Rebecca Rocks (9 page)

‘Oh for God’s sake, Rebecca, don’t scream like that,’ said Mum. ‘I thought you’d had a terrible accident.’

‘But look at it!’ I said. I couldn’t believe it. Basically, it turns out that the only thing that was keeping my fringe all flat and shiny was all the blow-drying and styling products from the hairdresser’s yesterday. Now it has gone back to its natural state, and it is just like my childhood fringe! Except I think it’s actually worse because my hair seems to have got much thicker since then!

‘It’s just a bit … fluffy,’ said Mum.

‘It’s bushy!’ I said. ‘It’s like a bushy mop!’ My hair has always had bushy-mop tendencies, of course, but at least when it’s long the weight of the hair keeps it fairly flat. But now the fringe was just sticking out wildly. I didn’t look like a cool French girl anymore. I looked like someone out of a 1980s film with giant pouffy hair.

And then, of course, Rachel came in and started laughing.

‘Wow, the eighties revival has started in this house,’ she said. ‘That’s some big hair.’

‘Shut up!’ I said. ‘It went funny in the rain.’

‘It certainly did,’ said Rachel. And I couldn’t bear looking
at her horrible laughing face for another second so I ran off to my room. But even there my torment continued (and not just because I could see myself and my ridiculous hair in the mirror on my dressing table). That evil Mulligan kid was in her room, and when she saw me she started laughing and put her hands up on her head as if she was puffing up a giant mane of hair! I hate her so much.

And now someone is knocking at my door. Can’t the world leave me alone in my misery for a minute?

Okay, maybe Rachel isn’t totally evil. She got her hair
straighteners
and lots of anti-frizz serum and tried to calm my hair again. It looked slightly better when she’d tried her magic, and it’s not wavy anymore, but it’s still sticking out quite a bit. Also, I get quite nervous having those hot straighteners right next to my eyes. It feels a bit dangerous. I don’t think you’re meant to use them on fringes. Anyway, I still look ridiculous. Cass rang to see about meeting up tomorrow, and I had to tell her what had happened. To her great credit she didn’t
actually
say ‘I told you so.’ She just expressed sympathy and said
she’d try and fix it tomorrow, using her years of fringe-battling experience. Maybe the freedom of coming out has made her a more noble person?

Huh, so much for Cass becoming more noble. As soon as I arrived at her house today and she actually saw my stupid fringe, she said, ‘Yikes! Well, I did tell you not to do it.’

‘Cass!’ I said. ‘That’s not very helpful.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Alice. ‘Come on, Cass. Use your magic anti-fringe powers!’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Cass. ‘Sorry, Bex.’

Anyway, I suppose she redeemed herself by trying to make my hair look normal again. She said that when a fringe is really misbehaving there’s no point in trying to flatten it out.

‘You’ve just got to pretend it doesn’t exist,’ she said. ‘This is where hair pins come in.’

Then she and Alice spent about five years fussing over my hair. I seem to have spent most of the last few days having my head poked at. Anyway, they tried several methods. After I
begged them to try flattening it anyway, they tried calming it down with more serum, but it started to just go all greasy and icky. Then they scraped it straight back from my face, but that didn’t work either.

‘I think it just highlights my unsymmetrical face,’ I said miserably.

Then they pouffed up the front in a sort of quiff.

‘That looks quite good,’ said Alice kindly.

‘Though,’ said Cass. ‘Um. It also makes you look a tiny bit like Vanessa. She does that with her hair.’

‘Try something else!’ I cried.

Eventually they sort of pulled it back and to the side, so it looked softer and not so scraped.

‘It does need quite a few pins,’ said Alice.

‘But I think it works,’ said Cass. ‘Doesn’t it?’

I suppose it does. I took all the pins out and tried to do it myself (it’s not like I’m going to have Cass and Alice around every day to be my personal hairdressers), and it looked a bit wonky but not too bad. Better than a giant eighties pouffy fringe, anyway. I tried washing my hair again when I got home and putting in lots of posh conditioner, but it didn’t make any difference; my fringe was still all big with a kink in it. They
must have magical powers in that stupid hairdresser’s, I can’t see how they made it look normal for twenty-four hours.

So much for my dream of arriving at the summer camp with a glamorous new look, anyway. I’m now more likely to spend the entire thing wearing a hat. Though what sort of hat could I wear? If only it were a winter camp, then I could wear a beret or something and it wouldn’t look too bad. But most people don’t wear hats in the summer, do they? Unless they’re on a beach. I can hardly go around the college wearing a giant floppy sun hat. I’ll just have to spend this evening practising with my new packet of hair pins. Why did I ever think it was a good idea to get a stupid fringe? Everyone should have talked me out of it!

