The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones Read online

  There’s a hammering on the cardboardy wall, as the shower noise cuts off.

  “Oi! Keep it down in there!” shouts Mum. Her voice is muffled, but not much; she can probably hear everything in here just as clearly.

  I clap my hand over my mouth.

  Red smirks, unhelpfully.

  “Sorry!” I call through the wall. “I’m. . .” My eyes scan the mess on the floor. “Just reading one of Tiger’s books. Out loud.”

  “Very convincing,” says Red.

  “Shhh, she’ll hear you!”

  “What?” shouts Mum.

  “Nothing!” I shout, as Red goes on smirking. “Wait – she can’t hear you?” I say, this time super-soft.

  “You think?”

  I press my lips very firmly together.

  Red rolls her eyes. “Look, we can’t talk in here. And what’re you doing still in bed anyway? There’s the whole of Penkerry out there and you’re sat in your jammies. Get dressed, meet me on the cliff top.”

  The shower door slides open again.

  “Red – she’s coming – how will you get—” I squeak, in a panic, as Red shows no sign of moving.

  “Wha?” grunts Tiger, swishing through the orange curtain wrapped in a towel, dreadlocks all piled in a knot on top of her head.

  “Ohhh,” I breathe, my eyes going wide as Red gives me a flash of a grin. Tiger can’t see Red. Only me, talking to myself. Then Red walks backwards through the wall. Straight through it, leaving nothing behind but a wisp of smoke like a blown candle.

  I know the caravan walls are cardboard-thin, but that is still quite unexpected.

  My fourteen-year-old self has amazing hair and walks through walls. I like me more already.

  3. A Girl Who Stands on Cliff Edges

  I take a ten-second shower, fling on the top layer of clothes from my suitcase, and brush my dampish hair back into its usual ponytail. Then I hesitate, and stroke one hand up the back of my neck. It tingles. I shake the ponytail, feeling it swish. What will it feel like, when I’ve cut that hair off? I can’t wait to ask.

  Dad has other ideas. By the time I’m dressed, he’s filling the kitchenette with burnt toast and bacon smells, squeezing out teabags with his fingertips. Tiger’s already sitting at the table, gazing fondly at the ketchup bottle.

  “Not officially a holiday till you’ve had a bacon sarnie for breakfast,” Dad says, and he looks so pleased with himself, waving his spatula about, that I can’t just leave.

  “So what’s on the itinerary today, baby?” asks Mum, sleepily padding out to join us, her dressing gown knotted but not quite meeting in the middle. “Are we going anywhere nice?”

  Dad flips open the diary I’ve made, stuffed with printed maps off the internet and little notes in my round handwriting. We’re here for six weeks, and I’ve planned the whole of our first one: bird sanctuary, chocolate factory, boat trip out to Mulvey Island lighthouse. All the essentials from the Penkerry and Surrounding Area Top Ten Fun Attractions for all the Family.

  It looks stupid now.

  “Dearie me, I think Bluebell might have to learn a bit of flexibility,” says Dad, eyeing the diary. “Doesn’t say anything in here about testing out any of your birthday presents. . .”

  I might learn to love my weird plasticky new camera after all.

  Half an hour later I’m running out of the caravan with Diana tucked in my bag, leaving Mum and Dad throwing each other proud looks about how much they nailed my birthday present.

  I weave through the other caravans, past the row of posh chalets with sea views, across the grass. Clumps of bushes mark the edge of the cliffs, with a spindly iron fence blocking the sheer drop. In places the fence leans out, almost level with the ground, as if someone’s already leant on it and fallen off. It’s probably illegal. Red doesn’t care, though. She’s standing on the edge, breathing in salt.

  She’s me. I wished her here, and she’s real (in a walking-through-walls kind of way) and when I grow up I’m going to be her. A girl who stands on cliff edges. Red, not Blue.

  I wipe bacony hands on my jeans, squint through Diana’s tiny viewfinder, and click a shot off quickly. Red poses at once, arms flexed like a weightlifter, as if she likes having her picture taken.

  “It won’t come out, you know,” she laughs. “I can walk through furniture, I’ll slide right off camera film.”

