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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
Life is complicated enough already, but when you try to solve your big sister's relationship problems, it can only mean trouble! Rebecca isn't looking forward to school after a summer full of music and excitement. To make it worse, her most annoying classmate Vanessa gets the starring role in a new ad campaign: now she's going to be on television, on posters, on the radio and even in the charts! Luckily a new arts and music studio space for teens has opened up where Hey Dollface and their summer camp friends can practise. Then Rebecca's sister Rachel is dumped by her longtime boyfriend Tom, and Rebecca is determined to cheer her up. Throw in a dad who is trying to take over his amateur musical, a mum who keeps reminding her that it's a big exam year, and an English teacher who has decided to become a novelist, and it's another eventful term for Rebecca. 'It reminded me of being a teenager, the nice parts! It's a perfect piece of hilarious loveliness! Gold Star!!!!' Marian Keyes
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Reviews
PRAISE FOR THE REAL REBECCA
‘Our new Book of the Week is The Real Rebecca by Anna Carey, a great new voice and definite Princess of Teen.’
Books for Keeps
‘I laughed and squirmed my way through The Real Rebecca, the sparkling and spookily accurate diary of a Dublin teenager. It’s stonkingly good and I haven’t laughed so much since reading Louise Rennison. Teenage girls … will love Rebecca to bits!’
Sarah Webb, author of the Ask Amy Green books
‘This book is fantastic! Rebecca is sweet, funny and down-to-earth, and I adored her friends, her quirky parents, her changeable but ultimately loving older sister and the swoonworthy Paperboy.’
Chicklish Blog
‘What is it like inside the mind of a teenage girl? It’s a strange, confused and frustrated place, as Anna Carey’s first novel The Real Rebecca makes clear … A laugh-out-loud story of a fourteen-year-old girl, Rebecca Rafferty.’
Hot Press
‘The story rattles along at a glorious rate − with plenty of witty asides. Rebecca herself is a thoroughly likeable heroine − angsty and mixed-up but warm-hearted and feisty.’
Books Ireland
‘Carey’s teen voice is spot-on.’
Irish Independent
PRAISE FOR REBECCA’S RULES
‘A gorgeous book! … So funny, sweet, bright. I loved it.’
Marian Keyes
‘Amusing from the first page … better than Adrian Mole! Highly recommended.’
lovereading4kids.co.uk
‘The teen voice is spot on … Carey captures the excitement, camaraderie and tensions brilliantly.’
Books for Keeps
‘John Kowalski is an inspired creation.’
Irish Independent
‘Sure to be a favourite with fans of authors such as Sarah Webb and Judi Curtin.’
Children’s Books Ireland’s Recommended Reads 2012
PRAISE FOR REBECCA ROCKS
‘A charming, uplifting story.’
Irish Independent
‘Carey hits the mark in terms of finding an authentic teenage voice.’
Inismagazine.ie
‘The pages in Carey’s novel in which her young lesbian character announces her coming out to her friends and in which they give their reactions are superbly written: tone is everything, and it could not be better handled than it is here.’
Irish Times
‘A bright and breezy read.’
The Sunday Business Post
‘A hilarious new book, perfect for the summer. Cleverly written, witty and smart.’
writing.ie
‘Rebecca Rafferty … is something of a Books for Keeps favourite … Honest, real, touching, a terrific piece of writing.’
Books for Keeps
To my nephews Arlo, Eli and Stanley, in the hope that you will make each other laugh as much as your mothers and aunts did (though maybe you could fight a bit more quietly than we did, just for your parents’ sake)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Clare Kelly, Susan Houlden, my ever-patient editor, and everyone at The O’Brien Press; Helen Carr for all her support and encouragement; Chris Judge for being the best cover artist I could ever have hoped for (and for putting an excellent pug on the cover of this book); the extended Freyne and Carey families; my husband, Patrick Freyne, who kept me going through what was an unusually stressful writing process (including the death of our cranky, yet much-loved, cat Ju Ju); and most of all to everyone who has read and enjoyed the first three Rebecca books. This one wouldn’t exist without you.
