Star Reporter

by Tamsyn Murray

  “Liam and I respect each other as artists,” she said haughtily. “We’d never let our relationship get in the way of the music.”

  I rolled my eyes – she’d clearly been watching the rock biopics on Sky Arts again. It’s the kind of thing Liam and my dad say all the time when they’re talking about crusty old bands like The Beatles. The thing is, Liam and Molly don’t have much of a relationship, unless you count him asking her to do crappy stuff like hand out flyers when they’ve got a gig coming up. But it doesn’t matter how many times I tell her he’s just using her, she still thinks he’s amazing.

  “Whatever,” I muttered, sitting down and preparing for the festival of boredom to begin. My attention drifted almost immediately and came to rest on Nathan, seated a few tables away. What I’d told Molly and Shenice was partly true – when we’d hung out, it had only ever been as friends. But that was only because Nathan saw me as another mate, someone he could have a laugh with, a solid team player even though we weren’t actually team-mates any more. Now that I am a reporter, he might just see that there is more to me than a mental dog and an all-encompassing knowledge of Hogwarts. He might notice that I am a girl.

  I couldn’t swallow my tuna salad baguette fast enough at lunchtime. With one eye on the clock, I wolfed it down and left Molly and Shenice still eating while I hurried over to the English block and my first official meeting as a journalist. I’d brought a new pen and dug out a half-used notepad and everything.

  I don’t mind admitting that I felt as though my lunch was going to come back and choke me when I saw them all sitting around the classroom. Some of the coolest kids in school were there, the kind of people who wouldn’t normally know I existed. But there was also Jimmy Nelson from Year Eight, who is the geekiest geek ever. No one seemed to be making a joke about him being there so I guessed he was part of the group.

  Kelly came over the second she saw me hovering in the doorway.

  “Cass, come in!” she said, a welcoming grin on her face. “You don’t mind if I call you Cass, do you?”

  I didn’t mind. I was so in awe she could have called me Bruce Bogtrotter and I wouldn’t have minded, to be honest.

  “Hi,” I squeaked. “I’m not late, am I?”

  “No, we don’t start until Mr Bearman gets here,” she explained. “He supervises, although what we decide to cover is completely down to us. Let me introduce you to the press gang.”

  The press gang – how cool did that sound? Like THE AVENGERS, but with pens instead of weapons, and school uniforms. Kelly knows all the journalisty slang – I might start using a few phrases myself.

  The rest of my fellow press gangers were seated around the tables or on them. Kelly worked her way around the room and, one by one, they all waved and said hi. There was Alex Jones from Year Eight, Nisha Choudhury and Kieran Sanderson from Year Nine, Mel Wallis from Year Ten and a boy called Toby from Year Eleven who I’d never seen before in my life. And Jimmy, of course, but he was sniggering over a Macbook Pro and didn’t even look up.

  “Alex and Nisha cover school sports, Mel does all the arty stuff and Kieran is our music expert,” Kelly said. “We all keep an eye out for stories specific to our year groups too – the human interest stuff.”

  “Like when Team St Jude’s won the regional Kids’ Quiz,” Mel said, smiling, and I decided I liked her.

  “And when you blew it in the final,” Alex added, and I decided I didn’t like him. We’d finished in fifth place, out of the WHOLE COUNTRY, which was pretty amazing as far as I was concerned. But this was my first-ever magazine meeting and I wanted them to like me, so I smiled and ignored him.

  Mr Bearman appeared in the doorway. I saw Kelly’s eyes flash at Jimmy and he slammed the lid of the laptop so fast I swear his fingers blurred. What was that all about?

  “Good afternoon, everyone,” Mr Bearman said, closing the door behind himself and perching on the edge of a table. His gaze came to rest on me. “And welcome to our newest recruit. Great to see you here, Cassie.”

  Mr Bearman teaches me for English and is totally my favourite teacher. It was thanks to him that I joined Team St Jude’s in the first place (although if I’m totally honest, it was Nathan who did the persuading). Mr Bearman’s always been really encouraging. He’s pretty much the best teacher in the ENTIRE WORLD so having him in charge of the school magazine is completely brilliant.

