Jasmine nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“Anything else nice?” asked Miss Honeywell.
Jasmine didn’t respond and the hiss of the cisterns got louder again. She started counting the drips from the tap. It wasn’t long before the door squeaked again. Miss Honeywell’s skirts swished as she hurried to the door.
“Is there anyone else in there with the two of you?” Mr Harvey’s voice was low.
“No, just us,” said Miss Honeywell.
“Okay, her father’s here…”
The door complained as it was opened wider and familiar footsteps entered. Jasmine listened.
“Jaz, you there?” her father’s voice penetrated the silence.
Jasmine tried to hold back the tears that welled immediately.
“Jaz…”
Jasmine couldn’t explain the emotions that coursed right through her. She wiped her face on her sleeve, rubbed hard and blew her nose, and shakily got to her feet. She fumbled with the lock as she opened the toilet door. Relief and love surged, overwhelming her as she collapsed into her dad’s uniformed arms. What she couldn’t understand was the disappointment that followed, leaving a hollow in her stomach.
“Where’s Mum?” she sniffed.
Dad hugged her tight. “She couldn’t get out of work, but it’s okay, honey, I’m here.”
She buried her face in his jacket and clasped him tight, and fresh tears flowed, but the ever widening gulf deep within her heart echoed with despair.
Dry your eyes and wash your face,” Jasmine’s dad told her, “We need to go and see the Head.” Jasmine dutifully splashed cold water across her face and stared in the mirror as Dad moved across the bathroom. “I’ll wait outside.”
Miss Honeywell stood by the window, leaning on the radiator. “Gosh, this is hot!” she exclaimed. “No wonder the heating bills are so high, it’s like a sauna in here!”
Jasmine gazed in the cloudy mirror. Her eyes were red, and her cheeks stained with blotchy patches and streaked make up. She sighed and didn’t even have enough strength to shake her head. She ran the cold water tap and ducked her head, splashing more cold water onto her cheeks. She rubbed with her fingers, scrubbing blue, green and plum smudges off her skin, until her cheeks were red and sore. Then she just stared at her reflection.
Numbness spread further than her skin, it filtered deep inside, and the girl in the mirror looked like a puffy-eyed stranger. The bare-faced image was of someone scared and vulnerable, and definitely not her.
She slapped her cheeks, and smoothed her hands over her face, then rubbed her eyes and tousled her hair. She sniffed and rummaged in her bag, pulling out her black kohl pencil. She widened her eyes and applied eyeliner, smudging it across the lids and beneath her eyes. Out of the corner of her eye in the mirror’s reflection she caught Miss Honeywell watching her with a curious raised eyebrow. Jasmine gave a wry smile. “Mrs Rhodes would be pleased, it’s all gone.”
Miss Honeywell smiled. “And I never really saw it. I’ll never know what it was all about.”
Jasmine grinned and pushed back her sleeve. “This…” She displayed her arm. “I drew this on my eyes. It was all about this.”
“Do you take art?” asked Miss Honeywell.
Jasmine nodded. “But I’m not that good, I’m okay, but I’m better at writing. I’m just no good at maths and that’s what counts with maths teachers!”
Miss Honeywell gave a small laugh. “It is. Maybe you should confine the art to the art room, if only to avoid this chaos. I like what you’ve done there though, it’s very good.”
“Thanks.”
“Now, your father’s waiting, you look somewhat normal, and we need to go and face the music. Do you want me to come with you?”
Jasmine smiled at the teacher and shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine, I’m always fine.”
Miss Honeywell pushed away from the radiator and her heels clipped across the tiled floor. She placed a hand on Jasmine’s arm, a soft, noncommittal hand. “If you ever want to talk, Jasmine, you know where I am.”
Jasmine nodded, her eyes welling up again.
“Really, I may be head of year eight, not ten, but I’m there for anyone who needs me. It’s quite nice to get different problems to face, so if you’ve ever got one…”
Jasmine nodded again and hitched her bag up onto her shoulder. Miss Honeywell smiled and gently steered the girl towards the door. At the door, Jasmine paused, she really wanted to hug Miss Honeywell, really wanted to thank her, but only a watery smile escaped her lips.
