Rebecca Rocks

by Anna Carey

  ‘Now, where are Hey Dollface? Ah, hello there,’ said Veronica. ‘Your mentor is Kitty Shorthall from the Chalet School!’

  A woman with a bob and a very cool dress gave us a cheerful wave. We waved back, and Veronica went through the rest of the list. There were seven bands and, to our surprise, one solo artist.

  ‘Right, last but not least is Paula Howard,’ said Veronica. ‘Our only solo act this year. Where are you, Paula?’

  A very small girl all dressed in black with lots of hair and a fringe that almost covered her eyes put up her hand.

  ‘Cool,’ said Veronica. ‘Your mentor is Dave Crewe from Panda Gun. Right, now I want you all to come up here and meet your mentors! And then you’ll go off for your first workshops. Today you’re going to have workshops with your mentors all day, but from tomorrow we’ll be mixing things up a little.’

  ‘See you later then,’ said Richard, giving Alice a quick kiss, and then we all went off to find our mentors.

  ‘What if she hates us?’ said Cass.

  ‘What if we hate her?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ said Alice. ‘She’ll be lovely. She looks nice and friendly.’

  And she was all of these things. Unlike obnoxious Charlie, I wanted us to get a woman for a mentor. There aren’t really that many girls in bands like ours, and it’s surprising what a difference it makes when you actually see any. It’s like you’ve got permission to do what you’re doing, even though you know that really you never needed any permission. Kitty seemed to feel the same way.

  ‘Hello, ladies,’ she said when we came up and introduced ourselves. ‘I’m really glad I got a band with girls in it. It’s always good to see more girls starting bands!’

  And after that we got on really well. We went into our designated practice room, which had some amps and instruments in it, and Kitty told us about her band, the Chalet School, which sounds really cool; they met when they were in college, and they released their first album last year. And, of course, we told her all about Hey Dollface.

  ‘We played our first gig at the Battle of the Bands in the Knitting Factory last year,’ said Cass. ‘It went pretty well.’

  I was going to say, ‘Apart from the bit where I fell backwards off the drum platform,’ but then I stopped myself. Surely Kitty didn’t need to know about that minor mishap? It wasn’t like I’m going to do it again. At least, I hope not.

  ‘But we had to take a break for a while because I hurt my wrist,’ said Alice. ‘So we haven’t actually played any shows since then. We want to, though.’

  ‘That’s a great idea,’ said Kitty. ‘And it’s great that you’ve played a gig already. My band were together for about a year before we actually got on a stage!’

  It was really easy to talk to her. In fact, I wish she was going to teach us everything, but it turns out that some of the workshops are just going to be each band alone with their mentor, and some of them will be all the bands together. Anyway, we had lots of fun; we played her our song ‘The Real Me’, and she said it reminded her of a band called Veronica Falls, and before we knew it, it was lunchtime.

  ‘This is brilliant,’ I said, as we walked into the big college canteen café place where we’re going to have lunch every day. ‘We’ll probably have written a whole album by the time this course is over!’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Alice.

  ‘Oh, come on, Alice,’ said Cass. ‘All this practice! Hours a day! We’ll be practically professionals! Ooh, look, there’s Jane and Ellie, they’ve saved us some seats. And who’s that with Ellie?’

  ‘It’s Sam!’ I said. ‘From Mary Poppins. I don’t know who the other red-haired girl is, though.’

  ‘Jane!’ roared Cass. ‘Ah, she heard us.’

  We hurried over.

  ‘Look who it is!’ said Ellie. ‘Sam’s doing the art course too!’

  ‘Hey!’ said Sam in a cheerful way.

  It was cool to see him again. He had been quite shy for most of the musical, but it turned out that this was because of his terrible fear of having to understudy John Kowalski’s stupid part. Anyway, we talked properly for the first time on the very last night of the show, and he turned out to be really nice.

  ‘And this is Lucy,’ said Sam, pointing to the red-haired girl. She was very tall and quite imposing, with high cheekbones.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, waving at us. We waved back. Then I realised who she was.

