The Real Rebecca

by Anna Carey

  THURSDAY

  School was okay today. Karen Rodgers wasn’t in, so there were no snide remarks about Wildfire, and Vanessa didn’t do anything but give me meaningful looks and nods, as though we were members of the same secret cult. However, I amfairly sure that will all change as soon as someone in the class gets hold of the magazine that appeared today. I have now seen it and, although there are no photographs of me and Rachel, Mum says things like, ‘I’d never have written this book if it weren’t for my two girls,’ and ‘They’re an inspiration to me – even if they don’t know it.’ There’s also a huge photo ofMumsitting at a table covered in cakes in a fancy hotel, and I bet that will really convince Vanessa that Mum is rich and famous, which is the last thing I need.

  FRIDAY

  Everyone knows about the gig! It was stupid Ellie’s fault. I’m half tempted to tell everyone her name is really Galadriel. She deserves it. Our class was sitting around at lunchtime chatting in a big group (I was feeling quite nervous in case Karen Rodgers suddenly produced a copy of that magazine but no one seems to have seen it yet, thank GOD). Emma was telling us about the awful bridesmaid dress she’s getting for her big sister’s wedding.

  ‘I can’t even sit properly in it,’ she said. ‘It’s like a cage. It’s got metal bits in it to hold it up. And it’s meant to, like, push my chest up, but there’s not really enough to push so it just looks weird.’

  ‘Speaking of weird dresses,’ said Ellie, ‘what are you three wearing to the Battle of the Bands next week?’

  Cass, Alice and I all froze and stared at her.

  ‘What battle of the bands?’ said Jessie.

  ‘Oops,’ said Ellie, looking guilty. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Cass.

  ‘Yeah, we’re not even sure whether we’re doing it or not,’ said Alice.

  ‘Come on, tell us!’ said Jessie. ‘Are you playing a concert, then? Where is it on?’

  And then everyone kept asking about it and in the end we cracked and told them it was next week. It’s not like they wouldn’t have been able to find out anyway. So now it seems like the entire class are going to be there. Including, of course, my number one fan, who emerged from behind the lockers when I was on my way to the first class after lunch.

  ‘I can’t wait for your concert,’ said Vanessa.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Um, you know I’m still not going to your party, right?’

  ‘We’ll talk about that later,’ she said, in a very grown-up way. ‘I’ve got loads to do.’

  As she turned to go, she took out her fancy phone and started to make a call.

  ‘Hi, Robbie?’ she said, sounding about thirty-five. ‘Vanessa Finn here. Yeah, that’s right.’ Then she wandered off. I wish I could afford to make random phone calls during school hours, although now I come to think of it, who would I ring besides my parents? All my friends are in school too.

  On the plus side, I did see Paperboy tonight. But only for a second. After last week’s early visit I was on high alert practically from the moment I got home. I didn’t even go upstairs for some drumming practice, even though I wanted to. And then, in the end, he just called at his usual time. I still feel all nervous and fluttery whenever I answer the door to him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. I wish I could think of something amazing and funny to say to him every week. I try and think of things in advance, but nothing ever really comes to mind. Maybe there just aren’t that many amazing, funny ways to greet someone who’s just called to your house to collect newspaper money.

  ‘So,’ said Paperboy. ‘Are you definitely going in for the Battle of the Bands?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said. ‘Thanks for telling me about it.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said. ‘Like I said, it should be a good laugh. Not that people will be laughing at you, obviously.’

  ‘Well, I hope not,’ I said.

  ‘They might be laughing at Johnny’s band, though,’ said Paperboy. ‘They’ve been, um, experimenting with hip hop recently. Results are mixed. Anyway, I hate to ask, but can I get some money from you?’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ I said, and ran back into the kitchen to get it. Mum gave me what I can only describe as a patronising grimace, but which I’m sure she thought was a wise smile.

  ‘Paper money?’ she said, holding out the coins. I took it off her and said nothing. I just glowered and stomped off. I’ve got very good at glowering at her in recent weeks.

