 
If It Wasn't For Sarah

By Lynne Roberts

Published by Liberty Publications at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts

ISBN 978-1-927241-13-4

Smashwords Edition, License Notes  
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11
Chapter 1.

It is all Sarah's fault. If it wasn't for Sarah, no-one would even know who I am. Instead I am the laughing stock of the whole school. She has totally wrecked my life. It just goes to show that you never really know what a person is like until it is too late.

It all started when we went back to school after the holidays. I was in the kitchen trying to make my lunch for the next day before my two little brothers ate all the food in sight.

'It's not fair. I don't see why we have to go back to school at all. I mean, two weeks holiday is hardly anything,' I complained.

'You're lucky to have holidays at all,' my father said unsympathetically. 'You should be grateful, Chelsea, that you are getting an education. Plenty of children in other counties would be glad to have the opportunity.'

'Education is right,' I said bitterly. 'I had to spend nearly the whole time working on school projects. There was no time to do anything else.'

'That's a bit of an exaggeration, dear,' Mum said calmly. 'You certainly seemed to have plenty of time to go out with Sarah whenever she called.'

'Well, I had to get some fresh air,' I argued.

'You could have got fresh air helping me feed the calves,' Malcolm pointed out.

I glared at him. 'The weather sucked, anyway,' I muttered.

'We know. You told us. Constantly,' Dad pointed out. Mum agreed with him.

'I'm actually relieved that school is going back so I won't have to listen to Chelsea complain all the time. Why can't you be happy like Malcolm and Billy? They're pleased to be going back to school.'

'I want to see my teacher again,' nodded Billy. 'She is my friend.'

'I probably enjoyed school as well when I was little,' I snarled. 'But we are bound to get lots of work shoved at us and it will totally ruin Christmas.'

'Christmas is not for a couple of months yet,' Mum said briskly. 'Now go and tidy your room.'

I stormed out of the kitchen and slammed my bedroom door. Hard.

'I wish I lived in another family,' I cried despairingly.

It's a pity you can't trade in your family, a bit like getting a new car. You could go along and say,

'Okay. I want a mother who understands the importance of fashion, and a father who earns untold amounts of money.'

Mind you, my lot probably wouldn't be worth much as trade-ins.

I certainly wouldn't choose brothers at all. A nice looking older one might be acceptable, especially if he had lots of hunky good looking friends who hung around, but Janice from our class has an older brother like that and she says he is horrible to her. I certainly wouldn't choose two younger brothers and I complained to my parents that they'd planned their family very badly. A sister would have been good fun to swap clothes with and talk about the important things in life. But small brothers, no way. They are so embarrassing. They call out 'Hi, Chelsea,' when they see me on the bus after school, even though I've told them I never want to be seen with them in public.

I went to school the next day expecting the same boring old things, but with a secret hope that something exciting would happen. I met up with my best friend Sarah and we went to English class together. That was hardly unusual as Sarah and I did practically everything together.

You probably know someone like Sarah. Long blonde hair and big blue eyes. Slim with long tanned legs that never have skinned knees or sandfly bites like normal people. Perfect skin when the rest of us are breaking out in spots all over the place. And straight white teeth that will never need braces.

Sarah's the one who is always picked first for all the team games and the one the teacher chooses as the student responsible enough to take time off class to carry messages around the school while the rest of us are struggling with Maths. Sarah never has to struggle at anything. The good things in life seem to come to her effortlessly. The worst of it is you can't even hate her for it because she's so nice. She's been my best friend since Year One when we sat together in Mrs Allenby's room. She would hang her smart, neat jacket on the hook next to my crumpled coat and beam at me.

'Hello Chelsea,' she'd say. 'Let's go and play on the climbing frame – or the sandpit – or the slide tower.'

I'd smirk back and go with her like some sort of handmaiden. I don't think we ever played with anything that I suggested. It was always Sarah who made the decisions. Unfortunately for me, she still does and I still go along with them.

So I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at what happened. Ms Cutter, our English teacher, spent the first part of the lesson going over our holiday homework.

'Have you done yours?' I whispered to Sarah.

'Yes,' she nodded. Of course she had. Why did I expect anything else?

Ms Cutter glared at me. 'No talking, thank you Chelsea. Perhaps you'd like to start by reading aloud your essay?'

Ms Cutter is such an old bag. I used to think she was really nice. That was until the first English lesson. That was when she showed her true colours.

She set us homework nearly every single night, which was so unreasonable of her. I mean, how does she expect any of us to have a social life? She gave us detentions if we hadn't done our homework and we had to study these really boring books. You know, where boring old men look back on their boring lives and talk about what life could have been like if they had done something else mind-bogglingly dreary. Or books about war where you wished the author had at least had the decency to get himself shot in the thick of combat instead of coming home and writing fifty thousand pages about it. Ms Cutter not only expected us to read this drivel but also made us answer comprehension questions about it. Our holiday project was _– What is your view on Captain Trimmer's Wartime experiences._

'I found it totally boring,' I said. The rest of the class sniggered.

'Is that the extent of your opinion, Chelsea?' asked Ms Cutter sweetly. 'Or have you written more insightful comments with which to entertain us?'

'No, that's about it,' I said defiantly.

Ms Cutter proceeded to go out of her tree. She ranted about how unsatisfactory it was and gave me a detention on the spot.

'It's so unfair,' I whispered indignantly to Sarah while Ms Cutter was interrogating another victim. 'I mean, they ask you to be honest and then go berserk when you are.'

'Never mind. I'll let you read mine at lunchtime. You can copy some of it if you like,' Sarah offered generously.

'What did you say?'

'I said it had changed the whole course of my life.'

I was flabbergasted. 'What? That's not even honest at all.'

'Yes it is, said Sarah smugly. 'Because I had to stay home and write the assignment I couldn't go to the movies with my cousin Eddie. So that counts as changing the course of my life. I had to go the next night instead.'

'Mum's going to go spare about me being in detention, and on the first day of term, too,' I said gloomily.' She's going to go on about me doing my homework for weeks now.'

'I'll wait for you and we can go home on the late bus together,' Sarah said kindly. She's really nice like that.

'Thanks,' I muttered awkwardly.

'No problem, it will give me a chance to do my homework, anyway.'

Then Ms Cutter told us all to hand in our essays and said she had something exciting to talk to us about. We all promptly yawned and looked bored.

'Now class, as you know we have a parent's evening at the end of the year and every class is expected to put on an item. So I want you to have a think about what you would like to do. Are there any ideas?'

We all sat looking at her blankly. We've done Christmas productions every year since we were babies. We used to dress up as lambs and sing Christmas carols and everyone went, 'aren't they sweet,' even though some of us had runny noses and probably head lice as well. And someone always got sick with the excitement or cried when their tail fell off. One year our class held up paintings we had done of the beach while a couple of the ballet girls put on a dance in front of us. That was quite fun, especially when Ty put his foot out and tripped Phoebe up as she was going past. He got into big trouble for that but he reckoned it was worth it.

'We could do nothing,' suggested Aaron.

Ms Cutter looked shocked. 'No, no, we have to put on an item,' she insisted. 'If you can't think of anything for yourselves then I will have to decide on something for you.'

That got us going.

'We could do lip synching to heavy metal music,' Mike suggested.

'Hey, cool idea. Let's do that, agreed Jody. 'We could make it a punk rock thing and dye our hair and stick on fake tattoos and everything.'

Ms Cutter looked alarmed.

'I think that may be a bit radical,' she suggested hurriedly. 'Try to come up with something a little more conventional,' she went on, ignoring the rolled eyes and gagging noises. 'There are only nine weeks in the term and we still have a lot of work to get through.'

We groaned at the thought of more work, but then Sarah had to go and have her bright idea. She looked up at Ms Cutter and said,

'I think it would be a wonderful idea if we put on a class mini drama production.'

Wonderful idea! Pass me the paper bag! It would be wonderful for Sarah, no doubt. Sarah was always the one chosen for the best parts whenever we did plays at school. Because of her long blonde hair she was always the princess who waited asleep until a prince rescued her. Or else she was a fairy dressed in those amazing costumes her mother made, with floaty skirts and glittery wings and even eyeshadow on. I was always a peasant or a woodcutter or a tree that the fairies danced around.

I think that a drama production is a wonderful idea,' enthused Ms Cutter, smiling at Sarah. The rest of us groaned and started making vomiting noises. 'It's terrific to do something that will incorporate the new Arts Curriculum.'

Sarah smiled back. 'That's great. Can we choose our own topic?'

I tried frantically to get her attention, by kicking her ankle under the desk.

'Not Shakespeare,' I mouthed at her. 'Anything but Shakespeare.'

Ms Cutter is mad about Shakespeare and insists on shoving it down our unwilling throats.

We'd been studying Hamlet all last term and I'll bet Sarah could see herself as Ophelia – all pale and interesting and drifting in a boat with lilies. The main trouble with Shakespeare is that all the exciting action takes place off the stage. Ms Cutter explained it by saying that when it was first written and performed, they didn't have curtains and proper stage sets and scenery and stuff. You couldn't have a body on the stage as it would have to stay there for the whole play and the rest of the actors would have to walk over it all the time. So it's offstage, then thump! Aah! Another body has hit the dust. Must have been a bit of a worry for the audience. I mean, this character exits. Is he for the chop or will he come on again?

Fortunately Ms Cutter had no ambitions to put on one of Shakespeare's plays; they leave that to the senior classes. Instead she announced,

'I think it would be a wonderful idea if you students wrote the production yourselves. '

There was an appalled silence as we all sat there gazing at her with our mouths open. All except Sarah. She asked, 'Would you like us to base it on one of the books we've read this year, such as Hamlet?'

The boys all look stunned at this. That's because most of them didn't even read the books. They used the comic version of Hamlet and Mike Savage handed round his older sister's notes on the other books. She did it two years ago and Mike made quite a bit of money selling the answers. I don't have a sister and my brothers are both younger, and haven't even got the decency to be as good at things as I am, so they're no help at all.

We all starting talking at once. Most people were objecting that they didn't want to do a drama production and someone, I think it was Gemma, said, 'Why do we always have to do what Sarah suggests?' Some of the other girls started agreeing with her until Ms Cutter held up her hand for silence and the muttering slowly subsided.

'I'll divide you into groups and you can discuss ideas.'

How mean is that. She didn't even trust us to choose our own groups. What a cow!
Chapter 2.

Everyone wanted to be in a group with Sarah, so they could thump her, but Janice and Brian and Mike and me were chosen. Ms Cutter is very strong on equality of the sexes. The boys reckon she does kickboxing and wins tournaments and everything.

So there we were having a discussion. Sarah's still hanging out for Shakespeare.

'If you don't want to do Hamlet then we could do something based on A Midsummer-night's Dream,' she suggested.

Yeah, right. There are fairies in that and guess who'd be the fairy queen? I'd get to wear the donkey head, if I was lucky, otherwise I'd be a good old tree again.

'Let's do a ghost play,' was Mike's suggestion.

'Hey, yeah man. Like with slime and vomit and stuff. Cool.'

Mike and Brian started talking about some absolutely cretinous movie they had been to which had apparently been full of projectile vomiting and disemboweling.

'I quite like the sound of A Midsummer-night's Dream,' Janice tentatively backed Sarah. She cherished dreams of being a fairy, even though her hair wasn't long enough or blonde enough. She'd obviously end up joining me in the shrubbery.

'I have an even better idea. I definitely think we should make it a Dance/Drama production,' said Sarah firmly.

My goodness. Was she trying to earn Brownie points, or what? Dancing was also part of this new Arts Curriculum thing. Someone in the government had evidently decided that New Zealanders were growing up as a lot of uncultured thickos and we were all going to be taught to dance whether we liked it or not.

I used to like folk dancing. You knew where you were with it. Every year the baby class would do 'The Wee Wee Woman and the Wee Wee Man' while the older classes struggled through 'Clap Dance' and 'Skip Annika' with a few square dances thrown in. By the time we reached Year Eight, most of us could 'do-si-do' and 'Toast King Gustav' with the best of them, even though the boys threw sickies on folk dancing days if they could get away with it.

There were always a few girls who went to 'proper' dancing lessons, like ballet and tap-dancing. They would go off to concerts and competitions and wear amazing costumes with real, actual makeup on. Sometimes us humble mortals were allowed to spend a day with them;

'There's no ballet practise this weekend so you can come to my place if you like.'

There we would admire the frothy tutus that we would have sold our souls for. We begged to try them on and watched open mouthed as these visions of loveliness demonstrated a few steps for us. It was a very closed shop. The 'ballet girls' were a group unto themselves. They spent their playtimes and lunchtimes huddled in a small group discussing Pointe shoes, plies and whispering about their ballet teacher who they all adored. At parent's evenings there were always a few of them to dazzle us with their virtuosity to classical or jazz music, and to fill our hearts with envy.

Sarah had been to ballet but had not persevered with it. I never dared to ask her if it was because she wasn't any good at it or because they expected her to actually sweat. However she had the gear – legwarmers and ballet slippers tossed negligently over a chair by her bed and a selection of leotards in her chest of drawers. Pictures of ballet scenes showered the walls of her room, and in pride of place in the hallway was a photograph of Sarah in a white tutu performing an arabesque.

But ballet was far removed from the new Dance syllabus we studied at school. We were expected to 'express' our emotions through movement, although some of the boys got into a bit of trouble over this. We did actually learn some yoga, which was pretty amazing as we thought the teachers would have been far too pre-historic to try that. I quite liked the Latin American dancing but that was obviously deemed to be encouraging S.E.X. so we only did one lesson on that.

I said, 'I can't see that yoga or the Rumba would fit into a Dance/Drama,' but that didn't bother Sarah.

'How about if we do excerpts from Shakespeare moving from his time through to the present day and link it all together with dance?' she said.

Brian and Mike sat looking at her in horror; too astounded to protest.

'Cool! Bags I be a dancer,' Janice said enthusiastically.

She obviously didn't want a speaking part, as that meant learning lines. None of us was keen on memorizing stuff after we suffered Mr Walker for English last year. He made us memorize, and recite to the class, screeds of stuff. We reckoned we learned every poem that had ever been written. Okay, so some of them were not too bad. I quite liked the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner where the dude starts by eating the cabin boy and works his way through the rest of the crew. Actually, most of us enjoyed that one and it's bound to be handy to drop in as quotes in English essays in the future to impress teachers.

The worst were those awful things that people wrote that didn't rhyme, and had long uneven lines, and quite frankly, most of us thought they were rubbish. Except Mr Walker. Mr Walker loved poetry. We cheered when we found we didn't get him for English this year. That was before we found out what a cow Ms Cutter could be. Now we'd give anything to have him back.

'We will need to have one central character to tie the whole thing together,' continued Sarah. No prizes for guessing who this central character would be. Who else, but the perfect Sarah? We were going to argue but Ms Cutter called us all to order.

'Time's up,' she said. Now I'd like each group to tell me in turn what they have come up with. Hamish, what has your group decided?'

'We'd like to do something with ghosts,' said Hamish. This got a cheer from all the boys. Ms Cutter frowned.

'We want witches,' Ruby called out.

'You won't need any make-up for that,' put in Ty. Ruby scowled at him and Ms Cutter said, 'That's enough. Settle down, children.'

