‘Well, we can show our appreciation when they put on their play tomorrow,’ said Alice.
‘Oh yeah,’ said Cass. ‘I can’t wait to see that. Wow. I’m looking forward to something involving Vanessa and Karen. This summer really has been full of surprises.’
Then – speak of the Devil – Vanessa came up to us.
‘Is it true?’ she demanded, without bothering to say hello, or anything vaguely polite. ‘Are you, like, an actual lesbian?’
‘Um, yes,’ said Cass, looking taken aback. ‘I suppose.’
‘Oh right,’ said Vanessa. ‘That’s cool.’ And she walked off.
We all just stared at each other.
‘Well, I don’t think today could get any weirder,’ said Cass.
‘Come on, let’s sit down before anything else peculiar can happen,’ said Alice. Ellie, Sam and Lucy had saved us some seats, so we sat down just as the lights in the auditorium went down and Veronica walked on to the spotlit stage.
‘Hey everybody,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a bit of a change to today’s show − Crack Parrots won’t be performing after all.’ There were some cheers and a few boos and various yelling noises. Cass squirmed a bit in her seat between me and Alice. ‘So we’d like you to give a big round of applause to our first act – Richard Murray and the Wicked Ways!’
Of course we all applauded and cheered like mad as Richard and the boys strode out. I had to admit that Richard did make the right decision to steal that suit. It looks really good on him. Not that I fancy him, I might add. Much as I like and, indeed, respect Richard, he just doesn’t do anything for me. Which is a good thing, obviously, for many reasons.
Anyway, Richard grabbed the mike and said, in a voice that was about ten times lower than his usual voice, ‘Hello, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Richard Murray, and these are the Wicked Ways. And our first song is called “The Fool”.’
The drums and the bass kicked in, sounding impressively gloomy, then the guitar started playing a dramatic riff, and then Richard began to sing.
‘I am …’ he sang, in a deep and rumbling voice, ‘little more … than a fooool.’
He has always been a bit … melodramatic on stage, and somehow it always worked. But now he was taking it a bit further. Actually, make that a lot further. He was now hunched over so his chin nearly touched his knees.
‘A fool … for loooove … a fool … in life …’ he declaimed, still in the booming voice. Then he sprang upright again. ‘Am I a fool to you?’ he cried, flinging his arms wide. As the song went on, he stalked around the stage in a very dramatic fashion. At one stage, he shook his fist at the heavens. And then he lay down on the ground in order to roar the final chorus.
‘I think he might have taken his love of Ian Cliff a bit too far,’ I whispered to Cass.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Cass. ‘What’s he doing now? Is he … writhing?’
‘Life!’ roared Richard, still thrashing around on his back, ‘has made a fooooool of meeeeeeee!’
‘I’m afraid he is,’ I whispered back. ‘Oh dear. We’d better shut up in case Alice hears us.’
Alice didn’t seem to mind Richard’s antics. In fact, she was staring at the stage in what looked like admiration. Love really must be blind. Eventually the song ended, with Richard still kicking about on the floor as he played the final bass notes, and there was a slightly stunned silence as he got to his feet. Then suddenly we heard loud clapping from up the front and a loud and even boomier voice than Richard had managed to achieve cried ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ It was, of course, Ian Cliff. It was like we’d been in a stunned trance until he started clapping, but then everyone else started joining in.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Richard. ‘This next song is called “Odysseus”, and I’d like to dedicate it to my friend Cass.’
‘Oh God,’ said Cass, but she tried to look pleased, because she knew Richard was being nice.
‘Odysseus,’ boomed Richard. ‘You’re a hero of the seven seas!’
Well, you can imagine the rest. The thing is, as the band went on, I started to get into it. I actually think Richard can pull this stuff off. Very few people could, without looking totally ridiculous. And of course he did look totally ridiculous. But he was somehow brilliant at the same time. The first time we saw the Wicked Ways, back at the Battle of the Bands, I said I thought he had star quality, and I was right. Cass felt the same way.
