Star Crazy Me by Jean Ure Read Free Book Online Page A

sort of person. He doesn’t just blurt things out like I do. He’d probably been screwing up hiscourage for weeks before finally bringing himself to tell me. How could I have been so mean as to fling it back in his face?
    And how could I have snarled at Indy? Threatening never to talk to her again! Indy and I had been friends since our very first day in Year 7. She was the only black girl, I was the only fat girl, and I guess we drifted together for comfort. Nobody else, right at the beginning, seemed to want to know us. Indy and her mum had just moved from London, and out of all my special gang at juniors I was the only one that got sent to Ravenspark. My best mate Janey was supposed to be coming with me, but at the last minute her mum and dad had gone off to live in Australia, leaving me on my own. Marigold had been at juniors, but she didn’t want to know me any more than I wanted to know her. Me and Indy were always going to be outsiders. Most everyone else got sucked into Marigold’s orbit before even the first week was out.
    Fortunately, as it happened, me and Indy hit it offfrom the word go. We both came from single parent families, which was an immediate bond. And we both utterly despised Marigold Johnson, which was another. I love Indy! She is really funny and scatty. She has a little brother who is even scattier. He gives us lots of laughs, like when he asked his mum to buy a second fish tank so his fish could go on holiday. Actually, I thought that was just so sweet! He was only six years old, and he really cared about his fish.
    Nan used to like Indy. She said, “That girl has a happy face.” Mum, on the other hand, always makes me grind my teeth. She says it’s “so amusing” to see us together, what with me being so huge and Indy being so tiny. Well, she doesn’t actually say huge; what she says is big . But that is just a polite word for fat.
    Another thing she says, though not in so many words, is “How come a boy like Josh” – meaning a boy who could have his pick of any girl he chose – “goes round with someone like you?” Not even Mum would be horrid enough to actually say it to my face, but Iknow that is what she thinks. She occasionally lets slip these remarks. She is so beautiful and glamorous herself that she considers it a total waste, like for instance if Darrin O’Shea from Urban Legend were to hang out with – oh, I don’t know! Some ancient old bag of a politician, maybe. Why not have a girlfriend as gorgeous as he is?
    It’s what Marigold thought, and the reason she got so insanely jealous, cos how could someone like Josh prefer a wobbly jelly to a prom queen like her?
    What Mum has never been able to get her head round, though I’ve told her over and over, is that Josh is not my boyfriend, he is just my friend . We confide in each other and look out for each other and support each other when things go wrong, like when Josh’s cat went missing and I helped him look for her, and went round the streets sticking notices on lamp posts, and did my best to cheer him up when he thought he was never going to see her again. Like when Nan died, and it was Josh who was there for me. Indy was, too,except she lives miles away, while Josh is just ten minutes down the road. I cried buckets all over him. Not over Mum ; I didn’t shed a tear, hardly, in front of Mum. Mum didn’t shed a tear, either, cos of being scared she’d make her mascara run. Well, no, I’m being unfair, she did cry a little bit, when she first got back from the hospital, just not in public when she had her make-up on.
    Mum never loved Nan the way I did; sometimes I used to think she almost resented her coming to live with us. They certainly didn’t always see eye to eye, in fact they used to fall out quite a lot, mainly over me. Mum used to say that Nan automatically took my side whenever we had an argument, while Nan said Mum did