“Can we please dim the lights?” Miss Balogun’s voice floats across the hall.
Tally blinks and looks up.
“Tally!” Miles reaches across and pulls down the switch on the light board. “Miss Balogun has called you three times! You have to focus on the script or I’m not going to let you do any of the cool stuff.”
“I am focusing on the script,” Tally retorts. “Look!” She brandishes the tattered booklet in the air, some of the pages curling at the corners. “I’ve read it all the way through about five hundred times.”
“Why would you do that?” Miles looks down at the switchboard, his face screwed up in confusion. “Five hundred is a lot. Like, it could be a new world record for the number of times a person has read the script of Little Red – The Untold Tale.”
Tally shakes her head. She is not in the mood for yet another conversation about ridiculous world records, not today.
“And – action!” calls Miss Balogun and the hall descends into silence. The curtains swish open and Carrie tentatively makes her way on to the stage.
“Tally – the spotlight!” hisses Miles.
Tally frowns and hesitates, wondering what would happen if she didn’t push the switch. It’s actually quite nice sitting here with Miles when it’s quiet and dark. Maybe school would be a little more bearable if they could sit like this for a little while every day. Invisible and unwatched and unjudged, just for a few moments.
And then Miles presses the button that starts the music and Carrie’s nervous voice stutters in the darkness, and Tally knows that she doesn’t have a choice. She leans forward and moves the switch up, up, up until Carrie is bathed in light, her voice growing and swelling in volume and confidence as Tally increases the intensity of the spotlight.
The song ends and the room erupts in applause.
“Carrie!” exclaims Miss Balogun, walking forward. “Where on earth did that performance come from? I knew that you could sing, but we haven’t heard anything like that from you before.”
It’s true. They’ve been rehearsing for a few weeks, and while Carrie knows all her lines, she’s been quiet and unsure.
Carrie smiles, her cheeks flushed.
“I think it must be my lucky charm.”
“What lucky charm?” asks Lucy.
Carrie’s face lights up. “My aunt came to visit at the weekend,” she tells them. “She’s really lovely! And I told her about how I’d got the main part in the production but that I kept feeling really nervous. She told me that the same thing used to happen to her when she had to do any speaking in front of people.”
Tally scowls. Of course Carrie’s lovely aunt came to stay this weekend. And of course there’s no way that she’d have a relative as mean as Auntie Tish. It took two whole days for Tally to feel a bit calmer about the things that were said about her, and while Mum and Dad were nice and let her watch her programmes for most of the weekend, she knows that they’ve been talking about what happened. And that appointment with the head doctor is getting closer.
Carrie carried on. “But when she was younger, my mum gave her a lucky charm. And now my aunt’s given it to me, and it totally works! Look!”
She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a delicate silver chain, and the whole class, including Tally, leans forward to take a closer look.
“Why have you got a necklace with a bug on it?” asks Ameet.
“It’s a ladybird,” says Carrie. “They’re supposed to bring good luck, and if I keep this on me at all times then my aunt says that I’ll be a star!”
“Did you know that the largest collection of ladybird items in the world is owned by a woman in Ukraine?” whispers Miles. “She’s got five thousand, five hundred and fifty-five ladybird related things, including a mobile phone in the shape of a ladybird and a vacuum cleaner.”
“How on earth would I know that?” hisses Tally back to him. “And stop saying the word ladybird. They’re actually beetles.”
Miss Balogun smiles at Carrie. “Well, I’m not sure if it was the lucky necklace or the fact that this is our first performance using the lights on the stage, but whatever the reason, you were very good!”
“We aren’t allowed jewellery in class.” Tally raises her voice so that they can all hear her. “It’s a school rule.”
A groan echoes around the hall and a few people shoot Tally a dark look.
“Why do you always have to spoil everything?” mutters one of Carrie’s friends and the others murmur in agreement.
Miss Balogun clears her throat. “Tally is right. But while we do have a ban on jewellery in school, I think in this case we can make an exception as long as it stays in Carrie’s desk tray when we’re not rehearsing.”
Tally sinks back into her chair. It’s so unfair. A girl like Carrie doesn’t need a lucky charm. She’s already got quite enough luck. And what’s the point in having rules if they can just be broken whenever people feel like it? Why does she try so hard to keep them if nobody even cares about them in the first place?
“Are we going to do my dance number now?” asks Lucy. “I’ve been working really hard on it.”
Miss Balogun nods. “In a moment, Lucy. I just want Carrie to know how very impressive she’s just been.” She turns towards the side of the hall where Tally and Miles are huddled on chairs behind the light and sound boards. “Can we have the full lights back on please?” Then she turns back to Carrie and continues to tell her how her singing is going to blow the audience away.
Tally leans back in her chair and folds her arms.
“What about telling us how impressive we’ve been?” she mutters. “If it wasn’t for the brilliant lights, then Carrie couldn’t have performed like that – Miss Balogun literally just said that it was because of the lights but there’s no praise for us, is there?”
Miles turns on the main lights and starts making notes on his already detailed lighting plan. “Why does it matter to you so much? Who cares?”
Tally’s head snaps round so fast that it hurts her neck. “I care! And so should you. How can you think it’s OK for us to be stuck here getting no attention or thanks while everyone else gets to be in the spotlight?” She exhales loudly. “The spotlight that I’m over here making, by the way.”
Miles shrugs. “I like being over here,” he tells her. “It’s quite nice staying out of the drama.”
“But don’t you just want to be like everyone else?” Tally asks. “Aren’t you sick of being different and alone all the time?”
Miles stares at the space to the side of Tally’s head, his face screwed up as he contemplates her words.
“I like being on my own,” he says eventually. “And I don’t think I’m any more different than everybody else is. We’re all different, aren’t we? It’s not a thing.”
Tally doesn’t know what to say to him. Because yes, of course it’s a thing. Being different is definitely a thing, and she doesn’t know how Miles can be so casual about it.
Or not know just how different he is to the rest of them.
“And how can I be like everybody else, when nobody is the same?” he continues. “I’m just me. That’s the only person I know how to be.”
Tally picks up her script and opens it again to Little Red’s big speech. She’s almost got the whole thing completely memorized, but there’s just one part that she’s struggling to get right. It comes just after the wolf has told Little Red that it’s hard when everyone thinks you’re a fierce, bad monster, but really you just feel scared and lonely. When Luke reads the lines it takes every bit of control that Tally possesses not to snort – as if a boy like him would ever know how it feels to be scared and alone.
“Let’s work on the dance scene now!” calls Miss Balogun. “Lucy – we’ll have you at the back of the stage to begin with and then you can dance forwards to join the others. Tech crew – let’s go!”
Miles starts the music and the hall is filled with the sound of several pairs of year six feet stomping about on the wooden floor.
“You can just be you, you know?” Miles’s voice is quiet, but Tally can still hear him. “It’s OK. You don’t have to be like anyone else.”
She looks up from the script, the stamping feet and the loud music making it feel like they’re in their own little bubble where nobody can hear them. And maybe it’s this that makes her mouth open and words that she’s only ever thought about come trickling out.
“I don’t know if I want to be me,” she tells him. “Not when nothing ever works out for me and I never get any good luck. I think it might all be a bit easier if I wasn’t me.”
And then she returns to the script, already regretting telling him anything. He can’t possibly understand what it feels like to be her – constantly working to figure out how she’s supposed to be behaving and what she’s supposed to be saying. If he knew, then there’s no way he’d ever say something as stupid as it’s OK to be her.
Or that it’s OK to be different.