  Paperboy received his tribute.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘And good luck! Your drumming sounded great last week, by the way.’

  And he strolled off before I could say anything.

  I didn’t bother ringing Alice or Cass to analyse everything. I just lay on my bed and thought about it. I wonder what I used to think about before I had Paperboy and the band to occupy me? I seem to think about them more than almost everything else these days. Well, apart from Mum’s constant attempts to humiliate me. And global warming. And Vanessa.

  Hmmm. I suppose I do think about a lot of things. But most of them seem to be kind of awful.

  SATURDAY

  Today we went shopping for clothes to wear on stage. Our parents have acknowledged that our very first gig is a special occasion and gave us each some cash, which sounds brilliant, except for the fact that we kept fighting over what to wear. Cass is still obsessed with our stage show.

  ‘We need to look like a band,’ she said when we met on Grafton Street.

  ‘I think it’s going to be fairly obvious we’re a band,’ said Alice. ‘Seeing as we’ll be standing on a stage holding instruments.’

  ‘Or sitting behind them,’ I reminded her.

  Cass sighed. ‘I mean we’ve got to have a look. A band look.’

  ‘We’re not wearing matching outfits, Cass,’ I said. ‘We’ll just look like a terrible girl band then.’

  ‘Yes, the last thing we need is Karen Rodgers calling us Wildfire,’ said Alice.

  ‘I don’t mean matching outfits,’ said Cass. ‘I mean … we’ve got to look like a team. Like, we can’t just each wear something completely different.’

  ‘Well, we wear quite similar clothes anyway,’ said Alice, which is true. We do always like the same sort of things. ‘Look, I think we should just wear clothes we like. We’ll look cool then, but not as though we’re trying too hard.’

  This was true, of course, but the more I thought about it, though, the more I agreed with Cass. I did like the idea of us looking like a team. Or a gang.

  ‘Why don’t we all wear, say, dresses? Or all wear jeans and tops and Converse?’ I said. ‘That way we’ll be linked, fashion-wise, but we won’t all look the same.’

  Everyone agreed to this inspired plan. But of course, then we had to decide what our common denominator, as they say in maths, was going to be. Cass thought dresses. Alice thought jeans. I should have been the casting vote, but I couldn’t decide. We ended up practically shrieking at each other in the middle of Exchequer Street. Finally Cass said, ‘Look, how many people do you think are going to be there in jeans? Probably all of them! If we’re in dresses we’ll stand out. And it’s not like we don’t wear dresses and skirts sometimes anyway.’

  She had a point, as I said to Alice.

  ‘I just don’t want us to look as if we’re trying too hard,’ said Alice. ‘Or being too girly.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being girly, if you feel like it,’ said Cass. ‘We’ll show them that girls can play instruments no matter what they’re wearing.’

  We all looked at each other.

  ‘Okay,’ said Alice. ‘Dresses it is. But not, like, ball dresses or anything.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Cass. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying on frocks. In the end I got a red one with a white collar and buttons down the front, Cass got a navy one with red flowers, and Alice got a pale blue one with tiny cream dots all over. When our epic shop was over we went back to Cass’s house and tr
ied them on. We put on some make-up too. If we’d been in my house I could have begged Rachel to lend us some of hers. Nearly all her stuff is really posh, like Benefit and Nars and Laura Mercier, because she asks for it for her birthday. This is why she hides it away somewhere mysterious in her room so I can’t get at it (although I still manage to steal – I mean borrow – some of it sometimes when she leaves it lying around the bathroom There is a blusher with a very rude name that makes me look all glowy. Sadly we didn’t have any of that today but even our own stuff made us look pretty good. I used my mineral powder to stop my nose looking shiny and put on some smoky dark-grey eye-liner and pinkynude lip gloss. Then we stood in front of the mirror in Cass’s parents’ room to see what we looked like all dressed up together. Unfortunately the mirror wasn’t big enough for us to see each other at the same unless we went to the other side of the room, and then you couldn’t see most of our legs because the bed was in the way.

