The Secret Life of Lola

by Davina Bell

  ‘Plus the ten-minute break between towns,’ Belle reminds us.

  But it’s not like that’s going to make a huge difference. We can’t move the whole show around. It’s not like there’s a spare dance we’ve been secretly teaching. It’s too late to make a big change. We haven’t rehearsed anything else. That dance number is the point of the whole show! And Pony Soprano is smart, but there’s no way he could learn a new routine in an hour.

  Poor Pony Soprano. I think of how hard he practised. I think of how disapproving Nana Marjorie will be if we go up there and do that same dance routine. ‘Unoriginal,’ she’ll sniff. ‘Disappointing. This would never have happened on Tally’s watch.’ She’ll probably enjoy the chance to gloat, so maybe that’s one good thing that will come out of this disaster – the chance to make an old woman happy.

  But then I think of Nana Marjorie’s face when she did those Raptor moves – how it glowed, like Rishi’s does when he’s deep in a piece of music. Like mine does when I paint, I guess. How she was once a girl who loved to dance. How perhaps she is cranky because it’s frightening to be old and she’s scared. Like I was at Clives when I stole that painting.

  There’s a snowstorm of ideas swirling through my mind and …

  ‘Guys,’ I say urgently. ‘Huddle round. I think I can fix this.’

  At the end of one hour of mayhem and rushing around and talking to what feels like everyone in Sunnystream to get them to help, our cheeks are flushed. We’re sweaty. We’re pumped.

  Maisie returns to the marquee panting, having run back to her house to fetch an essential prop. ‘Got ’em,’ she says. ‘And guys? Guess what! It’s snowing again!’

  But we don’t have time to even process that because the cheer for the end of Willowbank’s play goes up. Fury Freckle gives the ten-minute announcement. We go over everything one last time.

  ‘So you understand the bit we just changed?’ Belle asks Mayor Magnus. ‘With the final dance number?’

  Mark nods. ‘Stand to the side, sing like an angel.’

  And then Judy shows up, wearing one of those pop-star microphones and says to him, ‘It’s time. Seven minutes to go. Come with me.’

  As they leave the marquee, we all turn to look at each other, scared and proud and probably a bit wired. Is this going to work?

  We settle back into our chairs. The others look as nauseous as I feel. Usually the set designer would be in the wings, helping change the scenery, but Matilda is doing it for me so I can see my paintings like the audience will see them. Eek! I hope they’re OK.

  ‘One minute till curtain up,’ calls Fury.

  Mark belts out the first note and the lights go up. He is beyond amazing. He is electric. He’s incandescent. His voice is so powerful that the audience accepts straight away that he’s an eight-year-old cat girl. Then my first backdrop painting is lowered down, and the audience gasps and then cheers. Because the cats’ alleyway isn’t a giant pile of polka-dotted pumpkins, or a laneway with a brick wall and a couple of garbage cans. Their home is the gazebo at Handkerchief Place. I’ve painted it as though it’s shrouded in mist – all shadows and puddles of milky moonbeams. I’ve tried to paint it as if it’s a photo, even though there’s no photo of this actual scene because Handkerchief Place, pretty as it is, has never looked so spookily magical. On the edge of the stage is a lamppost just like the ones in town.

  Soph grabs my arm and squeezes it – squeezes it tight. ‘It’s perfect,’ she breathes in my ear. She holds on for the rest of the first act.

  Mark Magnus prances around on all fours. He dances. He swings around the lamppost as he sings a song called ‘Memory’. Truly, I have goosebumps. Then, unfortunately, Mikie comes in as part of the chorus and knocks over the lamppost when he’s breakdancing. It falls frighteningly close to Charisma Bloom’s head. She shrieks, throwing herself into Monsieur Flutard’s lap.

  Luckily, it’s not long before the scene changes, and it’s Catilda’s school.

  ‘Ooooh!’ says the audience, the way you’d say ‘Ooooh’ if a garbage truck swung round a corner and was heading towards you. I get it. I’ve painted the main building of Clives, which is big and old and a tiny bit like Hogwarts if you squint really hard. But I’ve painted it from a really low angle, which makes it look as if it’s looming down menacingly over the audience. It’s in my style, but I’ve tweaked it a little to make it look a bit like an Escher painting. He was that artist who did optical illusions, like staircases that go on forever.

