Jasper stared at me over his plate of half-eaten watermelon. Like he was suddenly figuring out he wasn’t the smartest person in our family. Even though I’d been telling him that for ages.
The next day at school, I couldn’t stop yawning. I’d stayed up late timing myself doing equations. Getting through to the Brainiacs Selection Day was amazing, but also like getting loads of extra homework.
Miki and I had been working on a presentation for the last few lessons in geography. I loved researching stuff, but I hated presenting in class. When you look like me it’s not just your presentation slides people stare at. Everyone had chosen a “geographically interesting” place to present. It could be anywhere in the world, provided it was on the list of geographically interesting places Mr Kelly had put on the board. We picked Lake Superior. It’s this really old lake that stretches across Canada and North America where over six thousand ships have sunk. I thought it sounded interesting, which was good because Mr Kelly didn’t let us pick until last and it was the only place left.
I researched on the iPad while Miki drew a perfect bird’s eye view of the lake for our poster. He added rocks, fishing boats, salmon, birds of prey, a lighthouse, and even a shipwreck at the bottom. Mr Kelly made him rub out the mermaids.
“I’m so excited you’re going to be on Brainiacs!” Miki said, gluing triangles of blue paper to the picture so they looked like shark fins.
“It’s only the Selection Day,” I said. “I probably won’t get through to the actual show.”
“Probably won’t get through the door you mean,” Lottie whispered, snatching the glue from our table and scurrying back to her desk.
“Oh my God, you have to beat Rat Face,” Miki said. He stopped drawing and his eyes lit up. “But, just in case you don’t…I’ve had an idea.”
“What?” He grinned at me. “Miki, don’t do anything to get in trouble. Not because of Lottie.”
“I won’t! Now, were you serious about me drawing a sea serpent, because Mr Kelly did not like my mermaids.”
I nodded. “According to legend, or in this case Wikipedia, an ancient spirit animal called Mishipeshu lives in Lake Superior. Like the Loch Ness Monster, basically. Only scarier. Look.” I turned the iPad round to show Miki a dark-blue serpent with the face of a lynx. It had pointed teeth, huge red spikes on its back and long, twisted, copper horns.
“Mishi-whaaat?” Miki said, wide-eyed. “It’s Lottie on a good day.” He picked up a blue pencil. “If Mr Kelly doesn’t think our presentation is amazing, then there’s something wrong with him.”
We practised the presentation during lunchtimes that week, and I spent every evening studying difficult-to-spell words, scientific discoveries, philosophers, poets. I even found out that three per cent of the ice in Antarctica glaciers is actually frozen penguin urine. I didn’t think that question would come up on the Brainiacs Selection Day, but that’s what happens when you click on a link Jasper sends you.
On the day of our presentation, Miki was even more excited than usual, but my palms were sweating before the bell even rang. The only good thing was our poster ended up so massive, I could almost hide behind it. When Mr Kelly called us up, Miki whispered, “Channel the spirit of Mishipoop.” And weirdly, trying not to laugh was a good way of calming my nerves.
My hands were shaking a little bit at the beginning, but once I started talking about how the lake began forming over a billion years ago, it seemed like my class was actually interested in the size of Lake Superior, not me. Apart from Lottie, who sat there blowing her cheeks out.
“Excellent presentation!” Mr Kelly said as we took a bow at the end (Miki’s idea). “One of the best so far! Can I just ask, what’s that?” He pointed to the fold-out piece of paper attached to the poster.
“Oh, I forgot,” I said, opening it up. “This is what Lake Superior looks like from space.”
Mr Kelly smiled. “Of course, thank you, Jemima. Now, Alina’s away today so, Lottie, do you want to wait until next lesson?”
Lottie immediately sprang out of her seat. “No. I can do it by myself.”
I pulled my chair out to sit down just as Lottie was trying to walk past.
She waited and whispered, “Biggest lake in the world by the biggest girl in the world.”
My chest felt tight as I sat down. Mostly because it was stupid. Lake Superior is only the biggest freshwater lake. The Caspian Sea is almost five times bigger. Lottie didn’t know what she was talking about.
