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It was pretty quiet and actually rather dark round by the catering vans. No wonder Big Burly aka Gordon had peered at Jazzy, somewhat perplexed, when he’d insisted that was where we needed to go.

Gingerly, we all clambered back out of the car, whispering, ‘Jason? Jason!’ as loudly as we dared.

Behind us, the door of one of the vans creaked open - and there he was. Actually in a ridiculously glaring white tracksuit like the suit Divine Prat was wearing. His hair was flattened to his skull and the guy was, basically, the victim of a fake tan attack. No wonder he was in a boy band. I was very, very tempted to introduce him to the others as: ‘This is Jason, orange’ and then they’d have wondered what band he was really in.

‘This way,’ he hissed, with a blinding flash of white teeth.

So we all squashed ourselves between the deep fat fryers and the serving counter in a long line. I had to point to everyone down the queue. ‘Hi there. That’s Aggie; Jazzy you know, and that’s Dolores at the back.’

‘Hi,’ said the real Jason. ‘Thanks, guys. Thanks for doing all this.’

There was silence from behind me, so I muttered, ‘S’fine’ before turning round to see what the matter was.

I’d forgotten, of course, that the others had not had the privilege of meeting the real Jason before, and both Aggie and Dolores were pink and dumbstruck. Dolores definitely looked in imminent danger of a screaming session. On top of all that, there were two Jasons to view –
Buy One Get One Free in the burger van – and this was proving very entertaining to everyone else as they compared Real Jason to Fake Jazzy.

‘Say hi,’ I said to the girls behind me. ‘It’s only Jason.’

‘Hi, Jason,’ they both said in tiny voices, before doing WOW faces at each other.

For the briefest, tiniest second, a flash of annoyance crossed Jason’s face. Maybe because I’d called him ‘just Jason.’ Then he smiled and nodded. ‘Hey. Yeah, thanks heaps. We’ve got just enough time. Jazzy, can I talk you to on your own?’

‘Sure, dude.’ Divine Jazzy peered around him, confused. ‘Is this the Fort Oxygen? Are you another me?’

‘Sort of,’ said Jason patiently. ‘I’m the first one; the one you already know.’

Jazzy looked like he was about to throw a major tant. ‘But I wanted to make a band!’

‘I know. Just let me have a chat with you, and we can sort this out.’

I took this as the cue to leave them to it. If Jason was going to cosh Divine Jazzy over the head and then stash him in the deep freeze with the sausages, I didn’t want to see it.

‘C’mon, out, out, back up,’ I muttered to Double D and Agnes.

They both took a long lingering glance at the two Jasons, side by side in their dazzling whiteness, and then reversed out of the van.

For about ten minutes we lurked outside; then, feeling a bit conspicuous, we piled back into the car.

‘What do you think is going on in there?’ said Agnes.

‘Never mind in there,’ said Dolores. ‘What’s been going on at the lab? Is everything Jazzy said true? I mean, I can see it is with two of them and everything, but did he really get made out of the collar?’

I remembered then that Dolores still had half a collar. ‘Why, are you going to make another one?’

‘Might do,’ she said sni
ppily. ‘Or I might keep that Jazzy in there. It was my collar in the first place, so basically he’s mine, isn’t he?’

‘It was Jason’s collar in the first place,’ I reminded her.

Aggie grinned. ‘I thought it was Fred Perry’s?’

‘Not actual Fred Perry,’ I said. ‘It’s
a brand like Ted Baker.’

We were just embarking on actually quite an interesting discussion about vintage clothing (
“actually” as it was a surprise because we were discussing fashion and I, like, don’t care) when the door to the catering van sprang open. In astonishment, we all gawped at the silhouetted figures in the doorway. There were still two of them. They hugged briefly, high-fived and fist-pumped, and then one of them broke away and ran towards the stadium.

‘What’s he doing? He was supposed to kill Stupid Jazzy and stash him in the freezer!’

Aggie blanched. ‘Cat! That would be murder!’

‘No, not really,’ I said, although I could see it would be a fine line. ‘Jazzy Divine Idiot isn’t technically alive, so he couldn’t technically be killed. Just
… de-activated or something.’

‘That would be a shame.’ Dolores sighed deeply. ‘They’re both beautiful.’

Now one of the beautiful and alive Jasons was making his way over to the car. He waved like a moron.

‘Oh my deepest Dawkins,’ I spluttered. ‘He’s left us to deal with it. He’s run off to do his stupid show and left us with this … zombie with an ego
and a flipping dance routine. I don’t believe it. He’s dead! I’ll kill Jason Devaney myself!’

