Star Reporter
Authors: Tamsyn Murray
Latest news from Cassidy Bond, Star Reporter!
So I started this petition to let girls wear trousers at St Jude's, and everybody's talking about it â including Kelly, Year Ten editor of the school magazine. And now she's asked me to be her new star reporter â yay!
Even better, I've already sniffed out a *big* exclusive. Because someone's set up a nasty gossip website about people at school â and if I can identify the mystery blogger, it'll be the scoop of the century!
Page torn out of “Spice Up Your Life!”
Torn from “The Thrifty Gal's Guide to Gorgeousness”
Email to Happy Sands Holiday Villages
Possible Articles for the School Paper
Sample Article for Hey Jude's!
Last Will and Testament of Cassidy Bond
Sneak Preview of
Completely Cassidy â Drama Queen
Completely Cassidy â Accidental Genius
For Tania, the original Cassidy.
“Once upon a time there was a girl called Cassidy. She was gentle and kind, in spite of being poor and having a cruel older brother. Everyone loved her, especially her faithful dog, Rolo, and her besties, Molly and Shenice. She lived in a rose-covered cottage in the middle of the woods and every morning, she sang so sweetly that even the birds stopped to listenâ”
WHAT IS THAT SMELL?
What IS it? Seriously, it is like something has died in my room. The twins are asleep in Mum and Dad's room â surely it can't be them? Then again, nothing would surprise me where Joshua and Ethel's bottoms are concerned. Having lived through some of their nappies in the last five months, I am amazed our house hasn't been declared a biological hazard. I know they can't help it but I am pretty sure I didn't do that when I was a baby.
I SUPPOSE it could always be Liam â he is almost fifteen and smells worse than our wheelie bin. But I think he is round at a mate's house and even he does not stink that much. Whatever the cause, it is making my eyes water. How am I supposed to turn my life into a fairy tale using less than five hundred words for double English tomorrow when the atmosphere around me is more poisonous than Saturn's? Some people might say it is my own fault for leaving my homework until eight o'clock on a Sunday evening but that hardly helps me now, does it? There isn't even any way I can use the pong as an excuse for not doing my essay â ever since we came back after the Easter holidays, the teachers at St Jude's have been drumming into us that the end-of-year exams are just around the corner. Never mind that it is only the end of April and the exams are not until June â apparently, even physical evidence that the dog has eaten your homework is Not Good Enough.
Which brings me to the only other stinky suspect â my dog, Rolo. When I asked for a puppy for my tenth birthday, I didn't know we would somehow end up with one who was part chocolate Labrador, part T. rex. NOTHING is safe around him, as my dad found to his cost when he left one of his Elvis Presley wigs lying on the sofa and came down the next morning to find only the tufty black quiff left. And as the old saying goes, what goes in, must come out â pretty sure I don't need to draw you a picture. But as disgusting as Rolo is, he doesn't usually do his business in the house. And this smell is so bad, it can only be an inside job. I wonder if I can work it into my fairy tale somehow â CINDERSMELLA, maybe. Urgh. I will have to turn one of Mum's bras into a gas mask at this rate.
It's no good, I am going to have to investigate. Hey, maybe that could be my talent â I could be a great detective and solve crimes. One mysteryâ¦three suspectsâ¦a dangerous mission to uncover the truthâ¦
Alright, it's not exactly Sherlock Holmes but even he had to start somewhere.
Mum and Dad were slumped on the sofa when I went downstairs. Mum was gently snoring and Dad was so engrossed in an ELVIS documentary that he hadn't noticed the smell.
“Although now you come to mention it, there is a hint of Brussels sprouts in the air,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Is Liam home?”
I shook my head. “It's either the babies or Rolo.”
“Or both,” Dad suggested, pulling a face. He glanced at Mum, who chose that moment to let out an especially unladylike snort. “Shall we investigate? I'll be Doctor Who and you can be my assistant.”
“No, thanks,” I said, following Dad up the stairs. “I'll be the Doctor and you can be the sidekick.”
The stink that greeted us when we opened the door was unbelievable. And we soon realized why â Joshua had had the kind of nappy malfunction they don't show you on the adverts. I'm not joking, his vest was basically an enormous brown stain, starting at his bottom and stretching all the way up to his neck. It looked like someone had spray-painted him while he slept.
Dad clamped his hand over his mouth. “Ah fink ee ave fan ver cubrit.”
