Rebecca's Rules

by Anna Carey

  Alice, Jessie and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Jessie is good at doing this because she is long-sighted and her glasses make her eyes look slightly bigger than they actually are.

  ‘Well, this’ll be good,’ said Jessie.

  But it really was. As soon as Vanessa started to sing our jaws literally dropped open. Because she could sing. I mean really sing. And not in a bellowing, X-Factor sort of way. She had what my mum always calls a ‘pure’ voice – I mean she didn’t sound like she was showing off at all. It was just a lovely clear sound. It was SO not how I expected Vanessa to sing. When she finished I found myself clapping automatically. THAT’S how good she was.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Jessie, who’d also clapped, without thinking, as had Alice. ‘I can’t believe we just applauded Vanessa. Voluntarily.’

  I was thinking the same thing, but I couldn’t say so because now Vanessa was acting a scene with Ms Byrne and she was really good at that too. She wasn’t annoying or smug at all, which just shows that she really is a good actress. She was all bright and brisk and Mary Poppins-ish. It was amazing. And very, very irritating. She was by far the best in the whole group. When everyone had had their audition Ms Byrne thanked us all and told us that what she called ‘a preliminary cast list’ would be posted on the noticeboard outside the library at the end of the school day. Ellie, Alice and I trudged out of the hall and off to SS2, where we were having geography. Vanessa strutted past us, looking even more pleased with herself than usual (which is saying something). She was with Karen and Alison. Karen was telling her how brilliant her voice was. That’s all we need, Karen and Vanessa teaming up.

  When we arrived at geography, Cass and Ellie were in great form.

  ‘I’m going to help Ms Dowling do the sets!’ said Cass.

  ‘And I’m working on the costumes,’ said Ellie. ‘But Mrs Limond wasn’t there, which was a bit disappointing. I want to see if she really has purple hair. How was the audition?’

  So we told them about Vanessa.

  ‘She can’t have been that good,’ said Cass. ‘I just refuse to believe it.’

  ‘She was,’ I said. ‘I even clapped for her.’

  ‘So did I,’ said Jessie, ‘without thinking, of course.’

  ‘I hate to say this,’ said Alice, ‘but I think she’s going to get the lead. I mean, she was the best.’

  And as it turned out, Alice was right. When the list went up this morning, there she was at the top! Vanessa is Mary Poppins! And if that weren’t bad enough, Karen Rodgers is Michael, one of the children. And if THAT weren’t bad enough, I am her understudy. Yes, I am understudying Karen Rodgers to play a small boy. I am starting to think that this was not such a good idea after all. So much for my musical genes.

  On the (tiny) plus side, Jessie got a proper part, playing the cook. And Cass and Alice are all excited about the whole thing now, so part of my plan is working already − we have an exciting new project that has nothing to do with paperboys or me moping (not that I will admit to doing that) at all. So that’s something. Oh, and Susie Murray from 2:1 is playing Mrs Banks, the children’s mother. It turns out she is quite talented after all.

  So anyway, the first rehearsal is after school on Monday. We all had to gather in the hall at lunchtime today and Ms Byrne gave us each a CD of the songs along with a script and told us to study both of them carefully over the weekend so we’re familiar with the story and the songs. I just hope Karen and Vanessa aren’t too irritating at the first big rehearsal (though I am sure they will be).

  Still no mail from Paperboy. I am starting to get angry as well as sad.

  SATURDAY

  I told Mum (and Dad) about just being in the chorus. They acted like this was a great thing.

  ‘Being in the chorus is lots of fun,’ said Dad. ‘You get the excitement of being in the show and none of the stress!’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Mum. ‘There were loads of times in The Pirates of Penzance when I would have loved to just be in the chorus. Having a big part isn’t all fun, you know.’

  ‘Remember that time you stabbed Dave Scully with your sword by mistake?’ said Dad. ‘He had to go to hospital and everything!’

  ‘It wasn’t a real sword,’ said Mum. ‘He was just bruised.’

  ‘I don’t think there’d be any chance of me stabbing someone by accident in Mary Poppins,’ I said. But I saw her point. Maybe it is for the best that I don’t have a big part to worry about? I’m in quite a fragile state at the moment; my nerves probably couldn’t take it.

