Kitten Wars (10 page)

‘Sorry, Jazz, but I don’t see what this show has got to do with you – or me – or the – what’s their name? –
Meerleys
,’ I said.

Jazz’s face clouded dangerously. I stared back at her while a dizzying sensation in the pit of my stomach gathered momentum like a distant thunderstorm.

‘What are you talking about?’ Jazz asked, her eyes narrowed. ‘It’s got EVERYTHING to do with us!’

I waited.

Jazz waggled her head at me as though I was the slowest train on the tracks and said slowly, for the benefit of my idiot-loony brain: ‘I told you; Fiona is the producer. She can get us to
the front of the queue.’

‘How do you know
Fiona
can get us in? Have you asked her?’ I felt myself squaring up to Jazz, even though part of my brain was telling me to stop, to slow down and let her
have her moment in the sun.

Jazz faltered. ‘I – I – it’s just obvious. She’s soooo lovely and I bet if I asked her it would be cool. Anyway, I am going to audition,’ she ended
abruptly.

I knew it. I tried to keep my voice level.

‘So you haven’t actually asked her yet? I mean, you haven’t had a proper conversation about it?’

Jazz’s face was growing bleaker by the minute. I watched it dawn on her that she hadn’t thought this thing through.

‘Why don’t we just go and watch?’ I tried to sound reasonable. I didn’t want to upset my best mate, I told myself. ‘Dad used to work for the
Ranter
,
don’t forget. Maybe he could sort us some good seats.’

Jazz flicked her braids out of her face and shot me a look of utter horror. ‘
He
can’t come with us!’ she gasped.

Admittedly, the idea of Dad rocking up to
Who’s Got Talent?
in his naff jeans and faded sludge-coloured T-shirt was pretty horrific – even
I
knew that. But that
didn’t mean I was happy with Jazz’s reaction. What had this Fiona got that my dad hadn’t? (Apart from contacts in TV and the music business, I thought glumly.)

I squinted at the tiny writing in the newspaper that outlined the rules for the auditions, while a rollercoaster rocketed around somewhere inside me. I couldn’t deal with all the different
feelings this conversation was stirring up. On the one hand I wanted to scream at Jazz to shut up about this new family and the auditions, and to get a grip. On the other I wanted her to give me a
hug and tell me nothing had changed and we were still best mates and by the way, here was a poster she’d been working on to help find Jaffa, and did I want to go out right now and stick
copies up everywhere?

But soon Jazz was off on one again, conveniently sidestepping all my practical questions.

‘So, like I said, what are
you
going to wear? I’m going to practise that new routine I’m learning in my Street Dance class, hence the jeans cos I’m doing the
splits – not that great a look in a skirt and quite tricky to do too. Then again, maybe my white jeans will be too tight—’

‘You can’t,’ I said quietly.

‘What now?’ Jazz said, one eyebrow arched.

‘Jazz,’ I said, taking her cue and adopting her you-are-not-on-Planet-Normal approach. ‘You’re eleven—’

‘Twelve in three months!’ she cut in defiantly.

‘You’re eleven,’ I repeated. ‘And you can’t audition for
Who’s Got Talent?
until you’re sixteen.’

‘Says who?’ Jazz’s confident expression wavered.

‘Look.’ I pointed at the small print which laid down the terms and conditions. ‘It says here you have to be sixteen.’

‘So? I could
look
sixteen if I got Aleisha to lend me some make-up,’ she said airily.

I could not keep a lid on my emotions any longer. ‘Yeah, like she’s going to do that!’ I rapped out, my voice laced with sarcasm and anger. Putting my head on one side, I
talked up in a baby voice to an imaginary older sister: ‘Oh, hi, Leesh. Can I have some of your make-up, please?’ I looked down as if talking to a smaller person. ‘Sure, Jazz.
What for?’ ‘Well, I’m entering the auditions for
Who’s Got Talent?
and I need to dress to impress.’ ‘Of course, darling little sister. Here, take the
whole shebang, why don’t you, and while you’re at it why not borrow my favourite designer jeans?’

Jazz had her hands on her hips and her face was hardening into a fierce mask of fury.

I threw my hands up. ‘OK! OK! But you know what I mean!’ I shouted. ‘She’d have a fit if she knew what you were planning – and she’d definitely tell your
mum.’

Jazz sucked her cheeks in and wobbled her head at me. ‘You just don’t want me to have a chance of winning,’ she said through clenched teeth. I didn’t think I’d ever
seen her look so scary. I should have known then to back down.