Contents
Week 1
There are only forty-eight hours left before I go back to school, and I’m going to have to spend at least two of them with a baby who hates me. Well, I think it hates me. Every time I go anywhere near it, it turns bright red and starts roaring, and then it gets sick. Usually on me. It belongs to my lovely godmother, Daisy, and how such a nice, cheerful woman and her nice, cheerful husband managed to produce such an angry baby is a mystery to me. Mum says I’m being ridiculous and there’s no way a six-month-old baby could hate anyone, but I’m pretty sure it can.
‘It’s a small baby!’ said Mum. ‘They all spend a lot of their time turning red and roaring. It’s just what they do. It’s nothing personal!’
‘Well, it doesn’t seem to do it when you pick it up,’ I said, and Mum couldn’t really argue with that because it’s true. So in typical style, she just ignored my clever comeback.
‘Whether it – I mean she – hates you or not, you’re still coming to Daisy’s this afternoon,’ she said.
So that’s that. I will have to spend two (or more, depending on the traffic) of my precious final hours of freedom being sicked on and roared at. It’s so unfair. And what makes it even worse is the fact that Rachel isn’t coming because it’s Tom-the-Perfect-Boyfriend’s birthday, so she’s going to some ridiculous birthday dinner in his house with all his family and then into town with a gang of their friends.
I told Mum that Rachel would be back from Daisy’s house in plenty of time to go to Saint Tom’s big party so there was no real reason why she couldn’t go, but Rachel insisted that she had to ‘get Tom’s present ready’. Which was, as I pointed out, a terrible excuse because we all know what her present for him is; it’s a cool t-shirt she bought on the internet and a book he’s wanted to read for ages. How long can that take to ‘get ready’? All she has to do is wrap it! And that’ll only take about two minutes. It’s not as if it’s some giant weirdly shaped thing like a bike or a drum kit. But Rachel never has to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Unlike me.
Oh, I can’t believe we have to go back to school on Monday. Well, I can believe it, but I don’t like it. It’s not only that the weather’s been gorgeous (unlike last year), which makes the thought of having to sit indoors all day wearing that hideous uniform even more awful, but this summer has been so much fun. We’ve done so many cool things that going back to boring old geography and German and homework seems even worse.
We were all discussing this yesterday when I met up with Cass, Alice and Liz in town.
‘I don’t want summer to be over!’ said Cass. ‘This summer was way better than last year.’
‘It really was,’ I said. ‘Lots more happened for a start. I mean, first of all I got my hair cut into a fringe. I know that turned out to be a mistake, but it was quite a dramatic way to start off the holidays.’
‘It was a bold move,’ said Liz. ‘I wish I’d got to see it in its full glory.’
‘It did look really good for a day or so before it went all weird and fluffy,’ said Cass. ‘It really suited her.’
‘And then you told me you were gay,’ I said to Cass. ‘Actually, I should probably have put that before the fringe thing – it’s a bit more important.’
‘Just a bit,’ said Cass.
‘And then we went on the summer rock camp and learned loads of useful stuff about being in a band,’ said Alice. ‘It was quite a practical summer when you think about it. And we wrote lots of new songs for Hey Dollface.’
This is all true. We have definitely expanded our band’s repertoire. And we made lots of cool new friends there too. So that was all good.
‘Of course, we did have to put up with Charlie and his gang,’ said Cass.
I shuddered as I remembered those awful, obnoxious boys.
‘But people stood up to them in the end,’ said Alice.
‘And even Karen turned out to have a good side,’ I said. ‘Which was a very pleasant surprise considering she’s basically our enemy.’
‘Well, that was sort of pleasant,’ said Cass. ‘I mean, obviously it was a good thing that she did something decent, and I do really appreciate it, but it did make me feel a bit weird. We’re just used to her being annoying, so it was hard to know what to do when she actually did something really nice.’
‘This is true,’ I said. ‘I wonder will she still be as annoying when we go back on Monday? Or will she have had a complete change of heart and decide that she loves us all?’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely,’ said Alice.
I’m pretty sure she’s right. But anyway, the whole camp was generally brilliant, and I wish it could have lasted all summer.
