‘And this,’ said Mayor Perry-Moore, ‘is my office.’

Jack and Vivi stood in the carpeted corridor outside the mayor’s chambers. Jack had shrugged away the mayoral robes as soon as the swearing-in ceremony was over. They were now being carried by the woman from the council who’d spoken at the school, as the mayor gave Jack and Vivi a tour of the council offices where they’d be spending most of the next week.

As far as Jack knew, Delilah was off filming Darylyn and Philo and Reese in the computer lab at school, where they were busy designing Jack’s balloon for the festival. He hoped she was going to be back to get plenty of vision of him in junior mayor mode. The producers needed to see him looking powerful and important if he was going to stand a chance of being voted onto the Bigwigs Board.

Mayor Perry-Moore was about to show Jack and Vivi through to his office when one of his phones buzzed. It was the third text in as many minutes. And just like the other times, it wasn’t the slim BlackBerry in his left jacket pocket that was buzzing; it was the cheap, basic-looking phone he kept in the other pocket.

‘Sorry,’ he said, a smirk playing at the corners of his mouth as he read the text. ‘Just got to answer this.’

With that, the mayor disappeared into his office, the door swinging not-quite-closed behind him.

‘He might be in there a while,’ said the woman from the council. ‘Can I get anything for either of you? A glass of water?’

Jack shook his head. Vivi asked for a mineral water. ‘Apple and guava would be great.’

‘I’m not sure we –’

‘Hmmm,’ said Vivi, frowning with junior deputy mayoral disappointment.

The woman smiled a tight smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Once the woman was gone, Vivi turned on Jack and stood there glaring at him, arms crossed over her chest. ‘I didn’t say this before, because I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of everyone. But now we’re alone, I’m going to call you out for the selfish, self-serving backstabber that you are.’

Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Okay, that’s kind of harsh …’

‘It’s not harsh at all. I was about to do something really cool with this Mayor for a Week thing, and you stole it from me.’ She glanced towards the half-shut door to the mayor’s office, then leant over to Jack. ‘You don’t even deserve it,’ she hissed. ‘You just got it because you cheated.’

‘First of all,’ said Jack, lowering his voice, ‘Mayor for a Week is not even that cool.’

‘True,’ conceded Vivi. ‘But it was my not-that-cool thing.’

‘Second,’ Jack continued, undeterred, ‘you can’t say I stole it. It’s not like you knew for sure you were going to get it.’

‘You’re right, Jack. It’s really unlikely I was going to win. I mean, they only went and made me deputy when they couldn’t make me mayor. Upland doesn’t even have an actual deputy mayor. Think about that for a second – I’m a junior version of something that doesn’t even exist!’

‘Sure, and you’re the only person in the world who’s ever had to put up with being in second place,’ Jack muttered.

Vivi frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Jack ignored the question. ‘And you’re wrong about me not deserving it, anyway. I was on Bigwigs, remember? I’ve done this kind of thing before. That’s real world experience, right there.’

‘Reality TV is not the real world, Jack.’

‘It’s more real than writing an essay,’ he snapped back. ‘And while we’re on the topic of betrayals, let’s talk about you and Reese and Darylyn, shall we? I spent the whole holidays not knowing if we were even friends or not. You guys ditched me. I get that Reese and Darylyn were probably busy “getting to know each other” – and, yes, I mean that in a totally disgusting way. And now it’s pretty obvious that you and Sampson were doing the same thing.’ He swayed his pelvis in a vague attempt to simulate whatever it was he imagined Vivi and Sampson had been doing all holidays. Which, judging by his impression, was a cross between practising the samba and playing the party game of passing oranges to each other with their knees.

Vivi looked disturbed. ‘That wasn’t … You’ve got it totally wrong. I’d barely spoken a word to Oliver before that soccer match.’

‘Well, you’ve definitely been making up for lost time.’

‘Now you’re just being gross. But, actually, you’re right. I have got to know him since then. And I think you’re being totally unfair to him.’

Jack wondered how well Vivi really knew Sampson. Did she know he’d called Jack a ‘baldy balls’ in front of everyone else in the changing rooms? Did she know about his secret identity as ModLSkillz, bad-mouthing Jack on the Bigwigs forum?

‘There’s something you don’t know about Oliver,’ said Vivi, stealing the very same words that Jack was gearing up to say. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Oliver sent in an application for Bigwigs, the year after you were on. And they said no. He lost to someone else. Which, I don’t know, might sound familiar? I’m just saying.’

‘Right,’ said Jack, rolling his eyes. ‘And that makes me the all-round worst person ever.’

‘Bigwigs is like a beehive of bad memories for Oliver,’ Vivi went on. ‘And now you’re poking and prodding at it with this reunion episode thing. You’ve probably undone months of therapy.’

That was sort of the idea, thought Jack. He’d had to fight back against Sampson’s testosterone firestorm somehow. It wasn’t his fault that Bigwigs was the only weapon he had.

‘Yeah,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Poor Sampson, with all his freakishly enormous man-parts. I bet that sucks.’ He crooked his elbow into his groin and let his arm dangle forward like an elephant’s trunk, then swayed it from side to side as he honked out the words, ‘What. A. Tragedy.’

‘Here’s your mineral water, Miss Junior Deputy Mayor.’

Jack looked awkwardly over his shoulder as the woman returned and handed Vivi a bottle of pale-green mineral water with a straw in it. He couldn’t think of any way to explain what he was doing, so he just held his pose.

‘I won’t ask,’ said the woman.

‘I’d struggle for an answer, to be honest,’ said Jack, straightening up again.

The woman looked into the mayor’s office and said, ‘I think he’s ready for you.’

Vivi leant towards Jack as they were both ushered inside. ‘I don’t know what your deal is with Oliver,’ she whispered. ‘But if you could give him a job on your team – if you gave him some proper screen time on Bigwigs – then I might not think you’re a totally awful person.’ She pulled out her phone. ‘I’m texting you his number now. So you’ve got no excuse.’

Jack had no intention of giving Sampson any more Bigwigs screen time. ‘What if he says no?’

‘Then I’ll just assume you weren’t trying hard enough. Either that, or …’

‘Or what?’

‘Or that you really don’t care what I think of you.’

Jack couldn’t believe it. The reason all of this had happened in the first place was because he cared what Vivi and Reese and Darylyn thought of him. He was so concerned about their opinion of him that he’d tried to fake puberty to stay friends with them.

Did he really have it in him to keep up that charade and be a good Samaritan to Sampson as well?