by Holly Webb
“No one could be that dull without some kind of training,” Bethany agreed. “Do I want a cereal bar or a muffin?” The Shine cafeteria was very healthy and an oatmeal-raisin muffin was about as close to a treat as you could get. “It’s history next, isn’t it? Definitely the muffin, then.”
They sat down at one of the tables and the conversation went back to the audition. It was all anyone could think about.
“Do you think the casting team will see our year separately or will it be us and the Year Eights together?” Sara wondered.
“Talking of Year Eights, look what just crawled in.” Chloe’s voice dripped with disgust. “Lizabeth.”
True enough, the tall blonde girl was walking over to the next table. Lizabeth would have been very pretty indeed if she didn’t always look as though she’d just smelled something horrible. She was with a small group of Year Eight girls, who all carefully cultivated the same sneering expression and agreed with every word Lizabeth said.
Lily pretended to be focused on opening her cereal bar. She couldn’t stand Lizabeth. On their first day at Shine, Lizabeth and her gang had really picked on Lily and now she stayed out of their way as much as she could.
“Of course,” Lizabeth said airily as she sank gracefully into a seat, “I’m bound to get a callback.” The rest of her group nodded wisely. “I mean, I look perfect for the part and Mr Harvey thinks my voice is truly special. He said so.”
Unfortunately, Bethany couldn’t hold back a disbelieving snort. Unless Mr Harvey had a personality transplant when he taught Year Eight, there was no way he had said anything like that. He was more likely to tell Lizabeth that she sounded like a bloodhound with flu, which is exactly what he’d said to Carmen, one of the twins in Year Seven, on Monday. And he’d said her sister, Ella, was worse. The twins hadn’t minded that much but they’d mouthed their way through the rest of the lesson.
Lizabeth swung round, her eyes narrowing. She looked like a snake homing in on prey with a whole nest of little snake mates to back her up.
Bethany swallowed her mouthful of muffin nervously. She wasn’t as scared of Lizabeth as Lily was, but no one really wanted to get on the wrong side of her. Too late now, though.
“You lot,” Lizabeth snarled. “Little Miss Ferrars and her bunch of loser friends. I might have known.” She turned back to her table, smirking. “Can you believe that the school are actually letting this lot audition for Mary Poppins with us? Ms Purcell must be off her head.”
Lizabeth’s ‘best friend’ Nadia, who was really just the girl who sucked up to her most, giggled infuriatingly. “I should think it’s to give us something to look good against. There’s no way anyone would actually cast them in a West End show.”
Sara stamped on Chloe’s foot. Chloe had a temper that was as fiery as her red hair and she was obviously about to go ballistic. But she hadn’t noticed that Lily had gone two shades paler than normal and was looking as though she was about to throw up.
“Leave it!” Sara muttered as Chloe blinked at her. She threw a meaningful glance sideways at Lily and Chloe got the point. With as much dignity as possible, they got up and stalked out of the cafeteria, Chloe scowling back at Lizabeth and her sniggering group.
“If she gets a callback, I’m going to murder her first,” Chloe muttered as they headed back to their form room.
“The problem is, when she turns on the charm she’s like the world’s sweetest person,” Sara said gloomily. “And she does look just right for Jane Banks, if they’re going by the way the children look in the film.” Sara loved the original film of Mary Poppins – it was full of amazing songs. It was Mary Poppins herself, the children’s nanny, who had most of the best bits. Jane and Michael Banks were the children she was looking after, and they got to sing quite a lot, too.
“Yeah, you and Lizabeth actually look really alike,” Bethany said, giggling. She nudged Lily encouragingly. “Don’t they?”
“Ugh, we do not.” Sara made sick noises.
Lily managed a feeble smile and the others looked at her sympathetically. Lizabeth had really got to her.
In singing that afternoon, Mr Harvey was in full Mary Poppins mode, getting them to work on ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’. He said it was what they would have to sing for the audition on Monday, so everyone was trying really hard.
