“So, what do you think?” I asked Miki, still picturing Mystic Avani’s eyes glittering behind specks of dust and the words: You’ll find what you’ve been looking for.
“A bit weird,” Miki said and took a huge gulp of Fanta. He put his hand to his chest, like he was waiting to see if a burp was coming. I’d known Miki long enough to know it probably was. “It sort of tastes like baked beans.”
“I meant the palm reader, Miki, not the burger!”
He licked ketchup off his fingers and said, “Well, I think she’s right. I definitely could be a famous actor one day.”
“And what she said about my mum?”
“Erm, I dunno,” Miki said. “She didn’t actually say ‘mum’, did she? And you haven’t been looking for her, so…”
I put my half-eaten burger down and stared at the floor.
“I mean, she probably meant your mum though! Like, whoever she meant, probably your mum, it’s definitely good news.” His phone beeped. “That’ll be my mum. Oh no, what? It’s Lottie.” He held up his phone.
Lottie: Hey, downloaded this if you want to watch it one day next week?
She’d sent him a picture of the Mary Poppins film. Immediately I felt sick. Not because Lottie was generally bile-inducing. But because I knew what she was trying to do. The same thing she’d done with Alina. Just the thought of not having Miki as my friend any more felt like being in outer space when your oxygen tank’s exploded.
I fiddled with the ring pull on my can. “What are you going to say?”
“Hmm! I don’t know,” Miki said. “Hanging out with Lottie would be bad. Let’s see what the Word Doctor suggests!” He tapped his phone. “What about, Sorry, Lottie, that would be distressing?”
I laughed and shook my head.
“Too strong? Okay how about, That would be execrable? What does that even mean?”
“It means extremely bad. It comes from the Latin word execrabilis, which means deserving of curses! It’s probably a bit harsh, even for Lottie Freeman.” I took a bite of my burger and thought for a moment. “I know! Put soporific. That just means boring. Well, literally, it means sleep-inducing, because sopor means sleep in Latin, so…”
Miki put his phone down and stared at me.
“What? Have I got ketchup on my face?”
“Jemima Small, if you don’t get through to Brainiacs, I’ll eat a thousand vegan burgers.”
When I got home, the first thing I noticed was Dad’s face. It was like he’d seen a ghost. Only, what he’d actually seen was my phosphorescent hair.
“What on EARTH have you done to your hair?” he said, leaping off the sofa faster than I’d seen a mammal move in my entire life. “Jemima!”
Jasper shot out of his room and halfway down the stairs. “Uh oh! Jemima’s gone rogue.”
I shot him the death stare.
“What HAVE you done?” Dad said again, even louder.
He looked pretty angry, so I decided the best idea was to deny all knowledge. “My hair? What do you mean?” I said and walked to the mirror. “Oh my GOD! What’s happened?” I felt quite pleased with how my acting was going. Maybe some of Miki’s talent had rubbed off on me. “Dad, I honestly have no idea how this happened.”
Dad shook his head at me. Not in a good way. “Luna? Can you explain this?”
Luna came in and put her bag down. “Yes, she’s beautiful!”
Dad shook his head again, even harder. I warned him he could damage his brain doing that. He didn’t appreciate my concern.
“Right, you’d better start explaining yourself, Jemima! I told you – no hair dye. And look at you!”
I swallowed. “There was this old lady at the fair.”
Dad put his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”
“She must have been a witch. She read my palm, and afterwards I felt kind of dizzy. Now I think about it, she did briefly touch my hair. You were right about the witches at those fairs, Dad.”
“Hey!” Luna said, jabbing Dad in the ribs.
He side-stepped away from her. “A spell,” he said. “On your hair.”
“It does happen sometimes at the fairs, Dad. You said it yourself. They attract some right weirdos.”
“Rion!” Luna said. “I can’t believe you said that to Jemima about my friends!”
“I didn’t say that. I said…‘interesting characters’.”
I caught his eye to let him know I knew he was lying.
“Anyway, Jemima, I’ve never heard such nonsense in all my life! And in this family, that is really saying something.”
I turned back to face the mirror. “It’s not my fault I had a spell put on me.”
Luna stroked my hair and winked at me in the mirror. “You know, Rion, I have seen this sort of thing happen before.”
Dad sighed.
“Luckily, this doesn’t look like a permanent spell to me. This is the type that should just wash out.” She kissed the top of my head.
“Let’s hope so! Or you’re not going to the restaurant tomorrow! Birthday or not!” Dad pointed to the stairs. “Off you go.”
As I went upstairs, Jasper whispered, “Your head looks like an Easter egg.”
I knocked my bag against him as I walked past and said, “Accident.”
I went straight into the bathroom and turned the shower on, but I could hear them talking about me downstairs, so I crept onto the landing and listened.
“Rion, it’s not a big deal,” Luna was saying. “So she coloured her hair for one day! She’s thirteen tomorrow. So what if she wants to dye her hair? I don’t know why you’re so annoyed about it.”
I smiled. Luna always stuck up for me against Dad’s oppression.
“You used to dye your fringe bright blue.”
“I was in college when I did that!”
“That actually makes it worse!” Luna said laughing. “Jemima’s not hurting anybody.”
“She hurt my eyes,” Jasper said. “I’ll never unsee that.”