‘You know, I thought nothing good would ever happen again after the camp ended,’ I said, stretching back in my seat. ‘Everything felt really flat. It was like when the school musical ended, only even worse because we just did the musical for a few evenings a week, and the summer camp was all day, every day, so it was basically our entire life for a whole month. But actually the last month of the holidays has been pretty good.’
And it really has. We’ve stayed in touch with our camp friends online and have met up with them a few times (well, most of them – no one has seen the mysterious Small Paula since the camp ended). And even though I was sort of worried that I would be abandoned to my lonely single devices now both Cass and Alice were going out with people, that didn’t happen.
‘Much as I want to see Richard,’ said Alice, a few days after the summer camp ended, ‘I need to see you two as well. I can’t survive on Richard alone.’ Then she looked worried. ‘That doesn’t sound like I’m being mean about either you or him, does it?’
I assured her it didn’t. It makes sense. Even in the brief time when I was properly going out with Paperboy, I still wanted to hang out with Cass and Alice too.
Of course, there were still a few times this summer when I’d have liked to have done stuff with them, but they were off with their beloveds doing … well, whatever people do when they’re going out with someone. It’s been so long since I was going out with anyone that I’ve forgotten what it’s like. Actually, the last person I went out with was John Kowalski, and I spent most of that time listening to him go on about what a genius he was. I don’t think most relationships are like that (at least I hope not. I can’t imagine Liz or Richard boasting about how great they are for hours on end. Or Cass or Alice, for that matter).
But anyway, on the days when Cass and Alice were off on their own with Liz and Richard, I just read or wrote stuff or hung out with Jane and some of the other people from the camp. There were only a couple of days when I felt like I didn’t really have anything to do or anyone to do it with, but when I mentioned to my mum that I was bored, she just laughed and reminded me that this used to happen last year, before Cass or Alice were going out with anyone, so I suppose being a little bit bored sometimes is just part of summer. And at least I get on really well with Liz and Richard and we can hang out together. Imagine if Cass and Alice were going out with people I didn’t actually like.
Oh God, Mum is calling me to come and visit my baby enemy now. I’d rather have nothing to do than be roared at for hours on end.
The baby still hates me. Not only did it get sick on me, it actually headbutted me! I hope my nose isn’t broken. It feels okay now, but you never know. Even Mum had to admit the headbutting was quite dramatic, though she claimed that the baby didn’t really mean to headbutt me, and that I just leaned over it when it was lifting its head up and it butted me by accident. But I think it knew exactly what it was doing. Mum is sure that my nose isn’t broken, but I just hope I don’t develop some terrible nose problems because if I do it will all be that baby’s fault.
It was nice to see Daisy, though. She gave me a book called I Capture the Castle, which she says she read when she was my age and which she thinks I will like. I need something entertaining to distract me from the horror of going back to school in just a few hours (well, about thirty-five hours now. But I’m going to spend at least fourteen of them sleeping, so it’s not that many really).
By the way, as I thought, Rachel was just lazing around on the couch when we got back. So much for her ‘ooh, I have loads of things to do for Tom!’ nonsense. And I just know it only took her a few minutes to wrap his present. She did use very nice wrapping paper and a lovely ribbon, but, to be honest, that’s the least she could do because when it was her birthday he got her a bottle of fancy Chanel perfume that smells gorgeous. It must have cost a fortune; it looked so posh in its little box. Anyway, I can’t believe she got out of a visit to the dreadful baby just for wrapping a t-shirt and a book, even if the paper was fancy and she wrapped it all up with a posh checked ribbon. She gets away with murder.
Last day of the holidays! I met up with Cass and Alice in town to toast the best summer ever and to drown our sorrows (in hot chocolate for me and Cass and peppermint tea for Alice) about going back to school.
‘The very worst thing about going into third year,’ said Cass, ‘is that you just know all the teachers are going to spend the entire year reminding us it’s our Junior Cert year. As if we didn’t know already.’
‘Well, we are going to have to put our heads down a bit this year,’ said Alice, looking a bit worried.
