Rebecca's Rules

by Anna Carey

  There was a blinding flash of light and a burst of smoke and Vanessa appeared on the podium, striking a dramatic pose. The glossy gang and the fairytale princes all started clapping and cheering (as did some of our class, who really should have known better). Then a fairytale prince walked up to each side of Vanessa and took her hand. As the band kicked into a brand new song, she strutted down from the podium and the glossy goons – and Jane – formed a group around her. And then we realised that the song was about Vanessa herself, and she and the goons (and Jane) were performing an elaborate dance routine to it!

  I can’t even describe how awful the song was. Bits of it were kind of spoken instead of sung and it went something like this:

  Ah … ah … Vanessa!

  Ah … ah … Vanessa!

  Glamorous

  Fabulous

  A diva

  Supreme

  She’s the girl the boys all want

  And the girls all want to be

  ‘That is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in my life,’ said Cass.

  ‘Well, maybe boys do all want her,’ said Alice. ‘We’ve never asked any.’

  ‘They may,’ said Cass, ‘though I can’t understand why. But I bet there isn’t a single girl on earth who actually wants to be her.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Ellie. ‘Look at Karen Rodgers.’

  We looked over at Karen, who was still with the same fairytale prince who’d whisked her away earlier. She was gazing at Vanessa in awe and sort of shimmying along.

  ‘Poor Jane,’ said Alice. ‘This must be the terrible surprise she couldn’t tell us about.’

  ‘She’s very good,’ I said. ‘Jane, I mean. You’d never know how she was feeling inside.’ She was doing the dance perfectly, smiling perkily all the while, even though we knew she didn’t want to be there. Vanessa wasn’t doing as much dancing as the others − she was mostly striking poses while the rest of the goons danced around her – but she did perform some quite complicated moves and I had to admit that she had a good sense of timing (as a drummer, I notice these things). Which didn’t make up for the fact that the whole thing was completely ridiculous and terrible.

  ‘This is the worst song ever,’ said Cass. ‘I wonder who wrote it?’

  ‘Maybe she wrote it herself?’ said Jessie. ‘The lyrics, I mean.’

  The song was still going on. It just got worse.

  Ah … ah … Vanessa! Ah … ah … Vanessa!

  She’s a princess

  She’s a queen

  She’s an empress too

  Everybody clap your hands

  At Vanessa’s birthday do

  ‘How can she be a princess, a queen and an empress?’ asked Ellie. ‘That doesn’t even make sense!’

  ‘I know,’ said Cass. ‘And what is she meant to be the queen and the empress and the princess of? Not our class, I hope.’

  The whole thing was terrible, but it was also sort of mesmerising. In fact, Alice and I climbed onto some chairs and stood on them so we could get a better view of the horrible sight.

  At last the song ended, with all the dancers stretching their arms out to Vanessa while she posed triumphantly in the centre. Even more glitter fell from the ceiling then, which I would like to think is the only reason why everyone shrieked, and they weren’t screaming with joy and admiration. Vanessa leapt gracefully back up on the podium in her sparkly heels (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again − for someone who generally wears very awkward footwear she is very nimble) and grabbed yet another microphone.

  ‘Thank you, everyone!’ she cried, as if we’d all been whooping and cheering and stamping our feet with joy. ‘In a few minutes, I’m going to show how grateful I am to all of you for coming by singing a very special new song with this amazing band. But now it’s time for a very special part of today’s fabulous celebrations – the birthday cake!’

  The door from the hall opened, some cameras moved in that direction, and something very peculiar came in.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Cass, gleefully. ‘It’s here!’

  It was the pony. It had clearly once been white (or grey, as white horses are mysteriously called. I don’t know why), but now it was bright pink, apart from its mane, which was still pale silvery grey. It was surprisingly large – I mean, it wasn’t a little cute Shetland pony. To be honest, I’d have thought it was a plain old horse. Anyway, it didn’t look very happy, understandably enough. It was attached to a little pink cart on which was a giant tower of bright pink cupcakes. Everyone gasped.

