“And this time we’ll try harder,” Taleb said.
Velvet knew that Taleb didn’t care about the money that was owed. He just wanted another chance to make the musical better. So did she.
“We’ll need a poster to advertise it,” Mr MacDonald said.
“Something with a really eye-catching graphic,” Velvet said. “Can you do that, Roula?”
“Sure.”
“We’ve got just over a week.”
CHAPTER 31
The members of Stagefright gathered around, admiring the poster. It featured a bloodstained sword sticking up out of the ground with a crown hanging on the hilt. Taleb’s dad had printed fifty of them.
“It’s ace, Roula,” Jesus said.
Peter read out what was written on the bottom. “‘Encore Performance, by Popular Demand.’ Is it okay to lie on posters?”
“It’s essential,” Velvet said.
They were all wearing purple T-shirts with Roula’s design on the front and Stagefright Presents: Richard the Third on the back with the date and the time.
“Why did they have to be purple?”
“Dad’s got a stack of them from an order that fell through,” Taleb said.
Miss Ryan had given them permission to stick up the posters around the school and to wear the T-shirts over their uniforms. Even Taleb was wearing one. Peter had paid another visit to Velvet’s mum and Mrs Anagnostopoulos, and they had agreed to serve refreshments during interval.
Taleb didn’t mind if the acting was terrible, but he was nervous about the music. His reputation depended on it.
“The band needs more practice,” he said. “Every lunchtime.”
They all groaned. Except Velvet. “And rehearsal after school, so Drago can come,” she added.
Actually, Drago was the least of Velvet’s worries. He knew all his lines and he only had one song. It was the others who needed to work on their performances. She wanted it to be as good as possible. Her blabbermouth mother had invited half her family. Her Aunt Evelyn, various cousins and her grandmother were all coming to the performance.
Velvet was punctual as always, only stopping at her locker to get her sandwiches on the way to the practice room. Taleb was there before her though. He looked up when she came into the room, but went back to tuning his guitar without saying anything. Velvet didn’t speak either. She took the cover off the Yamaha and plugged it in.
When Jesus arrived, Velvet was dusting the keys of the electric piano and Taleb was tidying up the spare strings and plectrums that he kept in his guitar case. Jesus set up his cymbals, drum, bells and shakers.
“Come on, you guys. You have to speak to each other. You can’t play music together and not talk.”
“Who says we’re not talking?”
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing to say at the moment.”
The rest of the band dawdled in and they practised the girls’ song over and over again. Hailie’s singing was tuneless, Roula couldn’t quite hit the high notes and Mei drowned everyone else out. Velvet’s singing was fine. She sang in tune, hit all the notes and her lyrics were clear, but she wasn’t very good at the movements. Where the other girls bopped and swayed, Velvet’s movements were stiff and wooden.
“You do realise I’m supposed to be dead by now, don’t you?”
“That explains why you dance like a puppet,” Taleb said.
“How come you pick on the one thing I’m not good at? You don’t pick on any of the others.”
“You just can’t take criticism.”
“No arguments, okay,” Jesus said.
“You were complaining that I wasn’t saying anything a minute ago.”
“Look. I’m not gonna spend my lunchtimes listening to you and Velvet squabble.”
“I’m the musical director. I can’t always be nice.” He turned to Velvet. “I think you should die at the end of the song.”
“Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?”
“No. We have to know that Lady Anne dies and Richard poisoned her. You can say you’re not well and then collapse. The other women can explain what’s happened.”
Velvet wrote down the changes on her script.
“Okay,” Peter said. “The girls’ song is fine. What else do we need to do?”
“We need a finale,” Velvet said. “You saw how flat it was when we ended with Jesus killing Richard.”
“That was because Peter and Jesus made a complete mess of it,” Hailie said.
“No, she’s right,” Taleb said. “It needs a big finish.”
Velvet was annoyed with her heart, which started thumping even though she officially hated Taleb.
“How can you have a big finish when there’s hardly anyone left alive?” Roula said.
“What if the ghosts all come back on stage and sing?” Velvet suggested to the group.
Taleb nodded. “That could work.”
“What will they sing about?”
Taleb shrugged. “I dunno. Peace at last or something.”
“I know, I know!” said Velvet, suddenly excited. “This is where we can say something about Richard being a good guy, that Shakespeare was wrong.”
“Don’t you ever give up, Velvet?”
“Drago stopped wearing his hump, didn’t he?” Hailie said.
“It’s only a few days till the performance,” Taleb said. “I just haven’t got time to write another song.”
“What’s Drago going to do during the finale, just lie on stage dead?”
“No, he’ll be a ghost too,” Velvet said. “Miss Ryan can make him a ghost outfit.”
Everyone was getting nervous at the thought of their friends coming to see them.
“If we’re talking about making it better, we need some lights and microphones,” Peter said.
“I know someone who can do that,” Taleb said. “Let’s get going. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
They went back to practising again.
Taleb rang Velvet late at night for the first time in a month.
“Listen to this,” he said, without even saying hello. “It’s for the finale.”
