Rebecca Rocks

by Anna Carey

  My fringe hasn’t improved, by the way. I bumped into Mrs Mulligan and her horrible child on my way home today, and that little brat said ‘Nice hair!’ in a really fake voice. And then she smirked at me! It was bad enough when she was just gyrating at me. I can’t believe she’s moved on to actual words. I just smirked back at her and said, ‘Thanks!’ as her mother smiled at her and said, ‘Aw, that’s very nice of you Sorcha.’ Clearly the little monster has fooled her poor parents into thinking she is a normal human being.

  But, on the plus side, my fringe doesn’t seem to have actually got worse. So that’s something. And in more good news, Cass came out to Richard and Ellie and Jane. This afternoon, she asked me and Alice had we told anyone about her coming out to us. Which we hadn’t. Not that her gayness is some big dark secret or anything, but we figured it was her choice to tell people or not and we shouldn’t go around talking about it without telling her. After all, coming out even to her best friends was a big deal for Cass. So we told her we hadn’t said anything.

  ‘I didn’t think you would have, but I thought I’d check,’ said Cass. ‘Anyway, I just thought I should say it was fine if you want to mention it to Richard. And I’ll tell Ellie and Jane.’

  So they all know now. They were all cool about it, though Richard did tell Alice later that he was a bit surprised.

  ‘I mean, I’d never have guessed,’ he said. ‘She’s pretty girly. She doesn’t look like … you know.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Alice fiercely.

  ‘Ah,’ said Richard. He seemed to realise how stupid he sounded. And if he didn’t, he certainly did by the time Alice had given him a lecture about stereotypes and judging people by appearances and how Cass could be as girly or not-girly as she liked. But he seems to be totally fine about the whole thing anyway. As were Ellie and Jane.

  ‘I spend half my life surrounded with my mum’s hippie friends from her various goddess groups,’ said Ellie. ‘Gayness does not scare me.’

  So Cass is relieved. It did make me realise how unfair it is that I never had to worry about people being weird about whoever I fancied. I mean, I didn’t have to worry that the world would have a problem with me going out with John Kowalski, even though he was a fool. And yet Cass has to worry about people being horrible about her and Liz, who is lovely! Truly this world is an unfair place.

  I hate that horrible Charlie! And his friends, too, though he’s definitely the worst of them. We were divided into two groups for workshops this afternoon, and as soon as we walked in we realised we were in the same one as the Crack Parrots.

  ‘Oh brilliant,’ said Cass, gloomily. ‘That’s all we need when we try to figure out sound levels. Charlie and his goons making not-so-smart remarks.’

  ‘Maybe they won’t be so bad,’ said Alice. ‘I mean, surely they’re not going to say anything with the mentors around.’

  But it turns out that Charlie is cleverer than he looks (which wouldn’t be hard, because he looks like a cocky idiot). He never said anything obnoxious when the mentors could hear. But as soon as their backs were turned or they were busy helping someone else, he’d be off.

  ‘Are you sure you can figure out those leads?’ he said, when Cass and Alice were hooking things up to the mixing-desk. ‘I know girls aren’t great at technical stuff …’

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Alice primly. And then she played a giant power chord on her guitar.

  ‘Excellent, Alice,’ called Kitty. ‘Lovely crisp sound. Now, check your keyboard level, Cass.’

  Cass played a thunderous bassline on her keyboard. It was far too loud and distorted.

  ‘Oops,’ she said.

  Charlie laughed.

  ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go and make me a sandwich instead?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said one of his bandmates, whose name is Robbie. ‘We all know a girl’s place is in the kitchen! Not at the mixing-desk.’

  ‘Seriously, what did that sound like?’ said Finn, the drummer.

  But before we could say anything, Kitty and Dave came over.

  ‘Everything okay?’ said Kitty. ‘You just need to adjust the levels there, Cass.’

  ‘I can do it for her,’ said Evan, the Crack Parrots’ bass player. ‘I’m pretty good at this sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Cass coldly. ‘I’ve got it.’ And she fiddled around with the dials and played a few notes until the keyboard sounded okay.