  ‘You know,’ said Cass, who had got up on the chair next to me. ‘In a way, this is just as insanely brilliant as I hoped it was going to be, but in another The song was still going on. It just got worse. well, I dunno. The pony looks a bit cross. I hope it’s okay.’

  ‘Maybe it’ll bite Vanessa,’ said Ellie hopefully.

  And actually, that’s almost what happened. Some men came over and unhitched the cart from the pony as the cameras pointed at Vanessa, who was skipping over to pet it (the pony, not the cart). They moved the cart to the side and pulled down some glittering covers over the wheels so it looked like a fancy table. Lots of camera flashes started going off as people tried to take photos. The pony looked crosser and crosser and then, when Vanessa flung her arms around its neck so the camera crew could get a close up, it just lost its temper (who could blame it?) and sort of reared up. Vanessa shrieked and fell back, but unfortunately (for her, not for us – we found this all very entertaining) she fell right back into the cart/table. Which meant she fell right back into the giant pile of cupcakes, which tumbled to the ground along with Vanessa herself.

  It was madness. Vanessa was lying there on a pile of squashed cakes, covered in more of the cakes, shrieking all the while and kicking her legs about. Meanwhile, the pony had made a bid for freedom and was trotting across the room at a scarily fast pace.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Cass. ‘It’s heading our way! Come on!’

  She jumped off her chair, and so did I, but it was like Alice was frozen. She just stood there, petrified, staring at the pony.

  ‘Come on, Alice!’ I shouted. And then she jumped. But she was in such a panic she didn’t land properly. Instead, she sort of fell off the chair and crashed onto the ground.

  Everyone screamed, including me, but Alice herself didn’t. She just lay there looking very white and scared.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said in horror. ‘She’s dead!’

  ‘No I’m not,’ said Alice, feebly. ‘But … ow! OW! I think … ow … I think something’s happened to my wrist.’ She tried to sit up as Sarah the producer pushed her way through the crowd (the pony, by the way, had been captured and taken out by its keepers. It looked very pleased with itself.). The cameras, I noticed, were still focused on Vanessa, who was trying to stand up but kept slipping on the cupcakes.

  ‘Oh God, this is all we need,’ muttered Sarah. ‘No, don’t move!’ she said to Alice. ‘We’ll have to get an ambulance.’

  ‘I don’t think I need an ambulance,’ said Alice. ‘I mean, it’s just my wrist.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll get the first-aid team anyway.’ She helped Alice get up and sit in the chair she’d just fallen off.

  By this stage, Vanessa was upright. She didn’t seem to have hurt herself (probably because the cakes broke her fall). But she was, of course, in a rage. Sarah’s assistant stayed with us as Sarah moved back to the camera crew. ‘Keep shooting!’ she cried. ‘Vanessa, can you tell us how you’re feeling?’

  ‘How do you think I’m feeling!’ screamed Vanessa, stamping a sparkly foot. She went on roaring at the camera while her minion Caroline nervously tried to tell her that everything wasn’t that bad. I’m glad that she now knows the awfulness of falling over embarrassingly in public, after the fuss she made when I did it.

  But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was just thinking about poor Alice. The first aider had checked her out and agreed that there didn’t seem to be anyth
ing seriously wrong but that she should go to hospital straight away. So she was taken off in one of the crew’s fancy jeep things to hospital while the rest of us just sat there.

  ‘Do you think she’ll be okay?’ asked Cass, nervously.

  ‘Well, they did say it was just her wrist,’ I said. But still, that’s bad enough. She did look very pale and stunned.

  The party didn’t last long after that. I think the TV people just wanted to get lots of footage of Vanessa going mad. The band didn’t bother playing. The caterers brought out more trays of food so we all just hung around for an hour or so eating it and talking. Jane had found us after Alice was taken away and apologised for what she’d just taken part in.

  ‘I had no choice,’ she said. ‘But you should know that I did want to get sick throughout.’

  ‘So did we,’ said Cass.

  ‘I nearly did,’ I said.

  We exchanged numbers with Jane and promised to text her to tell her how Alice is. She suggested meeting up with her and her best friend from school some time, which would be cool. Then Sarah took up a microphone.

