Fanmail (9 page)

‘So how was your … movie?’ I asked Dolores when we could first speak, which was at morning break between English and History. It wasn’t first thing as it normally would be: I’d realised on the bus that I didn’t have my pencil case or my student ID which was in it, so I’d spent ten minutes trying to persuade the bus driver to let me on for free as usual, which made us late, and then another ten minutes scrabbling around in my locker trying to find a pen while Mrs Shaw stood at the classroom door, tapping her foot.

‘It was A-MA-ZING,’ said Dolores
, sounding like Craig Revel Horwood, ‘but not half, no a quarter, no, a THIRD so amazing as you turning up in a car with Jazzy D. Cat, what was … how did … what is …’

Her face matched her hair, she was so breathless and dying
to hear what had been going on. I could hardly wait for 12.30pm. Her hair and face would turn purple for joy. Or some colour for joy. What colour do people go for joy? Maybe from now on, it would be called Dolores for joy. Like,
and I literally went Dolores
…

Anyway, now she had me by the lapels and was rattling my teeth. ‘How did it happen? Where is he now? What’s he like in person? Does he know about me?’

So many questions, such strange answers.

I ticked them off one by one. “Firstly, how did it happen? Well, he’s clearly got all my letters and remembers me from primary school and turned up on Friday night to find me. Looked straight at me and called me Cat.’

Dolores squeaked.

‘Oh, yes. Next, where is he now? Um, I can’t really say …’ This was true as he could well be roaming the high street looking for a taxi company by now, or finding his phone somewhere. ‘… but you’ll find out soon.’

Another squeak.

‘What’s he like in person? Gosh, that’s a hard one. He’s part …’ How to put this nicely? ‘He’s part singing idiot with muscles, part – and it’s a very small part – sensitive, dreamy soul.’

Squeakety-squeak which sounded like ‘Oh singing and muscles and sensitive and dreamy’ in the language of squeak.

‘I did say very small part soulful and sensitive, didn’t I? Like one percent.’

Squeak-speak which sounded like deep Dolores depths of joy that he was mostly a singing idiot with muscles.

‘
Finally, has he heard about you? Yes. Oh, yes.’

I couldn’t swear how much he’d been listening,
to be fair, but I’d been feeding him a steady drip of Glorious Dolores all weekend: how beautiful, how kind, how generous, how breastacular, how sweet, how perfect a friend that she’d be bound to make a fantabulous girlfriend for a pop star … All of which was absolutely true, but it’s not often you string together everything you think about your friend so you can do a sales job on them. Not that I needed to – he’d find out for himself in a very short space of time.

Still, I didn’t want it all to go to her pink head. ‘I told him you were quite nice but no match for me, and if he valued his shirts he’d best stay right out of your way.’

‘Ha ha.’ She took a blouse-bursting deep breath ready to ask another chain of questions, just as Freddie and an equally nerdy friend came sauntering across the hall.

‘Hey, Dolores,’ said Freddie, sweating slightly. ‘Cat.’

He knew my name he knew my name he’d said my name he’d said it, without prompting or anything! I stared at his mousy lip and tried to say something, but Dolores had already leapt in.

‘Freddie! Cat was just telling me why Jazzy D was in Aggie’s car with them and she says he’s absolutely brilliant in real life, and he can’t wait to meet me.’

There was a ripple of interest around us at the mention of Jazzy D, followed by the aroma of rampant disbelief as the rest of Dolores’ words sank in. Jazzy D in a car with Catherine Andrews? In what universe?

I could see from the expressions on everyone’s faces that the rumour had already been dismissed as a complete piece of fiction, probably made up by me.

It was like Aggie all over again.

And while I could see why it would seem weird, was it really so unbelievable that I might have gone to school with someone a bit interesting? Really?

Freddie, I could see, had other reasons for not wanting to believe it. He glanced quickly at Dolores, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. ‘It can’t be the real Jazzy D. It’s a double, or something. Did you hire him, Cat?’

