I Don’t Like Mondays
- "... The whole day down..." -
“I don’t like Mondays… no that’s terrible! I’m never going to get this right!” Rachael banged the back of her head against the wall in frustration and looked at the lyrics she was supposed to be learning. Once she signed up for the talent show and Ms. Marshall discovered this she immediately suggested this song, saying it was very good. Rachael read the lyrics and had to agree. If only she could hear the music for it, it would probably be better. But she had to wait for the piano to come into use. It was being hogged at the moment.
Becky’s two former friends were claiming they could sing better than anyone else in the orphanage. And they were keeping the piano to themselves so they could practise every minute of every hour of every day so that no one else could use it. Rachael read the chorus of the song again. How was she going to learn it without music? She banged her head again.
“Hmm… okay I’ll try it again.” The door to her room opened and Becky came strolling in. “Never mind,” Rachael muttered, taking the lyrics and placing them under her pillow. Rachael leaned back on her pillow and took a rubber ball out of her pocket and began to toss it up and down, looking as though that was what she had been doing the whole time.
“The piano’s free, you know,” Becky called from below.
Rachael sat up and pocketed the ball. “Took long enough,” she said.
“Go get it before they can get back to it.”
Rachael wasted no time at all. She jumped off her bed and ran down the hallway into the music room where she found Ms. Marshall sitting at the piano. She was looking over some music and placing it messily inside a folder, dropping it carelessly on the floor, all the while muttering under her breath. Rachael grinned. She knew Ms. Marshall was muttering about Brenda and Brandy. They had Ms. Marshall playing the piano for them and neither of them had talent when it came to vocals. They both had terrible singing voices. Rachael knew this for a fact. She sat up on the balcony above them and listened. It was worse than listening to a Banshee shriek.
Rachael walked in, stepping over some trumpet and trombone cases. “Ms. Marshall?” she asked quietly. Ms. Marshall looked up from the bag she was leaning over and raised an eyebrow. “Is it alright if I go over my song with music?”
“Of course, hopefully it’ll be a nice switch from those two,” Ms. Marshall answered bitterly.
Rachael didn’t need to ask whom ‘those two’ meant, it was obvious. Rachael handed Ms. Marshall the sheet music she had been given and took the lyrics for herself and began. Rachael had to admit; Ms. Marshall was a wonderful piano player. Being a musician was something that Rachael used to think her personal instructor wasn’t capable of.
“…The whole day down…” she finished.
Ms. Marshall rounded off the end with some slow playing and it was over. Rachael didn’t think she had done very well. She was a bit shaky in the second chorus and she knew Ms. Marshall would tell her she was. “Very good,” her instructor said in an almost awed voice.
“But I messed up,” Rachael argued.
“Yes, yes but it was hardly noticeable.”
Rachael raised an eyebrow but didn’t question her any further; she thought it was good at least. Rachael folded up the lyrics into fours and pocketed them. She made to leave when Ms. Marshall stopped her.
“You sing very well,” she said. “Has anyone ever told that?”
Rachael nodded. “My mum and dad used to say that they could sit for hours listening to me. It’s weird my mother would actually say something like that.”
Ms. Marshall gave a weak smile. Any mention of Rachael’s mother, especially by Rachael herself, was always enough to set her on edge. But this time she tried her best to brush it off and went on. “Yes, well, they’re right,” she said kindly. “Much better than those two girls who were here all day! Wretched voices.”
Rachael gave a quick laugh. She wanted to leave, but she needed to ask something. “Why’d you pick this song for me?”
“That’s a very… interesting… question. Well I’ve always liked this song, it only came out recently. It reminded me of the day you came here, a Monday. And if you haven’t noticed you’re always in a bad mood on Mondays.”
Rachael nodded. She did have a tendency to be a bit irritable on Mondays. She never knew why until this very moment. It was a reason… a really good one…. Why wouldn’t she be upset on the day when her father dropped her off at this building and never came back for her? But every Monday…?
“This song just reminds me of you, for some reason. That’s why I wanted you to sing it… So do your best and make us proud.”
Remus awoke the next morning to find outside of his window black skies. At first he thought it was still night time. But when he looked at his clock he saw it was nine in the morning. He rolled, literally, out of bed and onto the floor with a loud thud. He picked himself up and went to see if his friends were up yet. He crept slowly down the hall to his sister’s room, making sure not to wake his mother who was still sound asleep.
He poked his head through the open doorway to see James sitting up on his bed and looking around the room, obviously having just woken up, as his eyes were still a bit dazed. Remus knocked softly on the door, seeing that Sirius was asleep.
“Morning,” he said to James, rubbing some sleep out of his eyes.
“Morning,” said James brightly. Why was he always such a morning person?
“I see Sirius isn’t up yet.” Remus nodded his head over to Sirius, who was half dangling off his bed and leaving a puddle of drool on the floor.
James smiled. “This kid sleeps like a rock! I kicked him in the head by accident when I woke up and he didn’t move!”
Remus’s eyes brightened. “I have an idea.” He tiptoed over towards Sirius and slowly placed his hands on Sirius’s side. He gave him a gentle, but forceful, push and Sirius felt sideways onto the floor and hit his head on the floor.
“OW!”
James and Remus burst out in a silent fit of laughs as Sirius reappeared from the middle of the two beds, rubbing his head.
“Thank you, Remus,” he said sarcastically. “I needed that wake up call.”
“Any time,” Remus said falling back into a mocking bow.
