Free The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean by Lindsay Littleson Page A

won’t be going anywhere on holiday this summer, or any other, probably, unless Mum buys a winning lottery ticket.
    “OMG! I can’t believe it! It’s going to be so much fun!”
    Rowan is leaping about over by the bicycle racks, shrieking excitedly with Georgia, Danielle and Jade. They sound like a flock of squawking macaws. It doesn’t take long for me to overhear the reason for all the hysterics. Rowan’s mum has given in about the limo, apparently. Some parents have no backbone.
    David is standing alone by the fence, running his hands through his unruly hair and looking thoroughly fed up.
    “Oh there you are at last,” he says gloomily, when I walk over to him. He points over at Rowan and the other girls, who are still screeching at ear-harming decibel levels.
    “This is a vision of things to come at high school, you know. Rowan will be sucked into the popular crowd. She’ll shake us off like fleas.”
    “That’s not fair, David!” I argue, feeling stung both on Rowan’s behalf and on my own. “We’ve been friends forever. Nothing’s going to change. You’ll see.”
    David looks unconvinced.
    “Look at her, Lil. She fits right in. We don’t. We will be lumped in with the geeks and the nerds and the untouchables, or whatever they call the unpopular kids, while Rowan swans off with the populars. It’s inevitable.”
    I look over at the girls again. Rowan’s netball friends are giggling frantically as they gather in a celebratory group hug. Danielle is taking mass pouting selfies on her mobile. Mrs McKenzie will have a fit if she sees that someone has brought a phone to school.
    Perhaps David is right and Rowan will leave us behind when we all go off to high school. I hope desperately that she won’t. What would Ido without my best friend in the world?
    Rowan notices us and comes running over, her face glowing with joy.
    “I hear you’re going to the ball in your golden coach after all, Cinderella,” I say. “I take it you didn’t have to kill your mum first. I’m sure she mentioned something about you only getting in a hired limo ‘over her cold, dead body’.”
    “No, it wasn’t necessary to go quite that far. I cried, a lot, and that did the trick,” replies Rowan, cheerfully. “My dad folded first. He always does. I’m so happy. It would have been so embarrassing to walk to the dance on my own.”
    “Yes, it will be utterly humiliating, but I guess I’ll survive,” says David mock-seriously.
    Rowan blushes.
    “Oh, you’re a boy, Dave, it’s different. But all the girls are going in limos. I would have felt a complete freak.”
    I get that horrible feeling again of becoming disconnected from Rowan. It’s as if the radio signal between us is getting weaker. She sometimes says things that she must know are shallow, things we would have laughed about before, if some other girl had said them. But now she says those shallow things and seems quite serious. In those moments we’re on completely different wavelengths. And if I can’t communicate with Rowan, who do I have left?
    “It will be hard for me, all the same, having to walk all that way on my lonesome ownsome,” sighs David, clutching his chest for dramatic effect. “If only I could share a limo to the dance with Big Cheryl and her pals. If my mum would just let me get an orange spray tan like Cheryl’s, maybe it could still happen.”
    Rowan and I dissolve in giggles.
    “You will have to wear a dress like hers, to really fit in, David,” I laugh. “I believe there are many layers of white netting involvedand a zillion sequins. And do you even own a tiara?”
    “Well as a matter of fact I have several,” says David, and we all burst out laughing, though for all Rowan and I know, he could be telling the truth.
    All of a sudden Rowan stops laughing and grabs our hands. “Oh, I know I’m being a bit ridiculous,” she says. “Just ignore me, both of you. I know the whole limo thing is stupid.”
    So she still has one