The Blissfully Dead Read Online Free PDF

think. I reckon it’s that way. Exit P, by Gate 12. There.’
    They managed with difficulty to fight their way sideways across the tide of girls streaming straight ahead to the gates, to a small static enclave of sheepish-looking fans standing awkwardly around. Jess and Chloe joined the group and stood at the back, staring curiously at the huge blown-up photograph of one of their own – a dumpy, freckled girl in her school uniform, staring into the camera with a fake smile on her face.
    ‘So that’s what she looked like,’ breathed Jess.
    The canvas was propped on a folding trestle table covered with an Indian throw and a cardboard sign saying ‘ RIP – ROSE EMILY SHARP . VIGIL 10 p.m .’. An older woman was passing through the group, picking small candles on circles of tinfoil-covered cardboard out of a large crate carried by a sad-looking man behind her and handing them out to the assembled girls.
    Jess still couldn’t stop fidgeting. She hitched up her errant bra strap and adjusted her OnTarget crop top so that it covered half an inch more midriff. ‘My ears are ringing. Are your ears ringing? That was the best one yet, don’t you think? Eight concerts and that was definitely the best. You never know, he might’ve been winking at me. I tweet him so much. He might’ve recognised me!’
    Chloe rolled her eyes. If it weren’t for their mutual adoration of OnTarget, they would never have been mates, she thought. Jess had only contacted her on the forum last year after she, Chloe, had posted the photo of Shawn Barrett visiting her in hospital, when she’d had leukaemia, right before the bone marrow transplant that saved her life. They’d met up and Chloe could tell straight away that Jess was ‘one sandwich short of a picnic’, or ‘away with the fairies’, as her mum would say – but she could be a right laugh too. It was always Jess who made them get up at 4 a.m. to queue for the in-st ore performances or to be the first in line for when the ticket office opened. Jess was the one who organised them to get to whichever hotel the band were rumoured to be staying in, and who spent the longest on the forums trying to get the band members’ attention. Any of them would do, but they both loved Shawn the most. He was the hottest by a long shot with his olive eyes and tan muscled chest; more man than boy.
    ‘You and all the other fifteen million . . . anyway, shhh, settle down – we’re here for MissTargetHeart.’
    ‘She’s so lucky. All these people here for her.’
    ‘Jess, MissTargetHeart isn’t lucky, for fuck’s sake, she’s dead .’
    ‘Yeah, sorry . . . I don’t see why we have to stand around with candles. These candles are shit, like the ones we had at infants’ school in the carol concerts. It’s embarrassing. It’s not like we knew her anyway.’
    ‘We kind of knew her,’ Chloe said quietly.
    Both girls fell silent for a moment.
    ‘Do you know anyone who ever actually met her?’ Chloe asked.
    ‘Jade and Kai did, I think.’
    ‘Jade? Don’t mention that girl’s name to me.’
    As always, the thought of Jade sent a deep and uncomfortable frisson through Chloe, a shiver of guilt and shame. Fear, too. She had seen how vicious Jade could be; worse, the other girl was proud of it. ‘I’m a proper Scorpio,’ Jade had said once. ‘Cross me and I’ll sting you.’
    Jess’s eyes widened as Chloe said this. ‘Shit, speak of the devil – she’s, like, right over there.’
    Chloe, panicking, looked in the direction of Jess’s pointing finger until she saw the couple snogging disrespectfully to their right. It was hard to miss Jade, with her badly dyed long blonde hair. It seemed to swamp her boyfriend, Kai, as if she was swallowing him alive. Chloe had known, of course, that Jade would likely be at the gig, but she’d hoped that the massive crowd would mean their paths wouldn’t cross. No such luck, it seemed.
    Chloe and Jess slipped into the crowd before Jade saw them, just