by Grace Dent
My parents can’t believe how jovial I’ve been this week, ever since Blackwell Live started coming together. I’ve been smiling nonstop and chatting everyone’s legs off. I’ve been positive about life and the future. I’ve not mentioned the possibility of germ warfare once (I get a bit obsessed with stuff I see on the news sometimes). I’ve even been running out the door to Blackwell early some mornings because the LBD have tons of stuff to sort out. It wasn’t a conscious decision on my part to cheer up, but considering the LBD’s initial reasoning behind organizing Blackwell Live was to, ahem, perhaps “meet some boys” . . . and here, only weeks later, we seem to have a flood of men all wanting to chat to us and come to our houses, well, yeah, I suppose I am a bit chipper! I mean, we’ve even met the EZ Life Syndicate, who are from another school entirely! Yes, we’re now importing boys from other areas, for crying out loud! And okay, sure, we’ve had some hard times over the last days with Panama Bogwash and her Goblins, but I’ve managed to keep my chin up regardless.
“You’re on drugs, aren’t you?” announces my mother, throwing down a bowl of mush onto the kitchen table before me. I surmise this mess was Frosted Krispies when she poured them for me over an hour ago.
“What?” I say.
“You’re taking drugs,” she continues. “I can tell. I just can’t work out which drug. You won’t stop smiling.” Mum grabs my face and pulls down one eye bag. “See! Red-rimmed eyes. Drugs,” she says.
My mother must have taken the same medical degree as Panama Goodyear.
“Mother, could you at least clean your teeth before you get so close in the morning?” I splutter, shaking her off before she spies a spot she wants to squeeze while she’s there.
“I don’t believe this,” I squeak. “You’ve spent the last fourteen years badgering me to smile more and look enthusiastic, and now you’re giving me jip for smiling too much! You’re mad, you are. You’re a couple of chicken drumsticks short of a buffet, you are.”
“Pah, you are,” says Mum.
“No, lady. I think you’ll find you are,” I say.
(Since I’ve become a teenager, me and Mum’s arguments have taken a really profound turn.)
“Veronica, don’t call your mother mad,” shouts my father from another room.
“And he’s unhinged too,” I say, nodding toward Dad’s voice.
“Alas, I can’t argue with you there,” agrees Mum, wrinkling her nose in the direction of Dad. “You get your defective genes from his side of the family, but let’s keep your father out of this.”
Dad, knowing what was good for him, decides to stay silent in the living room with his tea and not attempt to argue his defense.
I thought, for about five minutes last night, that Mum and Dad might have ironed out this weird problem they’re having. When I got back from school, they were sitting in the kitchen together, talking quite civilly about pub business. Talking to each other, no less. Not telling me to say things to the other one. Just like they were friends, almost.
Well, this was until Dad mentioned that next year could be a good year to do the renovations to the Fantastic Voyage’s backyard. Dad’s had a bit of a dream to convert the back of the pub into a beer garden for about five years now, but it will cost about a squillion quid, according to builders.
“We’ve got bigger priorities than spending our savings on a stupid beer garden, Lawrence,” snarled Mum.
“I’d have thought you’d be in favor, Magda. I could get a tent and live in it. Then you wouldn’t have to look at me,” shouted Dad.
Thankfully, I was meeting the LBD at Fleur’s. We were cooking a big stir-fry and going over Blackwell Live business. It was great to get out of the house and be doing something that didn’t involve thinking about them.
When I look up from my Frosted Mush next, Mum is peering at me, waiting for me to confess my rampant drug problem.
“Look, give me a break,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m just really really okay at the moment. Everything’s going really well with Blackwell Live, it’s all just flowing at the moment. . . .”
Mum is still peering.
“I mean, yes, last week I may have been really stressed . . . ,” I continue.
“Stressed and depressed,” corrects Mum, eating a pickled onion.
“Okay, yeah, stressed and depressed, but now I’m happy and—”
“Happy and ecstatic?” says Mum, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah!”
“Hmmmm,” she says.
“But I’m NOT on drugs. In fact, I wouldn’t even know where to get drugs from, so how would I be on drugs?” I say, totally truthfully.
