The Dare Game Read online

  Before I could make anything up she says, '/

  know. It's Oxfam!'

  20

  Everyone laughed again but this time it was awful so I got mad and called Roxanne various names and then she called me names and most of it was baby stuff but then she said the B word

  – and added that it was true in my case because I really didn't have a dad.

  So I had to smack her one then, didn't I? It was only fair. Only Roxanne and all her little girly hangers-on didn't think it was fair and they told Mrs Vomit Bagley and she certainly didn't think it was fair and she told Mr Donne the headteacher and, guess what, he didn't think it was fair either. He rang Cam and asked her to come to the school for a Quiet Word. I was yanked along to the study too and I said lots of words not at all quietly, but Cam put her arm round me and hissed in my ear, 'Cool it, Trace.'

  I tried. I thought c-o-o-l and imagined a beautiful blue lake of water and me swimming slowly along – but

  I was so sizzling mad the water

  started to bubble all around me

  and I ended up boiling over and

  telling the head what I thought

  of him and his poxy teachers and putrid pupils. (Get my vocabulary, Mrs V.B.!) 21

  I very nearly ended up being excluded. Which is mad. I should have been even cheekier because I don't want to go to this terrible old school.

  So I've excluded myself.

  I'm here.

  In my own secret place. Dead

  exclusive. My very own house.

  Home!

  Well, it's not exactly homely at the moment. It needs a good

  going over with a vacuum or

  two. Or three or four or five. And even though it's kind of empty it needs a spot of tidying.

  There are empty beer cans and McDonald's cartons chucked all over the place, and all kinds of freebie papers and advertising bumpf litter the hall so you're wading ankle-deep when you come in the front door. Only I didn't, seeing as it's locked and bolted and boarded over. I came in the back, through the broken window, ever so carefully.

  I went in the back garden because I was mooching round and round the streets, dying for a wee. I came across this obviously empty house down at the end of a little cul-de-sac with big brambles all over the place giving lots of 22

  cover so I thought I'd nip over the wall quick and relieve myself. Which I did, though a black cat suddenly streaked past, which made me jump and lose concentration so I very nearly weed all over my trainers.

  When I was relieved and decent I tried to catch the cat, pretending this was a jungle and the cat was a tiger and I was all set to train it but the cat went

  'Purr-lease!' and stalked off with its tail in the air.

  I explored the jungle by myself and spotted the broken window and decided to give the house a recce too.

  It's a great house. It hasn't quite got all mod cons any more. The water's been turned off and the lights won't switch on and the radiators are cold. But there's still a sofa in the living room, quite a swish one, red velvet. Some plonker's put his muddy boots all over it, but I've been scratching at it with my fingernails and I think it'll clean up a treat.

  I could bring a cushion. And a blanket. And some food. Yeah.

  Next time.

  But now it's time for me to go . . . back to Cam.

  23

  Cam is fostering me. It was all my idea. When I was back in the Children's Home I was pretty desperate to be fostered. Ugly desperate. They'd even tried advertising me in the papers, this gungy little description of me outlining all my bad points together with a school photo where I was scowling – and so no-one came forward, which didn't exactly surprise me. Though it was still awful.

  Especially when one of the kids at school brought the newspaper into school and showed everyone. That was a different school. It wasn't much cop either. But it was marginally better than this one. This one is the worst ever.

  It's Cam's fault. She said I had to go there.

  Because it's the nearest one. I knew I'd hate it from the very first day. It's an old school, all red brick and brown paint and smelly 25

  cloakrooms and nearly all the teachers are old too. They sound like they've all been to this old-fashioned elocution school to get that horrid sarcastic tone to their voices.

  You know: 'Oh, that's really clever of you, Tracy Beaker' when you spill

  your paint water (accidentally

  on purpose all over Roxanne's

  designer T-shirt!), and 'I'm

  amazed that you're the one who scribbled silly words

  all over the blackboard,

  Tracy Beaker' (wonderfully wicked words!), and 'Can you possibly speak up a bit, Tracy Beaker, I think there's a deaf old lady at the other end of the street who didn't quite catch that' (I had to raise my voice because how else can I get the other kids in my group to listen to me?).

  I hate it when we have to split up for group work. They all fit into these neat little groups: Roxanne and her gang, Almost-Alan-Shearer and the football crazies, Basher Dixon and his henchmen, Wimpy Lizzie and Dopey Dawn and that lot, Brainbox Hannah and Swotty Andrew – they're all divided up. And then there's me.

  26

  Mrs V.B. puts me in different groups each time. Sometimes I'm in a group all by myself.

  I don't care. I prefer it. I hate them all.

  Cam says I should try to make friends. I don't want to be friends with that seriously sad bunch of losers. I keep moaning to Cam that it's a rubbish school and telling her to send me somewhere else. She's useless. Well, she did try going down to the Guildhall and seeing if they could swop me somewhere else but they said the other schools in the area are oversubscribed.

  She just accepted it. Didn't make any kind of fuss. If you want anything in this world you've got to fight for it. I should know.

  'You're on their waiting list,' Cam said, as if she thought I'd be pleased.

  What use is that? I've been waiting half my life to get a life. I thought my big chance had come when Cam came to the Children's Home to research this boring old article about kids in care.

  (She only got £100 for it and I was barely mentioned!) I thought she might do as a foster mum as she's a writer and so am I.

  She needed quite a lot of persuading.

  27

  But I can be pretty determined when I want.

  And I did want Cam. Badly.

  So when she said, 'Right then, Tracy, let's give it a go. You and me.

  OK?' it was more than

  OK. I was over the moon.

  Soaring straight up into the

  solar system. I couldn't wait

  to get out of the Children's

  Home. I got dead impatient

  with Elaine the Pain my

  social worker because she

  seemed to be trying to slow

  things down instead of speed them up.

  'No point in rushing things, Tracy,' she said.

  I felt there was every point. I didn't want Cam to change her mind. She was having to go to all these interviews and meetings and courses and she's not really that sort of person. She doesn't like to be bossed around and told what to do. Like me. I was scared she might start to think it was all too much hassle.

  But eventually we had a weekend together and that was great. Cam wanted it to be a very laid-back weekend – a walk in the park, a 28

  video or two, and a takeaway pizza. I said I did all that sort of stuff already at the Children's Home and couldn't we do something special to celebrate our first weekend together?

  I told you I can be pretty persuasive. Cam took me to Chessington World of Adventures and it was truly great and she even bought me this huge python with beady green eyes and a black forked tongue. She dithered long and hard about it, saying she

  didn't want it to look like

  she was buying my affec-

  tion, but I made the python

  wind round and round

  her beguilingly