Make Up or Break Up, page 3
‘Okay,’ said Cat. ‘But this time, I’ll do the pushing in. I’m not going to the back of the queue again.’ She linked her arm in mine, and we walked back to the canteen.
When I got home that afternoon I flopped onto my bed, feeling emotionally exhausted. I looked up at Chris Hemsworth.
In the poster, he was shirtless, crouching on one knee with his square chin resting in his hand. He was staring at the camera, his brow slightly furrowed in a serious, challenging look. Chris was decisive. Chris was tough. Chris knew everything.
‘Chris,’ I said. ‘What should I do?’
I practically jumped out of my skin when someone knocked on my door.
‘Ally?’ It was Mum.
‘Yeah?’
‘Have you got someone in there?’ she asked through the door.
‘No. Of course not.’
She opened the door and looked in, then smiled. ‘I thought I heard voices.’ she said. ‘Tony Rickson’s here to see you.’
I sat bolt upright. ‘What?’
‘He’s at the front door.’
‘What? Right now?’ I jumped off my bed and headed for the front door throwing my head back for a final glance at Chris. Wish me luck, I mouthed silently.
Tony was standing on the front porch. I didn’t invite him in.
‘Hey,’ he said, looking up from his shoes.
‘Hi,’ I said, finding it difficult to believe that this was the ‘cool genius’ behind the apparently amazing Gladiator: The Musical.
‘Um … I guess I just wanted to apologise.’
‘Oh?’ Finally, I thought, with a little tremor of excitement. He’s finally going to apologise for leaving me twisting in the wind after our terrible kiss.
‘Yeah, I … ah … didn’t realise … um …’ He trailed off in a volley of ums and ahs. I couldn’t see this guy with a speaking role in a play. Lucky he could write songs.
‘Spit it out, Tony,’ I said snippily, gaining confidence as his seemed to fade.
‘Well …’ He gave an awkward chuckle, then looked up at me again. ‘I’m sorry that I didn’t realise you wanted me to buy you something at the canteen today. When I thought about it later, I worked it out.’
‘That’s okay, Tony,’ I replied, trying to sound non-chalant. I was disappointed, but I didn’t let it show. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘No.’ He gulped. ‘I mean, um, I don’t think so. Sorry.’
I was relieved when I heard Mum calling me to dinner. Then she bustled up behind me in the hallway and stuck her head around the front door. ‘Would you like to stay for dinner, Tony?’ she asked.
I jumped in before the invitation could be accepted. ‘He was just leaving.’
Tony nodded. ‘See you later, Ally. Nice to see you, Mrs Motbey.’
I shut the door quickly.
‘Well, it’s no wonder you two aren’t friends anymore, if that’s how you treat him! That was very rude, Ally,’ Mum said as we sat down to dinner.
‘What?’ I blinked at her, as if I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘I didn’t invite him over here. He just showed up unannounced.’
‘Maybe he’s trying to rekindle the friendship. Ever thought of that?’
‘No,’ I answered, feeling embarrassed and grumpy.
I sat down at the dinner table glaring at the sausages and mash on my plate, as if they were the ones weighing in on issues they knew nothing about. God, what could my mother possibly understand about my problems? Tony was the least of them.
My phone beeped with a message. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was from Cat.
Let’s practise for the audition at lunch tomorrow. You’ll be amazing. So excited! xx
All through dinner I turned over my big dilemma in my mind. What was I going to choose? The Gladiator audition or the Latin extension class?
If I went to the audition, I’d humiliate myself in front of everyone, and even if I could somehow pull it off I would be stuck working with Tony. But if I blew it off, I’d be leaving Cat in the lurch – something she’d probably never forgive me for.
But I didn’t want to miss out on the Latin class either. It was a Year 10 extension class! That wasn’t an opportunity I could throw away without a second thought. Latin was my favourite subject. What was I going to do?
‘Okay, Ally. I want you to sing the note I’m playing. Don’t just sing some random note.’
It was lunchtime. Cat and I were in the auditorium, both perched cross-legged on the edge of the stage. Cat had her guitar balanced in her lap, and she was looking super serious. This would be her last opportunity to knock my singing into shape before the audition. ‘Ready?’ she asked.