I whispered to Miki, “I really hope she loses at the Selection Day.”
Miki smiled. “Don’t worry. She’ll lose way before then!”
Lottie waited until everyone was quiet then she took her hand out of her blazer pocket, did a twirl and tossed gold glitter into the air.
A few people said, “Wow!”
Mr Kelly said, “You’ll have to clean that up at the end.”
“My presentation is about the Cave of the Crystals in Mexico,” Lottie said. “Or should I say, La Cueva de los Cristales!”
I had to try so hard not to roll my eyes.
Lottie explained the different chambers inside the cave, and how some of the crystals were eleven metres long. It actually did sound pretty interesting. Auntie Luna would definitely like it. And her friend Jupiter. He could get some new crystals for his shop. Lottie started talking about the largest crystal ever discovered, when suddenly there was this noise. Like a really loud fart. Lottie’s cheeks went bright red and everyone started laughing.
Caleb called out, “She’s fired a stink rocket!”
Mr Kelly told him to be quiet and Lottie carried on talking. Then, about thirty seconds later, she farted again. And again.
Caleb shouted, “Lottie FARTman!” and the whole class erupted into hysterics.
Mr Kelly stood up and warned us to quieten down or he’d set a whole class detention. I couldn’t help laughing a bit, but I still felt sorry for Lottie. It can’t be easy to describe the metamorphic process of crystals when you have chronic wind.
She rushed through the rest of her lines, then farted again as she did a curtsy at the end. “It’s not me!” she shouted over everyone’s laughter. “SHUT UP, everyone!”
“Best not be in my tent when we go camping!” Caleb shouted. “Lottie FARTman!”
“That’s your last warning!” Mr Kelly said and everyone went silent. “Now, Lottie, do you need to go to the toilet?”
And everyone laughed again even harder.
At the end of the lesson, Miki said he’d dropped something when we were doing our presentation, so I waited for him outside.
“Hurry up, Miki!” I called into the classroom. “We’ll be late for French!”
“Got it!” he said and ran over to me. In his hand was a small, rectangular box, and some kind of remote control with red buttons. He checked no one was listening, then a gigantic smile spread across his face as he said, “Fart machine.”
It was Friday lunchtime, a week since Gina had asked us to write our lists, and she was sticking a huge piece of paper to the sports hall wall. Her white trainers had glittery ticks on them and she was smiling as usual. I held my notebook on my lap and tried to ignore the fluttering in my stomach.
“So,” Gina said, “who managed their thirty-minute walk?”
Everyone raised their hands.
“Well done! And keep your hand up if you enjoyed it!”
I was the only person who put my hand down, so I sighed and put it back up again.
Nate said he’d played five-a-side football after school on Tuesday, and Maya said she’d done a yoga DVD with her mum.
Gina cried, “Fantastic!” and practically exploded with excitement about it. “So, we’ll do the same homework for next week. Thirty minutes of light exercise. A walk again, or something else you enjoy. Now, before we start looking at your notebooks, I want to remind you that what we say in here is completely confidential. I’m sure we can all trust each other, right?” Gina beamed out a smile equivalent to
the energy magnitude of the sun. “Would anyone like to go first?” She looked hopefully around the semicircle of faces. “Anyone?”
The last thing I wanted to do was share my list of humiliations with Gina. Every atom in my body was telling me not to put up my hand. But she looked kind of disappointed. And so far she didn’t seem completely deranged. I raised my hand.
“Jemima! Thank you!” Gina clapped, and signalled for the others to join in. Gina held her pen against the paper on the wall and said, “Ready when you are.” Her eyes sparkled, like they contained the entire Andromeda Galaxy.
I took a deep breath. “Fat, obviously,” I said, feeling stupid I’d even written that one down. “Whale. Grotesque. Jemima Big.” I looked up at Gina writing them on the sheet of paper. “People saying, go on a diet. Saying I’ve got diabetes, that I’ll cause an earthquake. I’m blocking out the sun. I’m gross. I’m the biggest girl in the world.” I carried on reading until I got to the last thing on my list. “And…not wanting to do the Brainiacs Selection Day because there’s going to be two hundred and fifty people there. Plus everyone’s parents, and they’ll probably be thinking all the things that I’ve just said.” I closed my notebook. “That’s it.”
