Sasha's Secret

by Cathy Cassidy

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  1: Invisible Girl

  2: The Price of Fame

  3: Black Holes

  4: Treat Night

  5: Say Cheese

  6: Tea and Cake

  7: Sorry

  8: Kidnapped

  9: Nothing to Worry About

  10: Fox Hollow Hall

  11: The Plan

  12: The Picnic

  13: Just Breathe

  14: Song

  15: The X Factor

  16: Search Party

  17: The Midnight Meeting

  18: Wonderland

  19: Mask

  20: Watch Me Disappear

  21: Magic

  22: Try Again

  23: Something Missing

  24: Runaways

  25: Tanglewood

  26: After

  27: Secrets

  Afterword

  Read More

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Cathy Cassidy wrote her first picture book for her little brother when she was eight or nine and has been writing fabulous stories ever since. Cathy is the bestselling author of Dizzy, Driftwood, Indigo Blue, Scarlett, Sundae Girl, Lucky Star, Ginger Snaps, Looking-Glass Girl, Broken Heart Club, the Chocolate Box Series (including Cherry Crush, Marshmallow Skye, Summer’s Dream, Coco Caramel, Sweet Honey, Fortune Cookie and Life is Sweet) and the first two instalments in the Lost and Found Series, Love From Lexie and Sami’s Silver Lining. Cathy lives in Merseyside with her family, and of all the many jobs she’s had she loves writing best - it’s the perfect excuse to daydream, after all! For all the latest on this best-selling author go to www.cathycassidy.com

  Books by Cathy Cassidy

  Lost & Found

  LOVE FROM LEXIE

  SAMI’S SILVER LINING

  SASHA’S SECRET

  The Chocolate Box Girls

  CHERRY CRUSH

  MARSHMALLOW SKYE

  SUMMER’S DREAM

  COCO CARAMEL

  SWEET HONEY

  FORTUNE COOKIE

  LIFE IS SWEET

  BITTERSWEET: SHAY’S STORY

  CHOCOLATES AND FLOWERS: ALFIE’S STORY

  HOPES AND DREAMS: JODIE’S STORY

  MOON AND STARS: FINCH’S STORY

  SNOWFLAKES AND WISHES: LAWRIE’S STORY

  THE CHOCOLATE BOX SECRETS

  ANGEL CAKE

  BROKEN HEART CLUB

  DIZZY

  DRIFTWOOD

  INDIGO BLUE

  GINGERSNAPS

  LOOKING-GLASS GIRL

  LUCKY STAR

  SCARLETT

  SUNDAE GIRL

  LETTERS TO CATHY

  For younger readers

  SHINE ON, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR AND THE PINK GUITAR

  STRIKE A POSE, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR, OOH LA LA!

  Hello!

  Welcome to the third book in my Lost & Found series, all about Sasha, the band’s lead singer! Sasha’s story is a very personal one for me, but also one that I think will resonate with many of my teen and pre-teen readers. Have you ever felt out of your depth, worried that you weren’t good enough? Ever wanted to hide away from reality or had a secret you were too scared to tell? If so, you’ll understand Sasha’s dilemma and love her journey to face the truth, find her courage and take back control of her life! Nobody’s perfect, after all, and there’s a real freedom in accepting that and choosing to be perfectly imperfect.

  This is a book for anyone who has ever felt anxious or alone, anyone who’s worried that their friends and family just won’t understand. It’s about facing up to what you want in life and letting go of what you don’t … and it also follows your favourite Lost & Found characters as their career steps up a notch and they get the chance to record their first single!

  Make yourself a fruit smoothie, curl up for a while and escape into a world of music, friendship, dreams and first love … with a few surprises in store along the way! Enjoy!

  Thanks …

  As always, thanks to my fab family, especially Liam, Cal and Cait. Thanks to Helen, Mel, Sheena, Lal, Jessie, Fiona and all my lovely friends for the hugs, pep talks and heart-to-hearts. Thanks to Carmen, Amanda, Tania, Roz, Ellen, Lucie, Mary-Jane, Wendy, Andrea and all at Puffin HQ; to Darley and his team for the business bits; Martyn for the adding up; and Annie for arranging my tour events. An extra big hug to Erin Keen for the beautiful cover and artwork.

