I opened my mouth. This time, what came out was a whisper, ‘Did you say Sam and Stella kissed? On the lips?’
Buzz opened her eyes wide and gave me a strange little smile. But instead of answering my question, she pointed behind me. As if we were all one weird conglomeration of a body, every head turned to follow her hand and see what she was pointing at. And there it was. Walking towards the seats were Sam and Stella. And they were definitely walking together. Sam looked embarrassed; he was scratching his ear. I knew the sign, even if no one else did. Stella, on the other hand, was triumphant, her head held high and her arms swinging confidently beside her.
No one said a word. We all just stared.
Stella broke the silence. ‘What are you guys talking about?’ And then she giggled and looked naughty. ‘Is it about our scandal?’ She put the word in air quotes and turned to smile at Sam, who was still scratching his ear, but in a sort of excited way. ‘It’s a secret, you know. No one should have told anyone else.’
‘Maybe we should have more scandals at school,’ said Buzz, looking at Ollie. I whirled my head around and glared at her.
‘We do not need scandals at school,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, Jessie,’ I said, seeing that her face had gone bright red, but she just put her hands over her eyes in even more embarrassment, now that everyone was looking at her.
I took a deep breath and took control of the situation. ‘It’s bell time. Jackson, aren’t you on duty?’
Jackson rang the bell and the group broke up as the whole school started moving towards class. I headed back on my own. Around the corner of the classroom block, I found Sam. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back towards me.
‘Sam. What do you think you were doing?’ I whispered angrily to him. ‘Stella? I mean really? Are you crazy?’
‘Abby,’ he began, and he was looking right at me. Then something changed and he shrugged me off. ‘Just stay out of it, okay?’ He ran back to walk beside Stella and whispered something to her. My stomach felt sick, and then my feet felt wobbly, because Stella turned, looked and then walked right up to me.
She said in a loud whisper, ‘What’s your problem, Abby? You’ve always got to be telling everyone else what to do.’
‘I do not,’ I whispered back, but it wasn’t very strong.
‘You so do. You think all these people have to get your permission to do anything. You’re so annoying. Go find someone else to boss around. Not Sam.’
My mouth fell open for the second time that day. And this time, I had no power in my jaw to shut it again. She turned to go, heading down the path to the classroom again, but then thought the better of it and wheeled around to face me.
‘Oh, and I heard you got the main part for the choir night,’ she said sweetly. ‘Yay for you. Seriously, enjoy it, because no one else will.’
I froze to the path as she disappeared, chatting and talking to Sam. I could only move when I felt Jessie’s hand on my arm.
‘Come on, Abby. It’s going to be okay. Let’s go to class.’
Chapter 21
The day didn’t get better from there. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I seemed to have used all my brains up on the weekend’s exam, getting three words wrong on my spelling test and five sums wrong on my maths sheet. Mr Smee raised an eyebrow at me when I handed them in.
‘What’s happening, Abby?’ he said, but I hardly knew how to answer. What was happening? I had no idea. All I knew was that my friends had bailed on me without a good reason and without telling me, that Sam was being a total idiot, and that I hadn’t been invited to a party.
Not that I would have wanted to go. In fact, I would have definitely, 100 per cent, said no if I’d been invited.
But I still wanted to be invited.
Normally I got over a bad day by going down to the river or making myself pancakes after school. But even maple syrup every afternoon for four days straight didn’t make me feel good. Nothing was getting better. In fact, in the next few weeks, it just seemed to get worse.
Stella’s party set a trend and the next thing I realised was that some of the boys were hanging out a lot on the weekends, and inviting the girls along. Everyone seemed to know about it.
Everyone, except me.
‘Oh, you said your family was going to visit your grandma on Saturday,’ said Buzz the first week. Which was true.
‘I knew your dad doesn’t like you playing X-box all day, especially the shooting games,’ she said the next week. Also true.
‘We rang and rang and no one answered the phone,’ she said the third week. It could have been true, I guess. Maybe.
There was always a reason for not telling me. But it still felt terrible. What felt even worse was the fact that Sam hadn’t said a single word to me ever since that terrible kiss day. I kind of wanted to cry every time I thought about it, so in the end, I just didn’t think about it. I focused on ignoring Stella instead.
Also making me miserable was the fact that Francesca still had no news about the concert.
‘Have you heard anything?’ I pleaded. ‘Even a tiny something? Can you ask your friend again? Pleeeaaase?’
Francesca frowned at me after the fifth time I asked. I was now practically on my knees, begging.
‘I know it is slow,’ she said. ‘You have to be patient. Next week I go to see my friend. I will ask then.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,’ I said. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘You must learn to wait,’ she said, smiling. ‘You will be happier than all this jumping around.’
‘I just can’t!’ I said. ‘It makes me crazy.’
Actually, I did think I was going a bit crazy—feeling like I was constantly walking on glass, and sometimes birds flew around in my stomach. Plus, I wasn’t sleeping well. Dreams of auditions, scholarships, tests and always, right at the end, Stella kissing Sam, filled my nights. I woke up every morning with a jolt and went to school tired.
And then, I still had to practise singing. With Stella in the group.
