by Holly Webb
At least she seemed to have made it up with Ms Driver. For their next tap class, on Thursday, she made sure she was perfectly dressed and followed all the instructions as carefully as she could. No silly mistakes. Ms Driver actually told her that her footwork was very neat and gave her a huge smile when she completed a routine perfectly. So that was good. Chloe might like being a bit cheeky in morning classes, but she loved tap and she didn’t want the classes spoilt by a teacher who couldn’t stand her.
Ballet was great too. Miss Jasper’s methods were different from her old ballet school but she was a really good teacher. Chloe felt so supple and stretched out after her class that she just wanted to lie down on the changing-room floor and have a nap.
By the weekend, Chloe was so tired that she felt like spending the whole two days in bed. She’d had no idea what hard work stage school would be. Lying in bed late on Sunday morning, gazing at her Chicago poster (she was definitely going to be in that one day!), Chloe wondered if it would get any easier. It wasn’t that she wished she was at the local secondary school, like Sophie – no way! But… Oh, she didn’t know what… She supposed she’d had this fairy-tale idea that if only she could get into Shine, everything would be happy ever after. And it just wasn’t quite working out like that.
Dashing through the corridors to French the next Tuesday, she saw Mr Townsend, their history teacher, talking quietly to someone. Obviously he had no idea who was behind him.
“Year Seven are a nightmare, aren’t they? I wouldn’t have thought they could get worse than last year’s lot, but they’ve managed it. That red-haired girl, Chloe. She’s got half the class thinking she’s hilarious, and she just doesn’t shut up. It only takes the one.” He sighed.
“Oh, I know.” The dark-haired woman, their French teacher Ms LeBrun, grimaced. “You normally hope they might behave for at least the first couple of weeks – and I’ve got a double with them.” Her French accent was very pretty, but Chloe was too furious to appreciate it. She hadn’t even done anything in history lessons, just told Carmen and Ella a couple of jokes. How unfair was that?
Needless to say, Chloe was not at her best in French. She was seething. Once in the classroom, she gazed at the board, not seeing it at all. If that was what the Shine staff thought of her, then fine! She would really give them something to think about.
“Chloe!” Ms LeBrun’s soft voice had an edge to it now. “Listen, please! Quel âge as-tu?” Chloe gaped at her. She had absolutely no idea what the French teacher was talking about. “Onze!” Sam hissed at her out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s onze for eleven. Go on!”
Unfortunately, since Chloe hadn’t heard a word Ms LeBrun had said since the start of the lesson, she didn’t even understand what Sam was trying to tell her. On what? She just blinked at the teacher, looking confused.
“Fine. Chloe, you’ll be doing extra homework, see me about it at the end. Sam, as you seem able to tell Chloe what she ought to be saying, perhaps you’d like to answer instead.”
Sam coughed, looking embarrassed. “Er, j’ai onze ans.”
At the end of the class, Chloe slunk sulkily up to Ms LeBrun’s desk. She knew it was her own fault for not listening, but it didn’t make it any easier. Yet another telling off, plus a whole extra exercise to do from their textbook, didn’t make her feel like behaving at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. She felt more like she was going to explode. She had Carmen and Ella, and a couple of the other girls from her class, choking on their lunch with her imitation of Ms LeBrun forgetting how to speak English because she was so furious with Chloe. She was still bubbling over in ballet, and for once, the exercises at the barre didn’t have their usual magic effect.
Miss Jasper had arranged them at the barre so Bethany was behind Chloe, and Carmen and Ella were at the other end of the line. But Chloe just had to have someone as an audience, so Bethany would have to do. Miss Jasper was watching the girls at the other end as they did their pliés, trying to get Lily to bend deeper. Chloe started to exaggerate her movements, waggling her bottom like a duck as she sank into the bend. She heard a stifled snigger from behind her and grinned to herself. Bethany had seen. As she came up again she twitched her neck like a bird pecking – and then she did it all again, adding a little flap with the hand that wasn’t on the barre, turning out her feet, making a tiny little hissy quack noise. By the fourth time, Bethany just couldn’t cope. She burst out laughing and Miss Jasper turned round sharply – or as sharply as their super-graceful ballet teacher ever moved.
