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LOLA LOVE
Cupcakes
and
glitter shakes
By
Lisa Clark
Cupcakes and glitter shakes to:
The Man — mwooah? x
Team Lola — especially Darley, Zoe and Lindsey, for continuing to make my dreams come true!
Team Lolasland.com — Sophie — for ‘getting it’ and for being awesome — you rock and rule and Clive, Laura,
Tom and Zoe for making magic happen!
Julie — for giving me inside info, for being a kick-ass cheerleader and the coolest pen-pal ever!
Christoff and Keithster o’ FF — for being my BBF — best boys forevz and for my secret giftie — made finishing
this book so sweet!
Carla and Nadia — for being so super-fab and supportive and sending me the cutest notebook in which all
the notes for this book were written — cheers chicas!
The Pink Ladies who read the books and write fabulous-o emails and Letters to Lola and I-you’re amazing!
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 Twentyone
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
“Bella,” I say as calmly as I possibly can, “can you come reread this for me please, I think there’s a chance I might be dreaming!”
Pink Lady Bella crawls across my pink bedspread and rests her head on my shoulder. She mutters the words as she reads from the screen, and when she gets to the end, she lets out a really loud squeal in my ear.
“Lo, Lo—the ed of Missy magazine has just asked you to go be her intern—this is huge, this is may-jah!” she says, doing a stompy boot dance in honour of quite possibly the best news I’ve ever had.
So, I wasn’t dreaming.
Bella had just confirmed it.
The ed-girl—my idol-girl—of my most favourite magazine, Missy, has asked me to be an intern.
What did I go and do so right to deserve this?!
And um…more importantly than that I guess, what was an intern?
“It’s what Americans call work-experience, Lola!” Bella informs me, when I ask her. Which makes sense because like Bella, Tori Frankel—ed girl extraordinaire, is an American-o too.
“I thought that’s what it meant!” I say, which isn’t altogether true, which is why I asked. You should never be afraid to ask questions, y’know, no matter how silly they seem, because imagine if ‘internship’ meant something completely different like, I don’t know, eat maggots or clean toilets. If I hadn’t asked, I could have arrived on the first day and been in for a complete icky shock.
This was a BIG deal.
Missy magazine was my most favourite magazine and while I didn’t want to pester ed-girl Tori Frankel, after I met her, I thought it would be crazy not to take the opportunity to keep in contact—so I emailed her. I emailed her a copy of my new zine and I thought up lots of cool ideas for Missy, just so she knew I was serious about it. I even made a mood board to go with the ideas—cutting out pictures and words and colour schemes that went with them—it took me ages, but it didn’t matter.
If it meant I got to work at Missy Magazine, one of the only magazines in magazine-y world that doesn’t get all hung up on body bits and instead writes about cool stuff like, 15 year old girls doing kick-ass things with their lives, and fashion shoots with real-sized girls, then it would be worth it. I know I do my own thing with my own zine, which I love, but I want to learn all about how a real magazine works so that when I’m ready, I can make my magazine the best magazine in the world ever.
My computer pings again. Bella and I both rush to the screen in anticipation. It’s my Aunt Lullah. When she lived here, and not in swanksville New York, city of my dreams, we always used to joke that she wasn’t really my auntie and that she was actually my psychic sister and it turns out she really is (psychic that is, not my sister, coz that would just be weird) because I really wanted to talk to her!
I click the IM icon on the screen and pull up a blank message box.
I’m literally buzzing with excitement as I type, because Lulllah is my number one inspir-o-girl and I just know she’ll be as excited as I am about me entering the land of my pink-tinted dreams—real magazines.
Ah.
The Mothership.
Bella, who has been reading over my shoulder, pulls a knowing face. This is because she knows the full-on craziness that is my mum. Well, she should do, what with my mum spending A LOT of time with her Yoga Dad.
Yep, this is, in case you were wondering, the very same mum who threatened to call the police about her cult-like neighbours when Bella and Yoga Dad first arrived in the ‘hood. For a while they’ve just been ‘hanging out’ or whatever parental types call spending time together, but now, according to Bella, it seems they might, y’know, like each other. Mum hasn’t told me this herself, but that’s because mum and I don’t talk in the same way as Bella and Yoga Dad talk. I’d kinda guessed something might be going on, as her volume switch had been re-set to normal and she sometimes had a smile where her perma-frown used to be. I don’t think they’re dating or anything, just think enjoying spending time together, what with them both being single. That, I’m cool with.
I think.
