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Things were very quiet on the Aggie and Dean front for a good few days, and for a wee while I thought maybe the backfiring of the plan had somehow achieved what I really wanted: for Mum and Dean to split up in an unfussy way so Mum and I could just get back to our own lives.

Then I heard her on the phone. ‘I know, it’s awkward, but I’m sure they’ll come round.’ Mum caught me catching her and shot me a very guilty look so I knew she was talking about me and Aggie. Or the police? She grinned at me brightly and extremely fakely. ‘Anyway, Dean, yes, that sounds wonderful. We’ll see you at 7pm on Friday – we’re both looking forward to it.’

Both? How was I looking forward to it? Was she mad? I stood uncomfortably close until she put the phone down. ‘Do you mean me, Mum? Only I can’t on Friday.’

‘Now, Cat, don’t go making excuses. Dean’s got an event at his laboratory which he wants us to go to so he can show us round. Especially you. And then he’s making us all dinner.’

Oh. That put a slightly different complexion on it. The lab sounded very interesting, but actually I hadn’t been making excuses. ‘I’m not kidding. I’ve got choir and orchestra on Friday after school.’

This put Mother Dearest in a quandary. I could tell she didn’t want me to skip it as she’s always on at me to follow my passions and make some friends other than Dolores, and who could be more suitable than a bunch of recorder-playing choral singers? (Obviously we don’t play and sing at the same time, as that would be more like a gazoo
band and would sound awful). On the other hand, this was obviously a big deal for Dean and for her, so she didn’t want to let me off going there either.

‘Why don’t you come straight to the lab from rehearsals?’ she said after an internal battle which I mainly witnessed through the contortions of her eyebrows. ‘I’ll pay for a cab; that way you’ll hardly be late at all.’

I was about to launch into some made-up stuff about going for pizza after choir with some of the others, but then I decided against it. I’d already done enough lying for one week/month/year/lifetime, and it had got me precisely nowhere.

‘All right,’ I said after a period of kicking the table leg while I thought about it.

‘Good,’ said Mum. She gave me a hug. ‘What a fun evening you’ll have – choir and science together.’

‘Yay,’ I said without any enthusiasm, mainly because I was thinking that she was right: that normally
would
be my idea of the best evening ever – an hour of tooting my tenor recorder alternated with singing medieval songs in an alto voice, followed by a tour of a working laboratory. Holy crapoli. How sad am I? Maybe the Double Vision concert was the best thing that had ever happened to me. The most normal thing that had ever happened to me. I am truly a freak of nature …

The thought made me so depressed that I couldn’t even smile
in Biology the next day. Even when Freddie came over for a chat. Okay, actually to borrow the litmus paper and wink at Dolores. She shoo’d him away, pretending to be busy with her experiment but actually practicing writing the name DOLORES DEVANEY on the back of her science book.

‘Look at that,’ she whispered to me. ‘When I marry Jazzy, my initials will be DD. That’s the same as my bra size.’ She opened her eyes extremely wide as if she was telling me something astonishing.

‘Yeah, and?’

‘Well, it’s a sign, isn’t it? We’re meant to be together!’

I can’t say I followed her logic, but if it kept her on track (ie the track leading directly away from Ferdy Nerdy, who was looking so skinnily geeky today that my own skinny geeky chest nearly burst apart with chemical reactions), then I was happy to go with it.

‘Oh, yes, I see.’ I nodded seriously. ‘I believe you are.’

‘What, a double D?’

‘No, meant to be together.’

At that, Dolores squealed and hugged me. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘Is it?’ That was a bit of a surprise, to be honest. I’m always nice.

She grabbed my hand. ‘Sometimes I get the impression people think I’m thick. All they see is what’s on the outside. Just knowing that you believe in me, Cat – that someone believes in my talents … well, that’s just fantastic.’

‘You’re my friend, Double D. Of course I believe in you.’

