Rebecca's Rules (16 page)

Sort of bad, sort of good news at rehearsal today. I am no longer Karen’s understudy. This is because Cathy and Ms Byrne are totally panicking because the show is on in a couple of weeks and we’re already quite behind schedule. So they said they don’t have time to rehearse the understudies properly.

‘You’ll just all have to make sure you don’t get sick,’ said Cathy sternly to the principal actors. She was doing her
powerful stare. ‘In fact, unless you’re actually in hospital or dead, I want you on that stage and ready to go on the opening night.’

I think that even if Vanessa was in hospital she’d escape with a drip in her arm rather than miss her moment of glory. To hear the way she talks you’d think she was starring in a big play in the west end of London not a school musical.

In a way, I am very disappointed because, of course, there was always a tiny chance that Karen would be struck with a hideous illness and I would get a chance to shine. (I would also get to witness Karen’s hideous illness, which I have to admit wouldn’t bother me much). But in another, I am quite relieved that I don’t have to bother ‘observing her performance’. In fact, I can just ignore her from now on, which is fine by me. I couldn’t take more of her ‘helpful advice’ or her going on about the latest stupid thing Bernard the Fairytale Prince (and Oscar-winning actor, practically, if you believe the way she talks about him) has said about how great she is. I am seriously starting to wonder if she really is going out with him. I’m starting to think she’s made it all up. No one could be that devoted to Karen, surely?

Anyway, I don’t think there’s a chance the lead actors will
miss the show. They’re all terrified of Cathy now. She looks so small and pretty, but even the boys don’t dare disobey her. She is very charismatic. Jessie told me that whenever any of the main cast mess about or don’t listen to her, she just stares silently at them in a terrible, disapproving way until they’re intimidated into behaving. Jessie says Sam, the boy who’s playing Uncle whatsisname, looked like he was going to burst into tears the last time Cathy did it to him.

TUESDAY

I needn’t have worried about Alice raving on about Bike Boy. She is very restrained and sensible. She only mentions him like, once every five minutes (I have a horrible feeling that when I was going out with Paperboy properly I mentioned him every second). You can just tell she’s happy. No, what we should have worried about was Ellie and Mrs Limond. Ellie won’t shut up about how wonderful Mrs Limond is and how she is her new idol.

‘She makes clothes by hand!’ she says. ‘And they’re amazing! She showed me loads of the old costumes and they’re like something out of a film! And she made them all! With just
a bit of help from girls like me. She’s going to teach me how to do it and then I can be a fashion designer! It’s like a dream come true!’

‘But Ellie,’ said Cass, ‘doesn’t Mrs Limond wear a giant fur coat in the manner of Cruella De Vil? I thought you were a vegetarian!’

Ellie looked a bit uncomfortable but then she said, ‘I know, but that coat is, like, vintage now. She got it new back in the ’60s. Those minks would have died of old age by now anyway.’

I am not sure this is a very vegetarian spirit.

WEDNESDAY

I replied to Paperboy’s mail today. It was actually harder than I thought it would be. I told him I was really busy with the musical and told him about all the madness there, and about Alice and Bike Boy. And I told him about Vanessa’s party, even though that seems like years ago now. But anyway, that was all quite easy and fun to write about it. But after that I didn’t really know what to say. I was going to say that I missed him because I do, but not the same awful aching way I used to. I think I have got used to being without him. But you can’t say
that to someone, can you?

Anyway, he mightn’t care one way or another. If he really missed me, he wouldn’t have left it so long to mail me.

I think I am getting quite good at writing poems. But I should probably branch out from the haikus; they feel like cheating because they are so short (they are quite fun, though). I might try writing a story again. I wish my friends were into writing stuff so I could talk about it properly to them. But the only person I know who likes writing is John Kowalski, and I barely know him. I haven’t really talked to him all week. But he did wave at me across the rehearsal room this evening.

THURSDAY

I don’t believe my parents. I was just watching telly in the sitting room with Rachel when my mother came in and just sort of hovered in the doorway. Finally she said, ‘Rebecca, have you done your homework yet?’

