by Holly Webb
“Don’t you dare go in looking like that,” said Bethany sternly. “You know what Lizabeth’s like. If she gets one sniff that you’re worried, she’ll be on you like a shark smelling blood.”
Chloe laughed and Bethany glared at her. “You know it’s true!” she said indignantly.
“Yes, but Lizabeth the shark! I can’t help thinking of the shark from Jaws in a long blond wig.”
That even made Sara giggle and Bethany nodded approvingly. “Do – not –let – her – see – you – care – that – she – exists!” she added firmly, prodding a finger at Sara on each word. Then they frogmarched her to the studio and practically shoved her through the door.
Luckily Lizabeth and Nadia weren’t there yet, but, unfortunately, neither was Mr Harvey. Sara shut the door behind her very slowly and trailed over to the small group by the piano. All the boys were there and the other two girls. She forced herself to look confident and was rewarded by a friendly smile from the tall girl with startlingly green eyes.
“Hi. I’m Amy. Are you Sara? Well, you must be because you’re definitely not in our year! Congratulations! That’s really amazing, getting a callback for something like this after you haven’t even been here a month.”
Sara flushed. “Yes – I mean, yes, I’m Sara! I think it was just luck though, honestly.”
Amy nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ve done a few auditions now and the only time I got a part was the worst one I ever did! I totally messed up the lines they gave me to do and I was so embarrassed. This girl I once met at an audition for a cereal ad told me that most times they make a decision about eight seconds after you walk in the door. I think she was exaggerating but it makes you realize – sometimes whether you get the part or not isn’t really anything to do with you.”
Sara nodded. “Mmm… They’ve picked a lot of blond girls, haven’t they? I think they want us to look like the girl from the film.”
The other Year Eight girl twirled her long brown plait and grinned at Sara. “I’m planning on bleaching it before Monday! What with you, Amy and the one and only Lizabeth, it’s too much of a coincidence. Even Nadia’s almost blond.”
Amy sniffed. “That’s being generous. She’s mouse.”
Sara started to relax a bit. Amy and the brown-haired girl seemed really nice. She’d sort of assumed they would be like Lizabeth because they were Year Eight, but she realized now that was stupid.
“You won’t really bleach your hair, will you?” she asked, a little shyly. “It’s a lovely colour.”
The brown-haired girl squinted down at the long ends of her plait. It was lovely, a rich chestnutty brown and slightly wavy. She shrugged. “No, I shouldn’t think so. I kind of like it, and I’m not that desperate to be in this. Not quite, anyway.”
“So, if you three reckon it’s all done on looks, why did they choose us lot?” One of the boys was leaning against the piano grinning at them – he’d obviously been listening.
“You’re all short!” the brown-haired girl threw back, smiling. “You’re meant to be younger than us, remember.”
“I’m not short!” He shot up from his relaxed pose against the piano, practically standing on tiptoe. “I’m way taller than you.” Then he looked again at the brown-haired girl and shrugged. “Well, maybe not you, Izzy, but I’m definitely taller than her.” He jerked a thumb at Sara. “Look. ’Scuse me a minute.” He grabbed Sara’s shoulders and moved her away from the piano. Then he stood back to back with her. “Loads taller.”
Sara felt herself blushing again as the boy leaned against her. She didn’t know whether she ought to complain about being moved around like some sort of doll, but she had no idea what to say, so she stayed quiet.
Amy and Izzy looked them up and down, measuring them, and exchanged grins. “Nah. Well, I don’t know. What do you think, Iz?” Amy winked at Sara.
“Sorry, Nathan. Sara’s taller – only by a whisker, mind…” Izzy was giggling.
Nathan’s outraged face was so funny, Sara couldn’t help joining in the teasing, even though five minutes ago she wouldn’t have dared. “I’ve always thought the boy in the film was really weird-looking. A bit frog-like? Maybe that’s what they’re going for…” She put her head on one side thoughtfully, staring at Nathan, and Amy and Izzy nearly wet themselves laughing.
