Stagefright (17 page)

The busking was successful. The rest of Stagefright went along to Yarrabank Plaza to create an audience. A crowd soon gathered to see what they were looking at. Taleb took his little amp and played some old favourites that he’d selected specially to appeal to old people: “Stairway to Heaven”, a couple of Pink Floyd classics and the Star Wars theme. He also played a guitar-legend version of “Memory” from Cats, which Velvet thought might have been just for her. Jesus did a surprisingly good job of percussion accompaniment, even though he didn’t know any of the songs. When Taleb counted the coins in his guitar case there was thirty-eight dollars and sixty-five cents.

They had a meeting at a cafe afterwards to discuss how they would use the money. It was the first time they’d all been together out of school uniform. Drago was wearing green baggy pants that made him look like a garden gnome; Jesus a soccer shirt; Roula a long velvet skirt; Hailie a tight fitting T-shirt, cut-off jeans and goosebumps. Velvet thought about sitting next to Taleb but changed her mind. They hadn’t talked about it, but neither of them felt comfortable about being seen together in public. Velvet knew that the other members of Toxic Shock would relentlessly make fun of Taleb for having such an uncool girlfriend. And she hadn’t quite let go of being the princess exiled among the plebs. Even in cultural studies class they kept their distance. Velvet didn’t think the boys had a clue, but Roula and Hailie knew something was going on. They’d been quizzing her about it for weeks, even though Velvet had insisted that their relationship was strictly professional.

Mei arrived and distracted Velvet from her thoughts. Without anybody noticing, Mei had undergone a transformation over the last term. She’d cut off her pigtails and now wore her hair in a bob. Her eyes were skillfully made up. She no longer wore little girls’ clothes. Her skirt was tight and her blouse even tighter, outlining her large breasts.

“I get lost,” she told them. “Take wrong bus. Go to Richmond by mistake.”

They all squeezed up to make room for Mei. Drago moved next to her and Velvet ended up sitting next to Taleb anyway. She could see their reflection in a mirror. They didn’t look anything like a couple. Taleb was wearing black jeans and a black Slipknot T-shirt. Velvet had on her light blue jeans and a mauve shirt, and even with her hair down and carefully messy, she still looked neat and ironed. She and Taleb just didn’t go together. Velvet was worrying about whether this was important when someone remembered what they were supposed to be there for, and they started talking about their new funds and what they were going to do with them.

“We’ve got a bit more than half the money we had before,” Peter said, who had nominated himself Stagefright’s accountant. “We still won’t be able to hire costumes.”

There was some general grumbling about Drago and then they tried to think of alternatives.

“We’ll have to take up Miss Ryan’s offer. Let her make stuff.”

Peter groaned. “Do we have to?”

“I’ll end up with an orange cloak,” Drago said, “with big flowers on it.”

“Poor Miss Ryan,” Velvet said. “You shouldn’t make fun of her.”

“Yeah, Drago, you should be grateful,” Roula said. “She’s getting you out of trouble.”

The girls still wanted to wear flowing gowns.

“I’ve got the bridesmaid’s dress I wore at my cousin Kiki’s wedding,” Roula said. “That might look okay if I altered it a bit.”

That gave Velvet an idea. “We might be able to get some long dresses at the War Widows shop.” It was one of her mother’s favourite op shops and it wasn’t far away.

“They’ll all be pink and horrible though,” Hailie said.

“We can dye them.”

Miss Ryan had given them the address of a remnants shop where they could get cheap material. Drago needed a coronation cloak and Roula still needed some streamers of green and blue material for the underwater scene.

“You’ll have to have a cardboard and aluminium foil crown though,” Roula said.

Drago opened his mouth to complain.

“Shut up, Drago.”

He did his best to look apologetic. “Can I choose what colour cloak I get?”

“No.”

Peter gave Roula forty dollars and Miss Ryan’s instructions for how many metres they’d need. Drago insisted on going with her.

“If you don’t come back with everything we need and change …” Jesus left it to Drago’s imagination what he would do.

