Trust by Kate Veitch Page B

T-shirt in question as he settled back against the wall, his long arms around his knees and super-size feet sticking up like paddles in front of him. ‘Why haven’t you got anywhere comfortable to sit in here?’
    ‘Maybe I would have, if this room was bigger than an iPod.’
    ‘Oh, poor diddums.’ The door, which he hadn’t quite closed, widened with an eerie creak; they both watched as Tigger insinuated himself through the gap and sprang onto the bed with a soft miaow of greeting. Seb rubbed the big orange cat’s ears. ‘Look, after this place gets done up,’ he said more kindly, ‘you’ll have all the space you want.’
    Stella-Jean shook her head gloomily. ‘We’ll be dead before that happens. Dad’s never going to renovate this dump.’
    ‘Yeah, he will. One day. Ouch!’ He lifted the cat’s front paws from his bare thigh. ‘No claws, Tigs.’
    ‘Don’t you think it’s weird? Our dad’s this, like, world-famous architect, but we live in a daggy old shoebox. All he ever does for here is draw up plans.’
    ‘That’s because he is this world-famous architect. You don’t get it, Stinker: he keeps changing ’em because he wants our place to be the best. He just doesn’t want to let us down, that’s all.’
    ‘You think so?’ She snorted derisively. ‘Anyway. How come we’re both awake but him and Mum are dead to the world? We’re the teenagers; they should be awake, lying there worrying about us.’
    ‘You want ’em to worry? Then get a bong at least, for chrissake.’ Seb jerked his chin at the shelves opposite, stacked with containers of Stella-Jean’s jewellery-making materials. ‘Look at all this kindie crap! It’s like being inside the freaking useful box on Playschool .’
    ‘Me and Tess are doing very nicely with our so-called kindie crap, thank you very much.’
    ‘You and Tess, you and Tess. Anyone’d think you were, like, twins, joined at the hip or something. Except you look like a duck and she looks a, I dunno, a heron.’
    ‘Shut up.’ Stella-Jean said automatically, but her flying fingers had paused. ‘You know, I was thinking … If Tessa’s family took her off to go and live overseas somewhere, I’d be a basket case.’
    Seb shot her a lightning glance, but she was looking carefully down at Knitting Nancy. ‘I’m not a basket case,’ he said, then leaned forward to pick at his big toe.
    ‘I didn’t say you were,’ she said tartly. ‘I just said I would be. Anyway. What me and Tess want to know is, who are you going to the social with?’
    Seb’s head jerked up. ‘What?’
    ‘She bet me a king-size Kit Kat it’ll be Princess Sylvia.’
    ‘How do you know anything about the school social? You’re in Year Nine , you should be invisible.’ Fat chance. His sister had never been invisible.
    ‘Me and Tess accessorise half the girls in senior school – not that you’d know. And we have it on good authority that Sylvia Albanese and Georgie Patrakis and Chelsea Trumper all want you to be their date. Everyone is like, wow! That dumb jock? That dumb Year Eleven jock?’
    ‘But I don’t want to go with any of them,’ Seb muttered.
    ‘Crap on,’ scoffed Stella-Jean. ‘What, scared you’ll get torn apart?’ She mimed a tug-of-war with both hands.
    ‘No, I just don’t wanna … you know … give anybody the wrong idea.’ Still fiddling with his toes, he could feel his sister’s eyes boring into him.
    ‘What wrong idea, exactly?’
    ‘Meh,’ he shrugged, trying to sound careless and casual. ‘Like I’m, you know, committed to one of ’em.’
    She giggled. ‘They’re not asking to marry you, you know!’
    Seb ignored her, watching from the corner of his eye as she started working the ribbon on Knitting Nancy again. Suddenly she dropped it into her lap.
    ‘Oh! I’ve got an idea.’ Stella-Jean beckoned him closer; he inclined toward her, further, further, until finally he toppled onto her. She pushed him back to upright and Tigger, who’d got