I had to get up really early today to deal with my stupid fringe. I hoped it might have got nice and flat and sleek overnight, but it hasn’t. It still looks all puffy. So I tried to reproduce what Cass and Alice did last night, and, although it took ages and a lot of fiddling around with pins, I think it worked. It
didn’t look totally freakish anyway. And I used Rachel’s
brilliant
mineral powder and my nice new posh lipstick so people would notice that instead of my weird hair.

Though to be honest, today was so much fun I actually forgot about my fringe after a while. This morning I met up with Alice, Cass and Richard, and we all walked down to the college together. The actual campus was huge, with loads of different buildings, which was all very confusing, and we ended up wandering around in circles until we found a ‘North Dublin Summer Arts Camp this way’ sign.

‘You’d think they’d have put these signs near the actual gates,’ said Cass grumpily. But she only sounded grumpy because she was feeling a bit nervous. As was I. I don’t even know why.

Anyway, we followed the sign and ended up at one of the biggest buildings. Seriously, it was about the size of our whole school, and it was just for arts stuff. And there’s a theatre somewhere on the campus as well.

When we went inside, there were loads of boys and girls milling around looking as confused as we felt. Lots of them looked a bit older than us, which made me feel even more nervous. But eventually we found a big noticeboard telling us where all the different groups were meeting up. All the bands
were told to go to the Orchestra Room.

‘Orchestra Room!’ said Cass. ‘That sounds very fancy.’

It wasn’t, though. It was just a big room with a grand piano and some chairs in it and loads of music stands piled up in a corner. We all sat down and looked around at our fellow summer-schoolers.

‘I wonder will we be able to find Jane and Ellie at lunch?’ I said.

‘I was wondering the same thing,’ said Alice. ‘This place seems huge. I can’t imagine we’ll ever be able to find our way around it.’

‘Consider it practice for when we get to actual college,’ said Richard, but he looked very relieved a minute later when his bandmates came in. He waved at them, and they came over and grabbed some seats nearby. We didn’t know any of the other bands, but one of them included a few boys from
Richard
’s class in school. He didn’t seem to like them very much and with good reason.

‘I didn’t realise they were doing this,’ he said when he noticed them on the other side of the hall.

‘Is their band any good?’ I asked.

‘I doubt it,’ said Richard. ‘Ah, I dunno, I’m not being fair.
They could be good. They’re just kind of … annoying.’

But before he could say anything else, a man and a woman walked up to a pair of microphones set up next to the grand piano and waved. Everyone suddenly stopped talking.

‘Wow,’ said the woman, looking a bit surprised. ‘You’re all very quiet all of a sudden! So … hi! My name’s Veronica Flaherty, and I’m a guitarist and a sound engineer.’

Cass and Alice and I looked at each other. Veronica had been one of the organisers of the Battle of the Bands!

‘And my name is Tom, and I play the bass,’ said the man, ‘and sometimes the drums.’

Then Veronica told us how excited they were about the summer arts school and gave a speech about what we’d be doing over the next three weeks, which we kind of knew already from the website, and how at the end of it we’d put on shows for everyone in the camp. Then she called in all the people who were going to be our mentors, which sounds very reality TV. There were four men and two women, and they all looked like they were in their twenties and thirties. Some of them looked quite familiar − the camp has managed to get some quite big bands, which is impressive. When a very tall skinny man in a sharp suit came out, Richard looked
very surprised and excited.

‘No one’s going to try and make you sound a certain way,’ said Veronica. ‘We’re just going to help you do the stuff you already want to do.’ The mentors each introduced themselves, and there was more talking about what we were going to do in each week, and then we were released into the wild, or at least the rest of the college, for a short break. As soon as Veronica and Tom left the stage, Richard said, ‘Oh my God, did you see who that was?’

‘Who who was?’ said Alice.

‘It was Ian Cliff! In the suit! Ian Cliff from
Verfremdungs
-effekt!’ said Richard.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Alice. ‘They’re not bad.’

Verfremdungseffekt are a Dublin band who are pretty
popular
, and Richard loves them. Alice went with him to one of their gigs a while ago and said they were pretty good, in a sort of melodramatic gloomy kind of way (which, now I think of it, is quite like Richard’s own band).

