Face the Music

by Marianne Levy

  ‘Right.’

  ‘When you see them, live, it’s . . . it’s . . .’ She shivered. ‘I’m shivering just thinking about it.’

  ‘Maybe you should go to the sick room.’

  ‘So, afterwards, we went backstage – we had these wristbands that they gave us, I’m never cutting mine off!’

  She waved it at me.

  It was just a wristband.

  ‘Do go on,’ I said.

  Lacey went on. And on, and on. Stuff about dance moves and photographers and after-parties and blah blah blah-de-blah.

  ‘And then as we were going back to the limo, I listened to that song you sent me, which you clearly wrote just to wind me up and it ISN’T GOING TO WORK, all right? We are going to rise above this.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Katie, I know you have Karamel issues, but it was the best night of my life. So, thank you for getting me the ticket and I’m sorry it clashed with your birthday. There. That’s it. Over. OK? And did you find anything at all to say about that poem because I didn’t and I’ve basically written a whole page about nothing and it’s English next and I’m worried McAllister will notice.’

  The bell rang.

  And I saw that I had a choice. I could carry on being annoyed, or I could do the sensible thing and try to move on.

  Or, I could pretend to move on while being secretly still a bit annoyed, which is what I decided I’d do, because when someone offers you the Hand of Friendship you have to take it, or they’ll just hate you forever.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘It’s over.’

  She nodded. ‘Good. Now, what do you mean, it’s all been kicking off at home?’

  ‘Dad’s back,’ I said, and hearing myself say the words was a bit of a relief. Because while, obviously, as far as Dad was concerned, everything was one hundred per cent positive and completely fine, it was all getting a bit complicated. And it might be useful to say everything out loud and untangle it with someone who cared about me. Yes, it would be good to double-check with Lacey that everything was as totally all right as I definitely knew that it was.

  ‘Your dad? Whoah. Has there been major drama?’ Lacey did this exaggerated frowny face. ‘No wonder you’ve been away with the fairies.’

  ‘Minor drama,’ I said. Then, because that wasn’t quite true, ‘I mean, medium-level drama. Anyway, the point is . . .’

  Only, I never got to tell Lacey what the point was, because Savannah came drifting up, and put her arm around Lacey’s shoulder, drawing her away.

  ‘Hi-hi.’

  For someone who’d stayed out very late at a celebrity party, Savannah was looking surprisingly fresh, her hair somehow glossier than usual, and even her eyelashes curled to perfection. Maybe she’d not undressed after she’d got home, but just clambered into some kind of Barbie packaging and slept standing up.

  ‘Katie, have you HEARD?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Amaze,’ said Savannah.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Spit it out. We have to get to English.’

  ‘Shall I tell her?’ said Lacey, as though I wasn’t even there.

  ‘No, I’ll do it,’ said Savannah. ‘Katie. Are you ready? Because this changes everything.’

  I was finding it very hard to be the chilled-out person I usually am. ‘What changes what?’

  ‘I’m going out with Kolin. From Karamel. KolinfromKaramel.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said.

  This was clearly not the reaction Savannah had been expecting.

  ‘I am going out with Kolin from Karamel.’

  ‘Yes, I’m with you.’

  ‘She doesn’t care,’ said Lacey. ‘You know how she feels about them. It’s like she’s missing part of her brain, or something.’

  ‘Or you are,’ I murmured.

  Savannah didn’t show any sign of having heard me. ‘So, after the show, we all go to the party, and I can feel someone looking at me. And it’s him! It’s Kolin! And we talked and talked and it turns out we like loads of the same things and then he gave me his number and I gave him mine and now he’s my boyfriend.’

  ‘That’s great, Savannah,’ I said. ‘You two sound perfect for one another. You like Karamel, he’s in Karamel. It’s a match made in heaven.’

  Once, Lacey would have laughed.

  Now, she said:

  ‘Maybe it is.’

  Then, the two of them fell into step ahead of me, Savannah’s gold-plated phone glinting between them, like a stupid expensive phone that had been covered in stupid expensive gold.