“Who was that? Bethany! What’s so funny about pliés? You girls are supposed to be concentrating!” Chloe sneaked a quick look over her shoulder. Bethany was scarlet and she glared back at her. Chloe widened her eyes apologetically. She’d meant to make Bethany laugh, but she hadn’t really thought that she’d get into trouble. She wondered if she ought to tell Miss Jasper that it was her fault.
“I’m sorry,” Bethany whispered. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”
“Then stop disrupting my class. Girls! Did I tell the rest of you to stop?”
Everyone had been peering round to see what was going on and now they suddenly snapped back into their positions, trying to look as though they’d never moved.
“And one! And two!” Miss Jasper sounded so annoyed and Chloe’s silly mood vanished. Poor Bethany!
At the end of the class, Bethany shot out of the studio as soon as it was obvious that Miss Jasper wasn’t going to have another go about her laughing. Chloe raced after her, still struggling with her fleece.
Bethany was in the changing room, slamming her locker door and looking really cross. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to get you into trouble,” Chloe panted.
“Yeah, right! Of course you did. You made me laugh on purpose!” Bethany was practically spitting.
“Well, yeah, I meant to make you laugh, but I didn’t know she’d have a go at you! I really am sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry or not! You totally spoilt that class for me and now she’s going to be watching me like a hawk for ages. Why do you have to be so stupid and … and childish, Chloe? Why can’t you just grow up?”
Chloe frowned. “Hey, it was only a joke. Don’t take it so seriously!”
“She has to take it seriously, stupid. She was the one who got into trouble!” The rest of the class were back now and Sara was looking almost as angry as her friend. “I didn’t notice you telling Miss Jasper it was all your fault!”
“Mind your own business!” Chloe snapped.
“Bethany’s my friend, so it is my business – which you might understand if you had any real friends, Chloe, instead of just an audience all the time.”
Chloe gasped. Was that really what they all thought of her? She looked quickly round the group of girls and saw that quite a few of them were nodding. Carmen and Ella caught her eye, and looked away quickly. Chloe could feel the tears welling up, but she wasn’t going to give Bethany and Sara the satisfaction of knowing they’d made her cry.
“You think I’m childish! If you weren’t such a total baby, you’d know how to take a joke,” she snarled at Bethany. Then she stalked across the changing room to grab her stuff for a shower. She didn’t care if she was late for their drama improvisation. She needed some alone-time.
Chloe was far too proud to admit that Bethany and Sara’s comments had got to her – to anyone but herself, that is. The looks on the other girls’ faces had suddenly made her realize that she was wasting the best opportunity she’d ever been given. The odd joke every so often was OK – she wasn’t aiming to be a saint. But so far, she’d got totally on the wrong side of her form tutor and several of the other academic staff. And it was bound to show up on her end-of-term report, she thought worriedly. She’d annoyed her tap teacher, and messed around in ballet and got someone else in trouble.
As she stomped grimly along to the tube station that afternoon, she tried to be honest with herself. Sam was nice but he and his mates liked her because she w
as “fun” – which meant she fooled around and livened up boring lessons for them. Would they even want to hang around with her if she behaved? She wasn’t sure and it was really embarrassing to think like that about herself. As if she had to do tricks all the time to be noticed, like a performing dog! She was pretty sure Carmen and Ella did like her. In fact, might they like her even more if she wasn’t trying to impress everyone the whole time? They were so sensible and down to earth.
She felt her nose start to run again – just her luck to be someone who couldn’t cry romantically – and she sniffed furiously. While she was being honest, she might as well do it properly and admit that she was really jealous of Bethany, Lily and Sara. She so wished she had someone who’d stick up for her like Sara had for Bethany that afternoon. They were always together and they seemed to have fun without having to try so hard.