'We want something with fighting or war,' Ty said firmly, although judging by the black looks from the girls in his group, they hadn't agreed to any such thing. Ms Cutter looked unimpressed and turned to Gemma.

'I think, I mean, we think it should be a puppet show,' Gemma said confidently. She went on to explain that she and her other ballet friends would dance as puppets. In fact, I think it was actually a real ballet of some sort, but derisive laughter greeted their attempts to explain it. Ms Cutter got narky and shut everyone up and asked, 'Sarah what has your group decided?'

Her group! I ask you? Groups are groups and I didn't notice anyone calling for nominations for group leader here. Not that anyone would have opposed Sarah. She would have been elected leader anyway, but still!

Sarah said diplomatically, 'I think we can use all these ideas, Ms Cutter. Except the puppet show.'

Sarah doesn't like the ballet girls much either. Sarah went on to tell the class about the idea of a Shakespeare Dance/Drama with music and costumes ranging from old-fashioned to contemporary blah, blah. Even I had to admit she made it sound pretty impressive. We could see that Ms Cutter was impressed. She made 'oh, yes,' and 'you are so right,' noises and got more and more excited about it. Finally she announced,

'We will go with Sarah's idea. Who would you want to help organize it?' Sarah smiled and said,

'Chelsea can write it and I think Brian would be a great stage manager.'

I felt like I'd been kicked by one of our calves. All I could do was gasp like some sort of dying goldfish. I could see Brian looking as shocked as I was and we were both too amazed to do more than stammer some sort of acceptance.

'Fine,' said Ms Cutter. 'Let me have an outline by the end of the week please, Chelsea. That will leave seven weeks for rehearsals. I will arrange with Mr Murdoch for you to use the media suite to rehearse in at lunchtimes.'

You'll notice she said 'rehearse at lunchtimes.' Not, 'what time would be convenient?' or 'you can rehearse in class time.' The cow. And 'an outline by the end of the week!' I spent the last few minutes of the lesson, when we were supposed to be copying the homework off the board, thinking of all the ways I could kill Sarah. It had to be painful. Perhaps tying her down and rubbing her with cheese and letting rats nibble her. Or poisoning her with something slow and agonizing. Dangling her from a tall building before letting her go sounded pretty good too. Unfortunately, due to the lack of rats, poison and tall buildings, unless you count the Balcony Café downtown, Sarah looked unlikely to meet with a fatal accident. Pity.

'What did you do that for? Why did you suggest me?' I screamed at her when we went off to wait for the school bus. It was going to be a long wait as we had missed the usual bus because of my detention. It could have been worse. At least I had Sarah for company.

Sarah shrugged.

'But you're a good writer, Chelsea. You used to get 8/10 for your stories every week.'

'That was when I was ten years old,' I howled.

'But they were really good. I used to like it when you wrote about being a princess.'

'That's because I thought I really was one,' I said wryly, as I flopped on the grass beside the school gate to wait for the bus.

'You didn't, did you?' Sarah started giggling as she sat down beside me and I had to join in. 'Why?'

'Because my life was so boring,' I said defensively. 'I mean, look at me. I'm ordinary. Average ordinary brown hair, average height, average freckled face and not particularly outstanding in anything. I used to think that I must be a princess in disguise.' I sighed as I remembered. 'One day my Fairy Godmother would appear when I was tidying my room or washing the dishes and wave a magic wand.

'Your true parents, the King and Queen, want you to come to them,' she'd say. 'They gave you to these poor peasants to bring up for your own safety.''

'What was unsafe about your childhood?' Sarah asked, spluttering with laughter.

'Well, I was always a bit hazy about that,' I admitted, ' but the main thing was that the whole dream was such a great one. My fairy godmother would say.

'Your carriage awaits you, O Princess.'

I'd look out the kitchen window to see a large golden carriage drawn by four coal black horses.'

'I've always wondered about that,' Sarah interrupted. ' Have you noticed that in fairy tales the horses are always coal black or pure white? Never that ordinary shade of brown that most horses are.'

'Yeah, I suppose so,' I agreed. ' I guess you get the odd dappled grey one, too.'

'I've never seen one of those, have you?' asked Sarah.

'No, not unless you count that old wooden rocking horse my Aunt Gillian has on her porch for all the little kids who come to visit to play on. And I think that's really a white one that's gone grey from age.' We sat there for a while and watched the cars going past. A few kids were still straggling past on bikes or walking, and some of them waved at us, but mostly the bus kids were left by then.

'Tell me more about being a princess,' urged Sarah.

'Oh, you've heard it before.'

'I know, but you do it really well. Besides, it's ages until the bus comes and there's nothing else to do.'

'Oh, okay then.' I didn't need much encouragement. ' My Fairy Godmother would point at the golden carriage and wave her wand. By magic, my faded jeans and grubby T-shirt would be replaced by a shimmering turquoise dress. I would have a golden crown on my head, set with rubies and emeralds, and my sandals would be golden as well. My feet would have magically grown smaller and daintier - actually all of me would become smaller and daintier - and my hair would cascade in ringlets down my back.

The handsome coachman (naturally) would hand me into the carriage while my parents and two little brothers would stand weeping to see me go. I would wave lightly with one golden gloved hand before reclining on the silken cushions for the rest of the journey to meet my tall and good looking parents. They would be beautifully dressed and living in a turreted castle. My room would be at the top of the tallest turret and I would have doves flying in to land on my outstretched hands to coo at me. I would not be expected to do any work except toss a few coins at passing peasants and I would eat whatever I wanted to.'

'Sounds wonderful,' sighed Sarah.

'I know,' I agreed.

'I wonder what your life would be like if it really happened like that?'

'It's not likely too, unfortunately. I have the worst family out.'

'Your family is nice,' said Sarah indignantly.

'That's because you don't live with them. They are totally unreasonable I mentioned that I might be a princess in disguise, quite casually once. Big mistake!'

'What did they say?'

'My mother was immediately miffed that I would consider her badly dressed. Well, I mean, her clothes are terrible. She wears a dress, for heaven's sake, when all the other mothers wear jeans. It is so embarrassing. I've told her what I expect her to wear when she comes to school events like Sports Days, but will she listen? Anyway, she snapped that this imaginary mother wasn't much use if all she did was stand around in beautiful clothes. She obviously didn't have to cook meals or wash clothes or go shopping or any of the things that she had to do. For no thanks. Because we were all ungrateful and she was giving us the best years of her life and she could sit around all day in fancy clothes if we were millionaires, which we weren't and...you get the picture!'

'Mm,' murmured Sarah, trying not to laugh.

'My father wasn't much better. He just laughed and said that he didn't care what he wore as long as it was comfortable and functional, but basically it was whatever was within reach when he first got out of bed in the morning. Unless Mum got up first and put everything in the wash. He said he would be very suspicious of a man who spent all day sitting around in beautiful clothes. He didn't think it would be very 'manly' and he hoped that neither Billy nor Malcolm grew up to be like that. He said they certainly weren't getting that sort of example set by him. He's right there. He wears terrible clothes.'

'So does my Dad,' agreed Sarah. 'You think they'd make an effort sometimes, wouldn't you?'

We sat there for a while and looked critically at the clothes of all the guys we could see. Most of them were in school uniform, which hardly counted, and the only teachers we saw looked fairly ordinary. None of them was wearing anything that could be remotely considered trendy. I guess a school is hardly at the forefront of the fashion stakes.

'But that wasn't the worst of it,' I added indignantly. 'Dad also said that if I sat around each day doing no exercise, and eating whatever I wanted to, I would get fat. Then Malcolm said that doves are the same as pigeons and told me that his friend Peter had pigeons. Or rather, Peter's father had pigeons, but Peter got to help by cleaning out the coop every weekend. Malcolm said that pigeons shit everywhere so I wouldn't want them flying into my bedroom unless I liked sleeping in pigeon shit. He said they make an awful racket with their cooing and Mrs Knight who lives next door to Peter's family was always complaining about the noise and also about the mess they made on her clean washing.'

Sarah started giggling again then but she begged me to keep going.

'I can't think of any more, it's too cold.' We shuffled over into a patch of watery sunshine.

'Go on,' urged Sarah.

' I did say to Mum and Dad once that maybe if I wasn't a princess then I could have been swapped at birth with a millionaire's child by mistake. They didn't even think it was possible. In fact my father started talking about how I was the ugliest baby in the hospital, and yelled so loud every night for the first six months that they would have gladly given me away to anyone who would have taken me.'

I stood up and reached for my bag as the bus cruised to a stop beside us.

'That's why I suggested you write the production, Chelsea,' said Sarah in admiration. 'You have such a wonderful imagination.'
Chapter 3.

I was secretly pleased to be entrusted with writing the production but I was still annoyed at what Sarah had let me in for. We climbed onto the bus and sat together at the back. There weren't many kids on it at that time and there were plenty of seats spare.

'I can't write about princesses and stuff this time,' I argued. 'It's too babyish. And anyway, stories are nothing like a Dance/Drama. How on earth do I write one of those? I don't know anything about drama.'

'Yes you do. You've always been in the productions we've done and you were really good at being the witch in that play last year.'

'Yeah right. Thank you for reminding me. I was trying not to remember that.' I glared at her but Sarah just laughed at me.

'You were a great witch. '

'That's all very well for you to say. How would you like it if everyone said that you were perfect for the witch? I know I'm going to have a blighted childhood because I was chosen to be the witch. I'll probably have to have therapy about it when I'm older. I'm sure they only chose me because I'd just had braces put on my teeth.'

'Lots of other girls have braces,' protested Sarah. 'Well, some of them, anyway.'

'I know, but they didn't look like mine did,' I replied gloomily. The orthodontist had said I could choose what colour I wanted for those little plastic things that the wires go through. I chose navy blue as I thought that would be really cool. Mum went completely out of it when she saw me and said it looked as if all my teeth were rotten. She had a point. I had quite a shock myself when I looked in the mirror when I got home.

'If you didn't like them, why didn't you change them?' Sarah asked.

'I couldn't, it was too late,' I explained. 'Mum rang the orthodontist to get him to change them but his receptionist said I couldn't go back for six weeks and that next time I would 'choose more carefully.' Mum said a really rude word when she put the phone down but Dad just laughed when he saw me and said it didn't matter. The boys acted stupid as usual and screamed and ran away when they saw me.'

'Well, they did look fairly fearsome,' Sarah grinned.

'I know,' I said with grim satisfaction. ' I got my own back on them by waiting until they were in bed then creeping in and shining a torch under my chin and shouting 'boo' at them. Mum took the torch off me after the second time I did it, because Billy wet the bed that night.'

The braces didn't matter too much in the play as a witch is supposed to look ugly. I really threw everything into the part when I cursed the prince, but Sarah floated through the play in her fairy dress and didn't have to say anything, just smile a lot and look dreamy.

'I guess if I write the production I could give myself a good part for once,' I said thoughtfully. 'And it definitely won't be a witch this time.'

'You always get good parts,' said Sarah in surprise. 'I remember one Christmas when we were six and you said you had the most important part in the whole play.'

'That's because I was little and didn't know any better,' I pointed out.

That year Sarah was an angel and so were most of the other girls. My Mum was talking to Sarah's Mum, and she asked me if I was an angel. All the other Mum's were frantically making angel costumes for their daughters and Mum was sure I would only tell her I needed one the night before. I told her I had a much more important part than that. It was true. Our teacher had told me she was giving me an important part and she would even provide the costume. I was pretty excited, as if I couldn't be an angel, then I wanted to be something better. Janice was Mary, and she brought along her baby doll that really wet but the teacher took the bottle away and wouldn't let her feed it. She wouldn't let her pretend to breast feed it either.

All the parents came to watch and clapped like anything when their own kid came on stage. I made my big important entrance as the back legs of the donkey. I couldn't see through the blanket to tell if Mum was clapping or not. Lots of people laughed though. I think that's because the donkey head fell over Aaron's eyes. He was the front legs, and he couldn't see where he was going so we walked into the piano. It was very hot under the blanket but I felt really important doing it.

'The production will be easy to write,' Sarah assured me. 'We'll use the suggestions the other kids made, only absolutely not Gemma's suggestion of the puppets, and I'm sure your mother will help.'

That was a point in her favour. My mother adored Sarah and if she asked her then she would do anything for her. Well, almost anything.

We went straight to my place when we got off the school bus and Sarah and I told Mum what we had to do. Fortunately, Mum loved the idea of a Dance/Drama. She used to do a lot of dancing when she was younger and was disappointed to have produced a daughter with two left feet when it came to anything involving co-ordination.

So Mum said,

'Oh yes, Sarah. I'd love to help,' and before you know it she had cleared the kitchen table and was jotting down ideas.

'How about starting with Romeo and Juliet with the balcony scene then doing a Minuet? That's a really easy dance, it's mainly walking.'

'The boys want a fight scene,' I said rebelliously.

'Fine,' Mum said, still scribbling. 'There's a wonderful street fight between the Montagues and the Capulets. We can have Juliet standing on the balcony and narrating her famous 'Romeo' speech to start with before the fight. It's not the way the play goes but we'll take a few liberties. Then there's the Merchant of Venice with that great speech – the Quality of Mercy is not strained – and we have to have A Midsummer-Night's Dream with the fairies dancing.'

I had to admit Mum was good. Even I was starting to get excited about it after a while. I went into Dad's study carrying Mum's rough notes and a copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works to start typing up a good copy of the outline for Ms Cutter. Sarah and Mum talked about the dances and the sort of music they would need. It looked like it was going to be one of those shows that would please everyone. After the fairy dance there was to be a ghost bit from Hamlet and naturally the witch scene from MacBeth, which I was determined not to be in. The whole thing would finish with breakdancing and lip synching to Hip Hop music while Sarah did the epilogue from As You Like it, ending with a curtsey as the music faded out.

The next day, Sarah and Janice had a brief meeting with Brian during English and worked out who was going to do what, and added a few more ideas. I think Janice felt that if she hung around Sarah she might get a better part in the production. I had to finish my English homework that I hadn't had time to do the night before, because of writing the outline. Ms Cutter glanced at the outline, which had taken me ages to do, and said it was fine.

'Now you had better write it out fully, Chelsea,' she said. 'Not now,' as I started to get my pen out. 'Do it in your spare time. '

As if I get any! That's the trouble with living on a farm. Well, it's not really a farm, it's more what's known as a 'lifestyle block' which as far as I can tell means you get to experience the lifestyle of poor, starving peasants. Mum and Dad thought it would be a great idea for us kids to experience country life and animals and all that stuff so they have spent years yelling at us to go outside and enjoy the country air just as we are comfortably settled in front of the television. Consequently we have grown up resenting being sent outside and look for every opportunity to get inside again.

We get half a dozen calves every year, and when they've learned to drink from a bucket and eat Moosli, then they eat the grass until it's time to go off to the sales. Mum doesn't want great big animals on the place so they always go while they're still fairly easy to handle. If you take a bucket out they'll follow you anywhere, breathing hotly down your neck and sucking your fingers or your clothes with a horrible, wet, slobbery mess. We usually give them names like Buttercup or Daisy. One year Dad was a bit stressed as Mum had put her back out and he had to help us kids do the feeding before he went to work each day. That year the calves got names like Nuisance and Horrible but they didn't seem to care.

Ms Cutter said she had a special treat for us. We all looked a bit wary at this. Teachers' ideas of special treats invariably involve essays afterwards, but it seemed like this time it would be different.

