CHAPTER 1

The date was the biggest disaster of my life. I’m not even lying. Cannot handle school today after the humiliation of last night but Mum’s on the warpath, so I better not push it. Frankly, it’s a miracle I haven’t already been kicked out.

The sun beats down like it’s mad at me too, making me sweat so bad I feel like a basted chicken. I pop into the bakery on the way to school to buy a pink slice of sickly sweet cake. That much sugar could make the wicked stepmother crack a smile. The shop assistant tells me they’re on offer so I grab an extra slice for my best mate, Muzna. We’ve been tight forever: literally born on the same day and in the very same hospital. Muzna’s parents have always been proper strict, trying to raise her as the perfect Pakistani daughter. I’m perfect nothing, but it ain’t for lack of Dad trying.

Muzna thinks I lucked out with high cheekbones and big eyes. Those things might be Insta currency, but likes won’t buy you a bigger house or get you a good job. Muzna’s always getting top marks in class and has something smart to say. That’s the kind of stuff you can build a life on. Pretty isn’t forever.

When I get to school on the one day I need to pour my heart out the most, Muzna is nowhere to be found. Smirks and whispers surround me like fog, hounding my every step. Somehow everyone already knows about the date.

‘Hey,’ says a ginger kid, a football balanced under his arm. ‘Wanna visit my bedroom after school?’ He flicks his tongue in a way that makes me want to punch his lights out.

‘Say that again, see what happens,’ I warn.

He backs off, warily eyeing my clenched fist. The rumours have started and it’s not even 9 a.m.

At lunchtime, I finally corner Muzna in the dinner hall and I go to hug her, but she just bursts into tears and runs off, dumping her lunch in the bin. Muzna and me do not dump food in bins. We can’t afford to.

A folded sheet of pink paper by the bin catches my eye. Even before I’ve opened it, my heart’s taken the lift down to the basement of my soul. It’s from Muzna, begging me to understand that her parents will kill her if she’s seen with me after what happened last night.

I knew her parents were mad but I didn’t expect her to do this. Tariq screwed up and I get blamed.

A boy wolf whistles behind me and I whip round with a glare freshly baked in the fires of hell. ‘Easy, fam!’ he says. ‘Tariq said he hit all the bases last night. A home run on a first date!’

Tariq, I decide, needs his jaw wired shut. He’s by the lockers now, boasting to a crowd of pervy boys, making graphic gestures that leave me in no doubt what he’s on about. They see me coming and undress me with their eyes.

‘Gotta go! Bye!’ Tariq says bouncing.

‘Oi! You get your lying arse back here!’ I feel my skirt snag on something and spin round as a boy tries to lift it. I kick his phone out of his other hand so hard the screen has cracked before it even hits the floor.

‘You’re paying for that!’ he shrieks as I pelt down the corridor after Tariq.

Longer legs and a head start give him an advantage, but outrage spikes my adrenalin and soon enough I’m honing in on the idiot like a BS-seeking missile. Tariq makes the mistake of looking back once too often and runs straight into a ‘CLEANING IN PROGRESS’ sign. Feet tangling, arms pinwheeling, he hits the floor and rolls over. I land on him in a straddle, slamming into his belly with the force of an Anthony Joshua uppercut. Groaning, he grips my wrists before I do any real damage.

‘Why you spreading lies about me?’ I demand, fingers twitching.

‘I didn’t!’ he says. ‘I told them we spent last night together. It’s the truth!’

‘He did more than tell us,’ laughs a kid. Tariq looks daggers at him, shaking his head furiously. The kid continues undeterred. ‘My boy posted pics on Insta!’

Another kid, one I actually thought liked me, holds up a phone and my heart implodes. In the pic I’m asleep on a bed, but Tariq is posed behind me, bare shoulders and torso emerging from a duvet giving a cheesy thumbs up. One swipe later and my cheeks are burning. The next picture is of Tariq licking the side of my face like it’s made of chocolate. They say the camera never lies but this one ain’t telling the whole story.

‘Why would you do that?’ The betrayal makes me gasp.

‘Ain’t my fault you’re so easy.’ Wrong answer.

My fist connects with his jaw, whipping his face to the left with an audible crack.

‘Raaa! Tariq got Me-Tooed,’ quips some idiot in the crowd that’s started to gather now there’s a real fight on.

‘Don’t ever come at me with your BS again!’ I yell into his face. ‘Understand?’

He cowers. Point made, I get off him and turn to walk away.

‘Salma’s gonna be a movie star, y’all!’ Tariq yells behind me, humiliating me with the one needle of truth in a haystack of lies. He makes me wish so hard I hadn’t shown him my audition tape – why did I ever think I could trust him? Just cos he boo-hooed about his parents getting divorced? ‘Reckons she’s gonna be the new Cinderella.’

Shut up! Shut up! But he keeps right on, laying my soul bare for the entire world to laugh at.

‘Yeah, riiiiight!’ say the vicious glamour queens in disgust.

Once upon time, these three figured I was pretty enough to join their clique. Strutting round the school, ordering other students about like servants – it was a proposal nobody in their right mind would reject. But then they made the mistake of picking on Muzna for having too much facial hair. Muzzie’s super sensitive about stuff like that and I was done with their meanness. So I ditched them and they’ve haunted me ever since. Muzna wouldn’t let them get to me, told me that school wasn’t forever and that my acting talent would take me places.

But now I’ve lost Muzna and this boy is the reason.

‘The only movie you’ll be seeing Salma in,’ Tariq continues, a grin splitting his face, ‘is the kind that gets passed around the boys’ locker room!’

Howls of laugher and ‘Raa!’ swell around us, trapping me in an inescapable dome of humiliation.

The sympathy I felt for Tariq over his parents’ divorce burns in the inferno of my rage. I turn again, grabbing a fire extinguisher and lifting it over my head. Tariq’s left me with zero chill and is about to find out why that was such a big mistake.

‘Stop that right now!’ roars Mrs Roche, our Head of Year.

Problem is: I can’t. Floating five metres in the air, looking down on the scene, is the real me, as shook as everyone else. Down on the ground is feral Salma – the one Tariq’s lies created – preparing to teach him a lesson.

One of Tariq’s mates rips the fire extinguisher out of my hands while Mrs Roche yanks me backwards. Reflexively I round on her, snarling, ready to take a chunk out of her throat. Then just like that, two Salmas become one and I rein it in.

‘Come with me to the head teacher’s office. Now!’ Roche growls.

‘Bet she’s an animal in the sack an’ all!’ says a boy, making the assembly of onlookers double up in hysterics.

‘Cinderella?’ the mean girls scoff. ‘More like Skankerella. What a total slut!’