The Summer of Kicks Page 10
Practice cancelled for today, my star pupils – bit of a home emergency situation – but I have complete faith in you all. Hire the movie, get together, Skype each other – whatever it takes. Learn your lines and your moves and we’ll dazzle them on the night with a truly great performance. – Miss Kellaway
Grease is the word? Apparently not today.
I turn around to scan the crowd for Candace. If I can find her, maybe we can work together, sit under a tree and go over our scripts. I’m standing on tip-toe, pivoting. Searching. I see two or three groups of guys. Large packs of girls. Wait, there’s Jenna. She’s standing with Sara-with-no-H and Kasey and my brown-haired Candace substitute. I move towards them, counting the heads in their circle. There should be five, but again it’s just four. Candace isn’t with them.
‘Hey, you guys,’ I say. ‘Have you seen Candace?’
And it’s Jenna who seems to be the spokesperson for the Pink Ladies. The self-appointed real-life Rizzo. ‘Candace isn’t here,’ she says. ‘She had to go home. Her dog died.’
‘But … didn’t her dog die like … last week?’
‘No,’ says Jenna, flatly. But it did. I know it did. Why would she straight-out lie to me?
‘But how are we going to practise?’ I say. ‘Candace and I – we have a bunch of lines together. And dancing. We can’t get it right on the night if we don’t practise it first.’
‘Sure you can,’ says Sara. ‘Candace knows her part. And you’ve read the note – go home and watch the movie. Sing along in the mirror. Practise the kissing scenes with your mum. Whatever it takes, right? That’s what Miss K said.’ And she turns away from me, her face swallowed up by the Pink Ladies’ elite closed circle.
‘I’d like to direct my next question to Danny Zuko.’
Square nine, bottom right, lights up and with a twirl of his chair, John Travolta circa 1978, spins to face me.
‘Danny,’ I begin.
‘What are you, a nerd?’ he says. Labelled already. ‘Guys call me Zuko.’
‘OK, Zuko,’ I begin again. ‘When you had the hots for Sandy and you decided to change for her, you know, be a track star and wear that nerdy cardigan to get her attention …’
Travolta nods, running a flat palm against the side of his head, front to back, to slick down any stray hairs that may have required slicking down.
‘She noticed you, right?’ I say. ‘I mean, she didn’t care that you were a dork?’
‘What you’ve gotta understand,’ Zuko says, ‘is that Sandy’s a classy chick. She means a lot to me. Y’know, we had that whole summer together – bowling in the arcade, stayin’ out till ten o’clock, rockin’ and rollin’, so yeah, I thought maybe I’d trade in my guys and my cool for one chick, you know. See how that worked out,’ he says. ‘But it turns out I didn’t need to. If a chick digs you, she digs you.’
‘And if she doesn’t?’
‘Who knows?’ he says, combing his hair again. ‘Chicks always dig me.’
I thank the grease-ball for his advice. If this was Rydell High and I was 1970s John Travolta, I’m sure I’d be beating Candace off with a stick, but somehow I find myself no further ahead.
Nan has her feet up on the ottoman that we all affectionately call Bruce.
‘Hey, nanny goat,’ I say, and Nan smiles back. She always smiles when I call her nanny goat.
‘Just watching my play, darling,’ she whispers. It could be any one of a hundred different crappy daytime dramas she’s staring at, but to Nan they’re all as important as each other, and each one of them is her ‘play’. I wait for an ad and mute the sound.
‘You haven’t seen the three big boxes of records that were in my room, have you, Nan? They were there, but …’ I shrug. ‘Now they’re not.’
‘Oh, darling,’ says Nan. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve seen plenty of boxes around, mind you, but I’m pretty sure that none of them were yours. Been de-cluttering my room,’ she says. ‘So much stuff, the walls were closing in. There were umpteen dozen things I brought here just after Pop-pop crossed over. You know, mostly just old books and magazines – things I’ll never read again. Some of those boxes were heavy, too. I could have used your muscles earlier on, knucklehead,’ she says, and whacks me lightly in the arm. ‘Lucky those Salvation Army boys were here. One minute they were stacking boxes on to their trolley and the next thing I turn around and they’re starting up the truck and they’re off. I tell you, they made light work of it.’