Hailie had a date (she’d just dropped Jesus). Peter had to help in the family restaurant. Jesus wanted to watch his old soccer team play in a semi-final. No one seemed interested in going to the War Widows op shop with Velvet.

“I’ll go with you,” Taleb said.

“Thanks.” Velvet tried to look like it was no big deal.

Taleb picked up his guitar with one hand and took Velvet’s hand in the other. They said goodbye and the others stopped arguing about which tram to catch as they watched them walk away hand in hand.

“Geez, Roula,” Velvet heard Hailie say. “When are you going to get a boyfriend? Even Velvet’s got one.”

That was the end of Velvet’s reputation as the aloof princess. Everyone would know she was going with Taleb now. She didn’t mind at all really.

The op shop had two racks of dilapidated ball gowns and bridesmaids dresses in hideous colours. Velvet tried some on. Taleb was supposed to be looking around for anything the boys might be able to use, but when Velvet wanted to show him a dress she thought might work, she found him fossicking through a pile of sheet music. He didn’t like the dress. Velvet tried on some more. There was one that hung beautifully but was an awful shade of green, another was made of lovely silky material but stuck out too much. Another two had a vague medieval look and might have looked okay if they were dyed darker colours. They were marked at fifteen dollars each, but Velvet bargained with the little old lady behind the counter and got the price down to twenty dollars for the two, with a lace curtain thrown in to use as a veil. Taleb bought a peculiar selection of sheet music ranging from ABBA to Miles Davies.

“What are you going to do with those?” Velvet asked.

“Learn how to play them. I can use bits in guitar solos or make heavy-metal versions.”

Afterwards Taleb walked Velvet home along the river. A couple of months earlier Velvet would never have believed that she would soon be walking along a bike path hand in hand with a boy – especially one with hair the same length as hers whose idea of a musical genius was Jimi Hendrix. What would her friends at St Theresa’s think? Her ex-friends.

They sat under a willow tree with their backs against the tree trunk, inside the curtain of branches that brushed the ground as the breeze caught them. They talked for a while and then abandoned conversation. Velvet learned how to kiss someone who had bands on their teeth. Not that she’d had any experience at kissing anybody without them, apart from a kid she’d played kiss-chasey with in Grade 3 whose name she couldn’t remember. Velvet was amazed at how quickly she’d taken to kissing. Swapping saliva with someone had always sounded gross. It was actually very pleasant. She still wanted to make sure that she knew where she stood with Taleb.

“So, does this mean we’re going out?”

Taleb shrugged. “What do you think?”

“I just wanted to make sure.”

“Would you like something in writing?”

“Very funny. I was just wondering about …”

“What?”

“About Sofia Ritano.”

“What about her?”

“You were going out with her a few weeks ago.”

“I’ve never been out with Sofia Ritano.”

“I saw you. You were wrapped around each other.”

“She was wrapped around me. She does that with all the guys in the band. I don’t even like her, but she does the sound and lights for our gigs. And anyway, she’s a lesbian.”

“Is she? Okay. It’s no big deal. I just wanted to know.”

It wasn’t quite the formal request and acceptance that Velvet had imagined. When other girls talked about boys asking them out, she’d thought they’d meant it literally. Boy meets girl. Boy asks girl out. Girl accepts. It seemed a shrug was the best she could hope for. She’d also thought it meant you actually went somewhere. Out. It was the twenty-first century. Velvet decided it was time for her to take the initiative.

“Do you want to go to the movies tomorrow?”

Another shrug.

“I’ll have a look online tonight and see what’s on.”

It was nearly two-thirty and Velvet had said she’d be home for lunch. They walked quickly the rest of the way to her house. She didn’t invite Taleb in. It was taking her a while to get used to having a boyfriend, and she certainly wasn’t ready to introduce him to her parents.

No one was in the mood to work hard in the last week of third term. Except Taleb.

“Let’s just go through all the songs once, in order. To see how they sound.”