  This one is what Miss Ellershaw would call ‘a study in fear’, which means that I’ve put all my feels about Clives into it, and my worries about my friends growing apart. All of these scary thoughts are coming out in the dark shadows, the row of windows like rotten teeth, the octagonal towers at either end like two heads of a giant monster. This painting represents exactly how I feel about going back to Clives.

  This is also the scene when Pony Soprano comes in and he and Catilda do a synchronised jazz routine. As soon as Pony Soprano clops onto the stage, the cheers are so loud that my ears buzz. His jazz is perfect – of course it is! He’s a true professional. And, look, Mayor Magnus isn’t the most natural jazz dancer, but he does a pretty great job. Soph’s mum is great as Cat Trunchbull, stomping around in leopard-print gumboots. They finish the song and the curtain goes down, and the clapping is epic. So far, so good.

  Now there’s a tiny interval, just long enough for the lights to come up and a couple of costume changes, and for the school backdrop to be pulled up, and for us to breathe a sigh of relief but also get jittery about what’s coming next. I wish we were allowed to go talk to Belle, but she said she’ll be fine, and that it’s too crowded backstage to have us there anyway.

  Maisie leans across from the other side of Soph and says, ‘Mayor Magnus is good, right?’

  ‘He’s beyond good,’ I reply. ‘No jokes, he could be a professional. Even Rishi thinks so.’

  At the mention of Rishi’s name, Soph turns red as cranberry juice. And then, as if he’s heard us, Rishi’s there. Soph looks as if she wants to slide under her seat.

  ‘Loles, I’ve practised the new bit,’ he says. ‘And I can play for as long as you need to get it all set up.’

  ‘Thanks so much. You’re a lifesaver,’ I tell him.

  ‘No sweat,’ he says. ‘You’ve really saved the day here with this new plan. Those Cloud Town jerks.

  ‘You OK, Hargraves?’ he asks Sophia, and his voice is so gentle and concerned, it’s like a little blade in my heart. I think of how stressful these holidays have been – and great and lonely and intense, all at once. It would have been comforting to have someone to ask, ‘You OK?’ like that – like they really, truly, actually cared what was going on inside your head. I wonder if that’s what Belle misses about Pete. Someone who cares about the little thoughts, like fireflies that flit around your brain at night.

  ‘TWO-MINUTE WARNING,’ calls Fury.

  ‘Shoot,’ says Rishi. ‘Gotta go.’ As he goes out the clubhouse door, I watch him look over his shoulder – back at Soph. I turn and she’s watching him go like she wishes he didn’t have to.

  And then it’s happening. Holy moly. Curtain up.

  For this scene, I have wrapped fairy lights around giant black cardboard letters, so it looks like the words are made of light, and those words say: THE JUNKYARD. The painting is of the Shark Tank, boarded up. As soon as people see it, they recognise it, and everyone laughs. Truly, has there ever been a bigger piece of junk in Sunnystream history than the Shark Tank?

  The second act was supposed to be what Belle refers to as a giant sandwich: big dance number, emotional solo song, big dance number. The final dance performance is the one Cloud Town stole, but luckily I think the other bits of this act are just as strong. As Pony Soprano trots back out, the crowd goes WILD. It’s by far the biggest cheer of the night.

  The Junkyard scene is very cat-focused. The cast swish their tails and do the robot to a song called ‘Magical Mr Mistoffe
lees’. At one point Mikie trips over someone’s foot and sprawls onto the ground, and Pony Soprano steps right up onto his back and then lies down, as if he’s really tired. Poor guy, he’s had a lot going on lately. The crowd says, ‘Awww.’ Hopefully we get extra marks for the cute factor, but I’m starting to feel really worried about the final dance scene, which is where he really needs to bring it.

  I hold my breath as they change the backdrop. This is the one I took the most time on. It’s the one that means the most to me. And maybe, just maybe, it’s the best piece of art I’ve ever made. A spotlight shines down, and there it is. Miss Honey’s house. But instead of being a tiny jar of honey, it’s a building – one that’s filled with love and hope and the promise of better things.

  It’s an itty-bitty version of Corner Park Clubhouse.

  Around it is the garden, wilder than it is in real life: the plants lush, flowers blooming in a rainbow of colours, surrounded by bees buzzing. And beyond that, an ombré sky that fades from deep blue to the lightest purple. The sun breaks through the clouds in thick beams, like it does in old Italian paintings, like the fingers of God. The bright-red sewn-up slash through those clouds adds what Miss Ellershaw would call dramatic tension. And around the building, in bright-red stitches, is a giant heart.