‘They didn’t go near my room, did they?’ I say.
‘Oh gosh, I’d be fairly certain they didn’t,’ she says. ‘I mean, I had to shuffle off to powder my nose for a bit there, but I told them very clearly, just take the brown cardboard boxes and nothing else.’
‘But Dad’s records were in brown cardboard boxes,’ I say.
‘Oh, darling.’
I run to my room, the door is wide open, and as much as I desperately want it to be a different result, it’s just as it was before. There are no brown cardboard boxes of records in sight. Holy crap, Nan – what have you done?
Chapter 18
Educating the public
So it’s the night of the actual performance. The auditorium is clogged with parents and kids and teachers, and Mum’s backstage helping Miss K with some last-minute farting about, and I’m standing here on the stage and the lights above me are burning into my skin. I’m sweating and I really can’t see much past the first row of people in the audience, which is probably a good thing.
Nineteen fifties-style music is being unceremoniously murdered by the school band, but it’s not my focus. The crowd. The lines to remember. The dance moves. Candace.
I’m dressed in tight black jeans that are doing my goolies no favours. White T-shirt. Black leather jacket. Rizzo is standing before me, a gaggle of Pink Ladies huddled closely behind her.
‘Hey Zuko,’ Rizzo says. ‘We’ve got somethin’ for you.’ The pack of Pink Ladies separates, and this is my moment, the moment that Candace and I are finally together onstage, and the Pink Ladies shove her towards me, all 1950s big skirt and socks and blonde ponytail.
‘Mum? What the hell?’ I say, holding my hand over the furry section of my headset mic. The audience is watching us and from a distance, from the paid seating, and with the costumes, the stage lighting and the make-up, it probably isn’t that noticeable that it’s my mother up here onstage with me and not Candace McAllister. To most people there’s probably not much difference at all, but to me there’s a difference. There’s a huge difference.
‘What the frickin’ hell are you doing here?’ I say.
‘We just moved here,’ Mum says. ‘From Australia,’ and she’s keeping it going. Continuing the play, and I’m supposed to say another line – to respond, but I can’t remember anything, and Mum’s grabbing me in some kind of teenage embrace and she’s saying, ‘Oh, Danny, I’ve missed you,’ and I’m standing, shell-shocked, and now the music’s kicking in – the intro to ‘Summer Nights’ – and I can hear Mum loudly whispering, ‘Dance, darling!’ I start to dance, but I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and it’s supposed to be Candace out here with me. Candace McAllister and me – the king and queen of the school musical, glorified and immortalised for all time, but instead I’m sharing the romantic lead with my mother and she’s singing about summer loving and how it happened so fast, and just as the Pink Ladies are asking my mother if it was love at first sight, the music changes tempo, and a God-awful cardboard hot rod is wheeled out, and I’m expected to launch straight into the chorus of ‘Greased Lightning’ but when I spin around, I accidently clip Mum on the side of the face and as she begins to fall backwards, struggles to maintain her balance, she reaches out a hand, successfully finds mine and proceeds to pull me down.
And I’m now lying on the stage. On top of my mother. And we’re face to face. The entire auditorium is staring.
I look at my mother, desperately hoping that she’ll do something or say something that will make this state of affairs even the slightest bit more bearable.
‘And this,’ Mum says, attempting to make light of the situation, ‘is the missionary position.’ Instantly the whole place is in hysterics. Sheila Sweet, celebrity sex therapist, is in session, and as I lie here on top of her in a hall filled with hundreds of people, all pissing themselves laughing at me, and with Hemmo recording the whole thing, I realise that from this moment, there’s very little chance of social recovery.
‘One minute, people!’ Miss Kellaway, present and accounted for, is fussing around backstage like a caffeinated peacock, checking skirts, dabbing make-up and giving actors their cues. Six minutes down, six to go, as Connor Shrieve from my art class stands at the side of the stage, gripping the cord, ready to open the curtain on act two.