Which was right at the moment, naturlich, that he stuck his head through the passenger window where I was sitting and spluttering, and said, ‘Cat, could I have a word with you in the catering van? Maybe before you kill me.’

This was getting crazier by the minute. ‘What in creation is going on?’ I yelled. ‘Did you just send a clone into the stadium?’

Jason opened my car door politely and gestured towards the catering van. ‘In there, if you don’t mind. Thank you.’ He bowed to the others. ‘Thanks, Aggie. Thanks, Dolores. Bye for now.’

‘Bye, Jason,’ they hiccupped like a pair of five year olds.

I glared at them both and then stomped after him into the van. The smell of old fried onions was overpowering, so I turned downwind and folded my arms.

‘What are you doing? You were supposed to be getting rid of him.’

Jason smiled. ‘It’s perfect. Well, not quite perfect because he’s not fully trained yet, but I’m willing to be nobody will notice the difference. He’s going to be me.’

‘Oh. My. Darwin. You have totally lost it.’ I stared at Jason for a long time, noticing that under the fake tan he actually looked quite tired. His eyes were a tidge bloodshot, and I honestly felt like sitting him down and making him vegetable juices. Cute. No! Not cute. Mad. Back to business. ‘Are you seriously telling me you’re replacing yourself with that time bomb?’

Jason shrugged. ‘I know it’s a risk, but I’ve observed him quite carefully over the last few weeks, and as long as he gets treated like Band Me then he seems to be perfectly okay.’

‘And if he’s not?’

He gave me a wicked smile. ‘Well, Fred Perry shirts aren’t the only clothes I wear. And I happen to know this chick with a Vortexicon
, so I’ll make a better version.’

‘You do not … you are not making … are you calling me a chick?’

‘I wouldn’t really,’ said Jason with a laugh. ‘I only need one other Jason.’

‘And what will you do?’

‘Escape,’ he said simply.

And then it all came out: how he’d joined the band because he loved the music and one of the original Double Vision
members was his friend, but then they’d got very popular very fast and it all became about the image and the fake tan and the tours. The girls terrified him – especially girls like Dolores. ‘It’s like they want part of your soul, or something. They’d rip your head off your shoulders to take home a trophy, and not even realise they’d murdered you,’ he said softly.

By now we were sitting side by side on the serving counter. It would probably need a good clean by the morning; Jason’s face powder was
sprinkled all over the stainless steel.

‘So … are you going to have a solo career?’ I said eventually.

Jason nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Something like that.’ He glanced at me under his long mascara’d eyelashes (yes, without flicking them apart) and for some reason I was suddenly taken back to the biology lab, to a strange sensation sliding down from my brain to my chest and my intestines. ‘Though I hope not totally on my own.’

‘A duet?’ I thought about it for a moment. ‘I could p
lay tenor recorder if you like.’

He roared with laughter then, which was a tad insulting as I was actually making a genuine offer. ‘That’s not quite what I meant.’

‘Oh.’ Okay, laugh in the face of my genuine offer. Tenor recorder not good enough for pop stars, huh? ‘So anyway, do you want a lift somewhere?’

At that, Jason held up his phone. I got what he meant immediately. There was
a picture of Dean’s car, with the three of us and Jazzy in the back of it, all over the internet. If we left now while the other Jazzy was live on stage, there’d be chaos.

Seemed to follow me a lot, chaos.

‘I’ll find my own way.’ Jason stood up, and suddenly I realised this was it.

The end.

Goodbye.

‘Thanks, Cat. For everything.’

He was moving towards me. Moving. Moving. It looked dangerously as though he might actually be going to hug me and press me into his muscly chest again, and for some reason this made me completely nervous.

So I jumped backwards, out of his way, and said in a very shril
l voice, ‘No need to thank me! Just being nice. I’m always nice!’

At which point, he dropped both arms which had be
en on their way up to hug position, and stared at me.

‘Why do you always say that? That you’re nice,’ he said.

Well, what kind of a question is that? ‘Because I … am.’

Jason stared at the corrugated ceiling of the catering van, and I could totally see it running through his mind: pros and cons, pros and cons. Then he said, ‘But actually, you’re not.’

‘I’m not nice?’

He held up his hands. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way. That’s a good thing!’

Huh? ‘It’s a good thing to be not nice? It’s not! And I am nice. I’m always nice.’