  This book was inspired by my daughter Caitlin, but additional chats with readers Charlotte and Hollie and their mums also helped hugely – many thanks. Cheers to Jen for the info on vocal coaching, to Nicole for info on special effects make-up and to Cal for the info on studio recording.

  Thanks to Tara Lyons, who bid in a charity auction to have her name in the book – apologies for putting you up close and personal with a hockey stick – and well done, Edinburgh Children’s Hospital Charity! Thanks to D & R, two fab readers whose names I borrowed for this story, and of course to Mary Shelley the tortoise for ongoing inspiration. The biggest thank-you of all goes to you, my lovely readers … you really are the best.

  1

  Invisible Girl

  When I was little, I loved to play hide-and-seek – even in our small terraced house I found hiding places everywhere. I hid in wardrobes, in cupboards, under the bed; I stood for hours behind the faded green curtains with just my feet sticking out, hardly daring to breathe.

  My favourite hiding place was the cupboard under the stairs, behind the vacuum cleaner and the box of spray cleaners and the furniture polish that smelt like marzipan. I built a nest there, with a lumpy pillow and a blanket, making a chocolate-chip cookie last for an hour as I relaxed and let my mind drift.

  I’d dream that I was up on stage singing, or dressed in tulle and pointe shoes, twirling my way through Swan Lake. I had a dozen different daydreams to suit my mood, and I could vanish into one whenever I wanted.

  It was how I coped with the shouting.

  Later Mum would cuddle me, tell me not to be scared. ‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she’d say, tucking me in at night. ‘I haven’t been feeling well and your dad’s a bit stressed, but it’ll pass. Just ignore it, pet!’

  But I couldn’t ignore it. Whenever things got bad, I could smell trouble in the air, feel the ground beneath my feet begin to slip. I’d ask Mum if we could play hide-and-seek.

  ‘Oh, go on then,’ she’d say, rolling her eyes, and I’d hear her counting slowly to a hundred as I ran to hide. I always felt safer burrowed away out of sight, lost in my dreams.

  It didn’t bother me that I might be waiting a couple of hours for Mum to remember I was hiding and come to find me. It didn’t matter … I was safe.

  It was just a bad patch, Mum said, the kind lots of couples have – but there were two years of uncertainty, of horrible rows and stony silences, of broken plates and dinners burned and cold and tipped into the bin. I found out much later that Mum had been struggling after a miscarriage and that Dad had been trying to survive on a zero-hours contract. If Mum hadn’t lost the baby, I’d have a little brother or sister now, but instead there was always something missing in our family, a ragged gap I couldn’t even begin to fill.

  Two years of hiding and wanting to vanish … and then everything changed.

  I started school, Dad got a better job and Mum started working part-time in the beauty department of a big store in town.

  ‘It’ll be make or break,’ she warned us, and for a while it looked like it might be the latter. Dad would come home tired and get annoyed because the house was untidy and there was no tea on the table. Mum would say she
only had one pair of hands, that she was sorry if the house was a mess but life was never perfect.

  I remember thinking that maybe she was wrong, that things could be perfect if you tried hard enough to make them that way. I remember thinking that Mum deserved that, and I wondered if it might be possible if I just tried hard enough. The next day I washed all the mugs and dishes in the sink, tidied my room and made Dad a cup of tea when he got in from work.

  ‘You’re a star, Sasha,’ he said.

  That was all I needed to start believing that perfection really was possible.

  The rows began to ease up, and I convinced myself it was because I was trying so hard. The anger and resentment that had once crackled in the air between Mum and Dad faded away into silence, and they started smiling, laughing, hugging again.

  I tried harder. I was helpful, cheerful, reliable. I brought home good school reports, never argued, got into the habit of setting the table, folding the washing, helping with the cooking.

  ‘You’re growing up,’ Mum said. ‘It doesn’t seem so very long ago that I couldn’t open a wardrobe without finding you sitting cross-legged among the coats and dresses, when you used to hide behind curtains with your feet sticking out at the bottom and think nobody could see you …’

  I didn’t tell her that wearing a good-girl mask was the best way of all to stay invisible.