  LATER

  Although in that case, I am not sure my nerves will be able to take the sight of Vanessa being all smug as the star of the show. Hmmm.

  SUNDAY

  Very boring weekend. I ended up spending most of it lying on my bed listening to the Mary Poppins soundtrack (really very catchy) and reading one of my library books, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, which is a true story about a boy who goes off to Corfu with his family and adopts loads of cool animals. His older siblings are totally head-wrecking, especially his pretentious big brother Larry, which is partly why I like it. But I also like it because I too have an affinity with the animal kingdom, as proved by the fact that every time I go to Alice’s house in the country I always see loads of wild creatures. Well, squirrels. But they’re wild, aren’t they?

  Of course, my sensible way of spending the weekend didn’t please my tyrannical parents. Their sympathy for my relegation to the chorus didn’t last very long. This afternoon my mother came in to my room (without knocking, of course. She has the manners of a … I dunno. Something rude) when I was quietly reading, took one look at me and said, ‘What on earth are you doing like that?’

  ‘I am reading, mother,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘But why are you lying with your head over one side of the bed and the book on the floor? That can’t be comfortable. Or good for your neck.’

  Honestly! She can even find fault with the way I read! I don’t even know why I was lying like that; it just felt like the right way to lie. Also it meant that when I needed to take a break from Mary Poppins I could reach over and change the music on my iPod which was plugged into its little speakers on a shelf by the bed. So I told her this and she said, ‘Well, if you get a terrible crick in your neck, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  And then she demanded I come down soon and chop up some carrots. Yet again, I wonder what the fans of my mother’s books would think if they knew she made her children slave for her like skivvies. She and my dad are obsessed with making me and Rachel chop vegetables. When I grow up I’m never going to chop or peel anything. I’m going to live entirely on things you can just bite straight into, without doing anything, like apples. Unless, of course, I become incredibly rich. Then I’ll have servants to make all my food for me.

  Speaking of my evil mother, she is still writing a sequel to the terrible Ruthie nightmare. She promises that when it comes out she will make it very clear that Ruthie and her awful friends have nothing in common with me and Rachel. I hope she sticks to her word. I never thought I’d say this, but I really wish she’d just go back to writing books for grown-ups about twinkly-eyed kindly Irish mammies who solve all their family’s problems (these books are clearly even more unlike her own family than the Ruthie one).

  Okay, so I didn’t like Mrs Harrington going on about them, but at least there was no chance of anyone thinking any of the characters have anything to do with me, given that I don’t like Irish dancing and I don’t live in a cottage. Lots of Mum’s characters live in cosy cottages in quaint little villages. I don’t know why, considering she’s from Phibsboro and has never spent more than a week in a cottage in her life, and that was just on holiday.

  Anyway, the main reason I spent most of my weekend at home reading and hoovering and dusting and chopping things like a servant is because Alice is off visiting relations (she spends loads of weekends doing this because (a) she is an only child and (b) half
her relations are in Germany, so her parents are very keen on making sure she sees all her Irish relatives on a regular basis. So every few weekends she’s dragged off to see some aunt or cousin or someone). And Cass was off with Liz from Bad Monkey. I am still worried that my misery and sorrow have driven away Cass and she has found a new joint-best-friend. I really hope not. I will just have to stick to my new rules and hope it all works out.

  Although I sort of have a new friend as well. I texted Jane about Vanessa. Actually, I basically said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us she could sing?!’ Jane rang me and we talked for quite a while. She is very nice and funny. She said she thought we all knew Vanessa could sing and I had to admit that Vanessa might well have boasted about her singing before. She goes on about how brilliant she is so much that we all kind of tune her out.

  Anyway, strangely enough, it turns out Jane’s school did Mary Poppins last year and she played Mr Banks, the children’s father.

  ‘I’m actually about six inches shorter than the girl who played Michael,’ she said. ‘So it looked a bit weird. But I think it worked.’

  She said that she had a lot of fun in the musical and her friends were in the chorus and had a great time, so what with this and my parents’ words of wisdom I feel a bit better now about being stuck in the boring old chorus while Vanessa and Karen Rodgers are the stars of the show.