  She’s probably right. I can’t help trying to pin her into a picture, though.

  The film needs to be wound on after each shot, and there’s this funny system for taking different-sized prints, and a button for daylight versus night shots, and I wish it wasn’t so obvious that I’m only fussing about with Diana because I don’t have a clue what to say. I thought she’d feel familiar, equal. But Red’s like a celebrity, or a superhero; bigger than life.

  I so want her to like me. She grins, as if she knows exactly what I’m thinking – because she probably does. It doesn’t help.

  “Oh!” I squeak, suddenly even more embarrassed. “I forgot to say: happy birthday. For yesterday, I mean.”

  Red’s smile gets even bigger. “Bless, get you with the lovely manners. I’m so nice! I didn’t know I was that nice. Oh my god, are you wearing those shoes? I’d forgotten them. They’re disgusting; I can’t believe I ever went out in public with them on. Whoa: apparently I’m not nice any more, I’m patronizing and rude. Sorry. Really. That’s . . . sorry.”

  Her red hair blows about her stricken face in the cliff-top wind, and I can see she’s trying to be kind. My shoes probably are disgusting: flat canvas lace-ups with blotchy pink and green flowers on them. “Don’t worry about it, it’s fine,” I say.

  “See?” she says. “So nice!”

  Also, she has boobs. Not that I’m staring. But there are actual boobs, attached to my body which has my face on it. Me, I only have flat bits and fat bits. Tiger’s the one who overflows in all the right places. I’d given up waiting for them to pop up, and now, there they are. Boobs are in my future.

  I might be staring.

  Does she know what I’m thinking? Is that why she’s smiling? Why am I still thinking about boobs? Boobs boobs boobs.

  “Why are you here?” I blurt.

  Her hopeful smile fades a touch. I’m ruining it already. No wonder lately Grace is always already out with Monique or Jen or some boy when I text her on Saturday mornings. I can’t even talk to myself and not mess it up.

  “That came out wrong! What I meant was . . . don’t you have somewhere else to be? I mean – it’s obvious why I made a wish. I need help. I need someone to rescue me from . . . me. But, well, look at you. You did it. You’ve done the growing-up thing. You’re. . .”

  I scrabble for the right words. Perfect? Incredible? OK, now I sound like a stalker. Girls aren’t supposed to like themselves: it says so in Grace’s magazines. Am I allowed to like me when I’m her?

  “You’re . . . fine,” I stutter, eventually. “Better than fine. Why would you wish yourself out of your own life, back to here?”

  “It’s Penkerry! Who wouldn’t want to be here?” Red beams, flinging out an arm across the bay.

  This is awkward. I see a dishwater sea, wafting the smell of decaying seaweed up my nose. Far-off pebbles dotted with tiny people pretending to sunbathe while rocks poke their backs and the sun fails to shine. The rusty pier. The fairground. The Red Dragon, a dark twist of iron against the sky.

  She sees heaven.

  “Haha, don’t you love it!” Red picks up her shoulders and does a little run on the spot, like she just can’t keep still. Then she catches my eye. “Well, OK, you don’t love it yet. But you will. I guarantee it. And I’d know, right?”

  She claps her hands, disappears into the clump of bushes right on the edge of the cliff, and vanishes.

  She can walk through walls. Can she fly, too?

&nbs
p; Then her perky red head reappears, peering through the bushes. “Short cut to the beach,” she says, beckoning. “Come on. You’ve got new best friends to meet!”

  For a second I feel sick. Tiger got all the small-talk genes in my family; round new people, I go shy and tongue-tied. But if they’re her friends, they’re going to like me too. Like she said: guaranteed.

  I edge closer to the bushes, looking anxiously for the exact edge of the cliff, eyeing the bent iron railings warily. I have to take a step out into nothing to follow her – but my foot hits solid ground, and as I push through the prickly twigs, I can see it: a sandy windy yellow path, lined with green, sloping along the cliffs down to the beach.

  I’d never have found it without her.

