The Story of Tracy Beaker

  I've just called Elaine but she says she's got to help Peter for a while. The poor little petal is getting all worried in case he puts the wrong answers, as if it's some dopey intelligence test. I've done heaps of them, intelligence tests. They're all ever so easypeasy. I can do them quick as a wink. They always expect kids in foster care to be as thick as bricks, but I get a hundred out of a hundred nearly every time. Well, they don't tell you the answers, but I bet I get everything right.

  Ignore the stupid scribble up above. It's all lies anyway. It's typical. You can't leave anything for two minutes in this rotten place without one of the other kids spoiling it. But I never thought anyone would stoop so low as to write in my own private life story. And I know who did it too. I know, Justine Littlewood, and you just wait. I'm going to get you.

  I went over to rescue Elaine from that boring wimpy little Peter and I had a sneak peek into his book and I nearly fell over, because you'll never guess who he's put as his best friend. Me. Me!

  “Is this some sort of joke?” I demanded. He went all red and mumbly and tried to hide what he'd put, but I'd already seen it. My best friend is Tracy Beaker. It was down there on the page in black and white. Well, not your actual black and white, more your smudgy blue ballpoint, but you know what I mean.

  “Go away and stop pestering poor Peter,” Elaine said to me.

  “Yes, but he's putting absolute rubbish in his book, Elaine, and it's stupid. I'm not Peter Ingham's best friend!”

  “Well, I think it's very nice that Peter wants you to be his friend,” said Elaine. She made a funny face. “There's no accounting for taste.”

  “Oh, ha-ha. Why did you put that, Peter?”

  Peter squeaked a little about sharing birthdays and so that made us friends.

  “It does not make us friends, dumbo,” I declared.

  Elaine started getting on my case then, saying I was being nasty to poor little Peetie-Weetie and if I couldn't be friendly why didn't I just shove off and get on with my own life story? Well, when people tell me to shove off I generally try to stick to them like glue, just to be annoying, so that's what I did.

  And then Jenny called me into the kitchen because she made out she wanted a hand getting the lunch ready, but that was just a ploy. Jenny doesn't smack. She doesn't even often tell you off. She just uses ploys and tries to distract you. It sometimes works with the thicker kids but it usually has no effect whatsoever on me. However, I quite like helping in the kitchen because you can generally steal a spoonful of jam or a handful of raisins when Jenny's back is turned. So I went along to the kitchen and helped her put an entire package of fish fingers under the broiler while she got the pan for the french fries bubbling. Fish fingers don't taste so great when they're raw. I tried nibbling just to see. I don't know why they're called fish fingers. Fish don't have fingers, do they? These things ought to be called fish fins. That Auntie Peggy used to make this awful milk pudding called tapioca, which had these little slimy bubbly bits, and I told the other kids that they were fish eyes. And I told the really little ones that marmalade is made out of goldfish and they believed that too.

  When Jenny started serving the fish fingers and fries, I went back into the living room to tell everyone that lunch was ready. And I remember seeing Louise and Justine hunched up in a corner, giggling over something they'd got hidden. I don't know. I am highly intelligent, I truly wasn't making that up, and yet it was a bit thick of me not to get what they were up to. Which was reading my own life story and then scribbling all over it.

  A little twit like Peter Ingham would tell, but I'm no tattletale. I'll simply get them back. I'll think long and carefully for a suitably horrible revenge. I really hate that Justine. Before she came, Louise and I were best friends and we did everything together and, even though I was still dumped in a rotten children's home, it really wasn't so bad. Louise and I made out we were sisters and we had all these secrets and …

  One of these secrets was about a certain small problem that I have. A nighttime problem. I've got my own room and so it was always a private problem that only Jenny and I knew about. Only to show Louise we were the bestest friends ever I told her about it. I knew it wasn't a sensible move right from the start because she giggled, and she used to tease me about it a bit even when we were still friends. And then she went off with Justine and I'd sometimes worry that she might tell on me, but I always convinced myself she'd never ever stoop that low. Not Louise.