  Right, I’m going to go back to Gerald Durrell and Mary Poppins. It is quite a soothing combination. Which I need because there’s still nothing from Paperboy. I’m not going to check my mail or Facebook until tomorrow, it’s all stressing me out too much.

  MONDAY

  So, it turns out being in a musical is not what I expected. I thought it would be all just, you know, singing and dancing and improvising (my natural skill). But for now it seems to be all about something called ‘stagecraft’ (which as far as I can tell seems to mean ‘walking across a stage without falling over’) and being in what is essentially a choir! It is not very dramatic, at least if you’re in the boring old chorus. But it was still quite fun, at least some of the time. Especially for Alice.

  This is what happened. All us exciting glamorous musical people had to gather in the hall after last class.

  ‘At last,’ said Cass, as we walked down the corridor. ‘My career as a set designer begins.’

  ‘Are you actually going to be designing the sets?’ said Alice. ‘I mean, I think Ms Dowling might be doing the design part and you’ll be doing the, I dunno, painting-bits-of-cardboard part. I don’t know if you should get your hopes up …’

  But Cass said that she knew she was learning her new trade from the ground up.

  ‘I have to start somewhere,’ she said, which was worryingly sensible of her.

  Ellie will be learning new skills too, from the mysterious Mrs Limond.

  And I will be learning new skills as well, such as trying not to kill Karen Rodgers (this is going to be very difficult, as you will see).

  When we got to the hall, the boys from St Anthony’s were there already. To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten they were going to be doing the musical with us. But we saw them as soon as we walked into the hall, and I froze. So did Cass and Alice. Because there, sitting on a plastic chair in the St Dominic’s school hall, all ready to play Bert the chimney sweep himself, was Bike Boy! Or Richard Murray, as he is really called.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Cass. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

  ‘Bike Boy!’ I said.

  We both looked at Alice. She was just staring at Bike Boy and her cheeks had gone very pink. Then Bike Boy glanced over and saw us. He looked quite surprised too, but in a good way, I think. He smiled and raised his hand in greeting, so we sort of waved back.

  ‘Where will we go? What will we do?’ said Alice in a flustered way.

  ‘Everyone’s just sitting down,’ said Cass. ‘I don’t think it matters where. Come on.’

  Ellie had got there before us so we sat down next to her just as Ms Dowling (the art teacher) and Ms Byrne came in with a strange woman whom we’d never seen before. She was quite young and quite pretty in a dramatic sort of way. She had very dark shoulder-length hair with a very nice glossy fringe (I know it seems like I’m obsessed with other people’s fringes, but it’s because I can’t have a decent fringe myself. I got one last year and it just grew straight out from my head in a mad way rather than falling down all shiny. Luckily, it grew out fairly quickly and even my hairdresser agreed it was a bad idea so as soon as it was long enough she just trimmed the edges so it went back into the rest of my hair. This was unlike poor old Cass, who’s been trying to grow hers out for ages. Her hairdresser keeps cutting it back in).

  Anyway, as well as her fringe, the mysterious woman was wearing a black and white stripy top, a black cardigan, black skinny jeans and black converse. She had lovely glowing skin and her lipstick was bright red. It looked like she wasn’t wearing any other make-up but I had a feeling she was like my mum’s friends who wear loads of really expensive make-up in order to look like they’re not wearing any.

  ‘Who’s she?’ said Ellie, who didn’t recognise Bike Boy so wasn’t as stunned as me, Cass and Alice. ‘She looks kind of French.’

  But she wasn’t French. She and Ms Byrne and Ms Dowling, who is looking after the backstage stuff, went up on the stage.

  ‘Hi everyone,’ said Ms Byrne. ‘Welcome to the first rehearsal of the second-year musical! Now, I’d like to introduce you to the director of this year’s show. She’s an up-and-coming director and a graduate of the Trinity College Drama department who happens to be a former St Dominic’s girl. So please welcome Cathy Laverty.’

  We all applauded politely and Ms Byrne passed the microphone to Cathy Laverty, who clearly wasn’t French after all.

  ‘Hi,’ she said and looked out at us in an intense way. She has very big eyes. ‘I’m Cathy Laverty, but you can all call me Cathy. And I’d like to welcome you all to a journey to the heart of Mary Poppins. You might think we’re about to put on just another school musical …’ We all looked nervously at each other because to be honest, that is exactly what we thought. ‘But,’ Cathy (as we were told to call her) went on, ‘we’re embarking on an adventure in theatre.’

