Spurt by Chris Miles Page A

the upper hand quickly. He took a deep breath, remembering what the Year 7 girls had told him about Sampson trying to get onto Bigwigs the year after Jack – and failing.
    ‘We’re just starting to know each other!’ he said. ‘Starting to get to know a-l-l kinds of things about each other.’
    ‘I … know Jack from school,’ Sampson mumbled. ‘High school … and primary school.’
    Jack found it hard to remember that Sampson had even been to primary school, he’d seemed fully grown for so long.
    ‘Oh!’ said Delilah. ‘So you’d probably remember Jack being on Bigwigs ?’
    Sampson shook his head. ‘Never watched it.’
    Lies , thought Jack. ‘Oh, you really missed out,’ he said.
    ‘I’ve seen some of the old contestants on TV, though,’ said Sampson, sounding more confident all of a sudden. He narrowed his eyes at Jack cunningly. ‘You know, Piers Blain on YouTube and stuff. And Hope Chanders is a VJ on ‘Chart-urday Morning’, right? Wow, they’ve all gone on to bigger and better things, haven’t they? Well, most of them.’
    Delilah tapped something into her phone. ‘What was your name again?’
    ‘Sampson. Oliver Sampson.’
    Jack realised that Sampson had probably dreamt of saying his name in front of the Bigwigs cameras. He wondered if this was how he’d always pictured it.
    ‘So, Oliver: were you surprised when Jack didn’t show up on our screens again after Bigwigs ?’
    Sampson snorted. ‘No. I wasn’t surprised at all.’
    Jack glanced back and forth down the street. He needed a Davo to ruin the take. He turned to Brett behind the camera. ‘H-how’s the battery going there, chief? We’ve done so much filming already it’s bound to be running low –’
    ‘We’re good,’ said Brett.
    ‘We might stop there anyway,’ said Delilah. ‘But Oliver, can I get some details from you? You’re under sixteen, right?’
    Come on , thought Jack. He doesn’t look that old . Then he thought for a moment longer and realised that, yes, Sampson actually did look that old.
    Sampson nodded.
    ‘Okay,’ said Delilah. ‘In that case, I’ll need to forward a release form to a parent or guardian.’
    Delilah quizzed Sampson to get his address. Jack felt a stab of fear, mixed with a pang of something else. Maybe … jealousy?
    He hadn’t counted on Sampson barging into his Bigwigs shoot like this. Jack hoped he hadn’t just given Sampson exactly what he wanted.

    Jack’s mum had some bad news when Jack and the others returned home from the sausage-buying mission.
    ‘How can we not own a barbecue?’ said Jack.
    Adele held out her hands.
    ‘I don’t know how to answer that! If you’d told me that was what you were doing, instead of being Mr “I’m In Charge”, I could have warned you!’ She looked in the supermarket bag sitting on the kitchen bench. ‘And why did you buy five kilos of sausages?’
    ‘It’s okay, Bigwigs paid for it.’
    ‘It’s not about who paid for it. We’re never going to get through that many sausages! I can barely convince Hallie to eat anything these days.’
    ‘Delilah said we might need extra, in case they don’t get the footage they need. They’re basically stunt sausages.’
    Adele sighed. ‘Well, you’ll have to just cook them on the stove inside.’
    ‘Not exactly “man conquers nature”, is it?’ said Jack.
    Adele’s face softened. She looked at Jack as though she wanted to say something, but then changed her mind.
    ‘I think there’s an old camping stove in the shed,’ she said, finally.

    Brett and Todd waited around while Delilah made some phone calls from the van out the front. Jack rummaged in the kitchen cupboards for a frying pan large enough to cook the apparently excessive number of sausages he’d bought, but not so large that it would crush the legs of the flimsy kerosene burner beneath it. Meanwhile, the manliest apron he’d been able to find had orange and white diagonal stripes across it and reached all the way down to