Fizzypop (8 page)

I read it very slowly and clearly, pausing for effect at all the places where I'd underlined.

“Mainly school.
I went to Hillcrest
—”

“She came here?” said Jem.

“Yes! It's what she says…
I went to Hillcrest.
Listen! There's more.”

I saw Jem's eyes widen as I read the bit about Mia leaving home when she was only sixteen. They widened even more as I got to
something happened… I got into a bit of trouble.
By the time I came to
never stopped fizzing and bubbling
they were practically sticking out on stalks.

“There!” I said, when I'd finished. “What d'you reckon?”

Skye opened her mouth. I rushed in hastily, before she could start being negative. “Don't try saying it's just coincidence!”

“I wasn't going to,” said Skye. “I was going to say… ”

“What?”

“I was going to say wow.” She muttered it a bit shamefacedly.

Wow is
not
one of Skye's expressions. It showed she was impressed, not to say totally gobsmacked. Hah! I turned, triumphantly, to Jem.

“So what d'you think?” I poked at her. “Oi! What d'you think?”

Jem seemed to have gone into a trance. She had taken the page from me and was staring, open-mouthed, at the photo.

“That could be my mum,” she said. Her eyes had gone the size of soup plates. “She could be my mum… and she's famous!”

Chapter Eight

“She does look like you,” said Skye.

“That's what got me,” I said. “I saw it
immediately.
That's why I thought maybe you'd copied your drawing from somewhere.”

“I didn't,” said Jem. “ I just—” She blushed. “I just looked at a picture of me and made it older.”

“Well,” I said, “that practically proves it… it's just too much to be a coincidence!”

I looked at Skye, daring her to deny it. She frowned, but didn't actually say anything. Jem was eagerly rereading the article, in search of more clues. She pounced, gleefully.

“
I
get into trouble for talking too much and not paying attention!”

She did; all the time.

“And
I
don't have anything in common with my mum and dad! And I'm always showing off!”

“You fizz and pop,” I said.

“I've always fizzed and popped! D'you remember, at primary school—”

“Yes, yes,” said Skye. “We all remember at primary school.”

“You used to call me Fizzy Pop!”

“We did,” said Skye, kindly. “But it still doesn't actually
prove
anything.”

I knew she'd have to start being negative. “What more proof do you want?” I said.

“Well, for a start,” said Skye, “we don't know how old Mia is. If she's only, like, twenty, then that'd obviously make her too young.”

I checked, hurriedly, on my fingers. Jem was eleven, and twenty minus eleven was… nine. Oops! Skye was right. Far too young.

“Whereas,” said Skye, who likes to use these sort of words, “if she was
thirty
—”

“She's not thirty!”

“You don't
know.
”

We all gazed at the photo, trying to decide how old Mia might be.

“Photos can be airbrushed,” said Skye. “She could be any age. It's no good just guessing, we have to be sure.”

“But how?” quavered Jem.

“Look her up on the Internet. If she's famous, like Angel says, there's bound to be a website or something.” It was at that point, most annoyingly, that the bell rang for the end of break. Jem let out a howl.

“I need to know
now
!”

“Leave it to me,” said Skye. “I'll find out. I'll tell Mrs Holliday I've got to check something urgently. She'll let me.”

Mrs Holliday is our librarian. She wouldn't have let me or Jem go on the computer when we were supposed to be in class, but Skye is one of her favourites. Skye is lots of teachers' favourite. I don't hold it against her; it is just the way she is.

“At least,” I pointed out to Jem, “it shows she's taking things seriously at last.”

If she was late for registration she'd run the risk of being put in the Book. Her worst nightmare! I mentioned this to Jem, who said, “Yes, I suppose,” but in a vague sort of way. She kept shooting these worried glances at the door. I guessed she was scared in case Skye came back and reported that Mia had been airbrushed and was in fact quite ancient.

Skye slid into class just as registration had started. Mr Keys said, “You can think yourself lucky, Skye Samuels, that you're in the second half of the alphabet.” He wouldn't have said that to me! Not, of course, that I am in the second half of the alphabet, but that is not the point. The point is, he would have torn me to shreds. Still, I guess that is life. You just have to accept it.

