Phoebe Finds Her Voice Read online

  She pulled a face as if it was the most awful thing in the world but I knew she was putting it on. She was crazy about Adam.

  “There will be no pulling faces in my factory!” Adam called over, grinning at Sam. “No pulling faces, no laughing, no smiling, no talking, no burping and definitely no breathing.”

  As he was talking, Monty B crept up behind him and burped right into his ear and then for some reason he turned round and burped into mine.

  “Urrghh! That is so disgusting,” Polly Carter shrieked. She leaned over and whispered something to some of the other girls, probably something about how stupid my hair looked, and they cracked up.

  “Don’t worry, Frankie,” Monty B called over his shoulder. “I promise I won’t burp when we do our kissing scene.”

  I looked at him, horrified. I could feel my face start to burn up. Why was he always doing that? Calling me Frankie and talking to me in front of the others as if we were best friends or something?

  “Oh my God, I’m not kidding you, yeah, but I so pity anyone who’s got a kissing scene with you, Monty B,” said Neesha, and Polly and her cronies practically fell off the stage laughing.

  We spent the rest of the session reading through the script and learning one of the main songs in the show, Scream! Arthur never turned up at all, Tara Perkins had to go home early because the dust had made her wheezy, and it was actually a huge relief at one o’clock to get out into the fresh air.

  “Why don’t you come over to mine, Phoebs?” said Ellie, rolling up her script and using it as a telescope to try and spot her mum. “Sam’s coming and my mum said you can both stay for tea.”

  “Okay. I’ll just ask my dad, hang on a sec.”

  Dad seemed a bit upset. He mumbled something about how he never gets to see me any more, and how he had something important to ask me, but that if I really wanted to go it was okay, he’d tell me later. I could’ve pointed out that he never seems all that bothered about seeing me when he’s got something important on at the centre, like renaming himself for instance, but I just jumped into the car with Ellie and Sam before he could change his mind.

  “I know what we could do when we get back to yours, Ellie,” said Sam. “Let’s start making up a dance to Don’t Let the Bed-Bugs Bite and then show it to Mandy next week.”

  “Oh yeah, I love that one,” said Ellie, peeling a banana and then stuffing a huge piece into her mouth. “It’s like my favourite song in the whole show.”

  Sam screwed up her face. “Oh gross, Ellie! I can see your banana all mushed up in your mouth, it’s disgusting! And we didn’t understand a word you said, did we, Phoebs? It sounded like, ‘Itshnnnnn iknnnn mhhhhhy…’”

  “Shut up! No, it didn’t!”

  We all started to laugh and for the first time in ages I began to feel happy.

  Back at Ellie’s we moved everything round so that there was space to dance. Her room is tiny and it’s always a complete tip, but if the bed is pushed right up against the wall and the chest-of-drawers goes sideways, we can make quite a good area in the middle.

  “Right, Phoebe, you stand here because you’re the shortest,” said Sam, placing me in between her and Ellie. “Ellie, you sing, It’s the middle of the night, keep your eyes closed tight, I’ll sing, You try to fall asleep with all of your might, and Phoebs, you sing, But don’t let the bed-bugs bite. Then we’ll all sing, I said, don’t let the bed-bugs bite.”

  We put on the music and tried it out a few times and it worked really well so we started to make up a dance to go with it. I knew Sam was being bossy but for once I didn’t care. It was so nice to be singing and dancing and mucking about and not thinking about all the stuff that was getting me down that I couldn’t believe it when Ellie’s mum came in with sandwiches and drinks and said it was four-thirty.

  I grabbed a carton of juice and collapsed on the bed. “What do you think about the parts then?”

  “Mine’s brilliant,” said Sam. “Ice Bomb is easily the best part in the show and I get to do loads of scenes with Adam.”

  “You know, I still don’t really get the whole story,” said Ellie, doing a backbend in the middle of the room.

  “What do you mean, you still don’t get the whole story?” cried Sam, sitting on top of her and squashing her down to the floor.

  “Ooof! Get off, you great lump, I can’t breathe!”