  “Hello, sir.”

  “So, what have we got for this month’s edition, Kelly?”

  Kelly nodded to Jimmy and he scurried to the front of the classroom, a data stick in his hand. So that explained his presence among the cool kids, I decided – he was the technical support. Within seconds, he’d opened up a presentation on the interactive whiteboard and had backed away, giving Kelly centre stage.

  “Sport,” she said, clicking on the first slide. “This week, we’ve got the inter-school netball tournament, the house football cup and next week it’s the swimming gala. Nish and Al have got the skinny on those.”

  The skinny? I supposed she meant that sporty people were usually thin but it seemed like an odd way to describe them. She clicked the mouse again and a picture of Liam and his band mates popped up. I cringed. “WOLF BRETHREN are St Jude’s hard-rock answer to The Droids. Since they’re also the resident band for the lower school’s May Ball, Kieran has got the scoop on their likes, dislikes and musical inspiration.”

  Huh, the thing Liam likes best is stuffing his face with pepperoni pizza, but he doesn’t use a scoop. I kept my mouth shut, though, in case I showed myself up. Liam had already warned me not to talk about him and the band. Besides, I didn’t want him to think I admitted he was my brother.

  Kelly glanced over at me. “Then we’ve got Cassidy’s efforts to change the St Jude’s rules about school uniform.” A slide appeared with a screenshot of the petition on it and I saw with a jolt that it had over five hundred signatures on it. My little petition, up there with my name on it, and all those people had signed to say they agreed with me. Who’d have thought it would grow so fast?

  “Ah yes,” Mr Bearman said, smiling at me. “Quite the revolutionary, Cassidy.”

  The others were staring at me and I was glad I’d decided to leave my beret at home. “Suppose so, sir.”

  “Plus we’ve got the regular stuff – the horoscopes, crossword and adverts. Mrs Armstrong has got the lowdown on dealing with exam stress too. Anyone want to pitch anything else?”

  Huh, Mrs Armstrong is in her fifties – if she got low down, she wouldn’t get back up again. I listened as the gang tossed ideas around. Mel wanted to write a piece about the art exhibition Year Ten were doing for Parents’ Evening. I sat in silence, wondering whether my fellow Year Sevens were doing anything cool. I’d have to dig around – hey, maybe that was what the scoop was for.

  “Sounds like another excellent issue,” Mr Bearman said, after a few more minutes’ discussion. “The deadline for copy is two weeks from today and the magazine will go out the week after the May Ball. Good work, everyone.”

  I blinked. Copy? What did we have to copy? Teachers usually go NUTSO if you do that – I remember what happened when Shenice and I forgot to do our History homework. We copied Molly’s and she’d written about how the Battle of Hating was won by William the Conker, so we did too. Our teacher gave us this big long lecture about how we were only cheating ourselves and how slackers never amounted to anything. Surely Mr Bearman didn’t actually mean we should copy stuff to publish in HEY JUDE’S! Because I wasn’t making that mistake again.

  Mr Bearman must have seen my confusion because he came over. “Everything okay, Cassie?”

  I didn’t want to look like an idiot so I put on an expression of breezy confidence. “Oh yes, sir. I’m just off to copy something now. Where do you keep the scoop?”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “Ah. I thought Kelly might have explained a few basic journalist terms to you but apparently not. A scoop means a story we get before everyone else. Copy is what we ca
ll the writing that goes into the magazine. It doesn’t mean we copy someone else’s work – that’s called plagiarism and it’s against the law.”

  I nodded as though it all made sense, but really I was wondering why he couldn’t have just said “the deadline for articles is two weeks from today”. I can see there is a lot more to this journalism business than I thought, but I am determined to make it my Thing. Imagine having my name splashed across the front page in a searing article on the source of the terrible smell in the PE changing rooms – I’d be totally famous at St Jude’s and maybe it would even get picked up by the WINDSOR RECORDER. Or maybe I could uncover the person behind JUICE ON JUDE’S – I’d probably win an award for investigative skills. Then perhaps Liam would have to stop acting like he is the only one in our family with any talent.