I meant it, too. If anyone could get hold of Jazzy D (below the collar), then it was Dolores. Mainly because of the talents on the outside, of course, but I didn’t tell her that.

I did, though, tell her about my sudden concern about being a geek freak whose ideal night out was medieval chanting and inspecting test tubes. ‘Do I look like one of those Amish people on that programme?’

Dolores looked me up and down and then laughed. ‘Don’t be daft.’

Phew. ‘Really?’

‘No. You’re not
that
bad.’

Ah. Maybe not phew.

‘In fact, if you just dressed properly you’d look almost normal.’

Almost?

‘I’ll come round on Friday night and help you go through your wardrobe again, if you like.’

What was it with Friday night? Everything was happening on Friday night!

‘Oh, thanks, but I’ve got choir … ch … Quidditch on Friday.’ I put this in quickly because Freddie was back, and I didn’t want him knowing how dull I really am. He stared from me to Dolores and back again, then shook his head.

‘Sounds like you’re free on Friday night then, Dolores,’ he said, trying not to dribble at the sight of the home-made litmus paper badge she was pinning to her chest (yes, saying DD, as if that fact needed advertising). ‘Do you want to go to the movies?’

I think my lungs actually collapsed. As Dolores tossed her blonde and pink hair back over her shoulder, I sat down very suddenly on the tall stool, thinking in a very tiny thought voice
of course of course of course he wants Dolores and why wouldn’t he but he’s nerdy and clever because he got A* on his last assignment though he just thinks I’m a freak and I hate myself hate myself …

‘What film are you seeing?’ said Dolores, still not realising, evidently, that he wouldn’t be seeing any film because he’d be gazing at her the whole time.

Then I knew he was clever – really, really clever – because at that point he reeled her in. ‘That band’s got a new film out. Double Version.’

‘The Double Vision film! Omigod Omigod!’ Dolores jumped up and down on the spot. ‘
It’s not out until next week, though.’

Freddie shrugged. ‘I work at the Multiplex, so I get to go to the previews.’

‘I’m in!’ said Dolores, beaming with joy. ‘Cat hates them, don’t you, Cat? So you wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway, would you?’

Hmm, where was that scalpel when I needed it, with which to stab myself? Sit in a darkened room with Freddie by my side, clearly not interested in the band at all in a way that so meant that WE were the ones who were supposed to be together? ‘No, I’d have hated it. Hated it. Couldn’t imagine anything worse!’

‘You’d have had to miss Quidditch, too,’ pointed out Freddie, with a bit of a nasty smirk which suggested he knew all too well what I’d been about to say. Very bright. Very, very bright.

I should detest you, my brain whined, but
instead I Chemical Reaction You. Or for short, in the t-shirt version, I CRY. And I sat with my head in my hands for the rest of the lesson, not even interested to hear that my plant was the most acidic of all, because of course, I already knew …

Choir was disastrous. Couldn’t concentrate. Picked up the bass recorder instead of the tenor recorder and couldn’t understand why it sounded so terrible. Didn’t enjoy any of the singing in Latin as I don’t actually speak Latin. We could have been doing the Roman version of Show Me Tomatoes or whatever Double Vision sang about. Instead thought about Dolores being clamped to Freddie’s side as he showed her off at his workplace and chose her the best seat, little realising that she was only interested in getting into the film early. After all, with a concert ban, this was the closest she was ever going to get to Jazzy D again …

‘All right, love?’ called the taxi driver when I got in the cab afterwards.

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘My life is miserable.’

He barely even glanced in his mirror. ‘Right, where to?’

I sighed and gave him the address.

‘The science lab? On a Friday evening? Your life really is
miserable, isn’t it, love?’ He chuckled heartily to himself while I stared daggers at the back of his flat cap, then eventually he caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and stopped short.

When we arrived at the edge of the university campus, he pulled in behind a row of cars. ‘Actually looks like there’s some kind of party in there,’ he said as he counted out my change. ‘Maybe life’s looking up.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said, then I hauled my school bag and recorder case despondently out of the car and down the grass verge to the main entrance.

