Star Reporter (8 page)

I looked down. Sure enough, Rolo was glued to Nathan's trainer, globules of stringy slobber hanging out of his mouth as he gazed up, panting.

“Er, this might seem like an odd question but have you got cheese in your pocket?” I asked.

To his credit, Nathan didn't seem to think I'd lost the plot. “No, but I did have cheese on toast for breakfast this morning.”

That explained it – Rolo is to cheese what sniffer dogs are to drugs. If cheddar ever gets made illegal, he will have a whole new career ahead of him. They will call him THE NOSE and he will have his own television show called CHEESE QUEST. And I will be his patient yet doting owner.

“It's his cheese radar,” I told Nathan. “Our next-door neighbours only have to get their grater out and he tries to climb through their cat flap.”

“Right, no cheese for twenty-four hours before I visit next time,” he said gravely and I liked him a little bit more.

Mum coughed, as though reminding us that she was there.

“We should get going,” I said, pulling on my coat. My hand hovered over my scarf and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nathan grin. Maybe I'd brave the weather without it.

“Have fun,” Mum called. “Be good!”

I slammed the front door fast before she could come out with any more Mum-isms. I'm pretty sure they go to a special school to learn how to be embarrassing at all times. I explained my theory to Nathan, as we headed down the road to the town centre.

“Mine is the same,” he agreed. We walked in silence for a moment. “Your little brother and sister are cute.”

I grimaced. “You wouldn't say that if you met them at three in the morning. They morph into monsters during the night.”

We chatted all the way to the town centre. I was dying to ask about him and Susie but I couldn't think of a way to slip it into the conversation without sounding like a mad stalker girl, and by the time we reached The Shake Shack, he'd distracted me so much that I'd almost forgotten. It was busy but we managed to squeeze around a table in the corner. I couldn't decide what was better, being on a non-date with Nathan, or being in a place where Oreo cookies and Maltesers were mixed together in one divine drink.

“How's the magazine stuff going?” Nathan asked once we'd ordered. “Is it like you expected it to be?”

I hesitated. Part of me wanted to confess that I found being a journalist a bit harder than I'd expected. The ideas I had seemed good, until I started writing them down and then it all went wrong. My assignment about the Year Seven Outward Bound trip was due in soon and I couldn't work out whether to make it serious or jokey. But journalism was supposed to be my THING – I couldn't admit that I was struggling to anyone and I definitely couldn't ask for help. So I plastered on a big breezy smile. “It's amazing. Everyone is really nice. How's being on the School Council? Is it like being a Member of Parliament?”

“It would be if the main business of Parliament was deciding how many water coolers we need and where to put them,” he replied, pulling a face. “You wouldn't believe how many arguments that caused.”

I'd watched a bit of Prime Minister's Questions on one of the satellite channels one afternoon, not long after my petition had started to get really popular, and it had been the most boring thing ever – just a load of grumpy old men mumbling away and a bossy voice shouting “Order! ORDER!” all the time. I don't know where all the waiters were but some of the MPs had fallen asleep.

“If my petition gets enough signatures, it might be debated in Parliament,” I told Nathan, thinking that the idea had lost some of its shine now I knew that our MPs' idea of debate was muttering incoherently until the opposition nodded off.

But Nathan seemed enthusiastic. “Yeah, nice work on that. I passed the link on to all my mates and they all signed it.”

My ears went hot as I blushed – Nathan was telling his friends about me! Well, okay, it was really the petition he was talking about, but still! “Thanks,” I said, suddenly shy.

“No problem,” he replied. “Listen, I'm sorry we haven't seen each other much since the quiz team broke up. I kind of miss those cramming sessions we used to have.”

Did that mean he missed me as well? Or had he meant the team as a whole? It was probably a good thing our milkshakes arrived right then or I might have gushed how much I missed him too. As it was, I was awed into silence by my SUGAR RUSH MOUNTAIN. It was every bit as gorgeous as the description suggested – I could practically feel my teeth rot just looking at it.

“There was another reason I asked you here today,” Nathan said, after a few minutes' industrious spoon-work, and I realized he suddenly looked even more nervous than he had on Thursday. “I – er – wondered if you – uh – wanted to go to the May Ball.”

Duh. Of course I did. “Yeah,” I replied, frowning. “Everyone is going, aren't they?”

He flashed a frozen smile. “I meant with me.”

“Oh,” I said and felt my cheeks start to go red. “OH!”

The headline from JOJ loomed large in my mind. How could he be asking me if he was already going with Susie? “Um…won't your girlfriend be upset?”

His mouth dropped open. “My girlfriend?”

Nervously, I fiddled with my straw. “I thought you'd be going with Susie Carr. Only it said on JUICE ON JUDE'S that she'd been to your house and everyone had kind of put two and two together…”

I trailed off uncertainly as a flicker of irritation crossed his face.

“You shouldn't believe everything you read on JOJ,” he said, in a grim tone. “My mum is Susie's piano teacher, so she comes round to my house once a week for lessons. That doesn't make her my girlfriend.”

I looked down at the table, wishing I'd kept my stupid mouth shut. Of course there was nothing going on with Susie. “Sorry.”