‘But we all know this,’ Cass pointed out. ‘So Mrs Harrington reminding us about it every five minutes, in every English class, is hardly going to help.’
Ugh, it certainly won’t.
‘Sometimes it feels as if we’ve got nothing to look forward to but exams and exams and more exams for years and years,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said Cass. ‘I mean, we’ve got the Junior Cert, and then maybe transition year won’t have exams, but after that we’ll have fifth-year summer tests, and then the Leaving, and then we’ll hopefully have college for three or four years, depending on what we do and where we go. That’s six more years of exams at the very least!’
‘And then what if you did a Master’s?’ said Alice. ‘That’d be more exams, wouldn’t it?’
‘My dad did a PhD,’ I said. ‘He didn’t finish college until he was, like, twenty-five.’
We all looked at each other gloomily. Actually, now I think about it, technically Dad never left college because after he got his PhD he stayed there forever working as a lecturer. And I don’t think you actually have to do exams if you do a PhD. But still, you have to keep doing school-ish sort of work for years on end, which doesn’t sound like fun to me.
Anyway, then Alice suggested ordering a slice of cake and sharing it between us, so we did, and that made us cheer up a bit. We couldn’t afford to get a slice each after our beverages – hot chocolate is surprisingly expensive. I wish I actually liked coffee, or even tea. It seems a bit babyish only getting hot chocolates when we go to cafés. Coffee is so much more grown up, and I actually do like the smell of it. But I’ve tried drinking it a good few times and I just don’t like it.
But you never know, I might still grow into it. Mum once told me that she didn’t even like tea until she was in college, and now she drinks about seven cups of it a day. And Daisy said she didn’t like coffee until she was about twenty-two and now she can’t function without it. Although now I think about it, maybe being totally addicted to a hot drink isn’t such a good thing either.
Still, surely anything that could make me feel a bit more awake when I get up in the middle of the night tomorrow (okay, a quarter to eight in the morning, but it’s early in comparison to the last month) to go to school would be a plus. Oh, I wish we didn’t have to go back now! Especially as we bumped into a couple of our summer-camp friends today on our way to our various bus stops, which reminded me again of how cool the camp was. We were just walking past the Central Bank when we met Tall Paula, the cool, gothy girl from Beaumont who was in the band Exquisite Corpse, and none other than Small Paula, the enigmatic solo artist.
Apparently they’d bumped into each other looking at guitar pedals in a music shop and were walking back towards their bus stops together. It was very nice to see them. Small Paula didn’t say very much, but then she never did, and she looked quite pleased to see us (well, as much of her as we could see beneath her giant fringe). Neither of them are looking forward to going back to school either. Tall Paula said her parents have said that as well as one band practice a week, she can only go out with her friends after school or at the weekend once a month all year because of the Junior Cert.
‘They’re going to write down all my outings on the kitchen calendar to make sure I don’t go over the limit by accident,’ she said miserably.
This seems pretty harsh to me. I mean, I know we were getting stressed at the thought of our never-ending exams, but I don’t think it’s physically possible to work every single day even if you wanted to (which I certainly don’t). But everyone’s parents are acting as if we were doing our Leaving Cert, which is a bit ridiculous.
Tall Paula did remind us of something cool, though – the band practice space that’s going to be opening in the Knitting Factory. Veronica, who ran the band part of the summer camp, has arranged for the studios to offer teenage bands from the camp access to the spaces for a small fee, and the camp mentors are going to have regular classes and stuff too. We hadn’t heard from them yet, but the Paulas met Veronica today when they were coming out of the music shop.
‘Veronica said they’re just finalising details now,’ said Tall Paula. ‘And she said they’ll definitely contact all of us once it’s sorted, so in a few weeks we’ll all have somewhere to practise in town! Maybe I could tell my mum it’s a special extra Junior Cert music class or something.’
But the studio space isn’t all. We should be able to put on gigs too, which is cool, because it is very hard to find somewhere to play a gig if you are under eighteen. This is because people who run venues are more concerned with making loads of money from selling BOOZE than encouraging the musicians of the future. Ages ago, Liz thought she’d found a venue that would let us play all-ages afternoon gigs, but it didn’t work out because of insurance or something boring like that.
