Mr Masson silences the pre-recorded orchestra. ‘Is there a problem?’ he says with raised eyebrows.
The teachers from the other schools — a grim-faced, white-haired elderly man in a dusty black suit and a lean, handsome young man who doesn’t look old enough to be teaching yet — look my way interestedly. All the St Joseph’s girls are staring at me, too, and talking out of the sides of their mouths. It’s nothing new for Carmen, I suppose. Others in the room point and whisper. There she is, there’s the problem.
I am once more the still point at the centre of a spinning world and Carmen’s face grows hot with sudden blood. I can’t help that. I hate making mistakes.
‘No, no problem,’ Miss Fellows barks. ‘Tiffany, you take Carmen’s part. Rachel, step in for Tiffany. Carmen!
Sit this one out for now. Take it from the top of Figure 7.’ Tiffany shoots me a look of immense satisfaction and takes flight after Mr Masson reanimates the orchestra.
Frantically reading left to right from Figure 7, I realise belatedly that Tiffany must be one of the soloists.
Shit, I think suddenly. I suppose Carmen must be, too.
The freakin’ lead soloist. When she’s at home.
Chapter 6
I sit there mutely for what feels like forever before the bell rings for first period and students stampede gratefully for the doors. The other St Joseph’s girls are borne away on a wave of male admirers, which has to be something new for most of them. Miss Fellows and the other St Joseph’s teacher, Miss Dustin, steam over in righteous convoy and prevent me from leaving, from even rising out of my chair.
‘Not only did you embarrass yourself,’ spits Miss Fellows without preamble, ‘but you completely ruined it for everyone else! Delia looks to you for cues and what do you do?’ If Miss Fellows suddenly went up in a puffball of sulphurous smoke I’d hardly be surprised, but I’m only listening to her rant with half an ear. Something that Tiffany said before is bothering me and I’m chasing it down the unreliable pathways of Carmen’s brain. Hey, I have to work with what I’ve got.
Miss Dustin puts a steadying hand on Miss Fellows’ arm and cuts her off midstream. I’m seeing classic Good Cop, Bad Cop 101 being played out right here. No prizes for working out who’s who.
‘Is anything … the matter, Carmen?’ Miss Dustin says gravely from under her ridiculous bob. ‘You’ve been quite … out of sorts lately. I can help.’ I have to stifle a burst of laughter that emerges as a fit of unconvincing coughing. From Carmen’s point of view, there’s not a lot that’s going right at the moment, but it would be too hard to explain to Laurel and Hardy here. I shrug, when I probably should be cowering, which just sets Miss Fellows off again.
‘You’ve been acting like a flake since we got here, Zappacosta. Tomorrow’s your last chance or Tiffany takes over, and you know where we’re taking this piece, so consider it fair warning! Stuff this up and you’ll never sing a solo with this choir again. It will ruin your chances for performing arts college, and I don’t care how “talented” people think you are …’ She lets that one drift, but the implication is clear enough.
For a moment, I feel a twinge of discomfort, like a pulled muscle. Carmen?
‘Tiffany was always my first choice,’ Miss Fellows says sourly to her colleague knowing full well I am still listening.
‘Her voice doesn’t have the brightness and tone of Carmen’s, Fiona, and you know it,’ Miss Dustin murmurs in reply. ‘Carmen’s not as mature a performer, but you have to admit she’s really outstanding.’ Miss Fellows snorts. ‘ If she ever gets going! I shouldn’t have let you talk me into it, Ellen. She didn’t even try to sing. It’s like she’s had a personality bypass since we got here, and she didn’t have that much to begin with …’ There’s that internal twitch again. Don’t worry, Carmen, I think I hate her, too.
The music directors of the other schools file out behind Miss Dustin and Miss Fellows, talking quietly among themselves.
‘Two weeks!’ growls the old man. He shoots me an accusing look over his shoulder, as if the general lack of ability of the combined student bodies of Paradise, Port Marie and Little Falls is somehow my personal fault.
‘Less,’ replies Mr Masson glumly. He doesn’t look at me. I am just one more malfunction in a morning of malfunctions. ‘It’s right on track to be a fiasco this time.’
‘Lauren Daley would have been able to sing that part,’ murmurs the good-looking, young male teacher, who seems to have forgotten that I’m there.
Mr Masson nods. ‘A phenomenon. A once-in-a-lifetime voice. She could have carried them all single- handedly. People would have paid just to hear her sing, never mind the others. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of that girl.’ What was it that Tiffany said again? It won’t come clear.
‘Lauren Daley is dead!’ the elderly man exclaims, bringing my attention flying back to them.
All three reach the threshold of the hall. Somehow I can still hear them clearly, as if they are standing just beside me. Are the acoustics that good in here?
‘You don’t know that,’ Mr Masson replies stoutly.
‘Well, if she’s not, she’s as good as,’ the older man mutters as the group turns the corner, leaving me sitting alone in a sea of battered chairs.
What was it that Tiffany said? And it suddenly hits me in that dusty, echoing room. Lauren Daley was a soprano, a standout, a star. Like Tiffany thinks she is; like Carmen is supposed to be. That’s what I was trying to remember all along.
I have to find Ryan Daley. If he hasn’t made the connection already, someone has to tell him.
Maybe I’ve evolved, maybe I used to be some kind of impossible princess back when we first met, but Luc doesn’t know me well enough now if he thinks I’ll just sit around on my borrowed ass and do nothing. If you’ve got a surfeit of time and you need it to fly, you’ve gotta keep busy. Rule numero uno, my friends. Worked out the hard way. Take it from me.
Ryan Daley had a reputation as a troublemaker and I like troublemakers. Always have. Provided they don’t hurt people who don’t deserve to be hurt, I’m all for them.
But Ryan Daley refused to be found all that day. I went from class to class on the fringes of the St Joseph’s crowd, keeping a lookout for six foot five of total knockout, vigilante, gun-toting loner, and all I got was more gossip, conjecture and fantasy.
‘He’s like the Phantom,’ sniggered one of the gangly, amateur tenors who’d attached himself to Tiffany like an adoring limpet. He was good looking in a wet, severe-side-part kind of way, if you didn’t focus on the obvious crater marks on his cheeks from recurrent acne.
‘If it weren’t for the Lauren thing, he’d have been canned ages ago.’
‘She was hot,’ added a towering bass called Tod, who had a footballer’s build now but would some day run to fat. ‘Pity.’ If he’d just come right out and said something tasteless like the world had enough ugly chicks in it without someone making off with one of the good ones, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It was what he meant anyway. Like he’d ever had a chance.
‘There was always something weird about those two,’ sniped a delicate, pretty redhead I recognised from a photo on Lauren’s dresser. Both girls with their arms twined around each other’s necks in a Forever Friends photo frame. ‘It went way deeper than the twin thing.
They shoulda looked at him a lot harder than they did.’
‘And you should know, Brenda,’ added the spotty boy. ‘I mean, she’s his ex and everything.’ He licked his lips as he addressed this last remark to us, the interlopers without the necessary backstory.
I zeroed in on Brenda for a second and wondered what Ryan had seen in her. She was pretty, I supposed.
In a high-maintenance, high-fashion, don’t-touch-me kind of way.
Tiffany, Delia and Co exchanged satisfied glances as the home crowd bore us towards the school canteen for further updates on the Lauren Daley abduction and subsequent fallout. All day, I listened quietly in my guise as Carmen the stuff-up, Carmen the public disgrace and non-entity, and quietly grew angrier as the day progressed. Who says people don’t speak ill of the dead?