  Looking at it from back here, my whole body feels full of wonder. It’s as if I didn’t do it myself – as if I’m looking at the work of a stranger. And I don’t mean to brag, but truly? It’s good.

  When the audience sees it, the dear old clubhouse, the beating heart of Sunnystream, they break into applause, cheering and clapping and whistling and stamping their feet. The actors can’t start their dialogue because there’s too much noise, and I hope Belle isn’t mad about that. I look across at Soph and see that she is silently crying.

  By the end of Miss Honey’s solo, Soph’s not the only one crying. The whole audience is weeping, including me. When she sings about there being no place she’d rather be, we feel it deep.

  But now the moment has come. The lights go down and I can see people dressed in black putting chairs out onto the stage, making sure to leave a big enough gap at the front, just like I told them, and hauling out a couple of giant paint tins.

  What happens next is completely, totally out of our control. The final dance will decide who wins the Biennial Sprint-Musial Triangular Trophy. And it’s all in the hands of …

  Nana Marjorie.

  Rishi starts to pluck the banjo, playing an instrumental medley of all the songs in the musical, as the Goldies rise from their seats and start walking up the stairs to the stage, where Mark Magnus is ready to help them. Joel practically gallops up and takes his place on a chair near the middle. Edna needs her stick but she still makes it at a quick clip. I can’t quite see from the back, but if it’s all going to plan, Grey Dare is bending on his knee in front of Nana Marjorie. She will put out her arms and wrap them around his neck. He will lift her up, and – there they are!

  As Grey Dare carries Nana Marjorie up the stairs and to the chair in the middle of the stage, the crowd says ‘Awwww!’ The sequins of Tally’s silver head wrap sparkle like the disco ball at the year six social, which, FYI, is where I first kissed a boy. She beams out at the audience and does a wave like the Queen, and the audience laughs, and I breathe the world’s hugest sigh of relief. Rishi and Mark start to sing in harmony, sweetly and slowly, their voices weaving together like strands of DNA in a YouTube clip about genetics.

  When I grow up, I will be tall enough to reach the branches that I need to

  Reach to climb the trees you get to climb when you’re grown up

  The lyrics coupled with the sweet, beaming Goldies onstage are enough to snap your heart in two – and then bubbles from the bubble machine start floating around them, like the shiny dreams they had when they were younger. I grab my phone and film it for Tally. I have goosebumps. Then the singing stops. The spotlight turns up on Maisie, sitting on a stool in front of the paint cans at the back of the stage. She clicks her drumsticks together and yells, ‘ONE TWO THREE.’ Rishi morphs the song into a fast version of ‘We’re All Howling at the Same Moon’, faster and brighter and louder with the drumbeat. And Nana Marjorie leads the Goldies in the Raptor routine I taught them, dancing as if her life depends on it, her eyes half-closed with delight as the audience starts to clap along.

  T-rex! Three horns! Diplodocus neck! Right wave, left wave, brontosaurus jaw!

  Click and click and wink and clap. ‘Hey!’

  Led by Nana M, they are miraculously in time, and Maisie keeps the beat perfectly. And when they get to the chorus, Judy sends Pony Soprano in from the wings for his final tap-dancing solo. For a second he hesitates, confused by all the chairs, I guess, but then it’s like he shrugs and thinks, ‘Oh well!’ And as Mark joins him from the other side, they dance a duet that’s as tight and synchronised as the ice skating at the Winter Olympics.

  The clapping gets louder, and Nana Marjorie’s face is a sunbeam of joy. At the end, on the final line, she raises her arms and looks up. I wonder if she believes in heaven – if she’s saying to my grandpa, ‘Can you see me, Teddy?’ The next time I visit, I’ll ask her. For the first time ever, I feel like I want to cup her face in my hands and never let her go.

  A chant goes up from the crowd: ‘Sunny – STREAM! Sunny – STREAM!’ All the cast come onto the stage and each person finds a Goldie and shakes their hand and they do a bow together. I don’t want to brag, but that was my idea. I thought it should look like we’d planned to have the Sunny Heights residents up there all along. People cheer and stomp and whistle. Someone in the middle of the audience stands up – someone really tall. I can only guess from where I’m sitting, but I think it might be someone with one eye. And then everyone joins him in a standing ovation as Belle and Judy walk onstage. I look at Mayor Magnus, who’s watching Belle as the cheers roll around Corner Park Clubhouse. I grab Soph’s arm. ‘Look,’ I say, pointing at him.

