The Dare Game Read online

  I haven't written much about Cam recently.

  There have been lots and lots of Cam bits. I just haven't felt like writing them. I mean, writers can't put everything down. If you started writing everything exactly as it happened you'd end up with page after page 169

  about opening your eyes and snuggling down in bed for another five minutes and then getting up and going to the loo and brushing your teeth and playing games squeezing your name out in paste and seeing what you'd look like with a toothbrush moustache . . . well, you'd need a whole new chapter before you'd even got started on breakfast.

  Writers have to be selective. That's what Mrs Vomit Bagley says. Did I put that she's got wondrously unfortunate teeth? She spits a little bit whenever she says an 's' word. If she's standing too near you then you're not wondrously fortunate because you get a little spray of V.B. saliva all over your face. Not that this has happened to me

  recently as I've hardly been to school, I've just been bunking off to go to the house.

  They'll be getting in touch with Cam any minute. Maybe it's just as well I'm going off to my mum's. No, it's weller than well. I can't wait. I wish it wasn't being done in all these daft stages. Elaine says I can go for a week. I can't see why I can't go for ever right away.

  All this packing and unpacking is starting to get on my nerves.

  170

  Cam said she'd help me pack, but then she kept saying I didn't need this and I didn't need that – and I said it would be sensible to take nearly all my stuff seeing as I'd be staying there permanently soon.

  Permanently was a very dramatic sort of word. It was like it bounced backwards and forwards between us long after I'd said it. As if it was knocking us both on the head.

  Then Cam blinked hard and said, 'Right, yes, of course, OK,' in a quick gabble, shoving all my stuff in a suitcase, while I said, 'Perhaps it's a bit daft, and anyway, my mum will probably buy me all sorts of new stuff. Designer. Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger—'

  'NYDK, yes, yes, you keep

  saying.'

  'DKNY! Honestly, you

  don't know anything, Cam,' I

  said, exasperated.

  'I know one thing,' said

  Cam quietly. 'I'm going to

  miss you, kid.'

  I swallowed hard. 'Well, I'll

  miss you too. I expect.' I hated the way she was looking at me. It wasn't fair. 'Fostering 171

  isn't, like, permanent,' I said. 'They told you that right at the beginning, didn't they?'

  They told me,' said Cam. She picked up one of my old T-shirts and hung onto it like it was a cuddle blanket. 'But I didn't get what it would feel like.'

  'I'm sorry, Cam,' I said. 'I am. Really. But I've got to be with my mum.'

  'I know,' said Cam. She hesitated. She looked down at the T-shirt as if I was inside it. 'But Tracy . . . don't get too upset if it doesn't quite work out the way you want.'

  'It is working out!'

  'I know, I know. And it's great that you're being reunited with your mum, but maybe you'll find it won't end up like a fairy story, happy ever after, for ever and ever.'

  It will, it will. She just doesn't want it to.

  'It will end happily ever after, you wait and see,' I said, pulling my T-shirt away from her and stuffing it in my suitcase with all the others.

  'Tracy, I know—'

  'You don't know anything!' I interrupted.

  'You don't know my mum. You don't even know me properly. It's not like we've been together ages and ages. I don't see why you have to be 172

  so . . . so . . . so shaking your head and giving me all these little warnings about it not working out. You obviously think I'm so horrible and bad and difficult that my mum will get sick of me in two seconds.'

  'I don't think that at all. And you're not horrible and bad and difficult. Well, you are –

  but you can be great too. It's just that even if you're the greatest kid in the whole world and behave beautifully with your mum it still might not work out. Your mum isn't used to kids.'

  'Neither were you, but you took me on.' Ah!

  I had a sudden idea. 'You can take some other kid now.'

  'I don't want some other kid,' said Cam. She put her arm round me. 'I want you.'

  I could hardly breathe. I wanted to cuddle close and hang onto her and tell h e r . . . tell her all sorts of stupid things. But I also wanted to shove her hard and shout at her for

  spoiling my big chance to get back to my mum.

  I wriggled away from her and went on packing my suitcase. 'If you really wanted me you'd have made far more fuss in the first place,' I said, tucking my scrubby old trainers 173

  under my gungy chainstore denims. 'You'd have bought me decent clothes. And proper presents.'

  'Oh Tracy, don't start,' said Cam, suddenly cross. She got up and started marching round my bat cave in an agitated fashion like she was a dog with fleas.

  'You've hardly given me anything,' I said, cross too. 'I've never known anyone so stingy.

  And yet look at all the stuff my mum's given me.'

  'A doll,' said Cam, picking it up. She held it at arm's length.

  'Yes, but it's not like it's any old doll. It cost a fortune. It's not a little kid's doll, it's a collector's item. She gave it me like an ornament. Lots of grown-up ladies have doll collections. You wouldn't understand.' I sneered at Cam in her worn old plaid shirt and baggy jeans. 'You're not that sort of lady.'

  'Thank God,' said Cam.

  'I don't fit in here, Cam. Not with you. Or Jane and Liz and all your other stupid friends.

  I fit with my mum. Her and me. We're relatives.

  You're just my foster mum. You just get paid to look after me, that's all. I bet that's why you're making all the fuss, because you'll miss the cash when I'm gone.'

  174

  Think that if you want, Tracy,' said Cam in this irritating martyr voice.

  'It's true!'

  'OK, OK,' said Cam, folding her arms.

  'It isn't OK!' I said, stamping my foot. 'I don't know what you do with the money. It isn't like you spend it on me.'

  'That's right,' said Cam, in this maddening there-there-I'll-agree-with-whatever-you-say-you-stupid-fool voice.

  'It's wrong- and I'm sick of it,' I shouted. 'Do you know something? Even if it doesn't work out with my mum I still don't want to come back here. I'm sick of this boring old dump. I'm sick of you.'

  'Well clear off then, you ungrateful little beast. I'm sick of you too!' Cam yelled, and she banged out of the bat cave in tears.

  There. That's what she thinks of me. Well, see if I care. UNGRATEFUL. Why do I always have to be grateful to people?

  Kids are always expected to be grateful grateful grateful. It's hateful being grateful. It's not fair. I'm supposed to be grateful to Cam for looking after me but I'm not allowed to look after myself. Though I could, easy-peasy.

  I'm supposed to be grateful for my yucky veggie 175

  meals (she hardly ever takes me to McDonald's) and my unstylish chainstore clothes (no wonder they pick on me at school) and my boring old books (honestly, have you tried reading Little Women? – who cares if Jo was Cam's all-time favourite book character?) and trips to museums (OK, I liked seeing the mummies and the little hunched-up dead man but all those pictures and pots were the pits).

  If I could only earn my own money I could buy all the stuff I really need. It's not fair that kids aren't allowed to work. I'd be great flogging stuff down the market or selling ice creams or working in a nursery. If I could only get a job I could eat Big Macs and french fries every day and wear designer from top to toe, yeah, especially my footware, and buy all the videos and computer games I want and take a trip to Disneyland.

  Yeah! I bet my mum will take me to Disneyland if I ask her.

  176

  It is going to end up like a fairy story. I'm going to live happily ever after.

  I am.

  Even if Football doesn't think so. I hate him.