“Well then, Ruby, I expect you to be the best,” Mr Petrelli said. He pressed play on his CD player and the opening bars to Danny’s number one song filled the hall.
“Two, three, four!” Mr Petrelli yelled, waving a baton at us like somehow it was going to make us sing better.
“Before I met you, I was on a dark and dusty shelf.
Oh and I hated myself
Cos I was all alone…“
The whole of Year 9 sang more or less in unison.
“I can’t believe I actually have to do this,” I complained to Dakshima over the singing, as Mr Petrelli walked long the row in front of us, tapping shoulders as he went. “I thought I had been humiliated about as much as possible for a girl of my age – but apparently not.”
“Oh, chill,” Dakshima said. “It’s only a bit of singing, Ruby, not the end of the world.”
It was clear if I was going to be friends with Dakshima then I was going to have to tone down the drama queen thing. But that was one of the things I liked best about her. She made me be me, and not some acted out version of the me I thought I should be to impress other people. Dakshima winked at me and just as Mr Petrelli started to walk down our row and I joined in with the singing. After all, I decided, I might as well get it over with as quickly as I could.
“And now, your love lifts me,
So high and so easily.
And I know I’ll love you
With all of my might,
Because you
Take me to –
Kensington Heights!“
As I sang I watched Mr Petrelli approaching, tapping shoulder after shoulder as he went. Only two other people from our row were still standing by the time he got to me and Dakshima, and Adele wasn’t one of them.
“This is a fix,” she said angrily as she marched off.
It seemed like Mr Petrelli stood there for ages, torturing me as he listened to me trying to sing my ex-boyfriend’s number one single, and it felt like he was never going to tap me on the shoulder. When he nodded and moved on to Dakshima I realised why.
I, me – Ruby who can’t really sing, had somehow made it into the choir without even trying. It was a nightmare!
I stared at Dakshima as he nodded at her too and moved on.
She grinned at me still, singing along to the tune, but inserting her own words now.
“This is going to be so cool,” she sang. “We’ll get totally loads of time off of school rehearsing for the competition.“
“I don’t want to be in the choir,” I sang back. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.“
“Don’t sweat it, Ruby,” Dakshima replied tunefully, making me realise that she actually did have a very nice voice. “There’s no way Highgate Comp will ever get past the first round!“
As she finished on the last note of the song with a flourish, I looked around at the few people from our year group that remained. I couldn’t believe I was one of them.
“Right, children,” Mr Petrelli said, pushing the stop button on his CD player. “Thank you for joining the choir. Rehearsals are every lunchtime and after school starting tomorrow. You can bring a sandwich with you, OK? Now get to class.”
“Oh what?” Dakshima groaned. “What about all the time off, sir?
“This isn’t a game to get you out of your school work, Dakshima,” Mr Petrelli told her seriously. “This school is desperate for a new music and drama lab, and winning that prize money is the only way we can ever afford it.”
“Excuse me, sir,” I said stopping in front of him. “Thank you for picking me to be in the choir, but I don’t think you could have really heard my voice. I’m not a singer, sir.”
Mr Petrelli looked at me with round black eyes that made me feel a little bit like running away. “If I didn’t tap you on the shoulder, then you are a singer,” he said. “I am never wrong.”
“But at the Academy,” I pressed on. “That’s Sylvia Lighthouse’s Academy for the Performing Arts, I didn’t do any singing. I did acting, that was all, and I wasn’t even very good at that as it happens.”
“Look, Ruby,” Mr Petrelli sounded impatient. “Perhaps your last school was filled with budding tenors and sopranos, although not if that dreadful single your friend produced is anything to go by. But in this school your voice is in the top ten per cent. Yes, it needs some work, your tuning is off and you sing like a mouse – but you are the best of a bad lot and you are in the choir.”
“The thing is,” I tried to explain, “I’ve given up show business, so thanks for the offer but…”
“Ruby,” Mr Petrelli said firmly, “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. At this school a lot of kids would do anything to have a tenth of what you’ve just thrown away. And as preposterous as it seems right now, this choir is the nearest thing we’ve got to making that happen. As long as you can carry a tune, you are in it. Understood?”
“Understood, sir,” I said, in a small voice. For a music teacher Mr Petrelli could be quite scary, although no where near Sylvia Lighthouse levels.
“Good. Get along to class then,” Mr Petrelli told me. “You’ll be late for biology.”
Adele was waiting for me when I came out of the hall. The corridors were empty except for her. She was standing there, her arms crossed, her brow pulled together in the middle.
“Hi,” I said hesitantly.
“You got picked for the choir,” she said accusingly.
“Yes…”
“I didn’t get picked,” she growled. I bit my lip. At the very least, Adele and I were now going to be several minutes late for biology and I would be getting detained after school. On the bright side, I wouldn’t be able to do detention because Adele would have broken my legs for getting in the school choir I didn’t want to be in and I would be in A&E.
Funny, I thought to myself, life as a normal kid isn’t nearly as uncomplicated as I hoped.
“I wanted to be in the choir.” Adele took two or three menacing steps towards me. I found myself thinking about the letters girls used to write to me when I was in Kensington Heights, telling me about being bullied at school and how awful it was and how every single night they went to bed feeling sick with dread and would find whatever reason they could not to go to school. But although Adele had threatened to get me on my very first day, I hadn’t been nearly as scared of her as I was of Adrienne Charles at Beaumont High in Hollywood. Until now, that is.
“Look,” I said, holding up my hands, “I don’t want to be in the choir, Adele. I’ll get out of it…I’ll fake a sore throat or something – I’m quite good at acting, so I think I can pull it off. Then maybe you’ll get my place.”
“I won’t,” Adele said, her face get redder and redder. “I never get anything. Always last to be picked in netball, I never have a lab partner in biology and now this. I…I’m…gonna…”
I squeezed my bag tightly to my chest and closed my eyes, certain that I was about to find out exactly how much it hurt to be punched.
After a second or two minus any pain, I realised that instead of hitting me, Adele