The Story of Tracy Beaker Read online

  I've just called Elaine but she says she's got to help Peter for a while. The poor little petal is getting all worried in case he puts the wrong answers, as if it's some dopey intelligence test. I've done heaps of them, intelligence tests. They're all ever so easypeasy. I can do them quick as a wink. They always expect kids in foster care to be as thick as bricks, but I get a hundred out of a hundred nearly every time. Well, they don't tell you the answers, but I bet I get everything right.

  Ignore the stupid scribble up above. It's all lies anyway. It's typical. You can't leave anything for two minutes in this rotten place without one of the other kids spoiling it. But I never thought anyone would stoop so low as to write in my own private life story. And I know who did it too. I know, Justine Littlewood, and you just wait. I'm going to get you.

  I went over to rescue Elaine from that boring wimpy little Peter and I had a sneak peek into his book and I nearly fell over, because you'll never guess who he's put as his best friend. Me. Me!

  “Is this some sort of joke?” I demanded. He went all red and mumbly and tried to hide what he'd put, but I'd already seen it. My best friend is Tracy Beaker. It was down there on the page in black and white. Well, not your actual black and white, more your smudgy blue ballpoint, but you know what I mean.

  “Go away and stop pestering poor Peter,” Elaine said to me.

  “Yes, but he's putting absolute rubbish in his book, Elaine, and it's stupid. I'm not Peter Ingham's best friend!”

  “Well, I think it's very nice that Peter wants you to be his friend,” said Elaine. She made a funny face. “There's no accounting for taste.”

  “Oh, ha-ha. Why did you put that, Peter?”

  Peter squeaked a little about sharing birthdays and so that made us friends.

  “It does not make us friends, dumbo,” I declared.

  Elaine started getting on my case then, saying I was being nasty to poor little Peetie-Weetie and if I couldn't be friendly why didn't I just shove off and get on with my own life story? Well, when people tell me to shove off I generally try to stick to them like glue, just to be annoying, so that's what I did.

  And then Jenny called me into the kitchen because she made out she wanted a hand getting the lunch ready, but that was just a ploy. Jenny doesn't smack. She doesn't even often tell you off. She just uses ploys and tries to distract you. It sometimes works with the thicker kids but it usually has no effect whatsoever on me. However, I quite like helping in the kitchen because you can generally steal a spoonful of jam or a handful of raisins when Jenny's back is turned. So I went along to the kitchen and helped her put an entire package of fish fingers under the broiler while she got the pan for the french fries bubbling. Fish fingers don't taste so great when they're raw. I tried nibbling just to see. I don't know why they're called fish fingers. Fish don't have fingers, do they? These things ought to be called fish fins. That Auntie Peggy used to make this awful milk pudding called tapioca, which had these little slimy bubbly bits, and I told the other kids that they were fish eyes. And I told the really little ones that marmalade is made out of goldfish and they believed that too.

  When Jenny started serving the fish fingers and fries, I went back into the living room to tell everyone that lunch was ready. And I remember seeing Louise and Justine hunched up in a corner, giggling over something they'd got hidden. I don't know. I am highly intelligent, I truly wasn't making that up, and yet it was a bit thick of me not to get what they were up to. Which was reading my own life story and then scribbling all over it.

  A little twit like Peter Ingham would tell, but I'm no tattletale. I'll simply get them back. I'll think long and carefully for a suitably horrible revenge. I really hate that Justine. Before she came, Louise and I were best friends and we did everything together and, even though I was still dumped in a rotten children's home, it really wasn't so bad. Louise and I made out we were sisters and we had all these secrets and …

  One of these secrets was about a certain small problem that I have. A nighttime problem. I've got my own room and so it was always a private problem that only Jenny and I knew about. Only to show Louise we were the bestest friends ever I told her about it. I knew it wasn't a sensible move right from the start because she giggled, and she used to tease me about it a bit even when we were still friends. And then she went off with Justine and I'd sometimes worry that she might tell on me, but I always convinced myself she'd never ever stoop that low. Not Louise.

  But she has told. She's told Justine, my worst enemy. So what am I going to do to her? Any ideas ticking away inside my head?

  Well, I could beat her up.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  I could deliver a karate-chop death blow.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  I could get my mom to come in her car and run her over, squashing her flat as roadkill.

  Tick, tick, tick. Hey! Tick tock. Tick tock. I know. And I also know I'm not leaving this book around. From now on I'll carry it on my person. So, ha-ha, boo to you, Justine Littlewood. Oh, you're going to get it. Yes you are, yes you are, tee-hee.

  I'm writing this at midnight. I can't put the light on because Jenny might still be prowling about and I don't want another ding-dong with her, thanks very much. I'm making do with a flashlight, only the battery's going, so there's just this dim little glow and I can hardly see what I'm doing. I wish I had something to eat. In all those old-fashioned school stories they always have midnight feasts. The food sounds a bit weird, sardines and condensed milk, but I could demolish a Mars bar right this minute. Imagine a Mars bar as big as this bed. Imagine licking it, gnawing away at a corner, scooping out the soft part with both fists. Imagine the wonderful chocolaty smell. I'm drooling at the thought. Yes, that's what those little marks are on the page. Drool. I don't cry. I don't ever cry.

  I acted as if I couldn't care less when Jenny got really mad. And I don't.

  “I think you really do care, Tracy,” she said, in that silly sorrowful voice. “Deep down I think you're really very sorry.”

  “That's just where you're wrong,” I insisted.

  “Come off it now. You must know how you'd feel if your mother had bought you a special present and one of the other kids spoiled it.”

  As she said that I couldn't help remembering being in the first Home, long before the dreaded Auntie Peggy or that mean hateful unfair Julie and Ted. My mom came to see me and she'd brought this doll, a doll almost as big as me, with long golden curls and a bright blue lacy dress to match her big blue eyes. I'd never liked dolls all that much but I thought this one was wonderful. I called her Bluebell and I undressed her right down to her frilly white panties and dressed her up again and brushed her blond curls and made her blink her big blue eyes, and at night she'd lie in my bed and we'd have these cozy little chats and she'd tell me that Mom was coming back really soon, probably tomorrow, and—

  Okay, that sort of thing makes me want to puke now but I was only little then and I didn't know any better. The housemother let me cart Bluebell all over the place but she tried to make me give the other kids a turn playing with her. Well, I wasn't going to let that bunch maul her, so of course I didn't let them hold her. But I came unglued when I started school. You weren't allowed to take toys to school, only on Friday afternoons. I cried and fought but they wouldn't let me. So I had to start leaving Bluebell at home. I'd tuck her up in my bed with her eyes closed, pretending she was asleep, and then when I got home from school I'd charge upstairs into our crummy little dormitory and wake her up with a big hug. Only one day I woke her up and I got the shock of my life. Her eyelids snapped open but her blue eyes had vanished inside her head. Some rotten lousy pig had given them a good poke. I couldn't stand it, seeing those creepy empty sockets. She stopped being my friend. She just scared me.

  The housemother took Bluebell off to this doll hospital and they gave her some new eyes. They were blue too, but not the same bright blue, and they didn't blink properly either. They either got stuck altogether or they flashed up a