'I have arranged for Mrs Whyte to come in after school and take you for a drama lesson. She used to be an actress and I know she will have a lot of valuable tips to pass onto you.'

We were impressed.

'What shows has she been on?' Violet wanted to know.

'Has she acted with Mel Gibson?' Brian asked.

'How come we've never heard of her? She can't be much good if we haven't heard of her,' Rangi muttered.

'She was a stage actress,' Ms Cutter told us. 'She was commended for her performance in _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof._ ' We looked at her blankly.

'Doesn't she mean _Cats_?' Theodora whispered loudly to Charmaine.

Ms Cutter told her to be quiet and we waited impatiently for lunchtime to arrive so we would have a chance to talk about it. The 'ballet girls' always eat their lunch on the steps of the Art Room - probably because they think they are artistically gifted. As if! Sarah and Janice and me and sometimes Stacey and Angela, sit on the seat by the netball courts. Bethany and Grace and Sally always go to the library where they help old Mrs Jenkins the librarian every lunchtime. Melanie and Jody Jackson hang around in different places; usually where the boys are. That day we all sat together for a change and talked about having a drama lesson from a real actress.

We were still talking about it after school as we walked to the Media Suite where the lesson was to be.

'I wonder what she'll look like?' Charmaine said.

'I'll bet she's really glamorous, with false eyelashes and everything,' Janice said confidently.

'Maybe she'll have silicone tits,' sniggered Hamish. Honestly, boys can be so childish.

We were all wrong. Mrs Whyte turned out to be about a hundred and ten years old. She had masses of wrinkles with a lot of makeup plastered over them and red dyed hair with grey roots. We were all horribly disappointed.

'I thought she'd at least look like an actress,' I hissed at Sarah.

'Never mind. She might know some really good stuff,' she whispered back.

Mrs Whyte told us to find a space by ourselves and sit down. We managed this with a few minor territorial disputes and Eric only got thumped a couple of times.

Then she said, 'I am going to explain to you how to act.' She went on to tell us how instead of just choosing a play and reading it straight out of a School Journal like we usually did, we had to learn things like 'expressing emotions,' and 'characterization' and all that sort of thing. Some of it sounded quite fun, like when she told us to have a conversation with a partner using numbers instead of words, and the rest of the class had to guess what emotion we were expressing. She made a few of us take partners and demonstrate. I had Brian Appleby.

I decided I would be a sorrowful princess, mourning for my lost lover.

'Seven,' I sighed. Nine, two, three.'

Brian looked at me blankly then spat 'four' at me and gave me the fingers, so that emotion was pretty easy to pick. The class exploded into laughter and Mrs Whyte decided that was enough of that.

'I want you to take another partner and we will try mirror imaging,' she said sternly. 'One person is to move slowly while the other copies them so it looks like a mirror image. Try and keep your movements flowing steadily.'

We thought that sounded okay so I quickly grabbed Sarah and we started to copy each other's movements. It was actually harder than it sounded. You had to watch closely and try to anticipate what they would do next. Mrs Whyte told us to mime simple things like brushing hair or eating. Of course the boys went and spoilt it by picking their noses and pulling faces at each other so Mrs Whyte gave up on that pretty quickly, as well.

'The next thing I would like you to do is to be a rock. Think like a rock. Imagine yourselves as part of a mountain. Ages old. Tumbled and overgrown with moss.' Mrs Whyte half closed her eyes as she spoke and clasped her hands to her skinny chest.

'She's a bit cracked,' Mike said to Gemma, who normally wouldn't deign to talk to him. She looked like she agreed, and the rest of us did too.

So we all made like rocks, mainly by curling up or crouching on the ground and not moving. That apparently wasn't the right thing to do.

'Show the spirit of the rock,' intoned Mrs Whyte, stretching one hand in front of her and waving it round. 'Demonstrate the energy within.' That was a big mistake, because the boys all rolled around and made rude noises and said they were exploding volcanic rocks releasing their energy from within, and us girls all got the giggles and couldn't do anything.

Mrs Whyte tried to stop the boys but they were having so much fun they just got louder and louder and more and more excited. Finally she muttered 'ignorant ingrates,' and walked out. We figured we probably wouldn't be getting any more drama lessons after that.

Chapter 4.

Despite having to do most of it in our spare time, by the beginning of the second week of the term the main planning for the Dance/Drama was done and everyone ended up pretty happy. Most of the parts were worked out, mainly those ones that needed the most rehearsing, and Ms Cutter said she'd 'help us' choose the others later on.

The ballet girls got to be fairies, naturally, as they were not about to miss out on a chance to swan about in fancy dresses, and as Brian was stage manager he would shout instructions to everyone from the wings. At Ms Cutter's suggestion, or rather instruction, I got to be the prompt.

'You have written the production, after all, Chelsea,' she said. 'So you are the person who knows it best and the obvious choice for prompt.'

I was going to point out that Shakespeare had actually written it, all I'd done was to muck it around and mix it up a bit, but there wasn't much chance of him making an appearance to be prompt! Not that Sarah would need much prompting, and not many people had lines apart from her. For which they were all thankful, believe me. I was so pleased not to be a witch or a donkey I weakly agreed, as I knew there was no chance of the ballet girls letting me be a fairy. I would have liked to do the Lady MacBeth scene though. I really fancied myself as an anguished murderess, wringing my blood stained hands. But Sarah wasn't having any of it.

'I have to do that part, Chelsea,' she explained patiently.

'But you're doing lots of other parts. It surely wouldn't matter if I did just that one,' I pleaded.

'I have to do it. It is a pivotal part of my role,' Sarah replied firmly, so that was that. It didn't stop me practising being Lady MacBeth at home, though. I stood in front of my bedroom mirror moaning and pretending to sleepwalk. That lasted until I looked up one day and saw Billy looking at me with an astounded expression.

'Are you feeling sick?' he asked. 'Why have you got your eyes closed and your face all twisted up like that?'

'Go away,' I roared and slammed the door. I tried to get back into the mood but I bumped my knee on the edge of a drawer and decided to keep my eyes open after that. So I gave up and decided to accept the role of prompt graciously.

Ms Cutter told Brian he could organise the rehearsals. He was getting bossier by the day and had started wearing sunglasses everywhere. He said it was so people wouldn't recognise him and ask him for autographs. The teachers all made him take them off in class, though, which kind of spoiled the effect.

'I don't want to have all of us in the media suite together at the same time as it would be too crowded,' Brian announced one morning, 'so I've set up a rehearsal timetable. We'll have fairies on Monday, witches on Tuesday, ghosts on Wednesday and I'll decide the others later in the week.'

'That's fine,' said Ms Cutter. 'Well done, Brian.' He looked smug at this, as he usually gets told off most of the time. Some of the other boys muttered a bit but they couldn't complain with Ms Cutter standing there. And anyway, to do him justice, Brian had decently organised the boys so their rehearsals wouldn't clash with any of the sports practices.

We could only have the media suite for the first half of every lunch hour as the other classes used it for their stuff as well. That worked out well as people went straight there when the bell went. Otherwise they would have scattered all over the place to eat their lunch and it would have taken ages to get them all to come back on time. It did mean that they all complained about being hungry and tried to stuff down their sandwiches when they thought no one was looking.

Sarah and I had to go to every rehearsal. Sarah because she was in every scene, and me to prompt and do any rewriting Sarah decided she wanted. Not that I could rewrite Shakespeare! Ms Cutter would have had fourteen fits. But I could put in extra bits if they were needed, which meant carting around our huge book of Shakespeare every day in case it was needed. I reckoned I had a promising career ahead of me as a weightlifter!

The first rehearsal was okay – just. Sarah was Titania, the queen of the fairies. She said her bit then sat looking decorative while the ballet girls danced around her. They had pretty definite ideas on the sort of dance they were prepared to do, so I stayed well out of it. It turned out they had been working on stuff with their ballet teacher and even had the music. They had cheated with that. They were supposed to sing a sort of fairy chorus together as they danced but I guess they didn't want the rest of us to hear them puffing and panting. So Gemma's mother had got the niece of a friend of hers, who was training to be a singer, to sing the words along with the music and record it for them on tape. She had really worked fast! I was going to object to that, seeing Sarah and I hadn't been consulted, but decided it was one less thing we didn't have to do.

Janice watched from the side. She had already asked if she could be a fairy but Gemma had turned her down flat. I can't say I blamed her. Janice didn't exactly look like a fairy. Janice is... how can I put this in a politically correct way? Okay, I can't. Janice is fat. She's not unhealthy fat with double chins or anything. She's just thick and sort of solid. She says she has big bones, which is why she thumps when she walks. She says she's not fat, it's because she's not tall enough, and when she grows another thirty centimetres she will be perfectly in proportion. I'm a bit doubtful. I've seen Janice's parents and they're both about as tall as Janice is now. So if I were Janice, I wouldn't be holding my breath!

The ballet girls danced around the room with Gemma calling out instructions.

'No, no, I'm in front,' said Gemma loudly, pushing Violet to the back as she twirled around with her arms outstretched.

'You'll have to move over a little, darling' Brian pointed out. 'You mustn't stand in front of Sarah.' Now Gemma has always loathed Brian since the time in Year Five when he put a spider in her desk and she screamed the place down and our teacher told her not to be a 'silly little girl.' Any other time she would have hit him for talking to her like that, but she wasn't prepared to upset Sarah too much in case she made me write the ballet girls out of the production. They all gave Brian filthy looks and Gemma, who is the absolute leader, said,

'Of course we won't stand in front of Sarah. She is far too important, aren't you Sarah?'

Sarah ignored this and Brian pretended he hadn't heard it.

'We'll all just stand at the back then, shall we?' suggested Gemma sarcastically. 'Perhaps we should just stand still instead of dancing, so that we don't take the attention away from Sarah. Or perhaps you'd prefer it if we didn't bother coming onto the stage at all? I mean as the stage manager, Brian, obviously your wishes are paramount. It doesn't matter what we think. We are merely here to do what you want us to.' All the ballet girls fumed and pouted at Sarah who looked unconcerned as she read her lines to herself. Brian was starting to look agitated when fortunately Mr Murdoch, the head of department came in. Otherwise things could have got very nasty.

I missed the next rehearsal, which was the one with the witches, as I had an appointment in town to have my braces tightened. It's not too bad, as Mum always takes me to town for the whole day and we do some shopping. She buys me a really great lunch in a café before the orthodontist. She does it because the first time I went I came home and screamed and yelled and fussed about how much the braces hurt – well they did! I howled and asked to go and have them off again but Mum said no, because she wanted me to have lovely, straight teeth and 'I would be grateful when I was older.' I said I'd be grateful now if I had them removed and I was happy to live with crooked teeth. Dad said no because it was costing a zillion dollars to have it done and all the family was going to have to live on bread and water for the next two years. Plus, all the extra work he would have to do was giving him grey hairs before his time. I pointed out that if I had the braces off it wouldn't cost him anything but he said he had signed a contract so he would have to pay for them anyway so we had to keep going and 'a bit of pain never hurt anyone.'

I should have reminded him of that when he was changing the car tyre, that time last summer when we had a puncture, and he dropped the jack on his bare foot. Malcolm and Billy both learnt two new swear words that day and Mum fussed over Dad like he was a baby. He put on a limp every time he remembered for weeks and got to sit with his foot on a stool and eat his dinner in front of TV. We are not allowed to eat in front of the TV on pain of death. It is so unfair.

So Mum feels sorry for me on orthodontist days and makes it a special 'girls' shopping time. Mind you, it would be better if her ideas were a bit more up to date. This time we were going past a shoe shop when I pointed out, very reasonably I thought, that I needed another pair of shoes.

Mum said, 'Of course you don't need any more shoes, Chelsea. The ones you have are perfectly adequate.'

'But I do need another pair of shoes. You can't expect me to wear my school shoes when I go out.'

'Why not?' Mum asked

'Why not? It's obvious why not,' I raged. 'They are school shoes. They are terrible. Boring brown with sensible laces and flat rubber soles. Urk. Whoever chose them obviously has no fashion sense. Brown shoes are not 'in' and I doubt they ever will be.'

'As far as I am concerned, sneakers for sports plus school shoes plus gumboots plus slippers plus jandals are as many types of footwear as any person could possibly need. After all, you can only wear one pair at a time.'

'You don't understand. Of course I need another pair. Everyone else has two pairs of shoes or even more. I'm the only person in the class who has to wear their school shoes when they go out. And all because you and Dad are so mean you won't buy me any others.'

'That's quite enough, young lady. Sometimes I think that all you do is think of me as an Eftpos card instead of a person. I am certainly not intending to buy you yet another pair of shoes and nagging won't get you anywhere. Nor will sulking,' Mum added as I scowled at her. I tried very hard to pretend I didn't know her or belong with her after that. I pretended I was helping an old lady cross the road when she grabbed my hand. Honestly! You'd think I was still four years old!

I figured it was worth having a try for a new T-shirt. Stacy and Angela had each bought one to rehearse in and they looked really awesome.

'I need a black T-shirt for rehearsals,' I announced at the dinner table.

Mum and Dad ignored me and went on eating their tea.

'Dad, can I have a black T-shirt? They don't cost as much as shoes,' I asked. He's usually a softer touch than Mum if you can get him in the right mood. Unfortunately this didn't seem to be the time.

'No,' he said bluntly.

'But everyone else has one,' I pleaded. It was almost true. Lots of the girls were wearing black T-shirts that year. Long baggy ones that hung down almost to the knees and preferably had a picture of a Harley Davidson on the front. Well, you'd have thought that I'd asked to fly to the moon. Talk about a fuss! Mum went berserk and said,

'You have plenty of clothes already. Why don't you wear that nice blue top I bought you from Farmers?'

'My blue top! No one is wearing blue tops! I'll get laughed out of class,' I protested.

Dad said, 'I think you look lovely in whatever you wear.'

I'm not forgiving that in a hurry. I intend to turn up in a sack to his next firm's picnic and see if he still thinks that.

I tried everything to get a black T-shirt. I pointed out that Sarah had one. My mother said,

'How nice for Sarah.'

I threatened to go on a hunger strike unless I got one.

Malcolm said 'Great,' and Billy said, 'Are you starting now? Can we eat your pudding then?'

My father said, 'Don't be so silly. Eat up your broccoli at once.'

I said I would die of shame at being the only girl in my class who didn't own a black T-shirt because her parents were too mean to get me one and that they'd be sorry when I was dead. That got me sent to my room and Malcolm and Billy got to eat my pudding after all but it still didn't get me a black T-shirt. I had to wear my blue top after all and it was so shameful and uncool that I'm sure it has scarred my life and I'll probably have to spend years in therapy when I'm older.

I'll definitely need therapy for the end of year disaster. I'm not likely to forget that in a hurry.

Chapter 5.

Mr Murdoch needed the media suite for the rest of the week for the Seniors, so we had to put off the other rehearsals until later. Brian was a bit miffed that his arrangements would be disrupted but Sarah decided that it would give us a chance to sort out the costumes. We went to the Clothing room and asked Mrs Barrington, the Clothing teacher, who said she would help.

'Why don't you look through what is already there belonging to the Drama Department before I make anything new,' Mrs Barrington suggested. 'I'll open the storage cupboard under the stage for you tomorrow at lunchtime, if you like.'