The teacher nodded. “I know.”
Dinner was a quiet affair.
Mum was tight-lipped and Dad’s sympathetic smiles didn’t ease the tension. Jasmine ate in silence. When the plates were finally pushed aside, Mum glanced at Jasmine and then at her husband.
“Joe?” she began.
Dad shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tapped his spoon on the table.
“Joe, we need to talk about this.”
“Well, I’ll be in my room then,” said Jasmine, pushing out her chair so violently that the table wobbled and the vase of narcissi and grape hyacinths trembled.
Mum held up her hand. “Not this time.”
“You don’t need me here,” began Jasmine.
“I think we do,” said her mother.
Dad nodded. “Your mother’s right. After today and after all the other days…we need to discuss this.”
Jasmine slumped back down into the chair and the heavy black chains around her neck clunked on the table as she laid down her head.
They sat in silence for a few moments.
Jasmine lifted her head. “So?” She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “What are we talking about?”
Silence remained and Jasmine sighed. Mum and Dad shared concerned looks and it took all of Jasmine’s willpower not to growl in frustration. Instead she gazed about the room, from the flower arrangement on the table to the pictures on the walls. Three beautiful portraits of cats adorned the walls, making Jasmine’s head shake, almost imperceptibly. The striking cats stared at her with aloof superiority and she wished she could conjure the same expression. She’d be a cat if she could choose to be an animal, solitary and wild.
Her eyes roamed the wall, settling on a small frame close to Mum’s cork board. She scowled. The pretty frame held a small piece of torn notepaper mounted on purple card. Freya’s list stared out at her. A short list of ten things scrawled by Freya and left in a book, the making faces book, and discovered by Mum after Freya had died. Jasmine stared at the list of her sister’s dreams and couldn’t take the silence anymore. “C’mon, let’s get this over with, what are we talking about?”
Mum bristled. “I think you know.”
“Yeah, and what do you want me to do about it?” said Jasmine.
“I want you to stop!” her mother’s voice rose.
Dad put his hand on his wife’s arm and she shook it off. He frowned and spoke to his daughter. “Jaz, it does need to stop. For a start it’s not easy getting time off work to come and get you…”
“Mum could have come.”
“It’s not easy for me either!”
“Rachel,” Dad warned Mum. “It’s not easy for either of us, Jaz. And you shouldn’t be missing school, not during your major exam years.”
“We need to know what’s going on.” Mum caught Jasmine’s eye. “What’s gone wrong? Are you being bullied? Is it the work? Do you want to change subjects, classes? You need to tell us what’s happening and why it’s coming out at school. I…” She held up her hand again as Jasmine opened her mouth to speak. “I don’t think I can take any more of this. These phone calls, never knowing who’s going to call or why, and having to go down to the school to bail you out!”
“I’m not in jail. You’re not bailing me out!”
“It feels like we are!” Mum’s frustration surfaced.
Jasmine scowled.
“You can take that look off your face too!” said Mum.
“We need to be sure this isn’t going to happen again.” Dad stroked Mum’s arm and she slapped him away.
“Look, we’re not…I’m not going to play good cop bad cop on this one, because I always know which one I end up as, we need to work together and sort this out.” Mum laid her palms flat on the table. “You need to talk to us.”
“Talk!” Jasmine scoffed. “We don’t talk in this house, at least not with me!”
“We do!” cried Mum, “We’re an open family, no secrets. We’ve always been open with you, talked with you…”
“Talked with me! Not sure we live in the same house. I’m rather the odd one out here! Things happen and I’m just not part of it!” Jasmine pushed her chair back. “No one ever asks me how I feel.”
“What do you mean? We talk!” said Mum.
“You talk, I listen…sometimes,” she added muttering under her breath.
“I just want to know what’s happening to you, with you?” said Mum.
“Well, that’s a first…”
“Jasmine! I don’t know what it is I’ve done to be treated like this, why are you always so against me?”
“I’m not against you. I’m just never with you!” Jasmine felt tears prickle, matching the glistening in her mother’s eyes.
