Free Hazel Wood Girl by Judy May

rooster costume. Going down more sophisticated routes, I now have the phone numbers for the local paper, the radio station, the bigbusinesses like the hotel, and all the places where we put the audition notices (except the town hall, of course).
    Luckily Mum knows just about everything there is to know on the planet and taught me how to write a press release to send in to the newspapers and media people like the radio station.
    ‘A press release has to be very short because they don’t have much time to read things,’ Mum explained. ‘Be sure to include all the details such as the name of the band, where and when it is, and how much the tickets are. It also has to have something in it that will make it an interesting news story, not just another band putting on a show.’
    Mum, Adam and Dad all talked it through in detail with me at lunch time and we decided that what will interest the media is the fact that Beau is in the band and it’s to get money for his cousin, and the fact that Christophe only moved here a few weeks ago, and that Em-J’s mum works in the very place where the fire was.
    They were surprised that I’m not actually in the band so I told them that I prefer being behind the scenes. And they gave me ‘yeah, right,’ looks, so fingers crossed Mum doesn’t start making her famous phone calls. 
    Tonight, when I was watching them rehearse, I felt a bit sad and knew I would do anything to be in the band, but it’s too late now. And I am happy to be included even this much.
    I asked Em-J to ask Christophe to design the poster, and Em-J is going to find the equipment, the amps, mikes and mixing-board and all that. We also need to get a sound engineer for the night. I had no idea that there would be so much involved. I have to go to bed now so I don’t doze off during the early rehearsal in the barn in the morning.
    First, I am going to run down to the Hazel Wood and hang my sneakers on the note-leaving tree. If Christophe gets the idea he might decorate them for me, and if not I can say I was just mucking about and accidentally left them there. I kind of miss our Hazel Wood thing, it’s like there are two totally different people, Christophe who’s just a co-worker (and a slightly stuck-up one at that), and The Watcher who knows me and is there for me.

DAY THIRTY-NINE
    It was so weird. We were all in the barn, the band rehearsing, me drawing a plan for where to put the stage, and Sammy-boy watching Beau in awe. Before we knew it, Mrs Granger from the Egg Farm was standing in the middle of the barn, yelling at us all to get out, and pointing her bony finger at me.
    For ages we just gawped at her. My voice was shaking then as I shouted back that this barn was leased to my father until the end of this month, and that she was the one who had to go away. I was like,
    ‘You have no right to be here!’ 
    I can’t believe it was me shouting that loud at someone.
    Beau said, ‘Yeah!’ a lot, and started to calm Em-J down as she looked like she was about to throw something, or someone. Christophe ran over to where I was and in a softer voice than the rest of us, said to Mrs Granger,
    ‘There’s obviously been a misunderstanding, and we will be leaving the barn, either when Poppy’s dad asks us to, or at the end of the month.’
    As she started to walk towards him I was sure she was going to hit him, she’s that unstable, but suddenly she went all jumpy-looking and starting telling us to calm down. Just as she got to the door, she said, in her version of an ordinary voice,
    ‘There’s nothing here that’s yours, so don’t you go nosing about!’
    At the time we were all just weirded out by the whole thing, but thinking about it now, I wonder why she said that? I mean, there’s nothing in the stone barn except my and Sammy’s chairs from the greenhouse and three that Em-J brought over, and we already took out the buckets and the last of the hay after the audition. I swept it out myself and there