Jemima Small Versus the Universe

by Tamsin Winter

  “I’m not worried about it,” I said, half-lying. Maybe fully lying.

  “I mean, obviously, there’s a…problem,” he said. And it felt like being smacked in the face with a football. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that I was a “problem”. I could feel tears starting in my eyes again. “It’s just…you’ve always been…chubby, you know? Ever since you were a baby.”

  “Great. I was a fat baby.”

  Dad laughed, then his face went serious again. “I’m sorry, Jemima. I mean, you’ve always been…how you are. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we should have done something sooner. The way they’ve said it here…I feel responsible.” He picked up the letter and put it straight back down again. Probably because he’d already read it ten times. “Oh jeez, with things like this I really wish your mum had stuck around.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. It will be okay. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “You could say I don’t have to do the class.”

  “Oh, Jem, you’ve got to do the class. In fact, this Gina Grantley-Bond sounds—”

  “Deranged?”

  “No!” Dad laughed. “She sounds great. It says here she’s got lots of experience with…”

  I stared at him.

  “Young people. And look, she’s even worked with the British Paralympic team!”

  “That could be a lie.”

  Dad sighed. “I don’t think Mrs Savage would lie.”

  “Well, you don’t know her. Anyway, I’m not doing the class because…” I thought of those boys again, and the words “Fat Club” echoing around the sports hall. “It’s illegal.”

  He tutted. “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course it’s not illegal. The class is designed to help you.”

  “Well, I don’t need that kind of illegal help. I can lose weight on my own in my bedroom.”

  Dad looked sadly at me across the table. Probably remembering that time before I started at Clifton Academy, when I tried doing a high intensity workout from YouTube. Dad came running up the stairs saying it sounded like I was entertaining a herd of buffalo. Obviously, I didn’t try that again.

  “Jemima, honestly, I think this is the best way. Get you some proper support…from, you know, a professional.” He signed the form at the bottom of the letter.

  I looked at him like he was signing my death sentence.

  “Don’t look at me like that! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it! It will be fun.” He was outright lying now. “You’ll make some new friends who, you know…understand what it’s like. You love learning facts and things, don’t you? You’ll just be learning about healthy things and not…quantum particles. Great timing with this kale soup, hey?”

  Dad got up and stirred the bubbling pan of soup that apparently I’d be eating for dinner, probably for the rest of my life. “You know what? We should start playing basketball again! We’ve barely used that hoop since I put it up.” He patted his stomach. “I could do with getting back in shape myself! We’ll do it together.” He took out a teaspoon and tasted the soup. “Hmm, not too bad!”

  I found out later that that was a lie too.

  “Jemima, I know just having me isn’t the same as having a mum around. But…I am here…if you ever want to…you know. And you’ve got Luna!”

  We both looked out of the steamed-up windows at Auntie Luna’s wooden cabin in the back garden. Dad built it ages ago after Uncle Alfie left her. Luna’s heart broke so badly she had to go to hospital. She’s okay now, but she has to live with us so Dad can make sure she doesn’t get poorly again. Also, Uncle Alfie emptied their bank account, so she didn’t have much choice. Luna says money’s not important. It can be replaced. But nothing can fix a broken heart because hearts are irreparable. I think she has the same empty feeling in her heart like I have about Mum. Only hers is Uncle-Alfie shaped.

  “You should talk to Luna about this, Jem. I appreciate her advice can be a little…out of this world. To say the least. But, anyway, the point is, we can all go on this health kick together. Me, you and Jasper.” Dad squinted at the recipe book. “Pink Himalayan salt?” He tutted. “What’s so special about the Himalayas?”

  “Well,” I said, “the Himalayan range is almost fifteen hundred miles long, it’s spread across five countries, and contains the highest peaks in the world, including Mount Everest. It has one of the largest deposits of snow and ice on the whole planet, after the Arctic and the Antarctic, obviously. In fact, the name Himalaya means ‘the abode of snow’.” I thought for a moment. “I guess the salt’s pink because of the mineral content.”

  Dad stared at me. “I don’t know where you get it from.”