  ‘Oh, you do comics together, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Sam told me about them when we were doing the musical.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Lucy. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Cool,’ I said. But Lucy didn’t say anything else. She just smiled a bit distantly and looked down at her hands. I am not sure if she’s rude or shy. There is a fine line sometimes.

  Anyway, the art course sounds really good. Cass thought so too. In fact, she is a bit jealous of our artist chums.

  ‘I’m starting to wish we could do a bit of both courses,’ she said, as Ellie and Sam explained about their teachers and how they were all going to work on different projects – Ellie’s going to do fashion-design stuff, and Sam and Lucy are going to do comics. ‘It might be good for my theatre-set-design career.’

  But I think we’re both glad that we’re doing the rock camp. It really is so much fun. And it looks like we’ll be able to avoid Vanessa and Karen fairly easily. We only saw them once today, when we were on our way out with Richard.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Vanessa in her usual charming and not-at-all-rude fashion.

  ‘We’re doing the rock camp,’ said Cass.

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Vanessa. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Um, you’re the one who told us about it,’ said Alice.

  ‘Did I?’ said Vanessa, in a bored voice. Then she noticed Richard and said, ‘Oh, hey, Bert. So you’re doing this rock thing too.’

  Richard looked confused for a minute.

  ‘Um, it’s Richard,’ he said. ‘I just played Bert in Mary Poppins.’

  ‘Richard? Really?’ said Vanessa. ‘Oh, whatever. I just saw the role, not the boy.’ And she marched off, leaving us staring at each other. I can’t believe she played the lead role of the musical opposite Richard for weeks and weeks and she can’t even remember what his name is.

  Oh God, my mother’s roaring at me, I’d better go and see what she wants.

  I don’t believe it! Apparently even during my actual summer holidays when I am spending my days working hard on the future of music, I am not allowed to relax. Apparently my mother has a problem with me leaving my bag on the floor in the hall. I am not sure where else I’m meant to put it. It’s not like there’s a special bag cupboard. She also gave out to me for leaving my jacket on the couch instead of hanging it up on the coat rack, which is a bit much if you ask me. It’s not like anyone was trying to sit on the bit of the couch where the jacket was. Anyway, I am too fatigued after all that arguing to write much more. But basically we spent the afternoon working on one of our songs with Kitty. It was brilliant, and I actually felt I was learning something. Which is something that doesn’t happen in actual school that often.

  Ugh, that boy Charlie and his stupid band Crack Parrots are so disgusting. They were hanging around the main foyer this morning when Ellie, Alice, Cass and I walked in, and when we passed them Charlie pointed at each of us in an obnoxious fashion and said, ‘Seven, eight, seven and …’ – he pointed at Cass – ‘seven, but if you lost the glasses you might be an eight.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Alice.

  Charlie smirked, which seems to be his normal facial expression. ‘Marks out of ten, girls,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry, you didn’t do too badly. I mean, I’d go with any of you if I had to.’

  We just stared at him in disgust while his idiot bandmates sniggered. And then we walked off.

  ‘I think we should have said something to him and totally put him in his place,’ said Cass. ‘But I couldn’t thi
nk of anything.’

  ‘Neither could I,’ I said gloomily. ‘What a pig.’

  ‘My mum always says that if someone is rude you should never respond with rudeness,’ said Ellie. ‘Because the laws of the universe mean that whatever someone sends out into the world is returned to them threefold. Which supposedly means that if anyone is horrible, they’ll get three times as much horribleness and bad luck back to them. But I’m not sure this is actually true.’

  We looked back at Charlie. He and his stupid friends were still hanging around making comments at some other girls who had just come in.

  ‘He looks pretty happy,’ said Alice. ‘And Richard says he’s always been like that.’

  ‘And think of Vanessa,’ said Cass. ‘I don’t think the universe has punished her yet either.’

  So much for the laws of the universe.

  Anyway, besides Charlie and his stupid friends, today was pretty good. We started writing a new song with Kitty.

