Star Reporter (4 page)

Anyway, I try to keep it quiet but I've had the mightiest crush on Nathan for most of the year, ever since I became an ACCIDENTAL GENIUS and our team won the regional heat of Kids' Quiz last autumn. For a few days, me, Nathan, Rebecca and Bilal were famous and even reached page six of the WINDSOR RECORDER. I spent a lot of time studying with them (well, they studied and I daydreamed about Nathan) and we were all totally gutted when we lost in the national final. Team St Jude's split up after that and, without an excuse to hang out together, Nathan and I didn't talk as much – it's pretty hard to stay mates when one of you is the star striker on the under-fourteens school football squad, School Council rep and all-round Mr Popular, while the other smells permanently of baby sick. So I went back to mostly staring at him across the classroom and daydreaming. Which is why I couldn't stop grinning when he walked over to where I was sitting with Molly and Shenice, and also why I pretended it was no big deal.

“OMG, he fancies you!” Shenice squealed as we headed to maths. “He totally does.”

“Shut up!” I hissed, looking around to check no one had heard. “He was just being nice.”

“Did you see that thing on JUICE ON JUDE'S about him and Susie Carr in Year Eight?” Molly said, her eyes widening. “It said they went to see ZOMBIE PROM II together.”

Shenice frowned. “I thought that was a fifteen.”

I'd read the same story about Susie on JOJ last night and it had ruined my evening. In fact, the thought of Nathan going to the cinema with ANYONE made me feel a bit queasy. “It is. Liam tried to go last week and the cashier told him library cards don't count as ID.”

“Susie does look older,” Molly pointed out. “I bet she got the tickets and he got the popcorn.”

I wasn't sure JOJ was right – Nathan might be the nearest thing Year Seven has to a superstar but he's still a year younger than Susie Carr. She's really pretty too; there must be loads of boys dying to take her to see zombies in frocks. At least I hoped there were.

“It doesn't matter anyway,” I insisted in a low voice, as we filed into the classroom for a whole hour of Mr Peterson droning on about number sequences and equations. “He doesn't fancy me and I don't fancy him. We're just two people who used to be on a quiz team together.”

Shenice and Molly exchanged a look.

“Uh-huh,” Shenice said, grinning. “Like Molly doesn't fancy Liam.”

Now it was Molly's turn to go pink. I don't know why she was embarrassed – it's no secret that she thinks my moronic brother is cute. She practically lived at my house last autumn, when the ST JUDE'S HAS GOT TALENT! competition was hotting up, and she is definitely WOLF BRETHREN's number-one fan.

“Liam and I respect each other as artists,” she said haughtily. “We'd never let our relationship get in the way of the music.”

I rolled my eyes – she'd clearly been watching the rock biopics on Sky Arts again. It's the kind of thing Liam and my dad say all the time when they're talking about crusty old bands like The Beatles. The thing is, Liam and Molly don't have much of a relationship, unless you count him asking her to do crappy stuff like hand out flyers when they've got a gig coming up. But it doesn't matter how many times I tell her he's just using her, she still thinks he's amazing.

“Whatever,” I muttered, sitting down and preparing for the festival of boredom to begin. My attention drifted almost immediately and came to rest on Nathan, seated a few tables away. What I'd told Molly and Shenice was partly true – when we'd hung out, it had only ever been as friends. But that was only because Nathan saw me as another mate, someone he could have a laugh with, a solid team player even though we weren't actually team-mates any more. Now that I am a reporter, he might just see that there is more to me than a mental dog and an all-encompassing knowledge of Hogwarts. He might notice that I am a girl.

I couldn't swallow my tuna salad baguette fast enough at lunchtime. With one eye on the clock, I wolfed it down and left Molly and Shenice still eating while I hurried over to the English block and my first official meeting as a journalist. I'd brought a new pen and dug out a half-used notepad and everything.

I don't mind admitting that I felt as though my lunch was going to come back and choke me when I saw them all sitting around the classroom. Some of the coolest kids in school were there, the kind of people who wouldn't normally know I existed. But there was also Jimmy Nelson from Year Eight, who is the geekiest geek ever. No one seemed to be making a joke about him being there so I guessed he was part of the group.

Kelly came over the second she saw me hovering in the doorway.

“Cass, come in!” she said, a welcoming grin on her face. “You don't mind if I call you Cass, do you?”

I didn't mind. I was so in awe she could have called me Bruce Bogtrotter and I wouldn't have minded, to be honest.

“Hi,” I squeaked. “I'm not late, am I?”

“No, we don't start until Mr Bearman gets here,” she explained. “He supervises, although what we decide to cover is completely down to us. Let me introduce you to the press gang.”

The press gang – how cool did that sound? Like THE AVENGERS, but with pens instead of weapons, and school uniforms. Kelly knows all the journalisty slang – I might start using a few phrases myself.

The rest of my fellow press gangers were seated around the tables or on them. Kelly worked her way around the room and, one by one, they all waved and said hi. There was Alex Jones from Year Eight, Nisha Choudhury and Kieran Sanderson from Year Nine, Mel Wallis from Year Ten and a boy called Toby from Year Eleven who I'd never seen before in my life. And Jimmy, of course, but he was sniggering over a Macbook Pro and didn't even look up.

“Alex and Nisha cover school sports, Mel does all the arty stuff and Kieran is our music expert,” Kelly said. “We all keep an eye out for stories specific to our year groups too – the human interest stuff.”

