Remix (26 page)

Where is it? Not in my hand. I open my eyes to see it lying next to me.

I think I’m reaching out to answer, but actually I’m not moving.

It stops, which is a relief. Don’t have to worry about answering it.

My head is killing me.

I have to wait for the voicemail to play out before I dial again. This time I hold my phone away from my ear and listen for the ringtone.

There it is.

I look to my left and see a closed cabin, which I walk round, looking for Ruby.

The ringing stops and I wait. Dial again.

I have never been so pleased to hear that stupid song, and it’s coming from inside the cabin next to me.

I really hope this is just concussion, because there is no way I’m dying.

Just no way.

I want to have sex with Stu again. Lots.

I want to see my stupid brother get on a stupid plane.

I want to have another chance to mock Callum for something and to successfully dead-leg Ed.

I want to tell my parents that I love them, but I’m not resitting my GCSEs. They’re enough for what I want to do with my life.

I want to see SkyFires again. They’re going to be my new Gold’ntone, without the douchey lead singer. And I want to see the way that non-douchey lead singer looks at my best mate.

Above all, I want to know whatever it is that Stu thinks Kaz needs to tell me. No more secrets. Not between me and Kaz. Not any more.

The door is stiff and takes a hefty shove for me to open it – the sun from outside spilling out in front of me onto a figure lying on the floor.

“Ruby…”
Fear and horror and doubt and panic paralyse me for a second until I’m falling onto the floor next to her. There’s blood smeared on the sink and a patch of red stickiness on her forehead that’s crept down her nose and cheek so it looks as if she’s been crying a trail of crimson tears.

That lesson we had in P.E. where we had to practise things like the recovery position and resuscitation was completely useless. I can’t remember any of it.

“Don’t you
dare
be dead, Ruby Kalinski!” Even saying the word is frightening, but as I say it, I see that she’s breathing. My hand is shaking so much that I can’t even enter the pin on my phone.

There’s a croak on the floor next to me.

“Not dead. Just incredible pain…” Ruby opens one eye and looks up at me. “Hi.”

And I burst into tears and press a desperate, grateful (and possibly unwise) kiss on her ear and tell her that I love her.

“You know
I’m
not dying, right?” she says. “Because you and I have some serious catching up to do.”

Kaz helps me up and I tell her to call Lee – although the opening she uses is not the wisest.

“I found her on the toilet floor. She’s bleeding—”

I hear his response from a metre away. “OH MY GOD, IS SHE OK?”

I hold out the hand that’s not around Kaz and she gives me her phone. “She’s OK, Wee,” I say.

“Good, because I’m going to kill you for scaring us like that. Why’d you run off, you loon?”

“I’m not so OK that I can answer that easily.” My head is pounding and my thoughts are all jumbled about. “Are you with Stu?”

He isn’t. Kaz calls Stu for me and hands me the phone. He answers almost immediately. “Have you found her?”

“She found me,” I say with a smile.

There’s a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Don’t do that to me again, Ruby. Not ever. You understand? No matter what you’re running from, can you just wait long enough so I can run with you?”

His words make me want to cry and I’m too all over the place to stop it happening, so I just nod furiously and hand the phone to Kaz to do the talking for me. She tells him that I’m nodding and that I must have done some serious damage to my head because I’m crying. In public. Or rather in a public toilet. And also I am smiling.

Kaz tells me he wants to say something and she holds the phone next to my face.

“I love you, Soho.” His words in my ear ease the pain for a second. “I’ll see you at the first-aid tent.”

As Kaz helps me towards the doorway, I realize I’ve used too much energy talking to Lee and Stu and when we reach the steps, instead of walking down them, I sit on them. Following my lead, Kaz sits down too.

Ruby is paler than I’ve ever seen her. I would very much like to get her to the first-aid professionals sooner rather than later, but she obviously needs a rest. So obviously that she’s now leaning on me, the non-bloody but distinctly damp side of her head resting on my shoulder.

“So Stu says you need to tell me something.” She twists her head to look at me. “I’m guessing it’s Tom-slash-Lauren related, so spill. In case I bleed out and die anyway.”

I’d rather she didn’t joke about that kind of thing.

“So you know on Friday?” I say. “When we had a massive fight and you tried to tell me that Tom had a girlfriend and that he was over me?” Ruby does a nod-cum-head loll. “Well, you were right about one of those things.”

“I was right about the girlfriend.” Then she stops, thinks and adds, “But he was not over you. I totally knew that too, by the way.”

Now she tells me. “I found that out the hard way. And I mean that in the most innuendo-ey way possible.”

“Shut. Up.” Ruby actually sits up and makes me worried that she’s upset with me, the way she looks like she’s about to shout. “You are
not
telling me you lost your virginity via the medium of innuendo. Nuh-uh. You have to say the words. Repeat after me:
I had sex with Tom
.”

“I had sex with Tom.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She pats my cheek, and collapses on my shoulder as if perhaps that
was
too hard. Then Ruby adds, “I will beat you up for not telling me about Tom some other time.”

“How about me beating you up for not telling me about Adam Wexler?” I tilt my head so she can see I’m grinning, that this is a joke.

“Not sure I’ll ever be talking about that one.”

I assume she’s joking too, because
Adam Wexler
. I can understand why she freaked out about every last person at Remix knowing, but I’m her best friend. I have rights to information like this. “Was he any good?”