  ‘You shouldn’t be afraid to mess around,’ she said. ‘Some of the best songs happen when you’re not trying too hard. Just fool around with some chords and riffs and see what happens.’

  It was very inspiring. We also got talking to some of the other bands, who seem pretty nice. They are mostly boys, but there are quite a few girls. There’s a girl called Maggie in a hip-hop group called Positive Trigger who seems cool. And there’s a band called Exquisite Corpse, who are all girls apart from a boy who plays drums. They are kind of gothy and look very dramatic and gloomy, but they’re not really, as we discovered. When I heard what they were called I thought they were going to be into, like, sitting around in graveyards writing poetry about death, but they turned out to be much more entertaining. We got talking to them when we were in the hall waiting for the afternoon workshops to start. A tall girl with black dyed hair, lots of very dramatic make-up and an amazing sort of corset-y dress that looked very uncomfortable leaned towards us.

  ‘Hiya!’ she said, in a very cheerful voice. ‘I’m Paula. What d’you think of all this so far?’

  She and her bandmates are from Beaumont and are very nice. They practise in her attic.

  ‘My parents were a bit scared at first,’ she said. ‘I think they thought we’d turned into Satanists or something. They thought we were going up there to do dark rituals. Which we weren’t, obviously.’

  ‘They’re okay about it now, though,’ said her bandmate Sophie. ‘Your mam helped me fix my skull hair bobble last week when the skull started coming off the elastic bit.’

  ‘And I think they’ve got quite into the music,’ said Paula. ‘I heard my dad humming “Chemical Eternity” the other day. That’s one of our songs,’ she added.

  ‘I don’t know if that means he likes it, though,’ said Sophie. ‘It could just be because he’s heard it a million times and now it’s stuck in his head forever, whether he likes it or not.’

  ‘Yeah, I think my parents are quite relieved we’re doing this course,’ said Paula. ‘It gives us somewhere to practise so we won’t be up in the attic for a while.’

  ‘We’ve got a big shed at my house,’ said Alice. She explained about living in the middle of nowhere. ‘It should be perfect. But it’s tricky for the others to get to. I wish there was somewhere in town we could use.’

  It was fun talking to another band about this sort of thing. It’s good to know we’re not the only ones with organisational problems. They were all really nice. And it turns out even their name isn’t that creepy really. It’s just what a group of artists used to call that game where you draw a head and fold over the paper and then someone else does the same and draws the body and then someone else draws the legs. So not very scary at all. In fact, Paula is more chirpy than I am, even though she sings songs about falling in love with ghosts.

  There is also the other, shorter Paula, Paula Howard, the small solo artist with the fringe. She is very quiet in a mysterious sort of way. Whenever you say anything to her she just answers in very short sentences. But she’s not unfriendly. Small Paula is the only solo artist, and no one really knows what her music is like yet. She is quite intriguing. In fact, everyone on the course seems to be doing lots of different things. It’s a good mix. We’re all going to put on gigs for the whole camp over the last few days of the show, but of course we’ll get to see most people do stuff during the workshops over the next few weeks.

  But, if I am being very shallow (and surely I should be allowed to be shallow in my own diary), I must admit that I am quite disappointed with the boys. Is that really mean? It’s just that I was hoping I might fancy someone, and there isn’t really anyone there that I fancy. Even though there are loads of boys on the course. I have a horrible feeling I really will never find love again. Maybe Paperboy and John Kowalski are all I’m ever going to get. And maybe I should be content with that, but I do still want to, like, fall madly in love with someone and not have them leave the country after five minutes or turn out to be a total goon. Surely that’s not too much to ask?

  Also, my fringe is still misbehaving. I hoped it might have grown a bit in the last few days which might weigh it down some more. But it doesn’t seem to have happened. It’s still as fluffy as ever. On the plus side, I have got better at clipping it back and to the side so it doesn’t look too bad then. But still.