'Great, thanks,' answered Sarah enthusiastically.

'My Mum can sew any new costumes we need,' I volunteered.

'Excellent,' said Mrs Carrington. 'Tell her to give me a call if she is stuck for ideas.'

When I got home that night I told Mum politely what I'd done.

'Mum, I told them all at school that you would make the costumes for the production.'

'You did what?' gasped Mum.

'The costumes,' I said slowly and clearly. 'For the production,' I added loudly.

'You don't have to shout at me Chelsea, I'm not deaf,' Mum said irritably.

'Don't you think it would have been polite to ask me, before offering my services? Do you think I have nothing better to do all day than sit around sewing costumes?'

'Oh, I knew you wouldn't be busy,' I said loftily. 'You're not like the other mothers who work. You don't do anything all day anyway.'

Mum promptly went ballistic.

'Just because some people felt it is important to be a homemaker and do without rather than bringing in a second income, it doesn't mean they do nothing. Without people like me, there wouldn't be anybody doing Meals-on Wheels, or helping to entertain the old people at the Home by taking them on outings or helping them with their shopping. Not to mention sewing the curtains for the town hall supper room or ...'

'Okay, okay, whatever! I'll tell Sarah that you can't do the costumes after all.'

'I didn't say that I wouldn't do them,' Mum yelled back, 'I just would have appreciated being asked first instead of being taken for granted, as usual.'

I left at this point, as this is usually when she starts going off about how we all forgot her birthday one year and obviously nobody cares about her. Well I was four years old, for heaven's sake, and Billy hadn't even been born. My Dad only got it wrong by one day. He'd had a meal booked at a fancy restaurant for the next night and even got a babysitter booked for Malcolm and me but he was a day too late and Mum never got over it.

Some of us girls went to get the costume boxes from under the stage in the hall and we took them into one of the dressing rooms to see what we could use. The Seniors used to put on a major drama production at the end of the second term each year until Mrs Frank, the drama teacher, left. All the costumes they had ever used were there. We've still got drama teachers for the Seniors but none of them have been very keen lately so there hasn't been a show for two years.

'There's masses of stuff here,' I said in satisfaction.

'Look at this' squealed Bethany, pulling a tiger's head out of a box. 'This is so sweet. It's all furry and soft. Can't you write a tiger into the production, Chelsea?'

'No,' I answered firmly. I knew who'd end up wearing it, and it wouldn't be Bethany!

'There are heaps of striped shirts and sashes here,' remarked Sarah. 'They might be good for the fairies to weave around in a sort of floaty, dreamlike way.'

'I think the colours are a bit bright,' said Sally critically.

'The fabric is too shiny, really,' agreed Angela. 'I think they used them for pirates. Gemma wouldn't use anything like that.'

'Okay, we'll give that idea up,' said Sarah with a shrug. 'I'll ask Phoebe to find something they can use.'

'There are piles of uniforms here,' called Janice, whom was rummaging through another box.

'They are from War and Peace,' Grace informed her. 'They wouldn't be much use for Shakespeare.'

'I'll bet the boys would like wearing them though,' sniffed Janice.

'Yes, and then they'd insist on carrying machine guns or something else totally stupid,' I pointed out. 'It's bad enough that they want swords. They'll go all Rambo on us and start a war if you give them the slightest encouragement.'

Janice looked at the uniforms critically.

'They're a bit manky anyway and they smell musty. I'll put them back, shall I?'

'Yes,' we all yelled and Janice grinned at us as she put the uniforms back in their box.

'Look, shoes,' I said in delight as I opened another box.

'Awesome. Look at those neat red ones with the high spiky heels.' Bethany slipped them on and tottered around the room. 'They are really hard to walk in,' she squeaked as she narrowly avoided tripping over onto her face.

'We can't have shoes like that,' said Sarah rather regretfully. 'Ms Cutter wouldn't let us wear them.'

'She is so mean,' agreed Janice.

'Not as mean as my parents,' I said moodily. 'They won't even buy me another pair of shoes when I need them.'

'Sounds like my parents,' said Grace feelingly. 'Whenever I want a new pair of shoes my Dad starts the big lecture. You know the one – you are lucky to have shoes at all. When I was your age I had to walk to school barefoot through the snow.'

'My Dad says exactly the same thing,' I agreed. 'For goodness sake! Have you noticed it is always snow? They never had to go barefoot on nice sunny days when you like to have cool feet. Oh no. It has to be snowing.'

Grace nodded. 'Yeah, and that is after they've gone down the coal mine and hacked out three tons of coal with their fingernails to stoke the coal range before breakfast.'

'I've seen photos of my Dad when he was a kid, when we went to Nana and Pop's house,' I told her. 'In the photos it is always sunny, never snowing, and Dad always has shoes on. I asked Nana once if they hired shoes for him to wear for the photos, so that people wouldn't know how poor they were.'

The girls shrieked with laughter. 'Chelsea! You didn't! What did she say?' Grace asked incredulously.

'Well, my Nana is a bit deaf so she didn't hear what I said but started telling me what a lovely little boy my dad was. Pass me the paper bag!'

'I'll bet your Dad wasn't pleased.'

'No. He gave me 'the look',' I said gloomily. We all knew what that meant. That's the look that says, 'you are going to be in big trouble when I get you home, my girl!'

'We could go totally Space Age,' suggested Angela who had pulled out a bag of costumes from the Futuristic show and was prancing around in a glittery silver cloak, tossing her hair and making what she fondly imagined to be robotic noises.

'Hey that cloak might be good for when I'm the fairy queen,' said Sarah excitedly, and promptly pulled it off her.

'It's not fair, you're getting all the decent costumes,' grumbled Angela, looking discontented.

'There are a couple of boxes of fabric here,' I said soothingly. 'They are mainly old curtains and shop remnants, but some of them are gorgeous. Maybe we can use some of them. What do you think?'

The others fell on the boxes with cries of delight and draped them around themselves to see what inspiration they could get.

'That one looks like a dead polar bear,' snorted Sally, as Angela swathed herself in white fur.

'Well you look like something our dog has dug up,' snapped Angela, after a quick look at Sally who had found a length of grey vinyl with rather suspicious mildewed splotches on it. 'Quite frankly, I think this is a complete waste of time. There is nothing here remotely suitable for our production'

'There's whole heap of peasant skirts here, Sarah,' cried Bethany, who was methodically going through all the cartons and had just reached the last one. 'I'm sure we can use these.' She held a couple of them up and Sarah got quite excited.

'I'm sure we can. Sally, why don't you go and ask Mrs Barrington if she can come and give us some advice?'

Sally scowled at Angela and went off to the staffroom, while we put all the things we thought we could use in one pile and re-stacked the other stuff in the boxes.

'It's funny how things never fit when you repack them,' remarked Bethany, as we crammed clothing into cartons that looked perilously close to bursting. 'I mean, we took all this stuff out so it should go back again.'

'That's because Janice isn't folding things properly,' said Angela accusingly. 'She's just stuffing them in.'

'Am not,' denied Janice with an air of injured innocence.

'Yeah, right,' Angela sniffed and Janice glared at her.

Mrs Barrington said she had a free period and sent Sarah to tell our Maths teacher that we girls were all excused class because we were helping her. She is so much nicer than Ms Cutter. We spent the next hour happily planning all the costumes.

'The ghosts should be easy,' Sarah said breathlessly as she came back into the room. 'They only needed a white sheet and a bit of chain to clank.'

Mrs Barrington looked a bit doubtful about the chain but we knew the boys would love it.

'I have some fluorescent fabric paint we can use to mark skeletons on,' she volunteered.

''Terrific,' Bethany beamed. 'They are going to be so cool.'

'Gemma reckoned the fairies all have tutus they can use,' offered Janice.

'Yes, well they would, wouldn't they?' muttered Grace. She didn't like the ballet girls either.

Janice and Angela were playing witches and were a bit disgruntled at being asked to try on the ragged old peasant skirts and shawls.

'They don't look very nice,' grumbled Janice, as Mrs Barrington bustled around with a mouthful of pins, marking where all the adjustments needed to be.

'Well, witches aren't supposed to be nice,' I pointed out helpfully.

'They're too brightly coloured. They don't even look very witch like,' Angela complained.

Mrs Barrington said, 'Don't look so worried, girls. They will look a lot better when Chelsea's mother has altered them all to fit and I have dyed them black. Now, if you go to the Art Department you'll find they have a pattern for a witch hat there that you can make out of card and then decorate. It will have to be sprayed black first but then you can add stars and magic signs and glitter to them in whatever patterns you want.

'Cool,' said Angela happily. 'We'll go and see if Miss Shaw will let us do it now. Come on.'

She and Janice and the others all trooped off to have a go at making hats and Sarah was left to try her costumes.

She could have just worn one, and put a cloak over it for some of the scenes, but oh no. Sarah had to have a new costume for every scene. I tried to talk her out of it.

'You won't have time, Sarah. You're on the stage practically the whole time and there isn't any spare time between scenes so how are you going to change?'

'Well, I have to have a different costume for each new character. You'll have to re-write the production to give me time to change.'

'I am not rewriting it. Do you have any idea of how much time I have spent on this damned, er, sorry Mrs Barrington, darned thing already?'

'I know exactly how much time you've spent on it. I can tell you to the minute how much time you've spent on it. You tell me every single day how much time you've spent on it.'

'All right, all right, but it's taken me ages. I don't want to rewrite it. Why can't you just wear one costume like everyone else?'

'Because I need a new costume for each character. I've already explained that.'

'But that's seven costumes!'

Mrs Barrington stepped in before actual blood was shed and made a suggestion.

'Now listen girls. How about this for an idea? It's actually something I saw a singer do in a nightclub act, but it was very effective. You start off by dressing in the final costume. Over that you put the next to last one, and so on. Then all you have to do is quickly pull one layer off and you're ready for the next scene. You can quickly step backstage or behind a screen or some scenery to do that.'

'Sounds like a good idea,' Sarah nodded.

'Won't she look like an elephant in all those clothes?' I protested.

'Not necessarily. Because Sarah is only seated or facing the audience for most of her performances, we can make costumes that tie at the back and go on a bit like an apron. That way they won't be so bulky. There will only be a couple that will need to be full costumes.'

Sarah was delighted with the idea and I have to admit it was a good one. Anyway, Sarah is the sort who would look good in a potato sack. I was a bit sorry not to be getting a costume but I wasn't going to be seen on stage so I didn't need one.

We left Mrs Barrington with Sarah's measurements and a copy of the characters so she could do the costumes for her over the next couple of weeks. Sarah bought me an ice block from the Canteen, as a way of saying sorry, so that was okay. I was just thankful not to do any re-writing. I already knew the whole thing by heart.
Chapter 6.

The next rehearsal was the ghost one from Hamlet, although we had lots of skeletons and things moaning around as well to make it a bit more realistic. That was mainly because all the boys were keen to be ghosts. It meant they didn't have to learn any words, unless you counted a bit of moaning and wailing. It also meant they could leap out shrieking and scare totally innocent little kids in the corridors and say, 'I'm only practising for the Christmas production,' when they got told off for it. Some of them wanted to bring impressively bloodthirsty looking torture instruments and show people dying before they became ghosts but Ms Cutter put a stop to that idea smartly. The boys all wanted to be in the fight scene as well, and could hardly wait for that.

Mr Murdoch came in to help as we were putting the CD in the sound system. It was some weird sounding stuff that Joey and Mike had put together on Joey's computer. They did it last year when they were experimenting to make a new computer game but they assured us it would be perfect for the ghost scene. It sounded like the background music you hear on TV before someone is murdered with a chainsaw then cut into small pieces and thrown into a mincing machine. Not that I'm actually allowed to watch programmes like that, but it's what I imagined it would sound like.

'Joey, I'll show you how to operate the strobe lights,' Mr Murdoch said. 'You can use them for effect in this scene. You will be able to hook them up in the hall to use when you do the actual performance.'

He flicked a switch to turn on the speakers and flickering lights came on and off in time with the music.

'There you go. I'll be back later to see if there are any problems.'

'Wow, okay. Hey everything looks really spooky already,' Joey said in wonder. The rest of us were really impressed as well.

'I feel like a character in an old black and white movie,' said Ty and started doing a jerky walk around the room.'

'The lights hurt my eyes,' complained Brian.

'Don't be such a baby,' scoffed Aaron. 'These are brilliant. You shouldn't be on the stage anyway.'

That shut Brian up briefly. They rehearsed the ghost scene, which wasn't too bad for a first attempt, although all the boys were overacting like mad and groaning realistically as if their throats were being cut.

'You guys will have to cut the moaning back a bit,' Brian said. 'We can't hear the lines.'

'Just as well,' muttered Aaron.

'Let's try it again,' said Brian, ignoring him.

The problem was that Ms Cutter had chosen Simon Southcombe to be Hamlet. Unbelievable! I mean, I've got nothing against Simon personally. He's okay, for a boy, and not nearly as obnoxious as some of them, like Eric for instance. But he lisps. That's right, he lisps! I don't know what his parents were thinking of when they named him, as he always calls himself Thimon Thouthcombe. Mind you, to be fair, I guess he couldn't talk when he was born. Still, you think they would have played safe and called him something like John, which would at least have given him half a chance. They had obviously learned by the time Simon's little sister was born, because they called her Megan. She doesn't know how lucky she is. It could have been Sylvia or Sally or even Cecilia!

So there was Simon struggling through Hamlet's speech and the rest of us trying not to laugh every time he came to an 'S.'

' _To be, or not to be: that ith the quethtion:_

Whether 't ith nobler in the mind to thuffer

The thlings and arrowth of outrageouth fortune

Or to take armth againtht a thea of trouble

_And by oppothing end them?_ '

'How many of the words in this speech have an 'S' in them?' Sarah whispered to me.

'Lot's, unfortunately,' I replied. Sarah shuddered as Simon continued.

' _To die: to thleep:_

No more; and by a thleep to thay we end

The heartache and the thouthand natural thock

That fleth ith heir to, 'tith a conthummation

Devoutly to be with'd.'

'Chelsea, this is ghastly. Can't we choose someone else for Hamlet?' Brian asked me in an undertone.

'Can't. Ms Cutter said we had to have Simon.'

'Why?'

'She says it's to increase his confidence,' I replied and clapped my hand over my mouth so I didn't laugh outright at Brian's look of horror.

'She must be mad.'

'Could be worse,' I shrugged. 'At least he doesn't stutter.'

'Moan a bit louder,' Brian promptly instructed the rest of the boys, who needed no further encouragement.

'They are too loud. I can't hear mythelf thpeak,' protested Simon.

'Just keep going, you're doing fine,' shouted Brian above the noise.

Simon glowered and bellowed the rest of his lines.

' _To die, to thleep;_

To thleep: perchanthe to dream: ay, there'th the rub;

For in that thleep of death what dreamth may come

When we have thuffled off thith mortal coil,

Mutht give uth pauthe.'

Fortunately, that was as much of the speech that we had decided to use. I don't think anyof us could have stood much more of it and the ghosts were getting hoarse from all the wailing and groaning.

'I think you gyth were all far too loud,' complained Simon.

'We thought it thounded thuper, didn't we guys,' replied Mike.

'Yeth,' chorused the boys.

'WelI, I didn't. I'm going to tell Mth Cutter,' said Simon sulkily. He walked out

slamming the door behind him. We watched him go in relief.