  But she has told. She's told Justine, my worst enemy. So what am I going to do to her? Any ideas ticking away inside my head?

  Well, I could beat her up.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  I could deliver a karate-chop death blow.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  I could get my mom to come in her car and run her over, squashing her flat as roadkill.

  Tick, tick, tick. Hey! Tick tock. Tick tock. I know. And I also know I'm not leaving this book around. From now on I'll carry it on my person. So, ha-ha, boo to you, Justine Littlewood. Oh, you're going to get it. Yes you are, yes you are, tee-hee.

  I'm writing this at midnight. I can't put the light on because Jenny might still be prowling about and I don't want another ding-dong with her, thanks very much. I'm making do with a flashlight, only the battery's going, so there's just this dim little glow and I can hardly see what I'm doing. I wish I had something to eat. In all those old-fashioned school stories they always have midnight feasts. The food sounds a bit weird, sardines and condensed milk, but I could demolish a Mars bar right this minute. Imagine a Mars bar as big as this bed. Imagine licking it, gnawing away at a corner, scooping out the soft part with both fists. Imagine the wonderful chocolaty smell. I'm drooling at the thought. Yes, that's what those little marks are on the page. Drool. I don't cry. I don't ever cry.

  I acted as if I couldn't care less when Jenny got really mad. And I don't.

  “I think you really do care, Tracy,” she said, in that silly sorrowful voice. “Deep down I think you're really very sorry.”

  “That's just where you're wrong,” I insisted.

  “Come off it now. You must know how you'd feel if your mother had bought you a special present and one of the other kids spoiled it.”

  As she said that I couldn't help remembering being in the first Home, long before the dreaded Auntie Peggy or that mean hateful unfair Julie and Ted. My mom came to see me and she'd brought this doll, a doll almost as big as me, with long golden curls and a bright blue lacy dress to match her big blue eyes. I'd never liked dolls all that much but I thought this one was wonderful. I called her Bluebell and I undressed her right down to her frilly white panties and dressed her up again and brushed her blond curls and made her blink her big blue eyes, and at night she'd lie in my bed and we'd have these cozy little chats and she'd tell me that Mom was coming back really soon, probably tomorrow, and—

  Okay, that sort of thing makes me want to puke now but I was only little then and I didn't know any better. The housemother let me cart Bluebell all over the place but she tried to make me give the other kids a turn playing with her. Well, I wasn't going to let that bunch maul her, so of course I didn't let them hold her. But I came unglued when I started school. You weren't allowed to take toys to school, only on Friday afternoons. I cried and fought but they wouldn't let me. So I had to start leaving Bluebell at home. I'd tuck her up in my bed with her eyes closed, pretending she was asleep, and then when I got home from school I'd charge upstairs into our crummy little dormitory and wake her up with a big hug. Only one day I woke her up and I got the shock of my life. Her eyelids snapped open but her blue eyes had vanished inside her head. Some rotten lousy pig had given them a good poke. I couldn't stand it, seeing those creepy empty sockets. She stopped being my friend. She just scared me.

  The housemother took Bluebell off to this doll hospital and they gave her some new eyes. They were blue too, but not the same bright blue, and they didn't blink properly either. They either got stuck altogether or they flashed up a
nd down all the time, making her look silly and fluttery. But I didn't really care then. She was spoiled. She wasn't the same Bluebell. She didn't talk to me anymore.

  I never found out which kid had done it. The housemother said it was A Mystery. Just One of Those Things.

  Jenny didn't call it a mystery when Justine went sobbing to her because her silly old Mickey Mouse alarm clock had got broken. Clocks break all the time. It's not as if it's a really glitzy, expensive clock. If I'd been Jenny I'd have told Justine to stop making such a silly fuss. I'd have stopped up my ears when that sneaky little twerp started going on about me. “I bet I know who did it too, Jenny. That Tracy Beaker.”