Nathan was speechless, and the rest of the boys were laughing, too. It was just then that Lizabeth and Nadia walked in, clearly hoping to make a grand entrance. Lizabeth was not happy about being upstaged and she stalked over to the giggling group.
“What on earth is the matter with you lot?” she asked contemptuously, arms folded.
Nathan recovered the power of speech remarkably quickly. “We were having a joke, Lizabeth. Something you wouldn’t understand, seeing as you don’t actually have a sense of humour.”
Sara grinned, then wished she hadn’t when Lizabeth flashed her a furious glance. She was obviously about to lay into them when Mr Harvey walked in.
Mr Harvey was in his usual insulting mode. “Right, well, I have absolutely no idea why they chose you lot but obviously I will be doing my best with the very poor material on offer.” He took the sting out of the words with a very small smile – more of a twitch, really, but everyone beamed back at him. “In their infinite wisdom, the casting team still wish to hear you sing ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ – who knows why!”
Even Sara, who really loved the song, was getting the feeling that one could actually have too much sugar. But hey, it was for a good cause.
Mr Harvey made them sing bits of the song together, and then separately – he was really focusing on making sure the words were clear. The others all had good voices – even Lizabeth, Sara reluctantly had to admit. Her voice was very strong and she had superb control of her breathing, really holding on to the high notes.
At the end of the session, Sara walked out with Izzy and Amy, glad that she’d ended up meeting them. She cast a quick look back at Lizabeth and was startled to see a very thoughtful expression on her face. Then suddenly Lizabeth seemed to notice she was watching and she slapped on a sickly-sweet smile. Which was the scariest thing yet…
The others crowded round her when she got back to the classroom, just as Miss James was about to take registration.
“You’re still alive, then,” Bethany pointed out cheerfully.
Sara grinned. “Yeah, the other girls were really nice actually. And one of the boys.”
“Whoo-oo!” Chloe whistled.
“Don’t get excited, Chloe.” Sara rolled her eyes at her friend. “Just because you fancy the pants off Sam, it doesn’t mean the rest of us are boy-obsessed.” She laughed – Chloe’s face looked very like Nathan’s when she’d made the frog comment. “I only liked him because he was rude to Lizabeth.”
“She didn’t have a go at you then?” Bethany asked, sounding relieved.
“No. Actually it was really weird, she gave me this totally fake smile as I was going. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“She’s probably trying to psych you out,” Lily suggested bitterly. “So was the class any good?”
Sara gave them a quick rundown of what they’d done and then they had to shoot off to singing.
“More Mr Harvey!” Sara shook her head. “Please, please don’t let him do ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’…”
Lizabeth carried on being weird. At break on Thursday, Bethany nudged Sara. “You know what you said about you-know-who smiling at you? She’s at it again. Look!”
Sure enough, Lizabeth was walking past with Nadia, both smiling sweet, friendly smiles at Sara and Bethany. They seemed to have been practising, as the smiles looked almost natural.
“That was truly weird,” Bethany pronounced as soon as they’d gone round the corner. “We need to keep an eye on those two.”
“They could just have been smiling.” Sara said, not sounding very convinced.
“Yeah, right…”
But it seemed Sara was right. At lunch, Lizabeth w
afted past their table, smiled as though Sara was her favourite person in the world – and then turned back as though she’d just thought of something. Her blue eyes were enormous as she leaned over to talk to Sara.
Everyone else at the table watched in amazement as Lizabeth cooed, “Sara! I’m really sorry, I’ve been meaning to say this for ages.” She swept her long dark eyelashes artistically down and up again. “I shouldn’t have said what I did after the first audition. It was just –” she flapped her hand vaguely – “the stress. The buzz of the audition really got to me. You know? Anyway, I’m really sorry. See you later for coaching!” And she went, leaving them all sitting in stunned silence.
“I do not believe it…” Chloe muttered. “Lizabeth Mackenzie just apologized to you, Sara. Wow. Do you think the cafeteria has security cameras? We need this for posterity.”
