by Fiona Foden
“Well, not exactly,” I said with a shrug. “I’m just not allowed to go to my best friend’s party tonight.”
She sat on the wall beside me and I glanced at her face. She had bright green eyes, sort of cat-like, and amazing pale skin. Sort of … luminous. No wonder Ned sat staring at his phone when she didn’t call. “That’s such a shame,” she said gently.
I nodded, wondering if Ned had also told Ray about Chilli Galore and the Tarmouth Times and, if he had, what kind of idiot she thought I was. I couldn’t imagine her being lifted anywhere by a fireman.
“Well,” she said carefully, “there must be something you can do.”
I shook my head firmly. “No there isn’t. Mum says I’ve wasted police resources and…” I was trying to sound tough, like none of this bothered me really, but my eyes were filling up with hot tears.
“Oh, Cassie, don’t cry.” She put an arm around me in a big-sisterly way, not that Beth would ever do that. Beth was probably loving it that I couldn’t go to Marcia’s party. “I think it’s a bit unfair,” Ray added. “I mean, Ned’s been telling me how much you help your mum with the dogs and all that…”
I shrugged and wiped my face on my sleeve.
“Was this party really important to you?”
“Yeah,” I said, and it all poured out before I could stop it: about Operation SOOP and Chilli Galore – which Ned had blabbed about, of course – and how this party would be my big chance with Ollie, as long as the Leech didn’t turn up in that eyelash skirt, and how I always acted stupid and tongue-tied around him.
“That’s some crush you’ve got,” Ray said with a smile.
“Yeah. I suppose it is.” It felt OK telling Ray all of this, because she wasn’t family and I could sense that she wouldn’t laugh or tell me I was stupid.
“I hope Ollie deserves it,” she added.
“Er…” I tailed off. I’d never thought of it like that. “What d’you mean?”
“I mean, you’re pretty, you’ve got a lovely face, and I’m assuming Ollie’s cute…”
“Oh yes,” I said eagerly.
“But what else does he have?”
I racked my brain. All I could think of was the poshest house on Lilac Hill, and I knew Ray didn’t mean that kind of thing.
“Is he amazing?” she asked.
“Um…” I frowned and tried to come up with examples of Ollie’s amazingness, but I couldn’t think of any.
“If you’re going to have a crush,” Ray added with a mischievous grin, “shouldn’t you pick someone amazing who deserves all the thought and energy you put into it?”
“I suppose so,” I murmured, feeling my black mood start to fade. D’you think Ned’s amazing? I wanted to ask.
“Tell you what.” Ray jumped off the wall and pushed her hair out of her face. “Come for a ride on my bike with me. That’ll cheer you up.”
“I can’t!” I protested. “Mum’d go mad…”
“No she won’t. I’ll have a word with her if you like. I’ll tell her you’re really sorry about all the trouble you’ve caused and you and me are going off for a little chat.”
“What kind of chat?” Maybe I’d misjudged her friendliness and she was going to give me a right old lecture, like I needed that.
“You’ll see,” she said with a wide smile.
“Why will Mum listen to you? I mean, I’ve tried everything…”
“Sometimes, Cassie, it’s the way you say things.”
I blinked at her, not knowing what on earth she meant. “If you think it’s worth a try,” I said hesitantly.
“Course it is.” Her smile lit up her whole face. “You know what? I think your day’s just about to get better.”
I didn’t believe Ray, even though I really wanted to. I watched as she strode back into our house, and Mum was all smiley at the door with her again, then the two of them went in, all chatty like a couple of mates.
I waited for what felt like a hundred years. I nibbled my nails and picked the moss off a huge area of wall. Then Ray bounced back out and hurried towards me.
“Hop on, then,” she said.
I stared at her. “What, on your bike?”
“Yeah. C’mon, before your mum changes her mind.”
“I can’t go on a motorbike!” I protested.
“It’s OK, I’ve passed my test.”
