Jenny Q, Stitched Up

by Pauline McLynn

  I look around the class and there are all colours of skin to be seen – white, black, brown, freckled. I remember once at primary school a teacher brought in things that weren’t all they appeared to be, to show us not to judge by appearances alone. She had a passionfruit with her and we all said it looked like an old, dried poo, but then she cut it open and inside it was all juicy and delicious.

  Mr Foley is telling us all about how much work he is going to pile on to us this year, and so I start to zone out. The Gang has phones on silent but we can sneak looks at texts as they come in. Mine lights up, it’s from Uggs: MIKE HUSSY IS AN (_I_). I nearly choke on my snort of laughter – we have a new emoticon and it’s for arse = way cool and BAAAD(ass!). Dixie follows up with: HE’S A (__I__) = even better, a FAT ASS! I don’t know if I’ll be able to concentrate after such brilliance. All I can manage is to congratulate them both with: LOL!

  Bully 4 You

  ‘Why can’t people get on with one another?’ I ask Mum when I get home that afternoon. ‘Why do some of them have to be mean to other people?’

  She has a big sleepy head on her. She’s rubbing her bump and I think the critter is moving about a lot inside.

  ‘Is this something to do with school?’ she asks.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Well, not every group that’s put together is going to get on totally as a whole.’

  ‘Like being in a family,’ I say, and she smirks as if I’ve said something funny. But I didn’t mean to. It is like being in a family, surely? I mean to say, would I like Dermot if he wasn’t my brother? Maybe not. I probably wouldn’t even get to know him. I’m not sure I do know him, even though he is my brother. The only time I spend with him any more, really, is if we go on a family holiday.

  ‘Having to deal with different people can be a lesson in compromise,’ she says. ‘For the good of the group.’

  ‘But is that not just letting people get away with bad behaviour?’

  She looks at me seriously. ‘Is there a problem at school, Jenny?’

  I don’t know if I should be talking about this to an adult. No one likes a snitch. But she’s my MUM. She’s here to help, always, that’s the deal with mums. And dads too, for that matter.*

  ‘One of the boys is being mean to everyone, but especially Uggs. He says he doesn’t mind but I think he does. I know I do. I don’t like it, at all, but if we say anything, like, official, we might make things worse. Even sticking up for yourself gets you more grief from him.’

  ‘This boy is probably very unhappy.’

  Not my problem, I want to say, he shouldn’t take that out on other people, but I shrug instead.

  ‘Why don’t you leave it until Friday and if it has got any worse we’ll come up with a plan.’

  I nod, though it’s hardly a RESULT.

  ‘Kit Kat from the fridge?’ she asks.

  Does the bear poo in the wood?

  ‘Er, yeah.’

  I pass on the offer of pickles.

  It feels good to share, even if part of the sharing has involved my favourite snack. For a mad moment I want to tell Mum about Teen Factor X but I am so afraid of ridicule or even a smile at the idea of it that my self- confidence vanishes and I say nothing.

  I’m reading a book set in London in Victorian times and it’s full of adventures and smells and sounds and excitement and murders. It makes me feel nothing happens in my life. Is that a bad thing? IS it OK to live a dull life? Will I ever make my mark on the world? And should I? MUST I? What have I got to offer? I’m probably wasting lots of opportunities to use my talents, whatever they are. It makes me feel like I HAVE to go for Teen Factor X, rather than just wanting to. It makes me all jittery again, so even the Kit Kat has trouble settling me.

  I decide to do something practical,† so I go up to my room and start knitting a skinny tie for Dad with some green cotton that I have in my bag of yarns. This is something REAL and not a dream, like Teen Factor X. I can’t help but imagine what it would be like to win. I’m really not certain that showbiz is the life for me, especially now, at my age. The whole thing still fills me with fear. I guess I wonder if I’m in any way good enough at singing and I’m terrified in case I’m not. I wish I could juggle brilliantly and then that could be my act for the show and it would have novelty value and everything the judges and the public seem to want.