The others grudgingly agreed, but it was a half-hearted effort and Drago was so late for class he missed his soliloquy song and Taleb had to sing it instead.

When they had finished, everyone was talking about what they were going to do over the holidays. Velvet was admiring her most recent Mandarin test and congratulating herself after getting a C+. Sitting next to Drago had been a masterstroke. He explained the grammar much more clearly than Mrs Dwyer, and helped her learn the characters. Having conversation sessions with Mei had been his idea as well, and that had improved her spoken Mandarin. Velvet was hoping she could get her mark up to a B by the end of the year.

Suddenly, the sounds of their own voices were filling the room. Taleb had borrowed Velvet’s phone at the beginning of the class. She hadn’t given it much thought at the time. He had connected it up to his amplifier.

“You douche,” Hailie said. “You recorded us.”

The overture sounded bad. Velvet could hear her clarinet squeaking, and her piano playing was very ordinary. Hailie’s sax wasn’t in tune. Mei’s voice drowned out all the others, and the harmonies sounded terrible.

“I wanted you all to know how bad you sound.”

Velvet cringed when she heard herself singing Lady Anne’s song. She was in tune, but it had no emotion.

“That’s not fair. We weren’t even trying.” Velvet was angry that Taleb hadn’t told her what he was planning.

“Well, you should be trying, all the time.”

“You knew it was being recorded, so you did your best.”

“I always do my best as far as music is concerned.”

They practised the harmonies in the coronation song again and then ran through all the songs. This time they sounded better.

Velvet was still annoyed. “The songs need to link more.”

“If you want to write the music, go ahead.” Taleb wasn’t used to musical criticism.

“I don’t want to write the music. But at the moment, what we have is a string of songs. I’m not saying they’re not good songs, but …”

“Just stick to writing the script, Velvet,” Peter said.

“Yeah,” Taleb said. “You’re director, scriptwriter and leading lady. Isn’t that enough?”

“Look, you’re a great musician, a good songwriter and a guitar hero, but you don’t know the first thing about musicals!”

The rest of the cast watched in silence. None of them would have dared to criticise Taleb’s music.

“I may be an average clarinetist and a less than average piano player, but I’ve seen every musical that’s ever been staged in Melbourne since I was six. I’ve seen Broadway shows – on Broadway. I know about musical theatre!”

She waited for Taleb to explode. But he didn’t, so she continued.

“The music should flow, so that when you play the songs back to back it feels like a continuous piece of music. It doesn’t need much – a hint of what’s to come in the overture, an occasional recurring melody. And there has to be a finale.”

The bell went.

“Geez, Velvet.” Hailie picked up her bag. “It’s just a school musical.”

“Yeah,” Jesus said. “We’re not trying to win an Oscar.”

“Tony.”

“Huh?”

“The awards for theatre productions are called Tonys. Oscars are for movies.”

“Whatever.”

“We need to rehearse over the holidays,” Taleb said.

Peter couldn’t. “I’ve got to work at the restaurant.”

Neither could Drago. “I’m going to the country to stay with my granny.”

Jesus was coaching at a soccer camp. Hailie’s mother’s latest boyfriend was taking them to the snow. Roula had to look after her little brother.

Taleb sighed as they headed for the door. “You all have to work on your songs over the holidays.”

“And your lines,” Velvet added.

Taleb handed back her phone. A voice with a crisp English accent told them it was currently seventy-five degrees in Miami.

“That was sneaky,” Velvet said, “recording us like that. But it’s probably what we needed.”

She was expecting Taleb to be angry with her for being critical of his music in front of the others, but he wasn’t.

“I want this musical to be as good as it possibly can be,” he said. “I can take criticism.”

“I’ll practise over the holidays.”

“And I’ll write a finale – if you write the lyrics.”

He put his guitar in its case. “We should get together over the break.”

Velvet nodded. That was fine by her.

“We’ll need some inspiration,” she said. “I’m going to my aunt’s place on Monday. She’s got an amazing collection of musical soundtracks. Do you want to come?”

“Sure.”