Chapter Five
I sat down next to Ashley. "Hey, how are you?"
She turned to face me "I'm fine. I'm ready to go home, you know." she looked at me, pleading with her eyes.
She has been telling mum for the last three months that she's ready to come home, but every time mum comes up with a reason good enough to keep her in here. I decided to change the subject.
"What's this I hear about a boy visiting you?" I smiled slyly at her.
"Who told you that?" she whipped her head around and was now giving me her full attention.
"A little birdie," I teased.
She looked down sadly, "I know what you're thinking, and he isn't my boyfriend."
I became my serious self again, "Who is he?" I asked really wanting to know,
"He's my friend Kathy's brother. I started talking to him one day when he was here visiting her and we just really got along." she looked around to check if anyone was looking at us "And he gave me this," she put her arm up the bottom of her top and pulled out a disk with Short Stack written on it in messy handwriting. "It's this band called Short Stack. I can't believe I have never heard of them before!" I smiled at her as she put the CD back up her top.
"Well make sure they don't find that CD otherwise you'll get in alot of trouble".
After we had lunch in the hospital cafeteria, I said goodbye to Ashley and told her I would talk to mum. I went out into the car park and for a split second couldn't remember what my car looked like. I had been driving for about an hour and a half along the quite bush road when my car made a loud clanking noise; I squealed then pulled over to the side of the road.
I got out my phone and called my Mum, after the third attempt I assumed she was busy, next I tried Kevin, and his went straight to voice mail. I looked down at my phone. The next person on my recent calls list was Bradie. I considered it for a moment then pressed the green button.
"Hello?" he answered on the first ring.
"Hey Bradie its Lucy...um would you be able to do me a huge favour?" I waited for his reply.
"Haha, of course. What can I do for you?" he asked sounding generally happy.
"Well I was driving and my car made a weird noise and now it won't start, so I need someone to pick me up!"
I told him where I was and he said he would be there as soon as possible, so I thought I might as well make use of my spare time and try and get some sort of tan to my overly pale skin. I climbed up first onto the bonnet of my car and then up onto the roof, where the sun had already gently warmed it.
After I had shooed away about thirty million flies, I heard a car coming up the road ahead. I lifted the top of my body up onto my elbows and looked to see what was coming. A nice looking black car pulled around the corner and swerved onto my side of the road to pull over.
"Hey, Lucy," he called as he was getting out of his car.
"Hello, thank you so, so much for picking me up. Nobody in my family would answer their phones. For all they know I could be getting kidnapped by evil spies this very moment and they don't even care!"
He laughed, "Are you always this dramatic?" he said smiling as he looked at my car "I think were best off just leaving it here and coming to pick it up later."
"Okay, "I smiled and walked around to the passenger's seat of his car.
He had a nice car for a guy who lived in my suburb and his only source of income was his 'band', it had smooth black leather seats and it felt like he must have had the air conditioning on because they were about -10 degrees.
"Nice car" I said to him as he hopped into the driver's seat, he shrugged "thanks".
I sat there picking at my black and pink nail polish, thinking about that night at Counting the stars music festival, when Bradie suddenly started talking, "What where you doing all the way out here" he looked at me and then back at the road, I considered his question for a moment too long before deciding to lie, "I was looking for wombats" I said quickly then shook my head when I realised how stupid it sounded,
He looked at me like he truly believed it, "Why were you looking for wombats?" he asked with interest, "Um I just really wanted to see a baby one because I haven't seen one before" I smiled and looked out the window indicating that the conversation was over.
When we were nearly home and our long conversation about wildlife had ended, Bradie asked me if I wanted to come to his house seeing as no one was home at mine, I automatically went to decline but then thought why not, I really, really like him and he seems to have some sort of interest in me so why shouldn't I try to make him fall head over heels for me, "I would love too, thanks" I said grinning.