  I started secondary school, made friends, kept the mask in place. I wasn’t super smart and I wasn’t hopeless either, just somewhere in the middle, but I always tried my best at everything. The teachers liked me, but not all the kids did.

  The school bully, Sharleen Scott, labelled me ‘Little Miss Perfect’. She was almost right, in an ironic kind of way, and also very, very wrong.

  Underneath the try-hard exterior, I was a long way from perfect. Playing with my mum’s make-up kit and singing into my hairbrush in front of the mirror were my only real skills. I had a morning make-up ritual using the samples Mum brought home from work. It was calming to brush on foundation and highlighter, as if I was painting on a second skin. I liked looking in the mirror and seeing a braver, brighter version of myself smile back.

  I was an average student with a reasonable voice, a big imagination and a desperate need to please, but that’s not what other people saw. They saw a girl who looked like she could take on the world, when actually I was hiding away from it. Ironic, huh?

  Then a boy named Marley Hayes nagged me into auditioning for a band called the Lost & Found, and I ended up being their lead singer, which is kind of crazy. We’ve had some success, played a big festival, even been on TV.

  I guess you could say it was all a dream come true. The trouble is, dreams aren’t always the way you think they’ll be. I like to sing, but I don’t like being in the spotlight and I hate knowing that the band’s success – or lack of it – hinges on me. What started off as performance nerves has evolved into the kind of anxiety that eats away at my confidence and keeps me awake at night. So yeah … now you know what’s going on beneath the surface, and why I’m really not Little Miss Perfect. At all.

  I may be the lead singer of the Lost & Found, but lately that feels more of a nightmare than a dream. I’m just bluffing my way through, hoping nobody spots that it’s all smoke and mirrors.

  I learned a long time ago that you can hide all kinds of stuff beneath a smile, an impression of careless confidence. Hopes, dreams, anxieties, fears … all those things stay safely hidden away when you know how to wear a bright, shiny mask over the top. I’ve had years of practice at hiding.

  I am fourteen years old now and I have a theory.

  I think that if you hide yourself well enough, and stay hidden, eventually you start to disappear for real …

  273 likes

  SashaSometimes So the Lost & Found made it to the TV news last night … how cool?

  #Lost&Found #TVNews #CharityGig #TeenBand

  littlejen You were so good! Tell Marley I love him!

  MillfordGirl1 My favourite band!

  JBSings I’d love to be like you, Sasha. Do you get nervous on stage?

  SashaSometimes Oh my gosh, all the time! It’s natural, though. That adrenaline can fuel a whole performance!

  JBSings #MyHero

  2

  The Price of Fame

  ‘Can I have your autograph?’ the Year Seven boy at the bus stop asks. ‘Saw you on TV last night – can you sign this?’

  I smile and scribble my name on his homework jotter.

  ‘You’re my favourite,’ he blurts. ‘Out of anyone in the Lost & Found. I’m your number-one fan!’

  He whips out a smartphone and snaps a quick selfie with me, then blushes a deep shade of crimson and lopes back to his mates.

  I shake my head and smile, because I remember how it feels to be eleven years old and crushing on someone. In my case it was Harry Styles from One Direction, and if he’d ever signed the cover of my homework jotter I think I’d have fainted clean away with the shock.

  The Lost & Found are not in that league yet, but still, I don’t think I will ever get used to signing autographs. It’s only really our lead guitarist Marley Hayes who gets a kick from it; he’s crazy ambitious. Although the Lost & Found is a team, Marley is the driving force behind it. When I’m listening to his pep talks I almost believe that we can make the big time. Almost.

  The bus appears at last and I head upstairs, where Romy’s saved me a seat. She’s my best friend, and she also plays violin and sings backing vocals with the band.

  ‘See our bit on the local TV news last night?’ she asks as I flop down beside her. ‘Everyone’s talking about it!’

  ‘I just signed an autograph and had my photo taken by a fan,’ I tell her. ‘The price of fame!’