  ‘Thanks so much, everyone, for coming to Vanessa’s big birthday bash.’

  ‘If you put this on TV, I’ll sue!’ shrieked Vanessa in the background.

  Sarah turned to her and whispered, but loudly enough for the mike to pick it up, ‘You can’t, Vanessa, it’s all in the contract.’ She turned back to all of us. ‘I have to remind you all that you can’t post any photos or video from tonight online until after the show airs. That’s all part of the agreement you and your parents signed. Anyway, the buses have arrived to take home the girls from St Dominic’s and the theatre class. Have a good evening.’

  We all started filing out of the house. As we did, the camera crew started coming around to people and asking them to tell them what we thought of the party.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Cass. ‘I hope they come up to us.’

  And then they did.

  ‘So girls,’ said a producer. ‘This was quite a party, right? Can you tell us what you thought of it? And can you speak in complete sentences – like, say “This party was great” rather than “It was great”? So, tell us all about it.’

  And, for a moment, I thought, ‘Aha, this is my chance to get my own back for the way Vanessa behaved when my mum’s book came out and the time she screamed at me at the Battle of the Bands!’ But I don’t know what came over us because we couldn’t do it. Neither of us could. To say something, I dunno, snide about her on telly when we had, after all, come to her party and she’d just been totally humiliated at that party just seemed … too mean. Thousands of people would see it.

  I know I don’t like Vanessa, and I know we just came to her birthday bash because we thought it would be mental, and I know we bitch about her in school, and I know she had no problem with humiliating me in public herself, but laughing at her on telly just didn’t feel right. It felt properly bitchy. Afterwards, Cass told me that she felt the same way.

  So I just said, ‘I’ve never been to a party like this one.’

  And Cass said, ‘This party was very spectacular.’

  And that was it. We said bye to Jane and got on the bus.

  When we had sat down, I said, ‘You know, we just got the chance to have public revenge on Vanessa for all the times she’s been rude to us and we didn’t take it. I think we must be much better people than I thought we were. That was pretty good of us, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I think if we were properly good we wouldn’t even think of that,’ said Cass, and she’s probably right. But still. I think it was quite saintly of us.

  The bus journey home was quite different from the journey there. We were all kind of knackered and we’d spent the last bit of the party just hanging around. So there was no singing. Ellie and Jessie talked a bit about the musical auditions. Ellie really wants to work with Mrs Limond, who is this old lady who used to be an art teacher at our school and who returns every year to oversee the costumes. We have never met her, but she is famous because apparently she is a bit eccentric and mysterious. We have seen her costumes, though, because we were at the musical last year (and I went to see Rachel’s year’s production before I started at our school) and they are actually amazing. Anyway, normally I’d have been quite interested in what Ellie was saying because, after all, mysterious old ladies who make magical costumes are always interesting, but I felt like I’d sort of crashed down to earth after the madness and excitement of the party. So I just sat there and stared at the window and said ‘Oh?’ every so often in what I hope was an interested voice.

  Anyway, that was Vanessa’s party. I can’t believe it ended up with Alice in hospital. She texted me last night to say she was still waiting in A&E, but they don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong. I haven’t heard from her this morning yet. I suppose she’s sleeping in, like I’d be if I didn’t have the loudest family on earth.

  No mail from Paperboy, by the way. But, at the moment, I’m almost too tired to care.

  LATER

  Terrible news. It turns out Alice fractured her left wrist. She will be in a cast for weeks! She says it doesn’t hurt, but she is still feeling a bit wobbly. Poor Alice. Hurting her left wrist is particularly annoying – it means she can’t get out of school work because she can still write, but she can’t play the guitar because she can’t hold down the strings to make different chords (if it was her right wrist she’d still be able to strum the strings with her right hand).