  Penkerry is an attractive resort town, with a mile of pebble beach sheltered between two high cliffs, Verney Head and Penkerry Point, it says in my Tourist Information leaflet. Picturesque Edwardian villas overlook the semicircular bay, accessed by a series of steeply winding narrow streets. The fairground is conveniently situated on the seafront, a few minutes’ walk from the Victorian pier. Visitors can enjoy a boat trip to Mulvey Island lighthouse, sample the local Penkerry Dairy Ice Cream (seventeen flavours, including Raspberry Ripple, Candyfloss, and the unique Chilli Prawn – do you dare?), or relax in a deckchair on the prom. Fun for all the family!

  What the leaflet doesn’t say: Penkerry is loud and smells of poo.

  The cliff path leads us straight on to the promenade, the shop-lined road that runs the length of the beach. Babies wail. In the penny arcades, a million fruit machines go blipblipblipblipblip, not quite at the same time. People are eating chips at ten in the morning, and none of them seem to mind the cat-sized seagulls of death swooping at their faces making argh argh noises and trying to eat their children.

  But Red is practically skipping, pointing out Frisky’s Mussel Hut, Deckchair Jim, giggling maniacally at The Bench – which is a bench. Just a bench. But we have to sit on it because apparently it’s brilliant and amazing and I’ll understand soon.

  I try to see it through her eyes. Grace has gone to Bali for three weeks, whale-watching, and I don’t know how a bench is going to compete with that. But that’s why I wished her here. She can see what I can’t.

  “So, last night: where did you go?”

  “I was right here,” Red says. She moves to tap the wood of the bench, but her hand sinks into it palm-deep, the fingers disappearing in a puffy cloud of smoke. She gasps. “Brrr,” she whispers, twisting her wrist and shivering as the smokiness swirls and slowly forms back into bone and flesh and skin. “I am never going to get used to that.”

  Me neither. I’m getting used to seeing her beside me, solid as I am. Watching bits of her vanish is terrifying.

  “Hey, don’t look so freaked out!” she says. “It doesn’t hurt. I don’t think I can get hurt, exactly.” She frowns, as if she’s trying to work out the rules for herself, too. I like that. It makes me feel like I’m the clever one, knowing there are some things even she isn’t sure of.

  “Can you sleep?”

  “Don’t need to.” She shrugs. “That’s good, though,” she adds, gazing dreamily out across the water. “Penkerry’s beautiful in the dark. I mean, I love it when it’s all busy and mental and full of happy holiday people, but when it’s quiet, it’s like magic. They leave the pier lights on all night, and you can watch them dancing on the water. All you can hear is the crashing of the waves, the tide coming in, or the tide going out. It never stays still, never stops, and you can’t argue with it. Can’t fight it. It does what it wants. And then slowly, ever so slowly, the sun starts to come up, and the sky glows orange, and all these early-morning people come out and scuttle about like crabs, putting it ready for the day. I never saw that, when I was here last summer. You should sneak out and come with me, one night. I don’t want you to miss it.”

  My toes tingle inside my dorky shoes. I’m going to be the kind of girl who stays out all night to watch sunrises. It’s just so . . . Tiger. I sneak a sideways glance at Red, and she glows; almost pretty, and I never think that about me.

  I might not love Penkerry yet, but I love knowing that I’m going to.

  “Didn’t you get cold?” I ask, looking at her thin purple T-shirt.

  She barks with laughter. “All the questions in the universe, and that’s what you want to know?”

  It isn’t. I could drown her in questions. What’s it like, being a person made of candle smoke and wishes? Do you know already that’s what I want to ask? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Does time feel long or short or exactly the same? Do you mind, that you’re here not there?

  And about the rest of this year she’s already lived, too. Will I cry when I get my ears pierced? Does Grace like my hair? Are we still friends?

  Did something happen, something big, to make me turn from Blue to Red?

  “Oh!” I can’t believe I forgot the most important question of all. Again. I am going to be a terrible big sister. “Peanut! Tell me about Peanut! Boy or girl? Did they call it something stupid? Please tell me it’s not called Milk-Thistle?”