  Yes, she told on me. And Jenny listened, because she came looking for me. She had to look quite a long time. I kind of suspected what was coming, so I ran away. I didn't try to hide in the house or the garden like one of the little kids. I'm not that dumb. They can flush you out in five minutes no matter where you are. No, I skipped out the back door and down the road and wandered around the town.

  It was great. Yes, I had the most amazing time. First I went to McDonald's and had a Big Mac and french fries with a strawberry milk shake and then I went to the movies and saw this really funny film and I laughed so much I fell out of my seat and then I went off with this whole crowd of friends to an amusement arcade and I kept winning the jackpot on the fruit machines and then we all went off to this party and I drank a whole bottle of wine and it was great, it just tasted like lemonade, and this girl there, we made friends and she asked me if I'd like to stay the night, sharing her twin beds in this fantastic pink-and-white room, in fact she said I could stay there permanently if I really wanted and so I said …

  I said: “No thanks, I'd sooner go back to my crummy children's home.”

  Of course I didn't say that. Well, she didn't say it either. I sort of made her up. And her party. I didn't go down to the amusement arcade. Or to the movies. Or McDonald's. I would have gone, but I couldn't, on account of the fact that I ran off with no cash whatsoever.

  I said I tell fibs sometimes. It makes things more interesting. I mean, what's the point of writing what I really did? Which was loaf about the town feeling more and more fed up. The only thing I could think of doing was to sit in the bus shelter. It got a bit boring. I pretended I was waiting for a bus and I tried to think of all the places I'd like to go to. But that began to depress me because I started thinking about Watford, where my mom said she lived. And last year I got enough money together (which created a few problems afterward, since I sort of borrowed it without asking) and figured out the journey and took all these trains and buses and all the rest of it, so that I could pay my mom a visit and give her a lovely surprise. Only it was me that got the surprise because she wasn't there. The people who lived in that house said she'd moved about six months ago and they didn't have a clue where she'd gone.

  So it's going to take a bit of organized searching to find her again. I could catch a different bus every day for the rest of my life and maybe not find her. It's hard when you haven't got a clue where to look.

  I was still scrunched up in the bus shelter when a familiar white minivan hove into view. It was Mike, come looking for me. Mike looks after us with Jenny. He's such a bore. He doesn't often get angry but he whines on about Rules and Responsibility and a whole lot of other rubbish.

  So by the time I'd got back to the Home I was sick to death of the subject, but then Jenny came into my bedroom and she started. And she assumed it was me that broke Justine's clock though she had no proof whatsoever. I told her so, and said she just liked picking on me, and it wasn't fair. She said I'd feel better if I owned up to breaking Justine's clock and then went to apologize to her. I said she had to be joking. I wasn't the slightest bit sorry and anyway I didn't didn't didn't break Justine's rotten clock.

  That isn't necessarily a fib. I don't absolutely one hundred percent know that I broke it. All right, I did go into her bedroom when she was in the bathroom, and I did pick up the clock to look at it. Well, she's always going on about it because she's got this boring thing about her dad. She makes out he's so flipping special, when he hardly ever comes to see her. The only thing he's ever given her is that stupid tinny old alarm clock. I wanted to look at it to see if it was really so special. Well, it wasn't. I bet he just got it from some cheap discount store. And it certainly wasn't made very carefully because when I twiddled the knobs to make the little Mickey on the end of the hands go whizzing around and around he couldn't keep it up for very long. There was this sudden whir and clunk and then the hand fell off altogether and Mickey fell too, with his little paws in the air, dead. But he might have been about to take his last gasp anyway. That hand might well have fallen off the next time Justine touched the stupid clock to wind it up.

  I'm not going to say I'm sorry no matter what.

  I wish I could get to sleep.

  I'll try counting sheep …

  I still can't get to sleep and it's the middle of the night now and it's rotten and I keep thinking about my mom. I wish she'd come and get me. I wish anyone would come and get me. Why can't I ever get a good foster family? That Auntie Peggy and Uncle Sid were lousy. But then I could figure them out and tell they were lousy right from the start. Anyone who smacks hard and serves up fish eyes in your pudding is certainly not an ideal auntie. But last time, when I got taken in by Julie and Ted, I really thought it was all going to work out happily ever after, and that it was my turn to be the golden princess instead of a Rumpelstiltskin.