“Can’t we just sort this out, is it school? Is it me?” asked Mum.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” said Dad. “Otherwise we’d not have been called up to the school…”
“It’s nothing, it really is nothing! It’s not school, it’s not you—it’s me. That’s all it is, me, just me!” Jasmine jumped up from her chair and flashed her eyes at them. For a moment she almost melted as her dad stared at her. Maybe she could share how she felt, maybe she could tell them how difficult it was living in Freya’s shadow, but then he glanced at Mum and his eyes softened. Jasmine knew she’d lost him. “It’s just me!”
She stormed out of the room, slamming the lounge door and thumping up the stairs in her boots. She slammed her bedroom door and dived onto her bed. Downstairs she could hear raised voices in the dining room below.
She buried her face in her pillow, trying to block out the voices, but her parents continued arguing, and in time she could hear noisy sobs emanating through the floor boards. She groaned into her pillow and threw it onto the floor. She grabbed her leather jacket and took her usual course of action.
She flung open her window and climbed up onto the sill, in moments she was out on the extension roof and lowering herself down onto the garden wall. This time she balanced like a cat along the entire wall until leaping off into the field behind the garden. Then she ran, through the long grass and up the incline, fully aware of her parents’ gaping stares from the dining room.
Just past the old oak stump was a log, a strip of shattered trunk. It was all that remained of the old oak after lightning struck seven years earlier. It had been left because it resembled a bench and had weathered beautifully over the years.
Jasmine threw herself onto the bench, fitting into the weather-beaten curves of silver wood. The clouds rushed by overhead, grey and stormy, and she allowed her imagination to take her away, losing her ire in the stories that formed with every cloud.
Jasmine kept herself to herself at school and even resisted the urge to doodle on her face. Mrs Rhodes ignored her, but Miss Honeywell made a point of looking her up and Jasmine had a genuine smile for her that eluded the rest of the staff.
It was the same at home, Dad got smiles and Mum got ignored.
Time flew by like the clouds in Jasmine’s sky.
Tension bloomed as the daffodils died. Mum stood by the window staring out across the garden. “Where are the bluebells?” she asked, her voice wobbling.
Jasmine sighed with impatience. Her mother’s preoccupation with bluebells was almost as bad as her obsession with rainbows.
“They’re usually out by now…” she continued.
Jasmine put down her pen and gazed at her mother’s silhouette at the dining room window.
“It’s coming up to the end of April—the bluebells are always out.” Now Mum’s voice caught and Jasmine knew tears would soon follow. “Freya needs bluebells.” She sniffed and raised a hand to her eyes.
“Freya doesn’t need bluebells…” mumbled Jasmine. “Freya doesn’t need anything.” She picked up her pen and resumed scribbling in her notepad.
“It’s April, there have to be bluebells.”
Jasmine snorted and cast her pen down on the sofa.
“There are always bluebells in April. It’s Freya’s anniversary. We had lots of them at her funeral.” Mum sniffed again and Jasmine shook her head. There would be no writing done today.
“Mum, it’s a cold spring, they’re probably late this year and they usually come out in May more than April,” she called through from the lounge.
“But we had them in April, for the funeral.”
“That was fourteen years ago, seasons change each year.” Jasmine sat forward on the sofa, watching her mother lean against the window. “Anyway they are there, they just haven’t flowered yet.”
There was a large clump of bluebells beneath the apple tree in the garden, and she knew that was where her mother was gazing. Their strappy leaves, green and glossy, stood proud, but the flowers had yet to open. The little bells on each stem didn’t know there was a time limit and they had no idea they were supposed to open for Freya.
Jasmine knew. She was well aware of the date. For many years she’d accompanied her parents, and then just her mother, to the park gates with a handful of limp bluebells.
It was something Dad stopped doing after he came to terms with his oldest daughter’s death.
Mum still did it. She rose early and collected a bunch of bluebells and walked down to the park. She laid the flowers on the ground by the gates where the car accident had happened. After shedding a few tears she’d go and sit on the swing in the children’s park. She’d be gone for an hour or so, then arrive home with a tear stained face and trembling shoulders, kiss her husband goodbye as he left for work, and raise Jasmine to get up for school.