  And of course me and Cass are affected too. Because without Alice on guitar, there can be no more Hey Dollface until she gets better. No more band practices. No more venting my feelings by bashing the drums (I can use the sofa and cushions like I used to when I was just starting, but it’s not the same now I’m really used to playing the real things). I mean, I suppose I could go out to Alice’s house anyway and play them there, but it wouldn’t really be fair to Alice to play drums in her house (well, next to her house) while she can’t play anything. So no more drumming for weeks. No more of that brilliant feeling when a song works out. And just when I was determined to get everything back to normal between the three of us! How will I stick to my new rule about doing stuff and bonding now?

  Nothing is going right this week.

  There is one bright side, though. I texted Jane to tell her about Alice and she texted back to say that Mrs Finn came in to Jane’s mum today, and Jane heard her say she thinks Vanessa has gone too far and that maybe they have been spoiling her too much. At last! Maybe this means Vanessa will not spend her next birthday doing what she did last year, ie boasting loudly about how expensive her presents were and how her new bag cost more than she bets our parents earn in a week (she was probably right, but how obnoxious and silly). I hope the Finn parents’ reign of strictness has kicked in by tomorrow otherwise Vanessa will be even worse than ever now that she has been thwarted by the ‘Big Birthday Bash’ people.

  MONDAY

  I’m not sure whether the reign of strictness has begun or not. Vanessa doesn’t seem to have changed at all. She spent most of today boasting about how wonderful her party was, as if we all hadn’t been there and seen everything (including, of course, the pony running amok and knocking her into a pile of cupcakes).

  ‘In a way,’ said Cass, as we watched Vanessa holding forth to Caroline and Karen Rodgers and Alison on the other side of the classroom, ‘you’ve got to admire her. I mean, she doesn’t let things get to her, does she?’

  ‘But in another way,’ said Ellie, ‘that kind of shows she’s a psychopath.’

  ‘True,’ said Cass. ‘You wouldn’t know she’d been knocked into some cakes by a pink pony. While covered in glitter.’

  ‘And she’s even got some new fans out of the whole thing,’ said Ellie. ‘Look, Karen and Alison seem to like her now.’

  ‘That’s because Karen snogged that fairytale prince,’ said Emma.

  And we all screamed ‘What?!’ because none of us had heard about this on Saturday night, pr
obably because we all more worried about Alice than Karen Rodgers’s love life. But Emma was talking to Alison at the lockers this morning (they are both going to the new computer classes that are starting next week) and apparently it was true. The fairytale princes were all boys from some local drama club and Karen had danced with the same boy all night and ended up kissing him among the bean bags. And he took her number and texted her yesterday and they’re meeting up at the weekend.

  ‘Maybe love will change Karen,’ said Cass. ‘Maybe it’ll make her nicer.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said. ‘The only thing that’s ever made her a tiny bit nicer was Alison finally standing up to her at the Battle of the Bands.’

  ‘I wish Alison had got together with a fairytale prince instead of Karen,’ said Cass, and we all agreed with her. ‘She deserves it much more. Not that that prince is my type at all.’

  ‘His name is Bernard,’ said Emma. ‘Alison told me. It’s not really a very prince-y name, is it?’

  ‘In fairness,’ said Jessie, ‘he did actually look quite fairytale prince-ish. I mean, he wasn’t my type either. He was really cheesy-looking. But he looked quite, you know. Glamorous.’

  ‘Karen Rodgers has a glamorous fairytale prince,’ said Cass. ‘And meanwhile poor Alice has a fractured wrist. Life isn’t fair.’

  It really isn’t. As yet more proof that they have forgotten how miserable I am, Mum and Dad made me peel about ten million potatoes for dinner tonight. It felt like that many, anyway, but Mum said I was being ridiculous and there were only five potatoes. She also said that when she was a kid she had to help make dinner every single day and that me and Rachel were spoiled rotten in comparison. Dad said that he thought peeling potatoes was fun which was a barefaced lie because it clearly is not. And as I said to him, if it was so much fun then why didn’t he do it tonight? But he said he had essays to correct. Huh.

  LATER

  I am still writing poetry to deal with my general angst. It is quite cathartic, really. I feel quite proud of myself for rhyming Far away in Vancouver’ with ‘I am forced to hoover’. It shows the contrast between Paperboy’s glamorous exile and my horrible life as a lonely domestic servant.