  They were great at first, Julie and Ted. That's what I called them right from the start. They didn't want to be a prissy auntie and uncle. And Julie said she didn't want me to call her Mom because I already had a mom. I thought such a lot of Julie when she said that. She wasn't exactly my idea of a glamorous foster mom—she had this long wispy brown hair and she wore sludge-colored smocks and sandals— and Ted looked like a bit of a wimp too with his glasses and his beard and weirdo comfy walking shoes. Not so much Hush Puppy as Shut-your-face Hound-Dog—but I thought they were the sort of couple you could really trust. Ha!

  I went to live with them and I thought we were getting on really great, though they were a bit boringly strict about stuff like sweets and bedtimes and horror videos, but then Julie started to wear bigger smocks than ever and lolled about on the sofa and Ted got all misty-eyed behind his glasses and I started to realize that something was up. And so I asked them what it was and they hedged and made faces at each other and then they looked shifty and told me that everything was fine and I knew they were lying. Things weren't fine at all.

  They didn't even have the guts to tell me themselves. They left it to Elaine. She'd only just started to be my social worker then (I've had heaps because they kept moving around and leaving me behind and I got passed on like a parcel). I wasn't that keen on Elaine in those days. In fact I was really annoyed with her, because I'd had this man social worker Terry before her and he used to call me Smartie and he used to give me the odd package of Smarties too, and I felt Elaine was a very poor substitute.

  I wish I hadn't thought of those Smarties. I wish I had some now, I'm simply starving.

  I'm sure Elaine marked me down as Sulky and Noncooperative in her little notebook. The day she told me the Julie and Ted Bombshell I'm sure she scribbled TRACY TOTALLY STUNNED. Because Julie was having her own baby, after years of thinking she couldn't have any kids.

  I didn't get it at first.

  “So what's the problem, Elaine?” I said. “We'll be a proper family then, four of us instead of three.”

  Elaine was having difficulty finding the right words. She kept opening her mouth and closing it again, not saying a thing.

  “You look just like a fish when you do that, did you know?” I said rudely, because my heart was starting to hammer hard against my chest and I knew that when Elaine eventually got the words out I wouldn't like the sound of them.

  “The thing is, Tracy …Well, Julie and Ted have loved fostering you
, and they've grown very fond of you, but … you see, now that they're having their own baby they feel that they're not really going to be able to cope.”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said, in this jokey silly voice. “So they're going to give the boring old baby away because they can't cope with it. And keep me. Because they had me first, didn't they?”

  “Tracy—”

  “They're not really going to dump me, are they?”

  “They still very much want to keep in touch with you and—”

  “So why can't I go on living with them? Look, I'll help all I can. Julie doesn't need to worry. I'll be just like a second mom to this baby. I know all what to do. I can give it its bottle and change its soggy old diaper and thump it on its back to burp it. I'm totally experienced where babies are concerned.”

  “Yes, I know, Tracy. But that's the trouble. You see, when Julie and Ted first chose you, we did tell them a bit about your background, and the trouble you had in your first foster home. You know, when you shut the baby up in the cupboard—”

  “That was Steve. And he wasn't a baby. He was a foul little toddler, and he kept messing up our bedroom so I put him in the closet just for a bit so I could get everything straightened out.”

  “And there was the ghost game that got totally out of hand—”

  “Oh, that! All those little kids loved that game. I was ever so good at finding the right hiding places and then I'd start an eerie sort of moan and then I'd jump out at them, wearing this old white sheet.”

  “And everyone got scared silly.”

  “No they didn't. They just squealed because they were excited. I was the one who should have been scared, because they were all the ghost-busters, you see, and I was the poor little ghost and—”

  “Okay, okay, but the point is, Tracy, it makes it plain in your records that you don't always get on well with little children.”