Following Flora Read online

  “Do you think he was trying to charm you? Like he’s hoping you’ll tell Flora how dreamy he is, and what witty conversational skills he has?”

  We both sniggered at that. I know it’s not nice.

  Dodi says she’s disappointed in Zach in real life. She says that when he’s not singing or casting smoldering looks at Flora, he looks like a bit of a loser. I said that he reminds me of the poet Keats, who we studied in English before the Bwontës, and who died tragically young in Italy of tuberculosis. Dodi, who never lets anything she learns at school follow her into real life, said she would never have thought about that but that she supposed he did remind her of all sorts of doomed rock stars, and perhaps that is what Flora saw in him.

  Dad has spent the whole day cleaning. The house is draped with drying bed linen from basement to attic, and I have never seen it sparkle so much. At dinner, he announced again that we had to get rid of the kittens, but Mum said no.

  Dad said the kittens kept disturbing him when he was trying to work.

  “In this family,” Mum said, “we look after the weak and the vulnerable. In fact,” Mum added, “we don’t just look after them, we welcome them.” She sounded really fierce, and also like she wasn’t really talking about kittens at all. I think Dad realized that too, because he didn’t answer but looked down when she glared at him.

  The kittens have been rolled in flea powder like two little doughnuts in icing sugar, and they are not allowed out of the kitchen.

  THE VERY MUCH ENHANCED FILM DIARIES OF BLUEBELL GADSBY

  SCENE FOUR (TRANSCRIPT)

  LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

  INTERIOR. AFTERNOON.

  ZACHARY SMITH sits on a chair, playing his guitar. His surroundings (the Richmond Hill Retirement Home) have vanished in a misty haze. All background noise has been edited out. The only sound is that of his singing and strumming. Picture cuts to FLORA, gazing at him. A ribbon of pink cartoon hearts floats from her mouth to form a bubble above her head, inside which, in yellow letters, is the single word SIGH. Zach, in his misty haze, is enveloped in a cloud of baby blue songbirds. Think Disney’s Cinderella and all the little animals. His speech bubble says, YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL. When the song reaches the chorus—and the waves draw lines along the sand, the sand—picture switches briefly to a tropical sunset, and a couple running together in the water, then returns to a split screen with Zach on one side, looking poetically tragic, and Flora on the other, smiling with her eyes closed in apparent ecstasy. Picture melts away as music fades and the following words take over the screen:

  ZACH AND FLORA

  LOVE

  AT

  FIRST

  SIGHT

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24

  It was all Dodi’s idea. I’m not saying I didn’t want to go along with it, and that I’m not glad I did. We spent the whole day turning Zach and Flora gazing at each other at the concert into a full-length music video. I learned a ton of things. The end result was fabulous.

  It just wasn’t my idea to put it on YouTube.

  Flora has a history with YouTube. Last year, her then horrible boyfriend’s even more horrible friends uploaded a film of Flora playing one of Snow White’s seven dwarves in a Christmas show, when her leather shorts split as she was doing a forward bend. It was a very poor quality video, but it was unmistakably Flora, and she was unmistakably not wearing anything under the shorts.

  “But this is not humiliating at all,” Dodi reasoned. “This is tasteful and romantic.” And then she said that our clip could be seen by millions of people, and that this could be the beginning of a whole new career for me as a director of pop videos.

  “I’m not sure that I want a career directing pop videos,” I said. “I want to do something meaningful, like make undercover documentaries exposing crime and corruption. Or award-winning nature programs. And one day, feature films. I’m not sure pop videos are really my thing. And anyway, someone sitting on a chair playing the guitar hardly counts as a pop video, even with little birds and love hearts and butterflies . . .”

  “Stop being such a dork.” All the time I was talking, Dodi was fiddling with the computer.

  “All done,” she said when I finished explaining. “At the very least it will make him and Flora realize how much they fancy each other.”

  “Flora will kill me,” I said. “Zach will kill me. Zoran will kill me.”

  “Not when Zach sweeps her off her feet and declares his undying love, they won’t. Then Flora and Zach will be eternally grateful, and Zoran will actually thank you, because Zach will stop being so tragic.”

  That is Dodi’s point of view.

  Me, I just hope Flora never, ever sees it.

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26

  Mum and Dad left home together early this morning. I was brushing my teeth at the bathroom window and I watched as they got into the car and then just sat there, side by side in the front seats, talking for ages but not looking at each other. Even when Dad leaned over and kissed Mum on the cheek, she just carried on staring out of the window, and I’m pretty sure she was crying.

  “They’ve gone to the doctor,” said Jas on the walk to school. “I looked in her diary.”

  “But why has Dad gone with her?” I asked. Jas shrugged and said the diary didn’t say why.

  “It can’t be serious,” Flora said. “Dad would be nicer to her if it was.”

  “I saw him kiss her,” I reminded her.

  “Well, that makes a pleasant change.” Flora never worries about anything unless she absolutely has to.

