Rebecca Rocks (14 page)

I am pretty pleased with it, though there were a few problems even with the rhyming dictionary. Not many words rhyme with ‘avenue’, for example. In fact, I’m not totally sure that ‘retinue’ does rhyme with it, even though it was on the list in the dictionary. And it was particularly tricky finding a match for ‘corner’ because the dictionary is British and assumes you have the sort of English accent that makes ‘corner’ rhyme with ‘sauna’ and ‘fauna’. In fact, ‘mourner’ was the only word on that list that would work for Dublin people. But I think it goes in the song quite well.

Anyway, I will show it to the others tomorrow. I bet they’ll be impressed at how my songwriting has developed. Unless, of course, Cass really has run away (literally, considering her financial situation) to Connemara. But she probably hasn’t.

The mystery of Cass’s behaviour has been revealed! When I met her this morning, there was definitely something different about her.

‘Why are you staring at me?’ said Cass nervously.

‘No reason,’ I said. Then it struck me. ‘Aha!’ I said.

‘What?’ said Cass.

‘You got your hair cut!’ I said. ‘Was that where you were going yesterday?’

‘Um, yeah,’ said Cass, guiltily. ‘I needed to get my fringe cut. But I didn’t want to mention that I was going in to see Cliona in case it brought back terrible memories of your fringe experience.’

Cass can be surprisingly thoughtful sometimes. Of course I told her she didn’t have to feel bad about going back to Cliona.

‘I mean, she does a very good job on your fringe,’ I said. ‘I think it’s more my hair’s fault than hers. And I think I’ve mastered the whole pinning it back thing.’

‘It looks pretty good,’ said Cass. ‘You can’t even see all the pins from the front.’

Cass is truly a noble friend. And she is rocking her newly
shorn look. Ever since she has embraced the fringe her hair has looked great (unlike me. But I don’t want to think about my fringe today).

And we are not the only people on the course to embrace different styles. Niall from Puce seems to have taken Shane O’Driscoll’s advice to heart. He appeared at today’s
songwriting
workshop wearing a big leather biker jacket and some biker boots. It was quite a contrast to his usual cardigan and desert boots. It’s not my sort of look, but he definitely looked a bit tougher than usual when he wearing it, like a bad boy from an American soap opera.

Of course, Charlie and his gang thought Niall looked
hilarious
because if anyone does anything new or different they think it’s stupid. They were sitting in front of us, and when Niall came in, Charlie said, ‘God, look at Puke boy!’ That is his hilarious name for Niall. (Because of his band being called Puce. Yes, that’s how sophisticated Charlie’s sense of humour is.) ‘I didn’t think he could look any more gay until I saw him in that leather,’ Charlie went on. Finn, the band’s drummer, was sitting next to him, and he laughed so much he choked on the Coke he was drinking.

Luckily, Niall was on the other side of the room for the
workshop so I don’t think he heard them. In fact, I have noticed that Charlie tends not to say anything to other boys’ faces. Maybe he’s afraid one of them will hit him. Obviously I don’t approve of violence, but I sort of wish someone would, male or female. Actually, preferably female. He’d think that was worse.

But there are plenty of nice boys around too, even if some of them are going a bit mad. Richard is becoming more and more Ian Cliff-esque. His hair has gradually been moving upwards until today he had what can only be described as a quiff. And I bet he’d be wearing that posh suit of his brother’s every day if he could manage to steal it (apparently his brother started hiding it after he discovered Richard had stolen it for the Battle of the Bands last year). As he has no suit, he has just started wearing very fitted, quite formal shirts and alarmingly tight trousers in an effort to look taller. He is actually quite tall already, but Ian Cliff is practically a giant. I don’t think there’s anything else Richard can do to copy that unless he starts wearing platform shoes. But despite his Ian Cliff
worship
, he really is sound. I’m glad Alice is going out with
someone
I actually get on with.

And, of course, Richard isn’t the only decent boy around
here. Jane has become friendly with a boy called Jamie who is doing the drama class. He is a bit older than us but he’s very nice. He wants to do drama when he goes to college next year, which immediately reminded me of John Kowalski, but he talked about it in a much less dramatic way than John did. Though of course that wouldn’t be hard. Jamie talks about studying drama the same way someone might talk about doing English or computer science or any other subject, whereas John talked about it like he was on a mission from God.

And Sam brought in that
Good Omens
book for me today (he forgot it yesterday).

‘If you like funny fantasy stuff you’ll definitely like this,’ he said. ‘I hope. Let me know what you think, anyway.’

He is so nice, like the Anti-Charlie. I’m still not sure about Lucy, though. I passed her in the foyer today, and she just looked past me like I didn’t exist. Could it actually be because she thinks I’m after Sam, what with all the book-lending stuff, and she’s jealous? Not that I’ve got the impression there’s
anything
going on between them. Maybe she just doesn’t like me?

Speaking of not liking people, I had managed to forget all about the Mrs-Harrington-being-in-Mum’s-book thing, but I was reminded of it this evening. Mum was in an unusually
good mood, marching around the house singing songs from
Oliver!
. It turns out she’d sent the first few chapters of her book to her editor, and her editor really liked it.

‘And her favourite character is Patricia Alexandra!’ she said. ‘She said she’s my greatest villain yet.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to … I dunno, give her a softer side?’ I said. ‘I mean, maybe she could see the light at the end and become good and save the heroine’s bakery.’