Gina’s eyes had tears at the edges. I didn’t look at anybody else. Because so did mine.
“That’s awful, Jemima. I’m so sorry you heard all of this. Well done for sharing.”
Brandon put his hand up. “I’ll go next. People don’t say that much to me at school.”
Nate snorted. We all know Brandon was a bigger bully than anyone who said anything to us.
“But I wrote down ‘people staring at me’ and my grandad’s nickname for me is ‘chunk’. I know it’s not as bad.”
“If it makes you feel bad, Brandon,” Gina said, “then it’s bad.”
“And this kid in my class who told me to take off the fat suit,” Brandon said. “That’s why I got suspended.”
Gina’s eyes widened. “He said that and you got suspended?”
Brandon smiled. “I reacted badly.”
After Brandon, it was Nate’s turn, then Maya, then Heidi and Harry, and by the time we’d all read out our lists, the piece of paper was so full Gina had to squeeze the last words down the side. It was hard to even look at it.
“Okay,” Gina said, clearing her throat. “You’ve all been incredibly brave sharing all of this. I found it hard to listen to, and it wasn’t even being said about me. Look at these words. Take a good look. None of this is true.”
“You think we’re lying?” Brandon said.
“No, Brandon. I know you’re not lying. But the words written on this paper do not in any way represent the truth about you. About any of you. None of these words describe the kind, determined, fun, clever, brave, awesome individuals I see sitting here. The last thing you should do with these words is believe them.”
Gina told us to visualize the words disappearing into the sky. And said to let go of the shame attached to them too. She said if you imagine people’s negative words vanishing, it helps the pain disappear too. But it wasn’t that easy. I could memorize a whole pack of fifty-two cards and the entire periodic table. Those words inside my notebook were permanently stuck in the medial temporal lobe of my brain, like they’d been superglued. And no amount of imagining would get rid of them.
“So, from now on, any time you hear anything like this,” Gina said, “I want you to say something good about yourself out loud, like: I was kind to someone in class, or I listened to my friend, or I worked hard today or I’m awesome! Imagine their insult is an arrow and the positive thought is your shield. Each time you have a positive thought about yourself, that shield gets bigger and stronger. Now,” she said, pulling the piece of paper off the wall, “let’s tear up these words!”
We all watched as she tore the paper up and handed us each a piece.
“That’s right! Tear them up! And your notebooks.”
Brandon laughed and ripped his bit of paper in half, then tore the cover off his notebook.
Heidi whispered, “Is she for real?”
“I hope so.” I ripped the pages out of my notebook and tore them into pieces.
By the time we’d finished, the floor was covered in little bits of paper, like insult confetti.
“Ordinarily, I would set fire to these,” Gina said, sweeping the pieces into the bin. “However, Mrs Savage wouldn’t agree to that. The sports hall has a highly sensitive fire alarm system, apparently. So this bin will have to do! Let’s imagine they have been burned up, replaced with all the good things you know about yourself.”
And as we threw the last pieces in the bin, Gina recited all the “awesome” stuff we’d told her about ourselves in that first class. She must have a really good memory.
It was nice listening to everyone’s good stuff again. But if anyone believed those negative words had vanished because they were in the bin, they were wrong. Even if Gina had burned them, they’d have turned into carbon particles and water vapour, so they’d still technically exist. Stuff can change into something else, but it can’t disappear completely.
I put my rucksack on my shoulders and pushed open the double doors, squinting in the bright sunlight. I knew those words hadn’t vanished, but my rucksack felt kind of lighter without them. I just wished that all my good qualities weren’t on the inside. If only it was the opposite way round. It would be so much better to have kind arms, or intelligent legs, or a loyal torso, or hair with a good sense of humour. Why did our good qualities have to be so invisible to everybody? Human evolution had a major design flaw.
