Rebecca is Always Right (8 page)

Vanessa’s ad is going to be on telly on Monday evening. It’ll be in the ad break during
Fair City
. We don’t always watch
Fair City
, but I will definitely be watching on Monday because – and I’m ashamed to admit it – I do want to see the ad. I know. But I can’t help it, even though she was being particularly sickening today. For some reason, she has started talking like a celebrity doing an interview. Maybe she thinks she is about to become really famous and is getting in some practice.

‘They say you should never work with children or animals,’ she said at lunch, supposedly to Caroline, but so loudly we could all hear it. ‘But Handsome Dan was a perfect co-star!’

I don’t know whether Handsome Dan is a child or an animal. You’d assume he is an animal with a name like that, but you never know these days. There’s a kid in Jessie’s little sister’s class called Sugar Poppy. Anyway, I wonder what the
Bluebird Bakery would say if they knew Vanessa was giving so many hints about the contents of their top-secret ad? If I were a nasty sort of person, I would tell them and get her fired, but, sadly, I am not.

On the plus side, we’re going in to the Knitting Factory tomorrow for our first practice! And Ellie is going in to use the art studio. I wonder will Sam be there? It would be nice to see him. More importantly, I do still have one of his Neil Gaiman books and I have to give it back. I’d contact him online, but I don’t want him to read anything into it – me contacting him directly I mean.

What could he read into it? Why do I care? I’m being ridiculous. If I don’t see him tomorrow, I’ll send him a message.

Rachel is feeling even worse today. She and Jenny went out last night and she had a terrible hangover this morning. When
I woke up, I could hear her getting very sick in the bathroom. It was pretty revolting. As she will be eighteen in a few months Mum and Dad don’t usually mind Rachel going to over-eighteens places and having the odd drink. Their theory is that if they trust her to behave sensibly, she will then actually behave sensibly because she knows that if she broke their trust and went out and got hammered she would get into loads of trouble and then she wouldn’t be allowed out at all.

So far it has worked (with one or two exceptions that Mum and Dad have turned a blind eye to). But they were very annoyed this morning and also a bit upset.

‘You can’t go drowning your sorrows,’ said Dad. ‘It’s not healthy and it doesn’t work.’

Rachel gave a miserable grunt in reply. Mum and Dad lectured her for another while, but eventually they seemed to decide that her puking all day was punishment enough, and she’s also not allowed go on any nights out at all for the next month.

I have to say she’s not exactly an advertisement for getting off your face. It makes me never want to drink at all (not that I really like the taste of any booze I’ve tried. Perhaps I am not a natural party animal). Apparently, she and Jenny went to a gig in a place where there was a late bar and were still there
drinking shots at two in the morning. It was Jenny’s birthday last week and she basically spent all of her birthday money taking Rachel out on the town. Not sure it was worth it today, though.

Anyway, after a while I had to leave her lying on the couch in her pyjamas and go in to our first practice in the new studio space. It was totally brilliant! In fact, I felt a bit guilty being so cheerful when Rachel is still feeling so awful. But it was so good. The practice room we got to use was really nice – even better than the ones in the summer camp – and the drum kit was very cool. It was all red and sparkly (mine is just boring and dark green). And lots of our friends were there. Small Paula was working on something on her own in the recording studio (she is much more technologically advanced than Hey Dollface), and Richard and his band, the Wicked Ways, were in the practice room next to ours.

Even though Cass and I see Richard fairly regularly (and of course Alice sees him all the time), it was cool to see the whole band again. We went in to their room for a bit to hear them play their new song, ‘Pterodactyl’. It is all about how sometimes Richard feels like an ancient flying dinosaur looking down on the earth. I had no idea he felt like this, but like all the Wicked Ways songs ‘Pterodactyl’ is both very
melodramatic and strangely impressive. Then they all came in to our practice room to hear our song ‘Pistachio’ (a very poetic title if I say so myself), which is about looking back at a long ago lost love (Paperboy, of course).

They seemed to like it (or if they didn’t, they are very good actors and should have been doing the acting part of the course instead of the rock camp). And the guitarist, Colin, had a useful suggestion about making the intro a bit longer, which we tried after they went back to their room and which worked really well. We are all giving each other feedback like some sort of cool artistic community!