Anyway, if Veronica’s thing works out, and Tall Paula said she seemed pretty sure it would, we will be able to play gigs regularly! And hopefully we’ll get to see lots of the camp people regularly again too, because they’ll be doing stuff at the Knitting Factory too.
‘There’s a whole arts space thing at the back of the Knitting Factory,’ said Tall Paula. ‘So they’re talking about working with the mentors from the other bits of the camp and having art and drama workshops and other stuff too.’
That would all be so, so cool. It would be like a continuation of the summer camp. I just hope our parents let us all out of the house long enough to actually go there. I have a horrible feeling mine won’t. My dad just stuck his head around the corner of my room and said he hoped I wasn’t going to stay up late writing, because I have school tomorrow. It’s only half past nine! Are they actually going to make me go to bed at this time every night all year?! Surely not. Humans only need about eight hours’ sleep and I’m hardly going to get up at half five in the morning.
Ugh. This time tomorrow I might actually be doing homework. What a thought.
Week 2
I am not doing any homework, but that’s mostly because I am so, so tired. I had forgotten how exhausting stupid school is. It doesn’t really make sense because when we were at the summer camp we were standing up and moving around and DOING STUFF all day and I always felt fine in the evenings. But after one day of just sitting at a bunch of stupid desks, I’m so tired I can barely stand. It’s so unfair.
Today wasn’t totally and utterly bad, of course. It was nice to see some of the people we didn’t see as much of over the summer, like Emma and Jessie. And even though we have Mrs Harrington for English again this year, the class was actually quite interesting because we’ve been reading some good books for English and, to my great surprise, Mrs Harrington wasn’t as annoying as she usually is. In fact, she didn’t make a single reference to my mother’s books, which is not like her at all as she is scarily obsessed with Mum’s boring stories about kindly old ladies. As she hadn’t seen me for months, I’d assumed she’d be dying to ask me questions about ‘what lovely tales your mammy is thinking of now’ (that is how she always talks, so you can see how annoying she is). But no. In fact, she was so quiet I’d actually be worried that there was something seriously wrong with her if she hadn’t seemed pretty cheerful too. She just seemed a bit distracted. I suppose I should just be thankful and not question it too much.
Actually, I always feel a bit bad giving out about Mrs Harrington now, who is irritating but means well. I do not, however, feel bad about giving out about Vanessa Finn, who does not mean well at all and who has somehow become even more annoying since the last time I saw her, which was only a month ago at the summer camp. Apparently a few weeks ago she auditioned for a big part in an advertising campaign, and she’s totally convinced that she’s going to get it.
‘I’m expecting a call at any moment,’ she said at lunch, making sure everyone in the room could hear her.
‘I’m sure they’ll ring soon,’ said Caroline, Vanessa’s best friend.
‘It’s so exciting, Vanessa!’ said Karen Rodgers, and I had to remind myself of how Karen had stood up for Cass at the summer camp because otherwise her smarmy tone would have made me get sick. ‘And you totally deserve it! An actor with your skills deserves a bigger audience.’
Also, it turns out that getting this ad could be Vanessa’s only chance of being on television this year because her appearance in the reality show My Big Birthday Bash has been cancelled! Or rather, the entire show has been cancelled. I am quite relieved because we were all at her birthday party when they filmed it back in February and I don’t particularly want to see myself on telly. And Vanessa is pleased about it too.
‘Yeah, reality TV wasn’t the right outlet for my talents,’ she said.
Though of course we all know she didn’t want the show to air because her party ended up with her being knocked into a cake by a pink pony. But no one mentioned that. Cass caught my eye and made a little neighing sound, but that was all.
I did notice that Karen’s sidekick, Alison, was looking a bit bored when Vanessa was going on about all this. Ever since Karen and Vanessa became friendly I have been hoping Caroline and Alison would team up and escape their clutches, because both of them are quite nice when they’re not being sidekicks. But it doesn’t seem to have happened yet. Though Alison was on some sort of computer course during the summer and she was talking about that to Emma after maths (oh maths, I have not missed you) this afternoon. So maybe she’s escaping very, very slowly.