  ‘Rather you than me,’ Romy says. ‘I’m glad I’m more of a background kind of person. Although even if I was lead singer, nobody’d want my picture!’

  I nudge her sharply. ‘Don’t run yourself down, Romy! You’re great! You just need to believe in yourself!’

  Like me, Romy likes to keep things hidden, but she hasn’t quite perfected the art of acting carelessly confident the way I have. Her anxiety shows, and that marks her out as vulnerable in a place like Millford Park Academy.

  Romy pulls a face, laughing. A bunch of Year Seven girls shout over that we were brilliant on TV last night, and a Year Eleven boy called Matt Brennan wanders down from the back of the bus, dropping into the seat in front of us.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, pushing back an artfully tousled quiff and treating me to the kind of smile rarely seen outside a toothpaste advert. ‘My name’s Matt. I help edit Scribbler – you know, the school magazine. You’re Sasha Kaminski, right? You’re in that band, the Lost & Found, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m the lead singer,’ I say. ‘Romy here plays violin and sings backing vocals …’

  His eyes slide to Romy and then back to me again. ‘Cool,’ he says, and I find myself dazzled by his hazel eyes as well as the toothpaste-ad smile. ‘So, yeah … I follow your Instagram, actually. It’s cool. I wondered if I could interview you for the school mag? Get a scoop on what you’re doing before you hit the big time?’

  ‘Oh – we’d love that, wouldn’t we, Romy?’ I say.

  ‘I was thinking more just you,’ Matt says. ‘And Marley Hayes, maybe. I know there are lots of you in the band, but I wanna focus on you and Marley, to begin with at least.’

  I blink. I want to tell him about Lexie, who started the band in the first place. I want to tell him about Sami, whose artwork caused such a stir at the gallery the night before last, and how his awesome story would make a better magazine feature than anything me and Marley might have to say. I want to say that we’re all equals, that Lee, George, Romy, Happi, Bex, Dylan and even Jake are just as important as anyone else, but in the end I don’t. I allow myself to be dazzled by the smile, the eyes, the quiff.

  ‘That’d be cool,’ I say, and Matt grins and taps my mobile number into his phone before wandering ba
ck to his mates. It’s Romy’s turn to dig me in the ribs now.

  ‘He likes you!’ she whispers. ‘I could tell! And you like him!’

  ‘Nah, he’s way out of my league,’ I say.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ she says. ‘He might think he’s Mr Popular, but actually he’s just a boy with a hipster quiff and plenty of confidence. You’re out of his league, I reckon! Besides, a girl can dream, right?’

  I laugh, because I know Romy’s right … Matt Brennan will be sneaking into quite a few of my daydreams from now on.

  The bus pulls to a halt outside Millford Park Academy and Romy and I file down the stairs. Someone pulls at the sleeve of my blazer, and I turn to see school bully Sharleen Scott.

  ‘Saw you on telly last night,’ she says, so close I can smell the mixture of spearmint chewing gum and stale nicotine on her breath. ‘Think you’re quite something, don’t you, Little Miss Perfect? Thing is, I see through the act. You’re way out of your depth, Sasha. Why not just admit it?’

  This feels too close to home, and for a moment I can’t think of a smart reply … or any reply at all.

  ‘Ignore her,’ Romy says, trying to steer me away. ‘She’s just jealous!’

  ‘Of you two? Don’t make me laugh!’ Sharleen snarls, turning her attention to Romy now. ‘It’s a shame TV makes everyone look bigger than they really are … a bit embarrassing, really. I don’t know how you can stand up there, Romy, when you know everyone’s laughing at you!’

  My whole body flushes with anger, more on Romy’s behalf than my own. I should feel sorry for Sharleen – I know her spite stems from envy, from wanting to be part of the Lost & Found, but it’s hard to be sympathetic. She gets a kick from hurting people, and she knows Romy is insecure about her looks.

  I shake her hand off my arm and turn to face her, prickling with indignation.

  ‘Just listen, Sharleen …’

  And that’s when it happens. I disappear.

  Black hole, secret hiding place, silence.

  I only know I’ve done it afterwards, when Sharleen is laughing and waving her hands about in front of my face, and Romy is asking if I’m OK.