Waiting for Callback (26 page)

‘You can be a robot soldier.’

‘
Okaaay
, maybe we could do something slightly more naturalistic?’ And slightly less Year Seven?

‘No, we’re doing this.’ He looked stubborn (he quite often looked stubborn).

‘I just feel like it isn’t going to work. At all. Couldn’t we do something about a mother telling her kids she’s going to get remarried or something?’

‘No, Electra, we’re already going. And this is meant to be a collaboration so I don’t think you’re being very helpful, yeah? I’ll start . . .’

There was a long pause. It was uncharacteristically subtle for Brian.

‘I can’t think of anything,’ he said finally.

While this may have been a radical Brechtian reinterpretation of the fourth wall, designed to strike right to the heart of the audience’s assumptions about the meaning of theatre, I
strongly suspected he just had no idea what to say.

‘Two minutes left!’ shouted Lens.

‘Right,’ said Bry-an-o, shocked into action and coming over all masterful. ‘So, we start with the scene with the boy, then the dictator discusses the deal with the mother, then
the robot soldier grabs the boy and drags him off and the dictator gives a speech, then the boy makes a daring escape, kills the dictator and rallies the crowds, yeah?’

It wasn’t a question. This was going to be special.

‘OK, everyone!’ Lens called for order and (for once) got immediate and perfect silence. ‘Archie, we’ll start with your group first.’

The fact we had literally nothing to show the class nearly made me too distracted to ogle Archie. But not quite. His group had had the sense to stick with your classic devised family trauma: a
difficult stepfather/stepdaughter relationship plotline (very probably ‘borrowed’ from a weeknight soap, but none the worse for that).

‘Well done, that was very real.’ Reluctant praise. ‘OK, Elektra, why don’t you show us what your group’s got?’

There were so many reasons why what our group had ‘devised’ should never be shown to anyone.

‘Bry . . . Brian is very much in charge,’ I said.

‘This is a collaborative exercise,’ said Lens. ‘Group responsibility.’ His phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out, read a text and smiled – a beatific smile. I
caught Archie’s eye and grinned.

‘So,’ said Lens in a voice so mellow it was like pudding after a really rank main course. ‘Elektra’s group. Elektra? Or Brian? Whoever. Show us what you’ve got.
I’m sure it’ll be great.’ And he
beamed
.

Oh, dear. I would very much have liked to have given him something lovely. At least the robot soldier had no dialogue.

‘That was
incredible
,’ said Lens when we’d finished. He gave a wide smile (like a crocodile).

Brian looked proud, but I knew what was coming.

‘Unfortunately, I was looking for credible.’

‘Aren’t you excited about the
Straker
callback?’ asked Mum when I got home.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t sound it.’

‘I am.’ And I was (and nervous too), but it was ages away and it was still just an audition and I was trying really hard not to get overexcited about auditions. The lower I kept my
expectations, the less disappointed I got. It was my new approach and I was going to stick to it. Also (for unrelated reasons) I was still not in a great mood.

Mum did that ‘looking at me really closely and seeing into my soul’ thing. ‘You look miserable. Are you and Moss still fighting?’ I’m not entirely sure when
I’d told her about my ‘issues’ with Moss. I hadn’t meant to tell her, but obviously I had. That happened a lot.

‘It’s fine.’ Except it wasn’t fine. I think I’d rather Flissy pulled Archie than have to put up with much more of the silent treatment.

‘It’s obviously not fine.’

I shrugged and went back to looking at everyone else having a life on my Facebook feed. There were photos of Moss and Jenny hamming it up outside the juice bar near our school. I
‘liked’ it to make a point, although I’m not quite sure what point it was.

‘For goodness’ sake, Elektra, just go round there and sort it out,’ advised/ordered my mother. ‘You’re being very childish about this.’

‘Thanks, that’s helpful.’
Not
. ‘I’m not just going to turn up on her doorstep and beg her to let me in and be friends again. I’m not six.’

‘No, but you’re behaving as if you are,’ said Mum, violently chopping some innocent carrots. ‘You and Moss have fallen out before and it’s always been fine.’
There followed a long list of historic fall-outs none of which had anything to do with me and Moss now.

‘We haven’t been fighting over a guy before.’

‘You’re both too young to be bothering about boys. You should be putting your friendships first.’

More mixed messages and was it
impossible
for her to see that that was what I was trying to do? My father raised his head from the sports section of the newspaper. ‘Just let her
sort it out herself, Julia.’

‘There isn’t much evidence of her trying to do that, is there? And anyway Elektra hasn’t left me with much choice. Somebody has to get involved; she doesn’t know a thing
about how to behave like a responsible adult or even a responsible
teenager
it would seem.’ She briefly broke off from the aggressive dicing and slicing and handed me a glass of water
and a vitamin tablet so enormous it could have supported the immune system of a rhino.

I looked at Dad hopefully, but he was gratefully embracing the stereotype and had retreated back into an in-depth analysis of whether Chelsea should have played a 4–3–3. Normally, I
quite liked that he didn’t get involved in my friends stuff, but actually, when Mum was being so harsh, reinforcements would have been nice.

‘Thanks for the help, Dad,’ I said.

‘Your mum’s got a point. You’re being a bit wet about this, Elektra,’ he said without raising his head. Another typical bit of parenting consistency right there. Plus, my
father was calling me wet. Great. A new low point.

‘What do you want me to do?’ It was a rhetorical question. Stupid of me because I was going to get more advice whether I wanted it or not.

‘Talk to Moss. Talk to Maia or whatever the other girl is called. Forget about it for a bit and enjoy all the other things going on in your life? I don’t know.’

Sure, because it’s that easy.