  If we are not complete musical experts by the end of this course I will be very surprised. Today we had an excellent songwriting workshop with Richard’s beloved Ian Cliff. I do not think he is as much of a genius as Richard does, but he was very good. And very imposing, as he is about ten feet tall in his stylish suits (he always wears suits – I can’t imagine him in, like, jeans) and looks even taller because his black hair is pushed up in a sort of quiff. But he has revitalised my creativity, especially when it comes to writing lyrics. Ever since Paperboy’s absence fuelled my creative powers, I’ve ended up becoming the band’s chief lyric-writer, but so far I’ve mostly written lyrics about what I was feeling at that very moment, which is probably why I haven’t been feeling very creative lately, what with things being dull and exam-centric.

  But Ian Cliff reminded me that we can all draw from our past. And, as my love life seems to be a thing of the past, this was fine by me. So I have come up with some lyrics for the song we started working on yesterday. They are about John Kowalski.

  I met you at rehearsal

  Your clothes they smelled like Persil

  Oh-oh, oh-oh

  You went out for a smoke break

  And I felt my heart quake

  Oh-oh, oh-oh

  I think I might have to work on them a bit before I show them to Cass and Alice. I know that Persil line is a bit odd. And I don’t even know if John’s clothes were washed with Persil. It could have been Daz. Or something environmentally friendly like Ecover (Miss Kelly would approve of that). Anyway, whatever they were washed with, he didn’t do the actual washing. He used to boast that he always refused to do what he called ‘mundane, pointless household duties’, even when his parents threatened to stop his pocket money. He seemed quite outraged at the very idea that he could be ‘bought off’, as he put it.

  Anyway, I wouldn’t want to mention anything to do with laundry at all but very few things rhyme with ‘rehearsal’. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything else. But I’ll figure something out.

  And I wasn’t the only one who has been creative and productive today. When we met Jane at lunch today she had some surprising news − though we were lucky we were able to hear it because Positive Trigger have started having rap battles with each other at lunchtime and sometimes they can get quite heated and noisy (though in quite a good-natured way. I think it’s all for show; they all seem to be good friends). Anyway, we managed to find a relatively quiet corner and sat down with some sandwiches.

  ‘How’s it going, working with you-know-who?’ asked Cass sympathetically. ‘Do you have to go out to the corridor every few minutes and take deep breaths to calm down?’

  ‘Do
you think you’ll get through the whole thing without pushing Karen off the stage?’ I said. ‘I used to want to do that a lot during Mary Poppins rehearsals.’

  ‘Actually, it’s not bad,’ said Jane. ‘I know! I’m as surprised as you.’ She said that they’re all really focused on the play and it’s really intense. ‘It’s like we’re so busy they’ve forgotten how to be annoying,’ she said. ‘And Bernard the Fairy-tale Prince is a good influence. Seriously! Whenever Vanessa starts demanding stuff he kind of calms her down.’ She said that Gemma, Alfie and Josh, the other members of the group, just won’t put up with any nonsense from Vanessa. Or indeed Karen.

  ‘I know it’s really hard to believe,’ she said. ‘But we’re working really well together. We’ve all come up with lots of good ideas for the play we have to do.’

  Their play sounds very ambitious – lots of physical stuff going on. I didn’t realise they were all so good at gymnastics. And I’m not sure how they’re going to do the bit with the dragon, but Jane said they’ll work something out.

  Speaking of all things theatrical, my parents are getting even more annoying as the musical approaches. This evening I was trying to listen to music and read after my hard day’s work in the world of rock, but I couldn’t concentrate because they were in the kitchen singing ‘Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah’ at top volume. And when I went in to complain and ask them to sing more quietly, they just laughed.

  ‘I didn’t think you minded a bit of noise around the house!’ said Dad. ‘What about your drums? You’re always banging away on that little snare drum.’

  ‘That’s different,’ I said. ‘I’m learning an instrument! That’s like homework.’

  ‘But we’re doing our homework too,’ said Mum. ‘And our instruments are our voices. Oom-pah-pah!’ And then she and Dad laughed like fools. Sometimes I think they are not very mature for their (very) advanced age.