  “Just listen a minute, Ellie; it’s important! Baron-Von-Bolt and Ice Bomb run the Dream Factory, and they’ve got loads of money, right? But they’re horribly mean and greedy and they treat their workers really badly. So anyway, Gobstopper decides he’s going to get rid of Baron-Von-Bolt and Ice Bomb and run the factory himself, only he’s really evil as well. But then Lolly – that’s Phoebe – finds out what he’s planning and saves the day.”

  “Oh, so that means you end up the hero of the show, Phoebe,” said Ellie, from somewhere underneath Sam.

  “Yeah,” said Sam. “Like, from zero to hero!”

  “What about Polly?” I said, ignoring Sam. “She’ll be great as Gobstopper, won’t she? She’s exactly like him already.”

  I was dying to tell Ellie about Polly, but not while Sam was there.

  “Perfect casting!” said Sam. “I heard her say something really mean about you, today, Phoebe. Something about how quiet you were reading out your lines and that if you were that quiet sitting in a circle, who’d ever hear you in a theatre with an audience?”

  Ellie sat up, looking cross. “Well, I could hear all your lines, Phoebs, and I was sitting a long way away. Hey, have I shown you my new top? I got it as a sort of early Christmas present from my auntie.”

  She jumped up and rummaged around in a pile of clothes that looked as if they’d been there for years and from somewhere near the bottom she pulled out a gorgeous pink top with purple sleeves and collar.

  Sam grabbed it and pulled it on over her T-shirt. “Where did she get this? I love it!”

  “Careful, Sam, don’t stretch it! And look, I got matching nail varnish.”

  “D’ya know what, Phoebe?” said Sam, as she pulled the top back over her head and dropped it on the pile of clothes. “I swear someone at drama fancies you, but you’ll never guess who it is, not in a billion years.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said, blushing. “No one fancies me.”

  “No, I’m dead serious,” she said. “It must be your new hairstyle – the sleeked-back look. I noticed him staring at you today, like all the time. Okay, I’ll give you a clue. His name begins with M and he’s quite fit, in a weird sort of way, but don’t worry it’s not The Mad McDermott. Come on, take a guess.”

  “It’s not Monty B, is it?” said Ellie.

  “Shut up,” I said, trying to run my hands through my hair. It wouldn’t surprise me if Monty B was staring at me. He was probably wondering why I had a massive lump of cement instead of a head.

  “I can’t bear Monty B,” I said. “He’s such an idiot. He burped right in my ear at break time.”

  “But that’s because he loves you!” shrieked Sam. And they both collapsed back on the bed, clutching hold of each other in hysterics.

  As soon as I got home I locked myself in the bathroom and washed all the gel and tissue out of my hair. If I was going to transform myself it was pretty clear I was going to have to do it without Donny’s help. He might be able to work his magic with a flashy smile and a load of hair gel, but it obviously wasn’t going to work for me.

  “So come on then, who are you?” Mum said, the next morning at breakfast. “I meant to ask you yesterday when you got back from Ellie’s.”

  “I’m just Lolly – one of the Sweet-Dreamers. I told you I would be. Ellie’s a Sweet-Dreamer as well, she’s Fizz-Wiz, but Sam got one of the biggest parts, she’s Ice Bomb.”

  “What exactly is a Sweet-Dreamer?”

  “Oh, they make everyone’s sweet dreams,” said Sara, butting in. “But then there are the Jelly-Skulls, yeah? They turn the sweet dreams into—”

  I
put my hand over her mouth. Whose show was it, for goodness’ sake? “Anyway I’ve got to sing a solo, which is like the biggest joke, so I don’t even know if I’m going to carry on.”

  “Talking about big jokes,” mumbled Sara, sinking her teeth into my hand. “The biggest joke is you putting gel on your hair to impress your boyfriend. And don’t deny it because you know it’s true.”

  She was going to have to go, my little sister – and quick!

  I spent most of the day up in my room trying to learn my lines, but it was really difficult to concentrate. Every time I thought about singing my solo, my palms got sweaty, and the words on the script started to swim about in front of my eyes. It’s like part of me was thinking I would be able to do it and everything would be fine, but part of me was convinced I’d collapse in a heap or die if I even tried to sing in front of the others.

