Authors: Anna Carey
‘Vanessa, I …’ I began. But Vanessa wasn’t finished. ‘You were meant to be my … my Unique Selling Point because your mother wrote that book about you! But you haven’t sold anything! Except falling over like an idiot!
You’ve ruined my chance to be famous, Becca!’
That was it.
‘My name,’ I roared, ‘is not Becca!’
Vanessa stared at me. So did her entourage.
‘I told you last week that I wasn’t going to play at your crazy party,’ I shouted. ‘We’re not friends, and you never even spoke to me until you decided my mother had written a book about me. Well, I’ve got news for you, Vanessa. That book is not about me. I’m not Ruthie O’Reilly, I’m not famous, I’m just me! Rebecca, by the way, not Becca! And I just fell over in front of four hundred people! So pardon me for not caring about you and your stupid TV programme and your pink pony and your stupid crane!’
And I ran away into the girls’ bathroom. On the way, I passed Paperboy, who was staring at me in shock. Brilliant, I thought. Now he thinks I’m as crazy as Vanessa. As well as someone who’s just humiliated herself in front of almost everyone she knows. I ran into a cubicle and locked the door. I’ll just stay in here until it’s over, I thought. And I felt so sorry for myself that tears started to trickle down my face. Then I remembered what Rachel had said about the eye make-up. Brilliant. That’s all I needed, to cover myself
in black mascara streaks. I snuffled and tried to dab my eyes with a bit of loo roll.
Then I heard Rachel, Cass and Alice calling me through the door.
‘Come on out, Bex,’ said Alice. ‘No one cares about Vanessa!’
‘What about the fact that I just fell over and showed my pants in front of four hundred people?’ I sniffled.
‘You didn’t, you were wearing tights,’ said Cass. ‘And they don’t care about that either.’
‘Seriously, Bex, they don’t,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s fine. To be honest, I think people are kind of impressed.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘They don’t think I did it on purpose as a stunt, do they?’
‘Well, no,’ said Rachel. ‘But they’re impressed that you didn’t, like, cry and run away.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’m not coming out of here until everyone’s gone home.’
‘Oh, come on, Bex,’ said Alice. ‘They’re going to announce the winner in a minute!’
‘Maybe they’ll give us an award for most embarrassing performance,’ I said, sniffing.
I heard the door of the bathroom open and then Ellie’s voice. ‘I think we’re going to find out who won now,’ she said.
‘Bex?’ said Cass.
‘I’m staying here,’ I said. I couldn’t go out now. I was probably covered in streaks, for one.
‘Look, we’ve got to go and see,’ said Cass. ‘Follow us out, okay?’
‘Do you want me to stay here?’ said Rachel. She is not a bad sister, really.
‘No, it’s okay,’ I said. I didn’t say anything for a moment, but she was still there. ‘Thanks.’
‘’Sokay,’ said Rachel. ‘Seriously, you should come out.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. I could hear cheering coming from the hall. ‘I think I cried my eyeliner all over my face.’
Rachel sighed. ‘Come on, let me see.’
I opened the door of the cubicle.
‘Oh,’ said Rachel. ‘Apparently that crap is more waterproof than I thought. It’s only smudged a little bit under your eye. Hang on a sec.’ And she rummaged in her ginormous bag and pulled out a pack of cleansing wipes.
‘Come here,’ she said, and carefully ran the wipe under
my eyes. ‘There. You’re grand.’
‘I’m not really,’ I said. ‘Rache, I know you and the others think it’s not a big deal, but it’s not just the falling over. Paperboy saw Vanessa screeching at me. And he must have seen me screeching back at her. He must think I’m mad, as well as an idiot who can’t even sit on a stool without falling off it.’
‘No, he won’t think that,’ said Rachel. She was doing her wise big sister voice, but for once I didn’t mind too much.
‘It’s not just that either,’ I said. ‘I really wanted to show everyone at school that I could do something cool and different that had nothing to do with Ruthie O’Reilly and Mum’s stupid book. And I couldn’t even do that properly. Everyone in school is going to think this is hilarious.’
‘Well, at least you’ve given them something else to talk about,’ said Rachel.
‘Shut up,’ I said. I sighed. ‘Do you think everyone’s gone yet?’
‘Um, no,’ said Rachel. ‘We’ve only been here for about two seconds. From all the cheering I think they’re still
announcing the winner. Don’t you want to see who won?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said. And we went out. The Retreat were strutting around the stage.
