Rebecca is Always Right (4 page)

Not that I care, of course. Sam is definitely not my type. His hair’s light brown, for one thing. I generally only like
boys with darker hair. He’s really nice though. We always had really good conversations about books. Actually, I think I still have a book belonging to him somewhere. He’s one of those people I wish I saw more often. I hope Gemma doesn’t mess him around. I don’t really know her that well, but she always seemed pretty nice. We didn’t stay talking to them for long because Cass and I were walking Alice to her bus stop and her bus only goes once an hour so we couldn’t miss it. But we said we’d organise a proper meet-up in town soon, which is cool.

After we’d said goodbye and were walking past Trinity on our way to the bus stop, Cass said, ‘Well, well, well. Sam and Gemma!’

‘What about them?’ said Alice.

‘It looks like that close encounter at the disco wasn’t a one-off,’ said Cass, like she was some sort of gossip show presenter.

‘Hmm, I suppose so,’ said Alice. ‘What do you think, Bex?’

‘Oh yeah, I think they must be,’ I said. ‘Going out I mean. Or something. Something’s going on. Good luck to them. I mean, they’re both really nice.’

Cass and Alice looked at me a bit strangely, but Cass just said, ‘Yeah, they are. And remember, Gemma managed to put together a play with Vanessa and Karen without running amok
and killing either of them. So she must be a very together person.’

Then we stopped talking about Gemma and started talking about what Vanessa’s ad might be like (look, we’re talking as if she’s definitely got it already). Alice suggested that Vanessa might have to dress up like an actual chocolate chip cookie, which wouldn’t be so bad as she would look ridiculous and she mightn’t boast about it so much. Then Cass said that it could be an animated ad, and that Vanessa might only be doing a voiceover.

‘Which would obviously be the best result of all,’ she said, and Alice and I agreed.

Though then Alice said, ‘Aren’t we thinking too much about this? I mean, why do we care so much about Vanessa’s ad? We should just ignore her.’

And she’s right, of course. But still. It’s very hard to ignore Vanessa when we have to put up with her every day.

If something really was going on between Sam and Gemma, wouldn’t they have been on their own? Though I suppose I go
into town with just Cass and Liz quite often, and they are definitely going out. Oh well, it hasn’t got anything to do with me.

Well, it looks like Cass and I really are psychic (possibly) because of course Vanessa did get that part in the ad, which is yet more proof that there is no such thing as karma. If there was, then Vanessa would currently be living under a bridge like a troll. The ad people rang her this morning, as Cass and I discovered as soon as we walked into our form room to dump things in our lockers. She was holding forth to the whole class, who were, for once, actually standing around her, actively listening. They really shouldn’t encourage her like that.

‘The contract is just for one television advertisement and poster campaign,’ Vanessa was saying when we came in. ‘But if the campaign is as successful as they’re sure it will be, then there’s going to be, like, a whole series of different ads all based on my character, Kookie.’

Kookie! The mind reels.

‘I’m sure there will be,’ said Caroline, who seems to be as
loyal to Vanessa as ever.

‘They’re already working on follow-up ideas,’ said Vanessa smugly.

Good grief. So we might have to put up with her on our tellies for years on end. And on billboards. What a terrible prospect.

Alice, however, is more optimistic.

‘Maybe it won’t be too bad,’ she said at lunchtime. ‘I mean, we do know she’s a good actress. Maybe she’ll be playing a likeable character? The ad could be really good!’

I suppose this is possible, but still. First of all, the character is called Kookie, which doesn’t bode well. And second of all, I don’t actually care how good the ads are. When I am at home I want to forget about the irritating elements of school. I don’t want to be reminded of Vanessa in the ad breaks of
Laurel Canyon
.

But at least there are no billboards between school and my house so I won’t have to look at any posters of her every day. And – this really is good news – we all got texts from Veronica this evening saying the Knitting Factory scheme is definitely going ahead! Hurrah! She said it should be up and running in about two weeks and before then she’s going to send us links to the venue’s registration website so we can book workshops
and studio time online. I just hope all our parents don’t get weird about the whole Junior Cert thing and stop us going there. Surely they can’t begrudge us a few hours a week for our creative hobby? I mean, it’s not like we’d be going there for wild nights out, just a couple of hours every weekend in the middle of the afternoon. What else could we be doing then? After all, there’s only so much studying we can do. And I know Mum did piano lessons until she was in college, so she managed to do her exams AND go to music lessons every week. Band practice is basically the same thing, isn’t it? Just a bit more social.

My parents have just come home from their musical rehearsal. They weren’t singing when they came in, as they usually do, so at first I was worried that Dad hadn’t got a part at all and was too sad to sing. But it turns out that not only does he have a part, he has the lead! He’s playing Henry Higgins, who decides to teach the flower seller Eliza Doolittle to be a posh lady. Rachel and I were impressed when we heard the news.

‘The actual lead!’ I said. ‘That’s brilliant. Well done!’

‘Why don’t you look more cheerful about it?’ said Rachel.

But it turns out that Dad didn’t actually want the lead! He wanted to play Eliza’s dad, Alfred the dustman, because, Dad says, he ‘does lots of dancing’ and Dad wanted to ‘let those skilled feet fly’. And Henry Higgins doesn’t dance at all. In fact, now I come to think of it, he doesn’t even sing much either – I’ve seen the film and he just sort of speaks over the music (not in a rapping way, it’s not that sort of musical). So even though Dad is meant to be feeling all honoured, he is actually very disappointed because he was looking forward to prancing all over the stage.

