Diary of a Mall Girl , livre ebook

Capstone Global Library - Plaja Luisa

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106 pages

English

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Fifteen-year-old Molly actually lives in the residential wing of her local mall, and mysterious twins Jewel and Jasper have just moved into the flat upstairs. As Molly grows closer to them, she becomes more determined than ever to find out their secret - and so do her other friends. Will their prying spoil Molly's chances of happiness?

Informations

Publié par	Capstone Global Library
Date de parution	14 mars 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781782020165
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0138€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published in 2013 by Curious Fox,
an imprint of Capstone Global Library Limited,
7 Pilgrim Street, London, EC4V 6LB – Registered company number: 6695582

www.curious-fox.com

Copyright © Luisa Plaja 2013

The author’s moral rights are hereby asserted

First published in 2011 as a serialised ebook by Fiction Express (www.fictionexpress.co.uk)

Cover design by Victoria Allen

Cover images:
Shutterstock – © Maaike Boot; © Anastasiya Zalevska; © blue67design

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978 1 782 02016 5
17 16 15 14 13
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner.
To all the readers whose votes and messages helped to shake up Molly’s life, with special thanks to Zoe Crook, Alexandra Fouracres, Andie Frogley, Emily Gale, Caroline Green, Amber Kirk-Ford, Daisy Lovick, Jenni Nock and Kip Wilson Rechea, and extra thanks to Laura Durman and Laura Knowles.
Friday, 6th May
Tales of woe from the Hart residence, 5th floor, The Lilies eco-mall, Lilyford
My life is OVER!!!
When I told Mum this FACT almost an hour ago, she waved a giant gloop-covered spoon at me and said, “Don’t be so melodramatic, Molly. And can you get your brother for me? Tell him dinner’s ready.”
“JAMIE!!! I’m not even exaggerating, Mum. I swear. JAMIE!!! My life is absolutely over. It’s official. JAMIE!!!”
Mum clutched her head and staggered about, still holding the dripping spoon. “Ow. Molly! My ears! We do have neighbours, you know. In fact, never mind our block of flats. They can probably hear you at the other side of the shopping centre!”
So who was being melodramatic now, eh, Mum? The Lilies, where we live, is the third largest shopping complex in Europe. Well, it was when it was first opened, at least – this factoid seems to change every two minutes as new malls pop up in random cities. But anyway, as far as I know it’s still one of the biggest for miles around, and one of the first in the world to boast being “ecologically sound” and featuring “adjacent affordable residential units”. Adjacent, see? We don’t actually live in the mall, despite what people at school seem to think. “You’re so lucky you live right in the middle of the shopping centre!” they often sigh.
And now my mum was at it too. OK, it’s true that my local shops include huge branches of every major chain store you can think of and I can easily be at the back of the queue in Primark within five minutes of leaving my house. But even so, it was highly unlikely that Jamie’s Saturday job colleagues in the giant food court could hear a word we were saying, whatever my volume.
Clearly this was another of those situations where I’d have to be the adult.
My voice was ever so calm and mature as I explained. “You asked me to get Jamie. I called him three times!” Really, what more could she possibly have wanted? “Surely I had to be a bit loud, Mum. You know he’s probably plugged into his iPod.”
A blob of liquid detached itself from Mum’s spoon and plopped onto the side of her shirt. Her work shirt. She would so have told me off if I’d done that to my school shirt. I live in a house of total double standards.
Mum grabbed a cloth and wiped at it frenziedly, pausing only to glare at me like it was my fault. Like I asked her to get hysterical. Then she sighed and said, “I meant that you should leave the kitchen, walk down the corridor, knock at the door of his room –”
“His stinking den?” I held my nose. Childish but effective, like so many things in life.
“– and tell him politely, at normal volume, to come and eat.” She gave me a despairing look. “Is it really that hard? You know, if it was shouting I wanted, Molly, I could have done it myself.”
See what I mean? I’d bent over backwards to help out my mother with her trivial errands, despite being in the midst of a dire crisis, and I even got criticized for that.
My life is not, in fact, merely over. It is also, as they say on Nickelodeon HD, “A GIANT BOWL OF SUCK”.
Whatever Mum was cooking looked like a giant pan of... something else.
“What’s for dinner, then?” I asked her.
Mum sighed for about two years. I aged right in front of her. It was excruciating. “Molly, I’m a busy single parent. I’ve heated up some soup for you. Eat it, don’t eat it. I don’t care. Now, go and get your brother, then come back and tell me why your friends aren’t talking to you and your life is supposedly over.”
