Minus Me (18 page)

‘It’s just some song lyrics I’m trying to work out.’

Linda twists out of his grasp.

‘Let me see, then!’ she says, trying to open the drawer.

This time Axel grabs both her wrists and holds her tight.

‘No. Go away!’ he says.

‘Alright,’ she says.

He lets her go.

She sees Axel’s old guitar lying on the bed, and picks it up. She strums the strings and clears her throat. She tells him she’s been writing songs too, and that she’s not frightened of sharing them.

‘Listen to this: “When I count up to three, I think Axel, Axel, Axel. He’s brought me to my knee. And he’s called Axel, Axel, Axel!” ’ she squawks, using the only two guitar chords she knows.

Axel smiles, tilting his head sideways as he looks at her. When he smiles she can see how his canines stick out a bit, making him look like a cartoon character. If he was an animal he’d be a fox. She thinks she can see a hint of red in his face. Is he blushing?

‘Yes, very nice,’ he says, taking the guitar back and hanging it up on the wall where it belongs. Everything in Axel’s room has a place of its own. His room looks like the perfect boy’s room in a furniture catalogue.

‘I’m off to the kiosk. I expect Mia will want to come too,’ he says, heading for the door.

Linda is brought back to the present when her pocket vibrates. She takes off a mitten with her teeth and it dangles from her mouth as she fishes out her mobile and reads the text. She’s not surprised to see it’s from her mother: Good to hear you got to the cottage safely.
Call you tonight. Love Mum and Dad xx
. Linda doesn’t quite know what to write without telling too many lies, so she doesn’t answer. She scrolls back to the last text she got from Axel, on the night before her birthday. He hasn’t written to her since, and there wasn’t a parcel in the post either. He often used to text her several times a day. Not that she’s answered his birthday message, but that was only to make him start wondering and imagining things.

‘What are you doing, Axel? Are you thinking about me at all?’ she asks the telephone before starting to write a text:
Hi Axel, are you ready for a surprise?
She giggles to herself, then deletes the message and puts the phone back in her pocket.

Chapter 37

There’s a crowd outside the concert hall. Loud and happy mouths talking and laughing at once, breath hanging like clouds in the frosty air. Linda takes her hat off and with one hand tries to fix her hair. She hasn’t got a mirror, so she doesn’t actually know whether it looks better or worse, but it feels kind of spiky.

She gets a knot in her stomach when her phone goes off again. Her first thought is that it might be Axel, but it’s Maria:
Are you OK, babes? xxx

Great! I’m going to a Pet Monsters concert!!! xxx

Maria reacts with lightening speed.
What? Pet Monsters?! Awesome! Text me photos of the concert
.

Linda laughs as she reads the message. Maria’s almost as big a fan as Axel and her.

Will do. Enjoy playing Ludo at the cottage! ;-) love you, babes xx

‘Hello, punk girl,’ says Zak.

He’s got frost in his hair now, but the cold still doesn’t seem to bother him.

‘Hi,’ says Linda. ‘Where were you, Zak? I waited outside the hairdressers, but you didn’t show up.’

‘No. Shall we go in or what?’ he answers, nodding towards the queue that’s begun to form at the entrance.

‘Sure, but why didn’t you come?’

‘I lost track of time,’ he says with a shrug. ‘But I’m here now.’

Luckily the queue is moving quite quickly. Linda tries to puff herself up as much as possible. You have to be sixteen to get in. She glances up at Zak, who looks totally calm, as though he’s always sneaking into concerts. Or perhaps he is sixteen. She’s about to ask him, when one of the doormen addresses her.

‘ID?’

He grabs her by the sleeve of her jacket to make sure she can’t slip past him. Actually it’s tempting to make a break for it, he’s not the scariest-looking doorman in history. He’s quite short, with a tiny moustache, and the only thing making him look even vaguely muscular is his down jacket. Which is probably what gives her the courage to brazenly tell him that she’s forgotten her ID at home in Trondheim, and that he surely can’t stop them at the door when they’ve come so far?

‘You have to be sixteen to get in. And that’s that!’ says the doorman.