“Like when Team St Jude's won the regional Kids' Quiz,” Mel said, smiling, and I decided I liked her.

“And when you blew it in the final,” Alex added, and I decided I didn't like him. We'd finished in fifth place, out of the WHOLE COUNTRY, which was pretty amazing as far as I was concerned. But this was my first-ever magazine meeting and I wanted them to like me, so I smiled and ignored him.

Mr Bearman appeared in the doorway. I saw Kelly's eyes flash at Jimmy and he slammed the lid of the laptop so fast I swear his fingers blurred. What was that all about?

“Good afternoon, everyone,” Mr Bearman said, closing the door behind himself and perching on the edge of a table. His gaze came to rest on me. “And welcome to our newest recruit. Great to see you here, Cassie.”

Mr Bearman teaches me for English and is totally my favourite teacher. It was thanks to him that I joined Team St Jude's in the first place (although if I'm totally honest, it was Nathan who did the persuading). Mr Bearman's always been really encouraging. He's pretty much the best teacher in the ENTIRE WORLD so having him in charge of the school magazine is completely brilliant.

“Hello, sir.”

“So, what have we got for this month's edition, Kelly?”

Kelly nodded to Jimmy and he scurried to the front of the classroom, a data stick in his hand. So that explained his presence among the cool kids, I decided – he was the technical support. Within seconds, he'd opened up a presentation on the interactive whiteboard and had backed away, giving Kelly centre stage.

“Sport,” she said, clicking on the first slide. “This week, we've got the inter-school netball tournament, the house football cup and next week it's the swimming gala. Nish and Al have got the skinny on those.”

The skinny? I supposed she meant that sporty people were usually thin but it seemed like an odd way to describe them. She clicked the mouse again and a picture of Liam and his band mates popped up. I cringed. “WOLF BRETHREN are St Jude's hard-rock answer to The Droids. Since they're also the resident band for the lower school's May Ball, Kieran has got the scoop on their likes, dislikes and musical inspiration.”

Huh, the thing Liam likes best is stuffing his face with pepperoni pizza, but he doesn't use a scoop. I kept my mouth shut, though, in case I showed myself up. Liam had already warned me not to talk about him and the band. Besides, I didn't want him to think I admitted he was my brother.

Kelly glanced over at me. “Then we've got Cassidy's efforts to change the St Jude's rules about school uniform.” A slide appeared with a screenshot of the petition on it and I saw with a jolt that it had over five hundred signatures on it. My little petition, up there with my name on it, and all those people had signed to say they agreed with me. Who'd have thought it would grow so fast?

“Ah yes,” Mr Bearman said, smiling at me. “Quite the revolutionary, Cassidy.”

The others were staring at me and I was glad I'd decided to leave my beret at home. “Suppose so, sir.”

“Plus we've got the regular stuff – the horoscopes, crossword and adverts. Mrs Armstrong has got the lowdown on dealing with exam stress too. Anyone want to pitch anything else?”

Huh, Mrs Armstrong is in her fifties – if she got low down, she wouldn't get back up again. I listened as the gang tossed ideas around. Mel wanted to write a piece about the art exhibition Year Ten were doing for Parents' Evening. I sat in silence, wondering whether my fellow Year Sevens were doing anything cool. I'd have to dig around – hey, maybe that was what the scoop was for.

“Sounds like another excellent issue,” Mr Bearman said, after a few more minutes' discussion. “The deadline for copy is two weeks from today and the magazine will go out the week after the May Ball. Good work, everyone.”

I blinked. Copy? What did we have to copy? Teachers usually go NUTSO if you do that – I remember what happened when Shenice and I forgot to do our History homework. We copied Molly's and she'd written about how the Battle of Hating was won by William the Conker, so we did too. Our teacher gave us this big long lecture about how we were only cheating ourselves and how slackers never amounted to anything. Surely Mr Bearman didn't actually mean we should copy stuff to publish in HEY JUDE'S! Because I wasn't making that mistake again.

Mr Bearman must have seen my confusion because he came over. “Everything okay, Cassie?”

I didn't want to look like an idiot so I put on an expression of breezy confidence. “Oh yes, sir. I'm just off to copy something now. Where do you keep the scoop?”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Ah. I thought Kelly might have explained a few basic journalist terms to you but apparently not. A scoop means a story we get before everyone else. Copy is what we call the writing that goes into the magazine. It doesn't mean we copy someone else's work – that's called plagiarism and it's against the law.”

I nodded as though it all made sense, but really I was wondering why he couldn't have just said “the deadline for articles is two weeks from today”. I can see there is a lot more to this journalism business than I thought, but I am determined to make it my Thing. Imagine having my name splashed across the front page in a searing article on the source of the terrible smell in the PE changing rooms – I'd be totally famous at St Jude's and maybe it would even get picked up by the WINDSOR RECORDER. Or maybe I could uncover the person behind JUICE ON JUDE'S – I'd probably win an award for investigative skills. Then perhaps Liam would have to stop acting like he is the only one in our family with any talent.

My time to shine is on its way, I can feel it!

E-PETITION Number of signatures: 572

Wow. What a week! Not only did my petition gain even more signatures (squee!) but Nathan said hi to me every morning. In fact, this week has been so good that I didn't even make a fuss when Rolo ate my new beret, especially since Liam says it looks like I am balancing a cow pat on my head when I wear it.