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music.
    “Clarinet is my first instrument.” Velvet didn’t know why she felt the need to explain herself to Taleb.
    “Try this. This is probably your sort of thing, since you don’t know any music from this century.”
    He handed her some sheet music. It was
The Best of Simon and Garfunkel
. Velvet opened it to the first song, “The Sound of Silence” and struggled through a few bars.
    “I can’t play something just like that, without practising.”
    “So practise. Do it again.”
    She started again.
    “Your fingers are too stiff,” Taleb said. “Loosen them up.”
    Velvet stopped in the middle of a bar.
    “Don’t talk to me while I’m playing! I can’t play and listen to you at the same time.”
    Mr MacDonald returned from the dentist with a swollen jaw. He collapsed onto a chair, moaning.
    Taleb picked up his guitar and started playing “The Sound of Silence”. He played it perfectly. He swapped to a country and western version, then a heavy metal version and finally a syncopated jazz version. He was a talented guitarist, but that didn’t mean he was any good at teaching piano.
    “I don’t think I’ll take lunchtime music after all.”
    “You need all the practice you can get,” Taleb said.
    “Yeah, well we can’t all be musical geniuses.” Velvet stuffed her Andrew Lloyd Webber book in her bag. “If I was a great pianist, I wouldn’t need lessons.”
    She stomped out of the room, thinking how pleased her mother would be that she was saving her the thirty dollars a week it would have cost for piano class.

    Mr MacDonald’s enthusiasm for the performance had worn off over the holidays. He came into the cultural studies class with the employment section of the newspaper under his arm, and asked Peter to show him where to look up jobs on the internet.
    “Aren’t you going to help us with the play, sir?” Jesus asked.
    “I’ve started you off. You can carry on by yourselves.”
    “But we need someone to tell us what to do,” Roula said.
    “Yeah, like in the movies,” Jesus said.
    “We need a director!”
    “I need coffee,” Mr MacDonald said. “Can someone get me one from the staffroom?”
    No one volunteered.
    “Velvet, you’ve done drama.” Mr MacDonald put down his newspaper and went to the door. “You can be the director.”
    “I played a non-speaking schoolgirl in
The Mikado
!”
    “Come on, Mr Mac.” Even Peter failed to persuade him.
    Mr MacDonald shut the door behind him.
    Velvet wasn’t about to let everything fall in a heap. “We can do it by ourselves.”
    “You just want to be in charge,” Drago said.
    “Someone’s got to get organised.” Velvet took a folder from her bag. “Over the holidays, I listened to some music to get inspiration and …” She opened the folder. Her copy of the play was inside. “I made some notes.”
    “You would.”
    “Seriously. You’re such a try-hard, Velvet.”
    Velvet had had plenty of time to think about the school play over the holidays. “Are we going to do it or not?”
    “Yeah, we’re going to do it, ’cos we have to,” Peter said, “but we don’t have to be enthusiastic about it.”
    “Did everybody read the play?” Velvet asked.
    Silence.
    Velvet’s photocopy had bits highlighted in magenta. “Did
anybody
read the play?”
    “I don’t do schoolwork in the holidays,” Hailie said. “Ever.”
    “What’s the point? I give up.”
    “Come on, Corduroy, don’t sulk. What else have you got in your fancy folder?” Drago snatched it out of her hand.
    “Give it back.”
    Drago peered at Velvet’s notes and then handed the folder to Peter to read.
    “Overture, chorus. Scene one, Richard’s song. Scene two, murder of Clarence. Murderers sing funny song.”
    “Give it back!”
    “Let’s see what music she’s been listening to.” Taleb picked up Velvet’s phone and opened iTunes. “
Phantom of the Opera
!”
    “I was just listening to it to get ideas. What’s wrong with that?”
    “It’s sickly