Lisa Clark - And the Rainbow Hearts

Lola Love

and the Rainbow

Hearts

By

Lisa Clark

www.lolasland.com

Love and the Rainbow Hearts Lola Lave and The Rainbow Hearts Sending glitter filled hugs of fabulousness to: All the Pink Ladies who have picked up this Lola book—rock out! The best air-guitar playin’ boy, EVAH—Burts. Ed-girl Lindsey far not kickin’ my bee-hind too hard and for eating Dim Sum with me when I was sad. Jared Leto—for being my Tom Tootie. My Popahongo—Dad, thanks far initiating me in all things musically coal and I’m really sorry I scribbled aver your Beatles autographs in crayon when I was 5! Mix tape girl far giving me the 101 on being in a band—mwoaah! Sarah Rocks—far making coal tunes, for being a total rock star and far being my go-to-girl ‘bout all things guitar and girl!

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Chapter nineteen

Chapter twenty

Chapter twenty one

Chapter twenty two

Copyright

About the Publisher

“Lola, I must be dreaming—pinch me, pinch me!” Sadie demands holding out her petite, doll-like arm in my direction.

Sadie is far too cute to ever be pinched, and as a rule, I am not a pincher, but it seems my gal pal has developed what I can only describe as a touch of the crazy-excitedness, so I’m thinking that a teeny-weeny pinch might be just the thing to calm her down.

“Ow,” she scowls, rubbing hard at the just-been-pinched-by-Lola spot. “I didn’t actually mean it…”

Oh, maybe not then.

The cause of Sadie’s crazy-excitedness? Tom Tootie.

Sigh.

Tom Tootie, nicknamed Tootie Cuti by…well, just Sadie and me probably, is the lead singer and guitar god for our current band of choice, The Tootie.

He is the only boy type in the whole wide world who is yummier than Jake Farrell.

Sigh. Thud.

Previously, I thought that Ooh-la-la Frenchville Charlie, the super cute-shop-assistant, was totally worthy of my crushin’ and maybe even a contender to Jake’s throne, but sadly, it was not to be. While I love the fact he can recite EVERY word to all my favourite Audrey Hepburn movies, according to Angel, my BFF and his next-door neighbour, he can spend an hour or more in the bathroom—every day. You couldn’t actually date someone who took longer to get ready than you, could you?

Not really.

He does, however, make quite possibly the cutest arm-accessory though. And he has an Ooh-la-la Frenchville accent.

And he will pay you compliments, as every boy-type should.

According to Bella, my Americano gal pal and punk-trash guitar-playing princess, when deciding on a potential boy-type to hang with, you should ALWAYS make sure that they come with a built-in compliment-giving facility, because, apparently, it does not come as standard with all makes of boy. If they don’t have it, she says that you must send them back and demand a new model. Bella is significantly older than me, she’s 16, that makes her an expert in just about absolutely everything.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes, Jake. As-delicious-as-a-family-sized-bar-of-chocolate, Jake.

He was the one-and-only heir to my heart. I say was , because in an attempt to rain on my pink parade, a rather pesky evil Eva Satine, who FYI, is not a fan of my work, is now officially dating him.

Yes, this is sad.

Boo.

In fact, sometimes I think it’s even a little sadder than that because Jock boy Jake is so unbelievably wasted on Evil Eva. She is bad to the bone, badness x 100, bad, bad, bad—you get the picture, right? ‘Cept, I’m the only one who can see it. Oh and my BFF Angel, she can see it too, but what with her not being here all the time—she goes to a super-swank boarding school and has to wear a straw hat that she balances on her afro—she doesn’t get to see her evilness in full.

Still, I have a brand-new pink-thinkin’ tude, I can play three chords on the guitar, I am officially editor-girl of my very own real-life ‘zine, ‘Think Pink’ and I have two fabulous new be-there buds, Bella and Sadie, which, let me tell you, is waaay better than having any amount of smooch time with Jake Farrell.

I am now vowing only to spend my valuable crush time on celeb-boys. They don’t break your heart at 100 paces. They’re just very pretty and really rather nice to look at—it’s the celeb-boy law and everything—and they sing songs that could have been written especially for you. In fact, if, like me, you’ve got a very vivid imagination, those songs are written especially for you.

Every single dreamy word.

Sigh.

Which is why Sadie and I crush on Tom Tootie.

He is a full-time resident of Swoonsville. He’s not like most guitar boys, who look like they need a really good bath. He’s clean, and I bet if you were ever to meet him, he would smell of flowers and freshly mown lawns. Tom Tootie sings beautiful heart-string-pullin’ lyrics and has these piercing indigo-blue eyes that aren’t even contact lenses, they’re his real eyes and everything. Believe me when I say, Sadie and I have a totally incurable case of Tootie Cuti fever and we don’t want to ever, I repeat, ever, find a cure, thank you very much.

“Lo, Lo, this is our chance!” Sadie’s voice has gone up a whole octave as she waves her copy of Missy magazine in the air. “We could actually meet him. We could meet Tom Tootie. We could touch him, we could talk to him, we could even sniff him!”

We could?

“Look!” She taps the magazine page from where Tom Tootie and his band mates are looking out at me from. I try to read what it says, but as Sadie is jumping up and down on my bed impatiently, I can’t really read anything but I can see that it involves Tom Tootie and that makes my belly do a flip that only pretty boys can make it do.

“Miss Sades,” I say, not wishing for one minute to be a fly in any kind of expensive-looking ointment, “while I am as unbelievably excited at being in the same air-breathing space as Tom Tootie as you are, and as much as I really want to know if he does smell of flowers and freshly cut lawns, we have a problem…”

Sadie frowns.

She knows it, I know it.

We look at each other and as if we’re mind-reading sisters from psychic city, we both let out a collaborative sigh and say,

“Bella.”

“No way. Not in a million zillion, trillion years. Nu-uh. No. Nada. Not a chance,” Bella picks up her electric guitar and without plugging it in, plays an annoying noise that hurts my ears a little bit.

It appears we have been brutally re-buffed.

It was to be expected, but I just hadn’t planned on it happening quite so early on in the whole ‘Project-Win-Bella-Over-So-We-Can-Meet-Tom Tootie’ proceedings.

But Project-Win-Bella-Over-So-We-Can-Meet-Tom Tootie was set to fail from the get-go.

Why?

Because in our initial excitement at seeing the ad in Missy , we had ran straight from my house to hers—it’s next door, so there wasn’t a whole lot of physical exertion involved—and just blurted out the need for the Pink Ladies to make a demo so we could meet Tom Tootie.