He played the song over the phone to her. The music started off slow and quiet, and it contained refrains from earlier songs, just like a finale should, and then it built to a rousing chorus. Taleb had made it everything she’d said a finale should be. She was finding it hard to stay angry with him.
“It’s good,” she said. “It’s great.”
“I’m still working on some better music for the battle scene. Do you think you can write some lyrics?”
“I’ll try.”
“It needs to end on an up note.”
“I don’t see how it can. Everyone’s dead.”
“You’ll have to think of something. By tomorrow. Then we’ll have two days to rehearse it. I’ll email you the music.”
That evening Velvet listened to the melody again and again. She knew what was needed, but she couldn’t think of any positive message that could come out of a story where the main character is horrible and almost the entire cast dies.
She stayed up late, but nothing came to her. Not a single word.
Velvet woke before it was light, when her phone announced that she had to catch a 6.30 flight to Hamburg. Taleb’s melody was still in her head. She thought back to the start of the year. She would never have dreamed that in November she would be struggling to write song lyrics instead of studying for end-of-year tests. She’d done a lot of things she couldn’t have imagined doing in her old life. She sat up. She recalled how miserable she’d been in first term. She remembered when Drago had told her that she was like Richard – grumpy and whinging because she’d been hard done by. She wasn’t like that now. She’d changed.
She reached for her notebook and started scribbling words. Now she knew what the message for the finale was.
Velvet was nervous about singing her lyrics in front of the others. The words were personal. What if they groaned? What if they laughed? What if Taleb h
ated them? He’d probably think they were too sentimental.
She had to take that chance.
The morning dragged by, but finally lunchtime came. Velvet hoped the others would be late for practice, so that she could show them to Taleb first, but they were all on time for once.
“Did you write some lyrics?” Taleb asked.
Velvet nodded.
“Do we really have to learn another song?” Hailie complained.
“We haven’t got time to memorise it properly,” Peter said. “We’ll get it wrong.”
“You might not like it,” Velvet said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“Can’t you just read the words?”
“Lyrics are for singing.” Taleb picked up his guitar and played the introduction. Velvet took a deep breath.
“Don’t wish for what you haven’t got.
Don’t yearn for what is gone.
Count up your blessings, they’re a lot.
Stand tall and then move on.”
Then came the chorus.
“Live, love, dream, strive.
Be proud of who you are.
Be brave, be true, be strong, be you.
Be yourself and you will star.
“When you’re all alone, life makes you sigh.
Every challenge seems extreme.
But with friends beside you, hills aren’t high.
For together we’re a team.”
Velvet repeated the chorus, and couldn’t stop a catch in her voice. No one spoke. She felt like she’d just run down the street in her underwear.
“If you hate it we don’t have to do it.”
“It’s great, Velvet,” Roula said.
Jesus dug her in the ribs with his elbow. “That was good.”
She looked at Taleb.
“It’s perfect,” he said.
CHAPTER 32
The night of the performance was hot, very hot. It had got up to forty degrees during the day, and even with every door and window open it was like an oven in the school hall. It was hotter still wearing their costumes and the makeup Miss Ryan had insisted they all wear because they were performing under lights. The curtains had been fixed. The members of Stagefright were all living up to their name and taking it in turns to peep through the gap in the curtains.
“I can’t believe it. The hall’s full!” Hailie said. “Why have all these people come?”
“To watch us looking stupid,” Roula said. “I couldn’t sleep last night.”
The people in the audience were all fanning themselves with the programs that Miss Ryan had run off at the last moment. Everyone’s parents were there, and lots of other family members as well. And every single one of their classmates.
Even Taleb was nervous. Eddy and the singer from Toxic Shock were in the second row.
Velvet gasped. “Oh, no!”
“What’s wrong?” Taleb said.
“Rhiannon, Ashleigh and Clara-Louise are out there. My friends from St Theresa’s. I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Not again,” said Jesus. Taleb tried not to smile. Velvet turned raspberry-coloured. Hailie must have blabbed.
“Oh my God,” Roula said. “My Uncle Dimitrios is about to sit next to Drago’s grandma!”
“You were supposed to stop him from coming!”
“My stomach’s doing somersaults,” Jesus said. “I never used to feel like this before a soccer match.”
“Come away from the curtains, all of you,” said Taleb. “Don’t look out there.”
“It’s all right for you,” Velvet said. “All you have to do is take off your glasses and you can’t see the audience.”
“The stage lights will shine in your eyes when we start. Pretend there’s nobody there.”
Velvet couldn’t drag herself away. She peered into the shadows at the back of the hall.
“Who’s that operating the lights and the mixing desk?”
“It looks like Sofia Ritano,” Roula said. “Who asked her to be part of this?”
“I did,” Taleb said. “She does sound and lights for Toxic Shock.”
Hailie looked out through the curtains.
“Geez,” she said. Her latest boyfriend (John Zollo who had just become the national under-18 breast-stroke champion) was in the front row. “I need to go to the toilet.”