I wriggled and sat up straighter. ‘Yep, ready.’
Cat plucked a string of her guitar, then looked at me expectantly.
I opened my mouth and sang.
‘No, Ally, that’s not it.’ I detected a tinge of exasperation in my friend’s voice.
‘Cat,’ I said, sounding whiny and feeling over it, ‘I haven’t been singing random notes. I’ve been trying to sing the notes you’ve been playing.’
‘But can’t you hear that what’s coming out of your mouth is nothing like what’s coming from my guitar?’ She looked baffled.
I shrugged. I really couldn’t hear it.
‘Look, Ally. Close your eyes. Listen to the note. Then hum it. You only have to hum. I’m not expecting Edith Piaf.’
‘Who’s Edith Piaf?’
‘Only one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century,’ she said, like I was an idiot. ‘But forget about her. Just hum one note in tune.’
‘But I have been.’ There was an uncomfortable pause. ‘Haven’t I?’
Cat shook her head sadly.
‘Maybe your guitar’s out of tune,’ I suggested. ‘Ever thought of that?’
‘Look,’ Cat said, gazing at me with pity. ‘I don’t want to use the word “foghorn” but –’
‘Hey!’ Even though I was slightly offended, I started laughing and then couldn’t stop.
Cat gave me a wry smile, and then broke into giggles too.
‘What’s going on here?’ Standing in the doorway to the auditorium was Ollie Haas, doing a very convincing ‘grumpy teacher’ impression. As he walked towards us, I saw that he was with another guy, who was wearing a private-school uniform.
Cat and I fell silent immediately.
‘Practising for the audition on Friday?’ asked Ollie.
Cat and I looked at each other blankly. I wasn’t sure what to say. Would it be too uncool to admit that we were making an effort?
‘I-I’m practising,’ I stuttered. ‘Cat’s helping me.’
Cat clutched her guitar to her body. It looked like she was trying to protect herself from Ollie’s jaw-dropping gorgeousness.
‘So you play the guitar, huh?’ he asked Cat. ‘Me too.’
Cat just nodded.
‘What kind of music are you into?’
Cat gripped her guitar for dear life. ‘Oh, anything and everything.’
‘Do you write your own songs?’
She seemed to relax a bit. ‘Yeah, I’ve written a few,’ she said, smiling. ‘What about you?’
I sat in awe as Cat and Ollie struck up a proper conversation. Cat was doing a great job of playing it cool.
‘Mind if we stay and listen?’ Ollie dropped into a seat near the stage. His friend grinned and sat down next to him.
Cat looked to me, her eyebrows raised encouragingly.
I wasn’t so sure. The last thing I wanted to do was spoil an opportunity for Cat to spend time with Ollie, but if I really did sound like a foghorn …
‘Well,’ I said. ‘We were about to wrap it up, weren’t we, Cat?’
‘No, no!’ said Ollie. ‘Keep going. We want to hear you sing.’
I snorted and then covered my mouth with my hand. How embarrassing to snort in front of His Royal Gorgeousness! That was hardly going to win any points for Cat.
‘What is it?’ Ollie asked.
‘I can’t actually sing,’ I blurted out.
‘Well, don’t say that in front of Mrs Carey’s son,’ Ollie said with mock horror.
His private-school friend grinned at me.
I looked at him, feeling mortified. ‘You’re Mrs Carey’s son?’
Mrs Carey was Head of Music at Cherrywood High, and she always directed the school musical. I’d heard she was really tough on her performers – apparently she’d made the male lead cry during rehearsal a couple of years ago! Mrs Carey would also have the final say on casting, and now I’d gone and admitted to her son that I couldn’t sing. What a disaster.
I was beginning to seriously regret agreeing to try out for the musical instead of going to my Latin extension class. The way things were going I’d probably end up missing out on the musical and Latin class.
‘I’m Paul, by the way,’ the guy in the private-school uniform said.
‘Ally,’ I replied in a small voice.
‘Don’t worry, Ally,’ said Paul. ‘I’ll let Mum be the judge on Friday. She wouldn’t listen to me anyway.’ He beamed at me. Even though he was wearing a plate in his mouth, I could still see he had a cute smile.