  I shrugged. “Probably Waitrose?”

  Dad walked over and rubbed my head. “I meant you and your encyclopaedic knowledge! How did you get to be such a genius, hey?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Must come from Mum’s side of the family.”

  “Ha! Probably!”

  Without thinking, I said, “Hey, guess what? Our school is—” Then I stopped. I looked down at Dad’s signature on the letter – confirmation of how totally unsuitable I was for Brainiacs. It was best not to even tell him about it. “Erm, doing Mary Poppins for the Christmas production. Miki’s auditioning.”

  “Good for him! You’ll have to get us some tickets. Now, herbs!” he said. “Back in a minute.” He opened the back door and went over to the little herb garden Auntie Luna planted a few summers ago.

  I stared out of the window for ages, feeling like a satellite orbiting a planet. Totally alone. Realizing that the only thing that was ever going to matter about me was my size. It was only Friday night, but already I was dreading school on Monday. Everyone at school had probably already shared stuff about Fat Club. I wished I could stop time. Stay sitting at the kitchen table for ever. Just ideally not with the smell of kale soup in the background.

  At dinner, Jasper was telling us about how brilliant he was at everything. I corrected him, so he said, “Jemima, you don’t know it all! I bet you can’t even tell me three facts about” – he held up his soup spoon – “kale!”

  So I told him that, one, it’s green because its cells contain chlorophyll; two, it was used as a medicine in Ancient Greece; and three, he had some down his T-shirt.

  Afterwards, I went up to my room and watched the sky. It was full of grey cumulonimbus clouds. They’re the really massive ones. It’s the cloud type that most resembles my brother’s head. Orange street lamps were dotted along the promenade, and I could see the green neon glow of the Sphere on the Pier, this fairground ride that spins round really fast. The floor drops away and you stay there, stuck to the wall. Jasper calls it the Vomit Comet. The sign says Experience zero gravity! which is false advertising. What you’re actually experiencing is centrifugal force. But, believe me, the people who work on the ride do not care about that.

  I could hear Dad laughing loudly at the TV, followed closely by Jasper. I pulled on my jumper, walked downstairs, and out the back door to where Auntie Luna’s cabin glowed in the moonlight.

  The wooden steps creaked as I walked up to her door. The sign said: You say I’m a witch like it’s a bad thing.

  Jasper says she should change it to BEWARE OF THE WITCH. But he never says it when Luna’s around. Jasper always says stuff like that when no one’s listening. Sometimes he calls me fat even though he’s not allowed. If I tell Dad, Jasper just says I’m lying, and Dad always believes him. No one believes you if you’re the youngest.

  Auntie Luna isn’t a witch, by the way, she’s a psychic. She tells fortunes using tarot cards. And reads auras. An aura is this special kind of energy that surrounds your body. Only psychic people can see it. There are loads of different colours your aura can be, depending on your personality. I only half-believe in auras because there’s no scientific evidence. And because Luna said mine’s yellow and I wanted a purple one like Emma Watson.

  Hermione meowed as I knocked on Luna’s door. She’s supposed to be my
cat, but Luna sort of adopted her. I don’t mind that much. She used to pounce on me in the middle of the night and any time she left a dead mouse outside the back door, Dad always made me put it in the dustbin, even though I told him I could catch the hantavirus.

  I opened the door and went in, sneezing from the dust. Luna says there’s no such thing as dust, only particles of Mother Earth. Each one of them is sacred and she needs them to channel her psychic energy. That excuse for not cleaning your room does not work on my dad.

  Luna was sitting on a cushion in the lotus position with her eyes closed. Her hair was pinned up in big curls around her face. It was the colour of cinnamon and it reminded me I wanted to dye my hair as soon as possible. I looked at the books piled next to her bed. One was called Astral Projection: How to leave your body and travel the universe. I picked it up and turned it over. A step-by-step guide to leaving your body. It sounded like the exact book I needed. I checked Luna’s eyes were closed, then shoved the book up my jumper.

