by Ann Bryant
“But we mustn’t make her look too different from what she is,” said Naomi.
“Wh…what am I?” I asked in a small voice.
“You’re natural,” said Naomi simply.
“Yes, Naomi’s right,” Georgie said with a sigh. “You’re little and slim, with long straight blonde hair and lovely creamy skin, and I’m deadly jealous. Why can’t I have long straight hair and be all small and neat?”
“Your hair’s lovely,” I said, “and at least you look your age!”
“What do you want to wear?” asked Jess.
“Just jeans and a top.”
“Well, we’ll let you wear jeans,” Katy said thoughtfully. “But I think we need to snazz up the top half. What about this?” She jumped up and went over to her drawer. “Hang on a sec…”
She came back with a beautiful bright turquoise top with swirly patterns of sequins all over it.
“But that’s one of your best tops, Katy! And it might be a bit big for me…” Although even as I was saying it, I was really hoping it would fit, because I so wanted to wear it.
“It’ll look great with your blonde hair,” said Katy. “Go on, try it on.”
So I did, and I absolutely loved it.
“It looks way better on you than it ever does on me!” said Katy, which was very kind of her but totally not true.
So then we all went off to supper talking about what make-up I ought to wear. After supper we had to get through an hour’s prep, which is like homework, where we sit in a room in silence and get on with the work we’ve been set. Tonight it was our matron, Miss Jennings, supervising. I couldn’t concentrate particularly well, and I noticed Katy wasn’t concentrating either. She was sketching away with a dreamy look in her eyes, while, on my other side, Georgie had her play script on her lap. I glanced sideways at her and saw her lips moving, which meant she was learning her lines.
The moment prep was over we rushed back up to the dorm so Katy could try out some make-up ideas. When she’d finished, I looked at myself in the mirror and got a shock at the sight of my face with bright red lips and silvery black eyes. I thought I looked like a horrible doll, but I didn’t want to say that when Katy had worked so hard.
“Do you think you need to soften it a bit?” Naomi asked carefully.
“I’d really rather not wear any make-up at all,” I said, trying to be a bit less meek and mild.
Naomi and Grace agreed that if I wasn’t comfortable in make-up, I shouldn’t wear any, but Georgie and Jess said that I’d look pale and washed out on the stage with all the bright lights if I didn’t wear some sort of make-up.
After I’d washed my face, Katy had another go, and I liked it much better, because although it gave me a shock when I looked in the mirror, it wasn’t a nasty one. Really, it was still a bit too much for my liking, but I knew Georgie and Jess were right about the stage lighting, and everyone said I looked stunning – even Naomi and Grace – which was a lovely compliment. So I agreed to let Katy make me up just like that on Saturday.
Saturday! I shuddered yet again and couldn’t get the thought of it out of my head. By the time I went to bed I was in a terrible state, imagining all the cool acts coming onstage one after the other, and then pathetic little me wandering on, and people not really noticing me because I’m so small and young-looking. Or maybe I’d have to go on first? Would it be worse to be first, or last, or somewhere in the middle? I decided the middle would be best.
After a while I could feel that I was the only one still awake. I could hear Georgie, Jess and Naomi breathing, and although the other two sleep almost completely silently, I’ve been in the same dorm with them for so long that I can just tell when they’re asleep. And as I lay there, feeling very alone, I started thinking about the piano, which got me into an even worse state.
Every single week since I’ve been at Silver Spires I’ve gone straight to a free practice room after my piano lesson and practised for a few minutes, because Mrs. Roach taught me that if you do that, all you’ve learned will stick in your memory, whereas if you leave it even for a day, you can’t remember what you’ve been taught half so well.
