Accidental Superstar

by Marianne Levy

  ‘Devi Lester has these new trainers. He kept going on and on about how expensive they were so Kai pulled one off and kicked it on to a barge.’

  ‘Wow. That sounds a bit like something that happened to me on the bus this morning –’

  ‘And when Devi went to get it back this woman came out and screamed at him . . .’

  ‘Because Jaz started going through my bag –’

  ‘And so he waited until she’d gone inside and tried to hook it out with a branch but he couldn’t reach. So he’s going back later with a hockey stick.’

  ‘It was really intimidating. I just didn’t know how to stop her.’

  Lacey looked up from dissecting her sandwich. ‘Jaz was upsetting you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then how come you came in together? Why stay with her, if she’s so intimidating?’

  ‘I wasn’t “with her”,’ I said. ‘We just happened to be standing next to each other.’

  She shrugged. ‘So am I coming back to yours later, then?’

  ‘If you like,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘Yeah, but no pressure.’

  ‘Cos I don’t have to come.’

  ‘LACEY,’ I said, possibly a little bit more loudly than was strictly necessary because a load of other people turned around and stared at us. ‘Please will you come and stay the night at my house?’

  ‘All right,’ said Lacey. ‘No need to be weird about it.’

  At which point everything got better again.

  School ended and Lacey and I walked to the bus stop, where Finlay didn’t seem to notice us at all, and when the bus came we sat downstairs, at the back, which was possibly the worst seat, what with all the darkness and diesel fumes and being jolted every time we went over a bump. Only, with Lace next to me, sharing a Curly Wurly, it was like we were in our own little nest. No one knew we were there.

  ‘So you didn’t answer my calls because you were afraid they’d throw your phone in the water,’ I said. All things considered it did sound reasonable.

  ‘And you didn’t answer when I rang you back because your phone got broken.’

  I lifted its poor sad body out of my bag and on to my lap.

  ‘It’s no good, I can’t look.’

  ‘Maybe we should bury it in your garden.’

  ‘Not the best final resting place,’ I said, thinking of the nettles and the pool of grey sludge. ‘It was a good phone, it deserves more.’

  ‘So the house isn’t as nice as Adrian made out?’ said Lacey, with her usual understatement.

  ‘It’s grimmer than grim.’ I filled her in on the latest horrors, including Mum putting her hand through the side of the bath and how we’d all heard Something Moving Around In The Loft. ‘And the worst of it is that we can’t say how hideous it all is because then it sounds like we’re getting at him.’

  ‘And it’s not his fault?’

  ‘It’s totally and completely his fault. But if I say so then I’m basically saying I don’t like him.’

  ‘And you can’t say that because . . . ?’

  ‘Because it would be the equivalent of saying that I don’t want Mum to be happy. When really I do want her to be happy. Just . . . differently happy. With someone else. Anyone else. Or, no one. Who needs men, anyway? What is this complete obsession society has with everyone coupling up?’

  Lacey’s expression told me that she was starting to have second thoughts about coming over.

  ‘We don’t need to talk about him any more,’ I promised her. ‘You can do my hair – NOT my fringe – and we’ll watch Mean Girls.’

  ‘What about the mice?’ Lacey wanted to know. Out of the window I saw that we’d pulled away from all the nice roads full of houses and shops and postboxes and other useful things and were heading out towards the fields. ‘Because if you’ve got mice running around everywhere and I’m sleeping on the floor then . . .’

  ‘My room’s fine. Honest. Other than that somehow I’ve ended up providing a home for Adrian’s drum kit. But I’m vermin-free.’ The bus went over a bump. ‘Maybe don’t leave any food lying around, though. Just in case. Hey, this is our stop.’

  And so we came tumbling off the bus, me and Lacey and a broken phone and a guitar, ready for a bit of full-on friendship.

  To find Nicole and Jaz waiting for us.

  Don’t panic, I told myself.

