Jemima Small Versus the Universe

by Tamsin Winter

“Don’t listen to Rat Face,” Miki said, pushing his top lip above his teeth, and wiggling his fingers next to his cheeks so they looked like whiskers. I tried to smile. Miki always called Lottie “Rat Face”. Weirdly, she didn’t seem to mind. “It will be okay, Jem,” he said. “No one cares about how much anyone weighs.”

  I pointed my pen at Lottie.

  “Okay, maybe Rat Face, but who cares what she thinks?”

  I glanced back at Lottie. Her face was a bit pointy and her eyes were kind of beady-looking. But she was still pretty, so you wouldn’t notice the rattiness unless you looked really closely. Or you got to know her personality.

  “So,” Mr Shaw said after he’d written up some predictions, “who would like to go first?”

  He actually looked surprised when no hands went up. I thought about asking to go to the toilet and staying in there all lesson. But if I put my hand up now, Mr Shaw would think I was volunteering. I could say my stomach was hurting, like I had the norovirus. I watched Mr Shaw checking his clipboard, wondering if science teachers got any medical training.

  “All right then,” Mr Shaw said. “We’ll do it alphabetically.”

  It’s the only time in my life I’ve been glad my surname’s Small. Mr Shaw called Erin to the front. Her cheeks went bright red even though she was one of the thinnest girls in our class. She stood against the measuring stick, then covered her cheeks when she got on the scales. She didn’t even look when Mr Shaw typed 193 bananas into the Banan-ometer chart on the board. A few people laughed as though that was a lot of bananas to weigh. But it wasn’t. If they’d calculated it, they’d realize 193 bananas was hardly anything.

  As more people went up to get measured and weighed, people stopped laughing as much, and the class total on the Banan-ometer chart kept creeping up. Lottie weighed a perfect two hundred bananas. Miki weighed a few more than Lottie; Rohan weighed thirty-two bananas more than Miki; Afzal weighed a few less than that; Alina weighed slightly more than Lottie. I stopped looking at the chart after a while. The whole thing felt like a horrible practical joke. I prayed to God to time-travel me out of this moment. And I don’t even believe in God. Or time travel.

  When Mr Shaw called out my name, the lab went completely silent. My stool scraped against the floor as I slowly stood up, still trying to think of a way out of it. Caleb whispered that I’d break the scales, and Mr Shaw told everyone he didn’t want to hear any comments at all or there’d be detentions. Then it went silent again, which felt worse. I knew people were probably thinking horrible stuff in their heads.

  My cheeks burned as I took off my shoes and let Mr Shaw measure my height. Then I felt the heat drain out of my body as I stepped onto the scales. I looked down and swallowed. It took me about two seconds to work out how many bananas I weighed. It was more than anyone else on the board. Just like I knew it would be. I watched Mr Shaw record it on his clipboard. There was no way I wanted my weight on the screen for everyone to see. Being top of that chart was not like coming first. It was coming last.

  And that’s when I noticed the tray of beakers. The ones we used for chemistry experiments, like what you’re supposed to do in science lessons, not stupid weigh-ins. The tray was on the edge of Mr Shaw’s desk, right next to where I was standing. I quickly took a step backwards towards the tray and stuck out my arm until I’d pushed it off. I heard glass explode over the floor.

  “Jemima Small!” Mr Shaw shouted. Like I didn’t know my own name.

  “Sorry, sir!” I said quickly. “It was an accident.” The beakers had smashed on the floor in clusters, like tiny, transparent galaxies of stars. I could see some inside my shoes.

  “An accident!” He shook glass off his feet and tried to find somewhere safe to step. “I saw you tip the tray over with my own eyes!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. But teachers never think you mean it.

  Mr Shaw took a deep breath. “Right, Jemima, very carefully put your shoes back on then go and wait in the science office, please. And could someone fetch the technicians and tell them what’s happened?”

  Lottie’s hand shot up to volunteer.

  In the office, a few minutes later, Mr Shaw said he appreciated that being weighed in front of my class might have been uncomfortable. Might. I stopped listening after that. The last thing I needed was a lecture from the inventor of the Banan-ometer. He said I’d have to see Mrs Savage at lunchtime and that I was to work in the science office for the rest of that lesson and break time. It smelled of coffee and my stomach was spinning like it had VFTS-102 in it. That’s the fastest revolving star. It spins at a million miles per hour. But even feeling like that was better than seeing my weight up on the screen.