'How about we do the fight scene now?' demanded Mike.

'Nah.' Brian shook his head. 'I don't want to do it too often. It ought to look spontaneous.'

There were a few mutterings about that. The boys were not too keen on how bossy Brain was getting. I think being made stage manager had really turned his head. He had taken to carrying a clipboard around and calling everyone 'darling.' All of us girls really resented this but we decided to humour him and we didn't say anything. Then Brian got totally carried away. He wanted the boys to move over to one side of the room so he said, 'Over there, guys, hurry it along,' and motioned them with his clipboard. They all moved reluctantly, with a few more mutterings, all except Hamish. Hamish wasn't friendly with Brian at the best of times and all of us could see that having Brian bossing him around was really getting up his nose. Brian waited a minute then called, 'Hamish, move over there, darling.' That was a big mistake.

'What did you say?' asked Hamish incredulously.

'I said move over there.'

'You called me darling!'

'It's what stage managers say. It doesn't mean anything,' explained Brian patiently.

'Oh, right. It doesn't mean anything. Right. Well in that case this doesn't mean anything either.'

Hamish took a swing at Brian and decked him and at that moment Mr Murdoch came back.

'What's going on here?' he asked, although it was fairly obvious.

'We were just rehearsing,' croaked Brian as he staggered to his feet looking dazed.

'Yeah, we were... we were rehearsing the fight scene,' said Hamish in sudden inspiration.

'I thought Brian was the stage manager,' said Mr Murdoch suspiciously.

'I am,' muttered Brian.

'Yeah, he is,' agreed Hamish. 'He just got in the way, that's all.'

'Hmm.' Mr Murdoch didn't look convinced. 'I think you have all done enough rehearsing for today so you can run along now.'

Brian scuttled out the door and was much more subdued after that.

Things had calmed down a bit by the next rehearsal although the boys were still inclined to mutter and Brian kept well out of Hamish's way, trying not to make it look too obvious. Sarah stood on a chair, pretending it was the balcony, and declaimed,

' _Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo?'_

I thought she looked and sounded really good but all the boys made gagging noises, which was fairly typical. All the girls were obviously impressed as well. Janice whispered to me and Ruby,

'I'm going to grow my hair and dye it blonde, like Sarah.'

'Sarah doesn't dye her hair,' I exclaimed.

'I didn't mean that she dyed her hair, I meant that I was going to dye mine so it was the same as hers,' argued Janice.

'Me too,' agreed Ruby. I didn't think that dying their hair would make it like Sarah's but I didn't say anything. Who was I to rain on their parade?

Ms Cutter didn't bother to come to rehearsals. She had much more important things to do, like buff her nails. Or have long giggly lunches with Mr Gilbert, the Science teacher, who was drop-dead gorgeous but, unfortunately for us girls, happily married. The headmaster can't understand why all the girls in Mr Gilbert's science class do so well but he's the sort of guy you would die for. And if doing your Science homework gets you one of those film star smiles then hey, we're all keen to do it.

'I've decided to lead the dancers in the Minuet,' said Sarah calmly. Gemma looked thunderous at this, as I think she had been hoping to do it. 'Then I'll show my versatility by joining in the breakdancing at the end.'

I thought that was a great idea until she added,' You can be my understudy, Chelsea, and learn all the dances along with me.'

'Why do you need an understudy?' I asked her indignantly. 'You never get sick and anyway, no-one else is having an understudy.'

'Because I'm the star, and all stars have understudies,' Sarah explained patiently.

'I thought I was the prompt,' I protested.

'You can do that as well,' said Sarah calmly, and like a fool I went along with it. This meant learning all her lines, well, I knew most of them anyway by the time I had typed them out, then listened to her speaking them all the time. The worst part was learning the dances. As I've said before, Sarah is graceful. She glides through life. When she walks you can see people think, 'Oh yes. Obviously model potential.' Even when she's just hanging around with the rest of us at the Pizza Place she gets admiring looks from perfect strangers.

I make my way through life with more of a stumble. I'm the sort of person who trips over the only loose tile in the whole shop and drops their burger on the floor. I'm the one who always steps into a puddle on rainy days and slides on mud patches on bush walks. I'm the one who spills her Milo down the front of a clean white T-shirt or gets the ice block that falls off the stick halfway through.

I talked to Janice during Maths while we were supposed to be working on stuff from our textbooks.

'Do you want to be Sarah's understudy, instead of me?'

'Why? Don't you want to do it?'

'Not really. I don't mind learning the lines but I'm useless at the dances.'

'No thanks. I would be useless at learning lines,' said Janice hastily. 'Anyway, I was hoping I could be a fairy. I've asked Gemma and she said that maybe there could be a space for me.'

'Really?' I asked in amazement. 'But Gemma never lets anyone else into her group. You know that.'

'Well, she said she'd think about it,' said Janice defensively. She must have really wanted to be a fairy but she was doomed to disappointment. Brian had already told her she could be a witch as she would be perfect for the part. We thought she was rehearsing, as she kept going around muttering, but I got close enough to hear her one day. I was a bit shocked to hear her muttering curses about Gemma and Brian but she wasn't a real witch so I didn't think they had anything to worry about. I made sure there were no brooms around, just in case.

Sarah felt sorry for Janice, who was being very obviously unhappy at not having a better part, so she said, 'Janice, why don't you help Joey to work the sound system?'

'Yeah, great,' said Janice enthusiastically, and went over to stand behind Joey. 'What does this button do?'

'Don't touch that,' howled Joey, leaping to stand protectively in front of the control panel.

'I was only asking,' snapped Janice.

'Well don't push anything until I tell you to,' Joey mumbled.

Joey looked really annoyed. He's a weedy little kid who doesn't say much, and most of the time you don't even notice he's in the classroom, but he's a whiz at anything electronic. He even helps some of the Senior boys when they do their videoing and lighting effects and he was not pleased to be given Janice as an assistant. She stood and breathed heavily beside him saying, 'do I do it now?' until it was time to throw the switch. The rest of the time she just went around muttering curses, like I said, and when she was actually rehearsing she stood at the back of the group of witches and scowled.

Chapter 7

The historical stuff was working out okay but Ms Cutter wanted to know what we intended to do for the contemporary bit.

'You said in your outline, Chelsea, the production would progress through time, so I suppose you are concluding with the contemporary aspect as a climax?' she asked me.

'Um, yes, that's right,' I agreed, not admitting that there were at least two words in that sentence that I didn't understand. I looked desperately at Sarah who came to the rescue.

'We are going to end with Hip-Hop, Ms Cutter,' she said earnestly.

'And how are you planning on doing that?'

'Er, we're not sure yet,' I admitted.

'Make sure you get onto it,' sniffed Ms Cutter. 'Now get out your books. We are going to do some comprehension.'

We all whinged about her as we went to PE, but not too loudly in case any of the other teachers heard us. Mr Sadler, who takes us for PE, is really nice. I guess it helps that he is taking a subject everyone enjoys and we get to play heaps of games and use the equipment in the gym and everything.

'Why such glum faces?' he asked when he saw us.

'Because we have so much to do for the Dance/Drama,' I burst out.

'We have to learn how to do breakdancing,' put in Mike.

'Ms Cutter tells us to learn everything in our own time, then she makes sure we haven't got any by giving us homework,' added Grace in aggrieved tones.

Mr Sadler thought for a minute. 'I am sure that Breakdancing, or Hip-Hop could be categorized as physical activity,' he said thoughtfully. 'It all looks fairly physical from what I've seen of it. How about if I let you practise during your PE periods?'

'That's awesome, thanks Mr Sadler,' we chorused.

'I could ask my cousin Jake to come and teach us some stuff if you like,' Rangi offered. 'He's a B-boy in a crew in Auckland and he's staying down here for a few weeks.'

'That's sounds like an excellent idea,' agreed Mr Sadler. 'How about we start tomorrow, okay? Rangi, you let me know if that doesn't suit Jake.' We all went out to play a great game of softball then, wishing that we had Mr Sadler for English instead of Ms Cutter.

No-one missed the PE lesson the next day. Even Janice, who usually 'forgets' her gym gear, had shown up ready to have a go. Jake was awesome.

'Hey guys, I'll show you a bit of what I do then we'll talk about it,' he said. He put some Hip-Hop music on, it was a neat one by King Kapesi, and then he started breaking. Wow! He popped and he froze and did backspins and windmills. We couldn't believe a person could twist himself into so many spins and positions. He made it look really easy. Mr Sadler was impressed as well.

Jake talked a bit about Hip-Hop and its philosophy.

'Now while you can start by copying what I do, because that's a really good way to learn, it's important that everyone develops their own style. The essence of Hip-Hop is to have the freedom to move the way you want to and to express yourselves. If you watch me I will show you some of the simpler moves. Then you can put them together into a routine or pattern of your own. The main thing is to listen to the beat of the music and let your body move as you react to it in your own way.'

I could see that heaps of the boys and a lot of the girls were really keen on breaking. Not Gemma and the other ballet girls, of course, who scorned to do anything that didn't involve pink shoes, but nearly everyone else. I reckon even Mr Sadler would have liked to have had a go but he thought it wouldn't be dignified. He probably thought we'd laugh at him if he did it badly and we probably would have. He let Jake demonstrate a few of the easier movies then teach us how to do them.

'Ow, my body doesn't bend the right way. I'm sure my arms and legs are put on differently from everyone else,' I complained.

'You do look a bit awkward,' said Sarah, eyeing me critically. It didn't help that she was effortlessly copying Jake and he had said she was brilliant twice already.

'Try to relax, Chelsea and flow with the music.' I stumbled though a few more moves then collapsed at the side to watch the others. Some of the boys were very good at it and Rangi was nearly as good as Jake.

After we had copied Jake for a bit he said,

'You should all practise what I've shown you and I'll come back for the next session. You may want to have a few breakdancing rehearsals after school and I can come in for those too, if you want. I'm not doing anything else at the moment.'

We all thanked him and Mr Sadler said how good it was of Jake to come in and why didn't we show our appreciation in the usual way. So we all clapped like mad and some of the boys whistled and Jake looked really pleased.

'Can you help us work out a routine for the show?' Jason asked him.

'Yeah, okay. I don't mind doing that. I'll bring along some CD's of great music to use.'

Mr Sadler immediately said, 'No no, that's not necessary. I don't think the sort of music you would have would be suitable for a school production. Anyway, aren't you children writing your own music? '

'No,' I said and Joey said 'Yes,' at the same time.

'We can't possibly write halfway decent music, especially Hip-Hop stuff,' I protested.

'Yes we can,' said Joey defiantly. 'Mike and I can do it. You liked the ghost music.'

'That's because it is mainly sort of atmospheric background stuff,' I explained. 'It's not like proper music.'

'What do you mean, not proper music?' demanded Mike.

'I meant it wasn't like a tune or anything.'

'Music doesn't have to have tunes, you idiot,' scoffed Mike.

'I'm not the idiot round here,' I sneered. Mike is always so full of himself.

'Now, now, children,' Mr Sadler said soothingly. 'There's no need to get upset. You should be able to have a reasonable discussion without descending to abuse.' We both scowled at him.

Mike and I carried on a big argument about the music, with a heap of other kids all taking sides, and that went on into the next period and made us all late for Maths. We ended up by compromising. We decided to use a piece of music that Ty's brother had recorded with some friends and Sarah told Mr Sadler,

'Chelsea will write a rap to go with it.'

I was furious. 'Why did you say that?' I demanded, as we walked to the next class. 'I mean, if it is such a great idea to have a rap then why don't you write it? Or someone else? Why do I have to do it?' Sarah just smiled and said,

'I knew you'd do a good job of it and it is mostly using Shakespeare's words anyway. And it isn't as if you don't have time. You can take all week to write it, as there are still five weeks to go before the performance.'

I decided I would make her do my Maths homework for me as revenge. Not that it was a good idea to have Sarah do my homework too often. The problem is that she always gets all the answers right, while I can never manage better than about sixty per cent. This means that if I hand in stuff she's done for me, I'd get one hundred per cent and have to spend the next couple of weeks working flat tack. Otherwise the teachers would be suspicious of why my marks had dropped,

'We know you are capable of better than this, Chelsea.'

I suppose I should have been grateful that Ms Cutter was letting us use music at all.

'Why don't we go to my house after school and go through our tapes and CD's to see what else we can use for the production,' Sarah suggested. 'You can come too Janice,' she added kindly.

'Good idea. You're bound to have better music than we do,' I agreed.

Sarah's family sure had a lot of CD's and tapes and even a whole cabinet full of records. 'They belong to my Dad,' she said hastily. We sorted through her stuff and put on some really funky music that we were just starting to really get into when Sarah's Dad came in. I don't know what he works at but he does quite a lot of it from home.

'Turn that rubbish down,' he screamed. He turned down the volume on the CD player to a whisper. 'And that's still too loud,' he grumbled.

'Dad,' whined Sarah. 'That's too quiet. We can hardly even hear it.'

'Sounds plenty loud enough to me,' replied her Dad.

'Don't you know anything? You have to have it up loud enough to feel the beat pulsing, that's the way the music was designed to be played,' Sarah explained patiently.

'Not in this house, it doesn't,' he said grimly.

Sarah was looking really embarrassed. 'Don't worry,' I whispered. 'My Dad is just the same. He goes berserk as soon as any decent music comes on the radio or TV.'

'We're trying to find some music to use for the production we're doing for school, Dad,' explained Sarah. Her Dad said, 'Oh, why didn't you say so. I've got some great music here.'

He strode across the room and put on a record.

'No, Dad,' groaned Sarah. 'Please, not one of your old records. They are practically pre-historic. We must be the only people on earth who still play records,' she said rolling her eyes at Janice and me. 'And it's all old stuff. Some of it is actually pretty cool, like the Beatles,' she murmured to us, 'but I would die rather than admit that. '

'This is the Rolling Stones. It's a classic. It will be played for years and years.' Sarah's Dad nodded his head in time to the music.

'My Dad has stuff like that too,' whispered Janice.' He's far too mean to buy anything new.'

'At least he's not singing. My Dad sings to the records, loudly and off key,' I pointed out. 'And then he has the gall to tell me to turn the sound down when I want to listen to something. It is so unfair.'

Sarah complained, 'Why can't the music we listen to be classic as well? People might be playing it years later so how do you know that it's rubbish anyway?'

Sarah's Mum came in just then with a jug of orange juice and some crackers and cheese. She said, 'I've listened to the sort of music you play, Sarah. I am surprised that the record companies would record music with such dreadful words on it. They all seem to be about swearing and blood and death these days.'

'If you don't want my help then I'll leave you to it,' sniffed Sarah's Dad, turning off his record and stalking from the room.

'Oh,' moaned Sarah, when her mother had gone back to the kitchen, 'the trouble is they are both are so old they obviously don't get it. They'd rather listen to ghastly old singers moaning on about their ghastly old girlfriends who have left them and broken their hearts than to anything decent.'

'My Dad always shouts at me, 'Do you want to be deaf before you're twenty?'' Janice remarked.' So I say 'Pardon?' to him and it really pushes his buttons.' We laughed and Sarah made me make a list and start writing down the music we would use. We did end up using a range of stuff in the end, as we had to regretfully admit that our own CD's weren't really suitable.