  Film club was canceled after school today, so I came home early. The house was dark when I got back and at first I thought that it was empty, but when I went to the kitchen to make some tea the back door was open and Mum was sitting on the veranda, wrapped in a blanket and staring at the garden. I called out to her and she jumped. When she turned around I saw that she was holding a photograph.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her, and she said, “Nothing!” with that smile we all hate because it is so fake. She moved over on the bench to make room for me to sit down. The photograph fell off her lap. It was a picture of Iris.

  “Oh,” I said, and after that we sat very still and silent. The kettle boiled and I got up to make us both some tea. When I got back the photograph was gone, and Mum had that look people get when they were about to cry but then managed to stop themselves. She took the mug I offered her. I sat on the floor with my back to her chair, and we both watched the garden, which at this time of year is basically muddy and brown except for a few roses still clinging on like nobody’s told them yet that it’s nearly winter.

  “Something momentous is happening,” Mum said.

  I thought of the photograph, and of Iris, and of this morning’s secret doctor’s appointment.

  “Are you going to die?” I tried not to let my voice shake. Mum smiled and kissed me.

  “I’m not planning on it,” she said.

  “She’s not planning on it?” Jas cried this evening when I told her. “What does that even mean?”

  I said I didn’t have a clue.

  “What if Flora’s wrong?” Jas asked. “What if it is serious?”

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” I said, but I am not like Flora, and neither is Jas. If something is wrong, we would rather know about it.

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27

  My video has had thousands of hits! I can’t give an exact number because people keep looking at it, but Dodi is beside herself with excitement and I would be too if so many people weren’t furious with me.

  What happened was this: On Monday night, a girl in Tennessee with about a million followers on Twitter tweeted about it, posting a link to the video.

  A whole bunch of her followers retweeted it.

  A girl Flora used to know, who goes to Zach’s school, read the tweet, saw the video, and posted it to Facebo
ok and Instagram, then retweeted it and texted and e-mailed the link to everyone in her address book, including Flora’s best friend, Tamsin. By morning break, pretty much everybody in both schools had seen it.

  Flora has not responded well to global celebrity.

  U. Hve. Ruined. My. Life.

  That was her immediate reaction on discovering she was famous. She sent it via text ten minutes into first period, just after Tamsin showed her the video on her iPhone.

  I am litrly gonna mrder u. Flora is the world’s fastest texter. I will nvr forgive u.

  “Ignore her,” Dodi whispered when I showed her my phone under the desk. Every1 is laughing at me. Graham keeps singing at me. I am going 2 tear u lmb from lmb.

  “Can I come and live with you for a bit?” I whispered back to Dodi.

  U r no lnger my sister! Once I hve kld u I am nvr, evr gonna spk 2 u again. Prepare for yrs of misry.

  That’s when Madame Gilbert confiscated my phone, which, quite frankly, was a relief.

  Zach’s response to his newfound fame has been to get into a fight. A load of people in his class were teasing him, and when they didn’t stop he threw a punch at one of them, and then a whole bunch of boys got involved until their teacher came in. Someone in his class filmed the whole thing and posted that on Facebook as well. It got taken down later, but not before everyone was talking about it. Zach got sent home and has been suspended till the end of the week, and Zoran is even more furious with me than Flora is. In fact he came around this afternoon just to shout at me.

  “I asked you to delete that scene!” he yelled. “Not post it all over the Internet like some dating agency advertisement!”

  I said I was really, really sorry.

  “You knew how much that concert meant to him, Blue. He poured his heart and soul into that song, and then you . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “And now he’s in trouble at school. I had to go in this afternoon to make all sorts of excuses for him about extenuating circumstances. His sick grandfather. His missing mother. And you make fun of him!”

  I started to cry. Zoran sighed, and sat down next to me on the bed.

  “You have so much talent,” he said quietly. “It makes me mad to see you waste it.”

  “It was Dodi’s idea,” I sniffed.

  “You have your own way of looking at the world, Blue. You see things other people don’t. That’s why you like filming, and writing. You pick up on things. You don’t need to hide behind people like Dodi.”

  “Dodi’s fun,” I said.

  “And you are serious.”

  “I don’t want to be serious.”

  “Serious people can do great things.” He nudged me with his elbow and pulled a sad, serious face. “Stop to think before you do something like this again, okay?”

  I looked at my films again after he’d gone. Mum and Flora laughing together at the bathroom window, Alina and Peter holding hands at the concert, Jas in the garden draped in kittens—is this what Zoran means about picking up on things? Because if I posted those on YouTube, I bet they wouldn’t get viewed by thousands. For a moment, I felt annoyed with Zoran because it feels like quite something to have so many people looking at what I’ve done. Then Jake sent me a message on Facebook to tell me Tom had sent him the link to my video and all his family were laughing their heads off about it in Australia, and I immediately felt bad again.

  It’s not funny, I wrote back.

  Jake wrote, lol.

  I wrote that I didn’t think he understood the seriousness of the situation, and when was he coming home anyway?

  Jake wrote, Sunday, and man, he didn’t want to leave because Australia was so awesome.

  I didn’t reply.

  The atmosphere at home is horrible, and this time it’s all my fault.

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29

  “The most logical thing,” Dodi said today, “is to get Zach and Flora together.”

  “In what way is that remotely logical?” I asked.