‘Is that a Penscombe uniform?’ I asked. Penscombe was the most exclusive private school in our area.
He nodded, and then smirked. ‘Please don’t hold that against me.’
‘I would hold it against him if I were you,’ said Ollie. ‘He’s just as stuck-up as everyone else at that school. Don’t let him fool you.’
The boys laughed in the kind of confident guffaw I’d heard the older boys at school use around each other. I started to relax. Paul and Ollie were fun – and really nice! – and nowhere near as scary as I’d first thought.
Cat and I exchanged looks. I could tell that she was enjoying the company of these boys as much as I was.
‘So what are you doing here … I mean, at Cherry-wood High?’ I asked Paul.
‘Mum’s asked me to help with the musical,’ he explained. ‘I’m going to take care of the sound and lighting. Ollie’s showing me around so I can get a feel for the place. You know, the acoustics and stuff.’
‘The acoustics are great in here,’ said Cat, pointing upwards. ‘I think it’s the vaulted ceiling. It makes anyone sound good.’ She shot me a cheeky look. ‘Well, almost anyone.’
‘Come on, girls,’ said Ollie. ‘We can take it. Give us your worst.’
Just when I was starting to panic, I had a stroke of genius. ‘Cat, why don’t you sing something? What about that song by Gotye?’
‘Yeah, I know Gotye!’ said Paul. ‘How about Somebody That I Used to Know?’
Cat smiled, and her dimples went deep like they always did when she was embarrassed in a good way.
‘Yes!’ I cheered. ‘You must have played that song a million times, Cat.’
Cat repositioned her guitar on her lap and strummed over the strings to make sure it was in tune. The boys gave whoops and a short round of applause before I raised my finger to my lips and cut them off. Then she played the opening chords of the song perfectly.
When she started singing, I closed my eyes, amazed as usual by the way she managed to match her voice to the pitch and rhythm of the guitar – or was it the other way around? I didn’t know how she coaxed such beautiful tones from that wooden box. In my hands, it just made noise.
The other thing I loved about Cat’s performances was that she never tried to mimic the voice of the artist whose song she was singing. She always made the music her own. Her sweet, rich voice rolled over the edges of Gotye’s melody like maple syrup. It was beautiful. How could they even consider giving the main part in Gladiator to anyone but Cat?
I opened my eyes when I heard Ollie singing along in a lower register. He and Cat were gazing at each other as they sang. It was cute, but cringe-worthy. When I looked at Paul, he was already looking at me. He grinned and I shrugged.
Cat was belting out the final phrases of the song, holding the last note for longer than Ollie could, when a loud bang broke the spell. All eyes shot to the auditorium doors, which Louisa Andrews had just slammed behind her.
‘Hey, Lou,’ called Ollie in a friendly voice.
Ugh! I thought. Why couldn’t he see what a piece of work she was?
‘There you are,’ cooed Louisa, ‘I’ve been looking every-where for you boys.’
Ollie and Paul stood and turned to Louisa. Cat and I rolled our eyes. Louisa opened the carton of coffee-flavoured milk she’d been shaking and shoved a straw into it. She sipped on it delicately as she approached the stage taking tiny princess steps.
‘Cat was just serenading us,’ said Paul.
‘Cat?’ Louisa sniggered. ‘I thought I heard a cat being strangled.’ She blinked innocently at Cat. ‘Oh, was that you?’
‘And me,’ added Ollie with a chuckle. He was certainly taking the insults better than Cat, whose face was like storm clouds gathering.
‘I don’t sound like a cat being strangled,’ Cat said in a low voice.
Louisa’s lips spread in a mean smile. ‘All right then, what do you sound like?’
‘She sounds like Edith Piaf,’ I jumped in. ‘And if you don’t know who Edith Piaf is, then you don’t know much about music.’ I uncrossed my legs and hopped off the stage. ‘Come on, Cat.’
Cat quickly put her guitar in its case and zipped it up. I picked up what remained of my sandwich and hurled it past Louisa to the bin near the stage. Incredibly, it landed where it was supposed to.
‘She shoots, she scores!’ cried Paul.