At which point Jason started to tick off all the reasons I am not nice on his long, guitar-playing fingers. ‘You’re quite sarky. You question everyone and everything. You think you’re always right. You tried to set up your best friend – your BEST FRIEND – with a total stranger so you could snatch her guy out from under her nose. You’re prickly and … and you’re quite mean to your step-sister.’

This was all too much. I wanted to cry, but when I thought about it I had this sudden and irrational fear that it might all be true, and then I really wanted to cry. And shout a fair amount. ‘I am not mean to my step-sister. Gemma was mean to me, not the other way round.’

‘I don’t mean that one,’ he said. Then he pointed outside. ‘I mean that one.’

‘She’s NOT my step-sister. Not yet anyway, and she … actually I really like her. She’s been brilliant today, and I won’t be mean to her ever again.’ I glared at him. ‘Okay, maybe I was a bit mean. But I’m still nice!’

Jason looked puzzled, and shook his head. ‘Why is it so important to you to be seen as nice?’

And suddenly – what was it about this guy? - I was crying again. ‘Because it’s all I’ve got, okay? Because Gemma was the gorgeous one and I was the nice one. She got the looks and the brains and I got the nice! Don’t stop me being nice, Jason. Then I’ll just be the clever loner with the hair wings and a hump back because I stopped ballroom dancing too soon!’

Then, well, I’m quite ashamed to say, I cried like a little girl and once more Jason Devaney hugged me to his shiny white tracksuit and let me dribble all down it.

Then he kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘You don’t have to be nice. You’re really, really great. I told you – just be yourself.’ And then he kissed me on the other cheek. ‘I’m going to miss you, Melissa Mayhem,’ he said.

Then like a boy band ghost, he flitted off into the night
, leaving me standing there with a hand on each burning cheek, and a horrible, horrible, terrible realisation flooding from my stupid, stupid brain as it filled it up with serotonin and dopamine and it trickled down to the space beneath my ribs and lodged there like indigestion.

I flipping chemical reactioned him. Flipping chemical reactioned flipping Jason Flipping Devaney.

Furthermore, it was worse - way worse – than the chemical reactioning of Freddie the Ferd Nerd, because it didn’t even get to my stomach and turn poisonous. It just sat in my flipping heart, hurting like a hurty thing.

Because now he was gone. Gone for ever. Gone to be a solo act. Without my tenor recorder.

Without me.

On top of all that, I had to endure a whole evening of watching some ridiculous music awards with the other Jazzy D doing a very
passable job of impersonating Leap-Frog Jason, and twenty four other acts that I’d never heard of. Not one of them played medieval instruments. Then the texts from Mum and Dean started. WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE IS AGGIE? WHERE IS MY CAR?

It was a very, very long drive home.

I couldn’t even email or text him. Even if I’d wanted to, the messages would all have ended up going to Divine Jazzy Moron who had to have Jason’s phone and seemed to be doing a fine job of convincing everyone he was the real Jazzy - so much so that sometimes I wondered if Jason had double-crossed me and gone back to being in the band. It was only when I saw Jazzy being interviewed and heard how dim his answers were that I knew the truth.

      
Knowing the truth didn’t help, though.

Because
the truth was, Jason was gone.

I went back to sleep-walking, only it was better than the previous time because some of the things I did while sleep-walking actually felt more pleasant than remembering that Jason was gone. I hung out with Gemma lots. Popped back to Germany for the weekend even without Gemma. I helped Mum organise the wedding and even spent some time with Aggie, not being mean.

Truth be told, we got on quite well.

For instance, when we were
finally released from curfews and never-taking-the-car-again, we were made to go and find matching dresses for the wedding even though it was months away. We dropped off first at the shop for the bigger boobed, where Dolores sorted us both out with underwear that made us look at least a little boobed, with a discount. Off the price, not the boobs.

‘How’s it going with Freddie, then?’ asked Agnes, and I could now stand to hear it without wanting to put my hands over my ears and go La La La La La until she’d finished talking about him.

‘It’s great!’ said my biffle. She rummaged around in a box of knickers and pretended to be showing us stuff so she didn’t get in trouble with the boss. ‘Although he’s such a nerd. I don’t understand half the things he’s on about.’

Precisely why he should have gone out with me, I thought, but I’d got bored of thinking it
even before I got to the end of the sentence. If he preferred Dolores to someone who could potentially discuss neuro-science, I could quite understand it. I preferred Dolores to Sean, for instance.

