After wasting another minute faffing around with a broken strap on Alfie’s bass guitar the four members of Brontobyte nodded to each other, ready to play. When the boys rehearsed, Salman usually sang and played, but Alfie was a better musician, so for the competition he was on bass and Salman would just do vocals.

‘Hi, everyone,’ Salman said. ‘We’re contestant nine, from Carleton Road School. Our group is called Brontobyte and this is a song we wrote ourselves. It’s called “Christine”.’

A song I wrote, Jay thought, as he took a deep breath and positioned his fingers on the guitar.

They’d been in the school hall since ten that morning. Now it all came down to the next three minutes.

Copyright

HODDER CHILDREN’S BOOKS

First published in Great Britain in 2016

by Hodder & Stoughton

This ebook edition published in 2016

Text copyright © Robert Muchamore, 2016

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eBook conversion by PDQ Digital Media Solutions, Bungay, Suffolk

ISBN 978 1 444 91413 9

Hodder Children’s Books

An imprint of Hachette Children’s Group

Part of Hodder & Stoughton

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50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

If you liked this, you’ll love…

CONTENTS

1. Shorts

2. Balls

3. Trauma

4. Maggots

5. Boxes

6. Hose

7. Lynx

8. Skip

9. Arrival

10. Tales

11. Uniform

12. Scarper

13. Fence

14. Flood

15. Games

16. Staples

17. Pawn

18. Brother

19. Squelch

20. Bags

21. Judo

22. Rocky

23. Sky

24. Smart

25. Teeth

26. Hostel

27. Drawl

28. Bunks

29. Tapes

30. Structure

31. Medical

32. Weight

33. Best

34. Black

35. Border

36. Pussy

37. Surrender

38. Cluster

39. Tents

40. Bromance

Epilogue

Sneak Peek

Copyright

If you liked this, you’ll love…