  I know that weight is partly gravity. And if I lived on the moon, I’d hardly weigh anything at all. Unfortunately, I live on Earth. And I have a teacher who thought it was fun to find out I weighed more bananas than anyone else on the planet.

  At lunchtime, Miki waited with me outside Mrs Savage’s office. I imagined this was how Anne Boleyn felt in 1536 when she was waiting to be executed. Only she got to wear a special royal robe, not a Clifton Academy blazer with an ink stain on the sleeve. I looked up at the brass sign on the door. Mrs Savage had an adjective for her surname like me. I knew from previous experience that it suited her.

  “Jemima.” Mrs Savage’s face appeared round the door. “Do come in.”

  Miki whispered, “Good luck,” as I pulled down my blazer sleeve to hide the ink stain under my fingers.

  Inside her office, Mrs Savage put her elbows on the desk and leaned her fingertips against each other, creating a kind of squashed rhombus shape. Her nails were coral-pink, so she was breaking her own school rule about nail varnish. “Now,” she said softly, “I’d like you to tell me what happened in your science lesson this morning.”

  “It was an accident, miss.”

  She glared at me.

  “I mean, Mrs.”

  Her glare intensified.

  I gulped. “Savage.”

  She huffed. “An accident?” She turned to her computer screen and clicked the mouse a few times. “That’s not quite the way Mr Shaw describes it. ‘She deliberately knocked over an entire tray of conical beakers’.” Her voice went up at the end like she was asking a question.

  “It could have been the angle,” I said. “From where he was standing, Mr Shaw’s field of vision would have been limited. I’m not saying he’s lying just—”

  She put her hand up for me to stop talking. It was pretty rude of her, but I didn’t point that out. It was what my dad would call a mature decision.

  “Jemima, that’s not what I mean. This incident occurred as you were being weighed, isn’t that right?”

  I swallowed.

  “Because I am sympathetic to the fact that some of our students might be a little” – her eyes travelled down to my stomach then quickly back up again – “reluctant to have their weight shared with their class. I do understand.” But Mrs Savage didn’t understand. Teachers don’t get stuff like that. I looked away and she carried on. “If you’d have simply spoken to Mr Shaw at the start of the lesson, you could have—”

  “It wasn’t that, Mrs Savage,” I said. “It was just an accident.” I kept my eyes on the desk in case she was good at telling when people were lying. I thought about the most inhospitable planet in the universe. It’s called HD 189733 b and it’s sixty-three light years away. It has rainstorms of glass, and winds that go five thousand miles per hour. Even living there felt more appealing to me than getting weighed in front of an audience.

  “Well,” Mrs Savage said, “whatever the reason, I’m sure you appreciate breaking school equipment is rather serious. I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for the damage. So, I’ll be calling your father this afternoon.” A smile spread the entire width of her face. “You may go.”

  I slowly stood up and headed outside. My dad was going to kill me. If Mrs Savage was an emoji, she’d be the smiling pile of poo.

  That
afternoon in maths, any time I moved even the slightest bit, Lottie ducked and said, “Look out!” When Mrs Lee asked me to solve the “problem of the day” on the board about congruent triangles, Lottie whispered, “Uh oh, she’s going to smash something again!” So I told Mrs Lee I wasn’t sure how to work it out. Lottie was always worse in maths because Miki wasn’t in our class. And because Mrs Lee was about two hundred years old and never noticed anything.

  At the end of the lesson, Mrs Lee said she hoped we would all be taking the Brainiacs test next week.

  Lottie turned around and said, “I doubt they’d have a TV camera wide enough to film you.”

  I wanted to tell her why that was obviously untrue. But the logical part of my brain seemed to disappear whenever Lottie Freeman opened her mouth. I don’t know why. Maybe part of me still wanted her to like me.

  Dad was on his phone when I got back from school. From the look he gave me, I knew he was speaking to Mrs Savage. He waved an arm at me then pointed at the sofa.

  Jasper said, “Unlucky,” and pushed past me to go upstairs. “That’s what happens when you break the school rules, sis.”