Today, though, for the first time, I hadn’t played through any of the work that Mrs. Roach had set me. I’d just kept playing my song for the contest, and then I’d spent ages improvising new bits of songs. It seemed to be all I wanted to do these days and I couldn’t help feeling guilty about it. There was a horrible little voice at the back of my mind reminding me that I’d got my music scholarship because of my piano playing, and I shut my eyes and buried myself under the duvet to try and stop the terrible picture that came into my mind of a stern-looking Mrs. Roach telling me I hadn’t practised enough.
You know what this means, don’t you, Mia? You’ll have to give up your scholarship.
I shot out from under my duvet, feeling stifled. If I had my scholarship taken away I might have to leave Silver Spires, because I wasn’t sure if Mum and Dad could afford to keep me here without the school paying some of my fees. And that would be unbearable.
I promise to practise like mad from now on, I told myself over and over again as I lay in the dark. I promise to practise…I promise…
Chapter Five
As Friday turned into Saturday, and Saturday morning turned into Saturday afternoon, I grew more and more nervous. The girls who were performing in the contest had to attend a rehearsal in the afternoon to check the position of the mikes and the sound levels. Mr. Ray was also going to tell us the running order. We had to be at the theatre between two o’clock and two thirty, and I decided to be early to get it over with more quickly. Georgie said she’d come with me, thank goodness.
I’d been worrying in case Georgie wasn’t allowed to be with me, but when we turned up, Mr. Ray didn’t tell her she had to go or anything. It was a relief to find I was the first to arrive.
“Now, let’s see…” He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket. “You’re the fifth act of eleven, Mia, so you’ll be seated in the auditorium with your friends, and you’ll come down to the stage when you’re announced.” I like the way the seats in the auditorium are in tiers, getting higher as they go further back, just like a proper theatre. And the front row is level with the front of the stage. “It’s all very casual,” Mr. Ray went on. “Nothing to worry about. If you want, you can give the audience a little wave or a bow, or otherwise you might prefer simply to go straight to the piano.”
“I’ll go straight to the piano,” I said in a small voice.
“No probs at all!” said Mr. Ray. “Now, this is the mike for your voice. You can sing a bit now to get an idea of how close to the mike you need to be, and you’ll notice that with the amplification on the stage the piano will come over nice and clearly.”
I didn’t feel nervous in front of Mr. Ray, because he’d heard me sing before, but I was just about to try a few bars of my song when I heard whispering and noticed that a group of Year Nines had come into the auditorium, two of them carrying guitars. They were all chatting quietly.
Mr. Ray must have seen me looking anxiously up at them because his voice dropped. “Don’t worry about them. The soundcheck is important, Mia, so that we get it right tonight. Also, it’s good for you to get used to singing into a mike.”
“Go on, Mia. Just sing the first bit,” Georgie tried to encourage me. But I hesitated, because the Year Nines had all stopped chatting and were standing perfectly still waiting for me to begin, and that made a wave of nervousness come flooding over me.
Mr. Ray frowned. His eyes darted from the girls to me and back to the girls. “Sorry, you lot, would you mind waiting in the green room, please? I’ll come along and get you in a few minutes. If you pass anyone else on your way, give them the same message, please.”
The girls all exchanged eye-rolling glances, and my cheeks flooded with colour. I felt such an idiot needing the teacher to make the big girls go away before I would sing, and then I felt even worse because just before they went out I cl
early heard one of them say, “Why’s she bothering to enter if she can’t even sing in front of us?”
“Just ignore them,” said Mr. Ray. “It’s easy to be confident when you don’t have to get up onstage and perform solo. Those girls are all in a band. Now…let’s see…is this mike angled right? Just sing the first bit of your song and I can adjust it…”
So I did, and it sounded strange to my ears.
“Well that’s pretty much perfect.” Mr. Ray smiled. “Let me quickly check from the back.” He leaped off the stage and ran up the stairs, two at a time. “Okay, shoot!”
I felt a bit more confident this time and sang a few more bars than I had done before.
“Great!” Mr. Ray gave me a thumbs up and then leaped back down to the stage and asked me if I was happy.
“Not exactly,” I said, pulling a face to show how nervous I was.