‘But I am sixteen,’ says Linda.

‘Hmm, and the Queen is my mother,’ snorts the doorman.

‘Is she really?’

‘As much as you’re sixteen, so just beat it, you snotty-nosed kid.’

‘Hey . . . there was no need for that last comment,’ says Zak, grabbing the doorman’s collar.

‘Let go!’ the doorman growls from under his moustache.

‘I’m sorry, but Linda has travelled all the way from Trondheim. She’s a big fan, and besides, she’s with me. So I’ll take responsibility for her in there.’

‘Yeah, cos you’re sixteen, eh?’

‘As it happens, I am!’ says Zak, without letting the doorman go.

The doorman shakes himself free. And now he clearly wants to prove he has some muscle too, because he shoves Zak so he lands on his bum on the hard snow. Linda runs to help Zak to his feet. He rubs his leg and looks far from pleased.

‘Oy, you! That was unnecessary!’ shouts Zak, brushing off the snow. ‘That was totally unnecessary!’

‘Go home and watch kids’ telly,’ the doorman shouts back.

‘We’re not going to give up, are we?’ asks Linda.

‘Never!’ says Zak, scowling at the queue.

Linda and Zak wait until the doorman is concentrating on the queue again before darting round the corner to the back. They sneak along the wall where the band’s tour bus is parked. There’s a group of young men standing around the door smoking. Linda recognizes them instantly. It’s the Pet Monsters! Oh my God! What should she do? She feels like she’s frozen to the spot. But she knows it’s now or never.

‘Hi!’ she shouts, waving at them.

The whole band turn to look at her. One of them looks as though he’s about to tell her to shove off, and his body language as he walks towards her is very unfriendly too. It’s the vocalist.

‘Please, can I have an autograph?’ Linda asks. ‘I’m a big fan and I’ve come all the way down from Trondheim.’

Linda smiles as broadly as she can, hoping that she might manage to look cute for once. Right now she wishes she had Maria with her; there’s not a soul who can resist her velvet brown eyes and silky voice. The vocalist, who she knows is called Chris, smiles uncertainly and glances back at the others, who nod faintly.

‘I suppose so,’ he says. ‘Have you got anything to write on?’

Linda unzips her jacket, takes her arm out, and rolls up the sleeve of her jumper.

‘Here,’ she says. ‘It’s as white as paper, at least.’

‘Okay. Have you got something to write with too?’

The vocalist takes her arm. Chris, from the Pet Monsters, is touching Linda’s arm! She’s got goosebumps all over. She clears her throat to answer him. But her mouth is so dry she can’t get a word out. So she just shakes her head, and looks over at Zak, who shakes his head too.

‘God, it’s freezing out here!’ says the drummer. ‘Why don’t you two come back stage, and we’ll see if we can find a pen or something in there?’

‘Great!’ says Linda, able to talk again.

‘So, you sit here when you’re waiting to go on stage, do you?’ says Linda, instantly wishing she hadn’t. It’s the kind of stupid thing her mother would say.

‘Yes, we sit here and drink, er, lemonade or whatever, and eat peanuts and chat,’ says the drummer, Tommy, who seems like the friendliest band member. He always wears dark glasses and looks moody in all the pictures and when he’s on stage. But he seems completely different now. Linda decides that he’ll be her favourite from now on. After hunting around a bit he eventually finds a permanent marker.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to have our autographs on some paper?’ he asks.

‘No, just go ahead!’ says Linda, folding back her other sleeve too, and holding out both arms. When they’ve finished they turn to Zak, who shakes his head and says he’ll give it a miss this time.

‘Take a picture of us,’ says Linda, taking out her mobile and passing it to Zak.

He looks at her phone.

‘You’ve got five missed calls,’ he says, handing it back.

‘Oh, it’s just Mum. I’ll ring her later. Come on. Take a picture now, please!’ Linda begs, putting the mobile in camera mode and handing it back to Zak.

‘Okay. Smile!’ says Zak. ‘Or look tough.’

‘Take two,’ says Linda.

