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‘What are you crying for?’ I said, mystified.

‘I don’t know! I’m just so excited,’ she snivelled.

‘Well, please stop it. Your mascara’s running.’

How was she going to land the dreamy Jazzy D with panda eyes? I handed her a tissue, checked that all the band were on stage and that both Aggie and Dolores were suitably entranced, and then hollered, ‘I’m just going to the loo.’

I don’t think they even heard me; just stood t
here clutching each other’s wrists while Dolores screamed like a fire engine siren for no apparent reason. Aggie put out her hand as if to offer to mind my bag for me, so she must have registered I was off somewhere, but I needed that bag so I clutched it to me and waved, then sidled past four hundred hysterical year 10s to get to the aisle.

This gave me a good opportunity to face the stage and check out what all the fuss was about, and honestly, I do not get it! The “guys” were all leap-frogging each other and yelling to different sections of the audience, but let’s face it, anyone could do that. Even me, and I’m hopeless at gym
nastics. They were all quite good-looking in an obvious say, but there wasn’t a skinny-nerdy-brainy type among them; in fact, a couple of them looked like the only test they’d ever pass would be one for steroids.

And then
there was Jazzy D. The Divine Jazzy D. Or Jason Devaney, as I was determined to call him. Well, yes, he was quite pretty, I suppose, with big wistful eyes and a quirky way of holding his guitar (all of which I could only see on the massive screens either side of the stage, as the stadium was so huge that, in reality, they were just action figures in the distance).

I looked again at Jason. What was it about him? He started to sing, and I suppose he had quite a good voice. A light tenor in madrigal terms. He danced as well as the rest of them, though not as often as he appeared to be
actually playing his guitar. And he did look quite muscular, with biceps flexing whenever he strummed a chord, and a powerful neck that made his costume collar look a bit tight so he had to loosen it every now and again, to the massive excitement of the thousands of tweeny girls in the audience who obviously thought he was about to rip off his shirt any moment. ‘Keep it on!’ I wanted to shout, every time the cry of ‘Off, off, off!’ rippled around the stadium.

Not my type. That’s all I’ll say. And remembering
that the one who was my type was under the misconception that Dolores was his type, I hurried down the near-vertical stairs and ran out into the vast corridor that circled the arena.

It took me nearly forty five minutes
to trot around the entire venue, looking for ‘Manager’s Office’ or ‘Mr Scowl’s Trailer’ or similar. Eventually I found a sectioned-off area which obviously led directly from the stage, as it was manned by some very burly … well, men.

‘Can’t come through here, love,’ said the nearest of them. ‘You’ll have to go back to your seat.’

‘Is this where Jason comes off the stage?’

I fished around in my bag, and he suddenly looked quite alarmed.

‘Security did check your bag, right?’ He held out a hand. ‘Best give it here, sweetheart.’

Now several of the others were lurching towards me too. At this rate I was going to get thrown out. Finding what I was searching for, I pulled out my second lette
r to Jazzy D and handed it over.

‘
Just an envelope, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Look, nothing else in my bag. I’m a friend of Jason’s from school in Jersey and I wanted to say hi afterwards.’

‘Right,’ said the man, clearly not believing a word.

‘It’s true – ask him what the Year 1 teacher was called at his school. It was Mr Favreau.’ Wow. I’d almost convinced myself we genuinely were mates in Jersey.

‘If you say
so, love. Now, back to your seat.’

‘Please,’ I said, sounding a teensy bit desperate, ‘just give him the letter in the interval and tell him I’ll see him afterwards.’

The man seemed almost sorry for me. ‘There’s no interval, darling. It’s not a the-atre, you know.’

‘Oh.’ No interval? There was always an interval at choral events.
‘Well … just give it to him when you can.’

He nodded in a completely unconvincing way so I knew that
the letter was going in the bin the second my back was turned. For a moment I considered taking it back from him, but he’d folded his arms by now and his biceps were even more bulgy than Jason’s, so I just nodded back at him, and shuffled backwards trying to do some kind of Jedi mind-trick on him until I hit a wall, then turned and ran back to my seat.

I’d missed almost the whole thing, thank the stars. In fact, I got back to my seat just as Jason announced, ‘And this is our last song,’ and picked out a very nice acoustic melody on his Ovation (that’s a guitar, not a new words for abs or something).

Aggie and Dolores were both in a trance. I pulled Dolores’ hair to get her attention. ‘Come on, we’ve got to go now.’

‘But it’s the last song!’ bleated Dolores.

‘The best one,’ added Aggie. ‘I bought a glowstick specially for waving. It’s Show Me Tomorrow.’

