Coleen McLoughlin - Rock that Frock!

“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, which came after me having to tell my family tonight that I wasn’t going to make Em’s match.

“OK,” I said, back at home that night. “Here’s the 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.