  We were in our kitchen after school, eating Twig’s latest batch of banana and chocolate chip cookies.

  “It’s what we planned to do all along,” Dodi said. “It makes Zach happy; it makes Flora happy; it makes Zoran happy, plus now it lets you off the hook. It’s the perfect solution.”

  “But how?”

  “We finish what we started!” Dodi cried.

  “How?” I repeated, and Dodi admitted she didn’t know.

  “Think!” she ordered. We sat there for ages, munching and thinking. We finished the banana and chocolate chip cookies, and moved on to jam and coconut, until we eventually came up with this:

  Stalk Zach.

  Establish his routine.

  Take Flora to a place their paths will cross.

  Run away.

  Which is rubbish, I pointed out to Dodi, for loads of reasons but mainly because even if we do manage to work out where Zach is going to be, Flora is about as likely to follow us there as she is to crush a kitten with her bare hands.

  “We need help,” concluded Dodi. “But who?”

  We stared out at the garden. Twig has finally convinced Dad to help him build a tree house in the garden, but Dad has already given up, so now Twig and Jas were out there together, trying to finish it on their own and yelling at each other.

  “There’s our answer,” Dodi said.

  “You only talk to us when you need something,” Jas said when we told her what we wanted her to do. “It’s rude.”

  “You could pay us,” Twig suggested.

  “You are obsessed with money,” I told him. Twig shrugged and said to blame the parents and their imminent separation. He said it’s a well-known fact families are poorer when they divorce.

  “Don’t you want Flora to be happy?” asked Dodi.

  “Not particularly,” said Jas, but money did it in the end.

  “What if he is too embarrassed to talk to her?” Jas asked.

  “I would be, after that video,” Twig sniggered.

  “Everything will work out just fine,” I said firmly.

  Twig says he has never heard of a plan with so much potential for failure, but it hasn’t stopped him taking my money. Operation Flora is costing me five pounds a head for him and Jas, plus expenses, “in case we have to buy anything while we are out.”

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30

  Things started to go wrong from the beginning when Flora refused to take the Babes shopping, claiming excessive fame.

  “I can never show my face in public again,” Flora said. “It’s all Blue’s fault. She can take you.”

  “I have homework,” I said.

  “Surely,” Flora said, “they are old enough to go on their own.”

  “I am very, very young,” said Jas. “And Twig is extremely irresponsible.”

  “I’ll take you,” said Mum from the sofa where she was lying, and we all jumped because we thought she was asleep.

  “You mustn’t!” I cried. Mum looked startled. “You’re so tired,” I said. “And you don’t look well.”

  “I do feel a little sick,” she admitted.

  My heart dropped. Jas and I looked at each other. Mum still hasn’t told us why she went to the doctor and neither of us has had the courage to ask.

  “Oh for goodness’ sake,” sighed Flora. “Just let me find my biggest hat and sunglasses.”

  Dodi and I followed them at a discreet distance. We stopped just inside the park, out of sight but close enough to the shops to get there within minutes of Twig texting us.

  Later, Twig told me exactly what happened. The plan continued going wrong when instead of heading straight to the bookshop, like she was supposed to, Flora dived into a clothes shop then bumped into Tamsin, who suggested they go for coffee. Jas dragged her away but when they finally got t
o the record shop, Zach wasn’t there.

  “He left early,” Twig texted.

  “Well where the ****** **** is he then?” I said to Dodi.

  “Over there,” she replied.

  Right in front of us, across the lawn on the basketball courts. Shooting hoops and looking moody, all on his own.

  After that, things moved very fast.

  I texted Twig back to tell him where we were.

  Jas announced that vinyl records were a waste of time, especially since we don’t have a record player, and that she wanted to go to the park.

  Flora, who was enjoying herself, said tough.

  Jas ran away.

  Flora ran after her.

  Twig, after a quick text to me, followed.

  “They will be here in about two minutes,” I informed Dodi.

  “Which will be too late!” she hissed. “He’s leaving!”

  It was true. Zach had tucked his basketball under his arm and was lolloping—I swear, he lollops—away from us across the court.

  Dodi grabbed my hand.

  “Come on!” she cried, and started running.

  So there we were. Flora, Jas, and Twig running down the main street. Dodi and me tearing after Zach. Zach, unaware of any of us, lolloping.

  “How are we going to stop him?” I panted.

  “Leave it to me,” she gasped.

  We drew level with Zach. Dodi threw herself at his feet.

  “I’m sorry!” she cried “We weren’t laughing at you! We never thought so many people would watch the video!”

  Zach just stared at her.

  “Forgive us!” Dodi begged.

  “Dodi.” I nodded toward the park entrance. Jas and Twig were streaking across the lawn toward us, trailing.

  “We have to go!” Dodi shouted. And then me and Dodi ran away, except we were laughing so much we had to run with our legs crossed so as not to pee.

  Zach just carried on staring. He stared as we vanished down the path and dived into a bush, and he stared some more as Jas and Twig shot past and followed us, and then he stared and stared and stared as Flora, red and breathless and still wearing her hat and sunglasses, erupted onto the court, screeched to a halt, and stared back.