  It was very annoying, because the class was really useful, all about how to make sure your instruments and vocals sound good together on stage. But those stupid boys put us in a bad mood. It was particularly irritating because they weren’t very good at mixing their sound either, but they didn’t seem to care. They still thought they were brilliant. We were all meant to be taking turns, and Charlie and Evan kept hogging the microphones for ages. Their music is rubbish too.

  We cheered up a bit later, though, when Paula Howard turned out to be better than anyone else at realising what lead went where and making music sound good. Charlie looked as sick as a pig when the mentors praised her skills. But we didn’t get to hear any of her music. She said she didn’t want to play live yet. So she just engineered Positive Trigger for a bit. Their songs are pretty good, all about life on the mean streets and how hard it is for them to hustle their way through every day. I was quite surprised to find out that they are all actually from Clontarf, which is not very mean at all. Paperboy was from Clontarf, and his house was much bigger than mine and was also just down the road from a few posh restaurants and a supermarket my mother will only visit on special occasions because it sells nothing but fancy hummous and organic rashers. Also, two members of Positive Trigger, Oisín and Archie, go to a private school in town. But maybe Clontarf is tougher than it looks?

  There was another band called Puce, who, despite their colourful name, are quite boring. Not in an obnoxious way, just in a sort of wishy-washy generic indie way. I mean, you barely noticed when they were on stage. They all look really alike too. They do have nice cardigans, but that is the only thing that sticks in the mind. And even the cardigans all look the same, so that doesn’t help much. But perhaps the camp will improve their stage presence.

  Anyway, I was quite sorry when the session was over, because it was all very interesting (even with poor old Puce). We were giving out about Charlie and his gang when we bumped into the art people on our way to the canteen.

  ‘Sam,’ said Alice. ‘You know Charlie and Evan and all of them from school, right? Are they always really obnoxious?’ She paused and looked a bit guilty. ‘Um, I hope they’re not your best friends. Sorry if they are.’

  But Sam laughed.

  ‘They are definitely not my best friends,’ he said. ‘And yes, they are mostly really obnoxious. Well, actually some of them are okay when Charlie’s not around.’

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I know it’s probably hard to believe, but yeah,’ said Sam. ‘The problem is Charlie’s almost always around.’

  ‘He’s not very good at sound engineering, anyway,’ said Alice. ‘He was the worst of the lot.’

  ‘Yeah, Paula was in our group too, and she was the best,’ said Cass. ‘Small Paula, I mean, not tall Goth Paula.’

  Sam laughed. ‘I bet Charlie didn’t like a girl doing better than him.’

  The art projects all seem to be going really well. They’re each working on one big project over the whole course and then they do different challenges every day.

  ‘Mostly still comics,’ said Sam. ‘But different sorts. It’s really good. And I’m writing stuff too, which used to be Lucy’s department.’

  ‘How are you finding drawing?’ I asked Lucy.

  ‘Oh, it’s good,’ said Lucy. She looked kind of vague, as usual. ‘I mean, I always liked drawing, I just didn’t think I was very good at it. So I left it up to Sam.’

  ‘She’s really good,’ said Sam. ‘I always told her she should do more of it, and she ignored me! But it looks like this co
urse is going to succeed where I failed.’

  I hope I didn’t say anything to upset Lucy. She never looks me totally in the eye. I mean, she’s not very friendly. I hope she doesn’t think any of us are after Sam, because I’m certainly not. And neither is Ellie, because she likes another boy on the course (his name is Cillian but it turns out he has a girlfriend and talks about her all the time so poor Ellie knows she doesn’t have a chance).

  Anyway, Ellie has lots of work to distract her because she is going to make the costumes for Jane and the crazy people’s play. It will be her big project in the art course. She says it’s quite a challenge.

  ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the dragon,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly a normal costume. And I have to make sure they can do gymnastics and juggling in most of the outfits. And that they’ll be okay for the human pyramid bit. But I’ll figure something out.’