“You’ve only got ten minutes, Hailie,” said Miss Ryan, who seemed as nervous as everyone else even though she was just costume mistress and prompt.
“And Slinky’s definitely not here?”
“No,” Miss Ryan assured them. “I spoke to him at lunchtime. He’s attending the conference dinner tonight.”
Even Mr MacDonald was pacing around. “Where’s Drago?”
“Isn’t he here yet?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“What if he chickens out and doesn’t come?”
“He wouldn’t bail on us, would he?”
“Remember how nervous he was about singing?”
“Mei isn’t here either.”
“I can’t play Richard again,” Peter said. “Not in front of half the school.”
“Less than ten minutes to go and the main character is missing!”
They all spent the next five minutes panicking. Then, finally, Drago swaggered in looking not the least bit nervous. In fact it was Drago and Mei together, holding hands. Everyone stopped and stared. They were such an unlikely couple. Mei was a full head taller than Drago and very well-proportioned. Drago looked like a puzzle that someone had put together wrong. There was another reason why they were staring – Mei had undergone another one of her transformations. Her hair was short and spiky with bleached tips. She was wearing black lipstick, ripped fishnet stockings and a short dress made out of a patchwork of bits of old leather jackets, with a very revealing neckline. Drago was wearing his green jeans and a particularly tacky rugby shirt that his foster mother had bought at a Kmart sale. They were all distracted from staring at the new couple when Hailie came back in tears.
Peter put his arm around her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“My periods started!”
The audience was getting restless. They were already running late. Roula and Velvet took Hailie back to the toilets to initiate her in the use of feminine hygiene products, while Drago and Mei put on their costumes and Miss Ryan did their make-up. Taleb paced about in the wings. Mr MacDonald went out on stage and made a boring speech thanking Miss Ryan and Taleb’s dad and anyone else he could think of, while Sofia Ritano clipped radio microphones to everyone. Hailie emerged from the toilets walking like someone with a pillow strapped between her legs. At least her foot wasn’t in plaster.
They couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time for the band to go out and take their places.
“Oh, God.” Velvet’s nerves, which had disappeared while she was tending to Hailie, suddenly came back and paralysed her.
“Have some chewing gum,” Taleb said.
She took the gum, but couldn’t get her fingers to undo the wrapper. Taleb undid it and handed the gum to her.
He smiled at her for the first time in six weeks. “You’ll be okay.”
The band walked out onto the stage to some half-hearted applause and ironic cheers from the second row. Velvet had insisted that they all wear their costumes from the beginning. Even Taleb was wearing his doublet. He ignored the wolf whistles from his classmates and concentrated on getting his petrified band to actually play. He counted them in and conducted them as best he could for someone with both hands busy. The others watched his every movement as if their lives depended on it. It was easier to watch him than look at the audience. When it came to the piano improvisation, Velvet chewed hard on her gum and tried to imagine that it was just another practice session. The overture finished, the curtains opened, and Drago came onto the stage. He started his speech and various boys in the audience called out. Taleb played the introduction to the soliloquy song and Drago did his tough-guy impersonation and half-sang, ha
lf-shouted his song to the whoops and cheers of the audience.
It was Taleb’s turn. He sang the prophecy song to loud heckling from the audience. Then it was time for Lady Anne’s entrance and Velvet walked on, sleeves trembling. Drago entered from the opposite side of the stage. It was the scene where Anne starts off saying how much she hates Richard and ends up saying she’ll consider marrying him. At first the reactions of the audience stunned her. People laughed, shouted insults, and booed Richard. It wasn’t really the reaction they wanted, but it was a response to their performance and after the initial shock had worn off, the adrenaline of performing started to kick in. A spotlight shone on Velvet, and she sang her song confidently. Drago finished the scene by grabbing Velvet and kissing her on the mouth, much to her horror and the audience’s delight.
The audience was stunned into silence by Mei’s song, but cheered loudly when she finished. The dream sequence looked effective. To the sound of eerie music programmed into the Yamaha, dreaming Clarence fought his way through Roula’s ragged streamers, which were bathed in blue and green light and were blowing about, thanks to Miss Ryan directing a fan on them. Everyone gasped when the cardboard angel came swooping onto the stage bathed in blood-red light. Taleb’s death scene in the barrel of wine got some laughs.
At interval the audience hadn’t gone home, and the excitement level backstage was rising. Velvet could see her mother, wearing a last year’s Country Road dress, selling coffee and trying to strike up polite conversation with Jesus’s mother. Peter’s parents clung to each other like a pair of timid animals. Hailie’s mum was wearing skin-tight jeans with rips in them, a low-cut sequinned top and a bolero made from fake fur. She was standing between Drago’s tiny grandma and Roula’s Uncle Dimitrios, laughing at a joke she’d just cracked, digging them both in the ribs.
“Didn’t you tell her about the feud between my family and Drago’s?” Roula asked.
“I told her. She bet me five dollars she could get them talking to each other.”
No one went out to join their parents. They didn’t want to break the mood.
Act I had gone pretty well. The audience had laughed in more or less the right places. The scenery had worked and the songs sounded good.