A part of me thinks he’s being a bit ungrateful – after all, when they started the last production he was just an understudy and member of the chorus, and now he’s got a huge part – but I have to admit that it does seem like a bit silly of the new director to put their finest dancer (which he really is, I know it sounds mad) in a part where he won’t have to dance. It would be like asking me to join a band and then expecting me to sing instead of play the drums. Mum was trying to cheer him up and kept saying that his stage charisma makes him perfect for Henry Higgins, but I heard her on the phone later telling her friend Maria that she didn’t know what the new director was thinking, and that Joe, the
man who’s playing Albert, isn’t half as good as Dad at dancing and singing.

‘He’d have been perfectly suited for Henry Higgins,’ said Mum. ‘I do think they’re wasting Ed.’

Poor Dad. As for Mum, she doesn’t have a main part. She is one of the senior chorus members and apparently she is playing a sort of cheeky Edwardian flower seller in the market and pub scenes. She was a saucy tavern wench in their production of
Oliver!
, so I hope she isn’t getting typecast. But she is also playing a posh lady at the races and a few other things, as well as being an understudy for Henry Higgins’s housekeeper, so hopefully she won’t spend the entire thing half naked (well, wearing a very low-cut dress) like last time.

I have finished
I Capture the Castle
. I loved it and I cried at the end. Now I am reading
Code Name Verity
which is brilliant in a very different way. And it is making me count my blessings. I may have annoying parents, but at least I’m not in France being tortured by Nazis. So things could be worse.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when the most dramatic thing
happening in my life is Vanessa telling us about her stupid ad campaign. Apparently, she has wardrobe fittings and a rehearsal after school today because they are going to start making it very soon. She has been sent a copy of the script, but she can’t reveal any details yet (she shouldn’t even have told us her character’s ridiculous name because it is all meant to be top secret). Anyway, I’m very glad she can’t tell us all about the ad because it’s going to be bad enough having to watch it when it actually airs without getting a blow-by-blow account of it before it’s even been on telly.

‘All I’ll say is,’ she declared at lunchtime, while we all tried to pay no attention to her, ‘that you’ll all be saying my catchphrase in a few weeks!’

I can guarantee that I will not be doing this.

And that’s not even the worst bit. Apparently, there will also be a song. Sung by Vanessa.

‘They might even release it as a single,’ she said.

‘Bernard and I will buy one each,’ said Karen.

Words fail me. That’s all we need, Vanessa on our radios as well as our tellies.

Oh, I feel so blah. Not about Vanessa, though she doesn’t help my mood. I just keep remembering that this time last year was when everything started to happen. First of all, I met
Paperboy. It was around this week of September that he first called at our house to collect the money for delivering the newspapers on Saturdays. And then soon after that I got my drums, and we started Hey Dollface. So much was going on a year ago!

Oh my God. I’ve just realised something.

I got my drums a year ago.

Which means …

I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before now. I got my drums from a friend of Tom’s called Sam (to distinguish him from musical/summer-camp Sam, I will call him Drummer Sam) because he was moving to America for a year. But now that year is up! Why hasn’t Rachel – or indeed Tom – mentioned it to me yet? Maybe he’s forgotten all about his drums (though I know I wouldn’t if I’d left them with someone else for a year). Or maybe he’s not coming back.

Oh God, I don’t know what to do. Obviously the sensible thing to do is just ask Rachel to ask Tom. But what if Sam actually has forgotten about his drums, but this reminds him of them and he decides he wants them back? Is it better to just say nothing and hope he forgets all about it? I think that’s what I will do. It’s just like that proverb about letting sleeping dogs (or drum owners) lie.

I can’t stop worrying about the drums. I keep expecting Rachel to say something about Drummer Sam and how he’s back from America and can’t wait to start playing the drums again. Obviously, I know they are his drums and he has a perfect right to have them back, but it’s been so long since he went away that I’d almost forgotten they belonged to him and weren’t actually mine. Could he actually have forgotten about them? I can’t imagine I’d forget about owning an entire drum kit, but maybe living in America was so exciting it drove all thoughts of drumming out of his mind. After all, when Paperboy moved to Canada he seemed to forget all about his old Dublin life and didn’t contact me for weeks on end. Maybe going to North America does something to boys’ minds?

Not that I’m bitter about Paperboy. Seriously, I’m really not. I genuinely like hearing from him these days and I am definitely not still pining for him like I was at the beginning of the year. Though I have to say that I’m glad he has never mentioned a girlfriend to me. I think I would still feel very weird about that, even though I went out with John Kowalski. Which may be hypocritical of me, but is still true.

Anyway, thinking about Paperboy isn’t going to help with this drum-kit situation. I haven’t mentioned it to Cass and Alice because I’m pretty sure they would just tell me to get Rachel to ask Tom about it, which I still can’t bear to do in case Drummer Sam actually has forgotten about them, in which case it’s surely better not to remind him.

I keep looking at my (or rather, as I have to keep telling myself, Drummer Sam’s) snare drum, which is the smallest drum and the only bit of the drum kit I keep at home rather than in Alice’s garage. What would happen to Hey Dollface if I had no drums? I know there’ll be a kit at the new practice space, but that wouldn’t be the same and I wouldn’t be able to take any of it home. And practising on the snare at home is the only reason I’m halfway decent at the drums now. I can’t afford to get a whole kit of my own. Or even just a snare really.

I will just keep my fingers crossed and hope Drummer Sam forgets about it all.