For quite a few practices, I managed to ignore Stella and not talk to her at all. Of course, it meant that I wasn’t able to tell her how to sing the song properly, but I got to a point where I wasn’t even worrying about that anymore. It would come right by performance night, surely. And if it didn’t, at least I’d have my solo. Mrs Nickell and I had already started working on it together, and it was probably the only bright point in my whole school day. Singing still made me happy, even if it was only a short happiness, because I felt miserable every time I laid eyes on Stella or Sam or sometimes even Buzz, when she was with Stella, which was pretty much most of the day.
Choir night was only two weeks away, with only four more rehearsals. And the song was not even close to being good enough for me. Stella was still too loud, with no dynamics at all in her voice. It sounded boring, like she didn’t understand any of the feelings in the words at all. Even when we added some actions, nothing seemed to improve. It was only in the final practices, when Mrs Nickell managed to get off lunch duty and stayed in the room with us that I felt slightly more confident about Stella’s performance. The only thing that went badly wrong was Jessie standing on my foot once by accident.
‘I can never tell my lefts and rights when I have to take steps from the side to side,’ she mourned. ‘I’m so sorry, Abby!’
‘If that’s the worst thing that happens,’ I said, ‘we’ll be okay.’
‘Are you girls nervous?’ asked Mrs Nickell at our very last rehearsal. Stella shook her head firmly and Buzz said, ‘Not really.’
‘I know you are a little, Jessie,’ said Mrs Nickell kindly. You only had to look at poor Jessie’s face, which was nearly green—and had been for a week—to know that she wasn’t handling stage fright all that well. I would have laughed at her just like I’d done every single time we’d
ever sung together, except that for once, I was feeling nervous too.
Mum noticed it in the afternoon on the day of the performance.
‘You alright, Abby?’ she said. ‘That’s three pieces of chocolate cake in about ten minutes. I don’t think you’ve chewed once.’
I put my plate down guiltily and chewed my last bite deliberately.
‘Mmmfhgh,’ I said, pointing to my mouth. ‘I am chewing. See?’
‘Still, it seems unlike you to not want to talk while you’re eating as well. What’s the matter?’
I took a swig of water.
‘I dunno. I just feel weird. My arms and legs are a bit’—I searched for the right word, but could only come up with one that came close but still didn’t quite explain the cold, empty feeling in my bones—‘shaky?’
Mum put her own cup down. ‘Are you nervous?’ she said. Her eyebrows were up. ‘About tonight?’
I went to cut another piece of cake but Mum stopped my knife. She put the lid on the tin and put the whole thing back in the pantry. The shaky feeling reared again.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘A little.’
‘But you’ve never been nervous before, have you?’ she asked. ‘Not about singing?’
I dug into my backlog of memories.
‘Not really. Maybe it’s just because of the big audience,’ I said. ‘Can I at least have a glass of milk? I feel like I need something.’
Mum found a carton of milk in the fridge behind a bag of carrots and a bunch of celery and poured me a glass. ‘But what about the Show? That had a huge audience.’
I took a sip. ‘I don’t know. There’s just something different this time. It’s not like it’s harder. I think it’s just that I know so much more about singing now. Because of my lessons. I know all the things that you can get wrong.’
‘Well, don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, what could possibly go wrong? You’ll sound great like you always do. You’ve practised your solo, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Heaps.’
‘So, remain calm and you’ll be just fine. Just be yourself.’
Chapter 22
The shakes in my bones continued all the way through the afternoon and into dinner when, weirdly, I found that I couldn’t eat anything at all.
‘Too much cake?’ asked Mum.
I was still shaking in the car all the way to the performance. When we got there, though, I started to felt better. I left Mum and Dad in the tickets line and ran into the auditorium through the choir door, my eyes searching the groups of kids milling around in different coloured school uniforms. Where were Buzz and Jessie?
‘Jess!’ I shouted, when I spotted her blonde ponytail. She turned and waved, and I made my way through rows of plastic chairs to get to where she was standing with some of the boys. Ollie. Of course! I thought, rolling my eyes. But then I blinked. As I was getting closer, there seemed to be something different about her face. And then, when Ollie moved and I saw Buzz and Stella standing behind, I stopped still, caught between two rows of mustard-coloured chairs. I shifted my leg and hopped awkwardly towards my friends, nearly falling over and landing at Sam’s feet. He looked down at me helplessly and then looked at Stella, who ignored him, and focused on me.
‘Hi, Abby,’ she said, but her words came out in slow motion. At least, that’s how my ears heard it. A long, drawn out deep garbled version. ‘Hhaaaiiiii, Aaaaabbbbbbyyyy’. But the words weren’t even important. It was her face that was slowing my brain down. All I could see were her lips moving—lips that were covered in some kind of thick pink glossy mixture—even more than usual. And then she blinked—again in slo-mo—and all I was aware of was the thick black goo all over her eyelashes and the blue powder screaming out from her eyelids. I reached my hand up to rub my eyes but when I took it away, I nearly puked. Because all over Stella’s cheeks was a thick layer of orangey-pink blusher.
