Stagefright (7 page)

“Drago? Is that a nickname?”

“No, Mother, it’s his real name. He’s a bit of a creep. Taleb’s okay though.”

“Aren’t there any girls, darling?”

“Yeah, there’s Roula and Hailie.”

“Hailie.” Velvet’s mother latched onto the one Anglo-sounding name. “Is she your friend?”

“I haven’t got any friends, I told you. And Hailie doesn’t have girlfriends, only boyfriends. She’s got her claws out for Peter.”

“Peter?”

“He’s Vietnamese. And then there’s Jesus …”

“Surely the teachers don’t approve of you calling a boy Jesus!”

“That’s his name. He’s from some African country.”

“Aren’t there any Australian children at this school?”

“Mum, they’re all Australian.”

Velvet arranged lunchtime meetings with Drago twice a week, so they could work on the first act. The sun was shining and Velvet suggested they sit on the oval. She preferred to be out in the open, just in case he tried anything.

They were working on the scene where Richard reveals how he’s going to convince King Edward that Clarence is about to kill the little princes. Velvet soon realised that Hailie was right. Drago could barely read, but he did have a good memory. If she read his speeches out to him and explained the difficult words, he had quite a knack for picking out phrases from the original and mixing them with modern speech. They’d just got to the bit where Clarence enters when Taleb walked past.

“‘Dive, thoughts, down to my soul, here Clarence comes’,” Velvet quoted and ventured a smile. Taleb stopped but he didn’t smile back.

“We just got to your entrance in the play.”

“Yeah?” He was watching some Year 7s play baseball, so it didn’t look like he was talking to them. “What do I have to say?”

“You’re upset that your brother King Edward is sending you to the Tower of London.”

“Why’s he doing that?”

“Richard has spread a rumour that there’s a prophecy saying his sons, the little princes, will be killed by someone whose name begins with the letter G.”

“But I thought my name was Clarence.”

“George, Duke of Clarence. Just like Richard is the Duke of Gloucester. They call him Gloucester until he becomes king.”

“Does everybody in this play have two names?”

“Pretty much.”

“Hey, the prophecy comes true,” Drago said, “because Gloucester kills the kids. Right?”

“Yes.”

“I get it.” Drago looked pleased that he’d been able to understand something.

Velvet tried to get Taleb back into the conversation. “The prophecy. Sounds like a good name for a song.”

“Maybe,” Taleb said and walked away.

Drago was still poring over the script.

“I could help you with your reading, if you like,” Velvet suggested.

“I don’t need any help.”

It was the first cold day for the year. Suddenly winter didn’t seem far away. T6 was freezing and rain dripped steadily from a hole in the ceiling into a misshapen bowl left behind by an embarrassed ceramics student. The girls were arguing about who should be Lady Anne.

“I’m the one with the drama experience,” Velvet said.

“Yeah, but you don’t know anything about modern music,” Hailie said.

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“I’m the one with royal blood,” Roula said. “I should be the one to play her.”

Velvet was searching YouTube for Lady Anne’s speech from the 1955 Laurence Olivier film.

The boys were sitting back, looking on with interest, safe in the knowledge of their own parts and relative importance – except for Drago who hadn’t arrived yet.

Mr MacDonald came in. He cleared his throat and smiled. Velvet was immediately suspicious. He hardly ever smiled.

“I’ve decided who will play Lady Anne.”

The girls stopped bickering and turned to him.

“What about auditions?”

“I’ve made an executive decision. Taleb’s working on a terrific song for Lady Anne, so it has to be someone with a really strong voice. Isn’t that right, Taleb?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But we haven’t heard the girls sing yet,” Peter said.

Mr MacDonald held up his hand. Not that that stopped them from all talking at once.

“Everybody, I’d like you to meet our Lady Anne.” Mr MacDonald beckoned to the open door and a Chinese girl walked in and bowed.

The cultural studies class stared at her. Velvet stood up to protest, but for once words failed her. She sat down again.

“Who the hell is she?” Drago had followed her in, his customary fifteen minutes late.

“Come on, guys, be nice. This is Mei Hua Qian. Wait till you hear her sing. She’s a trained Chinese opera singer.”

Mei Hua continued to stand to attention at the front of the class.

Velvet found her voice. “She can’t be Lady Anne. What about us?”

“There are plenty of other parts for the rest of you girls.”

“They’re all a bunch of old dragons,” Roula said.

“They’re all excellent parts.”

The girls glared at Mr MacDonald. The boys were unusually defensive on their behalf.

“That sucks, Mr Mac,” Peter said.

Drago walked over to the new girl and looked her up and down. Mei Hua’s smile didn’t falter. She was wearing the sort of pink floral dress that five-year-old girls love. Her hair was in short pigtails tied with bows. She wore neat turned-down white socks and a plush backpack in the shape of a panda. She looked like she belonged in primary school, except for her breasts, which were very well developed.

“If she’s such a good singer, let’s hear her,” Drago said.

“Would you like to sing, Mei Hua?” Mr MacDonald asked politely.

Mei Hua looked at him blankly, still smiling.

“Don’t tell me,” Velvet said. “She doesn’t speak English.”

Everybody groaned.

“She’s only been in the country for four weeks. She’s a very intelligent girl. I’m sure she’ll pick it up in no time.”

Mr MacDonald tried to mime singing, even sang a couple of bars himself, and Mei Hua finally got the idea. She took a deep breath and launched into a Chinese opera. The force of her voice nearly blew them out of their seats. It was strong, high-pitched and warbly, and of course they couldn’t understand a word of it. She stopped as abruptly as she’d begun. The cultural studies class sat with their mouths open.

“What was that?” Hailie asked.

Even Peter couldn’t disguise his horror. “Sounded like someone stepping on bagpipes.”

