Ruby Parker: Musical Star

“Is that what we’re doing?” I asked her.

Adele frowned at the magazine and then at me. “What?”

“Is that why we have to sing for Mr Petrelli? So that he can get a choir together to enter this competition?”

“That’s right. I told you it was a schools competition,” Dakshima said, appearing at my shoulder. “Thanks for saving me a space in the queue, by the way.” She winked at the girls she had just pushed in front of, who grumbled but didn’t say anything because everyone liked Dakshima.

“I’m not going,” I said, picking up my bag.

“Hey, hang on,” Dakshima said. “You can’t just leave. Mr Petrelli’s doing a register for every year group. If you don’t sing with us now, he’ll only make you go back again and sing on your own. What’s your problem, anyway?”

“Nothing, there is no problem, but this is a waste of time. He won’t want me in his choir and I just…I don’t want to be involved with this. I’ve given it up. I left stage school, turned down film roles in Japan and everything. I don’t want to act any more or sing or do any kind of audition. I want to do biology and show an interest in fractions!”

Dakshima frowned at me and tutted, and I worried that I’d blown our fledgling friendship already.

“It’s only singing in the school hall, not The X Factor. If you’re no good, he’ll tap you on the shoulder and you can go, and no one will even care.”

“That’s my point!” I tried to explain. “I don’t want to get tapped on the shoulder any more. That’s why I left the Academy, because I couldn’t take getting tapped on shoulders any more.”

“What are you on about?” Dakshima asked me, but before I could answer, the hall doors burst open and Mr Petrelli appeared, armed with a clipboard and a determined look. It was too late to escape.

“Right, Year 9, it’s your turn now, and let’s hope you’ve got more to offer than Years 10 and 11. At this rate I’ll be entering a choir with only four members and we’ll never get our hands on the money.”

“Are you religious, sir?” Dakshima said as she walked past him into the hall.

“Why do you ask, Dakshima?

“Because you must be hoping for a miracle!” Dakshima said, making the others giggle.

I didn’t laugh because my stomach was in knots and I felt like butterflies had moved into my chest. I felt exactly the same as I had the time I auditioned for Oscar-winning director Art Dubrovnik and that day I threw up on my feet. This was only a school choir, a bad school choir at that, and I still felt the same. What I didn’t understand was why.

As Mr Petrelli called the register, I looked longingly at the door and wished I could escape.

“OK,” Mr Petrelli called from the stage. We all stood in haphazard lines in front of him, the boys messing around at the back and the girls chatting. Some things never change no matter what type of school you go to. “CAN I HAVE SOME QUIET, PLEASE?” he yelled.

The talking lowered to a murmur and Mr Petrelli switched on an overhead projector. A set of words flashed up on the screen at a slight angle. I recognised them.

“This is how it’s going to work,” said Mr Petrelli. “If I tap you on the shoulder, you have to go. If I don’t, you stay – and don’t sneak off because I will hunt you down and I will make you sing.” There was a collective groan. “Now, I thought I’d give you all a song you know so I’ve picked last year’s dreadful Christmas number one, You Take Me To (Kensington Heights).”

“Don’t make us sing that rubbish,” one of the boys called out.

“That’s Ruby Parker’s boyfriend’s song,” Adele told everyone at the top of her voice. “Except he chucked her!”

For a second, the whole of Year 9 looked at me. I dropped my chin on to my chest and prayed for a hole to appear in the floor, but God obviously wasn’t listening.

“Well then, Ruby, I expect you to be the best,” Mr Petrelli said. He pressed play on his CD player and the opening bars to Danny’s number one song filled the hall.

“Two, three, four!” Mr Petrelli yelled, waving a baton at us like somehow it was going to make us sing better.

“Before I met you, I was on a dark and dusty shelf.

Oh and I hated myself

Cos I was all alone…“

The whole of Year 9 sang more or less in unison.

“I can’t believe I actually have to do this,” I complained to Dakshima over the singing, as Mr Petrelli walked long the row in front of us, tapping shoulders as he went. “I thought I had been humiliated about as much as possible for a girl of my age – but apparently not.”

“Oh, chill,” Dakshima said. “It’s only a bit of singing, Ruby, not the end of the world.”

It was clear if I was going to be friends with Dakshima then I was going to have to tone down the drama queen thing. But that was one of the things I liked best about her. She made me be me, and not some acted out version of the me I thought I should be to impress other people. Dakshima winked at me and just as Mr Petrelli started to walk down our row and I joined in with the singing. After all, I decided, I might as well get it over with as quickly as I could.

“And now, your love lifts me,

So high and so easily.

And I know I’ll love you

With all of my might,

Because you

Take me to –

Kensington Heights!“

As I sang I watched Mr Petrelli approaching, tapping shoulder after shoulder as he went. Only two other people from our row were still standing by the time he got to me and Dakshima, and Adele wasn’t one of them.

“This is a fix,” she said angrily as she marched off.

It seemed like Mr Petrelli stood there for ages, torturing me as he listened to me trying to sing my ex-boyfriend’s number one single, and it felt like he was never going to tap me on the shoulder. When he nodded and moved on to Dakshima I realised why.

I, me – Ruby who can’t really sing, had somehow made it into the choir without even trying. It was a nightmare!

I stared at Dakshima as he nodded at her too and moved on.

She grinned at me still, singing along to the tune, but inserting her own words now.

“This is going to be so cool,” she sang. “We’ll get totally loads of time off of school rehearsing for the competition.“

“I don’t want to be in the choir,” I sang back. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.“

“Don’t sweat it, Ruby,” Dakshima replied tunefully, making me realise that she actually did have a very nice voice. “There’s no way Highgate Comp will ever get past the first round!“

As she finished on the last note of the song with a flourish, I looked around at the few people from our year group that remained. I couldn’t believe I was one of them.

“Right, children,” Mr Petrelli said, pushing the stop button on his CD player. “Thank you for joining the choir. Rehearsals are every lunchtime and after school starting tomorrow. You can bring a sandwich with you, OK? Now get to class.”