Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 07] (5 page)

‘As long as I keep my
mouth shut?’

Izzie nodded, then
burst out laughing. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she blustered, just people are always
telling you to keep your mouth shut and now you’re going to. Sorry. I wouldn’t
laugh if you were really hurt or something…‘

I gave her arm a light
slap. ‘It’s OK. I guess I wouldn’t want you lying to me. I know it looks weird.
They’re called railway tracks because that’s what they look like. I could have
got coloured ones if I’d wanted, but I didn’t want to draw more attention to
them than necessary.’

‘I don’t know,’ said
TJ, ‘Mary O’Connor has got pink and purple ones, I think they look really
cool.’

There’s a brace for
us,‘ sang Lucy to the tune of ’There’s a Place For Us’from
West Side
Story. ‘Somewhere… a brace for us.’ They’d all thought it was really funny when
I’d told them of my version of the song and hadn’t stopped singing it since,
whenever they saw me, in fact.

‘A brace is a brace is
a brace, whatever colour it is,’ I said.

‘Not necessarily,’
said Tony. ‘Henry, a guy at our school, has a Tom Cruise.’

‘Which is?’ I asked.

‘An invisible brace,
transparent. Apparently Tom Cruise had one but they cost a fortune. Henry’s
parents are loaded though.’

‘It will be all
right,’ said Lucy. ‘You’ll get used to it soon. It’s like when you have a bad
haircut, you feel you can never go out again but you do.’

‘That’s because your
hair grows again,’ I said.

‘No,’ Lucy insisted.
‘It’s because you get used to it.’

‘Yeah,’ said Izzie,
‘and you have so much else going for you, great legs, great body, great hair.
No one will ever even notice your teeth.’

Their words of support
weren’t helping. ‘No boy will ever fancy me again,’ I said with a groan. ‘I
will have to live the life of a nun for a year like Julie Andrews in
The
Sound of Music
.’

Lucy picked up a towel
from the chest of drawers and put it over her head. ‘Cliiiimb eveeeery
mountaaaain, follow eeeevery streeeeam…’ she warbled in a soprano voice.

‘We thought you might
want to go to Hampstead. Cruise the shops,’ said TJ. ‘Cheer you up a bit.’

‘Can’t,’ I said, lying
back on the bed. ‘My former life is over.’

‘Nah,’ said Lucy.
‘Something will happen. As Mum always says, life never closes a door without
opening a window.’

I shook my head.
‘Yeah, right. And there’s light at the end of the tunnel.’

‘That’s the attitude,’
said Izzie.

‘Yeah. The light at
the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.’

Izzie laughed at our
old joke. ‘Oh, it will be all right,’ she said.

‘No it won’t. From now
on, I’m going to be a recluse.’

‘OK,’ said Izzie,
lying next to me. ‘We’ll be recluses with you.’

Tony went to make hot
chocolate for all of us (part of his trying-to-impress-Lucy act), then we lay
around listening to sad songs about loneliness and generally feeling dejected.
Even though I was really the only one who had anything to feel tragic about, it
was nice that they tried to share it with me. Tony brought in an opera CD,
which he said was about a real tragic heroine (as if I wasn’t) singing about
despair. However, by this time, I was beginning to get bored with moping about,
and listening to the opera singer screeching away was the last straw.

‘What I don’t
understand about opera,’ I said, ‘is why, just when the heroine discovers that
she’s about to die of some terrible lung disease, she sings her head off for
another hour. Get on, die and put us all out of our misery, I say.’

‘I’ll second that,‘
said Lucy.

‘So does this mean
that you’ve had enough of being a recluse then?’ asked TJ.

‘Dunno, maybe,’ I
said. ‘Yeah. Brace or no brace, this being tragic lark’s a bit boring.’

‘So what shall we do
then?’ asked Lucy.

‘Video,’ said Izzie.

‘Video,’ chorused TJ
and Lucy.

Half an hour later, we
were coming out of the local library with the video,
Godfather
//.TJ
loves this film. She’s seen it five times already, mainly because she’s in love
with Robert de Niro. Hmm. Each to their own, I thought, he’s not my fave
fantasy babe,
way
too old! Next stop was the pizza shop. This is more
like it, I thought, as we made our way through the entrance hall of the library,
you’ve got to still have fun, no matter what life throws at you.

Izzie stopped to look
at the notices on the board. They advertise all sorts of the stuff that she’s
into. T’ai chi, crystal healing, astrology, massage.

‘Hey, check this out,’
she said as she scanned the board. ‘It might be just the thing for you, Nesta.’
I went over to join her and read the notice.

Acting for All
.
Wednesday
nights, 7-8.30. A fun and relaxed class given by a professional actor.
Improvisation, drama games, vocal technique and script work. Everyone welcome
from beginners to working actors wanting to refresh their skills. £5 per
session
.

‘Five quid,’ said
Izzie. ‘That’s cheap.’

‘A lot of the
council-run courses are,’ said Lucy. ‘My mum said they try to make them accessible
for everyone.’

‘Yeah,’ I said,
‘sounds good. And it would be good use of my brace time. I mean, no way I can
perform in publico like in
West Side Story
, but to do a class away
from school where I don’t know anyone, that would be cool.’

‘I still think that
you should go for the part in
West Side Story’
said Izzie.

‘And I think you
should stand on your head and wave your knickers in the air,’ I replied, ‘but
neither of us are going to do it, are we?’

Izzie went to do a
handstand right there, up against the wall in the library, but I pulled her
back. ‘No, no, I didn’t mean it. But no way am I going for the part. I told
you. I don’t want anyone looking at me, but…’ I glanced back at the
noticeboard, ‘this course looks interesting.’

