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better get changed. Our Clover taxi will be here any second.”
    “Weren’t you listening?” I cross my arms grumpily. “I’m not going, and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind.”
    “Actually there is” — she smiles smugly —“you’ve left me with no alternative: I’m calling Mouse. All for one and one for all — remember?”
    I squeal despite my bad mood. “No! That’s so unfair. I haven’t called Mouse on you in years.”
    “Ha! I’m calling Mouse and that’s that. Throw on your new skinny jeans — they look fab.”
    I glare at her, but she’s won and she knows it.
    “Go on, Ames,” she cajoles. “You know you secretly want to. You’re just being stubborn.”
    “You’re unbelievable, Mills, you know that?”
    She just smiles and mouths “Mouse” at me.
    Calling Mouse is so underhanded,
I think as I stomp up the stairs. When we were little, Mills had this videotape called
The Three Mouseketeers,
and we both adored it. One day we were snuggled up on the sofa in Mills’s house eating bowls of ice cream, with Mills’s duvet pulled over our legs.
The Three Mouseketeers
had just finished. “All for one and one for all,” Mills said, swinging her empty spoon in the air like a sword the way the little mice did.
    “Friends forever,” I said, waving my own spoon and quoting the mice: “‘Whatever is asked in the name of Mouse must be obeyed. ’Cause we are the Mouseketeers.’”
    And then we swore an oath of friendship — just like the mice. And for years we used to call “Mouse” on each other. I can’t believe she used it on me today — although she is right: I am dying to find out what Clover has in store for us. I can feel my bad mood lifting already.
    *  *  *
    “We’re running a bit late, so hold on to your hats,” Clover says as she speeds away from my house at twenty past seven. She’s a pretty nifty driver, fast but safe. She’d rock that celebrity lap competition on
Top Gear
— whup Simon Cowell, for instance, into the tarmac. Last year Gramps gave her a track session for her birthday, and she loved it — she roared around Mondello Park like a pro.
    Mills chatters away in the car, telling Clover about Bailey. She really is oblivious sometimes; she’s clearly forgotten all about our earlier conversation. At least she’s here, I guess. Now and then, Clover catches my eye in the rearview mirror and gives me a gentle smile.
    “Clover, does Brains ever go quiet?” Mills asks. “Like he’s thinking about something?” (Brains is Clover’s boyfriend. He’s in a band called the Golden Lions and is super cool.)
    “All the time,” Clover says. “Especially when he’s in the middle of writing a new song. I have to wave my hand in front of his eyes to snap him out of it.”
    “Bailey writes songs,” Mills says. “He’s amazing. Wait till I tell you about—”
    “Let’s throw on some tunes,” Clover says quickly. She puts on the Golden Lions CD that Brains had cut especially for her, cranks it up loud, and starts seat dancing. That shuts Mills up.
    Clover tucks her Mini into a parking lot in Temple Bar, and we walk through the cobbled back streets, up Crane Lane, and take a right, onto Dame Street. The evening traffic is heavy, buses and cars trundle by, and the metallic exhaust fumes catch at the back of my throat, making me cough. The street is jammed with people, and we have to step around a clump of American tourists staring at a map in the middle of the pavement. Mills insists on helping them locate “Kelly’s Book” aka the Book of Kells, while Clover and I jiggle around impatiently.
    Once outside the Olympia Theatre, Clover spreads her arms out and says, “Ta-da!”
    I stare at her. “The theater? Tell me it’s not Shakespeare, Clover. Miss Bingley took us to
Hamlet
last year, and it was a snoozefest.”
    “No kidding,” Mills adds. “I mean, ‘To be or not to be’? Seriously, who cares? I wouldn’t mind seeing
Romeo and