Ten
Wild horses won’t hold me back
I’ll keep going on this track
Gotta fight, gotta give, gotta make it
Right from the start . . .
Because I ain’t giving up
‘Right From The Start’ from
The Brink of Teenage Freedom
Did you register?’ I ask.
‘Yes, Selena, I registered before I even got out of bed this morning,’ says Mum, spreading butter on her toast. ‘It’s not like you to be anxious about things.’
I sit down next to her at the table with my breakfast. ‘It’s the first tour where I’ve been able to make it.
She only toured Dreamers at Glastonbury in the UK, which is impossible to get tickets for, and the tours before you said I was too young.
Plus this tour is a few weeks after my birthday – it feels like a sign. ’
‘I know you’re bitter about the earlier tours, but I didn’t fancy my chances taking an eleven-year-old to London by myself to see a concert,’ says Mum, shaking her head.
‘The point is, it’s important,’ I say. ‘I can’t imagine a future where I will not go to this concert. It’s as if my life has been leading up to this moment, and I need to maximise the chance I will get to go, you know?’
‘I know, that’s why I registered,’ says Mum. ‘I don’t really understand why you love Rose Conrad so much, but I know it matters to you. Now don’t you have to get to school?’
I look at my phone: Faye’s outside. Before I go, I put Mum’s plate in the dishwasher, to stop her from bending over, even though she protests against it. I then hug her, hold my toast in my mouth, grab my bag and jacket and run out of the house.
‘Today’s the day,’ I say, sliding into the back of the car.
‘Today’s one of the days,’ corrects Kira. ‘The ticket sale day will be the day.’
‘But there will be no ticket sale day if we all don’t have registration codes—’
‘Before you ask, we have both registered,’ says Faye, pulling out of my driveway. A grinding sound starts as she reverses, which in classic Faye fashion, she ignores.
‘Okay, good,’ I say. ‘So I think we need a strategy to get as many other people to sign up for us. For example, I know Katie Becker and her group aren’t fans.
Pretty sure she said she thought Rose Conrad is “overrated” once.
And she owes me because I covered for her in French when she skipped to go meet her boyfriend. ’
Kira shakes her head. ‘You know, Selena, if you put this much effort into thinking about your uni application, you would probably have already got three offers by now.’
Faye parks the car and we get out in silence.
I look at Kira, a range of emotions running through me, making it difficult to form actual sentences. I settle for, ‘I’ll do my university applications in my own time, you know.’
‘I don’t get it,’ says Kira, shaking her head. ‘You clearly have the drive. Look at you and the Rose Conrad thing.’
We head to the common room.
Kira looks at me seriously. ‘I want to ask you something. No jokes.’
‘No jokes’ is what we say when we want to get a real answer from someone. It means serious business. Faye and I glance at each other.
‘No jokes,’ I say back.
‘Do you actually want to go to university?’ says Kira. ‘Like, you don’t have to, there’s apprenticeships and all this other stuff you could do.’
My chest feels heavy, but again I’m struggling to say how I feel.
In truth, I don’t want to tell Kira all my concerns.
Leaving Mum, committing to the future, feeling afraid that this marks the beginning of the end of everything I know: in my head it sounds too silly to say out loud.
I can see a future where Kira meets a bunch of new, smart, exciting people at whatever prestigious university she gets into, and leaves me behind.
Filling in the UCAS form itself feels like stepping off the edge and into the unknown, and I’m too scared to begin.
Instead I say, ‘No, I do want to go to university. I like English and want to study it further. And I want the experience of university. I just need some time.’ And it’s true.
I want to try it out and see what it’s like.
I am excited by the prospect of meeting new people.
I just want to hold on to the present for a bit longer. Is that so bad?
‘I’m still thinking about it too,’ says Faye, touching my arm. ‘If it makes you feel better.’
‘See, that’s two out of three of us,’ I say to Kira. ‘You’re one extreme, you got to remember.’
‘Fine, fine,’ grumbles Kira. She looks at her phone. ‘Hey, have you seen this?’
‘What?’ we say.
‘They’re looking for contributors to The Common Room for this year,’ she says, reading the email on her phone.
‘Oh, I thought it was going to be Rose Conrad-related news,’ I say. ‘Yeah, Tori and Ms Harkness mentioned it in English.’
‘You should do it,’ says Kira.
‘Do what?’
‘Write for The Common Room,’ she says.
‘I can’t write for The Common Room,’ I scoff. ‘What would I even write about?’
‘Oh my God, yes,’ says Faye, grabbing my arm. ‘Your Selena Says are basically breaking news.’
‘You think I should send my Selena Says to The Common Room?’ I say, incredulously. ‘They’re three lines long. It’s not exactly journalism.’
‘Journalism looks different in this day and age,’ says Kira, excitedly. ‘You manage to convey a strong opinion in a few lines – I would say that’s a talent. Also, I bet it would spark talk.’
‘Nobody would publish it. Tori definitely wouldn’t. She’d probably see my name, three lines of text and ignore it.’
‘But if you want to do something English-related at uni, this will look so good on your application,’ says Kira. ‘And you could take the idea of Selena Says and make it into a different format. How will you know if you don’t try?’
‘Trust me,’ I say, crossing my arms. ‘I know there’s no point here. I have a better chance of getting a hundred Rose Conrad tickets right now than getting published in The Common Room.’