Star Reporter by Tamsyn Murray Page B

kill me,” I said in a dull voice. “I won’t need to change schools. I’ll already be dead.”
    â€œDon’t be silly, of course he won’t. And you’re not going to change schools,” Mum said briskly. “Deep down, I think you already know what you have to do.”
    The really depressing thing was, she was right. I was the one who’d worked out that Kelly was masterminding JUICE ON JUDE’S, which meant I was the one who’d have to report her, even if it did mean owning up to my part in the whole mess. Bleakly, I nodded. “I’ll speak to Mr Bearman on Monday.”
    â€œGood girl,” she said, patting my knee. “You know it makes sense.”
    She got up and carried Ethel into the kitchen, leaving me reeling in unhappy silence.
    â€œLearn from my mistakes,” I whispered into Joshua’s fuzzy head. “Never trust Mum with anything.”
    Seriously, I’m not sure I even know what just happened. One minute we were discussing the possibility of changing schools and the next I was spilling my guts.
    I’m telling you, Derren Brown could learn a lot from her.



Chapter Sixteen
    E-PETITION Number of signatures: 1458
    It is done. First thing this morning, I went to see Mr Bearman and even though I felt like the biggest grass in the history of grasses (and I don’t mean the wavy, green stuff), I told him everything.
    He listened without saying much, then thanked me for telling him and asked me to leave it with him. I overheard someone say that ten minutes after I spoke to Mr Bearman, the entire press gang except me was sitting outside the Headteacher’s office and then he and Mrs Pitt-Rivers called them in one by one to do Good Cop, Bad Cop with them. Apparently Mel, Kieran and Toby were sent back to class pretty quickly, because it became totally obvious they weren’t involved. The rest of them were sitting on the seats of shame for most of the morning. Meggie Defoe swears she heard screaming when she was monitoring the late book but I think she made that bit up. Anyway, their parents have been called into school, the website has vanished and someone said that Kelly might go to court but I think that’s probably an exaggeration.
    The other thing is that HEY JUDE’S! has been closed until further notice, which I’m kind of sad about as I never actually got anything published. Then again, I didn’t even finish my Year Seven Outward Bound article so maybe I’m not cut out for journalism after all – I’m fairly sure it shouldn’t be as hard as I found it. And I paid a pretty high price for my time in the press gang – Shenice still isn’t talking to me and I avoided looking at Nathan in registration. I suppose he knows who the real Juicers are by now but I’m too embarrassed to talk to him – I did vom on his shoes, after all. The news of my innocence will reach him eventually, I guess.
    Call me stupid but after speaking to Mr Bearman, I didn’t think about what Kelly might do afterwards. I was so relieved to get the weight of the website off my shoulders that for a blissful few hours I thought I might be able to put it all behind me. But when I saw Kelly waiting by the school gates at the end of the day, her two gum-snapping mates beside her, I knew I was in deep, deep trouble.
    It was too late to run – she’d seen me. A cruel smile crossed her face as she nudged her friends. Frantically, I looked around for backup – Liam, Molly or even Nathan – but although I was surrounded by people, no one was meeting my eye and I knew I couldn’t count on any of them for help. Most of them suspected I’d been involved in JUICE ON JUDE’S somehow and it was going to take time to set them straight. Quaking in my navy blue ballet pumps, I trudged towards the gate and prepared myself for the worst.
    â€œLook who we have here,” Kelly sneered as I got closer.