For the Minuet we decided on that one by Beethoven that everyone seems to learn on the piano when they're about ten years old. Minuet in G. The next day Ms Cutter taught us a dance to it that we actually did in our English class. We nearly fainted with the shock. It was such a pleasure to do something other than comprehension that even the boys agreed to try it.

'The Minuet was done in the French Court and it was a walking dance,' Ms Cutter explained. 'The king and queen would lead a whole line of people behind them as they glided around the room with tiny steps.'

Apparently this was a highlight of their day, which goes to show how boring life in the court of France must have been.

Ms Cutter went on to say, 'Men and ladies would communicate by gestures during the dance and even by kissing.'

'I can communicate with gestures. I'll demonstrate a couple, if you like?' offered Mike. We were really looking forward to that, but Ms Cutter turned him down.

'Now please take a partner, yes that means a girl, Hamish, and decide on what signals to use. I suggest you use such things as lowering the eyes to mean yes or squeezing the fingers to mean no. Take your hands out of your pockets, you boys. And yes, you do need to hold hands with the girls.'

'Please Ms Cutter, Hamish is making improper suggestions to me,' Janice complained.

'I was only trying to communicate to Janice what a graceful dancer she is,' Hamish said virtuously. Yeah, right. Even Ms Cutter didn't believe that for a minute.

Brian rushed up and claimed Sarah as his partner and I ended up with that toad Eric. His mother is friends with my mother and they can never understand why we don't get on. Eric doesn't understand it either but I just don't like him. It's probably because our mothers shoved us together practically from birth and thought it would be so lovely if we were friends. That is enough to make two people enemies for life. Unfortunately Eric thought that being friends was a good idea as well. I don't. I don't want him following me around. I don't like looking up and seeing his sad sort of spaniel eyes gazing at me. I don't want him to carry my books or pump up my bike tyres or anything. And I mainly don't want him getting in the way of any other boy who might be interested in me.

I once tried to explain all this to my mother who was, as usual, totally unsympathetic.

'I expect you to be friendly with Eric,' she said, and _'or else you'll be in big_ _trouble'_ was written across her forehead in letters six metres high. Okay, so I may be exaggerating slightly but you get the picture.

So there's little Eric prattling on suggesting signals.

'I can hold up one finger to tell you how pretty you are,' he said.

Urgh!

'I can hold up two fingers in reply,' I said. Eric looked hurt. He's good at that. He gives the impression that you've taken away everything he ever cared for in life and his only remaining course is suicide.

I wish!

Chapter 8.

Fortunately we only went through the Minuet a couple of times, then Ms Cutter chose the people to do it in the production. We were secretly relieved about this, as even Sarah was doubtful about being able to convince some of the boys to dance.

'What sort of costume would we be wearing?' Aaron asked. 'We don't have to wear tights, do we? Because if we do, then no way am I going to do it.' The other boys nodded in agreement.

'How about we wear medieval suits of armour complete with broadswords and sabres?' Jason asked hopefully.

'I thought perhaps some type of tunic or tabards,' Ms Cutter said hesitantly, and the boys all fell about making vomiting noises. Mike pretended to faint and a couple of them went all mutinous and there were mutters of 'no way am I going to dance, anyway.'

Even Ms Cutter could see there was going to be a big problem with this so she sighed. 'All right then. I suppose that riding gear would be acceptable. By that I mean leather boots and trousers and a shirt with a collar.'

'We could wear jeans,' suggested Jason.

'No, not jeans.'

'But Ms Cutter...'

'No way are you wearing jeans. Not at all. No.'

'But Ms Cutter...'

'What part of no don't you understand, Jason?'

Rangi said, 'I've got a neat pair of white gumboots that used to belong to my cousin when he worked at the freezing works, before he got laid off.'

Ms Cutter said, 'No thank you, Rangi. Those are not the sort of boots I had in mind. I was thinking of riding boots.'

So in the end Ms Cutter had to choose boys who went to Pony Club and had the right sort of gear or else who could borrow it from their sisters.

Some of the boys wanted to wear swords for the Minuet but Ms Cutter said 'no, definitely not,' and then the bell went and we had to go to Science. The best part was she had been so busy telling the boys off she forgot to give us any homework. I was sure she would make up for it the next lesson though!

The boys who were doing the fight scene from Romeo and Juliet were going to use swords, much to their delight, and Mr Sadler offered to give them lessons after school in the gym on Friday afternoon. All of us girls wanted to watch so practically the whole class turned up. Mr Sadler looked pleased we were so keen.

'I'm happy to show you how to do this,' he began 'I used to do a fair bit of fencing when I was younger.'

Hamish sniggered. 'Do you favour wooden strainer posts or concrete ones, sir?' he asked. Mr Sadler frowned. He told Hamish to come into his office and they went in and shut the door. We listened really hard but we couldn't hear anything. The boys were all hoping he would be walloping Hamish as there is a rumour that Mr Sadler keeps a leather strap in his office, even though none of us has actually seen it. No such luck. It sounded like he was just telling Hamish off. There certainly weren't any screams of pain. After a couple of minutes they came out again. 'Right, let's start again,' Mr Sadler said. All the boys stood up except Hamish.

'Aren't you coming to learn to fight?' asked Mike.

Hamish muttered something we couldn't quite hear but it soon became apparent that he was going to be a tree in the production instead.

Mr Sadler started by teaching the boys different movements and told them how to hold their heads and where to put their feet.

'It looks a bit like one of our ballet classes,' Ruby whispered to Theadora. Fortunately, none of the boys heard her or I wouldn't have liked to open her lunchbox for a week or so. There would have been bound to be spiders or beetles in it!

'Everyone please find a partner, take a stick and hold them still, I said still Mike,' instructed Mr Sadler. 'We will now do some fencing moves. Make sure you don't connect with your opponent. I have no wish to explain to your parents why you have all gone home from school injured. It wouldn't look too good on my resumé.' He grinned at us. We all like Mr Sadler. 'It will still look very effective, particularly if you practise with your partner so he knows what to expect and how to react to it.'

When they finally started the fighting with the bamboo sticks, it looked awesome! Mr Sadler made them practise so they got really good at slashing and ducking. Occasionally someone would forget to duck in time and get whacked on the head with the bamboo and there would be a howl of pain from whoever's head it was. They looked pretty impressive though, as Mr Sadler made them stand tall and put one hand on their hip and turn sideways. That's to make yourself into a smaller target for the other person to hit. I guess it makes sense. Probably makes it easier to turn and run away as well, if the truth be told.

Even though Mr Sadler just used pieces of bamboo to practise with instead of swords, the boys made some really brilliant ones in woodwork. They painted them silver with spray paint and glued on bits of coloured glass and wrapped cord around the handles so they looked really authentic. Only thing is, they were not very strong so the fighting had to be pretend. You know, lots of 'take that,' and 'hah,' and 'have at you,' while they waved the swords around but didn't actually connect with each other.

Everyone was pretty stoked with the fight scene. Mr Saddler said, 'You boys don't need any more rehearsals as you can practise on your own or in groups now, and it will look better if it is free and natural and not too over-rehearsed.'

That was a relief. The one thing the Dance/Drama production was not going to be was over-rehearsed. It was hard to get all the kids along to rehearsals what with music lessons and sports practises. All the teachers had decided that the end of the year was a good time to put on special performances or competitions so some of the kids had to practise their piano or flute playing for hours on end or go to extra lessons. The cricket trials were held as well and the boys went around muttering things like 'silly mid-on' and 'bowled out.' Plus there were the usual things like physio appointments and people getting detentions or being off sick and staying home from school.

Not that anyone in our family ever gets to stay off school because of sickness. In our house you need a coroner's certificate before you get to stay home.

I'll go,

'Mum, I've got a really bad headache today so can I stay home?'

And she'll go,

'Oh, is it the Maths test today? You should have done more work for it. Bad luck, you're going to school.'

Dad's not much better. If I say I have to stay home because I have a cold he tells me how when he was young they had to go to school every day even if they were half dead of pneumonia. And that meant walking forty miles barefoot through the snow on two broken legs etc. etc.

Sarah's parents are really nice. They let her stay home whenever she wants to only she hardly ever gets sick. If she does, it's much more glamorous that anything the rest of us get. She gets gastroenteritis when the rest of us have a twenty-four hour tummy bug. We chuck and heave but she just lies in bed to recover, looking pale and interesting and having special foods cooked for her. Can't see that happening in our house.

'Mum, I'm not feeling well. I'd really like some roast chicken.'

'Well, fancy that! I'd really like some roast chicken as well.'

'Can I have some then?' (Hopefully)

'No, I don't happen to have any roast chicken at the moment. Eat up your mince and stop complaining.'

After Labour Weekend, Ms Cutter, the cow, decided it would be a good idea if we read a different one or even two of Shakespeare's plays each weekend for homework, then spent part of a lesson reading bits of them and discussing them in class. Erk. As if we didn't have enough to do already. She chose the plays we were doing for our production and said,

'This will help to give you a deeper understanding of the Bard so you can put on a more meaningful performance. I would like you to find a quote from each of the plays and put it into the sort of language we use today.' There were gasps of horror at this and some very dirty looks were directed at Sarah for being the cause of the whole thing. Fortunately for her, the quote idea didn't last long. The headmaster made one of his unannounced class visits just then.

'Carry on, carry on. Don't mind me. Just pretend I'm not here,' he said jovially, walking to the back of the room where we could all feel his gimlet eyes boring into our backs. He does this from time to time, does Mr Micklejohn. He seems to think the class will go on as normal but all it means is that we all start being really polite to the teachers and each other. The teachers don't tend to yell at us with him in the room either, so it's not all bad.

Ms Cutter simpered and asked, 'Has anyone found a good quote that they would like to share with the rest of the class?'

To everyone's amazement Mike put his hand up.

'Yes Mike?' asked Ms Cutter, pasting an interested smile on her face.

'What bloody man is that?' said Mike.

You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone sat there in shock and Ms Cutter went absolutely rigid. She drew in a deep breath then realised that she could hardly do her usual screaming act in front of the headmaster. Her eyes glittered dangerously.

'Mike Savage, you will apologise for that remark immediately.'

'But it's Shakepeare, Ms Cutter,' protested Mike.

'I've never heard such...'

'I'll handle this,' said Mr Micklejohn, striding forward to stand beside Mike. The rest of us cowered cravenly in our seats and tried not to cringe too obviously as he walked past us. 'Shakespeare is it?'

'Yes, sir. Macbeth. Act 1, Scene 2,' said Mike with an expression of injured innocence.

'Is that so?' barked Mr Micklejohn, who obviously had no idea whether it was or not. A few people opened their copies of MacBeth and started frantically looking it up.

'Yes, and I can put it in modern language too. I'm buggered if I know who that f...' began Mike. At that point Mr Micklejohn marched over and grabbed Mike by the ear between a finger and thumb and led him out to the corridor where we could hear him still protesting, 'I was only doing what Ms Cutter asked us to do. It was Shakespeare. It was a quote. She told us to do it...' getting fainter and fainter as they disappeared down the corridor to the headmaster's office. The bell went then so Ms Cutter told us we could go and made off hot foot to the staffroom.

We groaned and yawned though all seven of the plays. I didn't find it too bad as I had read them all already to find the bits we were using in the show. The boys liked the bits where some of the characters insulted others and went round saying things like, 'stay, on thy peril,' and 'fie upon it.'

We all got into the spirit of it and it became an unofficial competition to see who could come up with the best insult for the day. Brian was overseeing the rehearsing of the fairy scene one Monday lunchtime when Gemma grabbed his arm to get his attention.

'Unhand me, thou cream-faced loon,' said Brian grandly.

'How dare you insult me like that?' Gemma gasped.

'It's a quote from Shakespeare,' Brian told her kindly.

'You are a disgusting, horrible beast,' fumed Gemma.

'Is that a quote too?' asked Brian, knowing quite well that it wasn't.

Gemma was furious and turned and walked out without another word. The rehearsal was nice and peaceful after that but we knew it wouldn't last. All afternoon we saw groups of ballet girls whispering together and they all sulked and pouted at Brian for the rest of the week. Fortunately he was too busy to look up any other good insults to quote at them so things finally settled down again.

Every time we had English, and Ms Cutter asked if we had done our homework, at least one of the boys would pipe up, 'I have done the deed.'

Ms Cutter got pretty sick of it after a while and screamed at them,

'You are grating all my days of quiet with turbulent and dangerous lunacy,' which we all thought was showing off dreadfully. She then told us it was what the king had said about Hamlet and we all looked as bored as we could until she yelled at us to start doing comprehension. I hope we don't get her again next year.
Chapter 9.

We were reading The Merchant of Venice when Bethany said,

'I'm impressed that females got such good parts. I think Shakespeare must have been a really liberated sort of guy.'

Ms Cutter laughed. 'Probably not, Bethany,' she said. 'In Shakespeare's day, all the actors were men as the stage wasn't considered a suitable place for a woman.'

'That sucks,' muttered Janice, who was cherishing dreams of being an actress when she grew up.

'What about the girls' parts?' Mike asked.

'The female parts were all played by men dressed as women,' Ms Cutter replied. She should have known that this would set off all the boys. They flounced around and spoke all their parts in high voices with limp wrists after that. Ms Cutter eventually lost her temper, again, and gave all the boys detentions the next two lunchtimes in a row. It was such a relief. We managed to rehearse the witch scene from MacBeth and Portia's speech from The Merchant of Venice and they went really well. Sarah had learnt all her lines by now with me helping, and I knew them backwards.

There was a movie on in town about King Lear and we begged Ms Cutter to take us but she wouldn't because it wasn't one of the plays we were studying.

I said, 'It would be very educational, Ms Cutter, because it's Shakespeare and that it would give us heaps of ideas.'

Ms Cutter shuddered and said, 'That's what I am afraid of,' and changed the subject.

It's not fair. No one takes our class anywhere. We don't mean to be badly behaved but things do seem to happen to us. Last year on the bush trek, Joey got tired after the first half hour and went back and sat in the bus. Problem was, he didn't tell anyone and we spent the rest of the day searching the river and the bush for him. When we finally went back to the bus and found him reading a book the teachers nearly strangled him they were so cross. And that time at the museum it wasn't Janice's fault that the door handle broke when she went to the Ladies. And it wasn't her fault that they had to get a carpenter to take the hinges off the door to let her out. And Melanie can't help getting bus sick whenever we go anywhere on a bus. It's not like she does it on purpose.

November seemed to go really fast, what with all the teachers madly rushing to stuff all the work into us that had to be done by the end of the year, and rehearsals taking up every spare minute of time. Suddenly we realised with a shock that there was only one week to go before the performance.

Time is strange, like that. Sometimes it goes really slowly, like when you are waiting for the bus to come and it's raining and your shoes leak. Other times it's really fast, like trying to get changed at the end of a PE lesson before the next class comes in, when you can't find your sneakers and all your clothes are turned inside out and seem to have lost all their buttons. You think you have heaps of time to do something and suddenly it's now and you wonder where the time went.

We had planned a big rehearsal in the media suite that Saturday with all the class. We would have liked to use the hall but the floors were being polished and we weren't allowed to go in there. We were going to try and put the show together in order to see how it would go. That would give us an idea of how long it would take and if anything had to be re-written. I was crossing fingers and toes that it wouldn't.