I glanced to the right. Jessie’s face also looked like she had decided to join clown school. And before I even bothered glancing to the left, to see what Buzz looked like, I knew what the answer would be.
Makeup.
‘You guys are wearing makeup,’ I said, scrambling to my feet. And then I kicked myself. Duh. Of course. How obvious.
Stella looked at Buzz sideways. ‘Um, yeah.’
I opened my mouth again. ‘We don’t wear makeup for choir nights. Smar ... I mean, we’ve never worn makeup when we sing.’
‘Well we should,’ said Buzz. Her voice was loud, even for an auditorium full of kids. ‘It’s a performance. Singers wear makeup for performances.’ She gave me a strong look.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Well, I’m not.’
Jessie pulled a small toiletries bag out of her pocket. ‘We’ve got some for you, Abby. In case you want to put it on.’ Her big blue eyes pleaded with me. ‘For the performance. So we all look the same.’
I put my hands up in front of me, like, No way. ‘I’m not touching that stuff. Even for the performance. Sorry.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stella make a face and turn away. I didn’t get to say anything because one of the choir teachers from the other school—the one that organised the songs and directed everything—was calling out names so that all the kids could take their seats in order.
When Buzz was called, my ears perked up. I’d hoped I’d get to sit next to either her or Jessie (preferably both), but Stella’s name followed hard behind. Jessie was put next to Ollie, a little further along the row, her face all smiles. Even with the stupid blusher on, I could tell her cheeks were pink with happiness. My friends were all seated. But I had to wait nearly to the end before I finally heard my name.
‘Abigail Smart,’ said the teacher. I picked myself up and walked to the seat they had allocated, resigned to the fact that I’d have to sit next to some random person from another school all night. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear the next name they called out.
‘Sam Carter.’
For a second my heart did a little hooray cartwheel but then it sat right down in the dust again. Sam and I weren’t speaking.
Oh well.
We sat carefully on the seats—I made sure I didn’t accidentally lean over and touch his arm or anything. He seemed as stiff and still as I’d ever seen him.
‘Are you nervous?’ I whispered, after all the parents had filled the hall, the lights had dimmed and the first notes of music were striking up.
‘I guess,’ he said. ‘I mean, yes.’ And I saw a tiny smile escape from the corners of his mouth. But then he looked away and closed his lips, and only opened them again to sing.
We sang six songs with the mass choir and by the end of the first one, I’d forgotten about the makeup and Sam and everything else that had been bothering me. The only thing that was important was the song, the music and the atmosphere. Even my nerves disappeared for a bit while we sang and clapped and snapped our fingers—just the way we’d rehearsed at school. And it was amazing. It had sounded pretty good at school, but here, in an auditorium with 250 kids all singing at once, it sounded incredible. Rich, deep and sweet.
When it came time for the group item with Stella, Buzz and Jessie, the four of us gathered in the space at the front of the hall. Mrs Nickell introduced us as the music began. My voice seemed wobbly in the first seconds, but I steadied myself, knowing Jessie would be looking to me to get rid of her nerves. If I could be calm, she would be fine. It always happened that way.
The song sounded quite good and our actions went surprisingly well—although every time I turned to the right or left, I had to ignore the flash of pink blush that was reflecting in the lights. When we finished and the music stopped, the applause was like a wave of sound. I looked to either side: Jessie was elated with the relief it was all over, Buzz was simpering and even Stella looked pleased. Only the solo to go, I thought, and a new wave of nerves shuddered th
rough me from my knees to my neck.
We sang a few more choir songs, watched a few other schools’ items and then it was time for the last two songs of the night—my solo, and a final mass choir piece.
‘We’re pleased to introduce to you tonight a little girl from a little school, who has a very big voice,’ said the director over the microphone. ‘Would you please welcome her, singing a beautiful solo, backed up by the mass choir. From Kangaroo Valley, it’s Abby Smart.’
I walked carefully to the front and found my place under the lights. The director motioned for all the children behind me to stand and then the room went quiet. I took in a deep breath and relaxed all the way down to my ankles, just like Francesca had taught me. And then the music started. And I began to sing.
All my nerves melted in the first three seconds. They didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was the song—the words, the rise and fall of the music, the melody, lilting and tripping. And my voice, carrying it along. I sang the first verse and stood back while the choir behind me sang the first chorus. I looked behind me and smiled at Jessie, and then when it was time, I came in again for the second verse, my voice soaring and diving through the air. On the highest note, I heard a gasp from the audience and my stomach tingled. I held the note just a little longer and I heard another bigger gasp. And then the whole audience drew in its breath, all at once, but it wasn’t because my singing was good.
It was because of something else entirely.
I screwed up my eyes so I could see beyond the lights. What was happening? It seemed incredible. Not one single person was looking at me. Not the dads. Not the mums. Not even the little kids, perched on their laps.
I kept singing, grimly and strained. Don’t stop! The show always continues! I thought, in Francesca’s accent. You must finish. But my voice was losing pitch and focus and then I muffed a word and then a line and for a second I almost had to sing ‘la la la’ instead. And that was when the music stopped.
I looked around wildly, trying to see what was going on. Was it my fault? Had I sung terribly? Why would a performance just stop mid-song?
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