“I don’t trust her an inch.” Bethany was frowning. “She didn’t mean one word of that.”
Lily nodded. “I felt like making the sign of the cross, like they do in vampire films. That girl is so evil.”
Sara agreed with her. But then – were they being unfair? She’d felt really weird about the audition, too. She’d been worrying about competing with her mates, desperate to impress her parents and, above all, just determined to do well. Adrenaline could do funny things to a person and she’d often felt buzzed or down after the excitement of a performance. She still didn’t actually like Lizabeth, of course, but surely it wasn’t really that strange for her to have had a temper tantrum like that after something so important.
“I don’t know…” she muttered thoughtfully.
“You weren’t convinced by that little act, were you?” Bethany looked shocked. “Sara, you just can’t be that nice!” She said nice as though she meant stupid.
“I’m just saying maybe!” Sara said defensively. “You never know, I suppose.”
“Yes, we do.” Chloe leaned over the table and glared at Sara. “Lizabeth is awful. Don’t trust her!”
Despite Chloe’s warning, Sara was finding it hard to hate her as much as usual. Maybe it was the glory of being the only person Lizabeth had ever been known to apologize to, or perhaps it was just that Sara knew Lizabeth was going through the same stress as she was.
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” she asked her friends before school on Monday. Lizabeth had just walked past them and called out, “Good luck for later, Sara!”, and Sara had rather feebly called back, “Yeah, good luck to you, too…” Then she’d seen Chloe, Lily and Bethany gazing at her reproachfully. “Don’t look at me like I just kicked a puppy or something! What do you want me to do, ignore her? How can I when she’s being nice?”
“Trust us, she is never nice,” Bethany muttered darkly. “She’s plotting. She has to be.”
“That’s what Amy and Izzy said on Friday when she was being all sweet to me at our coaching session,” Sara admitted. “They don’t like her either, even though she’s in their class.”
“You see!” Bethany said triumphantly. “Everyone in the school knows she’s a monster, apart from you! Just remember what she was like to Lily!”
Sara nibbled her nails. “But she was being really nice, Bethany. She was paired up with me in one of the improvisations we did and she seemed – oh, I don’t know … normal. She was telling me how excited she was and she loves the film of Mary Poppins just as much as I do. She told me all this interesting stuff she’d found online about the filming. And she gave me some good audition tips! She explained centring yourself way better than when Mr Lessing tried to teach us it.”
The others were still looking at her sceptically and Sara sighed. “Oh, you’re probably right. I just can’t think straight today. I can’t believe it’s Monday already. The audition’s this afternoon!”
“Stop doing that to your nails!” Lily grabbed her hand away. “Do you want to have ratty nails for the casting team to see?”
“They aren’t going to be looking at her hands, Lils!” Chloe giggled.
“You never know,” said Lily seriously. “Casting directors can have pet hates like everybody else. What if one of them just can’t stand seeing people with bitten nails?”
Sara stared down at her fingers in horror. She’d only bitten one nail a little way round. Was it enough to lose her the part?
“Look what you’ve done!” Bethany sighed. “Sara, Lily was just saying. This casting team probably couldn’t care less about your nails.”
“You think?” Sara was still staring anxiously at her fingers.
Everything seemed to be significant today. Breakfast with her family had been a nightmare. Sara had really hoped that her parents might make a bit of a fuss of her on such an important day, but Mum had been going on and on about some school thing that she had to organize. Will had wished her good luck as she got up to go and catch her bus, and she was fairly sure that she’d heard her dad asking him why. Mum definitely knew the audition was happening – she couldn’t have forgotten after that row with Gran – but she just hadn’t bothered to say anything.
Sitting in registration, Sara kept patting her pocket to make sure the little cat was still there. She’d gone round to Gran’s house on Sunday, nervous and desperate to talk to someone about the audition. They were sitting in the kitchen chatting when suddenly Gran had handed her a tiny parcel wrapped up with ribbon.