“Yes, but I don’t have a helmet…” After the roof stuff, I wasn’t about to go breaking any laws.
“It’s OK, I’ve got a spare.”
I wiped the last of the dampness from my eyes and looked at her. “Did you ask Mum if I could go on it?”
“Um, not exactly, but it’ll be all right, we won’t be long…”
I bit my lip, thinking that, with all the trouble I was in already, a quick ride on a motorbike wasn’t going to do any more damage. “OK, then,” I said, feeling a little ball of excitement starting to fizz in my stomach.
“Great,” Ray said with a grin, opening the box on the back of her bike and lifting out a shiny black helmet.
“Thanks.” I wasn’t even sure how to fix the thing on and was praying that Mum wouldn’t glance out of the kitchen window and see us. A few minutes ago, I’d been willing her to look out, think, “Oh, poor Cassie, all alone in the cold” and rush out and say all was forgiven. Now I was desperate to set off on that bike before she spotted us.
Ray fixed the helmet’s strap for me. As she towered over me, I realized how amazingly tall she is – easily taller than Ned. “What about Ned?” I asked as she climbed on to her bike and made it snarl into life.
“What about him?” she asked.
“Didn’t you come to see…?”
“Look, d’you want to come with me or not?” she asked, so I hopped on and we were off in a gigantic roar with me gripping her leather-clad hips and grinning madly as the winter air whooshed past my face.
Chilli Galore? The Tarmouth Times? Who cared about any of that?
You know when something happens that you realize you’ll remember for ever? Today was like that. We zoomed around a bit too fast, and I thought we’d stop somewhere but we went right through Tarmouth, along the winding road that follows the coast, and on to Winterbourne, which is miles away. Ray stopped in the middle of town. I spotted loads of men looking at her, but she didn’t seem to notice. When she took off her helmet and shook out her hair, even more men looked at her. She reminded me of a red setter, in a good way. I started to wonder if poor Ned’s really in with a chance when Ray could probably pick any boy she wanted. “Um, where did you tell Mum we were going?” I asked, after she’d parked her bike and we were wandering through the bustling street of touristy shops.
“I just said we were going out,” she replied.
“Right. So I suppose that’s not a lie, exactly…”
“Hey,” she said. “Don’t worry. And you know that newspaper with your picture in?”
I nodded, flushing pink at the very thought of it.
“See that?” Ray said, pointing to a huge blue and white sign which said Armando’s Fish Bar. “It’ll be wrapping fish and chips by now.” I knew our copy wouldn’t, as I had ripped it into tiny pieces and stuffed it into the bottom of our bin. But I understood what she meant – that it’ll be old news very soon.
It wasn’t until we went for coffee and cake that I started to feel puzzled. Why had Ray brought me out today? Sure, she was going out with my brother (sort of), but I’d never even spoken to her before. Did she feel sorry for me, crying on the garden wall, or what? She sipped her black coffee while I had hot chocolate with cream and a Flake, which she insisted she’d pay for (just as well, as I’d come out without my £1.72. Also, I must learn to like coffee ASAP). “Um … how old are you, Ray?” I asked hesitantly.
“Eighteen,” she told me.
“You’re two years
older than Ned!” I exclaimed, wanting to ask if her friends teased her or called her a cradle snatcher.
“So what?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “I just, er…”
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked teasingly.
“Of course not,” I exclaimed. We fell into silence again as I tried to figure out how to ask her why she’d done so much to cheer me up today. Then, as if she could read my thoughts, she answered my question before I’d even asked it.
“It’s funny,” she said, fixing me with her green eyes, “you’re so like I was when I was thirteen. I don’t mean that to sound patronizing…”
Miss Rashley is what I’d call patronizing, not Ray. “It’s fine,” I said quickly.
“And when I saw you there, sitting and crying in your garden,” she continued, “it could have been me, five years ago, when my parents had been called to school and I’d just been excluded…”
“You were excluded from school?” I gasped. Ray nodded and smiled ruefully. “What for?” I asked.