‘Actually,’ she said, halfway through ‘Odysseus’, ‘am I going mad, or is this kind of cool?’
‘You’re not going mad,’ I whispered back. When the band finished, we clapped and cheered with all our might. And by the end of their set, everyone was cheering and whooping. Ian Cliff even stood up.
‘The Wicked Ways, everybody!’ he shouted, and everyone cheered. Shane O’Driscoll cheered very loudly, which isn’t surprising. His own music is very different to the Wicked Ways, but he obviously approved of Richard’s dramatic gesturing. Even though Richard didn’t do any actual prowling.
But when they had left the stage, something surprising happened. The stage lights were down, as they always are between acts, but after a while we could see something happening on stage. Shane O’Driscoll and some of the other mentors were pushing out two big packing cases onto the stage.
‘Who’s on now?’ I asked.
‘I think it’s Puce,’ said Alice. And it was. We could see the drummer, whose name I can never remember, getting into position, and then Niall walked onto the stage clutching his guitar. As the lights went on, he marched to the central mike at the front of the stage.
‘Whoah,’ said Cass. ‘What is he wearing?’
‘I think it’s a jumpsuit,’ said Alice. ‘Or maybe a boiler suit. It kind of suits him!’
I’m not sure it did, but it certainly was eye-catching.
Then Niall grabbed the mike.
‘We’re Puce,’ he cried. ‘And we’re here to rock your world!’
‘Just him and the drummer?’ whispered Cass in confusion. ‘Where are the other two?’
But then Niall played his first chord, and two more spotlights hit the stage, shining straight onto the big packing cases. And, right on cue, the bass player and the other guitarist leaped up from behind the packing cases, where they must have been hiding all the time. They too had abandoned their cardigans. One of them was wearing a neon shiny tracksuit top and skinny jeans, and the other was wearing an oversized mohair jumper and leather trousers. (Which I think was a mistake, and not just because it was so hot. I mean, it’s hot on stage even in the middle of winter because of all those lights shining on you. It’s even worse at the beginning of July. The poor thing must have been boiling.) The audience cheered as the two boys leaped up on top of the packing cases, struck a pose and started to play.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Niall really was paying attention during Shane’s workshops.’
‘Look, he’s doing the “stretch out your hand to the crowd and then draw it back to your chest in a fist” move!’ said Alice.
It was quite a show. I couldn’t believe it was the same band who were mumbling away in their cardigans just a few weeks ago. Not that I have anything against cardigans. I actually LIKED their cardigans. In fact, I much prefer them to the tracksuit tops and the jumpsuits. I just thought the boys all looked the same when they were wearing them.
Anyway, they certainly all stand out now. And who knew Niall was such a showman? The only problem was that their music was still pretty boring. But you don’t notice the boringness so much when they’re all leaping up from behind boxes and pointing at the audience and stuff. Also, they’d even made a stage set! At one stage, the boys jumped off the packing cases and turned them around, and they’d painted a sort of backdrop and stuck it to the packing cases. It was of lots of pots of paint, and it took me a minute to figure out why, and then I realised the paint was all a sort of puce colour. Anyway, it looked quite good, and of course it made Cass say that she knew we should have had a set.
> ‘We could easily have made a backdrop thing!’ she said. ‘It’s just a couple of old sheets. No neon signs or anything. I’m definitely doing one for the next gig.’
I suppose we’ll have to let her. She’ll keep going on about it if we don’t. And actually, it could be quite fun.
Unsurprisingly, Shane O’Driscoll was delighted by his protégés. When they finished – Niall stretched out his hand to the audience in a particularly impassioned fashion and then placed his hand on his heart – Shane jumped up on the stage and yelled, ‘Let’s hear it for my boys, Puce, the masters of stage craft!’ And while that was going a bit far, we did give them a big cheer. After all, they’d put on an entertaining show. And they taught us that even if you can’t afford actual trapdoors and stuff, you can get the same effect by hiding behind something and jumping out. Which is good to know.