Actually the rehearsal was a total washout. It started really well because Sarah's Mum picked me up in her car. It's a Mercedes. Sarah's parents are rich. I said to her once that if I had heaps of money like she did I'd buy cupboards full of clothes. Sarah said you could only wear one outfit at a time (she sounded like my father) and where would I wear all those clothes anyway? I looked at her in astonishment.

'I'd wear them to the next clothes shop, of course.'

So we arrived in style, although Sarah's Mum drove the car herself. They didn't have a chauffeur, they weren't that rich. All of the girls were there, and the ballet girls had all come dressed in their tutus and ballet shoes. Gemma's Mum was brushing Gemma's hair.

'It's so lovely to have a daughter with naturally curly hair,' she sighed, making sure it was loud enough for Sarah's mother to hear. 'It looks lovely no matter what I do with it.'

Sarah's hair is dead straight but as it is long and blonde I don't think anyone has ever considered it a disadvantage. Sarah's Mum smiled and said nothing while Sarah walked past Gemma as if she didn't exist.

Gemma smirked. 'I thought about tying my hair back but I've decided to leave it as natural ringlets,' she said smugly. 'We are all going to wear our hair loose.' I noticed that a lot of the other ballet girls had suddenly sprouted curls overnight, so there must have been some serious sessions with hair rollers and curling irons. Some of them were even wearing make-up.The room seemed abnormally quiet and I noticed that none of the boys had turned up.

'Where on earth are all the boys?' I asked Sally. 'They knew about the rehearsal, didn't they?'

'Apparently there is a big end of season exhibition rugby game on down at the park and a couple of the All Blacks are going to be at it,' replied Sally. 'So of course all the boys have gone along to that instead.'

'And naturally they didn't bother to tell us this beforehand,' Angela added. 'Oh, and Janice has gone too.'

Janice told us later that she went to the game because she didn't think it would matter if she missed the rehearsal. 'I'm not important enough. I'm only a witch, after all. Besides, I even got my brother's rugby ball signed by one of the All Blacks.' She was really pleased but the rest of us, though secretly envious, were far too annoyed to be impressed.

However at the rehearsal we did go through all the stuff we could and Mrs Barrington turned up with two enormous bags full of costumes.

'These are all finished now, so I thought you might like to see them.'

'Wow, Mrs Barrington, these are amazing!' We crowded around and helped her to unpack them.

'Can we wear them for the rehearsal?' Bethany asked.

'Because it is just you girls, and I know you'll be careful, I'll let you put them on. It's good idea to try them out as you'll find that you have to move a bit differently in some of them. It also can help you to get into character.'

'Gosh, thanks Mrs Barrington,' Sarah said and went off with her own pile to put them on. I was really sorry I didn't have a costume when the others got changed. Sarah looked fabulous in all her outfits, naturally, and the fairies looked amazing. They did this incredible weaving dance with long bits of chiffon, to the floaty tinkly music as it went:

Lulla, lulla, lullaby

Never harm

Nor spell nor charm

Come our lovely lady nigh

The lovely lady was Sarah of course, and even though the song sounds a bit dumb it was really effective. I had to admit Gemma was seriously good; all those hours of practise have obviously paid off. Mrs Barrington gasped and sighed and made the right sort of appreciative noises, and so did the rest of us who weren't fairies.

Then Sarah did her speech from the Merchant of Venice. She put actions with it, which looked great. She talked about the ' _gentle rain dropping'_ and she wriggled her fingers like rain falling gracefully from the sky. Then when she said ' _it is twice_ _blest_ ,' she crossed her hands over her chest slowly, one after the other. She did it so well I could see her mother getting really proud and excited and trying not to show it too much. Gemma's mother just sniffed and pretended to be far too busy fiddling with Gemma's hair and costume to have time to watch Sarah.

Next we did the witches' scene but it wasn't nearly as effective without Janice. The costumes were beautifully ghastly though and Mrs Barrington said the witches could wear really way-out makeup so that cheered them up quite a bit.

'I'm going to have green and silver all round my eyes to make them really stand out,' announced Angela. 'Gemma's Mum said she'd help me do it. She's really good at makeup because Gemma has worn it for ballet shows for years.'

Gemma's Mum smiled and said grandly, 'I'm happy to help anyone with their make-up.' Gemma looked a bit sour at this but she could hardly say anything in front of her mother.

On Monday at school, Ms Cutter asked how our big rehearsal went.

'Fine, only none of the boys came. They were all too busy.' I glared at Brian. I thought that he, at least, could have made the effort. Brian looked a bit shamefaced. I stood up said, 'Everyone has to be at the dress rehearsal on Wednesday after school. This will be our last chance to practise because the performance is on Thursday evening. '

I could see some panicky expressions on some of the boys' faces, and some of the girls' as well. We were all getting fairly excited about the production now, and the girls disappeared into the toilets every chance they could to try out make-up. They used oceans of toilet paper to wipe it all off before they had to be back in class, and the office lady was getting pretty peeved at all the requests for more toilet paper. We figured there would be heaps of time to do the make-up on Thursday, anyway, as our item was on last. The only problem was, we wouldn't be able to use the stage dressing rooms, as they would be crowded with little kids and their mothers. Mrs Barrington said we could use the Clothing rooms to get dressed in, and they are next to the Hall, so that solved that problem.

I was amazed when everybody turned up to the dress rehearsal. Suddenly the whole thing became real, especially being able to do it on the actual stage in the actual hall. We had pre-recorded the words of the songs; well actually Mr Murdoch had done that for us with Joey and Janice helping. He explained, This is in case you get nervous and forget to sing or in case the parents can't hear the words over the noise of the dancing.'

'We ballet girls never make any noise, Mr Murdoch,' said Gemma indignantly. Boy, is she deluding herself. They come down with a fair wallop at times on the wooden floor. Ty and Hamish sniggered a bit but hastily stopped when Gemma and her cronies gave them the evil eye.

'The costumes look really good, don't they Sarah,' I beamed. I felt proud of what Mum and Mrs Barrington had done in such a short time.

'They will look even better at night with the lighting on the stage. All the glittery bits will stand out then.'

Sarah looked gorgeous walking round in her Juliet outfit, but she was really pale, so I guessed she would need lots of makeup on the night. We started the rehearsal but when it was Sarah's turn to speak her lines, nothing happened.

'Romeo, Romeo,' I prompted her. Sarah stood there and said nothing.

'Romeo, Romeo,' I said again.

Sarah looked at me helplessly for a minute then shook her head.

'I've decided I need to rest my voice so it will be perfect for the performance. I'll just act the part and you can put in the dialogue.' So she stood there on stage and did the actions while I said all the words from the side. I thought that was a bit weird but Ms Cutter was getting fairly harassed about the whole thing by this stage and would have agreed to anything Sarah suggested.

The dress rehearsal went okay – almost. A few people, mainly boys, got their entrances wrong or started singing the wrong words, but generally it was fairly good. Ms Cutter said,

'Never mind, class. A bad dress rehearsal generally means a great performance and I hope you'll all break a leg.' We thought that was a bit unkind of her until she explained that it's traditional to say 'break a leg' meaning 'good luck' in the theatre. Apparently if you say 'good luck' it means bad luck. Weird.

We talked about the performance at lunchtime on Thursday.

'I reckon we should practise an encore in case the parents want more,' said Gemma. 'We always do that in our ballet productions.'

'Yes,' agreed Theodora. 'We always do an encore. You will have to write one for us, Chelsea.'

'No,' I said flatly.

'That is so not fair,' protested Charmaine.

'Tough,' I said. 'I have no intention of writing anything else.'

'Oh, you are so not helpful,' complained Phoebe, and the ballet girls all flounced off in a huff.

Sarah didn't say anything and then just before the bell went she burst into tears and rushed off to the girl's toilets. We were all taken aback as we have hardly ever seen Sarah cry before. I ran after her and she was sick in the toilets then said she wasn't going to do the show.

'But why, Sarah?'

'Because I can't, that's why.'

'But you're the star of the show. We need you.'

Sarah cried harder after that then Ms Cutter came and took her off to the sick bay, and the bell went for Maths. After Maths we had our English class and Ms Cutter announced,' Sarah has gone home. She isn't going to be in the show after all.'

'What?' We all gasped in astonishment. We couldn't believe it. According to Ms Cutter, Sarah's Mum had come to collect Sarah and said that she, Sarah I mean, had been worried about the production for the last couple of weeks. Apparently she'd been having nightmares and really bad migraine headaches she was so worried about it. Now the doctor had given her some tablets and said she wasn't to do the show if it frightened her so much it was making her ill. Can you believe it? Sarah scared?

'But she's been in heaps of shows before,' protested Brian. 'She's never been worried about them.'

'Yes, and Sarah has always been the leading angel or the princess,' Gemma pointed out, 'so what is the difference with this production?'

Well the difference was that angels and princesses don't speak – they just sit around looking beautiful. Sarah could do that okay, but she couldn't cope with the words and the acting. Just goes to show that you never can tell. I mean, Sarah's been my best friend forever and I never knew she got stage fright like that. She said later that the only way she got through the dress rehearsal at all was by knowing she wasn't going to go on for the show.

'And anyway, before that we were only in a little room. When I stood there on stage I couldn't speak. It was like someone had sewn my throat up or stuffed it with cotton wool.'

We thought that would be the end of the show, and some of the kids were muttering a bit about all the work they'd done being wasted, when Ms Cutter announced, 'Thankfully, Sarah has an understudy. Chelsea will take over Sarah's part.'
Chapter 10.

'Chelsea will take over Sarah's part.' Ms Cutter repeated as I sat there with my mouth hanging open in shock.

'What, me?' Be the centre of the whole show? Me? I felt sick. If Sarah had felt like this for weeks, no wonder she couldn't go on. 'I'm shorter than Sarah. The costumes will be too long for me,' I protested, which was all my feeble brain could think of.

Ms Cutter said, 'Mrs Barrington is going to alter them to fit you and you are excused from class to go and give her your measurements right now.'

I wandered off to the Clothing room in a daze. All those gorgeous costumes! Now it seemed like a great idea that most of them wrapped on like aprons. Mrs Barrington smiled at me through a mouthful of pins as she turned up the hems. I was still trying to think of excuses when I went home to break the news to my parents'

'I have to do Sarah's part in the Dance/Drama but I can't do it. I've got a spot on my face.'

'What, that little thing?' said my mother. 'I can hardly see it'

How could she miss it? It was the size of a basketball and flashing like a neon sign.

'I'll put some concealer on it for you and no one will see it,' she assured me.

I hoped it would conceal me completely so that no one would see me at all.

'But I've got braces on my teeth,' I wailed.

'No one will notice your braces,' my mother said firmly. She was so excited. This beat being the hind legs of a donkey by about a million light years. She made Malcolm and Billy have a bath and wash their hair and forced Dad into wearing his best jacket that he hates. Even Dad was beaming in delight as he rushed around putting film in the camera and wondering aloud if the newspapers would be sending any reporters.

I could hardly eat any tea as I was starting to get fairly excited myself as well, by then. I mean, I did know all the words and I'd been to most of the rehearsals.

The costumes had been altered to fit me and Gemma had said her Mum would help me put on my makeup. It had to be a success, it just had to.

I felt excited, but confident as well, as we waited backstage for our turn. The hall was packed with people. That was one thing about having a school that went from little ones right up to Year Thirteen, it always meant there were heaps of people to watch.

The class before us was doing an action song about daffodils. It was a bit of a cheat really, as they had already done it for the rest of the school on Daffodil Day, but the parents were clapping so that was all right. Then they all came crowding off, pushing and shoving past us to get down the stairs and round the front to see our performance. Ms Cutter walked onto the stage and everyone went quiet. She announced,

'My English class is going to do a mini Dance/Drama of excerpts from Shakespeare, ably written and narrated by Chelsea.'

I felt so strung out I thought I would burst, then Ms Cutter came off the stage and the lights went dim, except for one spotlight over the balcony.

I walked over and climbed onto the balcony. Actually it was a gate they had used in a play about a farm, but the boys had fixed it to a couple of nail boxes, with the help of Mr James, the woodwork teacher, who had made them a couple of bolts.

I stood there wearing about a ton of costumes, with the spotlight on me, and looked at the audience. The hall was packed and I could see Mum and Dad sitting with Malcolm and Billy about two rows back. Everyone was looking at me. I had never felt so important in my life and one part of me was hoping that the lights weren't reflecting off my braces, I was smiling so much.

Now that was the point at which I was supposed to say Juliet's speech.

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny they father, and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

So I took a deep breath and leaned forward over the balcony. I said,

'O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?'

The balcony rail collapsed and I fell onto the stage. The boys obviously hadn't tightened the bolts enough. Brian saw it happening and shrieked,

'I'm here darling,' and ran forward to catch me, so I landed on top of him.

There were a few minutes of frenzied thrashing around before we could get up, and the whole audience was laughing. They obviously thought it was part of the show. So we fixed grins on our faces and backed off while the boys rushed on with their swords for the fight scene and a couple of them dragged the remains of the balcony off the stage.

I was hissing, 'don't touch me,' at Brian and he was hissing back, 'I was only trying to save you.'

I said, 'I don't need saving, go away,' while still walking backwards and trying to smile at the audience.

The fight scene began really well with the boys doing the thrusting and parrying the way Mr Sadler had taught them. The painted swords looked terrific but then Rangi forgot to duck and Mike caught him over the head with his sword and it broke. The sword broke, not Rangi's head. So both Rangi and Mike were furious and took to each other. Soon all the other boys stopped their own fights to egg them on and the audience thought it was terrific acting and cheered like anything. Even Hamish stopped being a tree and started swinging his branches around and clobbering people. Brian swore and ran to tell Joey to turn the music on for the Minuet before Rangi and Mike killed each other.

The Minuet music started and the dancers pushed onto the stage and muttered for the fight boys to get off. Mike had an impressive nosebleed by then and he got an enormous cheer from the parents who thought it was tomato sauce. Rangi had to be pulled off stage by three of the other boys and I could see half a dozen of his cousins slipping purposefully out the side door of the hall. It looked like there was going to be quite a fight later.

We did the Minuet okay, although it was hard to move slowly and gracefully and smile pleasantly when we could hear scuffling and thumping coming from backstage. In fact the Minuet would have been perfect except for Jason. He did a really grand bow about halfway through and there was this loud ripping noise. We all looked at him in horror and saw that his trousers had split right across the crotch. Actually they belonged to his sister who wore them to Pony Club. We knew they were a bit tight for Jason but he'd said they would be okay as long as he didn't breathe too deeply.

'Help,' whimpered Jason. 'What do I do now?' Aaron started spluttering with laughter.

'Keep going with the dance,' breathed Sally. 'The audience might not notice.'

'But they're split right across,' moaned Jason.

'Keep going, don't stop,' we all hissed.

'Someone in the audience is taking photographs,' whispered Aaron gleefully. 'I saw the flash.'

Jason looked horrified at this and all the rest of us promptly got the giggles. We did the rest of the dance, and Jason just took tiny little mincing steps with his legs held together so no one would notice the split. The audience thought he was doing it on purpose and laughed and clapped and cheered and Jason got redder and redder in the face. We all giggled so much we forgot the last movement. Bethany waved her hand at Joey.