  Speaking of stage ensembles, my parents went off to collect their costumes for their own musical this evening. A member of the musical society is making most of them, and she only lives down the road so she suggested they call round for a fitting. My dad took photos of them on his phone, and all I can say is I hope they add some fabric to Mum’s outfit. I know she is meant to be some sort of Victorian floozy, but surely she doesn’t need to show so much chest? It’s a bit much, especially at her age. I mentioned to her that it was a bit low-cut, and she just LAUGHED.

  ‘Come on, Bex, it’s hardly indecent exposure!’ she said. ‘Would you prefer all women over the age of thirty-five go around wearing sacks?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I said. ‘I’m just worried you’ll … feel self-conscious.’

  But she just rolled her eyes and told me to chop some leeks. She clearly doesn’t appreciate my concern. As usual. I don’t know why I bother.

  Today we had a workshop in stage performance. The mentor who was doing it is called Shane O’Driscoll. He is the lead singer of a band called The Invited, who aren’t my sort of thing, but lots of girls really fancy him for some reason. He is definitely not my type, though. He is kind of hunky in a fairy-tale prince sort of way, and his hair is all tousled with gel. He has lots of tattoos in Chinese lettering, and he wears leather trousers and lots of leather wristlets and necklaces and things. Which must be very hot in this weather, now I come to think of it. I was wearing a denim skirt with bare legs today, and I was still roasting.

  Shane believes it’s really important for bands to put on a big show. He started off by saying that we all have to find our own way to capture the crowd’s attention, but I think he thought his own way was the best.

  ‘You’ve really got to put your soul into your performance, he said, which is fair enough. But then he said, ‘I like to gesture to the crowd, like I’m singing straight to their hearts. And when I reach a particularly emotional part of the song, I like to stretch out one hand and then draw it back to my chest, like I’m pulling the audience closer.’

  I tried to imagine me and Cass and Alice doing that on stage. I couldn’t, not least because we’re all playing instruments most of the time. If I started waving my arms around and opening and clenching my fists, I’d drop my drumsticks.

  ‘I also have a move I call “prowling”,’ said Shane. ‘I like to walk from one side of the stage to the other like a panther, looking out at the audience the entire time. It’s like I become a charismatic big cat.’

  I can’t imagine Alice prowling across the stage like a panther. Or any sort of charismatic big cat. She’s the only one of us who could even try, because me and Cass are stuck behind instruments. If we tried prowling we’d have to push our instruments in front of us as we went around the stage, which wouldn’t look very cool.

  Shane also suggested that we think about having stage sets, which, of course, was music to Cass’s ears.

  ‘When Bon Jovi toured a few years ago they had a big set that looked like a scuzzy nightclub,’ said Shane. ‘Loads of neon signs, poles, that sort of thing. You could build some props, create a proper stage set.’

  I could tell that Cass was getting quite excited at the thought. I looked at her.

  ‘No, Cass,’ I whispered. ‘You are not making us a scuzzy nightclub. Anyway, you don’t even know how to make neon signs.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘But we could do something else.’

  She could be on to something, I suppose. Maybe we could have some sort of set. Maybe we could make the stage look like, I dunno, an ordinary sitting room. Or even the shed where we practise. But definitely no neon. Or poles.

  Anyway, Cass wasn’t the only one who was intrigued by Shane. Niall, the lead singer of Puce, looked like he was listening very intently all the way through, even when Shane was praising his own leather trousers.

  ‘These old trews are a part of me now,’ said Shane, which didn’t sound like a good thing to me. ‘They’re like my rock uniform. The way I see it, if you want to be a rock god, you’ve got to dress like a rock god! So find your uniform. It could be leather. It could be feathers. It could be denim. It could be eye-catching jumpsuits. It’s up to you.’

  I could see Niall taking notes. I can’t imagine him in an eye-catching jumpsuit, but you never know, maybe he could pull it off.

  Shane is also fond of explosions and fireworks and trap doors − ‘Audiences love seeing you pop out of a trap door!’ − but he admitted that we might find arranging all of these things quite difficult when we’re only starting out.