‘I’m not the one who’s refusing to speak,’ I said, slipping the tablet to Digby who (predictably) spat it out immediately. I kicked it under the table and hoped for the
best. ‘Moss is the one avoiding me.’

‘Then you’re both being silly. I can’t even see what you’re fighting about.’ That was my mum’s contribution.

It should have made me feel better that she was criticizing Moss too, but it didn’t; it just made me feel disloyal.

‘Or if you’re not going to sort it out with Moss then phone up some of your other friends. And not just your drama friends.’ She said ‘drama friends’ like I’d
have said ‘performing seals’.

I knew that I should be making an effort with my other friends from school.

I knew that because my mum had already told me so about one hundred times and I really, really wished that she’d stop.

The more I know she’s right about something, the more it irritates me to hear her say it. Maybe it’s because she never says it only once. I wish. I wasn’t feeling social.
After
I was back being friends with Moss again, I would make an effort with everyone else at school that I’d managed to upset in the past three weeks.

Or maybe that wouldn’t happen and I’d become best friends with Flissy. We could share make-up and she would advise me on guys. Right.

Or maybe I would just eat my body weight in chocolate.

‘Well, if you’re not going to take my advice, I can only suggest that you stop moping in my kitchen,’ Mum said angrily, mashing some poor little potatoes. ‘And if
you’re going to go out again later get changed first.’

‘What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’

‘The leggings are . . . gynaecological.’

So I could add camel toe to my list of things to worry about. And I’d been wearing them to ACT. Brilliant.

Mum always got offended when I didn’t take her ‘advice’, but the days when she could sort out my friends for me had passed. I thought about talking to Eulalie, but only because
she would have ended up offering to take me shopping to cheer me up. She wouldn’t have had any magic answers either. But that wasn’t even an option because she was away topping up her
suntan in the Caribbean and all I was getting were Instagrams of her in sarongs (#stillknowhowtohavefuninthesun #poolparty) and I didn’t want to rain on her (very sunny) parade.

Anyway, it was Moss I wanted to talk to. I wanted to tell her about the
Straker
audition, but mostly I just wanted to talk to her about all the things we always talked about – some
real stuff like did Miranda in the year above have an eating disorder? And some stuff that was just gossip, like was it true that Maia/Claudia/Isobel got off with Ben/Josh/Anna/Ben (the same Ben)?
And why did no one judge Ben? I wanted to talk to her about stuff that I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else (like was my left eyebrow higher than my right? Actually, I knew it was, so the real
question was why did I care?). And other more embarrassing things that I’m definitely not going to list. I wanted to talk to her about stuff that I couldn’t get out of my head (like did
she think Archie still fancied Talia? Of course he did).

Forget it. None of that was what I really wanted to talk to her about.

I just wanted to say that I was sorry.

It was completely unacceptable for two people in their
late
forties to be dancing round a kitchen table in some sort of middle-aged version of twerking.

‘What the—??’

They sort of trailed off and stumbled to a halt and looked sheepish, which was the least they could do.

‘There has to be a reason for this behaviour.’ I think I sounded quite stern. I certainly intended to. What if there wasn’t a reason? What if this was just some horrible
insight into how their marriage worked when I wasn’t around?

‘Sorry . . .’ said Mum.

‘Sorry . . .’ mumbled Dad.

It’s a good moment when you get a parental apology. And now two in a row. It almost made the ‘dancing’ thing worth it. Almost. Even without the half-empty champagne bottle, I
should have realized by the goofy smiliness and sort of blurriness of the pair of them that they were both a bit drunk.

‘And the reason for this singing and . . . stuff would be?’ There was a brief moment when I wondered if Granny Gwen had died and this was their idea of mourning. Not brief enough.
I’m not proud of that.

‘Your dad’s been promoted!’ I’m not going to lie, Mum
twirled
. ‘He’s off kitchens. He’s going to be working on the Experimental House
project.’

‘Experimental?’ I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of experimental houses. I’d rather go for something a bit proven myself – at least structurally.

‘It’s
fine
. They’ve said they can be white. And minimalist.’

I was finding this quite hard to follow.

‘I’m going to be busy,’ said Dad as if being busy was the best thing anyone could ever wish for. ‘No more kitchens.’

Experimental houses didn’t have kitchens?

‘Do you want a glass of champagne?’ My mum was practically waving the bottle at me. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was 4.46 p.m. That was the sort of question Eulalie asked me
after school, not my parents. I had two hours minimum of physics homework to do (the electromagnetic spectrum, fair to say not my favourite topic, but then it’s not my favourite subject), but
I took the champagne (are you kidding? Gift horse – well, gift foal: she only poured me like two centimetres). My phone woofed.

Hey, Elektra, what’s up? x

It was Archie. On the upside, there were definitely more of these random texts and the ‘x’ was pretty standard now. Was Moss wrong? On the downside, they were all the sort of texts I
would have sent to a friend. And I didn’t want to be stuck in Friendzone with Archie Mortimer.

‘Who’s texting you?’ asked my mum.

‘No one,’ I said.

‘You don’t normally smile like that when “no one” texts you. Do you want to talk about it?’ She hiccuped.

Oh, great. My dad was singing quietly in the background with a silly smile on his face. Oblivious.

‘Nope.’ I ignored the whipped-puppy look Mum gave me. ‘I’m just going to go upstairs and start on my homework.’ Which meant: ‘I’m just going to go
upstairs for a bit of privacy.’

I sat on my bed and looked at my phone as if, in the absence of a best friend, it would start to tell me what to do next. Digby scratched at the door and I let him in because he only made a
dog-sized dent in my privacy. He jumped up on the bed and pawed at my favourite jumper until he had got it into the best shape to curl up on. Should I make Archie wait for a reply? I probably
should, right? Digby wagged his tail, but as advice went it was a bit equivocal.