The Dare Game Read online

  The Story of Tracy Beaker has always been the most popular book. For years afterwards children kept asking me for another story about Tracy. Everyone wanted to find out what happened next. The first book finishes with Tracy absolutely determined that Cam is going to foster her but we're not entirely sure that this will happen

  – or if it does, whether it will work out!

  I started to get loads of letters from children with their version of Tracy's continuing adventures, some inventive, some amusing, some definitely not suitable for publication! For a long time I was happy to let things rest. I thought it was maybe more fun to let all my readers make up their own stories about Tracy.

  Then I was asked to write a play for a children's theatre in Manchester and I decided to have a go. I know that most people think of football the moment you mention Manchester so I thought I'd definitely have to have a football fanatic in my play. The theatre was going to be in the Rotunda so I imagined all sorts of inter-active ball play between the cast and the audience. Then I invented a brainy weedy small boy called Alexander who couldn't kick a ball to save his life.

  I needed a girl for my third main character. She has to be pretty fierce and feisty to hold her own again Football. I started to write her . . . and she seemed strangely familiar. Of course, she was Tracy!

  I decided to have lots of new dares in my play. The dare scenes in The Story of Tracy Beaker where Justine

  says a rude word in front of the vicar and Tracy runs round the garden stark naked and both girls try to eat worms have always been the most popular part of the story. I wanted more silly dares, rude dares, funny dares

  – and then a very dangerous dare right at the climax of the play.

  I wrote The Dare Game with great enjoyment. I loved getting back into Tracy's life. This time I made sure that she had a truly happily ever after ending. The play was fine. The theatre wasn't. It burnt down and by the time it was built again there was a new management and they didn't want my play after all.

  I decided to turn The Dare Game into a book, elaborating on the story, finding out much more about everyone. I'm so pleased that I've completed Tracy's story. Or have I? There's a brand new story about Tracy called Starring Tracy Beaker which is all about Tracy's Christmas when she's still living in the Children's Home. Maybe there'll be more Tracy Beaker books in the future. Tracy as a teenager? Tracy falls in love? Tracy Beaker, young mum? Tracy Beaker, famous writer, actress, television star? Let's wait and see!

  Illustrated by Nick Sharratt

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Adobe ISBN: 9781407045252

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  To Jessie Atkinson

  Francesca Oates

  Zoe

  Lee and Sarah

  Emma Walker and all my friends at Redriff School

  and everyone else who ever wondered what happened to Tracy Beaker

  You know that old film they always show on the telly at Christmas, The Wizard of Oz? I love it, especially the Wicked Witch of the West with her cackle and her green face and all her special flying monkeys. I'd give anything to have a wicked winged monkey as an evil little pet. It could whiz through the sky, flapping its wings and sniffing the air for that awful stale instant-coffee-and-talcum-powder teacher smell and then it would s-w-o-o-p straight onto Mrs Vomit Bagley and carry her away screaming.

  7

  That'll show her. I've always been absolutely Tip Top at writing stories, but since I've been at this stupid new school Mrs V.B. just puts 'Disgracefully untidy work, Tracy' and 'Check your spellings!' Last week we had to write a story about 'Night-time' and I thought it an unusually cool subject so I wrote eight and a half pages about this girl out late at night and it's seriously spooky and then this crazy guy jumps out at her and almost murders her but she escapes by jumping in the river and then she swims right into this bloated corpse and then when she staggers onto the bank there's this strange flickering light coming from the nearby graveyard and it's an evil occult sect wanting to sacrifice an innocent young girl and she's just what they're looking for . . .

  It's a truly GREAT story, better than any that Cam could write. (I'll

  tell you about Cam in a

  minute.) I'm sure it's practi-

  cally good enough to get

  published. I typed it out on

  Cam's computer so it looked ever so neat and the spellcheck took care of all the spellings so I was all prepared for Mrs V.B. to bust a gut 8

  and write: ' Very very very good indeed, Tracy.

  10 out of 10 and Triple Gold Star and I'll buy you a tube of Smarties at playtime.'

  Do you know what she really wrote? ' You've tried hard, Tracy, but this is a very rambling story. You also have a very warped imagination!'

  I looked up 'warp' in the dictionary she's always recommending and it means 'to twist out of shape'. That's spot on. I'd like to warp Mrs Vomit Bagley, twisting and

  twisting, until her eyes pop and her arms and legs are wrapped

  right round her great big bum.

  That's another thing. Whenever I write the weeniest babiest little rude word Mrs V.B. goes

  bananas. I don't know what she'd do if I used really bad words like

  **** and **** and ****** (censored!!).

  I looked up 'ramble' too. I liked what it said:

  'To stroll about freely, as for relaxation, with no particular direction'. So that's exactly what I did today, instead of staying at boring old school. I bunked off and strolled round the town freely, as relaxed as anything. I had a little potter in Paperchase and bought this big 9

  fat purple notebook with my pocket money.

  I'm going to write all my mega-manic ultra-scary stories in it, as warped and as rambly as I can make them. And I'll write my story too.

  I've written all about myself before in The Story of Tracy Beaker. So this can be The Story of Tracy Beaker Two or Find Out What Happens Next to the Brave and Brilliant Tracy Beaker or Further Fabulous Adventures of the Tremendous Terrific Tracy Beaker or Read More About the Truly Terrible Tracy Beaker, Even More Wicked Than the Wicked Witch of the West.

  Yes. I was telling you about The Wizard of Oz. There's only one bit that I truly dread. I can't actually watch it. The first time I saw it I very nearly cried. (I don't cry, though. I'm tough. As old boots. New boots. The biggest fiercest reinforced Doc Martens . . . ) It's the bit right at the end where Dorothy is getting fed up with being in Oz. Which is mad, if you ask me. Who'd want to go back to that boring black and white Kansas and be an ordinary kid where they take your dog away when you could dance round Oz in your ruby slippers?

  But Dorothy acts in an extremely dumb manner all the way through the film. You'd 10

  think she'd have sussed out for herself that all she had to do was click those ruby slippers and she'd get back home. That's it. That's the bit. Where she says, 'There's no place like home.'

  It gets to me.

  Because there's no

  place like home for

  me. No place at all.

  I haven't got a

  home.

  Well. I didn't have

  up until recently.

  Unless you count the Home. If a home has a capital letter at the front you can be pretty sure it isn't like a real home. It's just a dumping groun