“What is it?” Sara asked.
Gran smiled mysteriously. “Open it.”
Sara had carefully undone the wrapping and picked out the little black felt cat. He was sitting with his tail curled round his legs and he had green sequins for eyes, a pink bead nose and thread whiskers. He looked really old. He was really old, Sara knew that. She’d seen him sitting on Gran’s dressing table ever since she could remember.
“It’s Jacky! Gran, why’ve you given me Jacky?” Sara gazed down at the little creature in her hand, feeling confused.
Gran smiled. “I bought him just before my first professional audition, Sara. Tomorrow’s your first audition for a part, so I thought you might like to have him as your mascot now.”
“Do you mean it? Oh, Gran!” Sara couldn’t stop her eyes filling with tears. Gran couldn’t have done anything to make her feel more special.
Sara felt herself blinking back tears now as she touched the little cat in her pocket. She still couldn’t believe Gran had given Jacky to her. She’d kept him for over sixty years. Sara hadn’t shown him to the others yet. He was so special and for the moment she just wanted him to be a secret between her and Gran. Jacky seemed to be helping her a little already. It was comforting just to be able to slip her hand into her pocket and remember that Gran thought she deserved to have him.
Suddenly Lily nudged her and Sara blinked in confusion.
“She’s here, Miss James!” Bethany said and Sara blushed, realizing that she’d missed her name being called.
Miss James didn’t seem to mind, though. She smiled at Sara and said, “It’s the audition today, isn’t it? Ms Purcell mentioned that you’d have to leave maths early. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll catch up.”
Sara exchanged grins with the others. As if missing something vital in the maths lesson was what she was worried about!
It was a good thing she wasn’t worried because she took in precisely nothing from any of her morning classes. She just couldn’t stop the words from the song running through her head, and Bethany and the others had to keep shooing her in the right direction when it came to change rooms at the end of geography. She wouldn’t have had any of the right books either, if they hadn’t actually packed her rucksack for her.
By the time it got to maths, she was one big ball of jittery excitement. Luckily Miss James seemed to have realized there wasn’t much point expecting her to say anything useful.
“What time do you have to go?” Lily whispered when the maths teacher was talking to someone else.
“Twelve,” Sara muttered. The clock seemed to be moving far faster than it ought to be, she was sur
e. “The audition’s at half past, but I have to change and everything… Mr Harvey said to go at twelve. I’m the last of the girls. It’s Nadia, then Izzy, then Lizabeth, then Amy, then me. And then they’re doing the boys.”
At one minute to twelve, Sara waved a shaky arm in the air. Miss James looked a bit surprised as she’d just asked a difficult question and Sara was by no means a star at maths. Then she remembered. “Oh, yes, you need to go, don’t you? Well good luck, Sara. Don’t forget to get the homework off one of the others.”
Sara nodded vaguely and the rest of the class waved and grinned at her, calling good luck messages as she slowly headed for the door. Her legs were trembling. She was going to have to sing, dance and probably go through a scene in about half an hour – at the moment she could hardly walk! Let’s just concentrate on getting changed first, she decided.
Izzy was in the changing room, looking relieved.
“Have you had your audition? How was it?” Sara gasped out. “Were they nice? Was it the same people? What did you have to do?”
Izzy grinned. “Slow down, slow down! Yeah, they were really nice. It was Tamara, the choreographer from last time, and that musical director, Simon. The director was there, too, which was a bit scary but he was OK.”
Sara nodded. Good. She’d liked Simon and Tamara. “So what did you have to do?”
“You start getting changed and I’ll tell you,” Izzy said firmly. “You’ve not got time to stand around.”
Sara couldn’t help giggling. Izzy reminded her of Bethany, with that slightly bossy looking-after-you tone of voice. She grabbed her footless tights and Shine T-shirt out of her locker.
“Don’t forget to brush your hair out,” Izzy said. “They want it down, remember.”