  ‘Our pics have been getting some major play,’ Savannah said. ‘Like, major major.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Lacey.

  I dropped back a bit. They’d probably slow down and wait for me.

  ‘Oooooh, Kol posted the fairy-lights one! I am so glad he is my boyfriend.’

  ‘Yay, me too!’

  It was almost as though they preferred to talk to each other than to me!

  ‘Oof, the Karamel fans are sooooo jealous,’ said Savannah. ‘Total eeek. I’d probably better change my profile name.’

  ‘And maybe not have your avi be the one of you kissing Kolin,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Let’s not go crazy,’ said Savannah. ‘I mean, I’m, like, not going to let the haters control my life, you know? Just because I am lucky enough to have someone from a very major band as my boyfriend. I cannot live a lie.’

  ‘No,’ said Lacey.

  Then:

  ‘Oh no. No, no, no.’

  ‘No! Nooooooo!’

  They stopped and turned, and a very pathetic part of me actually felt grateful for a bit of eye contact.

  ‘Katie,’ said Lace. ‘You need to see this.’

  Savannah held up her phone.

  It was the feed from Kurt_Karamel.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not want to hear about last night any more.’

  ‘K! This is important!’

  ‘It’s not! It’s really not.’

  ‘Um, actually, Katie . . .’

  ‘How are we still talking about this?’ I said, in this semi-shriek. ‘Yay, you went to see Karamel. Woo, you partied backstage. Squee, Kolin and Savannah are now an item. I’m. Not. Interested.’

  ‘Is she OK?’ said Savannah. ‘She doesn’t seem OK. Katie, are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘But I would be even more fine if we could just talk about something else.’

  People were stopping and turning round.

  ‘Look at it, Katie.’ Lacey’s voice was serious.

  ‘No!’

  ‘You have to look!’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘KATIE YOU HAVE GOT TO READ THIS.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Read it.’

  The screen was right in front of my eyes, and I focused in long enough to see:

  Kurt_Karamel

  Hey there.

  Found out about this last night.

  Kinda upset as I was a big fan of hers.

  Peace and love

  Kurt x

  And underneath was a link.

  The phone began to sing, in my voice:

  Can’t stand the boy band . . .

  Kurt had posted my song.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘Ha ha ha ha ha,’ said Jaz. ‘You insulted Karamel. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.’

  There was quite a lot more of this, but it’s way boring written down.

  We were on the bus, because despite promising me a lift home – ‘While I’m around, my princess will not be getting public transport’ – Dad failed to materialize. I’m guessing Adrian wanted his car back, which is kind of selfish.

  Anyway, me and Jaz were down the back, watching Nicole trying to hack some false nails from her fingers.

  ‘She didn’t realize it costs twenty-five quid to get them taken off again,’ said Jaz, as Nicole attacked them with the end of a compass.

  The bus went over a bump and I looked away. The windows were smeary on the inside an
d the outsides were coated with these vague grey spots of yuk.

  Then, a cheer. ‘First one’s off!’ said Fin.

  ‘Great!’ I said, hoping that there hadn’t been too much collateral damage.

  Then Jaz remembered about the Karamel thing again. ‘But how did he get hold of the song? I thought you only sent it to Lacey.’

  ‘I did,’ I said, a tiny area of my brain registering that Jaz sounded a bit hurt, but really, there was no time for that now. ‘I sent it in a private message.’

  ‘Then how did he . . . ?’

  I thought back to that terrible moment a couple of hours earlier, as we all stood outside the English room, staring at each other.

  ‘Lace, did you send it to Kurt?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t!’ said Lacey. ‘How could I?’

  Long pause.

  ‘I did send it to Sofie, though. It was too noisy to hear it properly in the limo so she wanted to listen when she got home.’

  We all turned to Sofie.

  ‘I only sent it to Devi Lester,’ she said.

