Read Online Fizzypop by Jean Ure - Free Book Online Page A

just might have done, I’d have quickly turned it back off. I wouldn’t want to get burnt again, would I?
    I hurtled down the stairs to find Rags busily ripping and tearing at something. Fortunately it was the local paper, not the post, but I still yelled at him.
    â€œRags! Get off!”
    I like the local paper, it has interesting headlines. Like last week it had been, DOCTORS CURED MY SON’S FLAT HEAD . This week it was, RAT THE SIZE OF CAT IN WOMAN’S BACK GARDEN , except I couldn’t get to read about it cos of Rags having torn the front page to shreds.
    â€œStupid dog!” I said, but he only grinned, like it was some big joke. He never takes me seriously.
    I sat at the foot of the stairs to read what was left. Mostly sport and cars. I’m not into either of them, so I chucked the pages at Rags, who immediately jumped on them and began his shredding act. Near the back of the paper there’s a page called YOUTH CULTURE . That is more my sort of thing. Rags had torn it down the middle, so I fitted the pieces together – and had a bit of a shock. Cos there, staring up at me, was a girl who looked incredibly like the drawing Jem had done of her birth mum. There was a long interview with her, taking up half the page, under the heading LOCAL GIRL MAKES GOOD .
    Her name was Mia Jelena, and it seemed she was some kind of a singer.
    â€œHave you ever heard of her?” I asked Angel, who had just rudely shoved past me on her way down the stairs.
    â€œWho?” She peered over my shoulder. “Mia Jelena? Of course I’ve heard of her! She’s famous. Hey, give me that!”
    She made a grab at the paper, but I whisked it out of her way.
    â€œI got it first!”
    â€œLooks like that dog got it first.”
    â€œHe likes to read things,” I said. “He’s an intellectual. You can have it when I’m through.”
    â€œWell, just don’t take all day!”
    â€œI won’t,” I said. “I’m a very fast reader.”
    But by the time I came to the end of the article I’d forgotten all about Angel. My heart was pumping, furiously. The blood was pounding in my ears. I’d solved Jem’s mystery!
    It was all there, in front of me, printed in the paper. It couldn’t be clearer! I forced myself to stay calm – a little bit calm – and started to read the article again, more slowly, this time, just to make sure. I wouldn’t want to get Jem’s hopes up for nothing.
    LOCAL GIRL MAKES GOOD
    It’s only been a few months since singer Mia Jelena released her first attention-grabbing album, Gonna Get Going , for Pineapple Records, but already she’s being hailed as the new Queen of Soul. Now she’s back with album no. 2, There’s Got to be Love , and she’s coming to the Daycroft Halls on 15 th December as part of a nationwide tour to celebrate her success.
    I asked Mia how it felt, to be coming back to the town where she grew up and where, as she herself has admitted, life was not always easy. She agrees that it wasn’t, but says that that is all behind her.
    â€œI can look back now and remember the good times, not just the bad.”
    I ask her what the good times were, and she says, “Mainly school. I went to Hillcrest and I made lots of really great friends there, though I didn’t always behave as well as I should. I used to get into lots of trouble for talking too much and not paying attention. I was a bit of a naughty girl in those days!”
    And the bad times? She doesn’t shy away from the question.
    â€œThe bad times,” she says, “were being in a children’s home and then with foster parents. We didn’t really get on. I can see now that it was probably my fault as much as theirs, but we had absolutely nothing in common and it made for a very difficult few years.”
    â€œI believe you actually left home when you were only sixteen?”
    â€œYes, I