As the strained silence stretched, I thought about asking if Nathan knew who was behind JUICE ON JUDE'S but then his fingers touched mine and I forgot the website even existed. “There's only one girl I want to go to the ball with,” he said quietly, “and she's sitting right here.”

A warm fuzzy feeling flowed through me as my eyes met his and all thoughts of Susie flew out of my head. “Really?”

He grinned. “Really. So what do you think?”

I squashed the urge to leap up and squeal with happiness. “I'd love to.”

I'm not one hundred per cent sure how I got home from Shake Shack. I think maybe Dad picked me up but I was so busy floating in a bubble of May Ball bliss that I might have pranced home on a purple pony for all I remember. I know I texted Molly and Shenice and I could practically hear their shrieks from the middle of town. We all agreed that I need to start thinking about what I am going to wear. Now that I am going with Nathan, I will definitely need a new dress and there are less than seven days to find one.

I wonder how much my MOSHI MOSHI MONSTERS would get on eBay?

E-PETITION Number of signatures: 801

Catching Mum in a good mood is as tricky as trying to get Batman and Bruce Wayne in the same room. But if I wanted a new outfit for the ball, I had to start dropping hints. I thought about hitting her with some really bad news, like I'd been excluded from school, and then following it up with an “Only joking! I do need a new dress, though…” but I doubted she'd be able to hear me with her head in the roof.

In the end, she gave me a gift-wrapped opportunity at dinner that Saturday night. Miracle of miracles, we'd been allowed to order takeaway pizza and the twins were catnapping in their cot upstairs. The television was on but might as well have been off, since the volume was so low I could barely hear it, and no one was allowed to speak in anything louder than a whisper. Dad was busy trying to convince Liam to do an Elvis cover at the May Ball and Liam was doing his best to pretend that he couldn't hear him.

Mum leaned towards me, her eyes brighter than I'd seen them for ages. “So, Nathan seems nice.”

I saw this picture once of a painting called The Scream, which is basically someone looking like they've just heard The Droids are splitting up. That's exactly how I felt when Mum winked at me. But I didn't let her see that she'd got to me. “I'm glad you like him because he's asked me to the May Ball. How amazing is that?”

In a flash, her smile turned into a frown. “I think you're a bit young to be going to parties with boys.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. When will she stop treating me like a baby? “It's a school party, Mum. All the teachers will be there. And Liam.”

Liam stopped stuffing pizza into his face to glare at me. “Don't drag me into it. I'll be too busy being a rock legend to babysit you.”

“But you can keep an eye on me, right? To put Mum's mind at rest?” I said, in a wheedling voice, praying that just this once, he might actually do me a favour.

His eyes narrowed and I knew – just KNEW – he was calculating exactly how much mileage he could extract from the situation. “Yeah, I suppose I could do that.”

I exhaled very quietly and tried not to think about how many cups of tea I was going to have to make him to repay the debt. My gaze slid hopefully to Mum. “So?”

She glanced over at Dad and they had some kind of weird telepathic conversation. I held my breath until she nodded. “Okay, you can go with Nathan. As long as you remember Liam is in charge.”

Phase One – complete. Commencing Phase Two. I took another deep breath. “The other thing is, it's sort of a formal party and I don't think I have the right kind of dress.”

Mum's lips tightened. “Cassidy, we've been over this. As much as I hate sounding like a stuck record, we cannot afford to buy you clothes whenever you want them, especially a new dress you'll probably only wear once.”

“I won't only wear it once,” I protested. “I'll wear it all the time. I'll wear it to bed if it'll make you happy.”

“What would make me happy is if both of you understood that we have another two mouths to feed these days and money is not something that grows on trees,” she snapped.

I started to say that I was only too aware that there were another two mouths in the house, since the screams they made woke me up every night, but Liam cut me off.

“Don't have a go at me,” he said to Mum, sounding wounded. “I don't need a new dress to impress my boyfriend!”

“Who asked you?” I retorted.

And he might have ended up wearing the remains of the deep pan Meat Feast if a thin, reedy wail hadn't floated over the baby monitor and interrupted us, just as my fingers were reaching for the crust.

Mum slumped back on the sofa, looking like she was about to cry, and all at once I felt horrible. Of course I shouldn't be demanding new dresses when we could only just afford to pay the bills. And I should stop looking for ways to get out of our trip to UNHAPPY SANDS – Mum and Dad deserved a break too. “You stay there, love,” Dad said, waving at Mum. “Cassie will give me a hand, won't you?”

Nodding, I got to my feet and followed him up the stairs. I waited for the inevitable telling-off as we soothed Joshua and Ethel back to sleep. It didn't come. Instead, Dad waited until we'd tiptoed out of the room to press two ten pound notes into my hand.

“Don't tell your mum,” he whispered with a smile.

I stared down at the money, remembering Mum's stressed-out face, and handed it back to him. “It's okay. I'm sure I've got something I can wear.”

He closed my fingers over the notes. “Don't be daft. We can't have you going to the ball looking like Cinderella's skint sister, can we?”

I smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Dad.”

He winked back. “My pleasure. And remember, not a word to Mum. I'll tell her when she's calmed down a bit. Next year, probably.”

Mum must have got more sleep than me because on Sunday morning, she greeted me with a big hug and an envelope with twenty pounds in it.