Rebecca is Always Right (2 page)

Still, surely anything that could make me feel a bit more awake when I get up in the middle of the night tomorrow (okay, a quarter to eight in the morning, but it’s early in comparison to the last month) to go to school would be a plus. Oh, I wish we didn’t have to go back now! Especially as we bumped into a couple of our summer-camp friends today on our way to our various bus stops, which reminded me again of how cool the camp was. We were just walking past the Central Bank when we met Tall Paula, the cool, gothy girl
from Beaumont who was in the band Exquisite Corpse, and none other than Small Paula, the enigmatic solo artist.

Apparently they’d bumped into each other looking at guitar pedals in a music shop and were walking back towards their bus stops together. It was very nice to see them. Small Paula didn’t say very much, but then she never did, and she looked quite pleased to see us (well, as much of her as we could see beneath her giant fringe). Neither of them are looking forward to going back to school either. Tall Paula said her parents have said that as well as one band practice a week, she can only go out with her friends after school or at the weekend once a month all year because of the Junior Cert.

‘They’re going to write down all my outings on the kitchen calendar to make sure I don’t go over the limit by accident,’ she said miserably.

This seems pretty harsh to me. I mean, I know we were getting stressed at the thought of our never-ending exams, but I don’t think it’s physically possible to work every single day even if you wanted to (which I certainly don’t). But everyone’s parents are acting as if we were doing our Leaving Cert, which is a bit ridiculous.

Tall Paula did remind us of something cool, though – the band practice space that’s going to be opening in the Knitting
Factory. Veronica, who ran the band part of the summer camp, has arranged for the studios to offer teenage bands from the camp access to the spaces for a small fee, and the camp mentors are going to have regular classes and stuff too. We hadn’t heard from them yet, but the Paulas met Veronica today when they were coming out of the music shop.

‘Veronica said they’re just finalising details now,’ said Tall Paula. ‘And she said they’ll definitely contact all of us once it’s sorted, so in a few weeks we’ll all have somewhere to practise in town! Maybe I could tell my mum it’s a special extra Junior Cert music class or something.’

But the studio space isn’t all. We should be able to put on gigs too, which is cool, because it is very hard to find somewhere to play a gig if you are under eighteen. This is because people who run venues are more concerned with making loads of money from selling BOOZE than encouraging the musicians of the future. Ages ago, Liz thought she’d found a venue that would let us play all-ages afternoon gigs, but it didn’t work out because of insurance or something boring like that.

Anyway, if Veronica’s thing works out, and Tall Paula said she seemed pretty sure it would, we will be able to play gigs regularly! And hopefully we’ll get to see lots of the camp people regularly again too, because they’ll be doing
stuff at the Knitting Factory too.

‘There’s a whole arts space thing at the back of the Knitting Factory,’ said Tall Paula. ‘So they’re talking about working with the mentors from the other bits of the camp and having art and drama workshops and other stuff too.’

That would all be so, so cool. It would be like a continuation of the summer camp. I just hope our parents let us all out of the house long enough to actually go there. I have a horrible feeling mine won’t. My dad just stuck his head around the corner of my room and said he hoped I wasn’t going to stay up late writing, because I have school tomorrow. It’s only half past nine! Are they actually going to make me go to bed at this time every night all year?! Surely not. Humans only need about eight hours’ sleep and I’m hardly going to get up at half five in the morning.

Ugh. This time tomorrow I might actually be doing homework. What a thought.

I am not doing any homework, but that’s mostly because I am so, so tired. I had forgotten how exhausting stupid school
is. It doesn’t really make sense because when we were at the summer camp we were standing up and moving around and DOING STUFF all day and I always felt fine in the evenings. But after one day of just sitting at a bunch of stupid desks, I’m so tired I can barely stand. It’s so unfair.

Today wasn’t totally and utterly bad, of course. It was nice to see some of the people we didn’t see as much of over the summer, like Emma and Jessie. And even though we have Mrs Harrington for English again this year, the class was actually quite interesting because we’ve been reading some good books for English and, to my great surprise, Mrs Harrington wasn’t as annoying as she usually is. In fact, she didn’t make a single reference to my mother’s books, which is not like her at all as she is scarily obsessed with Mum’s boring stories about kindly old ladies. As she hadn’t seen me for months, I’d assumed she’d be dying to ask me questions about ‘what lovely tales your mammy is thinking of now’ (that is how she always talks, so you can see how annoying she is). But no. In fact, she was so quiet I’d actually be worried that there was something seriously wrong with her if she hadn’t seemed pretty cheerful too. She just seemed a bit distracted. I suppose I should just be thankful and not question it too much.

