In Sarah's Shadow

by Karen McCombie

  “Yeah, so I was having a moan to Miss Jamal about it just now, telling her that what I really need is a runner – someone to zoom around and help me sort everything out – and she suggested either you or…”

  He’s bumbling now, throwing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Pamela somewhere out there in the brightly-lit classroom. Told you he didn’t know my – or my friend’s – name.

  “Pamela,” I reply, helpfully filling in the blank. “And I’m Megan.”

  “Megan. Yes, of course,” he grins, knowing he’s been caught out. “Anyway, Miss Jamal said that you two are always very willing to offer your services, and usually—”

  He glances around at the general untidiness swamping the floor.

  “—very efficient. So what about it?”

  “Um…what?” I mumble, knowing exactly what he’s saying but too stunned to believe what I’m hearing.

  “What about helping me out? Being my runner? It means sitting in on every after-school and weekend rehearsal, and then coming to the Battle of the Bands competition too. You’d need the afternoon off school, but I’d sort that if you’re up for it.”

  “I’m up for it,” I mutter, hardly able to move the frozen muscles in my face to make the words come out.

  He must take my lack of facial expression to mean I’m not keen.

  “Are you sure? Because I can always ask Pamela – if she doesn’t have permanent amnesia after these books scoring a direct hit on her head!”

  “No!!” I squawk a little too loudly. “I mean, yes, I’d love to help out. And, um, my sister’s actually in the band.”

  “Yeah? You mean…Sarah?” I see Mr Fisher frown, instantly ruling out Angel and Cherish as obvious relations and settling on Sarah by a process of elimination.

  I can see he’s struggling to see the resemblance. But I don’t care. I’m not offended; I’m elated – already a change is happening in my life, and it seems to be a change of luck. OK, maybe that’s not the exact change I wished for over my PJ Harvey plastic CD cover a couple of nights ago, but it’ll more than do.

  And who knows, maybe even that wish will come true too, if I keep positive (and keep everything crossed)…

  Chapter 6

  The surprise – make that shock – party

  Mum and Dad dropped me and my overnight bag at Pamela’s this morning, on their way to the train station to spend the weekend with Auntie Kelly and Uncle Jack. All I can say is, thank God there was a band rehearsal to disappear to this afternoon. Pamela is in some seriously weird, distant mood at the moment and is zero fun to be around. Must be all the unrequited love messing with her head, although she went ballistic at me this morning when I suggested that. Hope she’s in a better frame of mind by the time I get back to hers. Which is pretty soon, unfortunately, seeing as the rehearsal has just finished…

  Mr Fisher has darted off to talk to the lad in charge of the mixing desk, and he’s left me to check with everyone that they’re free for the next band practice – the last band practice before the competition next Friday. Hey – an excuse to talk to Conor close up…what could be more brilliant? But first, I’ll have to find him. All the gear is still on stage, but Conor, Salman and Sarah have wandered off somewhere. Still, I can start with Cherish and Angel, I decide, heading up the wooden stairs that leads to the stage.

  “Um, hi…” I hear myself squeak apologetically.

  God, I wish I didn’t get so intimidated at the idea of talking to the two of them. My hand is shaking so much that I have to clutch my clipboard tight so it doesn’t show. I know, I know, I know they’re only human, like me. The trouble is, they’re stupidly gorgeous and they’re super-cool, unlike me.

  And, from the way they’re ignoring me, it’s obvious that my squeak is inaudible to the ears of the stupidly gorgeous and super-cool.

  “So, are—are you OK for Tuesday?” I ask, a little louder.

  Cherish and Angel stop chatting to each other as they wind up their mike leads and stare at me as if I’m a total stranger who’s just walked up to them and started talking in Ancient Greek.

  You know, Alice Morgan in our year: well, her big brother plays in the reserves for our local football team. His mates – guys who play for the first team; guys who’ve been in the papers and on the telly – they’ve given her personal signed photographs and everything. Me: I can’t even get my sister’s mates to acknowledge my existence. How bizarre…I’m just a totally nobody to them.

  “What?” shrugs Angel, her long, dark hair tumbling off her shoulders as she speaks.