  ‘We can see enough,’ said Cass. ‘So …’

  ‘We look like a band,’ said Alice. She took out her phone and took a photo of us. She has a posh phone that she got for her birthday and it’s much better than the tiny little yokes me and Cass have. It’s got a really good camera and the screen is nice and big so you can see photos on it properly. We all huddled around her and looked at it. Even on the little screen, we looked cooler than usual.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘We do look like a band.’

  Because we did.

  ‘Well, at least we don’t clash with each other,’ said Cass.

  SUNDAY

  Second last band practice before the big day. We’re going to have a final one during the week.

  ‘Maybe that should be our dress rehearsal,’ said Cass, who really seems to think we’re getting ready for some sort of huge superstar arena spectacular instead of an under-eighteens Battle of the Bands.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Alice. ‘We don’t need a dress rehearsal. We’re not wearing costumes and we don’t have a set.’

  ‘Maybe we should try playing in our new outfits,’ said Cass. ‘Just to get a feel for them.’

  ‘You can wear yours if you like,’ I said. ‘But I’m saving mine until next Saturday. What if, I dunno, we spill something on them?’

  ‘Like what?’ said Cass.

  ‘Well, I don’t know! Tea! Or orange juice! Anything! Or I could trip over a lead and fall flat on my face and rip a hole in it.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ said Cass. ‘It’s never happened before.’

  ‘It might,’ I said. ‘Why are you making such a fuss?’

  ‘I just want to recreate what it’ll be like on stage!’ cried Cass.

  ‘Well, we can’t do that,’ said Alice. ‘Unless you also bring along a huge crowd, including half our class. Is that what you want to do?’

  ‘Well, excuse me for actually caring about this stupid band!’ said Cass. She looked as though she were about to burst into tears.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Um,’ said Alice. ‘I think we’re all getting a bit … worked up.’ She looked around. Cass was leaning on her keyboard, and I was fiddling around with my drumsticks. None of us was looking directly at each other.

  ‘I know we’re all a bit stressed,’ said Alice. ‘But nothing’s worth fighting over. Is it?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ mumbled Cass.

  ‘Let’s just play the Kinks’ song again,’ said Alice. ‘Count us in, Bex.’

  And I tapped my sticks together and cried, ‘One, two, three, four!’ and we all launched into the song. It’s hard to feel stressed or cross when you’re all bashing away at your instruments. I think we all felt a bit better when the song was over. The rest of the practice went fairly well. We made a few mistakes, but most of the time it sounds okay.

  ‘You know,’ said Cass, as we got into her mum’s car, ‘there’s a chance we won’t actually make fools of ourselves after all.’

  I think she might actually be right.

  MONDAY

  How come every time something good happens – like us finding our stage outfits and having a good practice – something crap has to happen as well? Alice says this is the way of the universe and that we just have to accept the good and the bad in life, but I was not in the mood for her hippy wisdom today. As I feared, someone in school saw the magazine interview and now both Karen Rodgers and Vanessa are having a field day. Karen is the worst, of course. She says all these things like we’re friends and she’s having a hilarious joke but everyone knows that she’s just being mean.

  ‘I’m really looking forward to Wildfire’s concert on Saturday,’ she said. ‘I see your mum’s been talking to that magazine about what an inspiration you are, Rebecca. I knew she was just writing about your life.’

  I ignored her, and so did Cass and Alice. But one person came to my defence. Unfortunately, it was Vanessa.

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ she said to Karen. Which would have been quite cool if she hadn’t then said, ‘I saw the photos of your mum, Rebecca. Your house is fabulous! I thought you lived in, like, one of those tiny little kips near Calderwood Road but I was obviously wrong. Amazing. And I loved the cakes. We’re going to have loads of little cupcakes at the party, you know.’

  ‘That wasn’t our house,’ I said. ‘It was a hotel.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Vanessa.