'Turn the music off,' she mouthed. Joey didn't understand and thought she wanted it louder. So the music boomed out as we all stood there snorting and going red in the face trying not to laugh. We gave a sort of bow and curtsey and rushed off stage in a big huddle around Jason who raced off to the clothing room, swearing, to put his jeans on.

The next bit was The Merchant of Venice.

'Here's your cloak, Chelsea,' Angela whispered, handing it across.

'Thanks,' I gasped as I grabbed it and hastily wrapped it around me. Portia is supposed to be a girl dressed as a man. Though of course in Shakespeare's day it would have been a man, dressed as a girl, pretending to be a man, which rather defeated the purpose if you ask me. It also probably meant that guys were no keener to wear dresses then than they are now.

The speech I had to do is a really famous one and I'd watched Sarah do the actions so I reckoned it would be okay. Wrong! I started off all right.

' _The quality of mercy is not strain'd,_

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath:'

I raised my arms and wriggled my fingers like rain, just the way I'd seen Sarah do it. Unfortunately all the Juniors were sitting on the floor right at the front and they thought I was doing an action rhyme like they learn at mat time. They all stood up and started doing the actions too. Then the parents thought that obviously they were meant to join in as well so to my horror they all stood up and made rain movements. I kept going; what else could I do?

'It is twice bless'd'

I crossed my arms on my chest one after another and the whole audience copied me. It was a nightmare. It was like I was some kind of bizarre aerobics instructor with a hall full of pupils.

' _It blesseth him that gives and him that takes'_

I gestured to one side and then the other. The audience did the same. I felt like an air hostess pointing out the emergency exits on a plane. Brian was standing in the wings with the rest of the class and they were convulsed with laughter.

'Stick your finger up your nose and see if they all copy you,' called out Eric, who was wildly excited by the whole thing. I turned and glared at him and the audience turned their heads as well.

I got really desperate then. I gabbled the next bit as fast as I could, my actions faster than the speed of light. The audience struggled to keep up with me, and as they heard the class shrieking with laughter from backstage, they decided it was some sort of comedy routine and started laughing as well. I clutched my face in despair and they all copied. I waved my arms at them to stop and they all waved joyfully back.

I screamed the last couple of lines:

' _And that same prayer doth teach us all to render_

The deeds of mercy,'

and ran off the stage hissing to Brian to put on the fairy music.

The audience slowly sat down, still laughing among themselves, and the music for the fairy sequence in A Midsummer-Night's Dream started up.

I ripped off my cloak and the Juliet dress and stepped on stage in my glittery fairy costume. There was a gasp from some of the girls in the Junior classes and I began to hope we could save the show after all. I waved at Brian behind my back, he said later that I gave him the fingers, but I didn't, so he would turn down the music while I gave Titania's speech.

' _Come, now a roundel and a fairy song;_

Then, for the third part of a minute, hence;

Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds,

Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,

To make my small elves coats, and some to keep back

The clamorous owl, that nightly hoots and wonders

At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;

Then to your offices, and let me rest.'

The audience listened spellbound. They listened in absolute silence. This was more like it. Malcolm told me later that one of the boys had accidentally pulled the backdrop control and evidently it kept dropping and raising again above my head and everyone was watching with bated breath to see if it would actually fall down and hit me.

As I spoke the last line, _'and let me rest,'_ the music started for the fairy dance. This began beautifully. I knew it would go well because the girls had practised it so much.

You spotted snakes with double tongue,

Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;

Gemma and Phoebe danced across the stage, doing amazing snake like movements with their arms and hips. Then Violet and Theodora, who were the thorny hedgehogs, sort of scuttled across the stage in shimmery silvery costumes. After that it was supposed to go onto the next bit;

Newts, and blindworms, do no wrong;

Come not near our fairy queen.

Unfortunately the music got stuck in a loop. It kept going:

Thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen;

Poor Violet and Theodora thought they'd better do it again and rushed across the stage the other way, colliding with Ruby and Charmaine who were waiting to come on as the newt and blindworm. Ruby and Charmaine were pretty miffed by this and Ruby pulled Theodora's hair.

'Are you a total moron, or what?' she spat. Theodora promptly burst into tears and kept saying, 'but that's my music, that's my music,' and the music kept going over and over with thorny hedgehogs. Violet lost her head completely and ran from one side of the stage to the other while the other girls started going off at Joey.

'You've mucked it up totally. You are ruining our dance,' shrieked Phoebe.

'It wasn't me. It must have been Janice,' said Joey defensively as he desperately tried to untangle the tape.

'That's right, blame me. Everyone blames me,' said Janice bitterly. ' Look, that bit goes under here.'

'Don't touch it,' Joey moaned. 'You've done enough damage already.'

Janice swore at him but fortunately Ms Cutter didn't hear her. Joey did though and he was shaking with rage as he looped up the coils of tape and wound them back onto the cassette.

All this time Violet was running across the stage and the other fairies would go on and try to head her off. She would whimper and duck out of their way to start running again. Of course the audience, the cretins, thought this was part of the show and clapped and cheered again. I could see my mother laughing so much she had tears running down her cheeks, while Gemma's mother was completely appalled. I found out later that she kept telling all the people sitting by her that it was 'obviously Chelsea's fault.'

Chapter 11

Finally Joey sorted the tape and the fairies managed to go through their dance, although the parents still laughed at bits of it. Theodora sulked and wouldn't go back on which made their numbers a bit uneven for the weaving bit.

They got a big clap and I rushed backstage to strip off the glittery dress piece and go on again as Ophelia.

Simon looked very impressive as Hamlet. He strode out onto the stage and people were actually quiet for a change. I sank down by his feet, which was not hard, as my legs had pretty much gone all wobbly by that stage of the proceedings. I was thankful for the rest. Simon began;

' _To be, or not to be: that ith the quethtion:'_

Then the ghosts all came in and started clanking and moaning while Aaron turned the spooky music and strobe lights on. Simon rushed off the stage and complained bitterly to Ms Cutter. There was a bit of shouting before the strobe lights went off again, followed by the ghosts. Simon came back onto the stage looking sanctimonious and started again.

' _To be, or not to be: that ith the quethtion:'_

Half the ghosts came on again, egged on by Brian who was desperate to drown Simon out, and were dragged off hastily by the other half who were terrified of Ms Cutter and what she would do to them afterwards. The audience all laughed and some of the little kids started calling out for the ghosts to come back.

Simon glared offstage at the ghosts and started again. This time he got as far as,

' _to thuffer the thlings and arrowth of outrageouth fortune.'_

Unfortunately Brian kept hissing 'sss' at him every time Simon came to an 'S,' which he said afterwards was just to be helpful. The audience thought this was great, and enthusiastically joined in the hissing for the rest of the speech.

Simon stood it until he got to; ' _Mutht give us pauthe,'_ then stormed off the stage in a huff. I got up to follow him and half the ghosts bumped into me as the strobe lights went on again. They reckoned they couldn't see very well in the sheets but one of them, I'm sure it was Ty, pinched my bottom so I slapped him. The audience didn't care. By that time they laughed at whatever we did.

The ghosts got a really good clap for their sequence then it was time for the witches' scene. Now that did go well, about the only thing that went the way it was supposed to. The witches carried on a really realistic looking cauldron which was actually Angela's mother's preserving pan. The witches walked around the cauldron chanting;

' _Round about the cauldron go;_

In the poison'd entrails throw'

They threw in bits of plastic bag and lumps of play-dough and other things that looked really disgusting but were actually quite okay really.

They all muttered;

' _Double, double toil and trouble:_

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.'

They'd practised their cackling and it was really effective. No one laughed and a couple of the little kids looked quite scared until one of them called out,

'That's my big sister Stacey. Hi, Stacey,' and kept calling out and waving until Stacey waved back which spoilt the effect a bit.

Anyway, they were witching away like mad and I was thinking, 'thank goodness something is going right,' while I was changing into my Lady MacBeth outfit. Then Janice wrecked it all by spitting in the cauldron. She said later she'd been carried away by the drama of the moment. But Angela was furious. She yelled,

'Oh yuck! Oh gross! That is so disgusting. My mother uses this pan for making jam and now I'll never be able to eat it ever again.'

She shoved Janice, who shoved her back, and the next thing you know they were pulling hair and screaming at each other. The other witches hauled them apart and off the stage but Angela wouldn't touch the cauldron and kept going on about how it would have to be sterilized before she would go near it again.

I had to go on then, amid all the laughter, to do my Lady MacBeth bit. That's the part where Lady MacBeth is sleepwalking because she has killed her husband. She keeps trying to wash her hands because she thinks she can still see her husband's blood on them. I was desperate to do this part well, especially because Jake had arrived backstage.

'I've come to watch you do the breakdancing,' he said with a grin.

'What a gorgeous little puppy, isn't she sweet? Is she yours?' cooed Bethany, as a little tan and white pup with floppy ears and big brown eyes staggered over and sat down at Jake's feet. He nodded.

'Her name's Jessie, and I can't leave her in the car because she would howl the place down.'

'You'd better not let Ms Cutter see her,' warned Aaron.

'It's okay, I'll, keep her quiet,' Jake promised.

We all thought Jessie was gorgeous and fought to have a hold of her. We girls all thought Jake was gorgeous as well, so I was hoping he would be impressed with my acting.

Eric was okay as the doctor, which was hardly a dramatically demanding part, although his voice kept breaking in the middle of his sentences so he'd start off deep and end on a squeak. The little kids thought he was doing it on purpose and laughed at him, and he went bright red, which really clashed with his carrot coloured hair. Grace was quite good as the gentlewoman although she spoke her lines really quietly so one of the parents called, 'Speak up, we can't hear you,' from the back of the hall. Grace was so embarrassed after that she only spoke in a whisper. I drew a deep breath as I prepared for my dramatic speech. I was going to give this one all I had. I turned towards the audience and called,

' _Out damned spot! Out I say!'_

There was a yelp and a shout from the wings and Jake's puppy rushed onto the stage. The puppy ran around me, leaping joyfully at my outstretched hands, obviously thinking I was holding a dog biscuit.

'What's she doing here? Get her off,' I muttered through gritted teeth at Brian, trying to look soulful and dramatic at the same time.

Brian called from the wings, 'Sorry, Chelsea. I think someone has undone her lead accidentally. Just keep going.'

So I continued.

' _Out damned spot! Out I say!'_

One of Rangi's cousins called out, 'That's not Spot, that's Jessie,' and the audience went all hysterical again.

I kept saying, ' _Out damned spot!'_ and looking desperately at the wings hoping that Brian would do the decent thing and come on and grab her. But the puppy was becoming more and more excited and leapt all over me and started trying to lick my face. Jake got the biggest cheer of the night when he came on stage to pick her up, as I think his entire whanau was there. We stumbled through the rest of the scene somehow.

Next it was As You Like It where we were doing the lip-synching to the rap music.

Everyone crowded onto the stage and Joey put the tape on for us. Now the words were really simple. They were basically the last two lines of the Duke's speech;

Play music! And you brides and bridegrooms all

With measure heap'd in joy, to the measures fall.

But I'd made them a bit more modern;

Play music! Now you b-boys and b-girls all

Move to the funky beat, hip-hop one and all

Okay, so it wasn't that great! I was so miffed at having to put words to Mike's music that I hadn't tried very hard. I know I should have had something different instead of using 'all' twice but no one cared. So we stood there and the music started and it was the wrong tape.

'Where did that come from? Have you been messing round with the tape?' Joey asked Rangi.

'Wasn't me, mate.' Rangi shook his head. Joey turned around to look for Janice, who was sulking behind the scenery on the other side of the stage. The rest of us didn't care. Suddenly we had this fantastic Hip-Hop music blaring out. Jason said, 'Right on.'

'Awesome,' agreed Ty and everyone rushed out to the front of the stage and started breaking. I was supposed to take off my long dress and just have my jeans on at this point but I couldn't get the laces untied, as they seemed to be in a knot. So after a few minutes of struggling I gave up. The parents were stunned as they heard the words – I guess there probably were an awful lot of swear words on it. It didn't worry us but I could see some of the mothers were rushing over to cover their little kids' ears.

Finally Ms Cutter ran back stage, and pulled the plug from the amplifier, and hissed at me, 'Do the epilogue quickly, Chelsea.'

So I stepped forward and launched into the epilogue;

' _It is not the fashion to see the lady, the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that...'_

At that point my worst nightmare came true and my braces locked together. I think one of the wires on my top teeth must have come loose when I fell off the balcony and it caught on the bottom braces. Ms Cutter kept glaring at me from the side of the stage and the rest of the class started tittering as I desperately tried to force the words through my clenched teeth. I struggled through a bit more of it,

' _If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue;'_ only it sounded like 'Uh uh ee ooh at oog eye ee o ooh, uh ooh ah a ooh ay ee oh e ee oh.'

It was so hard to get the words out that I had to sort of grunt them, and Malcolm told me afterwards that I sounded just like our pig at feeding time.

I decided that I had done well and truly enough, as the audience was still treating me like some type of comedy routine, and some people were practically falling off their seats. I stepped forward and ground out the last line

' _when I make curtsey, bid me farewell.'_

As I said 'farewell,' I stepped forward to sink into a graceful curtsey. Unfortunately I tripped over my long skirt where the tacked up hem had come undone during the breakdancing and with a yell I fell flat on my face. The only good thing was that the jolt jarred my braces apart again so I could talk. The class cheered and laughed and the audience laughed and clapped and I wished the floor would open up and swallow me, I was so embarrassed. It had to be the worst moment of my life.

Then the headmaster came onto the stage and held his hand up for silence.

'Well done, class,' he said. 'That was a Comedy of Errors but All's Well that End's Well.' All the parents and senior kids who knew their Shakespeare groaned at this.

We listened in open-mouthed astonishment, as he went on to say, 'While you have rather taken liberties with Shakespeare's works, the bard himself was famed for his bawdy humour and would probably have enjoyed your performance.'

We couldn't believe it. I thought we would have been in so much trouble for stuffing it up so badly but all the parents said at the end that they had never laughed so much in their lives before. Even Ms Cutter was smirking and pretending that she had organised it to turn out that way. Mr Micklejohn made me shudder by asking me later what comedy production I was planning for next year but he said very encouraging things to my parents about my 'potential.' That ought to be good for at least a week of getting out of doing the dishes.

Sarah came up to me when I was getting changed. She said she'd watched it from the back with her mother.

'You were excellent, Chelsea. I wouldn't have been able to do it nearly so well.'

'Everyone laughed,' I said accusingly. 'It wasn't supposed to be funny.'

'But it was, it was hilarious,' spluttered Sarah. 'I loved the bit where you pretended to fall off the balcony.'

I tried to explain that I hadn't been pretending but Sarah wasn't listening.

She admitted that she had laughed all the way through, particularly at the fairies, who she felt were long overdue for a good setback. She knew quite well that their bit wasn't supposed to be a comedy routine.

All the class said they'd enjoyed doing the production, all except Gemma and Theodora, but they never talk to me much anyway. Some of the boys had disappeared and I think there was a fight going on outside behind the bike sheds. But quite a few kids crowded around me.

Brian said,

'It's thanks to you, Chelsea, that we've done so well.'

'And it was neat fun, too,' agreed Grace.

'Yeah,' beamed Janice. 'My parents are really impressed with me.'

'Mine too,' chimed in Stacey.

I said, 'Don't thank me. Thank Sarah. After all, if it wasn't for Sarah we would never have done it.'

