Free The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Page A

friends?
In home news, you may be happy to hear that I have been selected for this year’s national talent showcase event. I, Oscar Dunleavy, will be representing our school.
Paloma says lots of people would have liked to be selected so I should count myself lucky. She said in factthat she might have liked to use the competition as the opportunity to display these dress designs that she’s supposed to be incredibly good at. She reckons that if she hadn’t encouraged me to show off my apple tarts in the first place, then other talents might have been in with a chance of being considered. She said that I had had a very handy break and that I should be grateful to her, which I am.
But now she says she doesn’t care and that as a matter of fact, she hopes I win. I deserve everything that people with my kind of skill deserve and she has to admit that, after all, the tarts are delicious.
She’s helping me with a practice run in front of the whole class. She’s very supportive. She really wants me to get it right and spends ages talking to me about it. Andy and Greg learned iMovie over the summer and they’re going to do a big interview with me in front of everyone, and so no doubt I will be an Internet sensation before long—ha ha.
Oscar xx
    The thing was that Paloma was very impressed with my tarts, and I was glad. What she wasn’t too keen on was me being chosen for the talent showcase “just like that” and when she had a chance to explain, I saw that she had a fair point. She’d clicked her long, slender, nail-polished fingers to illustrate how quickly and randomly the decision had been made.
    â€œSurely someone shouldn’t be chosen like that without giving other people a chance? Surely everyone should have the opportunity to show what they can do before the winner is selected?”
    Mr. O’Leary was insistent.
    â€œQuiet now, Paloma, please,” he’d said. “Of course, we don’tneed a competition; we know who we’re going to put forward from class 3R. Oscar. Oscar Dunleavy and his beautiful apple tarts with the exquisite motifs—they are amazing.”
    â€œNo one ever won a talent competition with
food
,” she’d objected.
    â€œYes, they did,” Alison Carthy had butted in. “A guy on
Britain’s Got Talent
got through to the live shows with artistic toast.”
    â€œYeah, see, think about how ridiculous that even sounds. Apple tarts are equally weird and our whole class isn’t just going to be the laughingstock of the school. If he gets through, the whole bloody world will be laughing at us. It’s not fair. Other talented people are in this class. We should at least have a chance to show what we can do.”
    Later, at the windows, Paloma said she hoped I appreciated where she was coming from. She hadn’t meant to disrespect my skill, and she wanted me to realize that it was nothing personal.
    â€œNo offense,” she’d said. “I’m a hundred percent on your side when it comes to your talent. It’s just that somebody needs to stand up for democracy and freedom of speech and fairness for all.”
    Not bad things to stand up for, I agreed, when I’d had more of a chance to think about it.

the eleventh slice

    He’d promised me that everything was going to be exactly the same. I’d heard him say it, and he’d been looking straight into my face sitting in the window where I thought he was always going to be waiting for me. But Oscar had lied to me and I knew that now, because everything was becoming completely different.
    Someone else was in the middle of taking my place, living in my room, hanging out of my window, having huge long conversations with him, helping him with regional talent showcases, and talking to him about apple tarts and competitions and who knows what else, right there in the place where I used to be.
    I didn’t want to talk to him or email him or