“Oh, a whole mixture, really. Being cheeky, fighting, swearing at teachers…” She shook her head. “I was a real charmer, I can tell you.”
I looked at her, not quite knowing what to say. “You’re not like that now,” I murmured.
“No, thank God,” she laughed. “It all came together eventually. I took my exams at college, did some travelling, learned French and taught a bit of English, and now I’m back here, working for my dad until I decide what to do next…”
“But you’re only eighteen!” I exclaimed. “How come you’ve managed to do all that?”
Ray smiled. “Maybe I was determined to make up for lost time after messing around all those years … not that I think you’re like that,” she added quickly. But I do remember thinking that everything was hopeless when I was thirteen, just as you looked today…”
“…And that was only about a party,” I reminded her. “It makes my problems seem kind of pathetic.”
“I still think you’ll be able to persuade your mum to let you go,” Ray said firmly, “if you’re calm and reasonable about it. She’s not an ogre or anything…”
“I know,” I murmured, spooning the last of the creamy hot chocolate into my mouth.
As we left the café, I was trying to figure out how to persuade Mum, and wondered if she’d started to worry because Ray and I had been gone for an hour or so by now. No – she was probably just relieved I wasn’t moping about. We climbed back on to Ray’s bike and sped past the zoo, which made me think of rhino horns and love potions and Marcia’s party happening in just a few hours’ time.
Without telling me where we were going, Ray pulled up at a little cluster of shabby shops on the edge of town. One was called Party Box and had a peeling sign and a display of faded masks in the window. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going in.”
“Why?” I asked.
“We’re going to get you a costume for the party.”
“But what if I still can’t go? Anyway, I don’t have any money…”
Ray gave me a wide, gappy smile. “Things have a way of working out, Cassie. Come on.” She grabbed my hand. “Let’s go in and see what they have. My treat.”
I couldn’t understand why she was doing all this for me. Then it dawned on me that maybe Ray had a plan, and that she’d had to figure out ways to get around her mum too. “I suppose if I had a costume already,” I said as we stepped into the shop, “Mum would be more likely to let me go.”
“Exactly,” said Ray. I gazed around the shop, which was crammed with costumes and masks and crazy hats from the floor right up to the ceiling. A woman with a pale face and long, witchy hair smiled at us from the counter. “Looking for something for a party, love?” she asked.
“Yes, she is,” Ray said quickly, before I’d even opened my mouth. So I flicked through the rails, peering at furry gorilla outfits and ballet tutus and every kind of costume you could imagine. “What about this?” Ray said, holding up a black, all-in-one catsuit.
I liked it. Something about Ray’s green eyes and all the doggie stuff at home made the idea of being cat-like quite appealing. “It’s great,” I said, “but honestly, I’m probably never going to have a chance to wear it.”
“Just try it on,” she said. “Let’s see what it looks like.”
I smiled and took it from her. For the first time in ages, I was actually enjoying myself. It was great to be away from snooty Beth and Mum’s moods. I slipped into the tiny changing room and drew the bat-patterned curtain. Maybe it’s because I was excited to try the thing on, but I actually forgot about my lopsided boob situation until I’d undressed to my underwear and had struggled into the stretchy catsuit. “Hey,” Ray hissed from outside the cubicle. “You forgot this.” She jabbed her hand round the curtain and passed me a velvety, whiskery cat mask.
“Thanks, I said. I put the cat mask on and paused for a moment before facing the tall, thin mirror. I hadn’t padded my bra and I knew my left non-boob would be dead obvious in something so stretchy and tight. I turned nervously and peered at my reflection through the mask’s eyeholes.
And it wasn’t me. It couldn’t be plain old Cassie Malone, because in the mirror I saw a normal-shaped girl in a mask and a catsuit whose body was completely symmetrical.
