Dare Game (2 page)

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
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 ground for kids with problems. The ugly kids, the bad kids, the daft kids. The ones no-one wants to foster. The kids way past their sell-by date so they’re all chucked on the rubbish heap. There were certainly some ultra-rubbishy kids at that Home. Especially a certain Justine Littlewood . . .

We were Deadly Enemies once, but then we made up. I even gave Justine my special Mickey Mouse pen. I rather regretted
this
actually and asked for it back the next day, pretending it had just been a loan, but Justine wasn’t having any. There are no flies on Justine. No wasps, bees or any kind of bug.

It’s weird, but I kind of miss Justine now. It was even fun when we were Deadly Enemies and we played the Dare Game. I’ve always been great at thinking up the silliest daftest rudest dares. I always dared everything and won until Justine came to the Children’s Home. Then I
still
won. Most of the time. I
did
. But Justine could certainly invent some seriously wicked dares herself.

I miss her. I miss Louise too. And I especially miss Peter. This is even weirder. I couldn’t stand weedy old Peter when he first came to the Home. But now it feels like he was my best ever friend. I wish I could see him. I especially wish I could see him right now. Because I’m all on my own and although it’s great to be bunking off school and I’ve found the most brilliant hiding place in the whole world it is a little bit lonely.

I could do with a mate. When you’re in care you need to make all the friends you can get
because
you don’t have much family.

Well. I’ve got family.

I’ve got the loveliest prettiest best-ever mum in the whole world. She’s this dead famous Hollywood movie star and she’s in film after film, in so much demand that there isn’t a minute of the day when she can see me so that’s why I’m in care . . .

Who am I kidding??? Not you. Not even me. I used to carry on like that when I was little, and some kids took it all in and even acted like they were impressed. But now when I come out with all that movie guff they start to get this little curl of the lip and then the minute my back’s turned I hear a splutter of laughter. And that’s the
kinder
kids. The rest tell me straight to my face that I’m a nutter. They don’t even believe my mum’s an actress. I know for a fact she’s been in
some
films. She sent me this big glossy photo of her in this negligée – but now kids nudge and giggle and say, ‘What
kind
of film was your mum in, Tracy Beaker?’

So I duff them up. Sometimes literally. I’m very handy with my fists. Sometimes I just pretend it in my head. I should have pretended inside my head with Mrs Vomit Bagley. It isn’t wise to tell teachers exactly what you think of them. She gave us this new piece of writing work this morning. About ‘My Family’. It was supposed to be an exercise in autobiography. It’s really a way for the teachers to be dead nosy and find out all sorts of secrets about the kids. Anyway, after she’s told us all to start writing this ‘My Family’ stuff she squeezes her great hips in and out the desks till she gets to me. She leans over until her face is hovering a few inches from mine. I thought for one seriously scary second she was going to
kiss
me!

‘Of course,
you
write about your foster mother, Tracy,’ she whispers, her Tic-Tac minty breath tickling my ear.

She thought she was whispering discreetly, but every single kid in the room looked up and stared. So I stared straight back and edged as far away from Mrs V.B. as I could and said
firmly
, ‘I’m going to write about my
real
mother, Mrs Bagley.’

So I did. Page after page. My writing got a bit sprawly and I gave up on spelling and stopped bothering about full stops and capital letters because they’re such a waste of time, but I wrote this
amazing
account of me and my mum. Only I never finished it. Because Mrs V.B. does another Grand Tour of the class, bending over and reading your work over your shoulder in the most off-putting way possible, and she gets to me and leans over, and then she sniffs inwards and sighs. I thought she was just going to have the usual old nag about Neatness and Spelling and Punctuation – but this time she was miffed about the content, not the presentation.

‘You and your extraordinary imagination, Tracy,’ she said, in this falsely sweet patronizing tone. She even went ‘Tut tut’, shaking her head, still with this silly smirk on her face.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, sharpish.

‘Tracy! Don’t take that rude tone with me, dear.’ There was an edge to her voice and all. ‘I did my best to explain about Autobiography. It means you tell a
true
story about yourself and your own life.’

‘It
is
true. All of it,’ I said indignantly.

‘Really, Tracy!’ she said, and she started reading bits out, not trying to keep her voice down now, revving up for public proclamation.

‘“My mum is starring in a Hollywood movie with George Clooney and Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and they all think she’s wonderful and want to be her boyfriend. Her new movie is going to star Leonardo DiCaprio as her younger brother and she’s got really matey with Leonardo at rehearsals and he’s seen the photo of me she carries around in her wallet and he says I look real cute and wants to write to me,”’ Mrs V.B. read out in this poisonous high-pitched imitation of my voice.

The entire class collapsed. Some of the kids practically wet themselves laughing. Mrs V.B. had this smirk puckering her lips. ‘Do you really believe this, Tracy?’ she asked.

So I said, ‘I really believe that you’re a stupid hideous old bag who could only get a part in a movie about bloodsucking vampire bats.’

I thought for a moment she was going to prove her bat-star qualities by flying at my neck and biting me with her fangs. She certainly wanted to. But she just marched me out of the room instead and told me to stand outside the door because she was sick of my insolence.

I said she made
me
sick and it was a happy chance that her name was Mrs V. Bagley. The other kids might wonder whether the V. stood for Vera or Violet or Vanessa, but I was certain her first name was Vomit, and dead appropriate too, given her last name, because she looked like the contents of a used vomit bag.

She went back into the classroom when I was only halfway through so I said it to myself, slumping against the wall and staring at my shoes. I said I was Thrilled to Bits to miss out on her lesson because she was boring boring boring and couldn’t teach for toffee. She couldn’t teach for fudge, nougat, licorice or Turkish delight. I declared I was utterly Ecstatic to be Outside.

Then Mr Hatherway walked past with a little squirt from Year Three with a nosebleed. ‘Talking to yourself, kiddo?’ he said.