‘What does Verfremd-whatsit actually mean?’ I said. ‘It sounds a bit German.’

‘It is German,’ said Alice. Her mum is German so Alice can speak German better than our actual German teacher. ‘It literally
means, like, alienation effect. Or distancing effect. But I don’t know what that really means. If you know what I mean.’

We did.

But Richard, because he is Verfremdungseffekt’s biggest fan ever, did know what alienation effect meant.

‘There was a German writer called Brecht who did plays, and he wanted to remind the audiences that they were
actually
watching a play, not real people, so they’d be more
critical
and not get emotionally involved. So
Verfremdungseffekt
is the word he used to describe how he did this. The characters would, like, turn around and start talking to the audience and stuff.’

I was not very impressed by this. I don’t think I’ve ever
forgotten
that I was watching a play. I mean, surely it’s quite
obvious
that the people are, like, on a stage? And acting? Anyway, Richard was still going out about how brilliant Ian Cliff was and how much he hoped they’d get him as their mentor when we left the Orchestra Room. And it turned out that we needn’t have worried about not finding anyone because as soon as we walked out into the corridor we bumped into Jane.

‘Oh, thank God I’ve found you,’ said Jane. ‘Something terrible has happened.’

‘Oh God, you’re not sick, are you?’ said Alice nervously.

‘No,’ said Jane. ‘Well, sort of. But only because they divided us up into groups, and I’m in the same one as Vanessa and Karen! And Bernard the Fairy-tale Prince, though I don’t really have anything against him apart from the fact he’s going out with Karen. We’re going to have to spend the whole summer camp coming up with a play together.’

‘Just the four of you?’ said Alice.

‘No, thank God,’ said Jane. ‘There’s another girl and two boys. But still!’

‘Oh dear,’ I said. And I patted her arm sympathetically.

‘Oh well,’ said Jane bravely. ‘It’ll be good acting practice, trying to pretend they’re not driving me mad. What’s your thing like?’

‘Pretty good, I think,’ said Cass. And we told her about Veronica and Tom and the mentors.

‘So, who’s your mentor?’ said Jane.

‘We don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘They’re telling us in a few
minutes
when we go back in. Do you have mentors?’

‘Not like that,’ said Jane. ‘Just facilitators. Whatever that means, exactly. Oh! I forgot to tell you. One of them is Cathy.’

‘Director Cathy?’ said Alice. Cathy Laverty directed our
production of
Mary Poppins
. She was okay, in an intimidating, serious sort of way.

‘The very same,’ said Jane. ‘She’s still doing that scary glare thing. One of the boys started messing around at the start of the session, and she just … stared at him until he turned around, and then he shut up immediately. It’s like magic.’

Then we realised that people were starting to go back into the various meeting rooms, so we told Jane we’d see her at lunch and headed back into the Orchestra Room. When we got back to our seats, Richard and his bandmates had been joined by the other band from their school. They were having a serious conversation about which mentor they wanted to get. Of course Richard was going on about Ian Cliff and how he was the greatest artist in Dublin and Verfremdungseffekt were the best band since the Bad Seeds.

‘Yeah, they’re not bad,’ said a boy from the other band. He laughed. ‘We’ll have to fight you lot for him.’

‘I hope we don’t get one of the girls,’ said one of his
bandmates
. ‘I just can’t take girly musicians seriously.’ He looked at us and grinned in what he probably thought was a charming way but which looked more like a smirk to me. ‘No offence.’

‘Lots of offence taken,’ I said. I could see why Richard
hadn’t looked very pleased to see them here. He looked even less pleased now.

‘Wow, Charlie,’ said Richard. ‘I didn’t realise you were that scared of girls.’

Charlie looked annoyed.

‘I’m not SCARED of them, Murray,’ he said. But before he could say anything else obnoxious, Veronica and Tom and the mentors came back in.

‘So,’ said Tom. ‘We’re going to give you each a mentor now! First up … Richard Murray and the Wicked Ways. Where are you, Wicked Ways?’

Richard and the bandmates put up their hands and looked a bit nervous.

‘Your mentor is Ian Cliff from Verfremdungseffekt!’ said Tom, and Richard looked very relieved. Ian looked over and nodded at them in a very serious way.

Then they called the Crack Parrots, which, it turns out, is the name of horrible Charlie’s band. I was hoping he’d get one of the women but alas he didn’t, he got some man called Simon from a band called Aniseed. And then it was our turn.

‘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!’