  “Mr Fisher – he wants to know if you’re OK for rehearsals on Tuesday?” I rephrase my question.

  “Oh, Tuesday! Yeah, sure!” Cherish nods, now that she and Angel have realised the question has come from someone who actually matters (ie, not me).

  With relief, I see Conor come back on to the stage, flipping open the empty bass guitar case he’s just collected from backstage.

  “Fine,” I mumble at Angel and Cherish, as I quickly put a tick beside their names and hurry off to someone who will hopefully treat me more like a member of the human race.

  “Hey, Megan!” Conor beams, not letting me down.

  “Hi!” I grin, basking gratefully in the warmth of his welcoming smile.

  “So how did that sound today?”

  “Good! It sounded…great!” I babble enthusiastically as he unplugs his bass from the amp and lays it tenderly in its case.

  “So, looking forward to the party?” he glances up at me.

  “What party?”

  My heart instantly soars at the idea that there might be some sort of after-show do at the Battle of the Bands competition.

  “At yours, of course! Tonight!” Conor laughs, probably marvelling at how stupendously dense I was being.

  “I—I didn’t know there was one,” I blinked in shock.

  Funny, isn’t it? The only way my parents could relax and enjoy their night away from home was knowing that I wasn’t in the house, getting up to whatever I might get up to (well, it saved them locking all the sharp objects away, I guess). It was OK for Sarah to be home alone, though. Oh yes: she’s the responsible, dependable one out of the two of us. The daughter who can be trusted.

  Ha.

  You want a bet, Mum? Dad?

  Maybe I was feeling a little sorry for myself, or maybe the injustice of it all got the better of me, but whatever, I suddenly felt tears prickle in my eyes. I wasn’t deliberately looking for the sympathy vote, but I got it anyway, which was pretty nice.

  “Sarah didn’t tell you?” Conor frowned at me. “But you’d be there whatever, right?”

  Was that a “Hope you’ll be there” sort of statement? I thought anxiously, before I shook my head back into reality.

  “No – I’m supposed to be staying over at my friend Pamela’s…” I mumble.

  As the frown on Conor’s forehead deepens, my own heartrate rises rapidly under the full-on beam of those brown eyes close up…

  I’d say Sarah was surprised to see me walk in the front door, but I guess her expression had more to do with shock.

  “Listen,” Sarah hisses, her perfectly made-up face all angular and contorted with anger. “You don’t have to be here, Megan.”

  “Yeah?” I say, in a hopefully brave tone of voice as I try to hang my coat up on the crowded rack and dump my bag on the floor, “I think I do. I live here too or have you conveniently forgotten that?”

  Stunned at me taking a stand against her, Sarah is (yesss!!) temporarily lost for words, which gives me a second to stare at her. She’s used her hair straighteners, I notice – you can tell by the way her hair is glassy flat, flatter than blow-drying can ever get it. But the glossy surface of her chestnutty hair is vibrating, I notice, maybe with suppressed rage, or maybe because the music exploding from the living room is sending sonic sound-booms through the whole house. I can feel the deep vibration in my chest like regular, flat-handed slaps, and the floor is shaking under the very
soles of my Cat boots. Sarah’s wearing boots too – only they’re high and pointy, worn with raspberry cord flares, a long-sleeved, lacy, cropped black top, with nails and lips painted to match the rich, rusty pink-red of her jeans.

  Over Sarah’s shoulder, through the throng of people chatting in the hall, I can see Cherish in the kitchen, throwing back her head and blasting the drooling fan club of boys circling her with a throaty, dirty laugh.

  “Megan, you’re supposed to be staying at Pamela’s. That’s what you promised Mum and Dad!” Sarah snaps at me, raising her voice now that an extra loud Limp Bizkit track’s just come on.

  “Yeah? Well, I remember you promising that you’d look after the house while they’re away. So, what if I phone Mum at Auntie Kelly’s right now and tell her you’ve invited most of the school round to ours for a party her and Dad know nothing about?!” I answer my sister back. “Mind you, I don’t even need to tell her you’re having a party – she’ll hear it loud and clear down the phone!”