  My time to shine is on its way, I can feel it!

  Chapter Six

  E-PETITION Number of signatures: 572

  Wow. What a week! Not only did my petition gain even more signatures (squee!) but Nathan said hi to me every morning. In fact, this week has been so good that I didn’t even make a fuss when Rolo ate my new beret, especially since Liam says it looks like I am balancing a cow pat on my head when I wear it.

  It’s also totally amazing being in the press gang! Mum says I should learn something called shorthand to speed up my note taking, which seems to be like Egyptian hieroglyphics and only proves how old my mother is. Kelly asked me to shadow Nisha’s coverage of the netball tournament after school on Wednesday, so I got to hang out with her and all her cool Year Nine mates and absolutely none of them drew any weird squiggly pictures instead of writing. They asked me about my dress for the May Ball and I tried to be all vague but the truth is, I haven’t dared ask Mum for one yet, even though it is only two weeks to the ball. She’ll probably suggest I make it out of the twins’ old sleepsuits.

  By Friday, I was so exhausted that I looked like a raccoon. When Shenice invited me and Molly to sleep over at her house, I couldn’t get over there fast enough. So what if I had to sleep on a blow-up bed, or that Molly’s crazy ringlets might try to smother me in the night, like they always do? The odds of someone waking me up by screaming for milk at two in the morning were a lot lower than at my own house. At least I hoped they were.

  With one thing and another, I haven’t seen as much of Molly and Shenice as I usually do. Tucked up in Shen’s room in our pyjamas with The Droids blasting out, I could tell they were really keen to hear all about my new career as a journalist – every time I mentioned Kelly or Nisha or said the word “journo”, they’d sort of smile at each other, as though my success was their success. I’ve been worried that I might be making them feel a bit jealous. Their lives aren’t exactly overflowing with excitement, after all – Shenice’s mum is still hanging out with Julio every Thursday evening and Molly still spends every spare moment obsessing over my brother. I don’t want them to think I’m rubbing their noses in my new-found popularity, but maybe it will help take their minds off their problems.

  “Listen, I’ve got something to ask you,” Molly interrupted when I started to tell them about Kelly’s fruit system for rating how juicy a story was. “It’s really important.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Although I have to tell you that if it’s about an ongoing story in HEY JUDE’S! my lips are sealed.”

  Molly scowled. “Will you shut up about that for a minute? It’s about Liam, anyway.”

  I sat back, a bit surprised at the irritation in her voice. Maybe I HAD been going on about my new career too much after all. “What about him? He’s still a moron, in case you were wondering.”

  She ignored me. “I read on JUICE ON JUDE’S that Max is moving to Leeds next week. Tell me it’s not true!”

  I guessed she meant the bass guitar player from WOLF BRETHREN – he’s called Max – but honestly, what was she asking me for? I’m the last person to know anything about Liam these days – he’s always rehearsing. JOJ is my new guilty pleasure – I know I shouldn’t love it but it’s the first thing I check when I get home each day – but I must have missed the bit about Max in amongst all the other gossip. Or maybe I have trained my brain to ignore all WOLF BRETHREN references. Whatever the reason, I was drawing a blank until a memory stirred at the back of my mind – hadn’t Liam said something to Dad about auditions for a new band member next week? Maybe that had something to do with it. “Er…it might be. Why?”

  “WHY?” she exploded, so loudly that Shenice and I jumped. “It’s only the first nail in WOLF BRETHREN’s coffin, that’s all! It’s like when Josie left The Go-Go Bunnies – the beginning of the end. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

  And to my utter astonishment, she burst into tears. Shenice and I stared at each other, unsure what to say. I mean, I know Molly loves the band but this was off the scale, even for her.

  “Liam doesn’t seem very worried,” I said uncertainly, pulling a confused face at Shenice over Molly’s bowed head. I racked my brains for details of the conversation he’d had with my dad. “He said bass players are two a penny and he hoped some really hot girls would apply.”

  Shenice was making a desperate, one-handed cutting motion across her throat but it was too late. Molly stopped crying mid-sob and raised her head to look at me through narrowed eyes.