I gave him a little smile as we walked past them. Cat glared at the floor.
‘See ya Friday, girls!’ Ollie shouted after us. He seemed perfectly cheerful, as if he hadn’t even noticed how badly Louisa had put down Cat.
I didn’t want to destroy my best friend’s illusions, but I was beginning to think there wasn’t a great deal between Ollie Haas’s ears. He was like a cocker spaniel – determined to be happy no matter what.
As we were walking up to the double doors, we heard Louisa’s soprano voice fill the auditorium. The words she was singing – and they weren’t easy to make out through her exaggerated operatic vibrato – seemed to be French.
‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!’ muttered Cat, rolling her eyes at me.
‘What? What is it?’
‘She’s singing La Vie en Rose by Edith Piaf.’
‘Geez … Just to show us that she knows who Edith Piaf is.’ I shook my head in disbelief as I pulled the double doors shut behind us. ‘Honestly, Cat, how are you going to stand being in the musical with that girl?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s hope she catches laryngitis in the next forty-eight hours.’ Cat linked her arm in mine. We set off down the hall towards our English class. ‘But you’ll be by my side the whole time, right?’
I nodded. ‘You know, she’s not even that great,’ I said. And I really meant it. To me, Louisa’s voice sounded desperate and shrill compared to Cat’s.
My best friend sighed. ‘Thanks, Ally. But I think we should admit it when someone’s good. I mean, Louisa Andrews may not be a very nice person, but she does have an outstanding voice.’
I shrugged. ‘She sounds like a constipated canary to me. Then again, I sound like a foghorn, so who am I to talk?’
Cat grinned. ‘Did I say “foghorn”? I meant “French horn”.’
‘You lie about as well as I sing, Caterina-Cordelia.’
‘Do you think our session helped?’ Cat asked doubtfully.
‘Helped what?’
‘Helped you, of course!’
I shook my head gloomily. Ever since I’d sung my first ‘note’ in the auditorium, I’d been wishing I could do the Latin extension class instead. ‘I’m beyond help,’ I explained. ‘I’m going to crash and burn in that audition.’
‘I hope no-one gets hurt.’
‘Just my pride.’ I paused, taking a deep breath, wondering whether it was worth one last crack at trying to wriggle out of the audition. ‘Cat, I don’t think I’m going to be much use to you at the audition. I was thinking … maybe … you’d be better off without me. Singing just isn’t my thing. I’m probably not going to be chosen for the musical anyway. And I already kind of promised Mrs Hawkins that I’d show up to the Latin extension class.’
Cat’s face hardened as I tripped and stammered through my excuses. I tried to look away, but she herded my eyes back to hers.
‘Best friends back each other up,’ she said, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t they? Otherwise what’s the point of having a best friend?’
‘Um … yeah,’ I agreed slowly. ‘What’s the point?’ Was Cat threatening to dump me if I didn’t do what she wanted?
She squeezed my shoulder and smiled. It was as if she hadn’t heard a single word I’d said.
‘I want you to know how much I appreciate you keeping your promise on this.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But –’
‘I owe you one.’
‘I know that too.’
It was nice to be appreciated – sort of. I couldn’t help thinking that if Cat really appreciated me, she wouldn’t have ignored my wishes.
That afternoon, Cat and I took the bus home together as usual. We got off at Cat’s stop, dropped her stuff on her doorstep and then she walked me through the park. When we got to my house, we were right in the middle of an argument about what Ollie’s best feature was, so I dumped my bag on my front lawn and we walked back through the park to her house.
‘You know what I love even more than his butt?’ I didn’t really care about Ollie’s butt, but I was having fun trying to bait Cat.
‘His eyes?’
‘Nope.’ I paused for effect, waiting until Cat was really hanging. ‘His mind.’
‘Yeah,’ said Cat, nodding slowly. ‘I love his mind, too. He doesn’t seem to have any bad thoughts.’
‘I don’t think he has many thoughts, full stop.’
I glanced at Cat and watched her face change as she realised I was winding her up.
‘You don’t think he’s smart?’ she asked cautiously.
I shrugged. ‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know. Not really, I guess.’ A smile spread slowly across her face. ‘But, Ally, he is a nice guy.’
