Rebecca Rocks (11 page)

I think I might have to work on them a bit before I show them to Cass and Alice. I know that Persil line is a bit odd. And I don’t even know if John’s clothes were washed with Persil. It could have been Daz. Or something environmentally friendly like Ecover (Miss Kelly would approve of that). Anyway,
whatever
they were washed with, he didn’t do the actual washing. He used to boast that he always refused to do what he called ‘mundane, pointless household duties’, even when his parents threatened to stop his pocket money. He seemed quite outraged at the very idea that he could be ‘bought off’, as he put it.

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to mention anything to do with laundry at all but very few things rhyme with ‘rehearsal’. In
fact, I couldn’t think of anything else. But I’ll figure
something
out.

And I wasn’t the only one who has been creative and
productive
today. When we met Jane at lunch today she had some surprising news − though we were lucky we were able to hear it because Positive Trigger have started having rap battles with each other at lunchtime and sometimes they can get quite heated and noisy (though in quite a good-natured way. I think it’s all for show; they all seem to be good friends). Anyway, we managed to find a relatively quiet corner and sat down with some sandwiches.

‘How’s it going, working with you-know-who?’ asked Cass sympathetically. ‘Do you have to go out to the corridor every few minutes and take deep breaths to calm down?’

‘Do you think you’ll get through the whole thing without pushing Karen off the stage?’ I said. ‘I used to want to do that a lot during
Mary Poppins
rehearsals.’

‘Actually, it’s not bad,’ said Jane. ‘I know! I’m as surprised as you.’ She said that they’re all really focused on the play and it’s really intense. ‘It’s like we’re so busy they’ve forgotten how to be annoying,’ she said. ‘And Bernard the Fairy-tale Prince is a good influence. Seriously! Whenever Vanessa starts demanding stuff
he kind of calms her down.’ She said that Gemma, Alfie and Josh, the other members of the group, just won’t put up with any nonsense from Vanessa. Or indeed Karen.

‘I know it’s really hard to believe,’ she said. ‘But we’re
working
really well together. We’ve all come up with lots of good ideas for the play we have to do.’

Their play sounds very ambitious – lots of physical stuff going on. I didn’t realise they were all so good at gymnastics. And I’m not sure how they’re going to do the bit with the dragon, but Jane said they’ll work something out.

Speaking of all things theatrical, my parents are getting even more annoying as the musical approaches. This evening I was trying to listen to music and read after my hard day’s work in the world of rock, but I couldn’t concentrate because they were in the kitchen singing ‘Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah’ at top volume. And when I went in to complain and ask them to sing more quietly, they just laughed.

‘I didn’t think you minded a bit of noise around the house!’ said Dad. ‘What about your drums? You’re always banging away on that little snare drum.’

‘That’s different,’ I said. ‘I’m learning an instrument! That’s like homework.’

‘But we’re doing our homework too,’ said Mum. ‘And our instruments are our voices. Oom-pah-pah!’ And then she and Dad laughed like fools. Sometimes I think they are not very mature for their (very) advanced age.

My fringe hasn’t improved, by the way. I bumped into Mrs Mulligan and her horrible child on my way home today, and that little brat said ‘Nice hair!’ in a really fake voice. And then she smirked at me! It was bad enough when she was just
gyrating
at me. I can’t believe she’s moved on to actual words. I just smirked back at her and said, ‘Thanks!’ as her mother smiled at her and said, ‘Aw, that’s very nice of you Sorcha.’ Clearly the little monster has fooled her poor parents into thinking she is a normal human being.

But, on the plus side, my fringe doesn’t seem to have
actually
got worse. So that’s something. And in more good news, Cass came out to Richard and Ellie and Jane. This afternoon, she asked me and Alice had we told anyone about her coming out to us. Which we hadn’t. Not that her gayness is some big dark secret or anything, but we figured it was her choice to tell people or not and we shouldn’t go around talking about it
without
telling her. After all, coming out even to her best friends was a big deal for Cass. So we told her we hadn’t said anything.

‘I didn’t think you would have, but I thought I’d check,’ said Cass. ‘Anyway, I just thought I should say it was fine if you want to mention it to Richard. And I’ll tell Ellie and Jane.’

So they all know now. They were all cool about it, though Richard did tell Alice later that he was a bit surprised.

‘I mean, I’d never have guessed,’ he said. ‘She’s pretty girly. She doesn’t look like … you know.’

‘Like what?’ said Alice fiercely.

‘Ah,’ said Richard. He seemed to realise how stupid he sounded. And if he didn’t, he certainly did by the time Alice had given him a lecture about stereotypes and judging people by appearances and how Cass could be as girly or not-girly as she liked. But he seems to be totally fine about the whole thing anyway. As were Ellie and Jane.

‘I spend half my life surrounded with my mum’s hippie friends from her various goddess groups,’ said Ellie. ‘Gayness does not scare me.’

So Cass is relieved. It did make me realise how unfair it is that I never had to worry about people being weird about whoever I fancied. I mean, I didn’t have to worry that the world would have a problem with me going out with John Kowalski, even though he was a fool. And yet Cass has to
worry about people being horrible about her and Liz, who is lovely! Truly this world is an unfair place.

I hate that horrible Charlie! And his friends, too, though he’s definitely the worst of them. We were divided into two groups for workshops this afternoon, and as soon as we walked in we realised we were in the same one as the Crack Parrots.

‘Oh brilliant,’ said Cass, gloomily. ‘That’s all we need when we try to figure out sound levels. Charlie and his goons making not-so-smart remarks.’

‘Maybe they won’t be so bad,’ said Alice. ‘I mean, surely they’re not going to say anything with the mentors around.’