  I try to lose myself in the knitting, as I have been told is possible by my Lifestyle Guru (Dixie). Dix is actually a good teacher, and strict too. She’s slightly less sarcastic than the staff at Oakdale High but maybe that’s an age thing and she’ll grow more cynical as she gets older? She insists that the Knit ’n’ Knatterers double-check the instructions that come on the yarn – that way you’ll avoid a disaster later on when you might find your sleeves would suit an octopus’s arms rather than your own or that the sweater you knit is in fact a maxi-length dress.

  I’m still working with the two most basic stitches = KNIT and PURL. Dix says that if those are the only two I ever master I’ll still be able to make lots, and not just plain things.‡

  As I’m knitting and purling, I start to warble a tune, then I let rip altogether. My bedroom window is open so anyone might hear but I don’t mind. Then Gypsy starts yowling in the Nightingales’ garden and, believe me, she’s no help. Everyone says she’s singing along when she does this but I doubt that v v much.б Her doggy yodelling is so bad I actually start to laugh and cannot finish my song. I even drop some stitches. She is a proper menace.

  The Bus of Embarrassment

  Friday is always the best night of the week, knowing there is no school the next day. After loads of list-writing the Gang has a shopping trip planned this weekend, which will be large amounts of fun. Before I go to bed I hide my savings tin under it.* I had to start the sneakiness because Mum was forever ‘borrowing’† money. She says, in her defence, that she always puts it back, but the first time I noticed some missing I went into a proper strop about having a thief in the house. Quite rightly, I felt, but then I ended up having to apologize for throwing a hissy fit, even though I didn’t think I had anything to apologize for. Now I move the hiding place regularly so that no one is even tempted to steal – I mean borrow – from me any more.

  I have a good stash at the moment because I’ve been thrifty with my allowance and Mum and Dad pay us for special jobs around the house. I’ve been volunteering for lots of those, like washing the car or weeding in the garden. And Gran hates vacuuming, so she’s usually good for a few euros for that. Oh, and dusting: that is one boring activity! Of course I am a paid artist’s model too, from time to time, even if it is Gran who’s the ‘artist’.

  The next morning, the Gang get the bus and sit upstairs but not right at the front because we might look like total kids if we did and we’re teens now and have had to give up some of the fun childish things. I nearly lose my breath when Stevie Lee gets on a few stops after us and comes upstairs too. He’s with some of the lads and doesn’t bother to say hello. Well, actually we don’t look around because we’re being cool, so they’d have to be really UNcool if they were to try to get our attention, which they SO don’t need to do because they’re, like, SIXTEEN and needn’t bother with us. They sit in the long back seat and I just know my neck is bright red from him being close by, which he will SO see because my hair is in a ponytail. I hope I have no spots back there, either, flashing up even redder than my sweaty, red neck.‡

  I try to open the window above me to create a breeze but all that happens is that I catch my hand in it and then, when it’s ajar, a branch of a tree whips in through the space and thwacks me. I have to pretend it’s no big deal or everyone will be looking at me and if I draw attention to myself I just KNOW someone will remember the pants incident from the summer and mention it and I’ll be megamorto.

  I’m stinging from the window, the tree and major embarrassment now. Why do I have to be so clumsy? I feel slightly sick at the thought of falling off the stage during my Teen Factor X tryout.
Why did I even THINK of that? With the Quinn genes lurking in my body, now it’s almost guaranteed to happen. I glance guiltily at Uggs and Dix but decide that this is even more reason not to tell anyone so they don’t insist on coming along to witness my humiliation.

  You’d have thought it would be better when the bus stops for us to get off but that’s when it’s worst, if you ask me. I delay as long as possible so that anyone cool from Oakdale wanting our stop too might be ahead of us and have gone on to the mean streets of Dublin without noticing usб too much.

  I let Uggs and Dixie get a head start, but all that happens is that I delay TOO long and the bus has started to drive off so I have to come crashing down the stairs in a v v awkward way, shouting, ‘Wait, wait, this is my stop!’

  Like a lunatic.

  Most inelegant.

  Stevie Lee is right outside the bus doors as they fly open (mega ARGH!) and he helps to steady me when I tumble on to the footpath. He does actually look concerned, but also like he’s gonna burst out laughing. I brush him off with, ‘I’m fine, really, just couldn’t find something from my bag under the seat and then I lost my footing on the steps,’ which is (Way) Too Much Information.