‘Yeah,’ said TJ, ‘but
the people that do these courses are usually middle-aged and decrepit…’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘No
chance of humiliating myself in front of any cute boys of our age then. No, I
think it will be brilliant. Just the thing. Excellento.’

Izzie laughed. ‘You
know what I love about you?’

‘What?’

‘The way you can go
from total misery to total elation, all in the space of a day.’

‘All in the space of
five minutes sometimes.’ I smiled back at her from behind my hand. I was
feeling a million times better than earlier this afternoon. ‘My mum says that
when life throws you a lemon, you have to make lemonade. My brace is the lemon,
doing this course would be making lemonade, if you know what I mean. It would
be a way of using my time constructively. Only one thing would make it better…’

‘What?’ asked Lucy.

‘If one of you guys
would do the course as well.’

‘Not me,’ said TJ. ‘I
have to work on the school magazine Wednesday nights.’

‘And I said I’d help
Dad restock the shop on Wednesday nights this term,’ said Lucy. Her dad runs
the local health food shop and putting in some hours there is one way Lucy can
pick up some spare cash. ‘Sorry, Nesta.’

‘No prob.’ I turned to
Izzie.

‘But I don’t want to
be an actress,’ she said heading for the door. ‘I want to be a singer
songwriter.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘but
think Kylie, think Madonna, think J-Lo.’

‘What about them?’

‘They’re all actresses
as well as singers. My dad’s always saying that working in any part of the
media can be feast or famine until you make it big. It’s good to have a few strings
to your bow. And loads of singers have acted in films as well as pursued their
song writing. Come on Iz, it would be another thing that you can offer when
you’re famous.’

I could see Izzie was
thinking about it. One of the things I like about her is that she is into
learning about so many things. She’s totally open-minded… which made me think,
I know just how to persuade her

‘Thing is, with
learning,’ I began, ‘you can never stop. You can never think that you’re there.
It’s like, you can always improve your performance skills whether it’s for
stage, singing or acting…’

Izzie sighed. ‘OK.
Enough. You’re on. I’m in.’

‘Excellent,’ I said.
‘See Lucy, your mum was right, life never closes a wotsit without opening
another wotsit.’

C h a p t e r
 
5

Ding
Dong

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‘
Sorry
, Nesta love, I thought you
understood,’ said Mum when I got home and told her about the classes.

‘But it’s only five
pounds for each class. That’s pretty good value.’

‘I know, but add that
up over a term…’

‘Don’t worry,’ I
interrupted. She looked sad and I didn’t want her to feel like that. ‘It doesn’t
matter.’

I went to my room to
mope, but I wasn’t in the mood for being miserable. Been there, done that. Got
the T-shirt. I found it a humongous waste of time in fact. I lay back on my bed
and had a good think. Ways of getting money. Hhmm. Well, I know one thing not
to do again and that’s gamble. Earlier this year, I spent all my savings on
Scratch cards. Lost the lot, so I won’t be doing that again. No, there must be
some job I can do, babysitting or something. Suddenly a light switched on in my
head. Course, that’s it, I thought as I quickly dialled Lucy’s number.

‘Hey, Nesta,’ said
Lucy when she picked up the phone. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Actually, Luce, more
like what can I do for you? Or more, for your dad that is. Does he need any
other workers to do restocking in the shop.’

‘He does actually. On
Fridays.’

‘How much?’

‘He pays me five quid
an hour. Two hours ten quid.’

‘Ask if he’ll give me
a job.’

I heard Lucy yell at
the other end of the phone. ‘Dad, can Nesta have a job restocking on Friday
nights?’

I heard a distant
voice yell back. ‘Yes. The more the merrier.’

Lucy came back on the
phone. ‘Sorted, mate.’

‘Excellent. Another
string to my bow. Shelf stacker.’

‘I’ll do some hours
with you as well as my Wednesday,’ said Lucy. ‘Be fun if we’re both doing it.’

Ha, I thought as I put
the phone down. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And it’s part of the
process according to my dad. He says that loads of great movie stars start out
working in dead end jobs, so that they can pay their way before their big
break.

The following
Wednesday, Izzie and I pitched up for our first acting class. It was to be held
in Muswell Hill in a place that was an ordinary school in the day time and used
for adult education in the evenings.

‘That has to be it,’ said
Izzie as we approached a four storey building. ‘It looks like a school with all
those windows.’

‘And it looks like
ours isn’t the only night course being held here,’ I said. Music was pounding
out from every level and we could see girls in leotards ballet dancing on one
floor, another bunch jazz dancing on another, others kick-boxing on the ground
floor. ‘Looks like lots of girls come here, hope there won’t be too many boys.’

‘Speak for yourself,’
said Izzie. ‘You may be having a year off boys, but I’m not.’

After signing in at
reception, we made our way up to the first floor where our class was to be
held. As we waited for the ballet class to finish, a group of people began to
assemble outside the door.

Excellent, I thought
as I watched them arrive and, like Izzie and me, smile apprehensively at the
rest of the group. A bald guy with a beard, a petite white-haired lady, two
curly-haired twenty-year-olds, maybe sisters, a chubby guy with glasses,
probably in his forties. A couple more middle-aged ladies. Couple more guys,
probably in their thirties. Excellent, I thought. Not one cute boy in sight.

Our teacher was a slim
red-headed woman in her late twenties called Jo. She started us off with a few
introduction games. First we had to say our names and five things about
ourselves. I was third.

‘Nesta. Star sign Leo.
Fave band, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fave TV programme,
The Simpsons
.
Fave food, pizza. Live in Highgate.’