  ‘We’ve got big plans for tonight,’ said Jaz. ‘Nicole wants to pierce her thumbnail. So we borrowed a staple gun from the art room. Well, not borrowed, exactly . . .’

  ‘I didn’t know you were invited,’ said Lacey, and she didn’t seem too pleased.

  At which point I was desperate to tell her that, in fact, the person who’d invited Jaz was Jaz.

  Only I couldn’t because the person standing next to me was Jaz.

  ‘So, where’s your new place then?’ Jaz said, and all I could do was start walking there, and hope that she and Nicole would get a better offer somewhere along the way. Which meant within the next four minutes.

  We ambled alongside the fluorescent yellow field at the end of our road, then past the house of the lady who’d been giving me evils all weekend. She was watching me out of the front window, so I tried to give her my best we’re friends now smile, and it might have worked if Nicole hadn’t chucked a half-drunk can of Lilt into her front garden.

  Lacey wasn’t saying anything at all. And Jaz had her headphones on, nodding away to music so loud that it was managing to drown out the traffic. Part of me wanted her to switch it off so I could make another excuse and get her to go away, but most of me wanted her to keep listening because then I wouldn’t have to speak to her.

  We got to my front door.

  ‘Are you sure you want to come in?’ I said. ‘It’s going to be pretty rubbish, if I’m being honest.’

  ‘I might just head home,’ said Lacey.

  ‘Not you, I meant . . .’ Only I didn’t get to finish the sentence because at that point the front door opened.

  ‘Ladies!’

  Apparently, in the moment before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes. Thinking about it, I suppose it can’t be your whole life. Partly because it would have to go so fast that you wouldn’t be able to notice any of it, and also because a lot of the flash would be taken up with things like being asleep and looking very closely at the skin on the back of your hand and leaving voicemail.

  ‘Adrian,’ I whispered. ‘What are you doing here? You’re not due back for another two hours. Minimum.’

  ‘Business was a bit slow, so I thought we’d pack it in for the day.’ Adrian grinned. ‘Having a party, are you?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Shame. I was going to open a beer.’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Jaz.

  Stay calm stay calm stay calm.

  ‘Well?’ Amanda was hovering in the hall. ‘Are you coming in or what?’

  Let’s just recap.

  – Mad Jaz

  – Nicole from year eleven

  – Adrian

  – Amanda

  – Lacey

  – Me

  So we were all sitting down eating fish and chips LIKE EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL AND FINE. Amanda was giving us the fascinating story of how many sales they’d made that day (it was three) and Adrian was telling Mad Jaz all about his days in a band.

  ‘Me and Tony, we were signed and everything. Tony Topper, you know him?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Still got my kit. Couldn’t bring myself to part with it.’

  ‘Then why is it in my bedroom?’ I asked.

  Adrian launched into a whole thing about how the leak in his and Mum’s room wasn’t good for musical instruments, but before he could finish, Jaz’s eyes went all glinty and mad.

  ‘Can I have a go, then?’

  There was a minuscule pause as Adrian clearly thought about how much he didn’t want anyone messing around with his precious drums but also how
much he was enjoying having an audience.

  ‘You know what? Katie’s been using them as clothes hangers for long enough. We’ll set them up, have a jamming session!’

  ‘In my bedroom?’ I squeaked. ‘There’s really no need to go up there, it’s incredibly messy, disgusting actually, why don’t we bring the drums downstairs, or we could just leave it . . .’

  ‘Maybe you should have thought about cleaning up a bit before you invited so many people over,’ said Amanda, and right then and there I decided that her yellow jumper wouldn’t be making its way back into her wardrobe, however much she asked for it.

  Despite my many, many objections, we all ended up cramming into my room. Mands started picking out odd notes on her bass in the way she does, while Jaz sat down on the edge of my bed and didn’t play the drums so much as physically attack them. Seriously, if I’d been on the receiving end of what she was giving out, I’d have dialled 999.

  ‘Reminds me of the glory days,’ said Adrian, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to my dirty jeans pile, balancing a keyboard across his crotch. ‘Great technique you’ve got there, Amanda. And Jaz, that’s some real . . . energy.’