Skye slipped into her place between me and Jem. Slowly and deliberately, she held out her hand, palm upwards, on the desk. She was trying to show us something! I craned forward to look. On it, in ball point pen, she had written: 27. I did more hasty calculations on my fingers. Twenty-seven minus eleven was … sixteen. Yay! It worked out exactly. Jem's face was now bright pink with excitement. She spent the rest of the morning taking sly peeks at Mia's photograph. If she wasn't careful, I thought, she would have it confiscated. Some of our teachers are unbelievably strict.

At lunch time, we crammed down our food as fast as we could and headed off to our private den.

“She's my mum,” exulted Jem. “I know she is! It's just this feeling I have.”

“Me too,” I said.

We both turned, automatically, to Skye.

“Don't you agree?” said Jem. “Don't you think she's my mum?”

“I guess she might be,” said Skye.

“So should I get in touch with her or not?”

“I'm not sure.” For once in her life, Skye sounded doubtful. “I don't quite see how we can.”

“Maybe,” I said, “if we got tickets for her show?”

“You must be joking,” said Skye. “It'll be well sold out by now.”

“And where would we get the money?” Jem bleated it, pathetically. “My mum was going to take me to the Ice Dance but the tickets cost, like, a
fortune
.”

I am not one to give in. I find it really irritating when all people can do is raise objections. Specially when you are trying to help them!

“Just cos we can't get tickets,” I said, “doesn't stop us going there. We could wait at the stage door.”

Skye gave a hollow laugh. “At eleven thirty at night?”

Wild thoughts of creeping out of the house while Mum and Dad were in bed, or watching television, flashed through my brain; but even I could see that that might be fraught (as they say) with difficulties.

“We've got to do
something
,” pleaded Jem.

“We'll have a think. We will all rack our brains,” said Skye.

I racked like crazy the whole afternoon. I thought,
we could write a letter.
Well, Jem could write a letter. She could leave it at the box office. I began composing it in my head.

Dear Ms Jelena,

I am a great fan of your music.
(It was only diplomatic to say that.)
I wish I could have come to your concert tonight, but I could not get tickets. My mum could not afford them.
(Hopefully that would make Mia feel sorry for Jem.)

When I say “my mum” what I mean is my mum that adopted me. I have been trying to trace my birth mother, and when I read about you in the local paper
—

Which was as far as I could get. No matter how many times I wrote and rewrote in my head, I always became stuck at the same place. How do you ask someone you have never met if they are your real mum who abandoned you when you were just a tiny baby?

By afternoon break I was beginning to feel slightly demented. I think Jem was too. Her face was all scrunched up with the effort of brain-racking, and her hair was a mad mess of tangles. Skye was the only one looking calm.

“What we ought to do,” she said, “is see if we can find her in one of the school photos. All those great long ones they've got in the main corridor? They go back decades. She must be in one of them. I know it won't actually
tell
us anything, but the more we discover the better.”

“
Yes!
” Jem was practically bouncing on the spot. She wanted to rush off and start looking right there and then, but we are not allowed in school during break. I have no idea why; it is just another of their rules. Maybe the teachers like to get up to things while we are not there, though it is hard to think what.

“After school,” said Skye. “We'll do it after school.”

Fortunately, from my point of view, the last lesson of the afternoon was PE. I like PE! Today it was hockey and I especially like hockey. I think it is hugely satisfying to tear up and down the field whacking at the ball and cracking your hockey stick against other people's sticks. For a while it meant that I was able to give my brain a well-deserved rest. Skye thinks hockey is barbaric and Jem once got whacked on the ankle and now tends to turn and run whenever she sees the ball coming towards her.

“You are such a nutter,” grumbled Skye, as I walloped after her and Jem on our way back to the changing room.

“I bet Mia didn't like hockey,” said Jem. “If she did, I'd have inherited it. Like your mum was probably a nutter like you.”

“My mum was in the First Eleven,” I said. “She had her name in the school magazine.”

“Mia might have had her name in the magazine! Not for hockey. For singing, probably. I bet she did! I bet—”

“This is all irrelevant,” said Skye. “I thought we were going to go and look at photos?”

In the front hall and all along the main corridor are photographs going right back to when the school first opened. Skye led the way to the most recent ones.

“They're only taken once every five years so we'll have to look from
here
–” she tapped a finger – “to
here.
You start with that one,” she told Jem, “and you –” she gave me a little push – “start with this one.”

Skye can be incredibly bossy at times, but as she is good at organising and usually talks sense (when she is not being negative) I mostly just put up with it. I didn't mind which photograph she told me to look at. As it happens, it was one I am familiar with.