‘What about you?’ Dolores was waving an obscene pair of green knickers about, holding them up to her hips for demonstration of where you’d put them
as boss-lady turned her steely glare in our direction. She’d never quite trusted Double D since the Music Award disappearance, not that Dolores cared. ‘Any nice guys out there?’

Never. My
dopamine friend has disappeared without trace. I was about to say this when I noticed that Dolores wasn’t even talking to me. She was talking to Aggie, who was blushing.

‘Oh, nobody special.’

‘Hang on a mo. That’s not the look of someone with nobody special in mind,’ I said, stretching out a teeny lace thong like a catapult. ‘Spill, lady. Or you get it between the eyes.’

‘Well, there is this guy on my course …’

Which thrilled Dolores no end and even had me vaguely interested, seeing as how I’m now a bit of an expert in the chemical reaction arena. Aggie and I had actually even discussed our parents’ chemical reactions with each other, and decided that 1) the worst thing ever would be if they produced a baby (good thing Mum was so OLD) and 2) if they wanted to know about creating life they should have a closer look at that Vortexicon, and 3) they should be very content with the two daughters they already had (3 if they counted Gemma, which they seemed ready and determined to do despite her not actually belonging to either of them and already being a fully functioning grown-up all on her own).

Meanwhile we agreed – all three of us – never to discuss anything about the Vortexicon or Jazzy or any of it with anyone, ever
, even if it meant holding back the course of scientific development, which hurt a bit.

So life went on, as it does. Exams came and went. Events came and went. Life came and went.

It just felt flatter than usual. Which was pretty darned flat in the first place.

Two months later, it was time for exam results.

‘What is WRONG with me, Double D?’ I moaned as we dropped ice cream down ourselves
at the boating lake. ‘I can’t even get excited about my exams! They’re the most important results of my short and uneventful life and I totally need As and A starreds to do the A levels I want to do, and yet I don’t even care. It’s tragic.’ I bit the top off my flake despondently.

‘You need a boyfriend,’ said Dolores, which is her answer to everything since she and Freddie got together.

‘Before you say it, I am not double dating. Ever. Again.’ Since the Sean incident, I hadn’t even been able to stand wearing my madrigal tee-shirt again. Not only was it a terrible night, but he’d lost me half my wardrobe.

Dolores pointed her ice cream at me. It looked very much like her head, all pale yellow and pink. ‘Freddie’s got a cousin coming to stay. He’s not a nerd, by all accounts. How about him?’

‘Nooooo,’ I said. Or maybe sighed.

The truth was, it wasn’t that I didn’t want a boyfriend, it was that I totally did want a boyfriend now but nobody else would do. Nobody else would ever do.
At one point I’d even had two of them; now I’d lost both Jazzies and nobody else would ever match up.

‘So,’ said Dolores, licking her ice cream from the bottom up
, to the extreme interest of an audience of twelve year old boys who were meant to be boating, but were instead crashing into each other and dunking themselves in the lake in an effort to get a better view. ‘Are you going into school for your results tomorrow? Or are you going to get them online?’

‘I’m getting a letter,’ I said. ‘I always prefer actual letters.’

‘What if it’s late?’

‘It won’t be.’

‘What if the postman’s sick, and he can’t make it to your house?’

‘They’ll send another one.’

‘What if …’ Dolores stared at the clouds while she thought of something even more hideous than the postman getting flu. ‘What if there’s a fire at the Post Office and all the letters get burned, including your results?’

‘Then I’ll go online.’

‘No, you can’t, because all the records of all your results were also in that envelope and nobody knows how well you did in your GCSEs. Ever.’

I was very tempted to shove her ice-cream into her face. ‘Why are you torturing me, Biffle?’

She shrugged. ‘Because it’s fun.’

I stared at her head and looked shocked. ‘Omigod, Dolores, your bleachy bits must have got lake water on them. Your hair’s gone green!’

‘Nooooo!’ She fished around in her bag and found a mirror. ‘Why did you say that?’ she demanded.

‘Because it’s fun.’

Dolores glared at me. ‘Sometimes I hate you.’

‘Sometimes I hate you.’
I glared back at her and went cross-eyed.

‘No, sometimes I really hate you.’

‘No, sometimes I really hate you.’

‘Yeah, but sometimes I dream about how much I hate you and it’s more than it’s actually possible to hate someone and not die.’

‘Right,’ I said, ‘and sometimes I dream about how much I hate you and I actually die from it and then I come back to life, still thinking about how much I hate you.’