“Well, there’s all those drug dealers that wait outside your school every night, peddling their wares,” says Mum, who has taken to reading the Local Daily Mercury very closely of late.
“Oh, God, Mother, those drug dealers don’t even exist!” I moan. “In fact, me and Claude once hung around after school in Year Eight specifically to spy on a real-life drug dealer in action. The only person out there was Mrs. Baggins, the crossing patrol woman!” I say.
“Now, she’s definitely on drugs,” says Mum, beginning to smile in a relieved way.
“Oh, yeah, totally, she’s mad as a goat,” I agree, happy my interrogation is over. As ever, though, Mum wants the last word.
“Well, all I’m saying is: I’m watching you, Veronica Ripperton,” Mum concedes. “I’ve got your card marked. And if I see anything I don’t like, I’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks.” Mum’s pointing her finger at me now.
“Well, watch away, you mad old crone,” I say under my breath as Mum tucks into another pickle. “Cos I’m not on drugs.”
“And I bet that Fleur Swan will have something to do with all this,” she continues to whoever is listening. “She’s at the root of any misdemeanor. Ooh, If I were Patrick Swan, I’d have locked her in the attic long ago.”
“Why Fleur?” I say, collecting my schoolbag. “Why not Claude? Maybe she’s my drug dealer,” I add mischievously.
“Ha ha ha! Oh, don’t make me laugh, Ronnie.” Mum snorts. “Claude would never get involved with anything like that. She’s got far too much sense. She’s such a lovely girl, is Claude . . .”
(Let it be noted that if it wasn’t for the fact Claudette Cassiera is a completely different color to me, and has Mrs. Cassiera to look after her, my mother would be passing off Claude as her own flesh and blood after abandoning me on a motorway. Mum loves Claudette like the daughter she wishes she’d really had. How does Claude Cassiera do it?)
“Right. Can’t hang about,” I say breezily. “I’m off to school now to get high on drugs.”
Mum looks up from the pickle jar, where she’s spooning vinegar into her mouth.
“No, hang on, forget that,” I continue. “I’ll probably just go to double science and be bored to death, then grab a baked potato for lunch instead.”
“Good girl,” says Mum.
“See ya later, loonytoons,” I say, giving Mum a peck.
“No, you’re the mad one,” she says, quickly closing the pub door behind me so I can’t reply.
My mother is sooo childish.
the meeting
I love the smell of the drama studio.
Mr. Gowan uses this unbelievably great-smelling deep oak polish on the floors to keep the wood all smooth and shiny. It smells amazing. I suppose if I had to sniff any sort of strange substances, in a bid to give my mother the drug-related family crisis she so desperately seeks, I’d probably just sit in the drama studio, inhaling its lovely, rich, varnishy aroma . . . until I got trampled by a load of Year 7 kids pretending to be “sprouting trees” or “soaring birds” to the rhythmic beat of a tambourine.
I didn’t believe for one second if we invited all of the chosen Blackwell Live bands to the drama studio for a “General Meeting” (as Claude rather officiously refers to it), they’d all simply show up, no questions asked. Thirty kids? Many of whom don’t even like each other? All with
different timetables and after-school commitments?
That’s a lot of folk to schedule into one place.
You’re always going to get one boy who remembers an urgent appointment with his Nintendo GameCube (e.g. Aaron), or one girl who’ll need to go and tend to her pony (e.g. Abigail from Catwalk). Yet, with Claude at the helm, sprinting around the cloakrooms between lessons, threatening musicians under pain of death that they MUST be in the drama studio at 4:00 P.M. sharp, everything has come together.
“I told them exactly how it was,” said Claude as the LBD were en route to the studio. “No-show means ‘no show.’ If I can’t trust them to turn up tonight, I’m not relying on them for July twelfth.”
“Claude, you’re a real Scary Mary sometimes,” says Fleur.
“Yeah, I know.” Claude smiles. “But you’re calling me that like it’s some kind of bad thing . . . I mean, look, I got them all here, didn’t I?”
“Yep, Little C.” Fleur chuckles, sticking her head into the studio and spotting a flurry of faces looking back at her. “You certainly did.”
All twenty-nine faces, present and correct. What a sight this is to behold!