But instead I did something really stupid. I couldn’t help it. I don’t even know where it came from – it burst out of me like bubblegum popping in my mouth.

I laughed.

It was just the idea that Jazz could actually believe that an eleven-year-old who sang like a strangled canary had the slightest chance of winning ‘the nation’s favourite talent
show’ and be on television – and get a recording contract!

Jazz, predictably, did not find the idea as amusing as I did.

‘You, Bertie Fletcher, need to seriously get a life. And I mean
seriously
. You need to grow up. All this bonkers utter RUBBISH about pets and kittens and fluffy little
hamster-wamsters. I mean how old ARE you exactly? We’re not at Junior School any more, Bertie. We’ll be nearly teenagers this time next year. You need to shape up your act, girl, or you
are going to be doing time with the Losers of Loserville from here to the end of eternity. And I for one will not be hanging around to watch
that
happen.’

And she spun on her heel, her beads thwacking against her flushed cheeks, and marched out, slamming her door behind her, leaving me staring at the newspaper article and feeling as though she had
just knocked all the life out of me.

S
ome holiday this was turning out to be. I blundered down the stairs, swiping furiously at my wet, tear-streaked face and pushed past Ty who was
standing in the hall, gawping at me and waving a long-suffering Huckleberry in the air.

‘Ber-tiiie,’ he whined. ‘Jazz just called Huckleberry a tail-less lettuce-munching rat!’

‘S-sorry, Ty. Gotta go,’ I mumbled, letting myself out of the house and running down the street before Jazz’s mum or sister could spot me and make me sit down with Jazz and
‘try to sort it all out’.

All I could think was how much distance I wanted to put between me and Jazz.

How could she have said those things? We had always been mates. OK, so we didn’t get on one hundred per cent of the time, but she’d never been so hurtful before. What was I going to
do now? It had always been Jazz and Bertie, Bertie and Jazz. I wished I had Kaboodle to run home to – that gorgeous, soft, clever little kitten who always had some words of wisdom and a loud
jet-engine purr to make me feel better. He certainly would have had some sharp, witty comments up his whiskers when it came to Jazz. But Kaboodle had gone. And Jaffa too. And Dad was working.

I thought of Jazz and how she too was probably in tears right this minute because I had laughed at her. I should have felt bad about that, I supposed. But why should I feel sorry for her? She
had a mum to cuddle her when she was down, a big sister to give her advice. She even had a guinea pig in the family.

I had no one.

I was wallowing in the deep end of my own personal pool of misery and running along at full tilt with my hair flying in my face, so I didn’t see someone coming the other way. And I ran
right into them.

‘Uh – oh, sorry!’ I muttered, keeping my face hidden behind a curtain of mad-as-a-mongoose hair.

‘Er, it’s OK,’ said the someone.

I wiped my face on the back of my sleeve and moved to one side to get past.

The someone moved in the same direction and we bumped into one another again. I felt heat rise to my face.

‘Sorry!’ I almost shouted it this time. I just wanted to get home.

Then I sensed a hand on my arm and glanced up sharply.

‘Hey, you OK? You look as though you’ve been crying.’

Oh. No. Holy Stromboli with grated cheese and extra salami. It was only
him
wasn’t it? Prince Charming himself.

‘I – I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I’m Fergus, by the way – we’re neighbours, I think.’

I pursed my lips to stop myself from coming out with any words that I might live to regret for the rest of my life.

Fergus was taller than me. He had to stoop to try and hold my gaze while I shuffled uncomfortably and tried to flick my hair back over my eyes. I couldn’t think of anything to say and
wished he would stop staring at me like that. Apart from anything else, it made it difficult for me to get a proper look at him.

‘How old are you?’ I blurted out.

WHAT DID I SAY THAT FOR? We weren’t in Reception any more! Next thing I’ll be asking him if he wants to be my friend. Actually, scrap that. That’s one thing I would definitely
not
be asking him.

Fergus grinned. I noticed, through my hair-curtain, that he had very white even teeth. And
his
hair was actually really glossy and quite an unusual dark red, which glinted in the sunlight
– what you’d call auburn. I felt even more of a hot and dirty mess.

In fact, I felt like I was running a temperature. I wished the pavement would split in two and that some alien life form would emerge and drag me down into the depths.

‘Thirteen. Why? How old are you?’ Fergus was saying.