  The list of potential baby names pinned on to the fridge is horrifying. There are some sensible ones – Rowan for a boy, and lots of girl ones, Poppy, and Rose (which I’ve crossed out and changed to Rosie, because it’s nicer for a baby). I think Milk-Thistle and Hydrangea and Hedge are Dad just mucking about, but he did call me Bluebell; with him you can never be sure.

  Until now, I suppose.

  “Yeah,” says Red, clearing her throat awkwardly. “About Peanut.”

  An awful, hollow bowl of dread appears in my stomach.

  “No, don’t panic, it’s nothing bad!” Red looks mortified. “It’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”

  The bowl feeling goes away, just about. “Well?”

  Red gives me a meaningful look, and taps the side of her nose three times, tap-tap-tap.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not telling.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry!” She doesn’t look sorry. “It should be a surprise!” She grins. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. You’re rubbish at keeping secrets: you’d be bound to let it slip. Anyway, no one should know too much about their own future. Where’s the fun in life if you know exactly what’s going to happen next?”

  I curl my fingers under the edge of the bench, feeling the warm solid wood beneath me; gripping on tight. I don’t understand. Everyone wants to know what happens next. If Tiger could get the letter with her exam results right this second instead of having to worry for another four weeks, of course she’d open it. If that little girl on the Red Dragon had known it would get stuck, of course she’d never have climbed on board.

  “But. But that’s why I wished you here. To rescue me from doing it all wrong.”

  “That’s what you wished for,” Red says, sitting back and crossing her boots. She squints into the far distance, along the promenade. Something – someone? – catches her eye, and the ghost of a twinkly smile appears in her eyes. “Doesn’t mean I have to agree.”

  “What? But you have to help me!” I need her. I need to know when to cut my hair, where to buy those boots, how to be Red. How can she not get this?

  Red throws me a pitying look. “Didn’t say I wouldn’t help.” She gazes intently into the distance again, over my shoulder. “Maybe I’m here to rescue you from yourself. You don’t always need a carefully planned itinerary, Blue. That’s what really needs to change. Life’s no fun without surprises. Ignore all the maps and timetables and Top Ten lists. Your future will find you. Trust me. If you relax, sit back – it might just walk right up and introduce itself.”

  She flashes me a grin and hops off The Bench, leaving three-quarters of it empty – just in time for a girl to sit down in her place.

  “Hiya,” says the girl, in a thick W
elsh accent just like Dad’s. “Excuse my feet, these boots are killing.” And she starts to unlace her purple boots, right there on the bench, till her socks are off and her sore pink toes are wiggling in the fresh air.

  I politely look the other way. I wouldn’t want some total stranger staring at my blisters.

  “Didn’t I see you last night, down the Pav?” she says, lighting a cigarette.

  Purple boots. It’s the Chinese girl who knew all the words. And here she is, red heart-shaped sunglasses perched on her nose, roll-up burning between her fingers, chatting away like she doesn’t mind my dorky flowery shoes, or my ponytail, or the way I must have spent the last five minutes talking to myself on a bench. Like we’re already mates.

  The girl yawns and stretches, arms up, neck arching back so her hair hangs over the back of the bench, feet off the ground with starfish toes. She’s wearing a checked shirt, tied in a knot at the front, and it rides up so there’s a bit of tummy showing: a little bit of pudge and hip overflowing her cropped jeans. But she doesn’t pull her top down to cover it, like I would. She’s busy. She’s comfy. This is my bench, the bit of pudge seems to say. I belong here.

  I want to take her picture, stinky roll-up cigarette and all.

  Red stares fondly at the girl like she’s her long-lost bestie. Which must be exactly who she is. Apparently I’m about to score a new friend, without even having to try. I feel warm, all over.

  “The Pavilion?” the girl says, in case I haven’t understood, jabbing her cigarette at the big peach-painted block on the Pier. “There was a band on. Think they’re playing all summer. I can’t wait for next weekend, they were wicked lush.”

  Red leans over my shoulder. “This,” she whispers, “is where you say, Oh, that’s my parents’ band, and the phenomenon known as ‘conversation’ ensues.”

  I open my mouth.

  I clear my throat.

  No words come out. None at all. Not even stupid ones.

  The girl lifts her sunglasses and looks me up and down, with a tiny frown.