Never Saw You Coming by Hayley Doyle

Author:Hayley Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-02-24T17:00:00+00:00

22

Jim

‘Video killed the radio star …’

The words aren’t very coherent, but I make them out.

Again.

‘Video killed the radio star …’ Zara’s only started bloody singing, hasn’t she? Quietly, her mouth stuffed with tuna butty. I’ve finished mine and scrunch the empty paper bag into a ball with one fist.

‘Video killed the radio star,’ she sings again, a touch louder now.

I toss the ball towards her feet and she sings a little more. She clearly doesn’t know any of the lyrics other than the title words of the song, so she’s making them up, some mumble jumble of ‘mi-mi-mi’ and ‘ma-ma-ma’, with a ‘doo-doo-doo’ and a ‘da-da-da’ thrown in. My head’s still banging from last night, and I’m trying hard to ignore her. I catch my reflection in the rear-view mirror. Ha. I look like a bad actor doing some serious driving-acting. I mean, I like a bit of a sing. Who doesn’t, eh? But, not now. Not here.

‘VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR,’ Zara ups the volume. ‘Come on, Jim! VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR. DA-DA-DA and DOO-DOO-DAH, MA-MA-MA-MA-MI-MI-MA-MA. OH! OH-OH-OH!’

‘Shut up, Zara.’ Please.

‘Ah, was that a smile I just saw, Jim?’

‘No, you’re giving me a headache—’

‘VIDEO KILLED THE—’

‘Agh! You’re tone fucking deaf, girl!’

‘MA-MA-MAAAAH!’ she wails. ‘Oh! VIDEO KILLED—’

‘The radio star,’ I sing, involuntarily, teeth gritted. I do NOT want to be doing this. But fucking hell, if you can’t beat ’em, eh? I’m singing. So, what? I’m singing. ‘Video killed the radio star. In my mind and in my car, we can’t rewind we’ve gone too far!’

Hey. At least I know the words.

‘Woo-hoo!’ Zara cheers. ‘Yeah!’

Great. And now I’m blushing. I can feel that hot tingle in my cheeks and my face is breaking into a smile completely against my will. I don’t want to smile. This is so lame. Zara’s pure buzzing though, and still out-singing me in the volume category, which is fine. I’m not competing with that. I just continue to sing in my own way, and she carries on badly, making up loads of her own words as I sing the correct ones. Okay, maybe I am accentuating my diction here. Just a bit, like. And we come together during the ‘Oh-a-aho oh’ parts, bopping our heads in time to the beat we’ve created. As we reach a natural finale, Zara gives a huge round of applause and drum rolls with her feet.

‘You’re such a dickhead,’ I say.

‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all day,’ she says. ‘So, what were you called?’

‘What?’

‘Your band. What were you called?’

‘Oh. The Dentists.’

‘WHAT?’

I give a shrug. What’s her problem?

‘The Dentists?’ she cries.

‘Yeah. It was funny. You see, Snowy and the others, Mikey and Griffo, they all wore them train tracks.’ I flash my teeth and point to them. ‘But, me, I had naturally straight pearly whites. See? Never needed them. And … what? What the fuck you laughing at?’

‘That’s NOT funny,’ Zara howls.

‘It is! It was!’

‘You called your band THE DENTISTS ’cause you had perfect teeth? And your bandmates had braces?’

‘Ah, fuck.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.