Sara was enjoying herself and it was a song she loved. For once, Mr Harvey wasn’t picking her up on every little thing. Maybe he was trying not to stress them out before the audition, she thought. Her only problem was that it made her want to dance as well! She couldn’t stop bouncing in her seat and when they put down their music to stand round the piano, she just couldn’t resist a little twirl at the end. She went scarlet when she realized it hadn’t been an imaginary twirl, but everyone laughed, even Mr Harvey.
“Nice to see someone enjoying themselves,” he commented. “Remember that when you enjoy a song, it shows in your singing. That’s why I want you all to know this song backwards. Then you can just relax and enjoy it on Monday.”
Sara exchanged disbelieving glances with the others. OK, so she was enjoying the song now but she couldn’t imagine being relaxed enough to enjoy any of Monday. She was going to be terrified!
In tap on Thursday afternoon, Ms Driver spent the lesson preparing them for the audition, too. It was going to be a bit like their audition for Shine, where everyone had to dance along with the teacher. No one would be doing special audition pieces, not yet anyway. The casting team from the theatre would teach them a short routine and see how they picked it up. So Ms Driver was giving them a practice go, demonstrating a simple sequence of steps a couple of times and getting them to repeat it back.
“Remember this is a performance, girls! You’re out to impress! Smile and try to look as though you’re having fun!”
Sara realized that she had been scowling in an effort to keep the routine in her head. It was so difficult to remember what to do and remember to smile! It was no good just sticking a fixed grin on your face – it had to be a real, relaxed smile. Sara smiled to herself as she remembered her friend Lulu in her old dance school’s Christmas show. Lulu was meant to be a snow fairy, but Sara’s gran said afterwards that she looked more like a toothpaste ad!
“Lovely, Sara! Keep that nice smile! And shuffle, hop, step!” Ms Driver sounded approving and Sara couldn’t hold back a huge beam. Maybe she should try and remember Lulu on Monday…
Everyone was so focused on Monday’s audition that the time seemed to fly by. Sara spent quite a lot of the weekend holed up in her bedroom watching the old Mary Poppins film, trying to sing and dance along. She kept crashing into her bookcase though, and on Sunday afternoon Will came in, looking irritable.
“Are you still watching that? I can hear it through the wall, you know. Aren’t you sick of it yet? Those chimney sweeps are driving me mad!”
Sara pressed pause and gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry. It’s just that the audition’s tomorrow and I can’t think about anything else!”
Will looked confused. “What audition? You didn’t say you had one. That’s really cool!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. All of our class get to try out for Mary Poppins. It’s going to be at the Theatre Royal over Christmas! I told Mum but she wasn’t really interested, so…”
Will nodded. “Mmm. I get it. Bet Gran was over the moon though.”
Sara grinned. “Yeah, I watched the film at hers yesterday, too. We both danced!”
“Well, all right then. I don’t mind listening to that idiot trying to do a cockney accent if it’s for a good reason.” He headed back to try and finish his homework, and Sara started the video again, lying flat on her bed and kicking in time to the music. If she half-closed her eyes, she could almost see herself dancing along with Julie Andrews and the cartoon penguins…
The audition was being held instead of tap and singing on Monday afternoon, and no one could concentrate at all that morning. In geography, Chloe’s friend Sam wasn’t paying
attention and quite seriously told Mrs Carrington that volcanoes were like chimneys. Everyone roared with laughter. It wasn’t really that funny but they were all keyed up and needed to laugh. Mrs Carrington looked a bit confused but beamed at Sam and said it was actually a very clever way of putting it. He looked smug for the rest of the morning.
At lunchtime, the cafeteria was buzzing. It was only the Year Sevens and Eights who were auditioning but the whole school was excited. Sara, Lily, Bethany and Chloe squeezed round one long table with Sam and a couple of the other boys, and the twins, Carmen and Ella.
“It’s so weird…” Sara muttered, picking at her baked potato. She was way too excited to actually eat it.