  He goes, ‘You’re such a funny little thing.’

  Er, WHAT??? This is not good. A ‘funny, little THING’? Exsqueeze me?

  When he is safely out of earshot further up the street with his pals, Dixie says, ‘Way to go, lady!’

  She is the definition of irony§ with this. ‘You made an impact,’ she continues, for good measure.

  Uggs says, ‘Jen, there is never a dull moment with you around.’ And there’s no irony there: he means it.

  I am scarlet.

  We cool me down with an ice cream** and I find the will to carry on, JUST.

  Down Town

  First up, Uggs needs his bath-bomb ingredients to test out before making his main Christmas batch. Many of these can actually be bought in the baking aisle of the ordinary supermarket, so he’s already got most of what he needs, but citric acid costs a lot for small amounts there, so we head to an Asian shop to get it. Uggs said he asked about it in the local Oakdale Pharmacy and they wondered was he on drugs and he doesn’t know why (probably best not to either!).

  We buy what he needs and have to drag Dixie away from a v v vibrant henna, because one ‘scientific’ experiment is enough to be going on with and if she ends up with orange hair we’ll all be in trouble. We nip into a health shop and Uggs gets grapefruit oil to make the bombs nice and smelly. To be extra thrifty we’ll root around our bathrooms for other essential oils and donate some portion of those to him – I call it a spirit of ‘waste not, want not’.

  Dixie is no help on our quest because she just wants to clothes shop, even though she hasn’t got any money. She keeps wandering off or distracting us. We eventually give in and agree to visit Primark and River Island with her but, by then, the damage is done and all she wants is style checking, so we leave her to that and agree to meet her on O’Connell Street an hour later. So much for her getting all inspired to create gifts for others. Uggs is loyally coming to the wool shop but I feel a bit like I’m being stalked as he trails around after me.

  ‘I have to think about Gypsy’s little coat,’ he says, and I remember he has vowed to knit her one. Sometimes, though he is one of my Besties, I think he is odd and that mutt even odder.

  I spend a long time trying to persuade myself to stay within a strict budget on yarns but I fall in love with a deep purple colour in a cashmere mix and, even though it’ll have to be knitted on smallish needles and therefore take longer, I know I have to have it for Gran’s fingerless gloves.* I get a ball of black double-knit cotton and a lime green for Dermot’s hat, which is now going to have stripes as a result, and there are some balls of chunky light purple wool in the bargain basket for Mum’s cowl, along with a bobbly kind of mix that might look good as a fringing for that.†

  I should be glowing that I have done so well with my purchases but everywhere we go I see posters for the Teen Factor X auditions. The whole world will turn up and I won’t have a chance of progressing. It’s getting me down. Then it occurs to me that it’s all over Facebook too, so it’s not like everyone doesn’t know about it; the posters are just like tinsel on the readily available information. AND, while I’m at it, there have been adverts for it on television and radio. I really am densely stupid sometimes.

  Uggs stops me just before I get mown down by a taxi as I blindly cross a road. The angry, blaring horn brings me back to the Dublin street he has hauled me back on to.

  ‘What’s up, Jen?’ he asks. ‘You are so not you right now.’

  Oh no. There is something so trusting and trustworthy about his face that I blab all about wanting to try out for the show. It’s like I’m having an out-of-body experience as I hear myself tell him all about my fears and how I feel I can’t NOT try out now, and the song I’m considering and so on.

  ‘I think it’s a great idea,’ he says, and I can tell he means it. ‘You should defo go for it.’

  ‘But it’s a secret,’ I say. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’ And then, to make this a hundred milliondy times worse, I add, ‘Not even Dixie.’

  NO! I’ve said a Bad Thing. THE Bad Thing.

  We both realize that I have made a secret between our small gang of friends, two against one. I have to take it back but I CAN’T. If Uggs keeps this secret, I have divided us, the Gang, me (and no one else), by asking him to keep this knowledge to himself.

  There is a painful silence between us.