  ‘I actually do live in one of those tiny little kips near Calderwood Road,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, well, that doesn’t matter,’ said Vanessa. ‘Your mum looked gorgeous, by the way.’

  ‘Um, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘So what’s the story with this concert thing you’re doing on Saturday?’ said Vanessa. ‘Everyone’s talking about it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a Battle of the Bands,’ I said. ‘For undereighteens. It’s not a big deal.’

  ‘Oh please,’ said Vanessa. ‘It sounds fabulous. It’s the Knitting Factory, right?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘But …’

  ‘Cool,’ said Vanessa. ‘Do you know what time you’re playing at?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It starts at three o’clock, but we won’t find out when we’re on until we’re there. But …’

  ‘Fabulous,’ said Vanessa. ‘Talk soon, yeah?’

  And she was gone.

  ‘She really is a very strange girl,’ said Cass. ‘I wonder will she actually turn up on Saturday?’

  ‘Well, it seems as though everyone else will,’ I said. ‘I bet they’re going to have a great laugh.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ said Alice. ‘I know you’re feeling a bit paranoid at the moment, but you do realise people are actually coming to cheer us on, right?’

  ‘Karen isn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, who cares about Karen?’ said Alice. ‘She’s just snotty to everyone and no one really likes her. But most people like you.’

  ‘Or at least they don’t dislike you,’ said Cass.

  ‘Thanks, Cass,’ I said.

  ‘Well, anyway, people are coming because they like all of us,’ said Alice. ‘More or less. And they want to see the band.’

  Which is definitely better than people coming along to laugh at us. Although it also puts us under pressure. But that’s probably good for us. I have to admit that I POSSIBLY wouldn’t have practised the drums so much recently if it weren’t for the Battle of the Bands. The Battle gave me something to aim for. And now I can actually play them. Well, kind of. No, I can really.

  TUESDAY

  Because I can’t stop thinking about band stuff, I am finding it very hard to concentrate in school. Mrs O’Reilly (no relation to my fictional nemesis Ruthie) was asking me a question about some old explorer for about ten minutes today and I didn’t hear her because I was staring at the window, wondering whether I should wear tights with my gig dress or risk bare legs.

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Miss Rafferty,’ she said. ‘You’re worse than ever recently.’

  I couldn’t argue (not that she’d ha
ve listened if I had) because alas it is true. It’s not as though I’m an incredibly hard worker at the best of times, but I really have been a bit slack about doing actual studying over the last few weeks. Still, how can I be expected to concentrate on ancient explorers and German verbs when I have to go on stage and play the drums in front of hundreds of strangers AND my entire class in just four days?

  And as if I wasn’t thinking about the gig too much anyway, Mrs Harrington has somehow heard about the Battle of the Bands (HOW? Surely Karen can’t have told her? Maybe she really is spying on Mum and by extension the entire family) and now she keeps making ‘hilarious’ comments about it.

  ‘Now we know where your mammy got her inspiration for Wildfire!’ she said with a simper.

  ‘Well, we’re a very different sort of band,’ I said. ‘We play our own instruments and we write our own songs.’ Which isn’t totally a lie. We wrote one of our songs. And we only have two.

  But Mrs Harrington didn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘I hope there’s no rivalry in the band, though,’ she said. ‘Remember what happened to Ruthie and Wildfire!’

  How could I ever forget? They are hanging over me at all times. I never thought I’d miss those awful Irish dancing kids, but I do now.

  WEDNESDAY

  My parents have announced that they want to come to the Battle of the Bands. Of course, there is no way I will let this happen.

  ‘Oh, come on, Bex,’ said my dad. ‘It’s our baby daughter’s first gig! Of course we want to be there.’

  ‘You can’t come,’ I cried. ‘You’ll be the oldest people by about fifty years.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think that’s true,’ said Dad, ‘considering I’m only thirty-two years older than you.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘Anyway, the fact that you just referred to me as your “baby daughter” shows that you shouldn’t be allowed in. You’ll disgrace me! Again. And it’s not like you haven’t been doing that a lot recently.’