Secret Meeting (20 page)

Annie and I never really talk about that day. I think we are both too ashamed, and also it was just too scary. It scared me so much that I stopped nagging Mum to let me go into chatrooms. I even stopped nagging at her to let me have a computer. I thought Mum would be pleased. I thought she would say, “Well, at least you have learnt your lesson!” I couldn’t really blame her if that’s what she’d said. I’m all Mum’s got in the world, and she might have lost me. She’d already told me that it made her blood run cold to think what might have happened.

“You’re so precious to me, Megan!”

I said, “You’re precious to me, Mum! That’s why I don’t care any more if we don’t have a computer. I don’t want one!”

You’ll never guess what Mum said? In this very brisk tone of voice she said, “Well, that’s where I beg to differ. I think we need to get you one as soon as possible, so that you can learn to use it properly and responsibly, without putting yourself at risk.”

Anxiously I said, “But I don’t ever want to go into a chatroom!” To which Mum said, “Nonsense! Of course you’ll go into chatrooms. But you’ll do it with me, and
you’ll stick to the rules. I don’t want you growing up not knowing how to take care of yourself!”

Well.
There are times when Mum can really surprise me. I thought she’d be so angry she’d never trust me ever again. But she said that in some ways she blamed herself.

“I’ve kept you too wrapped up in cotton wool.”

At the time when she said it, when I was still feeling all shaky and terribly, horribly scared, I thought to myself that I liked being wrapped up in cotton wool. I didn’t ever want to be unwrapped! But Mum says you can’t live in a cocoon for ever, and I expect she is right. I am beginning to come out of it a bit now.

Annie has almost gone back to being her old bouncy self, which for a long while she wasn’t. I hated seeing Annie all meek and subdued. I was quite relieved when she said to me one day that it might be fun to visit the joke shop in the shopping centre and buy some pretend scabs to stick on ourselves.

“Really gruesome ones … and grollies! You can buy grollies, all green and yucky!”

I knew then that she was still the same old Annie. We did go to the joke shop and buy scabs – and grollies, and some boils-on-the-point-of-bursting – but I said I didn’t think we ought to wear them to school. I mean, we were in enough trouble as it was. For once, Annie agreed with me. Wonders will never cease! But like I said, Annie does now actually listen to me occasionally. Sometimes. Just now and again. If she always did
everything
I told her, I would know there was something seriously wrong.

Annie’s mum was really cross with her that day. Once she’d stopped hugging her, and crying, that is. Both our mums hugged and cried. Even Rachel did. But afterwards, Annie’s mum told her that she should have known better. She had been warned over and over about going to meet people from chatrooms. Annie sobbed and said that she had thought it would be all right, because it was a woman, but her mum said that didn’t make any difference.

“Besides, how did you know that it was a woman? It could have been a man. It could have been anyone!”

Rachel said, “It
was
anyone.”

It certainly wasn’t Harriet Chance. One of the horridest things is that for a while I thought I wouldn’t
ever want to read a Harriet Chance book again. I couldn’t bear to see them all, in my bedroom! It was like I was muddling the real Harriet with the pretend one. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach. But then something wonderful occurred. Caroline, Harriet’s editor, rang up and said that Harriet was very upset about somebody impersonating her, and the terrible time that we’d had, and she wanted to do something to make up for it. She’d suggested that perhaps she might visit our school and talk to all of Year Seven about her books, and how she wrote them. And Mrs Gibson agreed! She said, “You’ve had all the lectures. Now it’s time to move on.”

Harriet came last week. I was really on tenterhooks, wondering what she would be like, and how I would feel. I kept thinking, what would I do if she walked into the library and it was
her
? The one that had pretended. What if she hadn’t pretended? What if it had been the real Harriet all along?

Well, but it wasn’t. That was just my fevered brain. The woman who came into the library was as different as could be from that other one. She was just as I had always imagined her. Small, and slim, and friendly, with mousey hair – a bit limp, but not grey – and rather quiet and shy. But really, really nice!

Afterwards, she talked to me and Annie on our own. She said that although she didn’t usually use other people’s ideas – “I just have this resistance! I don’t know why” – she wanted to make an exception in our case. She wanted to write our story so that everyone who read it would know not to behave as foolishly as we had.
(She
didn’t say foolishly. I’m the one that said that.)

“Is that all right?” she asked. “Would you mind?” Annie and I just blushed and beamed and said we thought that would be really neat.

“And naturally,” she said, “I’ll dedicate it to you both.” So we really will have a book with our names inside! Mum says it is more than we deserve. Annie’s mum says that what Harriet ought to put is “To Megan, who was led astray by her very stupid friend”.

Poor Annie! It is so unfair. She feels extra bad about it, since she was the one who arranged it all.

“It was supposed to be your birthday treat!”

But I don’t blame Annie. I was just as much in the wrong as she was. I have told her this.

“I know you
suggested
it, but I didn’t have to agree.” She thought that I would hate her, but of course I don’t. How could I hate Annie? Especially after all we have been through together. She’s my best friend! My very
very
best friend.

She always will be.

Lemonade Sky
Love and Kisses
Fortune Cookie
Star Crazy Me!
Over the Moon
Boys Beware
Sugar and Spice
Is Anybody There?
Secret Meeting
Passion Flower
Shrinking Violet
Boys on the Brain
Skinny Melon and Me
Becky Bananas, This is Your Life!
Fruit and Nutcase
The Secret Life of Sally Tomato
Family Fan Club
Ice Lolly
Special three-in-one editions
The Tutti-Frutti Collection
The Flower Power Collection
The Friends Forever Collection
And for younger readers
Dazzling Danny
Daisy May
Monster in the Mirror