  I am more miserable than ever. So is Uggs. But if I agree to tell Dixie, then that will make it even MORE real. I’m not sure the Jenny Q nerves can handle that. My bag of quality knitting stuff feels as heavy as concrete as we walk along the street to meet Dixie.

  My BAD.

  Hell on Wheels

  My day should have been an adventure and a pleasure. Instead, I am left feeling like a total heel, and rightly so. I have done a bad thing and I am feeling it … acutely.*

  I am in a daze as we walk to O’Connell Street and, bless Uggs, he does his best to keep me in touch with the world around us.

  ‘Why are there so many clocks above the shops on this street?’ he asks.

  Normally that would provoke a fine discussion, a good argument even.

  ‘Would you have chosen a particular shop because you loved their clock?’ he wonders.

  Dixie is nowhere to be seen and I am glad cos when she appears I’ll have to plaster on a lying smile for her all over my vile face. How can I be such a betrayer of friendship? When did I become sneaky? WHY did I?

  ‘They’re not all agreed on the time,’ I say. ‘There’s a bit of a difference between them all.’

  ‘Five or ten minutes,’ he agrees. ‘If you chose the one the buses are ignoring, you’d be out of luck for getting home. There’s probably a big philosophical argument waiting to happen right there.’

  ‘Uggs …’ I start.

  ‘No, Jen, it’s OK,’ he says. ‘You’ll tell Dix when you’re ready. You don’t like being crowded and it’s a big thing you’re doing. Take your time.’

  How can this guy be so great? He’s thirteen too, so why can’t I be like him?

  Dixie slopes out of Primark to the left of us, plastered in make-up – she’s obviously let someone† loose on her face in a department store earlier. And it’s not just make-up; she’s clearly also been sprayed by any perfume seller she’s passed in the last two hours.

  She puts bits of hand and arm up to our noses, saying, ‘What do you think of that?’ The tip of my nose now has a concoction of odours on it and I’m not sure I like any of them.

  ‘Which clock are we going by?’ she asks, like she was listening in on some of our previous wonderings. She’s in tune with Uggs and me, even if she doesn’t know all of what has passed between us. I feel even worse now.

  ‘Not sure we can trust any of them,’ Uggs says.

  I feel this clock discussion
could start mirroring my life and how untrustworthy I am as a friend. If I can’t tell all my Bestests what I’m about, how can I be a true friend?

  The Heel of Humanity

  We head to the bus stop and who is waiting for our bus home? Only Stevie Lee & Co. and the EmmyLou Slinky, who is devoting herself to the Bolton Boy. He looks like he’s loving the attention. I am gutted. Shredded. And I feel I deserve it all.

  ‘She has a sticky-outy chin and a big, pointy nose,’ Dix says and, instead of laughing at her fabtasticness, I want to burst into loud, repentant sobs, telling her what a low-life I am and a bad, BAD friend.

  What’s great, though, is that she’s right: there is a certain amount of pointy-ness to the EmmySlinky face.* I love Dixie for saying it, which, in turn, makes me feel awful all over again.

  I am not worthy!

  ‘She’s SO not All That,’ Dix continues, oblivious to my discomfort at how life is showing me up to be (frankly) a SHIZZ.

  ‘NOT all that, fact,’ Uggs says.

  I am a HEEL, a paring from the rough, scaly, dry skin of the sole of Humanity. They are the shiny, bright nail-varnish-newly-applied-to pedicured feet that are really so lovely they don’t even need a pedicure at all.

  The bus comes. (On time, according to one city-centre clock, surely?) We go upstairs, as do all the Oakdale peeps, but this time I don’t play with the window or any passing branches of trees – I have done my bit for the amusement of humankind today. Mostly, I want to be home, safe, hidden.

  It’s a rattly journey and the sound of laughter from the back seat† is enough to make me want to throw myself off this vehicle at a high speed. Dixie is discussing underwear with Uggs and I’m pretending to be involved too, though I have a horrid buzzing in my head and I feel really shaky. She’s fallen in love with some peacock colours that she assures us are IT this season. She doesn’t seem to have got any inspiration for handmade gifts unless she’s going to make bras and knickers for her family and, really, knowing Dixie, I would not put that past her.