Flirting with Disaster (7 page)

Chapter 13

Early the next morning Penny and her mum came to pick us up in their extremely cool little sports car.

“Nice to have rich friends,” Dad muttered under his breath after he’d downed his morning breakfast of tomato juice with a shot of hot sauce in it. I grinned and kissed his cheek good-bye. He loved Penny. He was just jealous that he wasn’t actually
in
the car or, better yet,
driving
the car. Instead he’d have to settle for watching
Top Gear
on the telly and taking Growl for a walk. He was a good sport about it all, though. I knew the hotel in Chelsea was more than we could really afford right now, and sacrifices would have to be made.

An hour later we drove up in front of the hotel, got early check-in through our garden-show package, and met the others in the lobby. I noticed that Ashley’s mother was in charge. No surprise. To my great relief, even though most of the others were Aristocats, Chloe wasn’t there. At first Ashley thought maybe the ten of us girls should look at the gardens with the mums after all, but it was only because Ringo Starr had been at the show the year before, as had clothing designer Stella McCartney, and she was hoping to bump into some celebs.

She finally decided in favor of shopping on High Ken, as the locals called High Street Kensington, and then Oxford Street; the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief and headed down to the Underground. The concrete walls rumbled around me like they had in Seattle during an earthquake, and I reminded myself twelve times, under my breath, that my mother had said I’d never been claustrophobic. The Tube doors swooshed open, swooshed closed, carried us a short distance, and then we got off and raced into the late May sunlight. Shopping!

We bought some little things at Topshop—and I felt like an old hand there after having been, umm, once, officially—and then we were off to Bershka.

“Bershka?” I asked innocently.

Penny nudged me. Girl rule #212: Don’t display ignorance of local fashion hangouts.

“Yes, Bershka. You know,” Ashley insisted. “The Spanish fashion shop?”

“Oh, right. Bershka.”

Ashley dropped £100 at Bershka, which was about $150 by U.S. reckoning, on a pair of tights and twice as much on a pair of shoes. We started down the street, and she announced, “I need some jeans.”

I glanced at the store’s slogan near the door:
Look Good, Pay Less.

Hooray! I opened my little British flag snap purse and counted my money. “I could use some jeans too,” I said. Maybe I’d find some to replace the ones I’d lost in the great washing disaster.

“Me too,” another girl said. We looked at each other and smiled. When Ashley was involved, there was strength in numbers.

Ashley sailed through the various departments looking over all the jeans. At first we kind of trailed behind her like preschoolers crossing the street behind their teacher, and then we broke up and looked on our own. On one table I found the perfect pair of jeans. My size. Great stitching. Skinny but not too skinny. Marked down. Just as I was about to pick them up and take them to the try-on room, Ashley announced, “There’s nothing here I like. Let’s go.”

I noticed that the other jeans shopper had a pair in her hands too, but she dropped them like stolen merchandise within seconds of Ashley’s announcement. I looked at Penny, ready to speak up and ask if anyone would mind if we waited a second while I tried these on. Penny shook her head a little to indicate that wasn’t a good idea. I dropped my pair too, but I was steamed.

Later that night Penny and I sat in our hotel room eating a room-service meal of roast and Yorkshire pudding in our pj’s, and I asked her, “What was up with not trying on the jeans?”

“Ashley has some good points, like, uh, leadership, and she can be generous when she wants to. But she likes to be the boss.”

Ashley, meet Natalie.
That would be a smackdown I’d love to watch.

“So why do you go along with it?”

“I’ve known her since I was little,” Penny said. “It’s not worth it to make a big deal.”

I was about to open my mouth and insert my foot—speak up about how she should stand up for herself—but as I thought about it, she
was
moving forward, a little at a time. Maybe I needed to step back a little. Then we’d be in step with one another.

Back home on Sunday night, Mom was helping me do my laundry—duh, couldn’t afford to lose any more clothes—and we talked about the weekend.

“Hold on,” she said, leaving the laundry for a moment to dash into the kitchen and retrieve a small, brown, leather-bound notebook with gold writing on the front. “Everyone got one of these to take notes in, even me. I jotted down quite a few ideas and made some sketches of what I could do in the back garden.” She flipped through the pages, and I looked at them with interest.

Not that I was interested in flowers, mind you. I was interested in being interested in my mom.

“And look,” she said, “some photos I took with my phone.” She scrolled through a few, and I oohed and aahed at the appropriate moments. “Not as good of a photographer as you, I’m afraid, but it should be enough to help me see what I might want to do.” She smiled as she closed the phone.

“So did they say anything to you about joining the garden club?” I asked.

She nodded. “Lydia, Penny’s mum, said that, barring unforeseen circumstances, she sees no reason why I wouldn’t be voted into the club end of next month.”

“Great!” I said.

“Maybe.”

I looked at my mom. “Why only maybe?”

“Well, with the book club, I wasn’t sure they’d want me, but if they did, I knew I’d fit right in. This time . . . Well, we’re not rich, Savvy. We don’t have a huge estate. I’m just not sure.”

Chapter 14

Monday after school I was supposed to be in two places at once: watching Louanne and helping Becky with some prep work for the online auction, which was only eleven days away. I decided to float an idea.

“Do you want to come to [email protected] with me?” I asked Louanne.

“A fashion shop?” She wrinkled her nose.

“We walk by the ice cream shop,” I said. “I could buy you a cone on the way home.”

“Sundae,” Louanne negotiated with a firm smile. She knew she had me.

“All right, sundae,” I agreed. “Get your stuff and meet me on the porch.”

Two minutes later she appeared . . . with Growl on a lead.

“Oh no,” I said, “we’re not bringing him.”

“Of course we are,” Louanne said. “Part of watching me is walking Giggle. Right?” At that, the dog turned up his nose and pranced right in front of me before shaking his leash.
Great. An uppity dog and a sister who’s turned to extortion.

We walked through the village, the birds singing sweetly and the leaves unfurling on the trees. Louanne skipped on the cobblestone paths, and I had to admit, if I weren’t nearly sixteen, I might have wanted to skip myself. Growl was behaving. All was right with the world.

When we arrived, Becky was bustling about with Isobel and another woman, so I stood outside the door with Louanne and Growl. Emma came outside to join us. “A dog! A dog! I always wanted a dog, but our flat is too small, Mum says.” She ran over and gave Growl a tight squeeze around the neck. His eyes seemed like they were about to pop out, and he had a look on his face that said,
Get me out of here,
but he stood still while Emma petted and hugged him.