that lovely? Meeting up again after all this time! I do hope you’ll become friends.”
I pointed out that I had already got friends.
“So?” said Mum. “What’s to stop you having another one?”
I said, “I don’t want another one! You can’t make yourself be friends with just anybody.” Simply because their mum happened to have been in the hospital at the same time as yours.
Mum told me not to be such a grouch. “Don’t be so unwelcoming! She’s new, she doesn’t know anyone. You’re not shy! You could at least make a bit of an effort.”
I could have, but I didn’t. Me and Livy and Claire were quite happy as we were, just the three of us. We didn’t need some little mouse tagging on! It wasn’t till about a week later that Mum explained to me why Cupcake was so down. It was because she had a little brother who wasn’t well and her mum and dad had just split up, and that was the reason she’d had to change schools, cos they couldn’t afford to go on living where they were.
When I heard that I just felt so sorry for poor Cupcake. No wonder she was sad all the time! If my mum and dad split up, I would be sad all the time. More than just sad, I would be in floods of tears. I couldn’t bear it!
It was thinking about her dad that made me start trying to be a bit nicer, like inviting her to join us at break time, and even, once, when Livy was away, going and sitting next to her. I didn’t really think about her little brother all that much. I knew he couldn't walk too well, and that sometimes he fell over. I'd heard Mum say to Dad what a terrible shame it was, but it never occurred to me to ask what was wrong. It wasn't something Cupcake ever talked about. She seemed not to want to, and if she didn't want to then neither did I. I suppose I'm a bit of a coward in that way; I would rather not know.
In spite of making an effort to be more welcoming, I still didn’t feel that Cupcake would ever really fit in and be one of us. I certainly never dreamt that we would end up best mates! It was her baby brother who brought us together. His name is Joey and he is the sweetest little boy I have ever known. Exactly how I would like my brother to be if ever I had one (instead of my spoilt brat of a sister, Rosie). He’s so bright, and brave, and funny! He could still walk in those days, and even pedal about on his little tricycle. Sometimes his mum used to bring him with her when she came to pick up Cupcake from school. Other times, if he wasn’t too well, she would leave him at home and the old lady who lives in the upstairs bit of their house would look after him.
“She doesn’t mind,” Cupcake assured me. “She loves Joey.”
Everybody loves Joey! You can’t not. Even if you are like me, and not at all a gooey sort of person, you still want to put your arms round him and give him a cuddle. He has these huge, dark eyes and curly hair and looks just so angelic! Whenever I say this, Cupcake goes “Huh! That’s what you think,” making like she finds him as big a pain as I find Rosie. But it is all put on. I was quite shocked the first time she said it, but now I realise it is important to her to pretend that he’s no different from anyone else’s little brother. In fact, he’s full of mischief and manages to get up to all kinds of tricks, like the time he collected a load of slugs from the garden and put them in a dish on the kitchen table. Cupcake screeched. I know, cos I was there! I just went, “Yeeeurgh!” but Cupcake shot out of her chair going, “Take them away, take them away! That’s disgusting!”
In this hurt voice, Joey said he’d got them for us as a treat. He thought we’d enjoy them. He said that French people enjoyed them.
That really cracked me up. “That’s snails!” I said. “Not slugs!”
Joey said, “Slugs is only snails without any shell.” And then he picked up the bowl and ever so politely held it out to me. “You could try one!”
I said, “I don’t think so.”
“Just get rid of them!” screamed Cupcake.
Joey sighed and did his best to look hurt, but I knew he was only playacting cos he couldn’t help this big, happy grin spreading across his face.
“See?” said Cupcake. “See what I mean? He does it on purpose!”
Joey tries ever so hard to behave the same as any normal little boy, only you can’t say this to Cupcake cos it gets her really upset. I said it once, when I’d tried to help him on to his tricycle and he’d pushed me away and struggled on to it by himself. In this small, tight voice Cupcake said, “What d’you mean, the same as any normal little boy? He is a normal little boy. You saw what he did the other day!” She meant with the slugs. I knew that in spite of her screeching and saying how disgusting it was, she had been secretly quite pleased. Putting bowls of slugs on the kitchen table in the hope of making your sister feel sick is the sort of thing that little boys are supposed to get up to. To make her feel better I told her how I would like a brother like Joey – “Cos my sister is just sooo annoying!” – and that immediately made Cupcake stick up for Rosie, and we had a long discussion about whether or not she is spoilt. Which she is. Take my word for it! Cupcake said, “Yes, but she’s only six years old.” She said that Joey had been spoilt when he was six years old.
“And still is!” That was her mum, suddenly appearing through the back door. She said, “You two girls between you spoil that boy rotten.”
I don’t think we do! We just like to make him happy. We like to invent games that he can play, and read to him, and take him up the park. Once, for his birthday, we even wrote a special story for him. It was fifteen pages long, with pictures. We printed it out on the computer and made a proper cover so it looked like a real book that you could buy in a shop. It was called Man on the Moon. It was all about this boy who dreamt of becoming a spaceman only everybody told him he couldn’t cos of being in a wheelchair. Then one day some aliens came from outer space and with the help of their advanced technology they turned the wheelchair into a spaceship, and the boy went whizzing off to the moon and it was all over the television,
Wheelie Boy in Moon Trip.
Cupcake said, “Wheelie boys can do anything they want!”
Joey loved the book so much he read it to pieces and we had to print it out all over again. We thought about getting it published, except we couldn’t decide which names to use. Our real names or our nicknames? We tried it both ways:
MAN ON THE MOON
by Fudge Cassidy & the Cupcake Kid
MAN ON THE MOON
by Danielle Cassidy & Lisa Costello
I thought we ought to use our real names, so as to sound more professional, like proper writers, but Cupcake said that would mean everybody would know who we were.
“They might even put our pictures in the local paper!”
Personally I would love to have my picture in the local paper. I would love everybody knowing who I am! But Cupcake’s not into fame the way I am, and in the end we spent so much time arguing that we never did send the book to a publisher. Which I think is a pity, as it was really good, and we will probably never have the time to write another one. I wish now that I had given in and agreed to use our nicknames, in spite of them not being very professional. I bet the papers would still have found out who we were. I could have been a local celeb!
It was my dad who gave us the nicknames. He is quite a funny man, always making jokes. He laughed and laughed at the idea of me being Fudge Cassidy, though I would like to say right here and now that I am not called Fudge because I’m a pudge. And not because fudge does happen to be my all-time favourite treat. Well, practically my favourite food. I would live on fudge if I were allowed to! All kinds of fudge: chocolate fudge, vanilla fudge, cherry fudge. Even fudge with nuts in, though it is a bit of a drag having to pick the nuts out.
Dad was watching me do this one day, spitting out the nuts and gobbling up the fudge, and that is when he cried out “Fudge Cassidy!” like it was the best joke he had ever made. I