It did sort of look like a party – the most boring one in the world. Seven or eight people were standing around a glass display cabinet holding what appeared to be a mummified body, and two of the more lively chaps were reading bits of ‘Science Today’ to each other at the Reception Desk. I was actually grateful to see Dean.

‘Cat!’ he cried, obviously desperate for a distraction himself. ‘You made it!’

‘Yep. Where’s Mum?’

‘Aggie’s showing her around the place. Come on, I’ll help you find them and then I’d better come back here and entertain the masses.’

They didn’t seem like they’d appreciate entertainment. ‘You could borrow my recorder,’ I suggested.

‘Just more alcohol, I think.’

Right. So even Dean thought my recorder was dull. I trekked off down the corridor after him, peering in the various doors as we passed. ‘Sorry you’ve missed the full tour,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘We’ll catch them up at the Vortexicon, I think.’

‘The what?’

‘Vortexicon – it’s our latest patent, and what this evening’s about, really. It’s like the Large Hadron Collider only for human molecules rather than atoms, and about a millionth of the size, if that makes any sense.’

‘It’s the only thing that’s made sense all week!’ I shouted after his back as he hurried towards the room at the end of the block.

‘Here they are!’ Dean threw open the door to reveal Mother Dearest and Aggie poring over a desk together, pointing at a
person-sized tube of spinning air in the centre of the room.

Great. So now Aggie was interested in science, and impressing my mum with her cleverness and familiarity with the Vortexicon.

Still, I knew what would distract her. ‘Aggie!’ I cried. ‘Wasn’t the other night just weird?’

She and Mum turned around, and she flashed me a small smile. ‘Weird and a little scary.’ Like you at the moment, I could see she wanted to add.
‘And a shame we didn’t get to meet Jason in the end.’

She didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe I knew him. And why would she, because it was a lie … But I did have one thing to impress her with.

‘I’ve got his collar,’ I said. ‘If you like, I’ll split it with you.’

Aggie turned pink with pleasure.
I still planned to send my quarter to Jason to encourage him to accept I was for real and agree to meet with me and possibly have tea with Mother D and Double D. Now, more than ever, I needed him and Dolores to buddy up.

‘Mum,’ I said, ‘you go back with Dean. He needs help getting the guests drunk.’

‘That I can do,’ she said with a grin. ‘Although we’re only here for another twenty minutes and then we’re going for dinner at the house.’

The house. Hear that? The house. Like “our house”.

They left the lab, Dean with his arm around Mum’s shoulders, and Aggie and I both watched them go for a good few moments, before I dropped my bag on the counter and rummaged in it loudly.

‘They must have scissors in here,’ I said as I pulled the scrap of material that had
once nestled under Jazzy D’s hair out of my pencil case.

Aggie was entranced. ‘Oh wow! How did you persuade Dolores to give it to you? If I’d had the collar – or anything from the divine Jazzy – I’d never let it go.’

‘Well, it’s because I know Jason,’ I said, determined not to let my guard drop. ‘She thought it was only right. Anyway …’ - I snipped the small “half” in half again – ‘… this bit’s for you.’

Her eyes turned a bit watery. ‘My own piece of Jazzy D! I can’t believe it
. Thanks, Cat. You don’t know what this means to me.’

Aww. Well, it was quite nice, being thanked. ‘Not as much as actually meeting him, of course, but I’ll see what …’

‘It doesn’t matter, Cat,’ said Aggie quickly. ‘That’s enough.’

I stared at her, not quite sure if she meant that it was enough of Jazzy’s sweat to keep her happy, or it was enough of me pretending I knew him, or perhaps both … but then she gave me a quick hug. ‘Come on, Dad’s got some surprise planned for dinner.’

So I grabbed my bag and hurried after her, wondering what special item Dean had arranged to cook for our evening meal, with no idea that it wasn’t that kind of surprise.