Fortune Cookie

For Emily Collins and

Katherine Story

Hi! I'm Fudge Cassidy, and this is my friend, the Cupcake Kid. She's my bestie!

There's a photo of us that Cupcake's mum took last year, when we'd just started at secondary school. We're showing off in our new school uniforms, which we now wouldn't be seen
dead
in. Not if we could
help it. We are both smiling proudly, looking straight at the camera. Nothing to hide! No guilty secrets. That all came later…

Cupcake's the thin one. The one with the long, dark hair tied in a plait. I'm the short, stubby one with all the freckles. Not to mention the blobby nose, which Dad always says looks like a button mushroom. Cupcake has a really nice nose! Sort of…
noble
. She complains about it being too long; she says it's like a door knocker, but I'd sooner have a door knocker than a mushroom. I think people show you more respect.

Another thing Cupcake complains about is her teeth. They are being trained not to stick out, which means she has to wear a brace, which sometimes makes her sort of
buzz
and
click
when she says certain words. Mostly ones beginning with
S
. I have never told her, but when she first had the brace and started buzzing and clicking I thought it was really cool and wished that I could have one! I did suggest to Mum that
maybe I ought to, “just in case”. Mum said, “Just in case what?” I said, “In case my teeth start growing outwards. I think they
are
starting to… look!” And I pulled this bunny face with my bottom lip sucked in, just to show her. But Mum never takes me seriously. She says I'm too impressionable and always getting these crazy ideas.

“There's nothing the matter with your teeth! Don't be so daft.”

I bet Cupcake's mum wouldn't tell her to put her teeth away and not be daft. Well, she obviously hadn't.
She'd
taken her to the dentist to get a brace put on, which is what any normal mum would do. Not mine! “No,” she says, when I remind her of it, “I am a hard woman.”

Cupcake's mum isn't hard; neither is Cupcake. They are both very caring sort of people. In fact, Cupcake is nothing but a great big softie, which is what I'm always telling her. If Cupcake takes after her mum, I s'ppose I ought to be honest and admit that I probably take after
mine. I do love my mum (in spite of her not letting me have a brace) but I just HATE it when people look at me and go, “Ooooh, don't you look like your mum!” I mean, nobody wants to look like their mum, right? If they said,
Don't you look like
………………. (fill in the name of your favourite celeb). Well! That'd be different. But I don't expect anyone's favourite celeb is likely to be short and stubby with a button mushroom instead of a nose, and a face covered all over in splodgy brown freckles. Yuck yuck yuck!

Now I've gone and lost track. I'm always doing that! Attention span of a flea. That is what Mrs Kendrick said to me last term, and I guess she might be right. My mind does hop about a bit! What I really meant to do was write about me and Cupcake. Say how we first met. How we got to be friends. That sort of thing.

OK! Me and Cupcake first met when our mums were in the hospital, right next to each other in the ward. How cool is
that?
Cupcake was born a whole half-hour ahead of me without any fuss at all, and
afterwards she just lay there gurgling in her crib, as good as gold, so that everyone ooh-ed and aah-ed and said what a sweet little baby she was. I
apparently
was all loud and red and screaming and kept sicking up over everything and generally making a nuisance of myself. I don't suppose anyone ooh-ed and aah-ed over me. They probably took one look and jumped back in horror, going “Aaaaargh! Save me!”

Once, when I was trying to discover a bit more about those ancient times, I asked Mum if she could have told which baby was me and which baby was Cupcake if we hadn't had those little wristband things with our names on – cos, you know, all babies look alike when they are first born. Well, I think they do. I wouldn't be surprised if all kinds of mistakes are made. Mum seemed to find this amusing. She said, “We never had the
least
trouble telling you apart!” She said that Cupcake was always “such a dear little soul… so good and quiet and eager to please.” Unlike me, is what she meant! I guess it's true, me and Cupcake are just, like,
totally different – which doesn't stop us being in-sep-arable. Like,
joined at the hip
, as people say, though I'm not quite sure why. If we are joined anywhere, it's at the shoulder. We go round all the time with our arms round each other. Either that, or linked together. Sometimes it's like we're stuck with glue! It's strange to look back and remember that it hasn't always been like this.

After we'd got born, and our mums had taken us back home, we didn't see each other again for ages. Years and years. Nine, to be exact. I was in Year 5 when Cupcake suddenly turned up at my school. We didn't know we'd already met! After all, it wasn't like we'd been properly introduced or said hi, or anything. So to begin with, the first few days, we didn't really take much notice of each other. I thought Cupcake was a bit boring, to be honest. All mousey and miserable. She didn't ever seem to laugh, or join in any of our games at break time. Just skulked round by herself, looking like a tree had fallen on top of her, with her shoulders hunched and her head way down. No fun at
all! She confessed later that she hadn't liked me any more than I had liked her. She said I was all loud and bossy. “A right show-off!”

Thing is, Cupcake had a reason to feel sad. I didn't have any reason for being loud and bossy. I think my voice just naturally comes out as a bit of a bellow; Mum is for ever telling me not to shout. As for being bossy – well, maybe I
sometimes
am. But not on purpose! I just get kind of carried away. Same with showing off. I never mean to. “No,” says Cupcake, “you just
do
.” But she has learnt how to squash me! And she has learnt how to laugh, in spite of everything. I like to think this is partly thanks to me.

It wasn't till she had been in school several days that our mums arrived at the same time one afternoon to collect us and surprise, surprise! They recognised each other. That was when we discovered that we had already met. Our mums immediately started swapping memories. Cupcake's mum remembered how I hadn't seemed to want to be born – “You were so overdue!”
– and my mum told us how Cupcake had been such a
quiet
little baby and how I had been the noisy one.