Right now there were no bluebells and Mum’s pilgrimage to the park was only a few days away.
“They’re not usually this late…” lamented Mum.
Jasmine grabbed her pen. “I’m going upstairs.” She doubted Mum even heard her as she traipsed up the stairs. Irritation prickled and instead of going to her own room, she burst into her parents’ bedroom. She sat on Mum’s side of the bed and shook her head. She grabbed a teddy bear from her mother’s pillow.
“You! You have a lot to answer for!” she exclaimed. “Stupid teddy bear.” She stared into the teddy’s glassy eyes, holding him by his shoulders. “Stupid, stupid, Purple Ted!” She bared her teeth. “You remind her, every day. Damn it, everything reminds her!”
Jasmine shook her head and scrunched the teddy bear up in her hands.
“Damn you!” she cried and hurled him across the room. “Damn you!”
When Jasmine growled, the whole class knew there would be trouble.
Mr Reinholdt stood behind his desk, his sweaty hands gesticulating nervously as Jasmine stood up.
“I don’t care if they’re red!” Jasmine seethed.
“School rules should be taken seriously…” Tayla continued talking. “It says black shoes only. I don’t see anywhere where it says red shoes are fine. Or are there other rules for you?”
“Girls, we’re talking about the Central Business District, not shoes…” Mr Reinholdt stammered.
“We did mention shoe shops, Sir,” pointed out Amber.
“And we’re discussing Jasmine’s shoes,” said Tayla. “Those red ones.” She aimed her finger at the floor.
“And they’re burgundy, not red, dark burgundy!” Jasmine snarled.
“I don’t care what exact colour they are,
you can’t have different rules to us!” said Tayla. “That’s hardly fair is it? I mean what if I want to wear my new boots, my grey ones? I can’t, because they’re not black!” She curled her lip. “And at least mine would be fashionable, not like those monstrosities—are you trying to tell us something with those, dahhhling? Do you fancy a piece of me? Mwah!” Tayla giggled, running her hand through her hair and kissing the air in Jasmine’s direction.
“You’re going to get mine up your…”
“Jasmine Scott!” Mr Reinholdt found his voice again.
“My what?” snorted Tayla.
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, and Tayla made the mistake of turning her back. Jasmine was beside Tayla in a moment. “What sort of kiss do you want? A Glasgow one…or?” Her face was beside Tayla’s and her expression of disgust only irked Jasmine more.
“Ughh! Go away, you freak!” Tayla slapped Jasmine and Jasmine grabbed her hand.
Tayla pushed her chair back and reached out to shove Jasmine, but as she did so, her chair fell backwards and Tayla ended up on the floor. Jasmine grinned and Tayla leaped back up onto her feet. The two girls faced each other, almost nose-to-nose, and aggression permeated the entire classroom.
“Jasmine, Tayla!” Mr Reinholdt tried to assert himself. “Jasmine back to your seat, Tayla, sit down!”
Neither girl moved.
Jasmine’s hands trembled. Tayla’s eye twitched.
“Girls!” Mr Reinholdt had no effect.
“Meeeeowww!” One of the boys yowled at the back of the classroom, and Tayla sprang.
She got a slap in across Jasmine’s cheek. Jasmine lost control.
“Cat fight!” another boy yowled and the class joined in.
Tayla and Jasmine were a mess of arms and hair. Jasmine grabbed Tayla’s long ponytail and yanked. Tayla screamed and grabbed back, scratching and swiping at Jasmine. Manicured nails sliced into Jasmine’s neck and she seized Tayla’s hands. The next shriek was ear piercing and came from Tayla. “Blood! I’m bleeding!”
Jasmine let go, stunned for a moment. Both girls stared at each other. Tayla grasped her hand and cautiously let go, staring at her wrist. “She bit me!” Tayla gazed in shock. “The animal bit me, look!” She wildly swung her arm out to show the bite mark on her wrist and the blood on her hand.
Beneath the Distant Star Page 4