He laughed. “But apart from feeling nervous, happy with the stage?”
I nodded.
“Just one more thing to bear in mind. There will be a strong spotlight on you all the time, so you won’t be able to see the audience at all.”
I nodded and swallowed.
“Okay, that’s fine. See you later then! Make your way to what we call the green room, just along from the auditorium, at about seven, then Miss York will give all you contestants a last-minute talk before sending you through to the auditorium to sit with your friends. Okay? You know where the green room is, don’t you?”
I nodded. My parents knew someone who worked at The Royal Festival Hall in London and he had told me all about the green room there, where the performers gather before concerts. There are drinks machines and nice settees and tables, and places where you can hang things up. Then, when it’s time for you to go onstage, it’s easy to walk from there to the wings at the sides of the stage. I hadn’t been in the green room at Silver Spires before, but I’d walked past it, so I knew where it was.
I couldn’t eat any supper that evening, and by the time we were back in the dorm and I was all dressed up in my jeans and Katy’s top, I felt sick.
“This is such a bad idea,” I whispered shakily. “I never should have entered, should I? I’m just not the right person for this kind of thing.”
As Katy did my make-up, the others tried to keep me calm.
“You don’t know if you’re that kind of person yet,” said Naomi. “You love playing and singing your song, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“So you’re halfway there, right?”
I nodded more slowly. It didn’t feel like halfway there. It felt like a hundredth of the way there.
“Stop talking!” wailed Katy. “I get lipstick all over her face every time she nods!”
Naomi ignored her. “Well, there you are, Mia. Once you start singing, you’ll forget about the audience. And remember, with the spotlight on you, you won’t be able to see them anyway, so you can pretend they’re not there!”
I hadn’t thought about that until Naomi said it, and it actually calmed me down…well, just a little bit.
Georgie grinned at me. She was crouching down in front of me, peering at my face as best she could whenever Katy’s arms or hands weren’t in the way. “Naomi’s hit the nail on the head, as usual, Mamma Mia.” Her grinning face suddenly appeared really close up. “And I have this hunch that you’re going to find it’s totally fab onstage! Because it is!”
I couldn’t help smiling. Georgie always cheers me up. I’d still not breathed a word to anyone about my embarrassing experiences when I was little, because I couldn’t even bear to think about them myself, let alone tell anyone else, yet it seemed at that moment as though Georgie could see right inside my head.
“Good, you’re not twitching around so much now,” said Katy. “I can finally get this done!”
I might not have been twitching on the outside, but my insides were like quivering jelly.
“Right, take a look!”
There’s just one full-length mirror in the dorm and when I looked in it I couldn’t believe that it could be me standing there, looking so tall in Katy’s wedges and so sophisticated in her sparkly top. My hair looked strong and sharp too, instead of soft, because Katy had used her hair straighteners on it. But the biggest change in me was the make-up. It looked just right for the clothes I was wearing. I’d never seen my eyes sparkling so much.
“Thank you, Katy,” I whispered.
She grinned. “Pleasure, madam!”
But I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable with this new image. It felt like I was hiding the real me inside this sophisticated look and, in a way, as if I was cheating myself of being natural. Grace gave me a lovely smile in the mirror as she quietly said we ought to be going, and I knew she understood how strange I felt all dressed up like this when I’m not used to it, because Grace is exactly the same as me where fashion is concerned.
When we got to the theatre, the first thing that hit me was the noise. There were masses and masses of girls milling around in the foyer, and loads more who’d already gone to sit down in the auditorium. I spotted plenty of Year Tens and Elevens, and I gulped, because it meant it would be a massive audience. There were lots of teachers there too, all dressed up as though they were off out for the evening, which added to my anxiety, because it seemed as if they were treating the night as specially important. Music from the speakers filtered into every tiny chink of air space that wasn’t already filled with chatter or laughter, and the strong smell of perfume made the air even heavier.