  ‘How did Devi Lester . . . ? Why Devi Lester? And how did it get from Devi to—’

  ‘OK, that would be me.’ Paige let out this fluttery laugh. ‘So, Devi has this really fun messenger group, it’s so fun, Katie, you should get him to add you, anyway, he has this group and whenever he finds something fun, he shares it and normally it’s just Nicole squeezing spots or whatever, but this time, it was you, which is fun, so Devi sent it out and I saw it and I was all, like, “ooooh” and I kind of sent it to Mum because she’s a fan of yours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jaz, who was clearly starting to get a bit bored of this story. ‘So that’s how it got from Devi to Paige’s mum. But how did it go from Paige’s mum to Kurt from Karamel?’

  ‘I’m getting to that,’ I said. ‘So, Paige’s mum, apparently, sent it to Cindy, you know Cindy? She runs that shop, in town. Cindy’s. And Cindy sent it to . . .’

  ‘Savannah.’

  Savannah looked up from her phone and smiled. ‘What?’

  ‘Savannah, did you send Kurt from Karamel an MP3 of Katie being mental?’

  ‘No!’ said Savannah.

  ‘Then, how . . . ?’

  ‘I sent it to Kolin!’ She applied a tiny bit of Lancôme juicy tube and smacked her lips. ‘He’s my boyfriend.’

  I was brought back to the bus by a volley of Jaz cackles.

  ‘It’s not that funny.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Jaz.

  ‘Lacey’s ready to kill me. And what about all their fans? I’m probably going to have to sleep with a baseball bat by my bed. And—’

  ‘Katie, calm down. These are people who like Karamel.’ Jaz tried not to smile, and failed. ‘I suppose they might snuggle you to death . . .’

  ‘Seriously, though. I was thinking, if I call Tony he can get them to take it down again, maybe we can get the police on it or something, I mean, it’s stealing, isn’t it? Sticking someone’s song online without their permission. Isn’t it?’

  For a second she actually looked reasonably serious. ‘Seriously? I’ve listened to it.’

  ‘What! When?!’

  ‘Just now. While you were talking.’ She lifted up her hair to show an earbud, nestling deep in her ear.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I think it’s cool.’

  Not that I was especially out to impress Jaz. But . . . ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jaz. ‘I do.’

  I stared at Jaz’s face, and thought how different she and Lacey were. With Lace, I know completely what she looks like, how she has a pointy chin and milky skin and freakily tiny ears. Jaz’s face, even though I saw it every day, was still a bit of a mystery, with its massively pencilled brows and lumps of covered-up spots and angles of cheekbone that seemed to change according to her mood, or my mood, or the weather, or maybe according to how much blusher she was wearing.

  And she thought my song was cool.

  We’d reached my stop. So I got off.

  With a house as vibrant and ever-changing as ours, there’s always something new to enjoy. Last week there’d been the windowsill underneath Mum and Adrian’s bedroom falling off and landing on top of the porch. At the weekend, Adrian had hacked back some of the ivy around the side, revealing that a bit of the house we’d thought had been made of bricks was actually just bits of board held together by a few rusty nails and half a ‘For Sale’ sign from 1996.

  And today, there was a huge black car parked outside.

  Huh.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and then went in.

  To see Tony Topper, head of Top Music, sitting next to Dad, in our lounge, being handed a cup of tea by Adrian.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Would you like some tea? Hang on, you’ve got tea. Would you like a biscuit?’ Stop talking, Katie. ‘We’ve only got Bourbons and they’re a bit smashed up because I dropped the shopping.’

  Tony very sensibly ignored all this, and just said, ‘Katie, I hope you’re well.’

  He was so sharp and tanned that he made everything else seem sort of insubstantial, somehow. Like he was an actor and our house was a film set and if you gave the walls a push they’d tip over.

  Which, come to think of it, they probably would.

  ‘I come bearing good news,’ he said, smiling with his white, white teeth. ‘You’re aware of the Teen Time Awards?’

  ‘With the poppy bands and the cheesy presenters and the pathetic embarrassing concert at Wembley that’s supposed to be spontaneous but everyone knows is rigged and rehearsed and the speeches that are always really heartfelt and sappy and basically make me want to puke?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tony. ‘That. You’ve won a Teen Time Award.’