  Sarah looks like she wants to slap me, but I get the feeling that that’s not just ‘cause I’m cramping her style by turning up here at the party I’m not meant to know about, never mind be invited to. It’s also because I’m helping Mr Fisher out. It’s because I’ve been at the last two rehearsals – on Thursday night and all day today – and she likes that not one little bit. You should have seen her face when I announced over tea on Monday night that I was going to be Mr Fisher’s runner. While Mum and Dad were oohing and aahing in my direction (makes a change), Sarah stayed resolutely silent and stared down at the plate in front of her as if her half-eaten lasagne was hypnotising her or something.

  For a girl who gets everything she wants, no questions asked, you’d think she could be generous enough to wish me well just once. But that isn’t the way Sarah operates; she likes having the no-hoper sister – it makes her all the more diamond-bright by comparison.

  Anyway, maybe it’s true, what I thought before – about her having a thing for Mr Fisher. Up close, it certainly looked like I might be right. At Thursday’s rehearsals, when I was up on the gantry giving Alex (the guy doing the lights), some feedback from Mr Fisher, I got a bird’s-eye view of what was going on. As the band – still with no name – ran through their number, Sarah didn’t take her eyes off Mr Fisher, who was sitting out front in the first row of the school hall. And as for posing, you’ve honestly never seen anything like it. Yeah, so Cherish and Angel were giving it big licks, doing this coordinated hip wiggle dance in between their backing vocals, but Sarah really thought she was something. She deliberately set her mike stand low, so that when she joined in with Cherish and Angel, she sang with her chin tilted down and her eyes raised, all Bambi-cutesy. Idly, I wondered if – like the rest of the male population of the world – Mr Fisher was about to fall under her spell and enrol in the Cult of Sarah, but no. I had to hide my giggles behind my clipboard when Mr Fisher bounded on stage at the end of the run-through and immediately grappled Sarah’s mike up to the same level as Cherish and Angel’s, telling my sister matter-of-factly that she’d find this new height much more comfortable. Great! A man with a mind of his own, resisting being suckered by Sarah.

  Speaking of guys who are suckered by Sarah, I hung around on the darkened gantry for longer than I needed to, just for the luxury of one long, unseen, uninterrupted look at Conor. He stood virtually motionless as he belted out lead vocals, with only a flick of the head or the tap of one desert boot toe on the stage as he kept time. One skinny arm cradled the neck of his bass, while the other stayed practically straight, picking out the deep, reverberating bassline in time with Salman’s drumming in the background. Alex, the lighting guy, had the whole of the stage bathed in staccato blasts of red and green, but the one yellow spotlight on Conor was constant, making his fair hair seem blonder, sun-kissed glints of gold darting as he did his head flick thing, tantalising shimmers of light catching on the mysterious, thin chain around his neck.

  But that was then and this is now.

  “And how exactly did you find out about the party?” Sarah shrieks after me as I think better of leaving my bag in the hall and stomp up the stairs, weaving between can-holding, chattering couples, towards my own room.

  “I heard about it at rehearsal this afternoon,” I tell her over my shoulder, almost tasting how much fun it’s going to be to say the next bit. “Conor told me.”

  Oh yes! Just as I expected. Her face falls and it’s as if I’ve punched her in the stomach. I raise my hand from the banister and give her a cheeky wave of triumph, which immediately makes her purse her lips and turn away. Well, it doesn’t hurt to let her catch a glimpse of my wrist while I’m doing that. It is the wrist with the worst scars, and just in case she feels like getting on her high horse with me about being here, it’s time she had a reminder of what I’ve been through – and whose fault that was. Maybe Sarah didn’t hold the actual knife, but the scars are all her work, sure as night follows day, sure as guys like Conor never fall for girls like me…

  More’s the pity.