I mean, parentals deserve to be happy too, right? And when my particular parental is happy, I no longer get hurty ears. And Yoga Dad, rules. He’s a chilled out zen dude, who couldn’t be more unlike my earring-wearing, traveller dad, if he tried. But as much as I love Bella, when she jokes about the idea of them actually dating, and maybe getting married, and us becoming sisters, it turns out I’m not that cool about that in the slightest. In fact, can we change the subject please?
I let my fingers hover above the keyboard before typing back to Lullah. Writing is my most persuasive medium, so I’d better make this good.
Which was absolutely true.
Lullah might be mum’s younger sister and she might be across a huge expanse of sea, but there really was no-one wiser to the workings of the Mothership? than Lullah.
I love Lullah. She’s the greatest.
I especially love how she doesn’t even think the internship won’t happen. She always looks on the bright side of things, and lives her life by her most favourite saying, ‘what you think about, you bring about.’ She would always write cute li’l things like that on Post-it notes and leave them round the house when she was staying here. The Mothership? used to shake her head, tut a little bit and put them in the bin. Positivity was not a word my parental was familiar back then. But I’d collect the notes and put them in my journal. They’re the perfect pick-me-ups for sad days or just days when you need a reminder that life really is sweet. I particularly like ‘thoughts become things—choose the good ones!’ I have it on my mirror, next to my own mantra, ‘I’m feisty, fun, fearless and fabulous!’ which is written on a lip-shaped Post-it note in pink ink—natch.
Lullah is just the tiara-wearing princess of positivity and is my real life proof that if you have a dream, work hard and believe you can do it, you can actually have that dream come true, she’s not my number one inspir-o-girl for nothing, y’know!
I swivel round on my chair, to see Bella lying on my bed and Cat lying on Bella. Cat, or Catitude as I like to call her, takes one look at me, realises she has no interest at all in the pink-haired girl-shape—she never does—and returns to licking her paw.
“So, what’s the score, Miss Magraw?” Bella asks pulling her head up from the pillow, trying hard not to disturb Catitude’s extensive grooming procedure.
“It’s good news, Miss Ma-pooz, Lullah’s on it!” I say, joining her back on the bed. “She’s going to ask her BFF, Skye if I can stay with her in London and then she’s going to deal with the Mothership…Cool, huh?”
Bella picks Cat up from her belly and places her on the bed beside her. Cat is not impressed. For an animal that belonged to such a positive person like my Aunt Lullah, Cat really is quite the grumpster. She has an array of not-impressed faces that vary from mildly annoyed, to utter distain. This one was definitely a peeved’. She jumps off the bed and pulls a totally un-Cat-like pose. It seems that since Yoga Dad has been on the scene, Cat has become a wacky yoga-doing kitty.
Oh, and if you stare at her pulling crazy shapes, she will stop and give you the look—as if you’ve walked in on her naked or something. A look that says ‘Excuse me, do you mind?’
She’s deffo a quirky one, that’s f’sure. That’s why I secretly quite like her, but ssshhh, don’t tell her.
“So, Lo-Lo,” Bella says, trying to watch Cat out of the corner of her eye. “I know this is this coolest news ever and all, but I think you’ve forgotten one teeny-tiny thing…”
“What?” I ask inquisitively. “I’ve covered everything, haven’t I? Parental, accommodation—what else is there?”
Bella reaches across to my bedside table and holds up my invite to a garden party tea dance.
“Err…the small matter of a Sadie soiree?”
Chapter Two
“No way!” I say, grabbing at a fist full of pink tresses. “I can’t believe I went and got so excited about working at Missy magazine that I forgot Sadie’s soiree!”
Now I feel bad.
In fact, I feel beyond bad. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being badness personified, I’m feeling a whopping eighty-four, because Pink Lady, Sadie is the official organiser of fun.
This is factuality.
There’s not a holiday break that goes by without a themed party of some sort at Chez Sadie. It’s like the law or something.
“Chill, chica!” Bella says, removing my clenched, knot-making fists from my hair and placing them safely back down by my side. “It’s cool, this is a huge opportunity for you, Sadie’ll underst…”
“But…” I interrupt, “being a Pink Lady is all about putting your gal-pals first. Nope, it’s okay, I’ll just ask Tori if I can intern at Missy another time, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Except that it really didn’t feel fine.
Not one little bit.
What if this was my only chance? My one shot? What if they were booked up for the next four years? What if they were booked up for the rest of my life and I NEVER got the chance to intern at Missy? That would be just sucky × 100. But I couldn’t let Sadie down either. She really was one of the best friends a girl could ever ask for and she’d never let me down, not ever.
“That’s it, I’m gonna call Sadie, let’s get this sorted out!” Bella says reaching past me and picking up the receiver of the lip-shaped phone on my bedside table.