Anyway, we didn’t see Richard until Puce were over, so when all the lights came on we all hurried to tell him and the rest of the Wicked Ways how good they were.
‘The lying-down bit wasn’t too much, was it?’ said Richard.
‘No,’ I lied. Although maybe it wasn’t a lie really. The show did all work in the end.
I was a bit worried that we’d see Charlie on the way out of the campus, but we didn’t. We did see Evan, though. He looked pretty embarrassed, as well he might. But he nodded at us, and Cass nodded back.
‘I know he’s been an eejit,’ she said. ‘But he was pretty brave today, standing up to Charlie.’
‘The world is upside down today,’ I said.
And that’s still what it feels like. But even though what Charlie said was horrible, and poor Cass was a bit wobbly all day afterwards, at least we found out that not everyone is totally evil. Even people I don’t like very much. And that has to be a good thing.
Poor Jane! And poor Gemma and Josh and Alfie and Bernard the Fairy-tale Prince. I even feel sorry for Karen, who has proved she is not totally evil. And maybe even Vanessa (okay, maybe not Vanessa). Their play was a disaster. Well, it wasn’t so much that it was a disaster as that it didn’t happen at all. It turns out that they hadn’t told Cathy about all their special effects and knife-juggling and gymnastics and stuff, and when she heard about it this morning she was horrified and said the insurance wouldn’t cover any of it so they couldn’t do it. She asked if there was any way they could work around it, but they knew that if they took out all the controversial bits there’d only be about two minutes of play left so they had to cancel the whole thing.
I am surprised at how disappointed I am. I was looking forward to seeing whether Vanessa really could juggle with knives or not. Jane swears she is really good at juggling, but now we’ll never know. I was actually tempted to ask Vanessa to give us a show, but I didn’t dare. Of course, the whole group feel awful about not getting to put on the play. But Vanessa, unsurprisingly for a girl who has already thrown several tantrums in front of big crowds, was in a giant rage.
‘I’ll sue them,’ she said furiously. ‘I’ll sue everyone in this stupid little so-called arts camp!’
‘You do that, Vanessa,’ said Karen loyally. ‘We’ll take them for every penny they’ve got!’
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ said Bernard nervously. ‘I mean, we should probably have checked with Cathy about the fireworks. And the juggling. And the human pyramid. We just showed her the less … action-filled bits.’
‘Bernard’s right,’ said Jane sadly.
But Vanessa just kept on ranting on about knowing her rights and how she had lowered herself to come to what she called ‘this crappy little camp’ when she could have been at an international drama school in the Swiss Alps. (Jane told me later that actually, Vanessa couldn’t have been in the Swiss Alps – her mum had told Jane’s mum that Vanessa had been looking at the Swiss school’s website, but it cost, like, a million euro a week, or something. I think Vanessa thinks her parents are richer than they actually are.) She also started going on about how she’d invited all those agents.
‘This was my chance to be discovered!’ she cried. ‘And now no one will see my talent, thanks to that ridiculous fascist Cathy!’
This was too much even for Karen.
‘But Vanessa,’ she said gently, ‘none of the agents turned up. So it’s not like they’d have seen you anyway.’
Vanessa clearly didn’t have anything to say to this. She just made a sort of growling noise and stomped out of the room.
‘Sorry you didn’t get to do the show,’ I said to Jane. Jane sighed.
‘I suppose we should have gone through more stuff with Cathy,’ she said. ‘But she seemed so pleased we were working well together. It just seemed easier to … skim over the dramatic bits. She thought it was a much shorter, sort of abstract piece.’
Poor Jane. It is such a shame after they worked so hard. She was so glum she didn’t even cheer up when we went to see Positive Trigger and a few of the other bands do their showcase gig. I wasn’t that excited about seeing Positive Trigger, because they’ve been rapping in the canteen every day for the last month so we know most of their songs already, but they were very good, especially Maggie’s superfast rap about what goes on on the windswept Clontarf seafront, which, according to Positive Trigger, is some kind of gangster’s paradise, even though whenever I’ve been there it’s just full of middle-aged people walking pugs and Labradors.