Sirius rubbed his head and, took his pillow and flung it at Remus. He caught it and chucked it back at his friend, missing Sirius and hitting James instead. James snatched the pillow off the bed and flung it back at Remus. Remus ducked his head sideways and the pillow hit the wall, knocking over a family picture from five years ago that his sister had hung up. Remus fell to the floor and caught it before it could break.
“I think that’s enough,” he said lightly, hanging the picture back up and straightening it. “Wouldn’t want to destroy the house on your second day here, would you?”
“Nah,” said Sirius, smiling. “We’ll save that for our third day.”
Once they were dressed they went downstairs to see Remus’s mum reading the newspaper. She said a bitter good morning to them as they came into the room. She was still upset about arguing with a twelve year old, and losing the arguement.
Remus suggested they go out and go down docks, once the sky cleared up, where they could watch all the boats come in. He loved going down there when he was younger because the fisherman would give him and his sister a fishing pole from their boats and let them fish. Nowadays he usually had to steal one when they weren’t looking.
It was the day of the talent show and Rachael had spent most of her day reading over her song. Although she had to go through it with music in her mind as, yet again, Brenda and Brandy were keeping the piano all to themselves. She had tried countless times to lure them away. She would casually walk into the music room and say that their crushes, James Finch and Greg Monte, were looking for them. But of course they knew it was a lie because those two never acknowledged their existence.
So Rachael never got to touch the piano to go over her music. She was just going to have to go for it with only one day worth of practise. She would be sure everyone would understand. After they all listened to Brenda and Brandy, they’d be begging for a change. She smiled at the thought of her two worst enemies struggling through a hard song. She had gathered they were planning to sing the song “Help” by the Beatles. They certainly needed help singing.
She sat down on the floor of her room in the corner and leaned her head against the wall. She was a bit nervous despite the fact that she had sung in front of people so many times. It was just she was very out of practise and what if she did worse than the two least talented people in the building? That would be so embarrassing she might have to resort to locking herself in her room until school started. But, then again, they were as terrible as you can get, she wouldn’t do worse than them.
“There’s a rod right there!”
“Where?”
“There! The one I’m pointing to”
“Where?”
Remus gave a frustrated sigh. He plucked Sirius up from his hiding spot behind a crate and pulled him over to a fishing rod lying uselessly on the ground right next to the river, and stuck his face right in front of it. “There!”
Sirius’s eyes brightened and he mouthed ‘oh.’ Remus rolled his eyes and snatched the rod up before the fisherman could catch him. Normally Remus would never have to hide behind the crates and wait for hours on end to snatch a fishing rod. He could just go up to one of the workers and ask them for one and they would gladly give him one. But after he received his bite even the fisherman knew something was wrong with him just by how pale and peaky he looked. Remus lived in a village where if there was something wrong with you, you might as well be packing right now.
Out of breath, Remus and Sirius rejoined James behind the crate they were ducking behind and placed the rod they had snatched next to the first one they took.
“Don’t you have any at home?” James asked irritably. He wasn’t keen on stealing them. “I thought you did this all the time.”
Remus nodded agreeably. “Yeah I do. I just get caught every time and then get a nice lecture for an hour,” he answered bitterly.
“Why can’t you just buy one?” Sirius asked, falling out of the way of a hairy spider that had scuttled across his feet. Remus glared at him. Sirius knew perfectly well Remus couldn’t afford to get a fishing rod.
After waiting for another hour Remus began to realise that the fisherman weren’t going to leave any more rods on the docks. Or at least they were becoming aware of the boys’ presence. Declaring defeat, Remus placed the rods on the hiding crate and led James and Sirius out of the docks.
“What have I told you about taking our tools?” came an angry voice from behind Remus. The boys spun around and saw a stout, grizzly looking man bending over them, fury in his eyes.
“Well I - I,” Remus stammered, eyeing the man nervously.
“You were what? Gonna take ‘em and keep ‘em?” the man questioned furiously, advancing on the boys with every word he spoke.
“Well not keep them…”
“Oh yes you were! You know that every time you come here we catch you and you get in trouble but you still come back!”
“You used to let me use them.”
“Keyword boy! Used to, not anymore, now get on home before you get yourself in any more trouble!”
Rachael stood behind the curtains of the newly installed stage in the courtyard of the orphanage. The staff had spent the entire day putting it in, waking up at four in the morning and working until six in the evening, an hour before the show would start. Right now it was seven thirty and she was going on right after this act, Brenda and Brandy. Before she put her earplugs in, she heard just how horrible their voices were when they were singing with full force. It much resembled the scraping of nails against a chalkboard… purely sickening.
She peered out the curtains and looked at the rows of orphans and staff members that had come to watch the show. All of them were either pretending to enjoy it, though failing dismally due to the fact that their faces were squinted and they kept lifting their hands to their ears and dropping them. She could hardly blame them. She pitied them, coming there without earplugs; not knowing how badly damaged their ear drums were going to be.
Unfortunately she had to remove her earplugs in order to hear when they called her name to go up and sing. Thus she was forced to weather the horrible voices of Brandy and Brenda. Finally they were finished and got a loud round of applause, not for their “talent” but for the fact that they were finished.
“Next we have,” said Mrs. Ramben, ushering the two girls, who were taking their time bowing deeply, “Rachael Lupin singing ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’.” With a polite round of applause she walked onto the stage and waited for Ms. Marshall to begin.
“I want to shoot the whole day down.”
Rachael looked at the audience amazed, they were all on their feet, applauding as hard as they could, some even whistling through their teeth. She smiled and bowed, walking off the stage. She had done it… they loved it.