  Jasper likes rules. I do not like my brother. He ran to the top of the stairs then pretended to fight his way into his room with an imaginary lightsaber.

  “I thought you said playtime was over, Jasper!” I called after him, but Dad shushed me and pointed to the sofa again. I dropped my bag by the stairs and plonked myself down.

  “Yes,” Dad was saying, “I do apologize. She can be a bit difficult sometimes, yes…there were a couple of things last year, but nothing serious. Yes, her attitude really. Oh, the goldfish crowd-funder thing, I’d forgotten about that…and there was a small issue in drama, yes… Jemima reads a lot, you see, Mrs Savage, and she gets these ideas…”

  I sighed loudly enough for Dad (and probably Mrs Savage) to hear. The crowd-funder was Auntie Luna’s idea. It wouldn’t have happened if Clifton Academy had given the goldfish in reception a decent-sized tank. And it wasn’t my fault Miss Nisha’s dramatization of the French Revolution was unrealistic. As if somebody sentenced to death would do a shimmy roll. Teachers always overreact about everything.

  “Yes, it’s an awkward age!” Dad said. “Honestly, the amount of times she’s threatened to report me to the United Nations for breaching her human rights! Ha ha! Yes…exactly! Hormones!”

  My dad was beyond embarrassing. I sank as deep into the sofa as I could without the cushions falling off.

  “Thank you for being so understanding, Mrs Savage. I assure you, Jemima will be on her best behaviour for the rest of term.” Dad put his phone on the kitchen table and slowly shook his head at me.

  He looked like he was about to explode. Conical beakers must be really expensive.

  “Right,” Dad said. It’s how he always starts his lectures. “What on EARTH were you thinking when you decided to smash a WHOLE TRAY of glass beakers in your SCIENCE lesson? Of all the ridiculous things to do, Jemima! On the first day back! It’s so…what do you and Jasper say? RANDOM!”

  I bit my lip.

  “I suppose it was some kind of protest against scientific oppression, was it? Free the sulphuric acid? I mean, come on, Jemima! You actually LIKE science!”

  I stared at the painting of the sea above the fireplace. “I don’t like science.”

  Dad sighed at full volume. “Good grief, Jemima. You must have fifty books in your room about science!” His cheeks were turning red and he kept putting his hand to his forehead like he was checking his temperature. He sat on the sofa opposite, leaned forward and rubbed his beard. “Mrs Savage said everyone was being weighed today, is that what got to you?”

  I could have told him how it felt. To walk up to the scales in silence with everyone staring at me. And about the stupid Banan-ometer on the screen, and Lottie Freeman, and being called Jemima Big. And wondering whether I should even take the Brainiacs test next week because who’d want to see me on TV? But dads don’t care about stuff like that. Not my dad anyway. He’d probably tell me getting weighed wasn’t a real problem. Besides, talking to Dad about anything to do with my body was totally embarrassing. I still hadn’t got over him asking if I needed a “training bra” last year in the middle of Asda. So, I said, “Dad, you could be putting yourself at risk of an early heart attack by being in such a stress about this.”

  Dad gave me a full-strength Look. “Jemima. I’m. Not. In. A. Stress,” he said, then inhaled sharply through his nose.

  “Okay, well, your cheeks are red. It could be the first stage of a heart attack. I’ll google how to do CPR.” I pulled my phone out of my blazer pocket and Dad let out another long sigh. “You look exasperated,” I said, “which is probably dangerous at your age.”

  “Jemima, stop treating this like it’s a joke! Those beakers are expensive! You could have been in a lot of trouble! Who exactly did you think would have to pay for them?”

  “I didn’t do it deliberately.”

  “Really? Your science teacher told Mrs Savage you deliberately pushed the tray off his desk.”

  “Well, he’s lying.”

  Dad tilted his head up towards the ceiling like he was praying. Only my dad doesn’t pray. He went on about how disappointed he was for approximately a million years. And said the money for the broken beakers would be coming out of my pocket money. Which would take me ages to pay off because he hardly gave me any. But apparently it wasn’t a mature decision to point that out.