Zak snaps again, and then looks at the picture. Linda goes over to see it too. It’s amazing.

‘Well, it was great to meet you guys,’ says Chris. ‘But we’d better get ready for the concert now.’

Linda is determined not to go yet. She has got to find a way of staying a bit longer. Perhaps they can see the concert from backstage or something?

‘I’ve run away!’ she says. It just pops out. ‘Only for a little while,’ she adds.

‘Right,’ says Tommy, with an uncertain expression on his face.

The others in the band turn away, and Linda realizes she’s got to come up with something else. Something better.

‘And I’m a really huge fan of the Pet Monsters,’ she says.

‘Linda, I think they’ve realized that,’ says Zak.

He takes her gently by the arm, but Linda doesn’t want to give up. She scans the room desperately, and when she sees the bass lying on a chair, she gets an idea. Not the best idea ever, perhaps. But sometimes you have to make do with a slightly bad idea.

Chapter 38

‘I know all your lyrics by heart,’ says Linda, pulling down the arms of her pullover.

‘Right,’ says Chris hesitantly.

‘Yes, and in the summer my boyfriend taught me to play the bass line of “Deep Pain”.’

She catches a glimpse of Zak, who raises his eyebrows as soon as she says the words my boyfriend. She realizes, of course, that Axel isn’t exactly her boyfriend. Or, rather, she knows that he is. It’s just that she hasn’t told him yet. But she will soon. And then it’ll be perfect and very romantic.

‘Perhaps we should go?’ suggests Zak.

‘I can show you,’ says Linda, determined not to give up yet.

Chris smiles, and Tommy goes and picks up the bass. He glances at the bass player, who nods and gestures to Linda. The bass is heavy, and the strap is too long for her, so she pushes her hips forward and bows right over it to get a proper grip. She stands with her legs apart and hopes she looks just a bit cool. Then she plays the bass line, and hums the melody.

‘Wow, that was good. You’ve got a great sense of rhythm,’ Tommy exclaims, when Linda is finished.

He looks at her and Linda looks back at him. And she sees that he has the bluest eyes in the world, even bluer than Axel’s.

‘Not too bad,’ says Chris, nodding excitedly. ‘Can you do any of our other songs?’

‘No,’ says Linda, shaking her head.

She’s about to slip the strap back over her head, but the guitarist stops her.

‘Play it again, and I’ll sing. Tommy, can you give us a bit of percussion?’

Tommy pulls his drumsticks out of his back pocket and sits on his haunches in front of the table. Then he counts them in. Linda counts like mad and manages to come in on time.

‘Cool,’ says Chris, when the song is finished. ‘Do you play in a band or something?’

‘No, I’m more of a sports girl,’ says Linda. ‘Or was . . .’ she adds, quietly to herself.

‘Wow, that’s even more impressive,’ says Tommy.

‘Don’t suppose you’d like to have a go in the band, eh? What would you say to being our guest artist for that song?’ asks the vocalist.

‘Are you just kidding me?’ she asks.

But every cell inside her is jumping up and down with excitement, every little atom in her is buzzing.

‘I could do with a break,’ laughs the bassist, Andreas.

‘That’s a deal then,’ declares Chris.

‘But there’s one problem,’ says Linda. ‘The doorman refused to let us in, and if he sees me on stage, he’ll go crazy.’

‘We’ll handle that. You two can be our guests tonight,’ says the drummer.

Linda wonders if she’s too young to be in love with someone over twenty. But Tommy is so fit, and he’s written his name on her arm. She’s never going to wash it off. Nor the names of the others; she likes them all. Perhaps she’s getting as boy-mad as Maria?

Chapter 39

Tommy, the world’s coolest drummer, with rings in his ears, tattoos and wild bushy hair, leads Linda and Zak along the corridor and out into the auditorium. It’s already crammed with people who have got themselves a good place in front of the stage. Tommy gets hold of the doorman, who still has his big down jacket on despite the heat inside.

‘These two are our guests tonight. She’s going to play with us for one of the songs, so it would be great if you could help her get a place at the front, near the stage, when the concert starts.’