‘Well, I’m going to show you now. Jazzy D, downstairs, coming off the stage – but only if we leave THIS SECOND!’

They took one look at me, grabbed their programmes and legged it, followed by a swelling stream of girls who’d overheard me and cottoned on to what we were doing, or had just seen a queue and decided to join it. Consequently by the time we got back around to the cordoned off area, running at full pelt, we were no longer at the head of the crowd which had taken on a life of its own, and the man who’d had hold of my letter (and was no longer holding it, I just about managed to notice) glanced up to find a tsunami of teenagers bearing down on him, just as Double Vision finished their final encore and spilled down the steps at the side of the stage.

Our side.

‘There they are!’ screamed someone, Aggie I think, and suddenly the tide swerved and stampeded towards the crash barriers.

‘It’s him, it’s him!’ Dolores could be heard above everyone else to begin with, but was soon drowned out by the cries of ‘Jazzy! I lerv you! Jazzy, Jazzy! You’re Divine!’

Time to use my height to my advantage. ‘Quick, Dolores, get on my shoulders!’

Queen Divvie wasted no time in climbing up my back as best she could, and if it was more of a piggy back than a shoulder-ride, it didn’t seem to matter. It still gave us some extra thrust as we barged our way through the madness, Dolores tossing her pink hair around and yelling ‘I love you, Jazzy’ and me going, ‘Jason! Jason, it’s me
, Cat Andrews. Dolores, shout Jason Devaney instead of Jazzy.’

We’d just reached the barrier and the “guys” were sprinting along the other side of the metal bars
, waving a little nervously.

It all happened so quickly.

Dolores shouted, ‘JASON DEVANEY!’ at the top of her voice.

Jason was just running by at that very second, and turned to look at us in surprise.

I stuck my hand out, saying, ‘Jason, it’s me, Cat Andrews, from Jersey,’ …

… as
Dolores stretched out a taloned hand too, and ripped his too-tight collar right off his shirt.

He clutched
his throat as if he’d been strangled, but didn’t stop running. Though he did have time to gaze up at Dolores.

Yes! I thought.
Now there’ll be instant chemical reactions and marriage proposals.

Then I saw the expression on his face, and it wasn’t adoration. In fact, it wasn’t anything like the expression on Nerdy Ferdy/Freddie’s face when he
’d stared up at Dolores.

It was fear. Pure, animal fear, mixed with a teensy bit of loathing.

And then he was gone.

Jason Devaney

c/o Stephen Scowl

Talentfactory

PO Box 47863

London SW19 8DR

Or c/o The Zed Security

Hi Jason,

Just to confirm that me, Cat Andrews from your former school in Jersey and my gorgeous brawl-causing friend, Dolores (and someone else but you don’t need to know about her) … anyway, we’re going to be back stage
waiting for you after the show at The Zed, and it will be great to catch up on old times.

Hey, I just remembered something else about our school. Do you recall the pea
pod tree out the back of the playing field? The one that was actually a massively poisonous laburnum tree with evil seeds? Well, do you know it was me who stopped half of the reception class eating them, because I knew something they didn’t know:

Peas don’t grow on trees!

It was after that they cordoned it off and put that ‘keep away’ sign on it.

Right, chuntering on about nothing, and we can discuss this and many many many other fond memories of
our jointly-attended primary school when I meet up with you after the gig. See you very soon.

You’re on stage in approximately fourteen hours.

Cat Andrews x

And Gorgeous Dolores xxxxxxx

Really starting to despise Jason Devaney. How much trouble did he get me into? More than I’d ever been in before, basically.

First of all with Dolores. I don’t
honestly know what she was so snickety about. She actually got the idiot to look at her,
and
to stay still long enough for her to separate the collar from his shirt. Pity it wasn’t the head from his shoulders. That might have saved me the whole of the miserable episodes that followed. True, Dolores would have been in prison, her cell wall plastered with articles headlined “DERANGED DIVVY DECAPITATES DIVINE!” and similar, and then school might have been a bit less fun (although … wait … that would solve all the issues with Freddie or Ferdinand the scientific beautiful one … Oh sorry. Day dreaming again. Repeat: do not want Dolores to do time. Even just long enough for me to get a shot at the guy of my dreams. Or maybe … no, no, stop it now).

Anyway, she was super-snarky with me the next morning
after the concert, when I caught her on the front steps showing the offending collar to guess who – Freddie the Ferd Nerd. As if he’d be interested!

But strangely, he was.

‘Hey, I reckon that’s an original Fred Perry,’ he was saying, inspecting it like the forensic scientist I knew he was going to turn into. With me.