The others waited for a minute, then Bethany asked patiently, “What is?”
“Oh! Sorry, I was thinking aloud. It’s weird to be auditioning all of us together. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to be doing it on my own! But don’t you think it’s funny that we’re all trying out for the same thing? And only one of us can get it?”
The others nodded thoughtfully. “Just think what it’s like trying out against your own twin!” Carmen said, and Ella made a face.
“Yeah, that must be awful!” Sara gazed at them wide-eyed. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“It’s just one of those things,” Ella shrugged. “We all have to get used to it, I guess.”
“Hey, we’ve only got ten minutes till the end of lunch,” Chloe gasped. “We’d better go and change.”
The casting team were going to see the girls dancing first, so they needed their footless tights and the Shine T-shirts they wore for tap classes. They had to bring jazz shoes as well as tap shoes because there wasn’t going to be much actual tap in the production they were auditioning for. And for once, they didn’t have to have their hair tied back. Ms Driver had explained that the casting team wanted to see them with their hair down. Sara had spent ages putting intensive conditioner on hers the night before, so long that her mum had asked her if she was moving into the bathroom permanently. But hopefully it might just help!
“I feel all wrong with my hair loose for a dance class!” Chloe giggled as she brushed hers out. “I keep panicking that someone’s going to tell me off.” At the beginning of term, Chloe had got into trouble with Ms Driver over not doing her hair properly for tap.
“If that’s all you’re panicking about, think yourself lucky,” muttered Sara, twisting to see herself in the mirror. The changing rooms were crowded, with all the Year Seven and Eight girls trying to look their best.
Chloe looked back over her shoulder. “Hey! You’re not seriously nervous, are you? You’ve got such a good chance at this, Sara, honestly. You mustn’t let nerves spoil it.”
“It’s easy to say that, Chloe! Don’t you ever get nervous?” she asked curiously, twisting a strand of hair round her finger.
“Course I do. Everyone does! But what do you normally do for nerves? What about when you have dance exams and stuff?”
Sara shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think dance exams are that scary, somehow. An audition’s different.” She shuddered, remembering. “I was terrified all through the audition to get in here. I was nearly sick in between the ballet and tap.”
Lily gave her an amazed look. “Were you really? I remember seeing you at the audition, and I thought you looked fantastic. So calm!”
Bethany looked up from the bench, where she was putting on her tap shoes. “You’re all going to kill me for saying this but it’s not all that important, you know! It’s our first audition here – so what if it’s not perfect? We’re going to have hundreds of them!”
Sara, Lily and Chloe gazed at her in amazement, but then they looked at each other and shrugged. Bethany was right. Going into the audition stressed out would be a disaster.
“So you’re saying just relax and enjoy it?” Sara asked Bethany, making a face. “That’s what my mum said about my SATs. She really thought I’d enjoy them if I just tried hard enough…” She giggled, and then took a deep breath, uncurling her spine slowly. It was a great relaxation exercise her gran had shown her. Right. Enjoy it…
“Hi everyone! I’m Tamara. I’m an assistant choreographer for the show. I’m just going to go through a few steps for you and then we’ll get small groups to dance them. OK?”
Tamara seemed really nice but it was hard to ignore the other people from the theatre, all clutching notebooks. Sara and the others watched carefully as Tamara danced, explaining as she went. It was a simple routine, Sara noted gratefully. She saw Carmen and Ella making faces at each other – the twins had only just started tap and obviously Tamara’s moves looked a bit scary.
“Everyone got that?”
As if we’d dare say no! Sara thought and grinned to herself. Chloe and Bethany were right – the only way to do this was to try and enjoy it. She just hoped she’d be in the first group to go. She wasn’t sure she could stand waiting much longer.
Luckily she was standing near the front and Tamara picked the first five girls she could see – Sara, Chloe and three Year Eight girls they didn’t know. It felt so lonely, out in the middle of the huge studio.