‘Oh, darling,’ says Mum, rushing over, adjusting her Sandy wig and giggling. ‘You handled that pretty well. It wasn’t too embarrassing for you, was it?’
‘At least you didn’t dack me,’ I say. ‘But there’s still the second half. Why the hell are you Sandy? What happened to Candace? Or that girl with the brown hair?’
‘Alice Hill, the owner of said brown hair, is home with tonsillitis,’ says Miss Kellaway, swishing our way, ‘so we’re a Pink Lady short. But Candace? Well, who knows what happened to that girl!’
‘Miss!’ Sara-with-no-H squeals, and she’s pointing off to the right, and I turn my head to look and emerging from the crowd of buzzing, fifties-dressed kids, through a sea of girls with hooped skirts and blonde hair and ponytails is the one blonde-haired, ponytailed girl I’ve been waiting for. It’s Sandy. The real Sandy.
My Sandy.
‘Oh, good gracious, girl, where have you been? Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter,’ Miss Kellaway says in a hurry and a fuss. ‘Hair’s good,’ she decides, ‘make-up … passable. Know your part?’
‘Sure, Miss,’ says Candace.
‘OK, OK, no time, just … just race back there with Sheila and switch clothes and for heaven’s sake be quick!’ Mum and Candace scurry off to change. During this performance break I was supposed to be going over my lines, making sure that I was ready to roll, but now all I can think about is standing onstage with Candace McAllister and with seven mini-songs and two extended dance routines ahead, the butterflies in my stomach are growing and growling and I suck in a deep breath, hoping that will keep them at bay. I want to ask her what happened – what was so important that she blew off practice those two times, but maybe her dog did legitimately die on at least one occasion, which means that maybe she ditched only rehearsal once. Hell, she could have been sick the other time. A bout of gastro? Lady troubles? Who knows. Chances are she really did want to be a part of this – to be Sandy to my Danny – and she would have been at practice if she could. Either way, she’s here now and Miss Kellaway is calling ‘places’ and ‘ten seconds to curtain’ and there’s running and scattering and I’m not in this first part so I’m just about to head offstage when Candace reaches both hands out to me and adjusts the collar of my leather jacket and for the shortest moment, everything is still.
‘Perfect,’ she says, and pats my cheek with her hand. ‘Now, make me look stupid,’ she adds with a gorgeous smile, ‘and I’ll kick you in the balls.’ I decide to take that as an updated version of ‘break a leg’, and I turn to walk away to take my place offstage.
‘OK,’ Candace says either to me or to herself. ‘Let’s do this.’
The curtains pull apart and the crowd, possibly due to the events of act one, are in high spirits. It’s just Candace onstage. She’s hopelessly devoted to someone and God how I wish it was me. It’s one of the big numbers, but she only gets one verse and a chorus, and I could have watched her for hours out there, but Candace is wheeled offstage and the lights dim, which is my cue. My stranded-at-the-drive-in cue. My solo – just me and the stage and hundreds of people – and I’ve been talking myself into this for days now, telling myself that it’ll be OK and this condensed version is only forty seconds and I don’t want to make her look bad, don’t want to disappoint Candace, but the butterflies in my stomach have turned into mad, flapping pterodactyls that are trying to eat me from the inside out and I just want to get past this and fast-forward to the scene where the nerdy cardigan Danny meets the super-hot Sandy in her tight, tight clothes and we dance together and my hands are on her waist and her hips are swinging in time with the music, up and down, and she feels so good and holy crap, holy crap, I can’t go out there now! Bloody hell, why are there parts of your body that you have no control over? Teenage boys have hormones, Mum would say. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Unless, of course, you’re about to walk out onstage in front of hundreds of people with nowhere to hide. Holy crap, why is this happening now?
The music is slow, ballad slow, and I think about running. About heading down the stairs and out the back door, but before I bury that idea, someone has shoved me hard in the back and I stumble out onto the stage, the crowd responding with fervent applause. Whooping, laughing, cheering, ‘Way to go, Starrphyre’-ing. Much appreciation for my efforts during act one. But once the noise dies down, it’s just me. Me and the spotlight. And a hand-held microphone that I’m holding strategically in front of my increasingly uncomfortable jeans.