‘Huh,’ I said. ‘They must have won.’
There was no sign of Paperboy anywhere. But Cass and Alice were just outside.
‘We didn’t win,’ said Cass. ‘Obviously, as those silly boys are on the stage now looking like they’ve just won the World Cup. But Bad Monkey and Bike Boy’s band came joint second! Apparently the judges couldn’t decide between them.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s pretty cool, I suppose.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Wow, my mum will be out there to collect us in a few minutes. We should get our stuff together and go home.’
‘I wish we hadn’t arranged for her to get us so early,’ said Alice. ‘I wouldn’t mind going for a coffee or something.’
‘With who?’ said Cass. ‘Us or your special new friend, Bike Boy?’
‘His name’s Richard, actually,’ said Alice. And that was when I saw what seemed like our entire class heading in our direction.
‘Oh no,’ I muttered. ‘Quick, let’s go.’ But it was too late. We were surrounded.
‘Oh my God,’ said Jessie Mc Cabe. ‘You were amazing!’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Seriously, you were so good!’ said Catherine Wallace. ‘I can’t believe you actually got up after you fell over. Are you okay, by the way?’
‘Um, yeah, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘But …’
‘You were so brilliant!’ said Ellie. ‘Really! Didn’t you see our dance?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was fantastic. But …’
I tried to explain how terrible we’d been in the second song, but no one seemed to care. Everyone was hugging us and telling us how much they were looking forward to our next gig. Liz from Bad Monkey came over to say well done. Maybe, I thought, things weren’t so bad after all. I mean, Paperboy was probably going to avoid me for the rest of my life, but at least it looked like people in school had forgotten about Mum’s book for a while. Well, some of them.
‘Well done, Rebecca,’ said Karen Rodgers. ‘I’m pretty sure your lookalike Ruthie wouldn’t have fallen over like that. You really are an original.’
‘Oh my God, Karen, SHUT UP,’ said an unfamiliar voice. We all looked around in surprise until we realised it had come from Alison, Karen’s sidekick. The reason it sounded so unfamiliar was because we’d never heard her talk like that before. She didn’t sound like a sidekick at all. We all stared at her, including Karen. ‘Just leave her alone,’ said Alison, sounding a bit more timid, as though she couldn’t believe what she’d just said.
Karen blinked. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Um, okay then.’ She looked a bit embarrassed. But I didn’t have time to wonder what this meant for the future because Cass was in front of me beaming.
‘Listen to this,’ she said. ‘I was just talking to Liz again, and she suggested that we do a gig with Bad Monkey soon. Like, a full gig, just the two of us.’
‘Wow,’ I said. Could we do a full gig? I suppose it wouldn’t be too scary if the drums were flat on the ground and not on a stupid platform.
‘We’ll have to write a lot more songs,’ said Alice.
‘Well, if we need inspiration, you can ask your new friend Richard,’ said Cass with a snigger. ‘Shuddup,’
said Alice, going bright red.
My phone beeped. I checked my texts. ‘It’s Mum,’ I said. ‘She’s going to be outside, around the corner from the main entrance, in about five minutes.’
‘Right,’ said Cass. ‘Well, I’ve got Liz’s e-mail address, so I said we’d be in touch with her soon. But that’s cool about doing a gig, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. I thought about it for a second. And I forgot about the awfulness of falling over and playing badly. I remembered the bit in the first song where it all worked perfectly. I thought about doing that again. ‘Wow, yeah, it really is.’
We said goodbye to our classmates (not including Karen, who was looking a bit sheepish) and gathered our stuff together. Rachel and Jenny were going off somewhere fancy and grown up (well, it was somewhere that lets in sixteen-year-olds, so I suppose it can’t be too fancy), so they weren’t getting a lift. I looked around for Paperboy on the way out, but there was no sign of him. He’d probably gone home in horror, after seeing Vanessa roaring at me like I was the worst person in the world. We waved at Bad Monkey and they waved back.
‘Don’t forget to mail me!’ cried Liz.
‘I won’t!’ said Cass. She beamed at me and Alice. ‘We’ve already started our own music scene.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Alice. ‘But another gig would be very cool.’
When we reached the entrance hall we met Robbie, the ‘My Big Birthday Bash’ bloke.
‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Um, sorry about that earlier.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ he said.
‘How is Vanessa?’ said Alice.
A look of pain passed over Robbie’s face. ‘She’s fine. She’s more than fine, actually. We told her we’re definitely going to feature her in the show.’