I remember me and Cupcake exchanging glances. I was thinking, “Quiet just means
boring
,” while Cupcake was thinking, “She still is noisy.” I know this is what she was thinking cos ages afterwards she actually told me.

It turned out that Cupcake and her mum were living just two minutes away from us. I was not exactly overjoyed when I first realised this, and I don't expect Cupcake was, either. I nearly shrieked when we got indoors and Mum said, “Isn't that lovely? Meeting up again after all this time! I do hope you'll become friends.”

I pointed out that I had already got friends.

“So?” said Mum. “What's to stop you having another one?”

I said, “I don't want another one! You can't make yourself be friends with just
anybody
.” Simply because their mum happened to have been in the hospital at the same time as yours.

Mum told me not to be such a grouch. “Don't be so unwelcoming! She's new, she doesn't know anyone. You're not shy! You could at least make a bit of an effort.”

I could have, but I didn't. Me and Livy and Claire were quite happy as we were, just the three of us. We didn't need some little mouse tagging on! It wasn't till about a week later that Mum explained to me
why
Cupcake was so down. It was because she had a little brother who wasn't well and her mum and dad had just split up, and that was the reason she'd had to change schools, cos they couldn't afford to go on living where they were.

When I heard that I just felt
so sorry
for poor Cupcake. No wonder she was sad all the time! If my mum and dad split up, I would be sad all the time. More than just sad, I would be in floods of tears. I couldn't bear it!

It was thinking about her dad that made me start trying to be a bit nicer, like inviting her to join us at
break time, and even, once, when Livy was away, going and sitting next to her. I didn't really think about her little brother all that much. I knew he couldn't walk too well, and that sometimes he fell over. I'd heard Mum say to Dad what a terrible shame it was, but it never occurred to me to ask what was wrong. It wasn't something Cupcake ever talked about. She seemed not to want to, and if she didn't want to then neither did I. I suppose I'm a bit of a coward in that way; I would rather not know.

In spite of making an effort to be more welcoming, I still didn't feel that Cupcake would ever really fit in and be one of us. I certainly never dreamt that we would end up best mates! It was her baby brother who brought us together. His name is Joey and he is the sweetest little boy I have ever known. Exactly how I would like my brother to be if ever I had one (instead of my spoilt brat of a sister, Rosie). He's so bright, and brave, and funny! He could still walk in those days, and even pedal about on his little tricycle. Sometimes his
mum used to bring him with her when she came to pick up Cupcake from school. Other times, if he wasn't too well, she would leave him at home and the old lady who lives in the upstairs bit of their house would look after him.

“She doesn't mind,” Cupcake assured me. “She loves Joey.”

Everybody loves Joey! You can't not. Even if you are like me, and not at all a gooey sort of person, you still want to put your arms round him and give him a cuddle. He has these huge, dark eyes and curly hair and looks just
so
angelic! Whenever I say this, Cupcake goes “Huh! That's what
you
think,” making like she finds him as big a pain as I find Rosie. But it is all put on. I was quite shocked the first time she said it, but now I realise it is important to her to pretend that he's no different from anyone else's little brother. In fact, he's full of mischief and manages to get up to all kinds of tricks, like the time he collected a load of slugs from the garden and put them in a dish on the kitchen table.
Cupcake
screeched
. I know, cos I was there! I just went, “Yeeeurgh!” but Cupcake shot out of her chair going, “Take them away, take them away! That's disgusting!”

In this hurt voice, Joey said he'd got them for us as a treat. He thought we'd enjoy them. He said that French people enjoyed them.

That really cracked me up. “That's
snails
!” I said. “Not slugs!”

Joey said, “Slugs is only snails without any shell.” And then he picked up the bowl and ever so politely held it out to me. “You could try one!”

I said, “I don't think so.”

“Just get rid of them!” screamed Cupcake.

Joey sighed and did his best to look hurt, but I knew he was only playacting cos he couldn't help this big, happy grin spreading across his face.

“See?” said Cupcake. “See what I mean? He does it on purpose!”

Joey tries ever so hard to behave the same as any normal little boy, only you can't say this to Cupcake
cos it gets her really upset. I said it once, when I'd tried to help him on to his tricycle and he'd pushed me away and struggled on to it by himself. In this small, tight voice Cupcake said, “What d'you mean, the same as any normal little boy? He is a normal little boy. You saw what he did the other day!” She meant with the slugs. I knew that in spite of her screeching and saying how disgusting it was, she had been secretly quite pleased. Putting bowls of slugs on the kitchen table in the hope of making your sister feel sick is the sort of thing that little boys are supposed to get up to. To make her feel better I told her how
I
would like a brother like Joey – “Cos my sister is just sooo annoying!” – and that immediately made Cupcake stick up for Rosie, and we had a long discussion about whether or not she is spoilt.
Which she is
. Take my word for it! Cupcake said, “Yes, but she's only six years old.” She said that Joey had been spoilt when he was six years old.

“And still is!” That was her mum, suddenly appearing through the back door. She said, “You two
girls between you spoil that boy rotten.”

I don't think we do! We just like to make him happy. We like to invent games that he can play, and read to him, and take him up the park. Once, for his birthday, we even wrote a special story for him. It was fifteen pages long, with pictures. We printed it out on the computer and made a proper cover so it looked like a real book that you could buy in a shop. It was called
Man on the Moon
. It was all about this boy who dreamt of becoming a spaceman only everybody told him he couldn't cos of being in a wheelchair. Then one day some aliens came from outer space and with the help of their advanced technology they turned the wheelchair into a spaceship, and the boy went whizzing off to the moon and it was all over the television,