When our studio time was up, we went back to the art studio space part of the venue to meet Ellie, and who should be there but Sam and Lucy! It was very cool to see them. At the end of the summer camp Ellie vowed that she was going to make all her clothes from now on (apart from bras and things) and she has finally finished her first ensemble. It didn’t actually look too bad. Well, the skirt was pretty good. It was a plain denim skirt and the only thing wrong with it was a slightly wonky zip, and we wouldn’t have noticed if Ellie hadn’t pointed it out. She was also wearing a top she’d made herself, but it wasn’t quite as successful as the skirt because the shoulders were about twice as wide as the rest of her put together.

‘I made a couple of mistakes,’ she said. ‘The sleeves should be a bit more gathered and a bit less puffy. But I thought I’d just go with it. I think I’ve made it work.’

I agreed with her because I didn’t want to rain on her clothes-making parade, especially as she’s just getting started. She needs lots of encouragement and she really can sew, so she’ll get better eventually. And, who knows, perhaps she’ll start a new trend? After all, huge poofy shoulders were all the rage back in the eighties. Maybe this is the beginning of a revival and we’ll all be wearing tops with giant sleeves soon.

Anyway, we were all hanging out chatting for a while, and eventually Cass went off to meet Liz – they were going out to Liz’s house. Lucy was going to visit her cousins in Rathmines, so she went to get the bus with them. Alice went off with Richard to have dinner in his house, and Ellie had to go home straight away, so basically I ended up chatting to Sam outside the venue for a while. I told him I still had his book.

‘I am going to give it back,’ I said. ‘In case you thought I’d stolen it.’

‘I think I can trust you,’ he said. ‘Just give it back whenever you like. You’re going to be here fairly regularly, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah, I hope so,’ I said. ‘Every week, I think.’

‘Me too,’ he said. ‘This place is great, isn’t it?’

And we talked about the Knitting Factory for a bit. We both agree that it makes a big difference when you have somewhere special to go and do something creative (making comics for him, band practice for me). Sam wants to go to art college and study illustration eventually.

‘I think my actual dream job would be sitting in a nice big studio and just drawing all day,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘I think I’d like to spend half my time drumming and half my time writing stuff.’

‘Sounds doable,’ said Sam. I wonder has he grown since the summer? He looks taller. ‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘it’s probably more doable than my mate Daire’s dream of being a professional surfer.’

‘Is he not a good surfer?’ I said.

‘Well, he’s only done it once, in Donegal,’ said Sam. ‘So I’m kind of surprised he’s so convinced he could do it for a living. But he’s quite a good skateboarder, and he claims they use the same skills. I’m not sure how, though, apart from the whole “standing on a bit of board” aspect.’

We just stood there chatting about rubbish for a while. He is very easy to talk to. But eventually my phone beeped – just a text from Rachel asking me to get some milk on my way home – and I realised we’d been talking for over half an hour.

‘God, is it that late?’ said Sam, when I mentioned the time. ‘I’m meant to be going out for dinner for my dad’s birthday this evening. I’d better get home and change.’

‘Is it a fancy dinner?’ I said.

‘Ah, not really,’ said Sam. ‘But my mum will kill me if I turn up covered in ink yet again.’ He gestured to his t-shirt, which had a splash of blue ink on it. ‘It should be good fun, really. They do really good fancy burgers in the restaurant, and my aunt and uncle and my cousin Jim are coming too – they’re always a good laugh.’

John Kowalski used to act like having to go out for a family dinner was the worst thing in the world. It’s quite refreshing to see some boys don’t think having to eat nice food is a terrible torture. Anyway, we walked out to the bus stops together (his is just down the road from mine) and said we’d probably see each other next week. He didn’t mention Gemma and I didn’t really want to ask. I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea and think I cared who he went out with. Or didn’t. Whatever the case may be.

When I got home my parents were out (at the garden centre yet again – what can they be buying there? It’s not like we have spacious grounds to put loads of plants and things in. Our garden is only about ten metres long). Rachel was slumped
on the couch watching one of the music channels and looking pretty miserable (which is kind of her default state at the moment. In fact, unless I actually say otherwise, you should probably assume that she looks miserable all the time).

‘Are you okay?’ I said.

‘This time last week Tom was telling me it was all over,’ she said. ‘And now this is my life. Sitting on the couch watching telly on a Saturday night. Well, evening.’

Sitting on the couch watching telly on a Saturday night has basically been my life for ages and it’s not that bad, but she was so miserable I couldn’t feel too insulted. In fact, she looked so sorry for herself I went all the way to the shops and got her a can of Coke. Sometimes I think I am more like a saint than a sister.