“Not for me he wasn’t.” The way she’s talking, the tone of voice she’s using doesn’t sound like Ruby at all and I realize I misread the truth as a joke. “I couldn’t stop thinking that I’d rather be anywhere else than with him.”

I stroke her hair away from the cut on her forehead – it’s starting to congeal. And there’s a rather large lump forming.

“He didn’t…?”
How do I even ask this?

But Ruby and I aren’t so far gone that she can’t read my mind. “I wanted to. I just really wish I hadn’t. Like
really
. Like send someone back in time and
Terminator 2
myself.”

“Kill yourself?”

Ruby sighs. “You’ve never seen
T2
, have you, Kaz?”

I haven’t.

“So … was Tom any good, then?” Her voice is back to normal and I decide that I’m never going to ask her about Adam Wexler again. Just because Ruby
can
talk to me about anything, it doesn’t mean she has to.

“You have obviously never had sex in a one-man tent,” I say.

“No. Just a tour bus.” And there’s a sigh of laughter in her voice.

“Yours was roomier,” I say.

We sit a little longer.

“Speaking of rock stars,” I say, “anything happen with Sebastian?”

At the mention of his name, my best friend’s face blooms into the most beautiful smile. “We kissed. It was nice.”

The happiness I can hear in her words makes me want to cry, because there is no one I want to be happy more than Kaz. As she stands, the dress she’s wearing floats back in the breeze outlining her body – in the sunlight she seems aglow with Kazness. Strong and sure.

She makes me strong too.

“Come on.” Kaz helps me up. “I think we’ll go and meet your boyfriend up at the first-aid tent. That head wound is unnerving me.”

Boyfriend
. Kaz didn’t even sound angry when she called him that.

As I wobble on the steps to the ground, I look down at my vest. “Poor whimsical unicorn. She looks like she just escaped from the abattoir.”

“I’ll give you my whimsical badger. How about that?” Kaz suggests and I nod – only once, because moving my head is not something that feels all that great.

“Always preferred badgers anyway. Much handier in a fight.”

And I slide my hand into Kaz’s as we walk back out into the arena. Friendship isn’t something that’s supposed to be perfect because people aren’t perfect. People will lie, they will cheat and they will let you down. Friendship is what picks you up.

You can’t pick someone up if they never fall down.

I don’t care how many times we fall – one of us will be there to hold the other up.

Thank you most intensely to Annalie Grainger and Denise Johnstone-Burt. I tried several times to write a sentence that truly expressed why you are so brilliant and I’m sure you know what that sentence should be without me actually writing it – something that sums up the editorial process for
Remix
pretty well, I think. Thank you also to Christian Trimmer whose very sensible thoughts from afar have been invaluable.

Books are a team effort and I am in love with my team mates: Daisy Jellicoe, Jack Noel, Victoria Philpott, Sean Moss … and everyone else in editorial, design, publicity, marketing, sales, production and rights – just because you aren’t named doesn’t mean you aren’t appreciated. A lot.

Thank you to my amazing agent, Jane Finigan. You pep talk like no other and I continue to be grateful to have you on my side.

This book has changed a lot through the drafting process and I want to thank those who read various incarnations: Laura Hedley, who will always be my litmus test for whether what I’ve written is utter rubbish; Liz Bankes, whose feedback
without fail
makes me snort-laugh and nod in agreement; Kim Curran, who kindly invested time and thought on the wrong draft (sorry!); and James Dawson, who I caught in time to stop the same thing happening to him. I thank you as readers, but you’re pretty awesome as friends too.

Thank you to the book bloggers, not just for your enthusiasm for my book(s), but for books in general. I wish I could thank you all by name, but I would like to give a shout out to Jim Dean, for spreading a particularly happy-making kind of book joy across the Internet.

Speaking of which … thank you, everyone on Twitter, who has suggested a synonym for “having sex”, or slang for condoms, made up a stupid (sweary) insult, told me about an unromantic present and above all, thank you A MILLION for all the entertaining, serious, ridiculous and brilliant title suggestions. I’m still a little bit sad we didn’t go with the one from @ciclovesbooks:
I Came to this Festival to Forget About My Ex and All I Got Was this Friendship (and Possibly Drugs. But Mainly Friendship)
.

Thank you to the real Kirsten Turner, who won the right for her name (and her left boot) to get written into
Remix
.

Ta muchly to the Masons for coming with me to a festival – Conrad for suggesting we go in the crowd and Kat for introducing me to the phrase “musical omnivore” – and to the friends who accompanied me to gigs in days of yore: Caroline, Katy, Osie, Ruth and Simon.

Thank you, Gemma Cooper, Claire Wilson and Helen Boyle, all of whom help to keep my feet in publishing whilst my head’s in another world.

Family, thank you: Mum for what must have been a lot of repetitive phone conversations; Dad for unfailing pride in what I’m doing; Addy for distracting me (not actually very helpful, but never mind); Pragmatic Dan, you can’t choose who loves you, which is just as well for me, or I think you’d have chosen someone less erratic, grumpy and messy.

And a kind of pointless (but important) thank you to all the bands who shaped my love of music – there really are few things better than a three-minute-thirty song.

“Smart, engaging and hard to put down; Non Pratt is a YA writer to watch.”

Guardian

Hannah is smart and funny. She’s also fifteen and pregnant. Aaron is the new boy at school. He doesn’t want to attract attention. So why does Aaron offer to be the pretend dad to Hannah’s unborn baby? Growing up can be trouble but that’s how you find out what really matters.

www.ink-slingers.co.uk