“It’s not supposedly over. It is over.” I stood up and puffed indignantly. This was all adding to its basic over-ness. “And I never said anything bad about the dinner. I just asked what it was.” Though my thoughts about it might have shown on my face, I suppose. Trust Mum to pay attention to all the wrong things about me.
Jamie appeared in the doorway then, which at least saved me a journey. He sloped about and leaned on all available furniture in his typical Jamie way. My brother thinks he’s actually too cool to support his own body weight.
“What’s for dinner?” he croaked in that deep voice that he developed a couple of years ago, suddenly making the entire female population of our school go all giggly and silly for some utterly inexplicable reason. There are loads of girls at West Lilyford Community College who can’t believe I’m his sister. This girl called Tasha – who left school last year and now works full-time in a kiosk at the mall – even said to me once, “Were you, like, separated at birth? Because you’re nothing like Jamie Hart.”
I didn’t like to point out how little sense that made, as Tasha and her friend studied my non-Jamie-like face for a few seconds before she added, “Even though obviously you’re a girl and stuff. And he’s a boy. So...”
Her friend – who now works full-time in New Look – chimed in helpfully, “I reckon Jamie got all the looks and she got all the brains!”
Which was actually quite nice of her – I mean, it could have been a lot worse – but my (then) friend Wendy wasn’t having any of it.
“Molly is a genetic anomaly,” Wendy said. Her brother is training to be a doctor so sentences like that are the equivalent of “pass the ketchup” in her family. “She gains her superior intelligence by sapping brain cells from girls who find her brother attractive. Though it doesn’t make much of a difference in your case.”
My (then) other friend Ameera added triumphantly, “Yeah! What she said!” and we marched off, leaving the Jamie-fans frowning in bewilderment. They probably stood there all lunch break, trying to work out whether or not we’d actually insulted Tasha.
Life used to be good, back in the olden days, when I had friends.
Now I was in friendless misery in the kitchen and Mum was sweetly answering Jamie’s question, even though it was the exact thing I’d asked her ten seconds earlier. Nowhere are standards more double than in the way Mum treats me and Jamie.
“Vegetable soup from the Snack Box on Level 1,” Mum said, eyes shining with motherly love. “And fresh rolls from the bakery.”
Jamie smiled his lazy smile and actually Mum might have been right before, because I was sure I heard the sound of female hearts sighing all across the mall.
I scowled at him as he said, “The kiosk on Level 2 next to the doughnut maker?”
Mum nodded.
“Cool. Tasha works there. I’m seeing her.”
“You’re seeing Tasha?” I asked. The girl whose brains couldn’t sustain me?
“Yeah.” He actually went a bit red then. “We’re meeting at the rink tomorrow after work.”
I decided to challenge him. “Aren’t you still going out with Ellie?”
“Ellie?” Jamie frowned with the effort of remembering the name of the Year 11 girl I knew he was with last night. Mostly because I saw them snogging in the stairwell of Service Entrance B when I popped out to get some crisps from the 24-hour mini-market. And I forgot to mention this to Wendy, who developed a massive, tragic crush on Jamie a couple of weeks ago. Yes, Wendy too! I’ve lost her. I knew it couldn’t last. At least Ameera would still rather date a trendy boutique than my big brother, but that’s no use to me if she’s going to bow to Wendy’s command.
Anyway, Wendy overheard Ellie herself talking about the snog at lunch break, and I happened to let slip that I’d known about it. Wendy gave me the full lecture about “hiding information” when I should “understand how she feels”, and the next thing I knew, Wendy and Ameera weren’t talking to me anymore. And I am friendless and my life is over.
Wendy’s sudden crush might be tragic but, believe me, the true tragedy is all mine.
“Oh... yeah.” The girl-related cogs in Jamie’s brain were turning slowly. “No, Ellie was yesterday. Tasha’s tomorrow. Tasha’s amazing.” Jamie paused, giving me a brief moment to feel a bit sorry for Ellie. “Hey, want to come along, Measly? There’s a whole group of us going.”
Despite what my (ex)BFF Wendy expects from me, I don’t even try to keep up with Jamie’s love life. But I was supposed to be going to Wendy’s boring brother’s boring birthday party tomorrow night, and now that was obviously off the cards for me. Plus I am secretly in love with Jamie’s mate Liam and the chances of him being at the rink are extremely high. If I can stop Jamie from calling me “Measly” in front of him, I might even be able to make Liam notice that I’m not twelve years old anymore.
So I said, “OK.”
Mum beamed at her son, having conveniently ignored the Jamie-is-a-total-player portion of our conversation. “There you go, Molly. Your life can begin again. Oh, and don’t forget that you’re coming to my work thing tonight, too. Your new life is pretty full already!”
An