  ‘God, I hate them so much . . . Did you say I’ve won?’

  ‘Yes. The People’s Act. The people voted and they picked you.’

  ‘Whaaaaaaaaaaat?’ If I’d been in a film it would have done that thing where the background rushes past and my face goes super close-up. ‘I’ve won an award?’

  ‘You’ve won the People’s Act Teen Time Award, yes.’

  ‘I’ve won?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’ve won!’

  ‘Well, you did.’

  ‘That’s unbelievable!’

  ‘Believe it.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  Tony turned to Adrian. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘In my experience,’ said Adrian, ‘this might go on for a while. You can sometimes jolt her out of it by offering her a slice of pizza.’

  I calmed down. ‘It’s just, I don’t win things. I’m not a winning kind of a person. Like –’ I tried to explain – ‘if there’s a tombola, say, I just know that I won’t pick the right number. I physically can’t. The winning tickets see my fingers coming and they recoil.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Tony, taking a delicate sip of tea. ‘But this involved people casting votes. So it’s not chance.’

  ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘Huh.’

  ‘The results stay secret until the night, of course, so keep it under your hat. In the meantime, stick the date in your diary and think which song you’d like to play. And – Katie? Are you . . . crying?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s just . . .’ I was thinking of all those people, in their bedrooms, watching me and then bothering to vote. It was kind of amazing. ‘I didn’t know how it would feel. To have people love me. It’s nice. That’s all.’

  Adrian gave me a pat on the back, and then Dad got up to give me a hug.

  ‘I’m glad you’re so pleased,’ said Tony. ‘And I have to say, this all bodes very well for your concert next week. As instructed, we’ve booked you a nice, intimate venue, a little place in Camden, seats a couple of hundred, tickets go on sale tomorrow and there’s been plenty of interest. That, and your impending award, mean you’ve really got the wind behind you right now.’

  ‘Great!’ I decided I wouldn’t think about the couple of hundred people. Or the performin
g part. Or, you know, anything.

  ‘There’s just one issue.’ Tony looked for somewhere to put his mug, considered the cardboard box we were using as a coffee table, and then gave up. ‘We at Top Music were very interested to hear that you’d written and released a song.’

  ‘Ah. The song. Yes.’

  ‘Katie, you told me, back in the office, that you didn’t have any new material.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘And we’d worked very hard to come up with a list of things for you to write about.’

  ‘Yes, but it was—’

  ‘Then, instead, you write –’ he wrinkled his nose – ‘something else.’

  ‘I didn’t mean for it to get seen by everyone,’ I said.

  ‘So –’ Tony leaned in as though he was talking to a particularly stupid child – ‘why did you put it on the internet?’

  ‘I didn’t! I literally sent it to one friend! My bes—’ I stopped myself. ‘One friend.’

  ‘Karamel are the UK’s most successful group. They’re with Top Music, like you. They are your stablemates. And now I have to sit at my desk and justify to the world why our newest signing has publicly slated our biggest act.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to make life difficult for other people. I just wanted to write a good song.’

  ‘From now on, I’ll decide if it’s a good song,’ said Tony. ‘We can talk to Kurt, get that rant taken down. And replace it with . . . In fact, we’ve been working on a little something, if you’d like to take a look . . .’

  He handed me a piece of paper, heavy and white, with ‘Top Music’ printed at the top, and my eyes scanned down to:

  Getting late

  Party’s starting

  See my mates

  Music’s playing

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, looking into my lap. Then, I don’t know why, but it was like Jaz was sitting on my shoulder. Not a full-sized Jaz, obviously, that wouldn’t work at all. A mini Jaz, whispering into my ear. Saying, ‘I thought it was cool.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and then, as tiny invisible imaginary Jaz rolled her eyes, ‘I mean, not sorry. I am not sorry. I really like the song I’ve already written.’

  Tony had been about to take another sip of tea, but he paused. So I carried on.