So we’ve got Death Knell, all five of Blackwell’s nu-goth speed reggae pioneers, sitting directly beside Guttersnipe, Liam’s three-piece guitar act. While Liam waits patiently for the meeting to kick off, Tara, Guttersnipe’s blond bass player, gossips with the huge heap of hair which is Benny Stark. Benny, as ever, is managing to wear his Blackwell uniform like some sort of ironic fashion statement. I don’t know how, he just does. It’s something to do with Benny’s tie perpetually being a little thinner than other kids’ and his shirt collars a little pointier and his trousers a touch tighter than other lads’ (they’re always from secondhand shops too, but Panama somehow leaves Benny out of her bitching). A neat row of badges across Benny’s blazer lapel, heralding New York guitar bands that nobody else has ever heard of, seals Benny’s “Too Cool for School” look. In all honesty, I can’t work out whether Benny actually works hard to be cool or not . . . he’s so flipping laid-back, he looks like removing the top from a jar of pickles would fatigue him for an entire week.
“Yeah . . . well, I heard the Divines’ new single,” mutters Benny to Tara, “but the Music Box won’t be able to order me their new CD over from the States till late August, which sucks.”
“Those guys are rubbish down at the Music Box,” I hear Tara sighing above the general studio buzz. “I’m ordering all my import CDs over the Internet now. It’s so much quicker.”
Along the raised stage area of the studio perches ten bottoms: one half being Catwalk, the other side, Lost Messiah. The two bands are joined in the middle by Panama Goodyear and Jimi Steele, sitting shoulder to shoulder. I can’t help but notice that Panama keeps touching Jimi’s knee and flicking her hair about when she’s talking, accompanied by a weird high-pitched giggle whenever Jimi so much as speaks.
I figure Jimi is either telling Panama a long list of knock-knock jokes . . . or perhaps Panama really does beat Fleur Swan in turning into a syrup brain in the company of good-looking lads.
Catwalk’s Abigail and Leeza are calling across to a solitary dark-haired, dark-eyed Christy Sullivan, who’s looking completely gorgeous perched on a chair near the door.
“Yoo-hoo! Christy!” squeaks Leeza, patting the space between her and Abigail. “You can come and sit with us, Christy! You’ve only got a little bum, haven’t you?”
“Er, ooh, no, it’s okay, girls, really,” shouts Christy. “I’m quite comfortable here for the time being. Thanks and all that.”
Abigail and Leeza soon brush aside Christy’s knock-back and are quickly engrossed in their favorite subject aside from themselves: step aerobics.
But above all the general melee, one voice can be heard above them all: “And I said, ‘Daddy, you can’t buy me the Gucci shoes and the bikini for my birthday, that’s an obscene amount of money!’ ” Panama is telling Jimi rather loudly. “But Daddy told me that he’s only got one little girl and he can spend his money how he feels. I mean, Jimi, what could I say to that?!”
“Errrr, well, I dunno, really,” says Jimi.
“Precisely!” squeaks Panama. “So I let him buy me them both! Hoo hoo ha ha ha ha!” Jimi tries to laugh along, but to be honest, he seems more transfixed by Panama’s boobs, which are suspended in some kind of ultra-bra which has “raised and separated” her cleavage somewhere around her ears. (NB: I can hardly fill an egg cup with my knockers, let alone a D-cup. Another reason Panama Goodyear must be destroyed. Preferably in a freak steamroller incident.)
“But anyway, I’m babbling on about me again,” says Panama, taking her voice a little quieter now, although I’m still earwigging so I can make out every syllable. “How are you feeling after your accident? It was your arm as well as your leg, wasn’t it?” she says, quite caringly. Her hand reaches out and gently rubs Jimi’s right hand. “I was worried about you. You silly thing.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” says Jimi, blushing slightly. “I’m always getting hurt.”
“Well, if you’re going to keep on getting hurt, I’m going to have to keep on worrying about you. I’ll have no choice,” Panama teases, sort of poking him in the belly. “I’ll have to keep a very close eye on you from now on.”
Jimi pokes Panama’s excessively flat stomach back, and they both giggle. Panama’s good at this flirting business, I’ll give her that.