  I watched his reflection in the blank TV screen, wishing he could be like those dads you got in TV shows. The ones who give you hugs and tell you everything’s going to be okay. Not the type of dad who jokes with the principal about your hormones and doesn’t care about animal rights and gets in a stress about stupid conical beakers and asks about training bras in the middle of Asda. TV dads are way better than real ones. TV everything is better than real life.

  “And, young lady,” he said, “you can help me clear out the garage next weekend.”

  “The garage! But it’s really dirty.”

  “It won’t be once you’ve cleaned it!” he said, and smiled at me. It was literally like living with Mrs Savage.

  I wish I could have told Dad why I broke the beakers, maybe then he would have given me a hug instead of a lecture. And how, sometimes, it felt like there was a giant crater in my heart, so big nothing could ever fix it. I also wish I’d told him that my education is funded by the government so, technically, I shouldn’t have to pay for the beakers. But I didn’t tell him that either. Instead, I went up to my room and wrote a stupid apology letter to Mr Shaw like he told me to.

  Afterwards, I lay on my bed and looked up at the ceiling. I was genuinely sorry. But not about smashing the beakers like I’d said in the letter. I didn’t care about glass. Glass wasn’t valuable. It was only made out of sand. There was literally tonnes of it on the beach.

  I was sorry I didn’t have a family who understood how it felt to be me.

  I thought about Tika, the contestant who won Brainiacs last year. And about her family in the audience who wore special T-shirts with her face printed on them. Who cheered her on even when she messed up on a question and cried with happiness when she made it through each round. That was what I wanted more than anything: an unconditional love sort of family.

  It was the type of love I’d probably feel if Mum was still here. She’d come up to my room and tell me not to worry about what Dad said. She’d say it was gravity’s fault the beakers smashed. And the government should pay for them. And who even cares about the stupid Banan-ometer? Bananas aren’t a real unit of measurement. She’d say that Mrs Savage should check Mr Shaw’s science qualifications. Then she’d give me a hug. And tell me everything was going to be okay. And she’d probably be wearing a T-shirt with my picture on it.

  It wasn’t until the end of that first week back at school that I found out what the Banan-ometer was really about. It was like this sleight-of-hand trick my grandad used to do when we were littl
e. He was a famous magician called the Amazing Apollo. Well, famous in Clifton-on-Sea. He used to perform at the palladium opposite the pier. His real name was Harry Small, but the Amazing Harry Small didn’t have the same ring to it. He’d show you his empty hands, then pull a coin out from behind your ear, or even your toes if you were wearing flip-flops. I used to believe he’d really found the coin in there. But it was just a stupid trick. He had it hidden in his palm all along.

  It was the same thing with everyone at school getting weighed. It had nothing to do with predictions or formulae or bananas or science. They just pretended it did. And I was stupid to even fall for it.

  I walked into form on Friday morning with Miki and Mr Nelson said, “Jemima, a quick word, please.” I got this plunging feeling in my stomach, like when you look over the edge of the Plank. Miki and I exchanged glances then I walked over to Mr Nelson’s desk.

  He lowered his voice. “Mrs Savage would like you to go straight to the sports hall this morning. There’s a special meeting she’d like you to attend.”

  “Meeting?” I asked, scanning my brain for an idea about what it could be.

  “It’s nothing to worry about. You’re not in any trouble,” he said. “You’d better hurry.” And the way Mr Nelson smiled at me, I figured it was about Brainiacs. I thought maybe Mrs Savage wanted to make sure I was taking the test, even though she’d said it was optional. Maybe she’d looked up our SATs results or spoken to Mrs Lee or something.

  When I got to the sports hall, about twelve people were sitting on the floor. I recognized Harry and Heidi, the twins in my year from Ms Fraser’s class. I’d done the Reading Challenge with them last year. I went over and sat down. Brandon Taylor – Dylan’s older brother – was sitting near them. Brandon used to make fun of me at primary school too sometimes, although he’d never said anything to me since I started at Clifton. He looked up and smiled awkwardly. I looked away.

  I watched a few more people arrive and suddenly it clicked in my head. I knew why Mrs Savage had sent me here. And it had nothing to do with the stupid Brainiacs test next week. It all made perfect sense. Why we’d been measured and weighed on Monday. And why everyone sitting in the sports hall was wearing a blazer about the same size as mine.