We were all so startled Cass and I nearly dropped her keyboard.
‘You’re what?’ I said.
‘She’s, well, she’s highly strung, but she’ll be television gold,’ said Robbie. He looked at us hopefully. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way you’d go and play at her party?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Really? Oh well, she’s enough on her own. She’s hiring a tank, you know.’
‘Yes, I heard,’ I said.
‘And that pony too … It should be impressive. Anyway, I’ll let you get on. Nice meeting you!’ And off he went.
‘Words fail me,’ said Cass.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘She’s going to be worse than ever now.’
Mum was already parked around the corner when we got there.
‘So,’ she said. ‘How did it go?’
‘Meh,’ I said.
‘We were great,’ said Cass.
‘Apart from when I fell backwards and nearly wrecked the entire thing,’ I said, opening the boot so we could put Cass’s keyboard in it.
‘What?’ said Mum. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘It was just embarrassing.’
Mum asked lots of predictable Mum questions about whether I could be concussed or have any broken bones, and by the time she was satisfied that I wasn’t going to drop dead or lose a limb, we had got our stuff into the car. I was just about to get into the car myself when I realised I’d forgotten my jacket.
‘I left it hanging off that amp at the side of the stage,’ I
said. ‘I hope it’s still there. That’s all I need, losing my favourite jacket.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Mum. ‘Okay, well, hurry up and run back and get it. I’ll wait here.’
So I ran back around the corner and into the venue. There were still a good few people hanging around, but I couldn’t see Paperboy anywhere. I could see my jacket, though, safe and sound on the amp. I got it and headed back out, wondering if I would ever talk to Paperboy again, or whether he had been put off me forever by (a) the fact that Vanessa Finn had turned up with TV producers and pretended we were best mates (b) I had made a holy show of myself on stage or (c) all of the above. If he had, which seemed very likely, I’d just have to stop answering the door on Fridays. It wouldn’t be that hard. I could just try and forget about him.
And then, just as I was coming out of the venue and feeling very sorry for myself, I met Paperboy coming in. It was like that time at Tower Records, except this time he wasn’t with an intimidating ex-girlfriend. He was on his own.
‘Oh, hi!’ he said. ‘I was looking for you.’
As usual, I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say to this, so I just said, ‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you that you and the band were brilliant.’
‘What, even when I fell over in front of everyone I know?’
‘Especially then,’ said Paperboy with a grin. ‘It was a very impressive fall. Like a stuntwoman. Also, you might remember that you got up and kept playing.’
‘Well, it was either that or burst into tears,’ I said. ‘And if I’d done that, crazy Vanessa would probably have killed me. She’d have run me over in her pink tank.’
‘Yeah, what was wrong with that girl?’ said Paperboy. ‘She’s a bit scary. She’s not really friends with you, is she? I mean, she seems a bit … intense.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She wanted to pretend we were friends so the TV producers would put her in their programme. It’s a long story. And now they’re going to put her in anyway!’
‘Wow, really?’ said Paperboy. ‘You’re not going to be in it too, are you?’
‘God, no!’ I said in horror, and Paperboy laughed.
‘Well, if you were, at least it’d be entertaining,’ he said.
And then he looked a bit serious. I realised we were standing very close together.
‘Rebecca …’ he said. ‘Um. There’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages.’
And then, in broad daylight, outside the Knitting Factory in the middle of town, he kissed me.
HE KISSED ME!
I have been kissed by Paperboy! And it was lovely, although I wasn’t sure exactly what I was doing. After all, I’ve never kissed anyone before. I don’t think I was very good. But I didn’t get a chance to improve because while he was kissing me and I was trying to kiss him back, I heard our car horn beeping and heard the awful voice of my mother going, ‘Bex! Come on!’
The car was just a few feet away with the window rolled down. She was meant to be around the corner! What was she doing here? I jumped away from Paperboy as if I’d been electrocuted.
‘I’m coming!’ I cried in a croaky voice. I looked back at Paperboy. ‘I, um, I’d better go,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ said Paperboy. He looked a bit embarrassed too. But also quite happy. ‘I’d better get back in to Johnny
and the others. They’re still inside. So … will I see you soon? And not just in a, well, paper-money-collecting capacity?’
‘Oh!’ I said. I am very bad at all this. Maybe I should have asked Rachel for advice in the ways of love before now. But I didn’t seriously think I’d ever get to use it. ‘Yes please.’