“Look,” I said. “That's my auntie.”

“Ooh! Where?” Skye craned to see.

“There, in the top row. Year 11.”

“I didn't know your auntie came here.”

“My mum did too.”

“I knew about your mum.”

“She's just had a baby,” I said.

“Your mum?”

“My auntie.”

“Oh!” Skye laughed. “For a minute I thought you meant your mum!”

Jem's voice hissed accusingly at us: “I thought we were supposed to be looking for
my
mum?”

“Yes, yes, we are! I'll find her,” I said. “She's got to be here.”

Nobody ever escapes school photographs. Not unless they have a really good excuse, like being abducted by aliens. It was Skye, in the end, who discovered Mia, sitting cross-legged and beaming in the front row. She was in the same photograph as Auntie Cath. Jem squealed, excitedly.

“It's her! It's my mum!”

“
Maybe
your mum.”

“No, it is! It's got be. It all fits!”

We stood, looking at the picture of Mia when she was young. There was definitely a resemblance.

“Imagine her being here at the same time as your auntie,” marvelled Skye. “Now
that's
a coincidence.”

Jem spun round, her eyes shining. “Your auntie might have known her! She might be able to tell us something. Could we go and see her?”

“I suppose we could say we wanted to see the baby,” I said. We'd obviously need an excuse of some sort. If I told Mum we were trying to find out as much as we could about somebody who might be Jem's birth mum she'd only start on at me again about my habit of interfering.

“When can we go?” said Jem. “Could we go now?”

“I'll have to check with Mum first.”

“See if we can go tomorrow. We could go in lunch break!”

“Excuse me,” said Skye. “We're not allowed out in lunch break.”

“Who's going to find out?” Jem twirled, defiantly. “People do it all the time.”

“It'd be easy enough,” I said. “My auntie only lives ten minutes away.”

“In that case,” said Skye, “we can go after school.” She was very firm about it. She'd already done her bit, begging favours from Mrs Holliday and almost being late for registration. She'd got away with it once, but she wasn't risking it a second time. “Ask your mum if we can go tomorrow. OK?”

I said OK and cornered Mum as soon as I got home. She was in the kitchen, mixing stuff in a bowl.

“Oh,” I said, “you're cooking! Would you like me to help?”

“I'd rather you didn't,” said Mum. “These are for our dinner tonight.”

I was silent, wondering what she meant. Would she have wanted me to help if they
hadn't
been for our dinner? I didn't get it!

“Well, all right,” I said. “If you don't want me to, I won't. But children are supposed to help their parents. By the way—” I scooped up a bit of glop that had splodged over the side of the mixing bowl. “Yummy! Would it be OK if I took Jem and Skye to see the new baby?”

“I don't see why not. You'd have to give Auntie Cath a ring, though, to check when it's convenient.”

“I'll go and ring her right now,” I said.

Auntie Cath wasn't there, so I left a message on her voicemail and went back to the kitchen, where I found Mum frantically splashing dollops of splodge on to a baking tray.

“Oh, Frankie,” she said, “you can be of some help, after all. My four thirty's just arrived, so if you could finish off here for me… all you need do is just make these into nice firm shapes, brush a bit of egg over them and put them in the oven. Do you think you could manage that?”

“No problem,” I said.

“And don't let that dog have the mixing bowl, he'll put his teeth through it.”

I promised that I wouldn't let Rags anywhere near the mixing bowl.

“It's all right,” I said. “You can trust me.”

Mum went off and I began carefully moulding all the little rissoles into neat shapes. I made some of them square, and some I made round, and some I made long and sausage-like. Mum is a good cook, I think, but she doesn't always have much imagination. After I'd finished with the shaping I wiped out the mixing bowl with my finger and gave the finger to Rags to lick, then put the bowl in the sink, out of his reach. I felt proud of myself for remembering.
Don't let Rags near the mixing bowl!
And I hadn't. Mum would be pleased with me.

I'd just about finished brushing egg yolk over my assortment of shapes when my mobile rang. Rags immediately started barking; he always barks when the phone rings. He seems to think it is some kind of intruder. It was Auntie Cath, calling me back. I took the phone into the garden.

“How's Henry?” I said.

“He's fine,” said Auntie Cath. “He's just thrown up all over me!”