But it turns out that Charlie is cleverer than he looks (which wouldn’t be hard, because he looks like a cocky idiot). He never said anything obnoxious when the mentors could hear. But as soon as their backs were turned or they were busy helping someone else, he’d be off.

‘Are you sure you can figure out those leads?’ he said, when Cass and Alice were hooking things up to the mixing-desk. ‘I
know girls aren’t great at technical stuff …’

‘We’re fine,’ said Alice primly. And then she played a giant power chord on her guitar.

‘Excellent, Alice,’ called Kitty. ‘Lovely crisp sound. Now, check your keyboard level, Cass.’

Cass played a thunderous bassline on her keyboard. It was far too loud and distorted.

‘Oops,’ she said.

Charlie laughed.

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go and make me a sandwich instead?’

‘Yeah,’ said one of his bandmates, whose name is Robbie. ‘We all know a girl’s place is in the kitchen! Not at the
mixing-desk
.’

‘Seriously, what did that sound like?’ said Finn, the drummer.

But before we could say anything, Kitty and Dave came over.

‘Everything okay?’ said Kitty. ‘You just need to adjust the levels there, Cass.’

‘I can do it for her,’ said Evan, the Crack Parrots’ bass player. ‘I’m pretty good at this sort of thing.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Cass coldly. ‘I’ve got it.’ And she fiddled around with the dials and played a few notes until the
keyboard
sounded okay.

It was very annoying, because the class was really useful, all about how to make sure your instruments and vocals sound good together on stage. But those stupid boys put us in a bad mood. It was particularly irritating because they weren’t very good at mixing their sound either, but they didn’t seem to care. They still thought they were brilliant. We were all meant to be taking turns, and Charlie and Evan kept hogging the microphones for ages. Their music is rubbish too.

We cheered up a bit later, though, when Paula Howard turned out to be better than anyone else at realising what lead went where and making music sound good. Charlie looked as sick as a pig when the mentors praised her skills. But we didn’t get to hear any of her music. She said she didn’t want to play live yet. So she just engineered Positive Trigger for a bit. Their songs are pretty good, all about life on the mean streets and how hard it is for them to hustle their way through every day. I was quite surprised to find out that they are all actually from Clontarf, which is not very mean at all. Paperboy was from Clontarf, and his house was much bigger than mine and
was also just down the road from a few posh restaurants and a supermarket my mother will only visit on special occasions because it sells nothing but fancy hummous and organic
rashers
. Also, two members of Positive Trigger, Oisín and Archie, go to a private school in town. But maybe Clontarf is tougher than it looks?

There was another band called Puce, who, despite their
colourful
name, are quite boring. Not in an obnoxious way, just in a sort of wishy-washy generic indie way. I mean, you barely noticed when they were on stage. They all look really alike too. They do have nice cardigans, but that is the only thing that sticks in the mind. And even the cardigans all look the same, so that doesn’t help much. But perhaps the camp will improve their stage presence.

Anyway, I was quite sorry when the session was over, because it was all very interesting (even with poor old Puce). We were giving out about Charlie and his gang when we bumped into the art people on our way to the canteen.

‘Sam,’ said Alice. ‘You know Charlie and Evan and all of them from school, right? Are they always really obnoxious?’ She paused and looked a bit guilty. ‘Um, I hope they’re not your best friends. Sorry if they are.’

But Sam laughed.

‘They are definitely not my best friends,’ he said. ‘And yes, they are mostly really obnoxious. Well, actually some of them are okay when Charlie’s not around.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘Well, I know it’s probably hard to believe, but yeah,’ said Sam. ‘The problem is Charlie’s almost always around.’

‘He’s not very good at sound engineering, anyway,’ said Alice. ‘He was the worst of the lot.’

‘Yeah, Paula was in our group too, and she was the best,’ said Cass. ‘Small Paula, I mean, not tall Goth Paula.’

Sam laughed. ‘I bet Charlie didn’t like a girl doing better than him.’

The art projects all seem to be going really well. They’re each working on one big project over the whole course and then they do different challenges every day.

‘Mostly still comics,’ said Sam. ‘But different sorts. It’s really good. And I’m writing stuff too, which used to be Lucy’s department.’

‘How are you finding drawing?’ I asked Lucy.

‘Oh, it’s good,’ said Lucy. She looked kind of vague, as usual. ‘I mean, I always liked drawing, I just didn’t think I was
very good at it. So I left it up to Sam.’

‘She’s really good,’ said Sam. ‘I always told her she should do more of it, and she ignored me! But it looks like this course is going to succeed where I failed.’

I hope I didn’t say anything to upset Lucy. She never looks me totally in the eye. I mean, she’s not very friendly. I hope she doesn’t think any of us are after Sam, because I’m certainly not. And neither is Ellie, because she likes another boy on the course (his name is Cillian but it turns out he has a girlfriend and talks about her all the time so poor Ellie knows she doesn’t have a chance).

Anyway, Ellie has lots of work to distract her because she is going to make the costumes for Jane and the crazy people’s play. It will be her big project in the art course. She says it’s quite a challenge.

‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the dragon,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly a normal costume. And I have to make sure they can do gymnastics and juggling in most of the outfits. And that they’ll be okay for the human pyramid bit. But I’ll figure something out.’

Speaking of stage ensembles, my parents went off to collect their costumes for their own musical this evening. A member
of the musical society is making most of them, and she only lives down the road so she suggested they call round for a
fitting
. My dad took photos of them on his phone, and all I can say is I hope they add some fabric to Mum’s outfit. I know she is meant to be some sort of Victorian floozy, but surely she doesn’t need to show so much chest? It’s a bit much, especially at her age. I mentioned to her that it was a bit low-cut, and she just LAUGHED.