  Luna slowly opened her eyes. They glowed silvery-blue like a wolf’s, and her gold eyeliner glittered in the fairy lights. She was wearing a T-shirt that said GOOD VIBES. It’s the name of her friend Jupiter’s crystal shop.

  “Tonight is the full moon,” she said. “It’s time to bathe in her light and harness her feminine energy.” Luna stood up, took my hand and we headed outside.

  “Jemima,” she said, after we’d wrapped up in blankets, “I can feel something blocking your energy.”

  I swallowed and tried to reposition my body so she couldn’t see the outline of the astral projection book up my jumper.

  “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  I looked up at the grey clouds partially covering the full moon. I thought about telling Luna about the letter, but the last time I told Luna about being called Jemima Big at school, she told me to rub lavender oil into my skin for inner peace. The next day, Caleb Humphries told everyone I smelled like a granny. I changed the subject.

  “I wish I had psychic powers,” I said, even though I didn’t fully believe in psychic powers. “Then I could work at psychic fairs with you and I wouldn’t have to go to school.”

  Luna tilted her face towards the moonlight. “You never know, Jemstone. Sometimes psychic powers get awakened later on in life. Some people get them in their thirties or forties.”

  I sighed. It was so annoying. What was the point of getting psychic powers when you were too old to even use them?

  “I’m sorry, Jemstone,” Luna said, squeezing my hand. “I wish I could make things better for you at school. But, you know, everything you’ll ever need is already inside you.”

  Sometimes I forgot how weird Luna could be.

  I lay there for a while, looking out into the expanding universe, as Luna told me our skin was absorbing the full moon’s powerful feminine energy, just like it absorbed sunlight. Although how moonlight got through all the layers and blankets we were wearing, I don’t know.

  I didn’t feel very powerful by the time I went back inside. But I had figured out what I wanted: to be a completely different girl from Jemima Small. And I knew it would take something much stronger than moonlight to do that.

  That night, I stayed up late reading Astral Projection: How to leave your body and travel the universe, the book I’d borrowed from Luna. I could not put it down. Astral projection was the best thing ever. You lie down, close your eyes, concentrate really hard, then your soul leaves your body and soars through the universe. It’s not dying or consuming someone’s soul like a Dementor or anything. It’s this special thing which meant I could escape from my body. Even if it was only for a moment, I’d know how it felt to not be Jemima Big. Like magic, only real.

  I waited until Dad had gone to bed, then I lay really still under my duvet, trying not to fidget. I looked up at my bedroom ceiling. It was still covered in bits of Blu Tack from when I put posters up ages ago. They all fell down because gravity is a lot stronger than Blu Tack.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the night sky above me, mapping out the constellations in my mind with their billions of stars, trillions of miles away, expanding into infinity. I took a deep breath and tried as hard as I could to push my soul out of my body. Only I wasn’t sure where to start pushing.

  I needed to find out where the human soul was located exactly, so I could push it out. I didn’t want to push out the wrong body part. I didn’t want my intestines floating about in space for ever. I wondered if my soul was inside my brain somewhere, but what if it was inside my heart? Astral projection was kind of confusing actually.

  I put my hands in the mudra position that Auntie Luna had shown me ages ago, with my middle fingers touching my thumbs. It was supposed to stimulate energy flow, so I hoped it would stimulate my soul to hurry up and get going. But after about ten minutes nothing had happened.

  I opened my eyes. I could just make out a blob of Blu Tack on the ceiling that still had part of Hermione Granger’s face stuck to it. I wished I could astrally project my soul into Hermione. But I was pretty sure souls can’t go into made-up characters.

  I closed my eyes again and pictured my soul travelling through space, hoping it had some kind of built-in satnav. I imagined having to tell Dad that my soul had gone missing somewhere between my bedroom and outer space. He would kill me. It was bad enough when I lost my phone at the beach that time.

  I don’t know what happened next. But somehow, the strong urge to push out my soul must have been replaced by the strong urge to sleep. Because the next time I opened my eyes, my bedroom was filled with light. I was lying on the same bed, in the same body, and I had to be Jemima Small all over again.