Actually, I always feel a bit bad giving out about Mrs Harrington
now, who is irritating but means well. I do not, however, feel bad about giving out about Vanessa Finn, who does not mean well at all and who has somehow become even more annoying since the last time I saw her, which was only a month ago at the summer camp. Apparently a few weeks ago she auditioned for a big part in an advertising campaign, and she’s totally convinced that she’s going to get it.

‘I’m expecting a call at any moment,’ she said at lunch, making sure everyone in the room could hear her.

‘I’m sure they’ll ring soon,’ said Caroline, Vanessa’s best friend.

‘It’s so exciting, Vanessa!’ said Karen Rodgers, and I had to remind myself of how Karen had stood up for Cass at the summer camp because otherwise her smarmy tone would have made me get sick. ‘And you totally deserve it! An actor with your skills deserves a bigger audience.’

Also, it turns out that getting this ad could be Vanessa’s only chance of being on television this year because her appearance in the reality show
My Big Birthday Bash
has been cancelled! Or rather, the entire show has been cancelled. I am quite relieved because we were all at her birthday party when they filmed it back in February and I don’t particularly want to see myself on telly. And Vanessa is pleased about it too.

‘Yeah, reality TV wasn’t the right outlet for my talents,’ she said.

Though of course we all know she didn’t want the show to air because her party ended up with her being knocked into a cake by a pink pony. But no one mentioned that. Cass caught my eye and made a little neighing sound, but that was all.

I did notice that Karen’s sidekick, Alison, was looking a bit bored when Vanessa was going on about all this. Ever since Karen and Vanessa became friendly I have been hoping Caroline and Alison would team up and escape their clutches, because both of them are quite nice when they’re not being sidekicks. But it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. Though Alison was on some sort of computer course during the summer and she was talking about that to Emma after maths (oh maths, I have not missed you) this afternoon. So maybe she’s escaping very, very slowly.

Another person who hasn’t changed much is Miss Kelly. She marched into our first geography class of the year and immediately started going on about her environmentally friendly summer holiday. She cycled all over France with some of her friends. It’s quite impressive, especially for someone of her age.

‘If I could have kayaked to France, that’s what I’d have done,’
she said proudly. ‘Unfortunately, I had to use a bigger boat.’

‘Like a rowing boat?’ asked Jessie, impressed.

‘Sadly no,’ said Miss Kelly. ‘The ferry. But after that, it was pedals all the way. Soon we were cycling along the roads of Brittany, stopping only for the odd baguette and slice of local cheese.’ And on and on she went for about five years. Actually, she did stop, after a while, so she could tell us about the horrors of fracking, which seems to be a way of getting natural gas from under the ground by destroying everything on top of the ground. It was quite scary, but I must admit it was more interesting than hearing yet another story of how she and her mates managed to cycle up a French mountain. You’d think they were elite athletes doing the Tour de France, rather than a bunch of middle-aged teachers cycling around the countryside, eating loads of Brie.

Oh, I’m actually too tired to write any more. I’m going to go down and watch telly for a while instead. Luckily the only homework we got was to read something in the history book, and I’ve already done that. Surely my parents can’t expect me to do extra study after just one day of school? It’s bad enough that they change the wifi password practically every day to make sure I’m not messing around on the internet on my phone.

I was actually driven out of our classroom at lunchtime today by Vanessa going on about that stupid ad campaign. She still doesn’t know whether she’s got the part or not, but when we were all sitting around the classroom eating our sandwiches Jessie foolishly asked her what the ad was actually for, and that set her off.

‘It’s for Bluebird Bakery,’ said Vanessa in a very important way, and we all tried to look as if we weren’t impressed or even as though we didn’t know what Bluebird Bakery is. But I was impressed, a bit, even though I’d have died rather than admit it to Vanessa. Bluebird Bakery is a really big brand and they always have big posters everywhere as well as regular ads on the TV. And they do make very nice biscuits. Of course, they usually have quite cool telly ads too, so surely they won’t let Vanessa appear in them. I mean, the sight of her messing around with some biscuits would certainly put me off eating them.

