feedback over the caf-a-gym-a-torium’s loudspeaker.

  “May I have your attention, please,” boomed Principal Hardy’s cheerful voice. “Boys and girls, family and friends, attention, please.”

  It was a moment before the din died down. Lark took the opportunity to swallow hard and offer Teddy a shy smile. Then she turned to the stage at the far end of the room, where the principal stood holding a portable microphone. Behind Principal Hardy, the stage curtain opened and Lark saw that there were three mike stands, an electronic keyboard, and a drum kit.

  A feeling of dread shot through her. Oh, no. OH, NO . . .

  “In addition to all the wonderful food and fascinating cultural exhibits you’ve been enjoying,” the principal announced, “we have a big surprise for you. Thanks to one of our students, today, for the first time ever on American soil, a brand-new British rock band is going to perform their as-yet-unreleased new song. Isn’t it fitting that on this day when we celebrate different nations around the globe, we get to enjoy a true world premiere!”

  Immediately, murmurs filled the gym. Kids were whispering, making guesses as to who might be performing. And, of course, wondering which of their classmates had been cool enough to bring in a rock band for the International Fair.

>   Lark, of course, didn’t have to wonder. Because she knew.

  To her horror, the principal stepped aside and suddenly Donna Campbell was at one of the microphones. Lark’s stomach flipped over, threatening to bring up her gingerbread cookie. No! No, no, no. Mama, why?

  “Are you okay?” Teddy asked.

  “Not really,” Lark replied.

  “Hello, everyone,” said Donna, beaming around at the curious crowd. “I’m Lark Campbell’s mother.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Hundreds of pairs of eyes began to search the room. Lark heard a few students asking, “Who’s Lark Campbell?” while others whispered, “Never heard of her,” which made Lark want to crawl under the gingerbread table and hide.

  “I am very happy to present,” Lark’s mother continued brightly, “all the way from London, the hottest new British export . . . Abbey Road!” She turned to the wings and waved the boys onto the stage. Aidan slunk to the keyboard, looking moody. Max seemed friendly and focused as he took his place at the drum set. And Ollie, ever the front man, was working the crowd—waving and smiling before he’d played a single note on his guitar.

  The mood in the caf-a-gym-a-torium shifted from mildly interested to full-on anticipation. Girls were gasping and giggling, boys were hollering and clapping. Everything about the three Brits on stage said “cool,” and it didn’t hurt that they were gorgeous.

  “Hello, Ronald Reagan Middle School!”

  A cheer went up as what seemed like the entire student body rushed the stage. Lark saw Ollie throw Max a grin; they were totally in their element!

  “We’re Abbey Road,” Ollie said, “and it’s awesome to be here! We’re going to play our soon-to-be-released new single ‘Dream of Me,’ and we really hope you like it!”

  There were more shouts and applause as Ollie counted his bandmates in. The infectious intro had everyone bouncing, and eight counts later, Ollie’s voice filled the gym.

  “Do you dream of me when the nights are long? When the world is dark, do you hear this song . . .”