Now, it wasn’t exactly a lie when I said ‘yeah’ because I had read part of a poem for Mrs Harrington earlier.

But Mum said, ‘Don’t lie to me, Rebecca, you’ve been in here since you got home. You haven’t had time to do anything. Off you go and do some work! You can watch TV later.’

I have never heard anything so unfair.

‘How come I have to go and work while Rachel can sit there watching telly?’ I cried.

‘Because Rachel is not spending every evening at musical rehearsals instead of doing her homework. Now off you go! Upstairs!’

So I had no choice but to leave. I am not doing any homework though, I am writing this diary. So there, Mother! You can force me into this prison but you can’t force me to read poems for Mrs Harrington!

Though I suppose I should read them, we’re going to have to do something about them in class tomorrow.

I have done all my stupid homework now. And what thanks did I get from my mother when I went down to tell her it was all done? None!

‘You shouldn’t expect thanks and praise for just doing your homework,’ she said. ‘You’re meant to be doing it! It’s not a favour to me!’

Parents are never satisfied, no matter what you do. You’d think Emma’s parents would be pleased about her doing that computer class because that’s all very educational but no! They’re now giving out to her for spending too much time on the computer at home, even though she’s using it to write some sort of complicated computer code to create a computer that can think for itself.

Apparently, this is what the most advanced scientists in the world are trying to do, so if they haven’t managed it I am not sure a fourteen-year-old is going to figure it out, even if she did go to a computer summer camp last year. But she says she might spot something they haven’t.

I can’t believe anyone’s parents would be annoyed because their daughter is a scientific genius. But maybe they are worried that computers really will become more powerful than humans and take over the world? If so, then I suppose their annoyance is fair enough.

SATURDAY

Very boring day. My parents are keeping up their new reign of terror and said I couldn’t go down to Cass’s house because I had to study. I pointed out that I didn’t go out last weekend because they forced me to go and see a baby who got sick on me, but they said they didn’t care. Mum said I was out practically every evening during the week, so I’d got to do some studying at the weekend. I told her and Dad that I am not out socialising during the week but working hard at a great theatrical project (we worked so hard at the rehearsal last night that poor Alice barely got to say a word to her new love Bike Boy and I didn’t get a chance to speak to anyone apart from Alice), but they didn’t care.

Well, they can make me stay at home, but they can’t force me to do boring Irish homework. I am going to play the drums for a while instead.

Oh my God, my mum just came in and TOOK MY DRUMSTICKS! She says she is going to hide them unless I work for
at least an hour. This is an outrage!

I suppose I might as well go and start the essay due in to Mrs Harrington on Wednesday. But just because I feel like doing it. Not because my mother wants me to.

MONDAY

Strange things are happening in our class. Usually Ellie’s hair is all wild and flowing free because of her hippie upbringing, but today she came into school with the front of her hair all puffed up like Mrs Limond’s. She is truly obsessed. And it’s not even like Mrs Limond is particularly nice to her; she’s practically made Ellie her slave! She seems to just bark orders at her all the time and Ellie does whatever she says. And she still calls Ellie ‘Eleanor’.

We have started having fittings for costumes – Mrs Limond is re-using some of the ‘men’s’ suits and things from previous years and she stuck a pin in poor Alice today. And she didn’t even apologise. She just bellowed, ‘Stop wriggling, child!’ in her usual mad and posh fashion.

Luckily, Cathy and Ms Byrne aren’t as psychotic as she is. Now the pressure of training understudies is off them they are
quite cheerful. In fact, Ms Byrne said that us chorus people are ‘coming along nicely’. We’ve been running through quite a few things with the main cast and it has all gone pretty well.

Also, today at the break I went out for a breath of fresh air and there was John Kowalski, moodily smoking a cigarette by the bikes. I was going to tell him you’re not allowed to smoke on school grounds but when he saw me he smiled and said, ‘Ah, hello, Miss Rafferty’, and I forgot what I was going to say. So I said, ‘Oh hello, I was just getting fresh air. It’s quite stuffy in there.’