Drago was still standing at the front of the class, arms folded, looking unusually thoughtful.

“Let me get this straight. You want to give someone who can’t speak a word of English and who sings like a cocky on heat the main female part in our play?”

“Yes.”

Drago paced up and down, frowning. Velvet suspected he’d been studying acting techniques on late-night television. “Even though we have three girls who speak English?” Drago indicated the girls with a sweep of his hand.

“Yes.”

“Three girls who’ve been in this since the beginning?”

“Yes.”

Drago turned to Mr MacDonald dramatically. “Slinky threatened you, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Mr MacDonald.

“You’re pathetic … sir.”

“He made me,” Mr MacDonald whined. “Her parents don’t want her to play sport, they think running will ruin her voice. Slinky promised them she would get the leading role in the school musical. They’re going to donate heaps of money towards the electronic scoreboard.”

“I thought Chinese people were all poor rice farmers,” Jesus said.

“Her family owns a very successful electrical goods chain. They’re rich.”

Mei Hua bowed again. She must have heard a word she understood.

Drago was about to launch into another defence, but he stopped. “What’s that noise?”

They all listened. There was a faint sound like someone gargling.

“Hey, Corduroy. Hate to tell you this, but it’s your phone.”

Velvet put her hand in her pocket. Her phone wasn’t there. She looked around. Drago was pointing at the misshapen ceramic pot. “It’s in there.”

Velvet was on her hands and knees fishing her phone out of the water.

“No!” Velvet groaned. “Not my iPhone.”

She dried the phone on her uniform and tried to play some music, check her email, call someone. It wouldn’t respond. It wasn’t the latest model and she had the cheapest possible prepaid plan, but her phone was the one thing that she hadn’t had to sell. She wanted to cry.

The others were more concerned about the casting of the new girl.

“It’s not fair,” Roula said. “We didn’t even get a chance.”

Velvet stared at her phone’s blank screen and prodded the button.

“My whole life is on my phone.”

“Get over it, Velvet.”

She’d lost her contacts from St Theresa’s, photos of her old life. And her music – playlists she’d spent hours compiling. She was already angry because Mr MacDonald hadn’t given her the part of Lady Anne, but this was the last straw.

“We should go on strike!” she said. “If we walk out, the play can’t go on.”

“Yeah,” Hailie said. “Who’s going to play all the dragon women if we go on strike?”

“Come on, girls. Only one of you can play Lady Anne,” Mr MacDonald said. “Even if Mei Hua hadn’t arrived, there’d still be two of you playing the supporting roles.”

Velvet shook her phone to get the water out. “Well, we’re not going to! You guys will have to dress up for the women’s parts. You can be Drago’s mum, Jesus.”

“Get lost,” Jesus said.

“Don’t be stupid, Velvet,” Peter said.

“I’m serious. That’s what they did in Shakespeare’s day.”

“What?” Drago wasn’t following.

“Men played the female parts. Only men were actors.”

“Yeah?”

“Taleb, play Lady Anne’s song,” Mr MacDonald said, “so Mei Hua can hear it.”

“It’s not ready yet.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“I said it’s not ready, okay?”

“How about we rehearse some of act one then? Let’s have a look at the script you and Drago have been working on, Velvet.”

“I’m on strike as a writer as well as a performer,” Velvet said, cradling her phone in her hands.

It suddenly started to play “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” at full volume.

Taleb glared at her. “Turn off that horrible noise!”

The song kept repeating over and over again. There was nothing Velvet could do to stop it. Velvet sat on her phone.

When the bell went, the girls were still striking, Sarah Brightman was still singing and Mr MacDonald would not change his mind.

Velvet didn’t think the battery in her phone was ever going to go flat. At home, she tried putting it under her mattress, burying it in the dirty clothes basket, but there was nowhere in their little house where she could escape the faint strains of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”. Eventually, she put it out in the shed and was able to get to sleep.

Mr MacDonald was droning on about the brilliance of Shakespeare’s language, but no one was listening. Velvet was still trying to get her phone to work. Following advice on the internet, she had buried it in a bowl of rice grains to dry it out. She’d recharged it but the touch screen wouldn’t respond. It was still blank, but at least iTunes had stopped playing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”.

Hailie and Roula’s indignation hadn’t survived the week out. The boys had all lost interest in the play, but they had nowhere else to go. The only alternative on a Thursday afternoon was to join the sweating hordes out on the oval. Drago had reverted to sculpting. This time it was a disembowelled rat. Jesus was improving his hand-eye coordination by aiming beans from a ripped beanbag at the girls. Hailie was practising sexy looks on Peter, who was studiously ignoring her. Taleb played his Toxic Shock songs with headphones on. Mei Hua continued to smile and the other girls continued not speaking to her.

Velvet prodded the screen again, and it suddenly lit up. There was a screensaver of a basket of kittens that she’d never seen before. Her phone started calling someone.

“Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

It was her grandmother’s voice. On speaker phone. Velvet tried to hang up the call, but it wouldn’t let her.

“Hi, Granny.” The rest of the class turned to look at her. “Sorry. I dialled the wrong number. I’ll ring you tonight.”

Velvet was torn. The play had been the only thing making life at Yarrabank bearable, but she could never forgive Mr MacDonald for letting the main role go to Mei Hua, and she was determined not to take part in it.

She had to admit that she’d really wanted to play Lady Anne. If they’d auditioned, the part would have been hers, she was sure of that. It had been really stupid of her to imagine that she’d found something she could enjoy at Yarrabank. One of Jesus’s beans hit her on the back of the neck. Really stupid.

There was only one thing for it. She’d have to get out of the school. She made a decision. She would apply for entry into Endeavour High, a state school with selective entry for high-achieving girls. Her parents had said it was too far for her to travel every day, but she didn’t care.