Dare Game (4 page)

I hate it when we have to split up for group work. They all fit into these neat little groups: Roxanne and her gang, Almost-Alan-Shearer and the football crazies, Basher Dixon and his henchmen, Wimpy Lizzie and Dopey Dawn and that lot, Brainbox Hannah and Swotty Andrew – they’re all divided up. And then there’s me.

Mrs V.B. puts me in different groups each time. Sometimes I’m in a group all by myself. I don’t care. I prefer it. I hate them all.

Cam says I should try to make friends. I don’t
want
to be friends with that seriously sad bunch of losers. I keep moaning to Cam that it’s a rubbish school and telling her to send me somewhere else. She’s useless. Well, she did try going down to the Guildhall and seeing if they could swop me somewhere else but they said the other schools in the area are oversubscribed.

She just accepted it. Didn’t make any kind of fuss. If you want anything in this world you’ve got to fight for it. I should know.

‘You’re on their waiting list,’ Cam said, as if she thought I’d be pleased.

What use is that? I’ve been waiting half my life to
get
a life. I thought my big chance had come when Cam came to the Children’s Home to research this boring old article about kids in care. (She only got £100 for it and I was barely mentioned!) I thought she might do as a foster mum as she’s a writer and so am I.

She needed quite a lot of persuading.
But
I can be pretty determined when I want. And I
did
want Cam. Badly.

So when she said, ‘Right then, Tracy, let’s give it a go. You and me. OK?’ it was more than OK. I was over the moon. Soaring straight up into the solar system. I couldn’t wait to get out of the Children’s Home. I got dead impatient with Elaine the Pain my social worker because she seemed to be trying to slow things down instead of speed them up.

‘No point in rushing things, Tracy,’ she said.

I felt there was
every
point. I didn’t want Cam to change her mind. She was having to go to all these interviews and meetings and courses and she’s not really that sort of person. She doesn’t like to be bossed around and told what to do. Like me. I was scared she might start to think it was all too much hassle.

But
eventually
we had a weekend together and that was great. Cam wanted it to be a very laid-back weekend – a walk in the park, a
video
or two, and a takeaway pizza. I said I did all that sort of stuff already at the Children’s Home and couldn’t we do something special to celebrate our first weekend together?

I told you I can be pretty persuasive. Cam took me to Chessington World of Adventures and it was truly great and she even bought me this huge python with beady green eyes and a black forked tongue. She dithered long and hard about it, saying she didn’t want it to look like she was buying my affection, but I made the python wind round and round her beguilingly. He ‘told’ her he was desperate to be bought because the shopkeeper was really mean to him just because he’d got a teeny bit peckish and gobbled up a furry bunny and several toy mice as a little snack.

Cam bought him though she said she was mad and that she’d be eating bread and cheese for the rest of the week as the entry tickets and burger and chips for lunch had already cost a fortune.

I should have realized she can be a boring old meanie when it comes to money but I wanted Cam to foster me so much that I didn’t focus on her bad points.

Maybe she didn’t focus on
my
bad points???

Anyway, it was like we were both wearing our rose-coloured glasses and we smiled in our pink-as-petals perfect world and on Sunday evening when I had to go back to the Home Cam hugged me almost as tight as I hugged her and promised that she really wanted to go through with things and foster me.

So she did. And that’s really where my story should have ended. Happily Ever After. Only I’m not always happy. And actually I’m not even sure Cam is either.

It was fine at first. Elaine says we went through this Honeymoon Period. Is it any wonder I call her a pain? She comes out with such yucky expressions. But I suppose Cam and I were a little bit like newly weds. We went everywhere together, sometimes even hand-in-hand, and whenever I wanted anything I could generally persuade her
and
I was careful not to get too stroppy because I didn’t want her to go off me and send me back. But after a bit . . .

I don’t know. Somehow it all changed. Cam wouldn’t always take me out for treats and buy me stuff. Stuff I seriously
need
, like designer clothes, else I get picked on by poisonous girls like Roxanne. Cam says she can’t afford it – which can’t be true. I know for a fact she gets paid a fortune by the authorities for looking after me. It’s a bit of a rip-off, if you ask me. And this is all on top of what she earns from being a writer.

Cam says she doesn’t earn much as a writer. Peanuts, she says. Well, that’s her fault. She doesn’t write the right stuff. She’s wasting her time writing these yawny articles for big boring papers that haven’t got proper pictures. And her books are even worse. They’re dreary paperbacks about poor women with problems. I mean, who wants to read that sort of rubbish? I wish she’d write more romantic stuff. I keep telling Cam she wants to get cracking on those great glossy books everyone reads on their holidays. Where all the women are beautiful with heaps of different designer outfits and all the men have
dynamic
jobs and are very powerful and they all get together in different combinations so there are lots and lots of rude bits.

Cam just laughs at me and says she can’t stick those sort of books. She says she doesn’t mind not being a successful writer.

I
mind. I want a foster mum I can show off about. I can’t show off about Cam because no-one’s ever heard of her. And she’s not pretty or sexy or glamorous. She doesn’t wear any make-up and her hair’s too short to style so it just sticks straight up and her clothes are
awful
– T-shirts and jeans all the time and they’re certainly
not
designer.

Her home is just as shabby too. I hoped I’d get to live in a big house with swish furniture and lots of fancy ornaments, but Cam lives in this poky little flat. She hasn’t even got any proper
carpet
, she’s just polished up the bare floorboards and has a few rugs scattered about. Quite good fun if I fancy a slide but they look hopeless. You should see her sofa
too
! It’s leather but it’s all cracked so she has to hide it with this old patchwork quilt and some lumpy tapestry cushions she cross-stitched herself. She tried to show me how to do cross-stitch. No wonder that’s what it’s called. The more I stitched the crosser I got, and I soon gave up in disgust.

I’ve got my own bedroom but it’s not a patch on my room at the Children’s Home. It’s not much bigger than a
cupboard
. Cam’s so mean too. She said I could choose to have my bedroom exactly the way I wanted. Well, I had some great ideas. I wanted a king-size bed with a white satin duvet and my own dressing table with lights all round the mirror like a film star and white carpet as soft and thick as cat fur and my own computer to write my stories on and my own sound system and a
giant
white television and video and a trapeze hanging from the ceiling so I could practise circus tricks and my own ensuite bathroom so I could splash all day in my own private bubble bath.