“No!” I shout putting my hand on the receiver to stop her calling, I then jump back in insta-fright as the phone starts to ring.
It stops after one ring and I hear the parental greet whoever was on the other end with a cheery ‘Hi!’ a ‘Hi’ which is usually only reserved for the likes of Yoga Dad and it wasn’t him, because he was here, so I could only assume it was Aunt Lullah.
Now I felt bad again.
Aunt Lullah was going to have to work some of her serious Lullah magic to persuade the Mothership to let me go be a real-life writer girl in the Londinium, and now it would all be for nothing because I had friendship commitments and wouldn’t be able to go.
Undeterred, Bella reaches for my mobile instead and starts searching for Sadie’s number.
“Where’s your mobile?” I ask, realising that there was no point in arguing with Bella, once she had her mind set on something, there really was no stopping her.
“Err, Lola, does this outfit look like it could accommodate a mobile?” she tuts. I scan Bella up and down. She really was just wearing an oversized tee, boots and an excessive amount of pearls, so no, apparently not.
Having found Sadie’s number, Bella presses the green button and puts it on loudspeaker.
After three rings, Sadie’s voice fills my room.
“Hey Lola, how you doing?” she asks, not realising my phone has been hijacked by Bella.
“So, Sadie,” Bella pipes up, “Lo has something she wants to tell you.”
I wave my hands at Bella, mouthing the word ‘no’ to make her stop, but it’s too late.
“Oh? What’s that? Sadie asks.
“Look, Sades,” Bella jumps in, not letting me even try to make this sitch sweeter, seriously, that girl really has no patience sometimes.
“Lo, has been offered an internship at Missy magazine…”
“No way!” screams Sadie. “That’s AMAZING!”
Okay, it was now or never, I took a big gulp of air and swallowed hard.
“Well, it would be,” I begin, “except it’s in the school holidays, like, next week, which means it’ll clash with the Sadie Soiree.”
I chew hard on my lip, Bella has found her nail varnish incredibly fascinating all of a sudden and Cat struts past with her nose in the air and a defiant look on her face.
The line goes silent and stays that way for what seems like a whole lot of forever.
“Look Sades, it’s no biggie,” I say breaking the silence. “I’ll email the ed-girl back and ask if I can intern another time.” Sadie is the official organiser of fun and I really, really don’t want to rain on her fun-time-Frankie parade.
“C’mon, she doesn’t have to do that, does she Sadie?” Bella asks. “Take MeSuki for example…”
As well as our band, The Rainbow Hearts, Bella is in another band called MeSuki. They formed when Suki came into J’adore, the shop Bella works in wearing a badge that said ‘wanna be in my band?’ Bella asked her who her band was exactly, and the girl replied, ‘Me, Suki!’ Ever since then Bella and Suki meet every month and make experimental electro-noise. Suki on keyboard and Bella on guitar. They’ve never played an actual gig or anything, but that’s okay. It’s just something Bella likes to do.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to be in The Rainbow Hearts,” continues Bella. “It’s just that MeSuki was a chance for me to try something new, to experiment with my passion for music. Just like this internship will give Lo-Lo the opportunity to explore her passion for writing, you’re cool with that aren’t you, Sades?”
“Of course,” Sadie says finally, “Look, I’m not going to pretend we won’t miss you Lola, because we will, but this is huge, of course you’ve got to do it. Carpe Diem!”
“Carp de what?” Bella exclaims.
“It means seize the day, Bella!” Sadie tuts. “Jeez Louise, do they teach you nothing at that school of yours?” We all laugh because Bella doesn’t go to a real school, she’s home-schooled by Yoga Dad.
I know. We’re super-jealous too. No uniform. No long division. More importantly, no Evil Eva Satine to heckle you in the playground.
Bella says that home-schooling is much harder than going to real school, but seriously, Sadie and I are still not entirely convinced.
“Are you absolutely sure you’re cool about this Sadie?” I ask hoping and wishing really hard that she meant what she had just said.
“Of course I am, Lola” Sadie confirms. “This is big stuff in Lola’s land of pink fabulousness, it would be rude and wrong of you NOT to go!”
I thank each and every one of my lucky pink-tinted stars that I’ve got such incredibly amazing friends.
“And to show you how totally cool I am about it, why don’t we have a cupcake bake here at mine on Sunday?”
“Sounds great, Sadie. Thank you so much, love you!” I say, feeling my insides fill up with the total loveliness that comes with having caring, sharing gal-pals who know what’s important to you.
“Love you too, see you Sunday—mwooah!”
I press the red button on my mobile, sit down next to Bella and rest my head on her shoulder.
Happy days.