  “What?”

  Ooops.

  “But mostly, they want someone good,” I babbled, going for damage limitation. “And the main thing is that they get the best person for the job, right?”

  The silence was broken by a knock at the door. Shenice’s mum poked her head into the room. She was wearing a sombrero. “CHOCOLATE CALIENTE PARA MIS CHICAS!”

  Shenice groaned and covered her face with her hands. “Mum, you’re from Basingstoke, not Barcelona. Speak English!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with bringing a bit of sunshine into our lives,” Shen’s mum said, holding out the tray. She’s really lovely but she does treat us like we’re little kids. The tray had three mugs of hot chocolate on it, piled high with cream and marshmallows. Next to them was a bowl of pastel-coloured Iced Gems and a big bag of Haribo. Not that I’m complaining, of course – you’re never too old for gummy bears and tiny biscuits.

  “I thought you might be peckish,” she said. Then she saw Molly’s tear-stained face and frowned. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine, Mum,” Shenice said, letting out a heavy sigh. “Just go.”

  “Are you sure?” Mrs Coleman said, looking at Molly sympathetically. “Is it boy trouble?”

  “Mum!” Shenice shouted and I thought she might actually throw the tray across the room. “Molly is fine, we are fine, please leave us alone.”

  “Alright,” she said and turned to go. “Make sure you bring those mugs down when you’re finished, Shenice. The last cup you left up here started a new civilization under your bed.” The door clicked in its frame but not before we heard her call, “ADIOS, AMIGOS!”

  Shenice made a weird growly noise as she handed out the hot chocolate. “See what I mean? Since she’s started seeing this Julio, she’s suddenly obsessed with Spain. I came home the other day to find her watching a Spanish film with the subtitles on.”

  Even Molly couldn’t stay angry in the face of Shenice’s worry. “Does she know you know yet?”

  “No,” Shenice answered glumly. “But I overheard her on the phone saying that she wants to see him twice next week, so it sounds like it’s getting serious. If she tries to tell me he’s my new dad I promise you I will run away.”

  It sounded like Shenice’s mum was getting on well with this Julio but I knew that wasn’t what Shen wanted to hear. “I’m sure she wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I read this article which said—”

  Shenice ignored me. “She talks stupid Spanish all the time. Why else would she do that if not to get me used to the idea of moving to Spain?”

  Now SHE looked like she might cry, and I wasn’t sure I could handle both my BFFs going supernova at
the same time. “You should follow her next time she goes to meet him,” I said, pleased that my new journalistic instincts were coming in handy. “See what this Julio dude looks like.”

  Shenice sipped her hot chocolate thoughtfully. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. But I can’t do it on my own.” She threw us her best puppy-dog look. “You will both come, won’t you?”

  Molly and I looked at each other, and I knew we were both wondering how we’d get out of our houses late on a school night. But we’d think of something – Shenice needed us and we’d only be following her mum. What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter Seven

  E-PETITION Number of signatures: 601

  DISASTER! Woke up this morning thinking it was Monday and packed all the books I’d need, only for Liam to gleefully remind me that it was actually Tuesday – stupid BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY. After I’d repacked my bag, Ethel projectile-vomited into my Coco Pops, which put me off eating EVER again, but Mum insisted on making me some toast, all of which meant I was too late to meet Molly and Shenice. Thank goodness I washed and blow-dried my hair last night, which meant it was silky smooth for once this morning and didn’t even needed brushing – just as well, since I didn’t really wake up properly until halfway through registration. That little hair-care tip I picked up from THE THRIFTY GAL’S GUIDE TO GORGEOUSNESS has really worked. Mum might not be so impressed when she finds out there are no eggs left in the fridge but my hair feels great. Might try rinsing it with beer next time – am sure Dad won’t mind.

  It wasn’t until maths was nearly over that I noticed Molly and Shenice were whispering to each other and looking at me like I’d grown another head.

  “What?” I said, wondering if I’d forgotten to wash the blob of nappy cream off the monster spot I’d felt growing on my chin last night. “Why are you staring at me?”