Star Crazy Me. Jean Ure

you mad? Would you tell your mum?”

      I said, “N-no. But I’d tell yours!” Josh’s mum and dad are really nice. Really supportive. “You should tell them,” I said. “Otherwise you know what’ll happen… they’ll start teasing you about girlfriends, and it’ll just be, like, so embarrassing. It’s what my mum does about boys. It curls me up! You should tell them now,” I said, “so they have time to get used to it. You don’t want to spring it on them later.”

      Josh said he didn’t want to spring it on them at all. “There isn’t any reason for them to know. There isn’t any reason for anyone to know.”

      Just me. I assured him that I wouldn’t breathe a word to a soul, not even Indy, and I snatched up my guitar and started singing the song we’d just written.

      How cool am I?

       Think about about about a

       NICE cube

       Think about about about a

       NICE cream

       Think about a nice dream

       Ice dream

      Well, it went on for a bit and now I’ve forgotten the rest of it. But it did seem significant that we’d written it that particular day.

      “See?” I said. “How cool am I!”

      “I knew you would be,” said Josh. “That’s why I knew I could tell you.”

      Everyone needs someone they can tell things to. Josh had told me he was worried cos he thought he might be gay – but I couldn’t tell Josh that I was worried cos I thought I might be too fat to be a rock star. I was too ashamed. I didn’t have anyone I could tell.

      He said, “Promise me you won’t say anything!” and I gave him my word. I promised him. He had confided in me in strictest secrecy. He had trusted me. And now that hideous hag Marigold had gone and blown it. How had she found out? I hadn’t told a single solitary person. It had nearly killed me keeping it from Indy, cos me and Indy tell each other everything, but I hadn’t even so much as hinted. I wouldn’t do that to Josh!

      My only hope was that everyone would be so busy gabbing about how Marigold had called me a fat freak and I’d called her a moron that they’d forget the words she’d yelled at me as I stalked through the door. Maybe Josh would never get to hear of it.

      But I knew that he would. School is just like a seething cauldron when it comes to gossip.

       CHAPTER THREE

      Next day was Wednesday. Only Wednesday! I felt like I had lived through a whole week already. Mum was on early turn. She came breezing into my bedroom while I was still wrapped in the duvet with my eyes gummed shut. She started making noise almost before she even got through the door.