Another person who hasn’t changed much is Miss Kelly. She marched into our first geography class of the year and immediately started going on about her environmentally friendly summer holiday. She cycled all over France with some of her friends. It’s quite impressive, especially for someone of her age.
‘If I could have kayaked to France, that’s what I’d have done,’ she said proudly. ‘Unfortunately, I had to use a bigger boat.’
‘Like a rowing boat?’ asked Jessie, impressed.
‘Sadly no,’ said Miss Kelly. ‘The ferry. But after that, it was pedals all the way. Soon we were cycling along the roads of Brittany, stopping only for the odd baguette and slice of local cheese.’ And on and on she went for about five years. Actually, she did stop, after a while, so she could tell us about the horrors of fracking, which seems to be a way of getting natural gas from under the ground by destroying everything on top of the ground. It was quite scary, but I must admit it was more interesting than hearing yet another story of how she and her mates managed to cycle up a French mountain. You’d think they were elite athletes doing the Tour de France, rather than a bunch of middle-aged teachers cycling around the countryside, eating loads of Brie.
Oh, I’m actually too tired to write any more. I’m going to go down and watch telly for a while instead. Luckily the only homework we got was to read something in the history book, and I’ve already done that. Surely my parents can’t expect me to do extra study after just one day of school? It’s bad enough that they change the wifi password practically every day to make sure I’m not messing around on the internet on my phone.
I was actually driven out of our classroom at lunchtime today by Vanessa going on about that stupid ad campaign. She still doesn’t know whether she’s got the part or not, but when we were all sitting around the classroom eating our sandwiches Jessie foolishly asked her what the ad was actually for, and that set her off.
‘It’s for Bluebird Bakery,’ said Vanessa in a very important way, and we all tried to look as if we weren’t impressed or even as though we didn’t know what Bluebird Bakery is. But I was impressed, a bit, even though I’d have died rather than admit it to Vanessa. Bluebird Bakery is a really big brand and they always have big posters everywhere as well as regular ads on the TV. And they do make very nice biscuits. Of course, they usually have quite cool telly ads too, so surely they won’t let Vanessa appear in them. I mean, the sight of her messing around with some biscuits would certainly put me off eating them.
But the school musical did teach me I should never underestimate Vanessa – before the auditions I was convinced she’d be rubbish and then she turned out to be really brilliant, much as I hated to admit it. So maybe she actually would be good at making people want to eat biscuits. Anyway, she seems totally sure that she’s going to get this job and I couldn’t bear listening to her anymore so I went to the library to see if they’d got in any new books this term. Luckily they have, including a few that look really good – there’s one called Code Name Verity about girls working undercover in France during the second world war which looks brilliant.
In fact, there were so many interesting-looking new books I wanted to get out about five of them, but we’re only allowed take out three at a time. A few sixth years always run the library at lunchtime when the librarian is on her break, and it turns out that Rachel’s friend Jenny is one of them this year. I was hoping she might let me take out extra books (after all, I am her best friend’s sister, and she’s usually quite nice to me – she came to our very first gig at the Battle of the Bands and cheered us on), but apparently not.
‘Sorry, Mini-Rafferty,’ she said. ‘I don’t make the rules.’
‘But couldn’t you bend them for me?’ I said.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘I’m a very serious part-time volunteer librarian.’
Fair enough, I suppose, but I do feel there should be some advantages to being the sister of the best friend of a part-time volunteer librarian. Anyway, I got out three books, so at least I have some decent entertainment to console me for having to not only go back to school, but spend all day listening to Vanessa go on and on about how she’s going to be ‘the face of Bluebird Bakery Yummy Scrummy Cookies’.
Cass, by the way, is totally convinced that Vanessa is going to get the job.
‘The thing about Vanessa,’ she said, when we were walking down Griffith Avenue on our way home, ‘is that, even though she’s a bit deluded, she’s not totally deluded. At least when it comes to her acting skills. Maybe she actually was amazing at her audition.’