  If only I was more like my character, Lolly, I’d have the guts to sing my solo and stand up to Polly Carter. Lolly’s easily the bravest Sweet-Dreamer in the whole show. Even though she’s dead scared of Gobstopper, she finds out what he’s up to, reports him to the dream-police and helps Sabine escape from the factory. Just imagine if there really was such a thing as the dream-police, it would be brilliant. I’d be able to phone them up, report Polly for bullying, and get rid of her for good.

  On Wednesday when I came out of school, Dad was there to meet me. He was wearing a white T-shirt with Life written across the front, the oldest, scruffiest pair of jeans I’ve ever seen and his awful brown sandals. He looked as if he’d just come back from a music festival or something. I tried to get him away as fast as I could before anyone else came out and saw him.

  “I’m pleased I caught you, Phoebe,” he said. “I missed you on Saturday and there was something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I turned round to make sure no one was coming up behind us, but the coast was clear.

  “How was school?” he asked, as we started to walk home.

  “Okay, I guess. What did you want to talk about?” I wondered if it was something to do with Mum, or if he’d finally managed to get a new job.

  “Well you know how Miss Howell has been asking parents to come in and talk about their professions or hobbies to the class, erm…if they’re unusual or a bit different? Well…I’ve been thinking it might…”

  I stopped dead and looked at him in horror. “Oh no, Dad, please don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”

  “It’s just I thought it might be nice if I came in to your class and gave a talk about the Life centre and the sorts of things we do there.”

  “But Dad!” I grabbed his arm. “You can’t. I’ll die! Don’t you care about me at all? You can’t come in to my class and talk about spiritual journeys and stuff like that. I mean you only joined the stupid group so that you wouldn’t have to spend any time with me on Saturdays.”

  Dad swung me round to face him. He looked really upset, but I didn’t care. “Come on, Phoebe, you know that’s not true. You mean everything to me, you and Sara.”

  “But Dad!”

  My hands were trembling. I wanted to grab hold of him and shake him hard till he realized what a nightmare this was.

  The whole Life thing started when we went on holiday to Cornwall, a few months after Dad lost his job. We were down at the beach on the first day and Dad got talking to this man called Spirit who was out walking his dog. Spirit was a member of Life and he told my dad that if he learned how to look inwards or something then he’d be able to transform his life. They ended up in the pub, sitting there for hours talking and drinking coffee, their heads bent close together. I remember Mum kept trying to get Dad to come back down to the beach and spend some time with us, but he didn’t want to.

  On the last day of the holiday I found this incredible shell. It was really smooth and it had a sort of shiny, rainbow-coloured fossil embedded in it. Before I went to bed that night I left the shell on my dad’s pillow but I don’t think he even noticed it. When I went into their room the next morning it was shoved under the bed and he never said thank you or mentioned it or anything. It was as if he could only see Spirit and the rest of us had become invisible.

  As soon as we got back from the holiday Dad joined a Life centre near us and bit by bit he started to change. He began to wear different clothes for a start – tie-dyed T-shirts and those horrid, brown sandals, and then a few months after that he became a vegetarian. He even tried to get rid of the TV because according to him it was “quenching our creativity”.

  Then one morning he came into the kitchen while Mum was making us breakfast and said, “Maxine, my love, I can see your aura and it’s very dull. Please, Max, you need to let go of your negativity. Just take a deep breath and watch it float away.”

  Mum, who was holding an empty saucepan at the time, took a really deep breath, bashed the saucepan on his head really hard and stormed out of the room.

  A few days later, well nineteen to be precise, they broke up. He moved into his flat on the other side of town and that was the end of that. I’ve still got the shell though, from the holiday. I sleep with it under my pillow every night.

  I looked at Dad now. He was staring down at the pavement and I could see this little talk wasn’t going the way he thought it would.

  “What are you going to say anyway?” I muttered. “‘Hi, everyone. My name is Eagle Dust and I’m on a journey?’ I’m not going in that day; I swear I’m not. And you can’t make me.”