And there was good news today too. First of all, it looks like we won’t have to see Charlie again because he’s not coming in to the camp for the last few days. In fact, he’s basically been kicked out. Veronica and Tom found out about what happened yesterday, and this morning they talked to Cass, and they started asking around, and lots of girls – and boys – told them about the way Charlie’s been acting all summer. Veronica and Tom were totally horrified and called his parents. And, according to Finn, who told Richard, they told Charlie that his behaviour was unacceptable, and if they’d known about it sooner, they’d have kicked him out ages ago. But all they could do was expel him for the last few days. We really should have gone and told them what he was doing instead of trying to ignore his creepy awfulness. In fact, Veronica and Tom basically said so this afternoon, before we went to the band showcase. ‘We have a zero tolerance of bullying in this camp!’ said Veronica, looking quite upset. ‘But obviously we didn’t make this clear enough. Just remember that if anyone is harassing you or making you feel scared, come and tell us or any of the other department facilitators and mentors straight away.’
If only we had. But at least he’s been punished now. Apparently his parents are sending him to stay with his grandparents in a farm in the middle of nowhere for the rest of the summer, where there will be no humans to harass. So it seems that’s the end of the Crack Parrots. I suppose it’s hard on Evan and Finn, who did stand up to him in the end. But they put up with him for ages too, so it’s not that unfair. And I bet they can start a new band. I mean, they were the best musicians anyway. Maybe the next time they’ll find some bandmates who aren’t total sexist homophobic goons.
And if they do, they might have a place to practise. Because Charlie getting expelled wasn’t the only good thing that happened today. After Veronica and Tom told us about the no-bullying thing, they had an announcement to make.
‘Over the course of the camp, one thing that’s come up again and again is the difficulty of finding places to practise and to put on gigs,’ said Veronica. ‘So we thought we’d try and do something to help.’
And that means that they’ve managed to get the Knitting Factory to give over some of its studio space to keep the rock camp going at the weekends! We’ll be able to bag a studio hopefully once a week. We’ll still have to pay, but it’ll only be about a fiver. And Veronica and Tom are going to put on regular underage gigs. So we’ll definitely be able to play!
And that wasn’t the only news. There’s going to be a sort of disco on Friday night to celebrate the end of the camp, and we can take guests. So Cass is going to
bring Liz along. Which is pretty cool. Oops, speaking of Cass, she and Liz and Alice are here for our epic sweet-making session. I’d better go.
We have made loads of fudge. And it is DELICIOUS. We have come a long way from that weirdly gritty first batch all those weeks ago. Having Liz helped − every addition to the team means we can get more speedy stirring done. We sang songs while we made it too, which Cass is convinced helped us stir faster. And we added some orange zest and juice to one batch for an extra kick. Anyway, it was definitely our best ever result, and even Rachel admitted that it tasted good. Though, being Rachel, she had to be rude about it.
‘Are you sure you actually made this?’ she said. ‘You didn’t buy it in some posh sweet shop?’
None of my family have any faith in my abilities.
We did have a bit of a problem with the boxes, though. We only made two of them. It turns out fashioning a box out of cardboard is more fiddly than it looks. By the time Cass had drawn out the template and painted it red and done the logo and Liz cut it out with a special craft knife she’d borrowed from her big sister (you’re meant to do this on a special cutting board but we used the chopping board from the kitchen instead. I didn’t tell Mum about this), and Alice glued it together, it was practically time for them all to go home.
So we decided that, for the moment, we’re just going to put the fudge in clean plastic takeaway boxes with little Hey Dollface logos drawn on cardboard next to them and leave them out on the stage for people to help themselves. It is much easier all round. As Alice said, ‘There’s no point in overdoing it.’
I can’t believe it’s the last day tomorrow. I wish the camp was going on for another month.