When he pulled into his driveway, a girl who had been sitting in the gutter jumped up and ran toward Bradie, "Is Andy here!?" she asked frantically, I noticed she had a shirt on that appeared to say 'i NY' but actually said 'I aNdY' I laughed a little bit too loud, she snapped her head around, "who are you?" she sneered, I opened my mouth stunned, what had I done to upset this girl.
Bradie grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, "Was that your brother's girlfriend?" I asked once we were inside, "haha, more like stalker" he said laughing, I figured they might of had a bad break up or something so I didn't ask any more questions.
He showed me where his bedroom was and said to wait there while he went and got some food, his room had a giant window at the front and light blue walls, on the wall near the door there was a double bed and the rest of the room was filled up with musical equipment.
I walked over to a guitar and picked it up, I strummed the chords to a song I had wrote when I was about 13 and smiled at myself when I still remembered it perfectly, "I didn't know you played" I spun around and Bradie was standing in the doorway holding two plates with sandwiches on them, "I don't anymore I used to when I was younger" I spluttered and put the guitar down onto the bed.
"So?" I said as I ate my sandwich, "When will I be able to hear your band? Have you done any gigs yet? ", he looked at me for a moment "um, yeah we've done some gigs, we actually have an album" he looked at me like he was waiting for me to realise something, "cool, what is it called?"I waited for him to reply; "stack is the new black" I cracked up laughing then stopped "Wait, what did you say your band was called", "um actually I didn't, Short Stack" he looked at me uncertain as everything became clear in my head "Oh My God!" I said.
I hopped up of the bed "Short Stack, as in the band that Becca talks about every half a minute", he smiled at me and shrugged, "How come you didn't tell me you had a million girls already in love with you?" I looked at him, "sorry, I just liked the fact that you liked me for who I actually was and not because of the band I'm in or my hair" I sighed, "I have to go", I walked out the door into the hall way,
"Wait!, I'm sorry I should of told you it was stupid of me to lie, I'm sorry" I looked back at him and quickly looked away, "Bye" I said before walking out the front door onto the street.
When I got home I sat on my bed, I considered calling Becca and telling her about it but then thought of the hour of screaming I would have to listen too, I then remembered in the car on the way home from the festival when Becca was screaming that she new Bradie and I told her to stop scaring him, but all she was doing was telling the truth and he was the one that was lying.
I walked into the kitchen and made a piece of toast, after 10 minutes of staring at a repeat of Gossip Girl my phone started to ring, it was Becca,
"Hey" I said "how are you?" , "I'm good" she replied "are you okay? You sound quite" I paused for a second,
"Um can you please come over, I have something to tell you" I asked,
"Okay, sure I'll be right there" she hung up straight away and about ten minutes later she was knocking on my front door.
"What is it?" she said as soon as I opened the door,
I lead her into my room and sat down on my bed "do you remember anything at all from the night when we came home from the music festival?" she got a worried look on her face "um like I told you not really, I kind of remember dropping Willow off, um and was there somebody else in the car?" I shrugged "Well that was actually what I wanted to talk to you about, there was somebody else in the car, that guy I was talking to on the phone the other day", "yes..." she replied curiously "Well he turned out to be somebody different to who I thought he was, umm do you know a guy called Bradie Webb?" I bit my lip as Becca burst out laughing "Nice try, like I'm actually going to believe that you have been hooking up with the hottest guy on earth" she made a snorting noise and then her face dropped as she saw how serious I was "Oh My God!, Are you telling the truth?!" she jumped up off the bed and started to squeal, she walked towards the door and I thought she was going to leave but instead she picked up my phone and started doing something on it, "Can I call him?!" she said in a voice a bit too loud for inside, I jumped up off the bed and snatched the phone out of her hand "No!" I'm just going to have a break from him for a while" I said frowning.
It took me over an hour to calm Becca down and then she freaked out again when she realised she had been in the same car as him, she then asked if she could sleepover but I told her I needed to be alone for a while, and anyway I knew she would just wait for me to go to sleep, then take my phone and call Bradie.