This could have gone on for some time because we were both actually
enjoying it immensely, but my phone beeped. It was a text message from Mum.

‘That’s weird. My letter’s here already.’

Dolores suddenly panicked, as if she must have forgotten to do all her exams if she wasn’t getting her results today. ‘Omigod, do you think mine will be too?’

‘You’re not getting a letter. I thought you were going into school?’

‘Oh, that’s right. I am, with Freddie.’

I stood up, brushing ice cream cornet flakes off my shorts. Yes, shorts. I’d actually got my legs out
, shaved and everything. ‘Well, I wish you both brilliant results and a lifetime of happiness,’ I said, almost actually meaning it. ‘Call me when you know.’

Then I sauntered casually home, or at least sauntered
until I was out of the park and then ran like an Olympic sprinter.

Mum had gone out again by the time I got back, but she’d left the letter propped up against the clock on the hall shelf. I picked it up, wondering if I dared to
be alone when I opened it. It was a big occasion, after all.

I’d expected something more official-looking, truth be told, but then maybe not
many people wanted letters with results these days. Maybe there were so few that they sent them all in ordinary hand-written envelopes that smelt vaguely of some warm, musky scent.

Then I stared, very hard, at the name on the ordinary, slightly scented envelope.

It was addressed to Catherine Melissa Andrews, and beside my name in very small letters and enclosed in brackets were the words AKA Melissa Mayhem.

Melissa Mayhem?

Much tearing of envelope then manually sticking it back together again in case there was something on it that I would want to keep forever.

Like the letter.

The letter was beautiful:

To Catherine Melissa Andrews (AKA Cat, Melissa Mayhem and my actual friend)

Dear Cat,

I don’t have masses to say -
I hope the enclosed will say it all. Just … hope you don’t hate me after the ‘not nice’ business in the catering van, because I would not want your last memory of me to be of a muscly idiot telling you you’re not nice. It wasn’t at all what I meant - funny how these things come out, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ve written you a song. It will
probably never make it to the recording studio, but I wanted you to see it. Here goes.

I CRY

You’re not as nice as you think you are

(Sorry but it’s true)

You’re complicated, reading you is hard

(Please don’t be blue)

You dig so deep, don’t see the same,

(Like no one else I’ve known)

Question everything, don’t play the game

(Hate every
seed I’ve sown)

And yet for you

For only you

I CRY

You know it’s true

You feel it too

I CRY

You doubt yourself, and hide your pain

(I see it in your eyes)

You’re scared to take a risk again

(And laugh so you don’t cry)

You analyse until it’s clear

(If only in your head)

Won’t let your feelings interfere

(In case it’s what you dread)

And so for you

For only you

I CRY

You know it’s true

You feel it too

I CRY

Now I’m asking your clever brain to help me

Cos’ the only one I want is the only girl who doesn’t love me …

You found me wondering just what I’m for

(And helped me to decide)

And suddenly there’s an open door

(To live and breathe outside)

I could escape, leave it all behind

(And be forever free)

But the only key is in your mind

(The best version of me)

And so for you

For only you

I CRY

You know it’s true

You feel it too

I CRY

By Jason Devaney

Now AKA Jason David (my dad’s name, and my new identity!)

Jason xxxxxx (not too many kisses. Ever).

PS
If you’d like to hear me sing it, for an audience of one, I will be in the secret venue of The Shed, Bottom of Your Garden, at 4pm today. Yes, I’ve cleared it with your mum, who now thinks I’m actually rather charming.

I was down that shed pretty sharpish, I can tell you. After I’d batted down my hair wings, checked I wasn’t too sunburnt and made sure my shorts weren’t covered in choc mint chip.

Somehow Jason had persuaded Mother Dearest to let him commandeer the bean bag from my bedroom (can’t even begin to think how he explained why he knew it was there), and there he was, sitting in my shed
on my furniture with his guitar in his lap.

‘You’re early,’ he said with a tiny smile.

Deep breath. Be cool Cat be cool Cat be cool. ‘It’s my shed. I can be in here whenever I like.’

‘And is this whenever you like?’

I swallowed hard because it now appeared that my silly heart was trying to climb out of my throat. ‘Very much so,’ I said.

Then the Divine Jazzy D looked so relieved and pleased and just stupidly gorgeous at the same time, even without the fake tan and the styled hair etc (no, ESPECIALLY without the fake tan and the styled hair etc) that my heart stopped climbi
ng and pulsated and melted all at the same time.