‘No, not Fred Perry,’ said Dolores, and honestly, she uttered the next bit really slowly with a very round mouth, as if he was
a moron. ‘Ja-zzy Di-vine.’

Freddie, to my astonishment, didn’t tut
loudly and walk off. Instead he grinned a full set of delightfully uneven teeth. ‘I know. Your beloved, isn’t he?’

Yes, I urged silently. Say yes, he is.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ she said instead, and stupid Freddie stupidly blushed like a stupid ten year old. I am seriously beginning to doubt his intelligence.

So this is where I got into trouble with Dolores.

‘Hey, I need that collar.’

She hadn’t
seen me walking up to them; she looked a bit shocked when my arm snaked over her shoulder and went to grab the scrap of material.

Instantly she snat
ched it back. ‘No way! I tore it off him. It’s mine.’

‘You could sell it on eBay,’ suggested Freddie. ‘You’d get a fortune.’

‘No!’

That was me shoutin
g. EBay? How did he know about such matters? I wanted to like him less and less but his mousy top lip was just inches away from my own and it looked so delicious that I found myself staring at it, rather than listening to what he was saying. Suddenly I realised he was looking at me, accusingly, like “oh it’s you, Finger-stabber.”

‘Why not?’
he said.

Dolores and I spoke at the same moment.

‘Because I’m keeping it forever.’ Dolores. Obviously.

‘Because … because how would you prove it was his?’ That was me. Oh sweet scientists, I’d actually spoken
directly to him! Now to say something to really win his scientific brain over. ‘Other than extracting his DNA and getting something else off him to match it with, and then correlating the whole lot with perhaps a controlled experimental sample and a few … graphs.’

I trailed off because they were both studying me as if I was the one needing
a few scientific experiments.

‘Okay, c
alm down,’ said Freddie under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear him, and then he nodded at Dolores in a “see you later” kind of way and marched off, shouldering his bag onto his skinny, adorable back.

‘I wasn’t going to sell it on eBay anyway,’ said Dolores. ‘As if I’d part with it.’

‘But I do really need it,’ I said, hoping that would be enough to just encourage her to give it to me.

It wasn’t. ‘Why? You don’t even like Jazzy D. You don’t even like Double Vision. You’re not even a Divvy
at all – you disappeared for their entire set! Why would you want it?’

‘Because I have to send it back to him to prove that I’m not a maniac but a truly honest friend who did actually know him at primary school in Jersey, and before that I have to show it to Aggie and Dean so they think I do actually know him, and so Mum doesn’t think I’m a total freak.’

Yep, so they were the other people I’d managed to upset and get into trouble with: Dean and Aggie and even Mother Dearest. First of all, our little rampage around the stadium had meant that we got questioned by security and were escorted off the premises, so that when we eventually got to text them to say READY NOW it was really, really late, and two burly guards were standing either side of us. Dolores was just cuddling the collar like it was a pet stoat, actually singing gently to it, but Aggie was practically in tears.

‘I’ve never been in trouble with the police,’ she confessed in a very sm
all voice so the nearest guard wouldn’t hear her.

‘It’s not the police,’ I said. ‘They’re just hired muscle. They can’t actually do anything.’

‘But I’ve never been in trouble with anybody!’ whispered Aggie. ‘Even hired muscle. My dad’s going to blow a gasket.’

Weird
ly, I could see some advantages in this. If Dean and Mum turned up to find us in trouble with the pigs and thrown out of a concert out of 20000 screaming teenage girls, Dean would see that I was completely unsuitable as a family member and would slowly and delicately extract himself from Mum. I didn’t want a big showdown or anything – that might upset Mum – but if he just sort of disappeared then surely that would be better all round. He’d have to just fade away, wouldn’t he? Dean wasn’t a monster, after all, and he couldn’t exactly say to Mum: “We’re splitting up because your daughter is a criminal and a bad influence.” Hmm. Maybe if I could get a restraining order against the Divine one, it could all happen quite quickly …

I was just contemplating vaulting the barrier and screaming out, ‘Jazzy! I’m coming for
the rest of your shirt!’ when the car turned up.

Mum was driving, and she took one look at the three of us – Dolores chatting to the younger of the two security guards and stroking a strange strip of fabric
like a baddie in a James Bond movie, Aggie in tears, and me probably appearing to be on the verge of breaking out of the crowd and making a run for it – and she turned white. Instead of gesturing to us to get in quickly, she screeched to a halt on the double yellow lines and leapt out of the car, with Dean following closely.

‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘Why are you detaining these girls?’

