You could have knocked me down with one. ‘You play that too?’
‘Thought it would be too scary for the Lip Gloss Girls,’ Wizzie said.
‘Bet you don’t get it to work,’ Sonya said.
‘Every time,’ I told them.
‘Bet your ghost stories are all about little girls screaming and running away from bad people and having handsome hunks save them,’ Wizzie said. And she began screaming like a tiny baby.
‘You’d never beat me with a ghost story,’ I said. A challenge, and I was always up for a challenge.
The room was in darkness and the ghost stories began. Wizzie was first – liked to be first in everything, I suppose. Her story was all slash and blood and horror, about a headless zombie cannibal that kept chasing everybody and eating them. It didn’t so much scare you as make you sick.
‘How could it chase you if it didn’t have a head?’ Grace wanted to know. ‘It would keep bumping into things, wouldn’t it?’
Wizzie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a story, Grace. It doesn’t have to be logical. Anyway, how would it eat people if it didn’t have a head either! You’ve just got to use your imagination.’
That made us all giggle, except Grace, still trying to work it out.
Sonya told a vampire story, not very well, and Grace’s story was so mixed up she forgot the ending. Then it was my turn. I began the video story, speaking in a soft voice, full of atmosphere. I wanted them to know that I was the master storyteller, just as I had been with Erin. I drew them in, told them of the figure in the fog striding towards the shack, even mentioning Mary Brown, a real name, a real girl. I had them mesmerised, listening to my every word. I had almost reached the climax …
‘Then, I heard the back door of the video shop creak open …’
All of a sudden a cupboard door in Lauren’s room flew open, and a dark hooded figure leapt out.
Total panic! We all screamed, fell back in complete confusion. Grace was almost out of the window. Sonya was under the bed. I grabbed a lamp, ready to hurl it at whatever demon was attacking us.
‘What’s that?!’
‘Blinkin’ hell, the story come to life.’
Lauren jumped to her feet, switched on the light. The hooded figure whipped off his mask with a flourish.
It was Lauren’s dad.
He was laughing so much I thought he was about to burst. ‘Gotya, lassies!’
Lauren threw a cushion at him. ‘Dad! That could have been fatal!’
‘Where did he come from?’ I asked.
In answer, her dad, still chuckling away, opened the cupboard door he had leapt from and stepped inside. He pushed another door that opened on to the landing in the hallway. ‘Gotya!’ he said again. ‘Nobody ever remembers I can get in from the landing that way! Especially on a dark night … with the lights off, and the wind blowing.’ He began to howl like a wolf.
Grace flopped on to the bed. ‘See you, Mr Winters!’ She said it as if Lauren’s dad always got up to tricks like that.
I hadn’t laughed like that in so long. And here I was laughing again with the Hell Cats.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Chapter Forty-Two
Light as a Feather was forgotten. The mood gone. Even the wind had died down.
Lauren put on her music and we all began singing along with our favourite tunes. Wizzie was leaping about on the bed. I waited for Lauren to tell her to stop, but no one said a word to her. I’d like to see my mum allowing that!
Then I stopped singing. I listened. One of us had a beautiful voice, and it certainly wasn’t me.
I looked at Lauren.
She looked back at me. Stopped singing too. ‘What?’
‘You’re a really good singer,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to sound so surprised.’
‘She is, isn’t she?’ Wizzie said, flopping on the bed at last. She said it as if it was something they had told Lauren lots of times. ‘Her brother’s got a band. When she’s older she’s going to sing in it. We’re always telling her to go for auditions.’
But I had a much better idea. ‘Why don’t you go in for the school show? They’re doing Grease. You’d make a great Sandy.’
Lauren looked at me as if I had two heads. ‘Me?’
‘Well, we know you can be a Pink Lady.’
Grace interrupted. ‘What’s a Pink Lady? Is that not some kind of cocktail?’
‘The Pink Ladies is the name of the girl gang in the film,’ I told her. ‘They’re rough and tough and common … a bit like us.’
Wizzie grimaced. ‘And they call themselves the Pink Ladies? That’s really rough and tough, that is.’