Sara glanced back to Bethany and Lily, who were making thumbs-up signs at her and flashed a quick smile at them. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Lizabeth, looking contemptuous. The older girl was swishing her long blond hair about, trying to catch the attention of the casting team.
A grim determination took over inside Sara. Lizabeth obviously wasn’t nervous. She looked as though she was having the time of her life. Sara knew she was a pretty good dancer. She wasn’t as brilliant as some of her class but there was no way she was going to let Lizabeth do better than her. The thought of how furious the snotty Year Eight would be if she, Sara, got a callback made a natural smile the easiest thing in the world.
As the music started, Sara’s nerves melted away and it was one of those fantastic moments where the steps just seemed to flow. Sara found herself in the final floor pose without quite knowing how she’d got there and heard a storm of clapping.
“Well done, girls!” Was it Sara’s imagination or was Tamara smiling especially at her? She headed back to the others, breathing fast, and saw Lizabeth eyeing her. She definitely didn’t look happy and that made Sara feel even better.
“You were fantastic!” Bethany handed Sara her fleece. “That’s easily the best I’ve seen you dance and you had to do it first time.”
Sara glowed. Bethany and Chloe were tap stars, so if Bethany thought she’d done well, it had to mean something. She turned to give Chloe a quick hug. “We did it!” she whispered.
“It was cool!” Chloe was bouncing on her toes with excitement. “Even if I don’t get a callback, that was so fun. And you were amazing. I saw you do that difficult leg swap thing – what did she call it? Oh, I can’t remember, but you had it perfectly. I thought I was going to fall over!”
The buzz from the dance audition carried Sara through the singing. They were in little groups again but this time the musical director, Simon, did get some people to sing a few phrases solo. Sara was pretty sure by her turn that he was only getting the best people to sing alone. She was so glad they’d practised ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’! But in a way that actually made it harder, because Simon seemed to want different intonations from Mr Harvey and the stress on different words. Not everyone was picking up on that.
“Right – last group!”
Sara came up to the piano with Bethany, Carmen, Ella, Chloe and Lily. She could feel Lizabeth’s eyes drilling into her back, willing her to mess up. She’d been deathstaring her all the way through the audition. Obviously she’d decided that Sara was competition, despite what she’d said about Year Sevens being useless. But Sara wasn’t freaked. Lizabeth was scary but she couldn’t do anything in the middle of the audition! And knowing that someone else thought she was doing well just made Sara glow inside. She beamed at Simon and he smiled back.
“OK, you’ve probably
heard this way too many times already but I’ll play it through for you again.” He was already starting on the intro. Sara followed along, tapping her foot gently without even realizing she was doing it. She so wanted to sing! “Now you. Intro again, and you come in after three. One, two, three, and…”
At last! Sara sang out happily, trying hard to put the words across the way he’d shown them. She could hear Bethany’s bell-like voice supporting her, and the others in the background.
“That was nice. Very nice.” Simon looked carefully at each of them, scribbling some notes. “I’d just like to hear a couple of you again, to make sure… Would you sing the first few lines again for me – Bethany, is it?” He peered at the sticky label on her T-shirt. Bethany blushed delightedly and nodded. “Off we go then.”
Wow. Bethany’s voice was just so good – so clear and she hit the high notes with no effort whatsoever. Sara had always hoped she was good but she was pretty sure Bethany was better. Still, she thought there were a few times when Bethany could have placed her words better. She was hoping that Simon would ask her to sing alone, too.
“Lovely. And Sara.” He grinned at her, obviously seeing how keen she was. “Could you do those lines, too?”
Sara nodded excitedly. Now she had her chance, she must not mess this up! It would be easy to get overconfident, having heard the song so many times already. Simon’s hands flashed over the keys and he nodded her in.
Sara sang her way through the chorus, loving the chance to perform, her nerves completely gone. As she reached the last line, she took a breath, eager to go on to the verse, and Simon grinned and kept playing for her. She sang for longer than any of the others and she could feel people were enjoying it. The casting team were smiling as she finally stopped after the second chorus.