  On Sunday it wasn’t raining, which meant I had to help Dad clear out the garage with its fifteen years of accumulated junk. My punishment for smashing a few stupid beakers. I explained to Dad that most of the stuff in there came from before I was even born, so technically it wasn’t my responsibility. But he said that was irrelevant and handed me some overalls.

  “It’s gargantuan!” I said as Dad swung open the double doors. “There’s no way I can clear all of this out in one day!”

  “There’s always next weekend as well,” Dad said, actually laughing.

  I surveyed the never-ending stacks of boxes, old toys, planks of wood, tools, and approximately ten billion cobwebs. “This is so unfair,” I said, stepping into the overalls and rolling up the sleeves. “Smashing the beakers was an accident. I’m being punished for an accident.”

  “Mrs Savage didn’t seem to think it was an accident.”

  “She wasn’t there, so how would she even know?”

  Dad sighed. “I’m not getting into this again. You’re helping clear this out and that’s that. A bit of physical labour isn’t going to do you any harm, is it?”

  I glared at him.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  I blew out my breath and tied my hair back. “Fine. Let’s get on with it. But, if I find any disease-carrying insects or rodents then I’m going back inside.”

  Dad laughed. “Deal. I’m sure they’ll all be hibernating at this time of year anyway.”

  “I doubt it,” I said as Hermione padded in. She rubbed against an old box, then caught a spider in her claws and started chewing on it. “Gross.”

  “See?” Dad said with a grin. “You’ve even got your own spider catcher. What more could you want?”

  “Basic human rights?”

  Dad chuckled and handed me a broom. “I’ll bring you an apple juice.”

  After a couple of hours, my arms felt like they’d moved a thousand boxes, but the garage was only half clear.

  “Wow! Well done!” Dad said. “Give me a hand getting this lot into the van then you can have a break while I go to the tip.”

  We filled up the van and Dad shouted to Jasper that he was going. He still thought Jasper needed to look after me, even though I’d be thirteen in a matter of days. Thirty-five to be precise.

  “Give the floor a swe
ep while I’m gone, hey?”

  “I thought you said I could have a break!”

  Dad got into the van and gave me The Look through the window. “It will take you two minutes!”

  I watched Dad drive off, then sat on an old armchair at the back of the garage, watching sunlight stream through the gaps in the wooden door. Dust particles floated in the air, glittering like tiny stars. And this moment I will probably remember for ever. Because there, right in front of me, was a box covered in a thick layer of dust, with one word written on it in black pen: JOANIE.

  The whole garage could have collapsed around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. There’s this story in Greek mythology called Pandora’s box. It’s about a box with all this evil stuff inside. Only Pandora doesn’t know what’s inside. She only knows she isn’t supposed to open it. Sitting there with that box in front of me with my mum’s name on it, that’s sort of how I felt. Like opening it might tell me something I didn’t want to know. Maybe why she left. I was too scared to open it and too scared not to.

  I looked at it for a minute, surrounded by dust and cobwebs and rusty toys and Jasper’s old scooter. Then I stood up, wiped the dust off the box with my sleeve, and opened it.

  Something gold caught the light. It was a jewellery box with a broken clasp at the front. Inside were some silver bangles that had tarnished and turned almost black. They felt cold and smelled kind of rusty. Normally, when I thought about Mum, I got that horrible empty feeling. But looking through her old stuff, I didn’t. It felt like goosebumps, only warm. Like for once she didn’t feel so far away.

  There were a few boring-looking documents, some old postcards, a framed certificate from an accountancy course dated a few years after I was born, some old gloves and a CD. I pulled out a brown envelope and some photos dropped out.

  I picked them up and there we were. In our back garden. In the summer. I was sitting on Mum’s lap looking at a piece of chalk or something in my hand, maybe three years old. Dad had his arm around her and Jasper was standing next to him pulling a funny face. Above Mum’s head were little circles of lens flare, those coloured spots you get in photos when the light’s too bright. She was leaning against Dad with her arm wrapped around my tummy. There she was. My mum. Smiling into too-bright sunlight. And I was sitting on her lap like it was no big deal. As if she would be there for ever.