This moment of girlkind bliss is rudely interrupted by a parental that appears to have lost the ability to knock, standing, hands-on-hip in my doorway.
Chapter Three
The parental said yes.
No really, she did.
And I think, although I can’t be 100% sure, that she might even have been a little bit proud of me in her own hard-to-spot way.
Chica, I’m just as shocked as you are, but it seems Aunt Lullah is able to cast her special kind of fabulous magic all the way from NYC.
Lullah spoke with her BFF Skye, who is adorable and cute and basically a black-haired version of Lullah. They were just like two-peas-in-a-pod at University and in the holidays, Skye would come down to the coast to escape the big city. That’s why I think that when Skye rang to speak to the parental, the parental instantly agreed to let me go. She knows Skye, she’s met her and actually really likes her, which is really good news for me. And guess what? Not only is Skye super-lovely and nice and liked by the parental, she’s also editor at a new magazine based in the same building as Missy. I didn’t even know she was an ed-girl! So now I’ll be working with super cool ed-girl Tori by day, and I’ll be staying with super-cool ed-girl Skye at night, it’ll be inspir-o-girl city-hurrah!
IM to self
Q. Could life be any more fabulous?
A. No.
I’d been so ready to practise the new-found parental persuasion skills that I’d learned from an episode of this American-o show called Dr Grill, that I was the teeniest tiniest bit disappointed when I didn’t get to try them out for size. It had been a great episode too, with Dr Grill, who’s not a cook btw, but actually an agony uncle type dude, giving bratty American-o teens with ‘issues’, failsafe ways to get their parents to ‘understand’ them. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought the Mothership had watched it too, because getting her to agree to let me go was much less painful than I could ever, ever have imagined. Turns out that Lullah + Skye + Yoga Dad’s bendy-wendy, zen-like presence = a near normal parental able to make rational decisions that may change the course of her daughter’s future for the better.
Now that’s an equation that makes me think Maths might not be all that bad after all.
So you’d think I’d be worry-free, right?
Wrong.
My only real concern should have been creating a day-by-day outfit plan and figuring out how I could be the best intern-girl that Missy has ever seen, but there was still the smallest niggle in the back of my mind that I was letting Sadie and the Pink Ladies down.
Y’see, school breaks are the only time we get to all spend quality BFF girl time together, because that’s when Angel comes home from her swanksville boarding school. Except this particular school break, I was going to be rockin’ it up journo-girl style in the Londinium. What if Angel comes home, gets bored of not seeing me and decides she’d rather stay at her super-swank boarding school with her new friends who have daddy-funded credit cards, yah?
When I’d messaged her about the internship, she replied instantly with;
Wow! Amazing. B sure 2 scope out the fashion rail and if you’re allowed freebies remember I’m a size 5 shoe, ‘k?
Which made me think she was more than okay with it, so I couldn’t help but wonder why today, at the thought of the impending yummy scrummy cupcake bake, when my head should be filled with thoughts of pink frosting and edible glitter shakes, I was actually still feeling slightly weirded out at the thought of hanging with my gal-pals.
Chapter Four
“Lo-Lo, it’ll be fine,” Bella assures me as we whizz at a hundred miles per hour (well, it feels like it anyway!) along the promenade on her brand new Chopper bike. It shouldn’t be cool because it’s a total throwback from the 1970’s, but with its black and hot pink piping, coloured ribbons and feathers attached to the handlebars that flap and blow the faster we go, it was totally hipster cool, just like her.
“Sades will be fine, and as for Angel…” Bella shouts in my ear as we pass the funfair, “it’s just hard for you two. You’re so used to having spent all your time together as kids, that now, when you’re apart, you both just get your weird on!”
I was sitting on the metal bar in front of Bella, with my flip-flop feet outstretched in front of me and my candyfloss pink coloured hair whipping my face in the wind, it was all I could do to stay on board let alone answer. Instead, I let the salty sea air tangle up my pink tresses, the smell of hot dogs and fried onions fill my nostrils and the strain of some cheesy 80s pop star provide the soundtrack to my beach ride with Bella.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Sadie sing-songs as she answers the door to us. She’s wearing a baby blue apron with big floral print and she’s licking cake mix from her finger.
“Mmmm, delish!” she informs us. “Angel and I already have a batch in the oven, so they’ll be ready for frosting soon!” Sadie throws me a little wink, as she knows that hands down, frosting is by far my most favourite part of Cupcake Bake. Well, besides the actual taste testing part obviously, but surely that goes without saying, right?
“When she says ‘we’, what she actually means is ‘she’!” says Angel coming at me with open arms. “Do I look like I could whip up cupcakes? Seriously, do I?” she asks.