By the time she opened her front door, Chloe felt exhausted with the double effort of thinking and trying not to cry. She dropped her bag in the hall and trailed into the kitchen. Her mum only worked part-time, so she was around when Chloe got home from school. Chloe had been saying for ages that she was perfectly capable of making her own tea, but for once she was really glad her mum was there. She was cooking and called out without looking round.
“Hi, sweetheart, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Chloe nodded and then realized her mum couldn’t see her. She wandered over to lean against the counter and her mum smiled round at her. “Good day?”
Chloe gave a funny little laugh and then started to cry. She couldn’t help it. She put her arms round her mum’s waist and gave her a hug.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” Chloe’s mum abandoned her pasta sauce to hug Chloe back.
“Nothing. I just had a really horrible day. Had a fight with somebody,” Chloe snuffled into her mum’s sweater.
“Oh, Chlo, everyone has days like that sometimes. Do you think you can make it up?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter though, l know what I’m going to do.” This was true. Chloe had worked out a plan. It wasn’t something she was exactly looking forward to, but the new-look Chloe Ford would be going back to Shine the next day.
Everyone noticed that Chloe was quieter than usual the next morning. She sat with Carmen and Ella, which was what she normally did, but she didn’t giggle and chat her way through double science. She just listened, even though Mrs Taylor was droning on and on about different ways heat could move through substances – or something like that. Halfway through, Sam chucked a note across one of the benches at her, but it missed. Even though she could have pretended to drop a pen or something to get it, she just gave him an apologetic look and went back to gazing at the board.
At lunch she disappeared to the cafeteria before the others had got their stuff together, bought a sandwich and then set off down a little staircase by the drama studios to put her plan into action. Shine had loads of practice rooms in the basement of all sizes. They were meant for music practice and the outside staff who came to teach extra music lessons used them. Sometimes groups of students would rehearse in them. But basically anyone who wanted could use them and hardly anyone bothered with the booking system. You just turned up and looked for one that was free.
Armed with a book of songs from the musicals that she’d got from the library at morning break, Chloe sneaked along the corridor. She peered through the glass panels, and eventually found a cubbyhole with a piano and just about enough room to open the door and squeeze in. It was perfect. The best thing was that although she was keen on singing, she hadn’t exactly been up for extra work before now, so no one was likely to look for her here.
She heaved a sigh of relief and settled herself in front of the piano, flicking through the book for something she felt like. Then she giggled. “My Favourite Things” from The Sound of Music. That was about right! Thinking about her favourite things – glitter lipgloss and chocolate buttons – would definitely cheer her up right now, even if warm woollen mittens didn’t really do it for her.
Chloe wasn’t brilliant at the piano, but she knew enough to pick out a tune she wanted to sing and it was something she often did on her keyboard at home. She practised the voice exercises they’d been doing in singing too. She knew she really needed to work on her projection, especially if she wanted to be in musicals someday. Power was really important. She was actually surprised how quickly the lunch break went and she had to cram in her sandwich at the last minute.
People had noticed she wasn’t around though. Sam tackled her about it at afternoon registration.
“Hey, where were you? I looked for you at lunch. Tom and Jake were having a spaghetti fight, you missed it.”
Chloe dithered. She couldn’t tell Sam that he was a bad influence and she was avoiding him. It would make her sound a bit pathetic, and anyway, she still really liked him – she just didn’t want to be hanging round with his mates getting into trouble. Although she did wish she’d seen Tom and Jake covered in spaghetti.
“Extra music practice,” she said slowly, hoping that it sounded like something official, rather than hiding in a music room on her own.
“Oh, OK.” Sam shrugged.
