Free The Bex Factor by Simon Packham Page B

ungrateful cow. You should actually be thanking him.’
    ‘What, for trashing my kitchen you mean?’
    Emily is painting the mess a kind of yellowy brown. ‘He’s helping me with my science project, Mum. Kyle mixed some plaster to make the crater with, didn’t you, Kyle?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘I see,’ says Mrs Layton. ‘And what is it exactly?’
    ‘It’s a volcano, of course,’ says Emily. ‘Named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.’
    ‘I thought it was that geezer with the big ears off the Star Trek movies,’ says Kyle.
    Mrs Layton pulls herself up on her crutches so she can get a better look. ‘Yes, yes, I can see it now.’ She turns to Kyle. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . .
.’
    Kyle shrugs and slops another bit of plaster onto the side of the volcano.
    ‘It’s not finished yet,’ I say. ‘We’re going to build a little village at the bottom, yeah? And when it’s dry we’re going to get some vinegar and baking
powder to make it erupt properly. Don’t worry, we’ll clean up and everything.’
    Mrs Layton mops up a pool of poster paint with a tea towel. ‘Then we’d better get a move on because The Tingle Factor ’s on in twenty minutes. Now, if Kyle here is
joining us, perhaps he’d be good enough to leave his boots by the back door.’
    The first part of The Tingle Factor (Road to Basic Training) is like watching a horror movie starring yourself as the main victim. When they break the news that
it’s Matthew they want to go through to Basic Training and not me, there’s this massive close-up of my ugly face, which gets bigger and bigger until it fills every centimetre of the
Laytons’ flat-screen telly and the zit on my nose looks like an erupting volcano. And yep, there they go – tears the size of tennis balls roll down my cheeks in slow motion when Justin
moves in for the kill: ‘You’ve got about as much chance of winning The Tingle Factor as my dead grandmother.’
    ‘That man’s a monster,’ says Mrs Layton. ‘How dare he talk to you like that?’
    ‘I said I should have thumped him,’ says Kyle, grabbing another handful of organic crisps.
    Next thing you know, the camera follows me down the corridor as far as the ladies’ toilets, where the voiceover man takes over: ‘They do say that singing in the bathroom can make you
sound better, but surely that’s taking things a bit far!’
    Talk about out of order. They’ve actually managed to make the worst day of my life look a million times more rubbish than it actually was. Everyone goes quiet. Kyle stops munching, Emily
nibbles her fingernails, Mrs Layton bites her bottom lip and I look through the sliding doors at her coffin, kind of wishing I was lying in it.
    But when Matthew tells the judges he only came to the audition because he wanted to support me, I start feeling better. And by the time he walks into Basic Training (looking quite cute in his
yellow hoodie) I’ve recovered enough to join in with the others and give him a cheer. That’s the way it always is with this show – after five minutes, you’re hooked.
    And there’s one contestant who stands out from all the rest. She’s cool, she’s confident, she’s gorgeous enough to make a supermodel vomit and I ought to hate her. But
you know what? When Twilight tells the judges that all she ever wanted was to make her mum happy, you can’t help liking her.
    ‘I didn’t know Matthew was into The Beatles,’ says Mrs Layton, looking dead proud as her son starts singing. ‘I thought he was into all that miserable stuff.’
    ‘He loves them,’ I say. ‘“The White Album” is, like, his second favourite of all time.’
    Mrs Layton cranes forward and squints at the screen. ‘Do you think he looks pale? I hope he’s eating all right.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘He told me the food was really good.’
    ‘Hang on a minute,’ says Mrs Layton. ‘He never tells me anything. How come you seem to know so much?’
    ‘He called me a