Free Rebecca Rocks by Anna Carey

summer-schoolers.
    ‘I wonder will we be able to find Jane and Ellie at lunch?’ I said.
    ‘I was wondering the same thing,’ said Alice. ‘This place seems huge. I can’t imagine we’ll ever be able to find our way around it.’
    ‘Consider it practice for when we get to actual college,’ said Richard, but he looked very relieved a minute later when his bandmates came in. He waved at them, and they came over and grabbed some seats nearby. We didn’t know any of the other bands, but one of them included a few boys from Richard ’s class in school. He didn’t seem to like them very much and with good reason.
    ‘I didn’t realise they were doing this,’ he said when he noticed them on the other side of the hall.
    ‘Is their band any good?’ I asked.
    ‘I doubt it,’ said Richard. ‘Ah, I dunno, I’m not being fair.They could be good. They’re just kind of … annoying.’
    But before he could say anything else, a man and a woman walked up to a pair of microphones set up next to the grand piano and waved. Everyone suddenly stopped talking.
    ‘Wow,’ said the woman, looking a bit surprised. ‘You’re all very quiet all of a sudden! So … hi! My name’s Veronica Flaherty, and I’m a guitarist and a sound engineer.’
    Cass and Alice and I looked at each other. Veronica had been one of the organisers of the Battle of the Bands!
    ‘And my name is Tom, and I play the bass,’ said the man, ‘and sometimes the drums.’
    Then Veronica told us how excited they were about the summer arts school and gave a speech about what we’d be doing over the next three weeks, which we kind of knew already from the website, and how at the end of it we’d put on shows for everyone in the camp. Then she called in all the people who were going to be our mentors, which sounds very reality TV. There were four men and two women, and they all looked like they were in their twenties and thirties. Some of them looked quite familiar − the camp has managed to get some quite big bands, which is impressive. When a very tall skinny man in a sharp suit came out, Richard lookedvery surprised and excited.
    ‘No one’s going to try and make you sound a certain way,’ said Veronica. ‘We’re just going to help you do the stuff you already want to do.’ The mentors each introduced themselves, and there was more talking about what we were going to do in each week, and then we were released into the wild, or at least the rest of the college, for a short break. As soon as Veronica and Tom left the stage, Richard said, ‘Oh my God, did you see who that was?’
    ‘Who who was?’ said Alice.
    ‘It was Ian Cliff! In the suit! Ian Cliff from Verfremdungs -effekt!’ said Richard.
    ‘Oh yeah,’ said Alice. ‘They’re not bad.’
    Verfremdungseffekt are a Dublin band who are pretty popular , and Richard loves them. Alice went with him to one of their gigs a while ago and said they were pretty good, in a sort of melodramatic gloomy kind of way (which, now I think of it, is quite like Richard’s own band).
    ‘What does Verfremd-whatsit actually mean?’ I said. ‘It sounds a bit German.’
    ‘It is German,’ said Alice. Her mum is German so Alice can speak German better than our actual German teacher. ‘It literallymeans, like, alienation effect. Or distancing effect. But I don’t know what that really means. If you know what I mean.’
    We did.
    But Richard, because he is Verfremdungseffekt’s biggest fan ever, did know what alienation effect meant.
    ‘There was a German writer called Brecht who did plays, and he wanted to remind the audiences that they were actually watching a play, not real people, so they’d be more critical and not get emotionally involved. So
Verfremdungseffekt
is the word he used to describe how he did this. The characters would, like, turn around and start talking to the audience and stuff.’
    I was not very impressed by this. I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten that I was watching a play. I