I genuinely thought this was pretty clever of me. I mean, surely this would make Patricia Alexandra Harrington more complex and interesting? But Mum just laughed at my
brilliant
idea.

‘Sorry, Rebecca,’ she said. ‘But the character is working the way she is. And she’s going to get her comeuppance at the end!’

Oh dear. I don’t know what to do. If I keep going on about this, she’s going to get suspicious that something’s up. After all, I don’t usually show so much interest in her books.

But I should be able to come up with something. Shouldn’t I? I mean, my mother is not the only creative person in the family. I shared my lyrics with Cass and Alice today, and they went down pretty well, even if they did question some
of my innovative word choices.

‘It’s a really good idea for a song,’ said Cass. ‘And I
particularly
like the chorus. But what is a tercel?’

‘It’s a male falcon or hawk,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ said Cass. She looked thoughtful. ‘Hmmm. I suppose John does look a bit like one.’

‘Exactly!’ I said.

So we are sticking with my lyrics. They really do go well with the song, if I say so myself. In fact, I can’t wait to get out my trusty rhyming dictionary and write some more words to the song we started working on this morning with Kitty. She is great at offering suggestions without, like, imposing her own ideas on us.

I love working with her so much. We’ve written a few songs over the last week and a half (even though most of them don’t have words yet), and we’d never have done all that without her encouragement. She is really nice, and her band are very good. They’re actually playing a gig tomorrow night. I wish we could go, but it’s in a pub so our parents would never let us. And, to be honest, we wouldn’t get in even if they did. Even when we’re all dressed up and wearing make-up I don’t think we could pass for older than sixteen at the very, very most.
And that would be pushing it. Rachel says we all look about twelve, though of course she is exaggerating (and it’s not like she even looks her age either). My mum always says we’ll be glad of our youthful looks when we’re thirty, but that’s not much comfort now.

I really don’t know how Jane is managing to put up with Vanessa. I know she says Vanessa is different when they’re
actually
working on their play, but unless she has a complete
personality
transplant every time she enters the rehearsal room, I can’t understand how anyone can bear her. And Karen’s almost as bad. Today a gang of us were having some Cokes during the morning break, and Vanessa, Karen and Bernard the
Fairy-tale
Prince sat down at the other end of the table. Which is how we couldn’t help overhearing Vanessa talking about her new insane plans.

‘I’m going to invite some agents to see our showcase,’ she was saying.

‘You mean the play?’ said Bernard. ‘Oh Vanessa, I don’t
know if that’s a good idea.’

‘Of course it’s a good idea!’ said Karen.

‘I can’t believe this camp isn’t inviting agents anyway,’ sniffed Vanessa. ‘They’re so unprofessional here.’

‘Well, it is meant to be a camp for amateurs,’ said Bernard. But this didn’t go down well.

‘Bernard, I’m surprised at you!’ said Karen. ‘We can’t think of ourselves as mere amateurs.’

‘Karen’s so right,’ said Vanessa. ‘We need to think of
ourselves
as stars! I, of course, already do.’

Good grief. I am starting to feel very sorry for Bernard the Fairy-tale Prince. He seems relatively sane in comparison to his awful girlfriend and Vanessa.

Then Vanessa noticed us at the end of the table.

‘You must agree with me, Bert,’ she said to Richard.

‘It’s Richard,’ said Richard. ‘And I can’t say I do. We’re not pros yet. We’re here to, like, gain experience and learn stuff from the experts.’

Vanessa just tossed her hair crossly and turned away.

‘God,’ she said. ‘Karen, we really are the only professionals in this place.’

If by ‘professionals’ she means ‘deluded fools’, then I suppose
she’s right. But at least she’s not as bad as that horrible Charlie. Alice and I had another run-in with him and his goons. It was actually really disgusting. The two of us were on our way back from the loo at lunch. We going down a corridor in the arts building when we passed the Crack Parrots, looking at
something
on Finn the drummer’s mobile and laughing. As soon as we got near to them, Charlie went, ‘Hey, girls, what do you think of this?’ And when he held up the phone there was a porn video playing on it. I looked away quickly so I didn’t see any details, but it was obvious what it was. It made me feel a bit sick and sort of upset. I couldn’t even think of anything to say. But Alice just glared at him and said, ‘Oh, you’re into sexual harassment now?’ and marched me along the corridor. She is always very good in a crisis. She never loses her head. Evan looked a bit uncomfortable, but the others just laughed more. They’re such revolting pigs. And Evan didn’t say
anything
to them so he can’t have minded that much.

Anyway, when we got back to the canteen, we told Cass, Jane and her drama mate Gemma what had happened. Gemma said she’d seen the Crack Parrots looking at porn a few days ago.

‘They don’t even care who sees them,’ she said. ‘They have no shame.’

Luckily we had a workshop with Kitty in the afternoon so we didn’t have to see the Crack Parrots again today. It was a really good workshop too, all about performing on stage, and it was actually more useful than Shane O’Driscoll’s more dramatic workshop last week. Kitty isn’t into big gestures and prowling. She says that her key to looking confident is to just put your head back and chin up and kind of stare down at the audience. I will definitely give this a try when we play next week. Practising my haughty stare was a lot of fun and made me forget about the Crack Parrots for a while. But now I almost wish I’d said something to Kitty about what they did. I mean, surely they can’t be allowed to go around showing random girls stuff like that?

Ugh. I don’t want to think about them now. I will go and read that book Sam lent me instead. It is very good. Actually, it features a boy who is the spawn of Satan. So maybe it will not be much of a distraction from Charlie after all.