I know my first line, and Miss K points at me from offstage, telling me that I’m good to go, that this is it. Some fears you can run from and some you just have to face head-on. It’s ‘go big or go home’ time and for Candace, if not for any other reason, I decide to go big.
After a stomach-steadying breath, I grip the microphone with both hands. Down where I’m holding it, no one beyond the first three rows will possibly be able to hear me sing, but I’m going to belt it out and hope for the best anyway. The song’s opening line bursts through the speakers. I look out into the crowd, trying to catch some faces to gauge the audience response, but all I get is burning white light shining directly into my pupils. From the sound of the applause they seem to like it. I sing the following line and the next and it’s going quite well. And it’s not until the chorus, the part where I’m singing about missing Sandy, that I miss a word, have to stop and collect my thoughts, and I realise what I’m singing and what the crowd is hearing are two very different beasts. It seems that John Travolta – movie-version Danny Zuko – is singing this one for me. Someone’s flipped from backing track to the actual movie soundtrack and John Travolta’s having a great old time crooning away with his geeky vocal inflections, while up here in the spotlight, like the Chili Peppers that time at the Super Bowl, it turns out that I’m just miming. The way this is going, I’ll take any help I can get. For better or worse, I keep my lips flapping in time with Travolta and set my focus on the scene to come.
Drive-in off, Shake-Shack on, and it’s carnival time and this is the moment. Candace and I together in front of everybody. She’ll look into my eyes. She has to – it’s in the script, and we’ll have chemistry. Amazing onstage chemistry that people will notice and talk about, and I’m sliding one arm and then the other inside a cardigan that some kid has thrown to me. And there she is. Candace McAllister and she’s about to suggest that I tell her about it. She’ll call me Stud and we’ll dance and hold our way to the final number and this feels amazing. I’m nervous beyond anything I’ve ever felt, but I’m so ready, and I get it, Travolta – I do have chills because of Candace – she is the one that I want.
Standing before me, her face within an arm’s reach of mine, Candace McAllister looks incredible. She’s wearing skin-tight black pants, sexy black top and high heels. She’s the new and improved Sandy and even for her it’s a transformation. The music kicks in, the first two bars, and I’m moving, kind of dancing to the beat, I’m taking off my cardigan, and my eyes never leave Candace.
This is the part where we declare that yes, we do actually like each other, and even though it’s just a school musical, this is going to be one of those moments that I hold onto forever. Will she look at me? Look into my eyes? Will she smile when she tells me she needs a man? I’ll follow her towards the cardboard carnival sign, and we’ll dance around the subject, quite literally, for a moment before she tells me that her heart is set on me.
‘Just keep going!’ It’s Miss Kellaway, yelling from the sidelines.
What?
She’s making horizontal circles in the air with her finger, a signal that the show must go on, and I don’t really understand what she’s doing, because the show is going on, isn’t it? But people are running, scrambling, and Candace is one of them. Suddenly dozens of kids are onstage and props are being wheeled in and dragged out in a mad frenzy and it takes me a moment to realise that the show is going on. But it’s going on to the next scene. Some idiot backstage must have sat on the all-controlling iPod or pressed the wrong button or hit fast forward or something because it’s skipped straight to the next track, and we’re now at the finale. The show must go on. Even if it means that our big duet is over before it began. And as the faces of all the other kids in the production mill around us, happy and dancing and boogety-boogety-shoo-ing their way through the final number, I can’t escape that feeling of ‘almost’, of how because of a technical error I’ll now never have that moment – even if it was scripted – where Candace McAllister tells me that I’m the one that she wants.
Chapter 19
Viral analysis
Goat’s cheese is hardly the most obliging object when it comes to things that melt successfully in a sandwich press but, besides a sagging half-tomato, it’s all I can find in the fridge that qualifies as toasted sandwich filler. Mum and Nan have dropped me off on their way to dinner at the club, and the text that’s just appeared from Rue tells me that she and the Tool are off to a movie, so just like Macaulay Culkin, I’m home alone. I lift the lid on the sandwich press and slip my cheese and tomato sourdough onto a plate.