I’d prefer that to having parents who your classmates follow for tips on eyeliner We’re going to have a real heart-to-heart about this Squidge said Dad Right when I get finished with all my emails And my messages And my texts And my photos And we’re going to spend some time getting your little head around that very expensive bit of silver alloy titanium sitting over there unused with the brainpower of a thousand Blue Robinsons aren’t we he said pointing at my laptop I nodded meekly Well anyway I spoke to Mrs Froggatt and we both decided that punishment should be constructive You deserve to be punished of course you’re a miscreant Blue Do you know what we do with miscreants Dad asked No eating carrots for an hour I asked hopefully Near enough we round up all the miscreants together he said with a Gang Lion-style master villain grin Which is why you’ll be babysitting Oscar McGrath tonight But Dad that’s so Hang on a minute I haven’t finished Two missed IT classes in a week means two punishments in a 10
week You’ll also be coming with me to work during take-your-child-to-work day Then again as if that’s a punishment How about a making-up fist pump he said holding out his fist Dad really knows how to get the week off to the worst start 11
Chapter 2 A little bit about Blue Robinson aged 13 5 6 Having to avoid fatherly fist pumps seems to be a more frequent task in my life since I turned thirteen Life in general seems more annoying and boring than it used to That might be because I live in Grimes ville a place never mentioned on TV or the news or anywhere other than a TV program called Britain’s Worst Towns I don’t know if it’s the worst town in Britain but Grimesville is pretty dull Apparently it used to get loads of people coming for the beach and the promenade but that ended when the Grand Pier burned down in the 1950s Granny Mae says it was great fun in her day but it looks like no one’s owned a brush or a hoover since her day either Nowadays there are only shops which are too rubbish to ever want to go in like the charity shops places I’m not allowed to go in like the betting shops or am too 12
scared to go in like the one selling army gear which would be awesome if the shop owner wasn’t such a creep The weird thing is I never even noticed that I lived in one of Britain’s worst towns until I went from being one of the popular kids to having a grand total of three friends in what seemed like the blink of an eye How did I lose all my friends Was I mean to people Did I suddenly become really spotty Nope Those reasons would have been too obvious It turns out that you can ruin your career in high school by simply messing up in Cheer team People take cheer leading really seriously at my school Ever since I was a toddler I have always been good at leaping about Mum used to joke that I was half-human half-monkey Something I like to think of as fact it would be the kind of power that would really get a superhero up and running so to speak Normally the flyer is the smallest person in the cheer team I’m actually the 11th tallest out of the 22 cheerleaders but I was so good at the flips that I was made flyer anyway I was able to do stunt moves that no other girls in the team could do like double backflips and twirls combined 13
