[Excerpt] The Stand-In: my life as an understudy

Little Drummer Boy

I liked dance and I liked music, I hadn't been doing these things for nearly my entire life only to hate them. But they weren't my favourite subjects. I was just lucky that a lifetime of practise had made me decent at both.

"Uh... You..." Miss Felicia called on Monday afternoon, waving at me.

"Yes?" I replied, looking up at her and realising she'd forgotten who I was. "Uh, Chloe."

"What was it you do again?"

"What did you want me to do?"

She looked at me like she was trying to remember who I was and what instruments I played. As she frowned, her glasses slid down her nose. "Are you related to Ella?"

I sighed and nodded. "Have been for over seventeen years."

"And you've been at Winters for...?"

"Three and a half years."

The rest of the class was, not surprisingly, wondering when she'd get to her point and how much longer she was going to focus on Ella Cowan's little nobody of a sister. The mutterings of boredom began.

"And you play...?"

"Piano and guitar."

She brightened somewhat. "Like Ella. She plays the piano beautifully."

I nodded. If beautiful here meant half the time she sounded like she was strangling a particularly melodious cat – to quote Aunt Bow.

"Well, hop on up then and we'll see how you do," she said as though it was my first time in front of the keys.

I pulled myself off the floor and went up to the piano. I wasn't going to be a concert pianist like my father could have been – no matter what Aunt Bow liked to think – but I wasn't exactly bad at it after something like eleven years. Still, anything that drew the least amount of attention to me was great. So I played her a relatively simple piece and even threw a wrong note in there for good measure. When I was done, she looked at me like she was surprised I was as good as I was.

"Well, very nice...work..." And she'd already forgotten my name again.

I nodded and went back to my spot while Miss Felicia called on the next student. Honestly, sometimes I wasn't sure my grades were actually based on how well I did or on how guilty the teachers felt about forgetting who I was in the shadow of the great Ella Cowan. But it could have been worse; they could have assumed I didn't turn up and failed me.

Winters School of Fine Arts was, obviously, a school dedicated to the arts. But we also did things like Maths and Sciences as well. And those teachers tended to remember who I was, especially compared to Ella who was rubbish at all those things.

When the bell rang, I picked up my stuff and wandered to the auditorium for the Formal Committee meeting.

"Hey, you!"

I smiled and didn't look at her. "Hey, yourself."

"Where are you going? Freedom is that-a-way." Rica pointed like I might have forgotten my way around the school.

I nodded. "Committee meeting."

"But you're not actually on the committee. The committee is for Year Twelves..."

I shrugged. "I told Ella I'd go."

"Gin, come on! Let Her Lowness go to her own committee meeting."

"I told Milly I'd be there, too."

"Why the hell did you do that?"

I looked up from my feet. "Well... I committed."

"God, I love your loyalty. But you leave none for yourself." She held her hands up like she was strangling me.