“What am I supposed to do? Where do I go?” I asked Georgie in a sudden panic.
She put both hands on my shoulders. “Calm down, Mamma Mia. You go to the green room, don’t you? That’s what Mr. Ray said.”
Georgie was right. I was in such a state I couldn’t remember the simplest thing.
“Look, there’s Mam’zelle Clemence beckoning you over, Mia,” said Naomi.
It was a relief to see Mam’zelle Clemence’s smiling face across the foyer and I made my way over to her.
“We’ll save you a seat in the auditorium,” Georgie called after me. “See you in a sec.”
I followed Mam’zelle Clemence into the green room and found it was almost as noisy as the foyer, even though there were only about twenty people in there. And everyone looked so glam, in skimpy figure-hugging dresses or tight trousers with the highest heels. Katy might have done a big transformation act on me, but I still felt like I was the least dressed-up person in the room, and I was suddenly grateful that my hair hung in a curtain. It would help me to hide my face from the audience.
Bella, the Year Eight girl who’d done her audition just before me, was standing in the middle of the room. There were several Year Eights and Nines crowded round her, all talking loudly as though there was a competition to find the loudest voice. Another girl was playing the piano in the far corner, and five or six people were tuning their guitars, though how they could hear a thing, I didn’t know.
“Eef you want to play ze piano, Mia,” said Mam’zelle Clemence above the noise, “I can ask Lily to give you a turn. She ’as been prrractising for ages.”
“Er…that’s okay.”
Then she was gone to join Miss York and Mrs. Harrison, who’d just come into the room. Miss York clapped her hands for silence and everyone was immediately totally still and quiet. And yet something was moving in the room. I could feel it. Maybe it was just the atmosphere, trembling with theatre magic.
“Well,” she began, her eyes sparkling, “I don’t think anyone was expecting quite such a huge audience! This clearly is the social event of the year!”
While some of the girls turned to each other and grinned, another Year Seven called Louise, who’s in a different house from me, gave me a nice smile and mouthed, “Are you nervous?”
I nodded and she hunched her shoulders up tight like a little girl and mouthed, “Me too!”
Louise wasn’t the only Year Seven girl in the room, I noticed as I glanced around, and I fe
lt relieved about that, because I’d been too nervous to notice anything except the number of acts when I’d looked at the list.
“I know you’re all going to be fantastic,” Miss York was saying, “because I have it on very good authority that your auditions were wonderful!”
Mrs. Harrison nodded hard, which made some of the girls laugh.
“Okay, so eleven acts this evening. Now, just to reassure you, if you’re playing in a band, the keyboard and drums are all set up and ready. For the girls playing piano rather than keyboard, the piano is ready too and the mike is in place if you’re singing from the piano. I think Mr. Ray warned you all that the spotlight will be on you when you sing?” She put on a really dramatic voice as she said that, and there was the smallest rush of laughter that wavered and then shrank away, as though everyone had finally realized how scary it was going to be on the stage. I felt relieved that I wasn’t the only one who was nervous, though I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would be the most scared of all.
“How many acts are going through to the next round, Miss York?” asked Eve.
“Important question! I was just coming to that. We’re going to reduce the number of acts from eleven to seven tonight.”
We all nodded and exchanged nervous smiles.
“Now, don’t worry, you won’t be stuck in this room all evening. I want you to be able to see each other’s acts and vote for them, so you’ll be called down from the auditorium when it’s your turn and then you can return to your seat when you’ve finished. So, all I have left to say is have fun and don’t worry if you don’t get through to the next round. You’ve all shown that you’re fantastically talented, both for being able to perform your songs, and some of you for writing the songs in the first place! Okay, Chloe, you’re first up, so the rest of you can go and join your friends now.”
“Good luck, Chloe!” came all our voices, but Chloe looked as though she was in a world of her own, busy giving her guitar a last-minute tuning. How could she be so calm? I think I would have died if I’d had to go on first.