Becky Hill had been the ‘typical teenager’, as coined by herself and the nag of a mother less came to love over the course of a year. Frizzed hair was the aftermath of hours at a mirror primping for two minutes, the diminutive fraction of a life that would be evanescent but permanently stirring. She would not go by Rebecca and neither would she allow the occasional ‘Becks’ because either would be thoroughly offensive. The year was a special one, though, and the fourth week was a milestone for the eighteen-year old Hill.
“Alright, then, Becks,” the mentor waggled her brows in suggestive motions, “let’s go.”
The ball of laughter Becky was in a matter of seconds was not much of a sight to see; not a person expected the tough and especially whiney nut to be a mellowed cashew in the presence of a self-assured professional and much less a female. However the microphone’s sturdy mesh met her lips and the flip-flops were steadily whacking the floor beneath in a rhythmic fashion to ‘Seven Nation Army’.
Beneath the bouncy exterior of prettily large eyes holding such sparks Jessie watched a bud attempt to blossom in a hazy part of the meadow. Upon the stool at the piano the self-confident female watched a dragon snake its path from what seemed to be the diaphragm of a younger person much like the kid she’d once been. Becky Hill did not have the pleasure and honour of an audience with Jessie-J, mega superstar of the United Kingdom and all the hullabaloos that rode on her coattails. Becky Hill had belted the army of soul and rasp to Jessica Ellen Cornish who painted snowmen and Christmas trees on the mauled nails of toddlers and preschool children.
“Less jumping, Becky,” Jessie chuckled for a moment as Becky found herself enervated but still restless from the strength thrust into the notes, “but keep the crowd on their feet, yeah? You’ve got to go like ‘yeah’, they can go like ‘whoa’ but to do that you’re going to need the angst within you, little ma’am.”
“Yes,” Becky felt her pulse through the balls of her feet and eventually found equilibrium and stillness, “understood. I can’t wait to get out there again; you have no idea.”
“Oh yes, I think I’ve the idea,” the professional mentor clapped her hands, “and you’ve got good reason to be impatient. You sounded amazing. You don’t realise the pair of lungs you have on you.”
A smile threaded itself across Becky’s lips in an instant, the voracious appetite for assurance whetted almost perfectly. She couldn’t pretend. She couldn’t pull on a masquerade piece over the glorious, unbridled exhilaration coursing through her veins.
“I know, I know; I’ll get it done.”
“I know you will.”
There was a sort of sureness about the voice that had Becky soothed and ready to rumble simultaneously. There wouldn’t be competition with the pure uniqueness of Vince Kidd, the emotional and powerful vocals of Toni Warne and there certainly wouldn’t be struggle against Cassius Henry and his soulful tone. There wouldn’t be disbelief within the rickety and snappy self of eighteen years because Jessie-J said there wouldn’t be.
And Becky Hill believed it. She would sit through the interviews silently, letting the others get through the overused and trite questions. Yes, she would pipe up to knock down Cassius’s claims of victory against her strikes and bowling. No one really gave much to Vince, who had thrown the ball over to the incorrect lane. Anyhow Becky was thoroughly annoyed with the rumours about Aleks Josh and babies.
As the band disassembled and dismantled itself to leave the place, the cameras were swung off thick thews of shoulders and the boom-microphones taken aside as stowage. The last performer to be in counsel with Jessie-J was to be out and about, anywhere else but in the studio, in fifteen minutes.