He stared me down with an expression that was half challenge, half pity, and suddenly I knew something terrible. He knew. I knew that he knew that I had chemical reactions in the organ of the brain for him, and that sometimes they transferred to areas lower down my body. And he knew that I knew that he liked Dolores
while I liked him, even if Dolores hadn’t properly worked it all out yet, and I knew that he knew that I was plotting to somehow distract Dolores so I could get my claws – I checked my hands – my chewed, stubby fingers into him.

Ouch. That hurt on any number of lev
els, but mostly on the level of deep, bitter shame: I’d been busted by the very person I was trying to impress, and he evidently thought there was nothing I wouldn’t stoop to in order to prise him and Dolores apart.

Was he right? Double ouch. That was really the worst part. What if he and Dolores were meant to be together? How could I do that to my best friend?

It was a loooooooooong, shaky moment, during which my face drifted from expression to expression as I tried to work out how to answer him in a satisfactory manner. If I overdid it, in a ‘How dare you!’ kind of way, he’d guess he was right, and if I said nothing, he’d guess he was right. Whatever I did, in fact, I was doomed to him guessing he was right (not about me hiring Jazzy as I hadn’t, but about the whole plan behind it all).

Furthermore, Freddie, Nerdy Mate and even Dolores were now watching my facial contortions as if they were waiting for an alien burst out of my nose.

‘She didn’t, did you, Cat?’ said Dolores, with only the tiniest glimmer of doubt in her voice.

And of course I could be very truthful, which saved me. I settled on an expression of superior amusement and said, ‘Freddie, what a mad idea. Jazzy – or Jason, as I call him – is an old friend from my primary school, and we were just catching up, that’s all.’

The bystanders had pricked up their ears again, and there was a low hum of intrigue as the mutter went around the hall and the queue for the shop that Cat-astrophic in Year 11 actually knew Jazzy D (yep, I heard it).

‘And how was he?’ Freddie said it nicely with a bit of a smile on his attractive upper lip, but even so, there was something suspicious about the
way his eyes hardened behind his glasses that made me slightly nervous.

‘He was …’ I gulped. ‘… fine.’

‘And muscly and singing and soulful and sensitive!’ said Dolores, clapping her hands prettily.

Freddie smirked. ‘Right. Well, now I know you’re making it up. Soulful and sensitive? Jazzy D?’

Yeah, actually it was a stretch. I could see why he’d struggle.

I was just working out what to say next when I realised the rumour-rumble had got louder. Actually it got loud and sort of swelled, rather like a Mexican wave. Like the Mexican wave at the Double Vision gig, rippling through the hall from a dull murmur at the back, blooming and booming as it went through the middle, rising to a screeching crescendo as it reached the doorway into the corridor. I was suddenly transported back to the concert, to thousands of little girls screaming for their idol:

‘Jazzy D! Omigod, it’s Jazzy D! Jazzy!’

All heads turned to face the doorway, and me being a bit taller than most of the girls (and quite a few of the boys), I could see quite clearly what they were all looking at.

Resplendent in a black supermarket t-shirt which he’d ripped and layered over the white supermarket t-shirt, and Dean’s beloved 501’s sawn off (probably literally, given what utensils were in the shed) to expose two muscly thighs, was Jason Devaney. The Divine Jazzy D. In the hall of Trevellyan High School.

He scanned the room quickly, then spotted me. Like I said, taller than most. Also scarlet and radiating heat from my furnace of
a face, so there was probably a flaming glow all around me. Possibly my hair wings were on fire. The bloody idiot. What was he doing here? Now?  

‘Cat!’ he called, and strode towards me
through the crowd on those muscly thighs like Moses parting the Red Sea (although I’m sure Moses used a staff or something, not muscly thighs).

He reached my side and tried to give me a kiss on the cheek, and I leapt out of the way quickly. ‘What are
you doing here?’ I hissed. ‘I said 12.30pm. At the tree!’