I couldn’t believe it. I wondered if it was an illusion caused by the mask, or if this was one of those trick mirrors that changes your shape like you get at the fairground. I pulled off the mask and looked again. It had happened, and it was nothing to do with trying to be left-handed or exercising my left side. Grinning, I pulled the mask back on and leapt, feline-like, out of the cubicle. “So,” I said as Ray turned around to look at me, “what d’you think?”
“Wow!” she exclaimed. “Amazing.”
“You look fantastic, Catgirl,” chuckled the woman behind the counter.
“You really think so?” I asked, feeling suddenly shy.
“Admit it,” Ray said, laughing. “You know you do. Go take it off and we’ll buy it.”
“Thanks!” I exclaimed. That one little word didn’t seem nearly enough. I had another quick look at my new cat-self and tried a few feline moves in the mirror. Then I pulled off my outfit and examined myself in my underwear. It wasn’t the mask, the catsuit or a trick mirror at all.
My left boob had caught up, simple as that, just as Marcia said it would. I felt crazily happy as Ray took me home, as if a little bit of her magic had rubbed off on me.
As Ray went up to see Ned in his room, I sat on our front step and called Marcia, desperate to tell her about my amazing day. “Oh,” she said. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Right,” like I was talking about clearing out the shoe cupboard or something.
“You don’t sound impressed,” I said.
“Sorry, Cass. It’s just, you won’t believe what’s happened…”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s off,” she wailed. “Mum won’t let me have the party. I can’t believe she’s doing this to me with everyone coming…”
“Why?” I asked, hardly able to believe what I was hearing.
“It’s my own fault…” She sounded really choked up now.
“Don’t get upset! How can it be your fault?”
Marcia sniffed loudly. “I’d written a list of everyone who’d said they were coming, and Mum saw it and went mad. She said there’s no way our house is being overrun by hundreds of strangers and—”
“How many people did you invite?” I asked.
“Not that many! And none of them are strangers…”
“How many, Marce?” I asked gently.
“Er, well, maybe I did get a bit carried away…”
“Marcia,” I said, “how many people were meant to be coming tonight?”
“Ninety-two,” she mumbled.
“Ninety-two?”
I repeated. “Are you kidding?” Never mind fitting them all into her house. I couldn’t believe she knew so many people. It made me feel like a complete Nelly-no-mates.
“When they heard the Leech was coming,” she explained, “everyone wanted to come. Pretty much every boy in our year, anyway, and I thought…”
“So how many boys did you invite?”
“About sixty, I think. I sort of lost track.” Sixty boys. Great. That’s sixty boys who were coming not because it was Marcia’s party, but because they all wanted to be with the Leech.
“How many boys were coming before the Leech invited herself?”
“Er, eight,” she mumbled. Great. Well, even if I had been allowed to go, the last thing I’d have wanted was to be batting off the Leech’s reject boys.
“D’you want to come over?” I asked. “We could watch a film or something…”
“I’d better not.”
“Oh, Marcia,” I murmured. “This whole thing’s a real mess, isn’t it?”
“It’s all right,” she said in a tiny voice. “Like I said, it was my fault, really. Oh, and I meant to tell you…”
“What?” I asked anxiously.
“Mum found your bra and school top, the ones that were stained blue, in the bottom of our linen basket and threw them away. Want me to try and rescue them for you?”
“No, it’s OK,” I said. Like I cared about a ruined old bra and top anyway.
I felt so bad as we finished the call. This whole party business wasn’t her fault – it was mine. After all, the whole idea had started with my crush on Ollie. Did he really deserve all this fuss, as Ray had suggested? All the party arranging, and the trouble I’d got into with Chilli Galore and the police and the newspaper? I thought of everything I’d done to try and be his girlfriend:
I’d followed him to his house…
And nearly been savaged by Monty… (What kind of a dog’s name was that anyway?)…
Made a disastrous jam potion…
Failed to turn myself into a Venus flytrap…