Becoming Perrie Edwards // h.s

Chapter Six // Is There Any Caesar Salad?

I hear the sound of a key in a lock an I break out into a fresh round of sweats. “Is that — Mum?”

When he nods, I squeal and drag Noah upstairs with his protests muffled by my hand. “You have to help!” I fret as the door unlocks. “Mum thinks I've been laying in bed, sick!” And it's so weird to call someone who is not my own mother 'Mum.' Kind of like calling myself Aria.

“You snuck out? Aria—” He looks shocked, which tells me that the real Aria isn't a very daring person.

“Noah, please.”

He sighs laboriously as if it's going to set him back about ten hours. “Fine, fine, fine. But you have to give me thirty pounds.”

“Noah!” I say, outraged.

“Mum!” He yells and I panic. She can't see me fully clothed and made up, when she thinks I'm dying in bed with that vegetable soup.

“Twenty-five pounds.”

“Deal.”

He works faster than Jodi does on a busy concert venue, grabbing a white fluffy dressing gown off a hook and throwing it to me. I shrug it on over my clothes and make quick work of dabbing on talcum powder to hide my make-up. Noah tips the cold bowl of soup into the bin and cover it with a mound of tissues and then hurries me into bed, just as a tall, dark haired woman walks into the room.

“What are you doing in here, Noah, you'll catch Aria's flu!” She shrieks, batting him out. He twists his head back to look at me and mouths twenty-five. I nod. It's only fair. If I get away with this.

“How are you, Ar?” She sighs, patting my hair. I wince, hoping she doesn't notice the hairspray stiffening it. “Hope you haven't been on the laptop.”

“No,” I sniff. “Just wallowing in my own self-pity.”

“You're going into school tomorrow, right?”

“Mum!” If she made me go in tomorrow, I might just have cardiac arrest! I was not ready to face the world as Aria. Oh please, please, please—

“Aria, I've already got one child suspended, I don't need another one missing school.” A yell sounds from downstairs. Aria's mum — or Andrea, I suppose — groans and points a finger at me. “You're going to school tomorrow unless you're physically throwing up. And don't even think about chucking my porridge into the bin to pretend. Yes, I'm /coming/, Mark!”

As soon as she's out of earshot, I let myself fall back into the pillows and scream.

~*~

“Hello, how's it going?”

My face flashes up on the iPad. Thank God for Skype.

“Oh, Aria, I have to go into your school tomorrow!” I wail, pouting. Then I pause. My mouth falls open and I breathe through my nose very quickly. Anything I was planning on saying flew right out the window as I took in my face. My hair.

“Aria, what did you do to my hair!?”

Because my once pink hair was now a shade of bright, violent white and I haven't had white hair since just after The X Factor! And it totally makes my face look fat.

“You don't like it? I think it's quite nice,” she remarks, fingering the locks fondly. “You can't even see the roots. At first your tour manager went ballistic but then she calmed down. Perrie, I really like it!”

“That's all very well for you, it's not your face!” I clutch at the strands of Aria's brown locks and wonder how much she'd hate me if I got it dyed yellow. Considering she has access to a 5 million twitter account...best not to...