In science that afternoon, Mr Shaw was demonstrating photosynthesis using a torch, a pot plant and a mini watering can when the school receptionist knocked on the door.
“Do you have Lottie Freeman and Jemima Small in here?” She held out two bright-yellow A4 envelopes. “A special delivery from Brainiacs! I thought you might want them for the weekend. I expect you’ve got some revising to do!”
“Yes, yes!” Mr Shaw said. “Wonderful! Come up here, girls!”
Immediately my heart sank. Standing at the front of the class was bad enough, but standing next to Lottie, who weighs approximately five thousand per cent less than me, was mortifying. I slid off my stool and stood as close to Mr Shaw’s desk as I could, feeling it digging into my side.
“Congratulations!” Mr Shaw said, indicating to everyone to give us a round of applause.
Miki whooped and cheered from behind his textbook.
“May I wish you every success! You’ve still got a few weeks to revise, I take it.”
“Yes, Mr Shaw. May I wish you every success too, Jemima!” Lottie said loudly, then whispered as we went to sit down, “Hopefully you won’t embarrass the school by getting through.”
I tried to do what Gina said, and think of something positive about myself to shield Lottie’s insult arrow. But all I could think of was that I already understood photosynthesis. And that made kind of a weak shield.
At the end of the lesson, as everyone was tidying equipment away, Miki whispered, “Hey, my mum just sent me this. Look, you’re on the school website.” He handed me his phone.
It was the picture they took in assembly on Monday. I was standing in between Lottie and Noah Chamberlain, the boy from Year Seven who’d got through. Mrs Savage was smiling proudly behind us. I felt sick looking at it. I zoomed in on Lottie’s body, then on her hair wrapped into a perfect bun. If Mrs Savage could pick someone to represent our school on Brainiacs, she’d choose Lottie. No offence to Noah Chamberlain, but he wasn’t even smiling. Not that I was any better. What people said about me was so bad it had to be thrown in the bin.
“Hey, read it!” Miki said, nudging me.
I zoomed out of Lottie’s image and scrolled down.
Former Clifton County Spelling Bee Champion and current holder of the Clifton Academy Lower School Science Award and Maths Prize, our Year Eight student Jemima Small (Form 8N) will certainly make for some tough
competition! Mr Nelson, Head of History, believes Jemima will be “difficult to defeat”.
I took a deep breath because my eyes had gone blurry with tears and I did not want to make a scene in a science lesson again this term.
I gave Miki his phone back and said, “Thanks.” From the outside, I was tidying the equipment away like everyone else. But on the inside, my heart felt as though it was being given a healthy dose of water and sunlight.
I thought back to what Mr Nelson had said to me that day in the library. How he’d phoned my dad to make sure I took the Brainiacs test. Mr Nelson believed I could make it onto the show. But more than that – it was like he actually wanted me to. As I collected the textbooks from our bench, I noticed Lottie sitting down while Alina and the rest of her group tidied away. And I thought that, unless Mr Nelson was completely deranged (which was actually possible considering the Yoda impression he’d done in form that morning), he didn’t think I’d be an embarrassment to the school at all.
That weekend, I was in my bedroom trying to memorize sixty cards in a row, when Heidi messaged me:
Take a break from studying! You heard of her?
I tapped the link and YouTube opened. A woman with bright orange hair and tattoos all the way down her arms appeared on the screen. Her body was big, much bigger than mine. And Heidi’s and Maya’s. She was called Tabitha Hendrix and she used the words fat and big as if they weren’t bad. Like they were just the same as strong, tall, loud, pretty. Her flame-coloured bikini matched her hair and she showed off her body to the camera, pointing out bumps and dimples and rolls like she was proud of them. Like she didn’t care about me seeing. I scrolled down. 490K views! Like she didn’t care about anyone seeing.
And I could see why. She didn’t look too big. Or like she’d cause an earthquake. Or like she’d block out the sun. Her skin glittered, as though it was made out of sun particles. She looked like Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn. Like someone who could be on the cover of a magazine. Or a TV show.
Jemima Small Versus the Universe Page 11