Chloe breathed a sigh of relief. She seemed to have got away with it. But Carmen and Ella were giving her a scarily identical thoughtful look, and as Sam wandered back to his mates across the classroom, Ella asked, “Since when do you have extra practice? I mean, we’ve been having all those extra lunchtime tap classes with Ms Driver, but you’re not behind in anything.”
“Um. My mum wants me to keep up with piano, that’s all,” Chloe muttered. It was actually true – Chloe’s mum was always saying she ought to have more lessons. She wished she could tell Carmen and Ella what was really going on, but she was still feeling fragile after the fight yesterday. She didn’t know the twins well enough to admit that she was feeling friendless and lonely, and she was spending all her lunchtimes on her own. She had a horrible feeling they’d just think her big decision to be “good” was funny.
The times for the next set of LAMDA acting exams were announced on Monday. Everyone at school had known they were coming up, but knowing exactly when they were happening threw all the candidates into a panic. External exams like LAMDA were a really serious thing at Shine and everyone was expected to do well. None of the Year Sevens were entering this first term, but suddenly everywhere they went was full of older students rehearsing and stressing and generally being a total pain.
It got worse all week, until even Chloe’s favourite tiny little practice room got nicked on the Friday. Chloe was happily playing around with a couple of songs from West Side Story, when a couple of Year Nines barged in.
“What are you doing in here?” one of the girls asked Chloe, as though she’d just found a small bug in her lunch.
Chloe had been mid-song and she wasn’t happy about being interrupted. Besides, she knew no one else had booked the room. “Duh, practising,” she snapped. “It is a practice room.”
“Well, get out. We need to be in here,” the older girl ordered.
Chloe swung round on the piano stool and folded her arms. “Why should I? You didn’t book the room, there’s no name on the door. I’ve got just as much right to be here as you.”
“We’ve got exams,” the other girl started to explain, in a more friendly sort of way. “We really need to practise.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” muttered Chloe. “Not sure it’s worth you bothering though.” She grabbed her music and stomped out, seething.
She wasn’t the only one. Carmen and Ella had been practising tap in one of the other rooms. They were desperate to catch up with the rest of the class and they were furious at being chucked out too. They greeted Chloe sympathetically as she stormed into their form room and the three of them spent the rest of lunch moaning about uppity seniors.
“Somebody ought to teach them they don’t own the school,” Chloe grumbled as they all walked into the studio for their drama class.
“No, they just say it’s a very important time, and so on, and so on,” complained Chloe loudly. “It’s so unfair. We should do something ourselves to pay them back.”
“That sounds very dramatic, Chloe,” their acting teacher commented as he walked in. “Hope you’re not talking about anyone in the staff room.”
“Mr Lessing, everyone keeps chucking us out of the practice rooms,” Ella complained.
“Oh, I see. Well, the thing is, with the exams coming up, it’s a very important time for some of the older students right now…” Mr Lessing said vaguely. He was getting stuff out of his bag, so he didn’t see the look Carmen, Ella and Chloe exchanged – which was probably just as well. He finally managed to find what he’d been rooting about in his bag for and turned back round flourishing it, by which time they were more interested in why he was waving an umbrella about like a lunatic than moaning about practice rooms.
“This is today’s theme!” he announced dramatically.
“An umbrella?” It was Jake, Sam’s friend, and he sounded as though he thought Mr Lessing might have lost it entirely.
“Yes, well spotted, Jake. Can’t get anything past you, can I? Spread yourselves out round the room. Today’s lesson is pass the umbrella.” Mr Lessing was grinning at them all. “Not as stupid as it sounds. I want to see as many different ways to pass the umbrella as you can think of. Are you going to be Gene Kelly singing in the rain –” here he performed a short solo dance number, which was dreadful – “you remember he gives the umbrella to a passer-by? Or are you going to be a spy stabbing someone with the poisoned tip? You can talk, mime, whatever you want and the umbrella doesn’t always have to be an umbrella, if you see what I mean. I want to see what you come up with and I’m just going to watch.”