  This pleased Jaz so much that she whacked the biggest drum hard enough to knock it on to the floor.

  ‘You two going to join in?’ said Adrian, looking at me and Lacey.

  ‘I can only play the recorder,’ said Lacey, in a way that made it clear she didn’t even want to do that. Nose Hairs didn’t seem to notice her moodiness, though, and offered her a tambourine.

  ‘But I don’t . . .’ Lacey began. ‘I thought we were going to watch Mean Girls, Katie. I’m going home.’

  This could not be allowed to happen.

  ‘Lacey, please. Let’s just get this done, then we’ll absolutely watch Mean Girls. Promise.’

  Very slowly, and in a way that made it clear she found the whole thing properly stupid, Lacey took the tambourine from Adrian, who gave it a little shake as he handed it over. ‘Wicked. Nicole?’

  In answer, Nicole held up Jaz’s phone.

  ‘She’s videoing it,’ said Jaz. ‘For posterity.’

  ‘Yup, yup,’ said Adrian. ‘Katie?’

  This was awful. But on the plus side, if we were playing then Lacey couldn’t fight with me and Adrian couldn’t be too embarrassing. And Jaz couldn’t . . . do whatever terrible thing it was that Jaz was surely about to do.

  I unzipped my guitar from its case and tuned up.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Adrian. ‘One, two, three, four –’

  There was a minute, maybe two, where the air in my bedroom turned into this music casserole, guitar twangs, drum beats and the tinny notes from the keyboard all floating about together and taking it in turns to come to the surface. It was a complete mess.

  Then, Adrian began playing . . .

  ‘That’s your song,’ said Jaz. ‘The one you sang on the bus this morning.’

  Exactly how did Adrian know the tune to Just Me?

  Then I saw Amanda’s guilty face, and I knew.

  And she knew that I knew.

  ‘I just went through it with him a couple of times the other night, that’s all, it sounded nice with two guitars, and I thought . . .’

  ‘You played my song?’ I said. ‘You sat down with him and you played something that is mine? With him?’

  ‘Yeah! And we got it pretty good,’ said Adrian, who clearly hadn’t quite grasped the epic treachery going on right beneath his hairy nose. ‘I’ve worked out a keyboard backing, you do the guitar and vocals, yeah?’

  No.

  NO.

  There was no way I was singing my song with the Cox Family Destruction Collective, featuring drums from Mad Jaz. No way.

  They were all looking at me.

  ‘I really don’t want to,’ I said.

  They kept looking.

  ‘Seriously.’

  More stares.

  ‘I suppose . . .’ I said, hopelessly. ‘But does it have to be Just Me? We could do Bohemian Rhapsody, or Yellow Submarine. Or The Wheels on the Bus . . .’

  ‘I like your song,’ said Jaz, and I honestly couldn’t tell whether she genuinely did like it or just wanted to see me squirm.

  ‘It’s just . . . quite . . . personal,’ I said, and Lacey said:

  ‘Not that personal, is it? If you sang it to everyone on the bus.’

  There was nothing – and I really mean nothing – I could do. Except maybe get up and walk out, but I didn’t think of that until afterwards.

  So I hummed the tune, just a bit, and then, in that way that sometimes happens, the music sort of took over and I hummed it louder.

  ‘Cool, cool,’ said Adrian, nodding his head to the beat.

  Then Jaz started playing at the exact speed of the song, boom tish, boom boom tish, like she’d been a drummer all her life. Which, come to think of it, was perfectly possible.

  ‘Nice,’ said Adrian, and together we sort of mashed through the song, stopping every now and then for Amanda to twiddle, or for Jaz to get a bit overenthusiastic, which was often.

  ‘Again?’ said Adrian, and we did it again, and this time it almost sounded quite good.

  ‘Well, this has been fun,’ I said. ‘Shall we call it a night?’