  In year three, we went on a night-time excursion to the observatory in the hills, away from the city, to look at the stars. There was a room at the top where the ceiling was made of glass – the walls too. As every single person walked into that room, they said, ‘WHOOOAA!’ and their eyes opened wide, like they never could have imagined what they were seeing. When I walked in, I felt my heart grow bigger. That’s the expression on Mark’s face. Like he’s having his own Observatory Moment. Soph and I look at each other and grin, and then I let go of her arm and start wolf-whistling, which is truly one of my superpowers.

  And then the curtains close. Fury Freckle climbs onto the stage, the ice-cream wrapper dress glittering under the lights. ‘There will be a ten-minute break while the judges confer – and this is not going to be an easy decision, people.’

  Soph and I run out of the clubhouse door and round the back so we can help with getting the Goldies off the stage. Plus, I really want to hug Nana Marjorie. When we get there, though, I can hardly reach her because she’s surrounded by fans, and she is loving it.

  ‘You guys could have your own Instagram,’ someone is telling her.

  ‘I think we’d prefer a YouTube channel,’ she says airily. ‘Social media is such a time sink.’

  Ha! Like she’s short of time.

  I channel Belle and do some assertive walking to get through the crowd. ‘Nana Marjorie, you were great,’ I say. ‘You were born to perform.’

  As I lean in to kiss her, she grabs my cheeks between her cool, smooth hands. ‘And you were born to change the world,’ she says to me sternly. ‘And don’t you ever stop trying.’

  Then Grey Dare shows up to carry her back to her wheelchair, and the other Goldies are being escorted back to the audience, and Maisie and Soph are hugging and Matilda is instructing the props people to clear away the chairs, and the casts of all three plays are trying to fit on the stage, and the three stage crews are lining up along the sides of the clubhouse, and the audience is chattering excitedly, and I’m looking through the
crowd, trying desperately to find Belle.

  But when I spot her, I don’t run and jump on her, like I’d planned. She’s tucked in a corner at the back of the stage, deep in conversation with her dad. He has his hands on her shoulders, looking into her face, and I wish I could hear what he’s saying. She’s looking back up at him, listening, as if it’s just the two of them, far from this mad, swirling crowd.

  And then the lights flash on and off to tell everyone IT’S TIME, and we have to get back down to our seats, and, boy oh boy, I am NERVOUS.

  ‘Killer, you were incredible!’ I tell Maisie as we race around the clubhouse.

  ‘Thanks. Good idea, Loles. Are we going to win, do you reckon?’ she asks.

  ‘Honestly? I have no clue. Pony Soprano might get best actor again, maybe?’ We tried so hard, but so many things went wrong. But it wasn’t a disaster. In fact, was it an actual hit? Or am I dreaming? Cloud Town were pretty impressive, and let’s face it, that last dance number was incredible. But if they win, that sucks! Nobody saw Willowbank’s musical, but the chances of them winning are about the same as the odds of Belle quitting school to join a motorcycle gang.

  Just as we plonk onto our chairs, the curtains open to reveal Monsieur Flutard, Charisma Bloom and Fury Freckle standing at the front of the stage. There’s a microphone, too. The trophies are lined up on a little table: best performer, best sets, best show. EEK. The crowd falls silent, waiting. I can barely breathe.

  Charisma grabs an envelope. ‘I could give a long speech,’ she says, batting her eyelids, ‘but I’m not a jerk.’ The crowd laughs. ‘And so. Tonight’s award for Best Actor is …’

  She pauses, and suddenly I wonder, IS IT GOING TO BE NANA MARJORIE?!?!

  ‘… Mark Magnus for his role as Catilda!’

  ‘ARGH!!!’ We scream as Mayor Magnus comes to the front of the stage.

  ‘Well, gee!’ Mark booms into the microphone as the cheers die down. ‘I don’t know what to say!’ Then he giggles, and the crowd giggles with him. Was it really only a few months ago that he was standing outside the clubhouse, trying to persuade the crowd that we should tear it down?