Just My Luck(54)

Dad has hired a party planner because, even though Mum doesn’t have a job anymore, she wasn’t really getting into the party. She constantly asked what things cost and insisted on us getting three quotes for every single thing! It was getting tiring. Plus, I don’t want to be mean but I’m not certain Mum has the vision to pull it off it the way Dad and I want to see things go down. For instance, Mum agreed that it would be nice to have a moment where we cut a celebration cake as a family. She even suggested it should be tiered ‘to make sure there’s enough to go around’. But then Dad said we could have a cake with a false top tier and get a magician to pull a rabbit out of the hat or something. Better yet, a monkey in one of those cute little red showmen jackets. I mean that is vision. You know. But then Mum started going on about health and safety and animal cruelty and kept insisting we ‘consider the practicalities’. Another example: Mum thought she was being flash when she gave the nod to us having loads of helium balloons, then Dad said we should get an actual hot air balloon and have it tethered to the ground but people could go up and down on it, just for fun. You know, vision. Let’s just say Mum set a budget which she described as ‘generous’. We’ve quadrupled it.

So now basically me, Dad and the party planner, Sara, are doing everything, and Mum spends most of her time dealing with the charity requests that are rolling in thick and fast. She seems pretty happy with this division of labour. Logan went back to school. He said he wanted to finish this term with his old mates and was bored at home. It’s not that he’s a super swot or a saint, it’s just that he never worked very hard at school before. He might as well be there, messing about with his mates and having people high-five him in the corridors than here, on his own playing video games online with complete strangers who are sweaty losers at best but most likely potential paedos.

This party is going to be amazing!!

I can’t really emphasise that enough. Sara is awesome. If I ever thought I might need to get a job, I think I’d want to be a party planner, maybe. But I’m never going to need a job now though, am I? She’s really creative and yet efficient and business-like. We’ve plumped for The Greatest Showman as our theme, so basically circus with a nineteenth-century lean. She found us a field that we can hire about five miles from where we live. It doesn’t look much at the moment, just a big field, overgrown with grass and wildflowers, backing onto a frankly spooky-looking area of woodland; behind that there is a pond that’s dank and sullen. However, Sara’s Pinterest boards promise the space is going to be transformed!

We are having a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round, like Dad said, and we’re hiring actors to wander around pretending to be magicians or bearded ladies or whatever. We’re having actual trapeze artists and a tightrope to entertain the guests. Dad said he wants to wear a red jacket and a top hat and I think he likes the idea of Mum wearing a can-can dress (urgh, perv, gross). Mum said we should all wear red, so everyone knows we’re a family but that’s mad, everyone does know we are a family. This is why it’s best she doesn’t get involved. Besides, I’m more thinking I’ll take my inspiration from Zendaya’s costume, not the purple glitzy number but the simpler one she wears when she’s rehearsing: hot pink hot pants and a blush camisole. I want to look cool and stand out but as though I haven’t tried at all.

Like we first talked about, we’re going to have popcorn machines, candy floss and festoons of colourful lights everywhere! Dad’s coming good on all his promises. We couldn’t find a red-and-white-striped marquee and so we are having a white one customised. There is going to be a hog roast plus a selection of cabins with other food options, like crepes, hot dogs and burgers (although I’m not sure exactly how nineteenth century they are, I’ll google). There is going to be a cocktail bar and a massive champagne tower. You know, a stack of those round tit-shaped champagne glasses piled high up and you pour champers from the top and it flows into all the glasses. Sticky, I bet, but so glam!

I think it’s time I started to drink. Why not? Logan is right, basically I’m a freak. What’s the worst that can happen if I get drunk and I lose control of my mind and my knickers? I mean, really? How much worse can it get? When we were about thirteen, Ridley started sneaking WKD into socials by pretending it was a slush puppy. I just didn’t feel ready to get behind it then. I don’t know, maybe it was because Logan was often out with me and he’d definitely have snitched me up to Mum and Dad. They’d have gone ape (hypocritically, I might add, as they both can knock it back). Then suddenly, Ridley and Megan and everyone I’ve ever met were drinking vodka straight, hardcore; they seemed to skip the beer and cider stage.

Mum says I can’t invite Megan and Ridley to the party. I get that, I know why she hates them. I hate them too.

Sort of.

I want them at the party though. I want Megan there because she has to see it all, to see my life and know what she could have shared with me, but she couldn’t let herself because she is boiling in her own jealousy and she just can’t be happy for me. It’s so weird that I’m not sharing this with her considering everything we shared up until this point in our lives. Like secrets, chicken pox, crushes, hairbrushes, homework, lip gloss. The list is endless. We created things too – memories, friendship bracelets, rose perfume in jam jars. And Ridley? Well, we’ve done so much together. We’ve curled up on a sofa watching Disney movies, telling ourselves we were only enjoying them in an ironic nostalgic way but in fact loving them for real, in an authentic way. We’ve played Chicken Wing Roulette at Nando’s, we’ve Christmas-shopped in London, we went to our first gig together.