“Right, everyone!” shouts Claude. “With respect: Shut up! I need to get through a few points, then you can all ask any questions that you want. S’that okay?”
“Yeah,” choruses the crowd.
“EZ Life Syndicate, are we all present and correct?” asks Claude.
“We are!” shouts a gaggle of voices at the back of the studio.
“Oh, and cheers, EZ Life, for coming all the way across town, we appreciate that,” Claude says, tipping their rather attractive frontman Killa Blow (aka Shaun Jones) a respectful nod.
“No worries,” says Killa, “we’re all here now, Claude.”
And they were, all eight members of the Syndicate, plus two or three other kids who just seemed to be there lending moral support. I don’t blame them for bringing reinforcements, it must have been flipping scary coming over from Chasterton to Blackwell. The LBD were sure the EZ Life Syndicate wouldn’t show up, especially as both schools have a long history of fighting with each other, but it’s flipping marvelous they did.
By the way, in case you’re wondering how we convinced Mr. McGraw to let a non-Blackwell band perform at Blackwell Live, well, it’s all down to Claudette obviously; she did all the talking.
“So EZ Life are in,” said Claude yesterday on her return from McGraw’s lair, “but we’ve had to, er, compromise.”
“What sort of compromise?” I asked gingerly.
“Well, you know how much Mr. McGraw digs the Blackwell bellringers?”
“Yessss?” I said with a heavy heart.
“Well”—sigh—“McGraw says we can’t have one without the other,” Claude continued, huffing and puffing, “so I took them both.”
“Ding dong!” I say, beginning to smile.
Claude’s depressed expression was so amusing that Fleur and I simply had to laugh. In fact, I’m trying to stop giggling here in the drama studio, as Jemima and George from the Blackwell bellringers perch themselves directly beside Claude, handbells at the ready, waiting to give her a little recital if need be.
Eventually Claude opens up the meeting, battering through some fairly general business: thanking everyone for auditioning and saying “what a hard time we had choosing people,” blah blah blah. Obviously, Claude fails to mention that by 10:00 P.M. last Monday night we were so sick of arguing, in particular about the merits of Shop and his blue suede shoes, that I resorted to battering both her and Fleur about the head with a pillow. We fail to mention also that the Blackwell bellringers were there through sheer bribery, as these were private LBD matters
.
Everyone doesn’t have to know everything.
“You’re probably thinking the festival is months away,” continues Claude. “But I’m here to spell it out that it’s not. Today’s Thursday, the twenty-sixth of June, and we’ve got to get this whole show together for the twelfth of July: That’s just over two weeks.”
“What? Two weeks? Oh my God,” mumbles the entire crowd.
Jeez, when Claude puts it like that, even I feel queasy.
“So, in brief: We’re leaving it up to you guys what you play and how you play it,” says Claude. “But the only rule is: Turn up on time and make it good.”
Everyone groans, including Panama, who nudges Leeza, then sneers at Claude, muttering, “Good? How could we NOT be good?!”
“Oh, and another thing: Try and keep it clean,” continues Claude, “and this isn’t our request. I’ve got a message here from Mr. McGraw saying he won’t tolerate ‘profanity and lewdness,’ that’s, er, swearing and ‘exposing your underwear to onlookers’ in everyday speak.”
“Darn,” says Killa B, “I was going to show them my—”
“Never mind what you were going to do, Mr. Blow, we’ll have none of it,” butts in Claude, laughing.
“Oh, and if anyone is in any doubt about which words are and are not appropriate for usage in front of Mr. McGraw,” adds Fleur, “please see me, as I’ve spent enough time in detention to find out.”
Everyone chuckles except the bellringers, who look at each other in abject horror. What kind of debauched nightmare have Jemima and George got themselves tangled up in?
“Is Mr. McGraw even coming on the twelfth?” asks Ainsley from Death Knell.
“Good question,” I say. “Last time we spoke to McGraw, he seemed to have suddenly remembered he had relatives from Outer Mongolia visiting that day, so he mightn’t be able to make it.”
“Errrr . . . Has McGraw got relatives in Outer Mongolia?” asks Ainsley.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” I say. “We’ll just have to see if he turns up.”