  There’re a couple of girls hovering outside the bathroom, hammering on the door and asking if someone called Ellie is all right in there. Evidentally, she’s not, as the sound of barfing makes pretty obvious. Bustling past them into my own room, I’m relieved about two things: first, that there’s no one loitering in here – barfing or otherwise. Sarah seems to have made it the spill-over space from the oversubscribed coat rack downstairs, and that I can just about handle. The second thing I’m relieved about, I think to myself as I brush on some black mascara in the mirror, is that I didn’t invite Pamela along with me tonight. With a bit more make-up on I can look passable at this party, but with Pamela in tow – gawping wide-eyed at the drinking, the smoking and the barfing that seems to be going on – it would have been a dead give-away that I’m the uncool little sister. (Not that I care too much – there’s only one person here that I’m interested in impressing.)

  And it’s not just the cool/uncool factor of having Pamela around either – like I say, she’s gone funny on me this week, and when I think about it more it’s been ever since I told her that Mr Fisher asked me to help him out, so staying over at hers wasn’t exactly something I was wildly looking forward to. (Although it took ages to get away tonight; her mum insisted I had tea with them at least, and then forced me to wait for ever for Pamela’s dad to drive me over here.)

  Great, isn’t it? I can’t even rely on my best friend to be chuffed for me, to be pleased that for once something’s going right for me, without jealousy clouding everything. (At least that’s what I think her problem is.) And another thing: I know for a fact that she holds me personally responsible for scaring Tariq off. As if…I thought I was doing her – and him – a favour by having a quiet little word in his ear last Tuesday; thought it would help speed things up a bit in the romance department. Wrong. Instead, he went silent on her – well, more silent than ever – letting her text messages drift unanswered in cyberspace, acting like he was fascinated by the dinner hall curtains whenever we’ve seen him since. What’s that phrase? Shoot the messenger. Yeah, that’s it. I mean, it’s not my fault that Tariq’s blown cold, just like it isn’t my fault that Mr Fisher chose me to help him out, or that Conor spilled Sarah’s little secret to me about the party tonight. But from the dirty looks I’ve had from my so-called best friend and my stupid sister lately, you’d think I was the bad guy.

  Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not the bad guy, and if I can, I’m going to have as good a time as you can when you’re at a party you not only haven’t been invited to but aren’t remotely welcome at either.

  I tuck my conditioner-resistant frizz of hair behind my ears and head out on to the first floor landing, where there’s now no sign of Ellie the Puker or her friends (though I’m not about to check out what state the bathroom’s in right now). I put my hand on the banister, take a deep breath and get ready to head downstairs when I hear a sound, a sound that makes the hairs on my neck prickle
with embarrassment – and it’s coming from Sarah’s room.

  I’ve never heard anyone have sex before.

  In the movies, yeah – of course there’s always plenty of rolling-around-in-crisp-white-sheets action going on, with accompanying moans and groans of passion. But this – this has to be the real thing, right? And I don’t know whether to be shocked or get the giggles. No, actually, I’m shocked: I dart away from the sliver of open door I’m peeking through as if my eyeball’s just been seared by a blowtorch. That…that’s definitely Angel in there, doing something X-rated with someone I can’t make out because it’s too dark. God, I kind of wish Pamela was here now, so I could have someone to gasp over this with.

  I back away quickly, feeling dirty and soiled, even though I’m not the one doing anything to be ashamed of. You know, I’d never admit it to my sister but I’ve always been in total awe of her mates, but what Angel is getting up to in there is so seedy, fumbling away half-undressed in a room where anyone could walk in on her, even if they’re only just stumbling around in search of the loo. What happened to stupidly gorgeous, to super-cool?

  God, Angel’s as ordinary and dumb as the rest of us. And what she’s up to right now – I can’t think of anything more nasty and less sexy…

  Unless it’s Sarah doing the same thing.

  Near enough.

  Well, from where I’m now standing at the top of the stairs, it looks like Sarah’s flirting for Britain down there in the living room doorway; her lacy black top is slipping off one shoulder, her obviously braless boobs are jiggling under the thin material as she laughs. Hey, maybe she’s planning on following in Angel’s footsteps any time now…

  Wonder what Conor would think if he could see what she was up to with this guy? I muse, hunkering down on the top step of the staircase, receding into the shadows and studying what exactly my sister’s up to.

  And I’m particularly intrigued by what Conor would make of it, since the guy presently drooling over Sarah’s mating display isn’t him.