  Heavens.

  Cathy started talking about how we were setting off on a journey to the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious heart of Mary Poppins, and while this was going on I sneaked a glance at Bike Boy (I should really start calling him Richard) and his cohorts. There were only a few of them and they all looked quite ordinary, apart from one tall, thin boy who was sitting next to Richard.

  He had dark hair cut short at the back and sides but sort of floppy on top, like the First World War soldiers in Rachel’s history book (the other week I was so bored by my own homework I wandered into Rachel’s room and started flicking through her books to see if anything more exciting is awaiting me in a few years. It isn’t). He wasn’t exactly incredibly good-looking but he had an interesting face. And he wasn’t listening to the speech either. In fact, he was reading a book. I couldn’t see what it was at first, but it was a very battered-looking paperback that looked as if it had been published long before we were born.

  I was still looking at him (while trying not to make it obvious that was I was looking at him) when Cathy finished her impassioned speech and gave the mike back to Ms Byrne, who thanked her and urged us to give her a welcoming round of applause. Which we did.

  ‘And of course,’ she said, when the clapping had stopped, ‘we want to give a special St Dominic’s welcome to our visitors from St Anthony’s. Can we all welcome them with another big round of applause!’

  We all clapped. Most of the boys looked slightly terrified for some reason, apart from Bike Boy, who looked like he was going to start laughing, and the tall, thin boy, who just kept reading his book, with an amused sort of expression on his face, as if a whole room full of girls weren’t staring at him and clapping.

  ‘Now,’ Ms Byrne went on. ‘Can I get the chorus
over here, please? Principals, I want you over there with Cathy. Backstage crew, Ms Dowling will see you all up on the stage. Thanks, girls. And boys, of course.’

  We all got up and shuffled over to our different groups. Cass kept looking significantly over to Bike Boy as she went up to the stage. Luckily, he didn’t notice because he was coming our way.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, smiling at us as if were really pleased to see us (or at least Alice). ‘Long time no see!’

  ‘Hi,’ said Alice. ‘Um, how’s your band?’

  ‘Oh, fine,’ said Bike Boy. ‘Y’know. We’re playing a gig soon. How’s yours?’

  ‘Sort of on hiatus at the moment,’ said Alice, and lifted up her hand so he could see the plaster. Bike Boy whistled in a sympathetic way. But before he could say anything Ms Byrne called, ‘I need all the chorus over here right now!’ So we had to run over to her. But before we did, Bike Boy said, ‘See you later!’ And Alice went pinker than ever.

  That’s when I thought we’d get started on all the singing and dancing, but no! It was all about this stagecraft business, so us chorus people all had to gather at the back of a pretend stage (a corner of the hall) while Cathy Laverty showed the main actors where to stand and how to move about the stage while reading lines. Basically, it seemed to be about making sure they didn’t have their backs turned to the audience half the time.

  Vanessa was tossing her hair about (she must have learned some new tricks from her orange party pals) and looking disgustingly smug. And Karen wasn’t much better. In fact, she was almost worse because she kept sucking up to Cathy.

  ‘Oooh, Cathy, is this right?’ she said in a simpering voice and I actually thought I was going to be sick. But that probably wouldn’t have gone down very well with Cathy so I just made a sick face at Alice instead.

  Anyway, even thought it was a bit boring standing there in the background watching the stars of the show, it was also interesting at times because Bike Boy and the mysterious First World War boy, who turned out to be playing Mr Banks, were really good. I knew when we saw old Bike Boy at the Battle of the Bands that he had star quality. It’s funny, he was so serious and melodramatic when he was performing on stage that time, but he’s very cheerful and friendly in real life. Some of the other cast members looked a bit awkward sometimes when they were walking around the stage, but he and John Kowalski (for that is the name of the mysterious boy) looked totally comfortable, like there was nothing weird about standing up in front of a bunch of girls they didn’t know and walking about reading lines. Susie Murray was very good too. You’d never know from just talking to her about made-up youth hostels and train directions in German that she was such a good actress. I suppose those conversations didn’t really show her acting range.