  ‘Once more,’ said Adrian. ‘And this time, you should sing.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘If you don’t,’ said Adrian, ‘then I will. I’m the something apple in the fa-mi-ly . . .’

  Hearing him singing my words, or at least a version of them, was deeply cringe-inducing. As if I’d come home to find him trying on my clothes.

  ‘It’s I’m the big bad apple on the family tree,’ I said.

  ‘Sing it,’ said Adrian, and Amanda said:

  ‘Oh, go on, Katie.’

  Ages and ages ago I remember we did this poem in English, something about choosing between two paths. And how once you go down one path your life changes forever and you can never go back and see what was down the other path. I think there was a difficult bit about leaves and undergrowth in there too, which I never quite understood.

  Anyway, the point being that sometimes you have these major moments that decide loads of stuff, not just for a bit, but forever.

  Now, given how things turned out, I’d like to say that I knew I was having one of those moments as Lacey, Amanda, Mad Jaz, Nicole and Adrian all paused, and looked at me. I’d love to be able to state that I looked out, into my future, down those two paths, and knowingly chose the one that I took.

  Honestly, though, it wasn’t like that at all. Jaz and Adrian came in on the intro, Mands picked up the bass line, Nicole held out the phone and I just opened my mouth and sang.

  Because singing is what I do.

  I’ve got mad skin

  I’ve got mad hair

  I borrowed your stuff and I don’t even care

  It started out fairly quiet and I could feel everyone settling in to their instruments while my voice kind of floated around somewhere up above. Like a feather or a kite, or the time Paige made Lacey’s maths homework into a paper aeroplane and sailed it off the top of the science lab.

  I’m the big bad apple on the family tree

  Deal with it, sister, that’s just me

  And while Lacey’s maths homework had drifted down into the school pond, my voice stayed up. And got louder and better, as underneath me the instruments went from being separate into one proper sound. Into, I suppose, music.

  I’ve got mad beats

  I’ve got mad moves

  I know your mum really disapproves

  By the time I got to the second verse I’d stopped being embarrassed. In fact, I was hardly thinking at all.

  If you’re up for a laugh then you’re my cup of tea

  Friends forever, that’s just me

  Saying this is incredibly embarrassing, so I’ll do it quickly and just get it over with, but as I was singing I really did feel as though I was growing stronger. I suppose it was a sense of togethern
ess with everyone, which is deeply bizarre as we were the least-together group that had ever existed on the face of the earth.

  The end was pretty intense.

  I’ve got mad love

  I’ve got mad hate

  Much bigger than it had been on the bus, too.

  I’ve got my whole life to come and I just can’t wait

  Not just me, but everyone, Adrian thumping out his chords, Jaz whacking her drums, Lace giving it some on her tambourine and Amanda doing a cool sort of flourish . . .

  And here’s the thing, I think you’ll agree

  We’re all in this together. It’s not just me.

  And then we were all laughing our heads off and Adrian was giving everyone high fives.

  ‘That was excellent!’

  ‘So cool!’

  ‘I never knew you had such a good voice!’

  It was exclamation mark central.

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’ I said, trying to make the jump from worried hostess to lead singer.

  ‘Did you get it all, Nicole?’

  ‘I love that riff you did, right at the end . . .’

  ‘Is anyone eating these chips or can I have them?’

  The chips were stone cold and slimy and stuck together and soaking in fish grease. Even so, they were the most delicious thing anyone had ever eaten in the whole history of eating things.

  ‘It sounded like a proper song,’ said Lacey wonderingly. ‘You know, like the songs that you hear on the radio. It sounded like one of those.’

  ‘I can’t believe we made that noise.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I know!’

  I swear to you, there was a glow in the room. Not the scary, radioactive one there’d been to start with, either. This glow was like the ones you get in make-up adverts. Everyone, and everything, right down to my dirty jeans pile, just seemed to shine.

  In that moment, in fact, I could almost believe we were all in this together. That we were all on the same team, that the house wasn’t so bad. That Adrian and Jaz weren’t so bad, either, because how else could we have made that music?