Jazzy shrugged as hundreds of teenagers started to close in around him.

Around us.

‘I got bored
waiting for the time to leave for the cab, so I ran instead. Got here quite quickly.’

‘You ran?’
That explained the shorts, then. ‘It’s about six miles!’

At that, the Divine Jazzy D grinned, and h
alf the room practically combusted. It could actually have been quite nice, watching the girls (and some of the boys) being affected by him in the way the guys reacted to Dolores, if it weren’t all so embarrassing …

He pointed to his bicep as he flexed his arm and then put it around my shoulders. Not just his bicep
, of course, because that would be weird. His whole arm. And that was even weirder.

He pulled me a bit closer but sadly, didn’t lower his voice.
‘I told you, Cat. Big muscles.’ Then he wiggled his eyebrows up and down as if we had some secret joke between us.

And just as I stared at him wondering how much it would hurt
to punch him in the shoulder or possibly the mouth, and he smiled down at me like some kind of dreamy teen idol, about a thousand stars appeared around us.

Camera phones.

Flashing.

Triple o
uch.

I’m not sure how long it took to be all over, well, EVERYWHERE. As I’d said to Jason in my letters, I don’t really like all that Facebooking, Twittering, Tumblring, messaging stuff. I don’t understand it, I don’t need it, and I don’t use it. There are just a few people on the planet I ever wanted to talk to: Mum, Dolores, Freddie, Gemma. Dad, maybe. When you’re not very happy with who you are, why would you want to go telling the world?

But suddenly, in just seconds it felt like, the world knew who I was. They knew I was the Cat-Astrophe who was apparently going out with the Divine Jazzy D. Everybody on the whole planet suddenly wanted to know more about me – anything about me – and how Jazzy and I had got together.

Though nobody ever told me for sure that it was being said, I’m sure most of them also wanted to know what the most famous teen idol on the continent, who could have any girl he wanted in the big wide world, could possibly see in me.

And meanwhile, nearly all of the only people I ever really wanted to talk to were not talking to me.

Even though I was EVERYWHERE, I’d never felt more alone.

Stephen Scowl

Talentfactory

PO Box 47863

London SW19 8DR

Dear Mr Scowl

You didn’t come and get him! And now he thinks we’re ‘meant to be’ or something, and nothing could be further from the truth!
He keeps singing and I hate it!

You see, he’s meant to be for Dolores – they’d be perfect together. And I’m meant to be for Freddie, who incorrectly believes that he and Dolores should be together.

Now Dolores isn’t talking to me because she thinks I deliberately stole Jazzy D (Jason) from under her Double Ds. And Freddie isn’t talking to me (not that he was much anyway) because he can see that not talking to me will get him onside with Dolores. He’s actually COMFORTING her, for crying out loud.

Even my mum isn’t talking to me because she found out he’s been staying in our shed and that we’re apparently going out, even though we’re not, and we always promised I’d talk to her before I got a boyfriend. Do you know what she said? A few weeks ago I told her there was a boy at school and she guessed that I liked him, but after Monday and Facespace and everything she told me she was very disappointed with me, and thought I’d at least try to find someone with the same values as me, not a pop star.

She’s also a bit cross, I think, because Aggie (she’s the daughter of Dean who my mum plans to marry, and a bit of a Divvy, I’m sorry to say) … Aggie’s older than me and met Jason on Friday too, and would really have liked to go out with him at least a little bit. Her mum died a few years ago, and this was the happiest she’d been in ages blah blah blah.

So not only do I NOT want to go out with Jazzy D, but having him in my shed has made me NOT go out with the person I’d like to go out with, and has made my BFF and actually only F decide not to talk to me any more, and has made my mum side with my soon-to-be evil step-sister who’s so perfectly nice it’s infuriating.

Please, Mr Scowl. You’re a manager. You’re used to this stuff. Please put it right.

Cat Andrews (although I might go back to Catherine now I’ve found out they all call me ‘Cat-Astrophe’)