  Anyway, it was all quite interesting, especially when we got the chance to try out some of the techniques (sadly we didn’t get to try out trapdoors or fireworks. Or, indeed, jumpsuits). Tall Paula from Exquisite Corpse was particularly good at prowling. She even did a bit of a panther-esque snarl as she paced from one side of the stage to the other, which made Shane nod seriously and say, ‘Very good, Paula. You’ve got great stage presence.’ Small Paula, however, didn’t want to perform at all.

  ‘Don’t you want to give it a try?’ asked Alice. But Small Paula shook her head.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Alice, but we were all a bit disappointed. Now Small Paula is the only person on the course whose music we haven’t heard yet. It is very intriguing. I can actually imagine her prowling like a panther, even though she looks more like a small pony than a big cat, with that impressive fringe.

  I just tried doing some prowling in front of my mirror, but I’m not sure I pulled it off. I think I looked a bit silly. Also, whenever I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t help noticing my stupid fringe, which was starting to work its way out of its hairpins and fall down over my face. Of course, it didn’t help that I turned around and saw that horrible Mulligan brat across the road laughing her hideous head off at me. I just glared at her and drew the curtains. I can’t believe that appalling child is forcing me to live in darkness in the middle of summer just because she has no manners.

  Today we had the first proper Hey Dollface sweet-making session because Alice was FINALLY free at the weekend. So we all went round to Cass’s house to work our magic. We had plenty to talk about before we started our sweet-making because Cass came out to her parents last night. She hadn’t even planned it. Apparently her little brother Nick was being really annoying at the dinner table and going on about the summer camp and asking whether Cass had fallen in LUUURVE (as he put it) with any of the boys on it. He just wouldn’t shut up so eventually Cass got really annoyed and told him to go away. Except she didn’t actually say ‘go away’.

  And her mother gave out to her for using a rude word and to Nick for trying to annoy her, but afterwards, when Nick had gone off to do whatever stupid twelve-year-old-boy stuff he does, her mum got all serious and said that she wasn’t to ever worry about not having a boyfriend, and the thought of her mother having a ‘serious chat’ about LOVE with her was so horrible that Cass said, ‘I’m not worried, I’m gay!’ basically just to shut her up.

  Anyway, not on
ly was Brenda (for that is Cass’s mother’s name, and she insists that we are on first-name terms) not upset, but she reacted a bit TOO well. She seems to think that having a lesbian daughter makes her cool (‘As if anything could,’ said Cass), and she keeps going on about it and trying to be all understanding. Like, ‘Well, Cass, as a lesbian, I’m sure you appreciate this …’ Cass says it is terrible, and I can see why. In fact, Cass is starting to wish she’d never told her at all. But, as she said herself, ‘Her being so freakishly positive about it is much better than the other way around.’

  She much preferred her dad’s reaction, though. He was a bit surprised, and then he said, ‘And do you really like this girl?’ And Cass said yes. And he gave her a hug and said, ‘Well, if you’re happy then I’m happy, Boldness.’ And Cass was so touched she didn’t even mind him calling her Boldness, which was her family nickname when she was very very small and which usually drives her mad if her parents call her it. So it has worked out very well.

  Anyway, Brenda only told us how great it is to be gay once while we were making our fudge, and then she went off to her Pilates class. Our fudge went really well. I think we’re getting the hang of it at last, although maybe it was better than our previous efforts because this time there were three of us so we could share out the beating of the ingredients. It was much less exhausting than when it was just me and Cass. We also put on music so we could work in time to our favourite tracks.

  It was still surprisingly hard work, even with Alice and the music, but it paid off. Even Nick, who is the sort of rude person who just spits out any food he doesn’t like, said it was ‘not bad’. Which is high praise coming from him.

  ‘Maybe we could experiment next time,’ I said. ‘Like, add nuts. Or chocolate. Or a different flavouring. Like, I dunno, orange or lemon or something.’

  ‘Or raisins,’ said Cass.