‘We’re not detaining, we’re restraining,’ said Big Burly. ‘These two borderline assaulted Jazzy D and we’re making sure they don’t get backstage to finish the job.’

Mum blinked rapidly as Aggie finall
y burst into tears and Dean escorted her to one side. ‘Are … are they in trouble?’ Mum asked finally after Dolores and I both launched into vivid and not entirely accurate descriptions of what really happened.

‘Only if they try to get back in to a DV concert.’ Big Burly nodded to Little Burly. ‘Shane’s got their pictures on the security camera
which will be circulated to all venues, and we’d like to respectfully ask that they stay away from the lads.’

‘Good God,’ was all my mother could say.

Dolores screamed and then she burst into tears too. We were ushered into the car pretty quickly after that. I sat in the middle of a crying Dolores and a sobbing Aggie all the way home like the statue in the centre of a gushing fountain, trying to work out which part of my experiment had gone so hideously wrong.

Then when we’d dropped Aggie and Dean off at home and Dolores at her place, it just got worse.

First of all, she didn’t speak for a good mile or so. That’s usually time for a “talk” because she’s thinking of what to say.

I
t started with a small sigh. ‘I don’t understand what’s got into you, Catherine,’ said Mum.

Yup. There we go.

‘Nothing. Nothing’s got into me.’ It’s just that I told a silly and rather massive lie and had to prove it was true to Aggie when it actually wasn’t although with luck it might turn out to be sort of true, and I had to keep Ferdy/Freddie away from Dolores because of the chain of chemical reactions – me to Freddie and Freddie to Dolores and Dolores to Jazzy D but possibly and rather scarily also to Freddie. That was all.

‘But it’s not like you at all,’ said Mum. ‘
I’m sure you didn’t know that boy at the school in Jersey. You hardly spoke to anyone there, to be honest. I was quite worried you about you back then. The only person you’d talk to was Gemma.’ She changed gear as we turned into our street of little matching houses, and then turned to me. ‘Sorry. I know you don’t like me to mention her.’

I didn’t even reply
as she parked on the drive. We both stared out at the garage door through the windscreen, and then a little later when I realised there was no escape, I said, ‘There’s this boy at school.’

And
then Mum gazed at me with sad, deep understanding in her eyes, and patted my knee. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ is all she said.

After that we didn’t mention it
at all, and Mother Dearest did the one thing she can actually do in the kitchen without causing actual danger and microwaved milk for a hot chocolate, and then put the hot chocolate in it all by herself, and gave me a kiss on the forehead as she handed it to me. Eventually she smiled. ‘Did you even like the music?’

I snorted. ‘Call that music? It was rubbish. I hated it.’ I tried to remember even one song, and failed. Show me the sunrise? Show me the door? Show me to the outside barrier and issue me with a
lifelong concert ban, more like. ‘Although I do think Jason might really have playing his guitar, which surprised me.’

Mum just smiled. ‘I think you’re the surprise, Catherine Melissa Andrews. Now go to bed.’

I didn’t even have the energy to object.

What a waste of a night and a great plan. I hadn’t proven anything other than that I’m deranged. And now Dolores, who had come off best out of the whole thing because she got noticed by Jazzy AND by Freddie, obviously agreed.

     
By now we were outside the form room. I’d said nothing for the last four minutes as we made our way from the steps and along the corridors, not even to shout at anyone, ‘Yes, they’re real, now stop looking!’ about Dolores’ boobelage.

Meanwhile she’d kept up a monologue about how brilliant the concert was to anyone and everyone, and waving her prized possession around her head. ‘Jazzy D’s collar!’ she yelled. ‘Who wants to see the very collar of one Divine Jazzy D?’

Of course, everyone did, and I got shoved further and further from her as we trolled along.

I stopped at the door so we could make our usual joint entrance and waited for Dolores.

Do you know what? There are times when that girl is not so dumb after all. She took one look at my face as I leaned against the white-painted door frame, and she huffed out an enormous sigh. Then she sat down at her desk, took the roundy-ended scissors out of her pencil case, and she chopped Jazzy D’s collar into two pieces.

‘You can have half,’ she muttered, holding the two parts aloft under cover of her bag so nobody else could lay claim or offer to pay her for a piece of Jason Devaney. ‘Do you want the big half or the little half?’

‘Big half or little half? You do know that’s not possible …’ I started to say, but then I thought about how astonishingly kind she was being and changed it quickly to ‘You do know that’s amazing of you, don’t you?’ and chose the little half out of respect for her generous gesture.

Though how it was going to help with the growing dis
aster at home, I really didn’t know.