I was so shocked I forgot to stay hidden behind my fringe. My eyes were doing their best to leap out of their sockets, but I did my best to restrain them.
Thirteen?
Bang went Jazz’s
dreams of Prince Charming leading her up into the dizzying heights of fame and fortune!

‘I’m eleven – nearly twelve,’ I added, immediately biting my lip and thinking how utterly dumb that sounded. Why didn’t I just say ‘eleven’ and be done
with it?

‘Oh. Right – I thought you might be older than that,’ Fergus said, his smooth face going a bit pink. ‘It’s just – er – your friend Jazz told me she was
thirteen and I guess I thought you might be in the same year as her.’

I was finding it incredibly difficult to speak like a normal human being. Jazz was unbelievable. But for some weird reason, I couldn’t allow myself to drop her in it and tell Fergus the
truth.

‘So. I guess we’ll be in the same school in September,’ he was babbling on.

‘Yeah, probably.’

I’d calmed down slightly now, what with all this bizarre conversation, and I realized I didn’t feel like crying any more. I sniffed loudly.

‘So, er, what are you into?’ Fergus said, kicking at a leaf on the pavement.

‘What?’ I said. What kind of a question was that, for goodness sake?

‘Well, like, your friend Jazz is into music and dancing and stuff – she told me all about it—’

‘I bet she did,’ I muttered.

‘Eh?’

‘I said, “That sounds like Jazz!”’ I fibbed extra-brightly.

‘Yeah, so – are you into music?’ he persisted, peering down at me through his floppy fringe.

I picked at some loose threads on the sleeve of my T-shirt. ‘Kind of. Not really. I mean, it’s OK, but it’s not my
thing
,’ I said with a slight sneer.
‘I’m not in a successful band or anything.’

I knew I should be trying to be nice to this boy. He was only making conversation. He was probably a bit lonely if he’d moved a long way from all his friends. And I knew what lonely felt
like. But it was all that stuff about Jazz: I couldn’t help it.

‘Oh, right. You’ve heard about the band . . . Actually, it doesn’t exist any more. We had to split when I moved,’ Fergus said. He looked sad suddenly. Then he blurted out
suddenly, ‘Sorry, enough about me. I should let you go. Erm – hope you don’t mind me asking though, but is everything OK? Only, you were crying, like I said, and—’

All at once I was fed up with this freaky chitchat with a boy I had never even wanted to meet in the first place. I didn’t care about his band. I didn’t care about him. I snapped.
‘Not that it’s any of your business, but
animals
are really “my thing”; not music, not
Summer School Dance Camp
, not Zeb Acorn, not Street Dance –
animals
. And if you absolutely have to know why I was crying, it’s cos I’ve lost my cat and she’s only little, so it’s kind of upsetting.’

I had been trying to keep my eyes fixed firmly on the pavement during this whole tirade, so that I didn’t embarrass myself by bursting into tears again, but a sharp gasp from Fergus made
me start.

‘What?’ I asked, looking up.

Fergus was frowning and chewing his lip.

‘Have
you
seen her?’ I pressed him.

‘I’m not sure, but . . . You say she’s little. How little?’ Fergus asked, his dark blue eyes clouding over. Why was he suddenly so concerned about my kitten?

‘We-ell, size-wise she’s about this big.’ I showed him with my hands exactly how tiny my little Jaffa was. About the size of a grapefruit – I could still hold her in one
hand. The last time I’d held her, anyway. ‘But we don’t know exactly how old she is. She was given to us, you see. By – by the lady who owns the house you’re living
in, as it happens.’

Fergus smiled. ‘Oh, Fenella Pinkington.’

I found myself smiling too. ‘Yeah. Pinkella!’

Fergus laughed. ‘Great nickname – wish I’d thought of that! Makes sense when you see the walls and carpets. Mum’ll crack up when I tell her.’

I was horrified. ‘You can’t tell your
mum
! She might tell Pink— I mean, Ms Pinkington, and I’d hate that. She was really nice to me,’ I tailed off,
pathetically.

Fergus shrugged. I could tell he thought I was a right doofus. ‘So – your kitten,’ he prompted.

‘So?’ Was he humouring me?

‘Tell me what she’s like. Apart from being small.’

‘I – well, she’s mega-cute. I called her Jaffa cos she’s gingery-orange. Made me think of Jaffa Cakes? Oh, and she’s a bit white too. And she seemed really happy
with us to start with, and then we had to take her to the vet for her jabs and stuff, and ever since then—’