  “Come on, Phoebe, it’s not that bad is it? It might be quite interesting. I could talk to your class about meditating and about how everyone is surrounded by their own special aura.” He started to get excited; his voice growing louder by the second. “I could even talk to them about past-life experiences and hands-on healing.”

  Hands-on what? Sometimes I wondered if aliens didn’t come down to Earth one day and beam my pretty ordinary sort of a dad up into their spaceship to reprogram his brain. Maybe he was just part of some weird outer-space experiment.

  Suddenly I heard sniggering from behind us. I whipped round and there was Polly Carter with her stupid friends gazing at Dad as if he did come from a different planet and I could feel myself start to burn up. I pulled Dad away from them and we walked home in silence. What would I say anyway? Thanks for humiliating me in front of my arch-enemy – good one, Dad. I was so angry I could feel my hands itching to punch him.

  “You know, you shouldn’t care what everyone else thinks, Phoebs,” he said suddenly, as if he could see right inside my head.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” I whispered, clenching and unclenching my fists. “And anyway, why did you join your stupid group in the first place?”

  Dad didn’t say anything for ages. I wasn’t even sure he’d heard me or that I’d actually said it out loud. But then halfway down our road, he stopped walking and turned me to face him again, bending down so that our faces were practically touching. I squirmed away, embarrassed. I didn’t know what he was going to say but whatever it was I didn’t want to hear it. My stomach was in knots and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

  He pulled me back towards him and I could feel his hands digging into my arms.

  “I had to join the group, Phoebs,” he said. “I had to join because the centre was the only place where I didn’t feel I was going mad; the only place where I could make sense of things. The Life group literally saved my life.”

  I didn’t know what he was on about. When I was younger he used to say we were his life, me and Sara; that he couldn’t live without us – but as soon as he started going to the centre it was like we didn’t even matter any more.

  “Look, Phoebe, I know it’s difficult for you to understand at your age but when I lost my job at the nursery it was like something inside me died. That job was part of me. It was who I was. When they took it away I didn’t know what I was going to do. Your mum didn’t understand – she thought I could just go out and get another job in a factory or a shop, but it wasn’t as
simple as that; my work at the nursery was special. When I turned up for interviews, dressed in a suit, trying to be something I wasn’t, I didn’t feel right. I felt like a fish out of water. Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded. I did know what he meant. It was just how I’d felt ever since I started at Woodville. Like a fish out of water. I wanted to go back to my old pond at Merryhill Primary more than anything.

  “Do you think you’ll ever come home?” I said, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes.

  He stared at me for the longest time. He looked so sad and I knew what he was going to say.

  “Do you?” I whispered.

  He shook his head.

  I yanked my arms away from him and tore down the road, straight past Mrs. Bolton who gave me one of her stupid interfering looks. I banged on the front door over and over until my hands hurt and when Mum let me in I pushed past her and ran upstairs to my room.

  I felt awful the next morning; about Dad and about Polly Carter and her manky mates overhearing him outside school. Dad actually called to say he wouldn’t come in and talk to my class after all – not if it was going to upset me, and even though I was relieved I couldn’t help feeling bad, like I should’ve had the guts to stand up to Polly Carter – and not feel so ashamed of my own dad.

  The week dragged by. I learned my lines and practised my solo and tried my best to stay out of Polly’s way. Eating breakfast the following Saturday, I thought about all the things I could’ve said when I saw them standing there like that, sniggering and pointing. I bet Neesha would’ve thought of something in a second if someone was laughing at her dad. She’s always got something quick and funny to say – but my brain just doesn’t seem to work that fast. Maybe I could get her to give me some special, Put Down Polly Carter lessons or something?

  “What on earth are you thinking about, Phoebe?” said Mum. “You’ve been staring at that bacon roll for ages with a very strange expression on your face. Hurry up and finish, will you, I want you by the front door and ready to go to drama when your dad gets here. Oh, and Gran’s coming over later so tell him he needs to bring you straight home.”