I pinched my nose. “Whad?”
He removed his hand and winced. “I said, I think we've found the culprit.”
I couldn't argue with that â the evidence was pretty overwhelming. What I couldn't get over was the way that Ethel was sleeping soundly next to him, completely unaware that WORLD WAR POO had begun beside her. Backing away from the horror, I left Dad to it and went to get the changing stuff.
Half an hour later the smell was STILL lingering, even though Dad had sorted Joshua out and opened a window to let some air in. I was back in my room and doing my best to concentrate on my homework, but the stink seemed to be getting worse.
After several hard sniffs, I decided that after all that the pong might actually be coming from under my bed, which kind of ruled out the twins. I thought about calling Dad again, but then I remembered that a good investigator does her own dirty work, so I took a deep breath and peered under the bed. And there, staring up at me, was a very embarrassed-looking Rolo. Holding a cushion over my nose, I leaned closer and saw he was encrusted from head to toe in something brown and smelly. The parts that weren't crusty seemed to be oozing. I have no idea what he'd rolled in â have the neighbours upgraded their tabby to a pet elephant or something? And it was just typical that he'd hidden in my room instead of Liam's. There's all kinds of rubbish and fluff under my bed, which probably explains why he had a Starburst wrapper stuck over one eye and â URGH â the pong! Let's just say it made Joshua's little accident seem like a walk in the rose gardens.
I have texted Molly and Shenice, letting them know that POOMAGEDDON has struck and that I might not survive the clean-up operation.
It's at times like this I wish we'd got a cat.
AAARGH! There is only one thing worse than being woken up at three-thirty in the morning by a screaming baby. And that's being woken up by two screaming babies. Especially when it's a school night and you've only just nodded off after the last time they broke the sound barrier.
Joshua and Ethel have the kind of cries that pierce pillows and it's turning us into sleep-deprived wrecks. Sometimes I think they wait until we've all drifted off and then they attack, like tiny scratch-mittened ninjas. Shenice says that sleep deprivation is an actual torture method used by the CIA and I can totally believe it; seriously, just brushing my hair has become a task worthy of THE CUBE and my eyes have more bags than Asda. Molly reckons that in the zombie apocalypse, our house will be the safest place in Windsor, because our brains have already been mushified by the twins' supersonic screaming. And if the sleep deprivation doesn't get us, the bad smells will.
My dad is being ridiculously cheerful about everything, despite the fact that he's up at four-thirty most mornings and actually fell asleep in his Weetabix today. Maybe that's why he's so keen to get to his deathly-dull day job â to get some rest. I don't expect anyone poos on him there, either.
“We have to try to enjoy them while they're little,” he babbled this morning, cradling Joshua into his shoulder, unaware that a dribble of milky sick was trickling down the back of his shirt. “It won't be long before they're toddling around, causing chaos, and we'll wonder where the time went.”
I tore a savage strip off my toast. I'd enjoy being a big sister a lot more if I didn't feel like my eyeballs had been pickled in nail varnish remover. Even Liam stopped shovelling cereal into his mouth long enough to give me a we're-in-this-together look. That's when I knew things were really bad; Liam really puts the ugh into ugly and we never agree on anything. Maybe the lack of sleep is dragging me down to his level.
Mum seems to have lost the power of speech. She just grunts whenever I ask her anything, unless it involves money and then she glares and launches into a rant. I know that money is tight at the moment but it doesn't mean that I don't have needs. And, according to Mum's GLITZ magazine, what I need right now is some Starshine fake tan to put the spring into my spring. Sadly, Mum didn't agree when I showed her the article at breakfast.
“I've told you before not to read my magazines, Cassidy,” she said, before I'd even got to number three of TEN TAN-TASTIC REASONS TO FAKE IT. “You're too young to be worrying about fake tan, anyway. You'll just have to put up with being pale.”
Huh. It's alright for her, she hardly ever leaves the house and when she does, people are so busy cooing over the twins that they barely even notice she's there. Actually, that's probably a good thing since next to her, even vampires look tanned. I, on the other hand, have less than five weeks until the St Jude's Secondary School May Ball and I refuse to go to it looking like Draco Malfoy's paler sister.
“Butâ”
“Forget it, Cassie,” she snapped, laying a snoozing Ethel down in the Moses basket and picking up her long-cold cup of tea. “Don't think I've forgotten the HIGHLIGHTS FROM HELL incident.”