But the school musical did teach me I should never underestimate Vanessa – before the auditions I was convinced she’d be rubbish and then she turned out to be really brilliant, much
as I hated to admit it. So maybe she actually would be good at making people want to eat biscuits. Anyway, she seems totally sure that she’s going to get this job and I couldn’t bear listening to her anymore so I went to the library to see if they’d got in any new books this term. Luckily they have, including a few that look really good – there’s one called
Code Name Verity
about girls working undercover in France during the second world war which looks brilliant.

In fact, there were so many interesting-looking new books I wanted to get out about five of them, but we’re only allowed take out three at a time. A few sixth years always run the library at lunchtime when the librarian is on her break, and it turns out that Rachel’s friend Jenny is one of them this year. I was hoping she might let me take out extra books (after all, I am her best friend’s sister, and she’s usually quite nice to me – she came to our very first gig at the Battle of the Bands and cheered us on), but apparently not.

‘Sorry, Mini-Rafferty,’ she said. ‘I don’t make the rules.’

‘But couldn’t you bend them for me?’ I said.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘I’m a very serious part-time volunteer librarian.’

Fair enough, I suppose, but I do feel there should be some advantages to being the sister of the best friend of a part-time
volunteer librarian. Anyway, I got out three books, so at least I have some decent entertainment to console me for having to not only go back to school, but spend all day listening to Vanessa go on and on about how she’s going to be ‘the face of Bluebird Bakery Yummy Scrummy Cookies’.

Cass, by the way, is totally convinced that Vanessa is going to get the job.

‘The thing about Vanessa,’ she said, when we were walking down Griffith Avenue on our way home, ‘is that, even though she’s a bit deluded, she’s not totally deluded. At least when it comes to her acting skills. Maybe she actually was amazing at her audition.’

‘Maybe she was,’ I said. ‘But she is still a bit … unreliable.’ When we’d last seen Vanessa, she was in the cloakroom telling some unsuspecting second year that she was a professional actress, which is a barefaced lie because she hasn’t got that job (yet) and she’s definitely never done any professional work before. ‘And remember when she was totally sure that theatrical agents were going to come to the summer camp and sign her up?’

‘I know,’ said Cass. ‘But I’m telling you, I have a feeling she’s going to be in that ad. It’d just be our luck to have to put up with Vanessa on our tellies as well as at school.’

‘And on posters too,’ I said. ‘Don’t forget the posters.’

Vanessa isn’t the only one around here who is confident about a future in showbiz. Tonight Mum and Dad’s musical society held their auditions for their next production,
My Fair Lady
. Their last show,
Oliver!
, was a big success, not least because Dad took over one of the lead roles at the last minute and, to my great surprise, he was totally brilliant.

Anyway, their old director has had to take a break from the musical society for a while because of some work thing so now they have a new director. She was just the assistant director last time and apparently she wants to put on quite a spectacular show. After Dad’s amazing performance in the summer, he is sure he is going to get another big part. Well, he won’t admit it, but I know it’s what he’s thinking. Every time I ask him about it, he gets all bashful and says things like, ‘Oh, it’s up to the director, there are lots of good people in the musical society’, but there’s a strangely confident look on his face that says, ‘I know they will remember my triumphant performance as the Beadle!’

In fairness, he’s probably right to be confident. I still can’t believe what a good dancer he turned out to be. It seems quite unfair that neither Rachel nor I have inherited his amazing dancing skills. And he can jump into the air and click his heels
to the side too! It’s really impressive. I’ve been trying for years and I still can’t do that. And I only weigh half as much as him, so you’d think I’d be a bit more nimble.

How come I am only fifteen years old and already have not one nemesis, but two? And both of them are younger than me! First of all, of course, there’s Daisy’s terrible baby. I know Mum thinks it’s impossible for a baby to hate another person, but literally every single time I’ve met that baby it’s yelled and puked on me, and if that doesn’t show hatred I don’t know what does. And now, with the headbutting, it’s resorted to physical violence! God knows what it’ll do when it’s actually big enough to, like, attack me properly. At least at the moment I can easily escape it because it’s too young to crawl after me. And of course, apart from the headbutting (and I’ll watch out for that in future), it can’t do any serious damage yet. I mentioned this to Rachel after dinner today, and she laughed and laughed in a callous way.