Fanmail by Mia Castle Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t speak for a good mile or so. That’s usually time for a “talk” because she’s thinking of what to say.
    I t started with a small sigh. ‘I don’t understand what’s got into you, Catherine,’ said Mum.
    Yup. There we go.
    ‘Nothing. Nothing’s got into me.’ It’s just that I told a silly and rather massive lie and had to prove it was true to Aggie when it actually wasn’t although with luck it might turn out to be sort of true, and I had to keep Ferdy/Freddie away from Dolores because of the chain of chemical reactions – me to Freddie and Freddie to Dolores and Dolores to Jazzy D but possibly and rather scarily also to Freddie. That was all.
    ‘But it’s not like you at all,’ said Mum. ‘ I’m sure you didn’t know that boy at the school in Jersey. You hardly spoke to anyone there, to be honest. I was quite worried you about you back then. The only person you’d talk to was Gemma.’ She changed gear as we turned into our street of little matching houses, and then turned to me. ‘Sorry. I know you don’t like me to mention her.’
    I didn’t even reply as she parked on the drive. We both stared out at the garage door through the windscreen, and then a little later when I realised there was no escape, I said, ‘There’s this boy at school.’
    And then Mum gazed at me with sad, deep understanding in her eyes, and patted my knee. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ is all she said.
    After that we didn’t mention it at all, and Mother Dearest did the one thing she can actually do in the kitchen without causing actual danger and microwaved milk for a hot chocolate, and then put the hot chocolate in it all by herself, and gave me a kiss on the forehead as she handed it to me. Eventually she smiled. ‘Did you even like the music?’
    I snorted. ‘Call that music? It was rubbish. I hated it.’ I tried to remember even one song, and failed. Show me the sunrise? Show me the door? Show me to the outside barrier and issue me with a lifelong concert ban, more like. ‘Although I do think Jason might really have playing his guitar, which surprised me.’
    Mum just smiled. ‘I think you’re the surprise, Catherine Melissa Andrews. Now go to bed.’
    I didn’t even have the energy to object.
     
    What a waste of a night and a great plan. I hadn’t proven anything other than that I’m deranged. And now Dolores, who had come off best out of the whole thing because she got noticed by Jazzy AND by Freddie, obviously agreed.
          By now we were outside the form room. I’d said nothing for the last four minutes as we made our way from the steps and along the corridors, not even to shout at anyone, ‘Yes, they’re real, now stop looking!’ about Dolores’ boobelage.
    Meanwhile she’d kept up a monologue about how brilliant the concert was to anyone and everyone, and waving her prized possession around her head. ‘Jazzy D’s collar!’ she yelled. ‘Who wants to see the very collar of one Divine Jazzy D?’
    Of course, everyone did, and I got shoved further and further from her as we trolled along.
    I stopped at the door so we could make our usual joint entrance and waited for Dolores.
    Do you know what? There are times when that girl is not so dumb after all. She took one look at my face as I leaned against the white-painted door frame, and she huffed out an enormous sigh. Then she sat down at her desk, took the roundy-ended scissors out of her pencil case, and she chopped Jazzy D’s collar into two pieces.
    ‘You can have half,’ she muttered, holding the two parts aloft under cover of her bag so nobody else could lay claim or offer to pay her for a piece of Jason Devaney. ‘Do you want the big half or the little half?’
    ‘Big half or little half? You do know that’s not possible …’ I started to say, but then I thought about how astonishingly kind she was being and changed it quickly to ‘You do know that’s amazing of you, don’t you?’ and chose the little half out of respect for