Dad sighed so hard I could practically feel the floorboards vibrating. “Keep out of this, Jasper. It’s just with all this…weight stuff.” He said the word “weight” quietly, like it was a bad word. “I don’t want her drawing unnecessary attention to herself, you know? I mean, it’s already been in the paper! And dyeing her hair seven shades of ridiculous. I don’t want people…”
I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I didn’t want to hear anything else. I got undressed, stood in the shower and let the water dilute my tears. Neon colours swirled down the plughole like a rainbow melting away. Until all that was left were grey-blue bubbles from my shampoo.
Later, I knocked on Jasper’s door and asked to borrow his portable CD player. He half opened the door and said, “Can’t you just use the one downstairs?”
“No, Jasper! It’s…a revision CD. I need it for studying.”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“Fine. Guess I’ll have to tell Dad Tornado’s missing.”
“Shh! Okay, okay!” He reached his arm behind the door then handed me his CD player. “Don’t break it.”
Back in my bedroom, I rummaged in Mum’s box until I found it. There was a crack across the case, but the CD inside looked okay. I put my lamp on, lay on my bed, plugged in my headphones and pressed play. The songs had that grainy, old-fashioned kind of sound, like they should be played on a record player. The first song was about a moon made out of paper, which wouldn’t be heavy enough to stay in a planet’s gravitational pull. I was going to turn it off and watch a film, but then a song came on called “Dream a Little Dream of Me”. It had lyrics about fading stars and sunbeams and feeling alone and missing someone, and they didn’t seem so unrealistic.
I pressed pause. But I could still hear the song playing because I remembered Mum’s voice singing it to me. I remembered the light I used to have by my bed, with little star shapes cut out of the lampshade that made my ceiling look like the Milky Way. Th
e same ceiling I was looking at now. I remembered how it felt to have Mum’s arms around me, and her soft French tones singing that song to me over and over again.
I pulled off my headphones and sat up. I stayed like that for ages, staring into space, thinking about the Earth. About how its surface area is almost two hundred million square miles. And how somewhere, right now, in one of those square miles, was my mum. I still felt her gravitational pull. That feeling of belonging with her that never really went away, even when she did.
And that’s when I felt it.
It was an unmistakable feeling. One I’d felt before. One that sent goosebumps over my skin and a chill over my heart and made me think that Mystic Avani knew what she was talking about when she said I’d find something. Only she wasn’t talking about my mum.
“JASPER!” I shouted as loudly as I could whilst keeping my head perfectly still. “JASPER!”
The floorboards creaked outside my room and the door opened. A beam of yellow light spilled onto my carpet.
“Jemima! I’m trying to practise a trick! You’d better not have broken my CD player. What is it?”
“Not what is it,” I said. “Who is it?” I carefully pointed to my head and gave Jasper the strongest evils of my life.
Jasper moved closer and gasped as Tornado’s hairy legs walked slowly down the side of my face. All eight of them.
“Jasper,” I said, through my clenched jaw. “I am literally going to kill you.”
When I woke up the next day, I was exactly 4,748 days old. Or 156 months. Or thirteen years. I’d been on Earth long enough for it to revolve thirteen times around the sun. I was officially a teenager. And that felt like something to celebrate.
“Happy birthday, Jemstone!” Luna sang as she came into my room, opened the curtains and kissed me on the cheek. She always got up early on my birthday. “Your dad’s just gone to get Nana. I hope you like it!” From nowhere, she held up a zaffre blue dress. It’s a colour made from cobalt oxide. Hundreds of gold sequins sparkled in the sunlight. It was the kind of thing Emma Watson would probably wear on her birthday. Only my size. I got out of bed and gave Luna a hug.
“It’s amazing, Luna! Thank you!” I said, as she helped me try it on.
She made a few adjustments and hung it on my wardrobe door ready for later, then painted my fingernails and covered my eyelids in glitter.
“Your eyes look brighter than the stars!” Luna said, kissing my forehead.
I looked in the mirror and blinked a few times. I couldn’t see them sparkling, but I made a wish anyway.
Please let me not mess up Brainiacs.
Downstairs, Dad arrived back from getting Nana. He said, “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” and gave me a hug. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I may have slightly overreacted to your hair.”
“Slightly?” I muttered, helping Nana out of her chair and onto the sofa.
“It’s nice to see you looking back to normal,” Dad said. “Let’s focus on having a nice day, shall we?”
We all sat in the living room eating slightly burned croissants for breakfast while I opened my presents. Dad handed me a huge box wrapped in silver paper. Inside was a bright pink neon light that said:
“I’ll put it up in your bedroom later, if you like?”
“Thanks, Dad. I love it.” I took a gulp of my fizzy apple juice because I could feel tears starting in my eyes. Which wasn’t a good idea because then I got hiccups. I don’t know why a Jemima light made me want to cry. It’s a stupid thing to nearly cry about. It’s not even sad. But seeing my name written in pink neon, from my dad, I felt like maybe Jemima was an okay person to be.
“Here,” Jasper said, throwing a parcel at me. “It’s a unicorn that poos paper clips.” Jasper always tells you what’s inside your present before you open it.
Nana gave me some book tokens, the same as she did every year, and Luna put a book-shaped parcel into my hands. “Is it called How to Become a Brainiac in Nine Days?” I asked.
Luna smiled. “No! But I know you’ll like it.”
Nana said, “You could always buy that one with my tokens, dear.”
“Thanks, Nana.” I pulled off the wrapping paper. Star Atlas, it said in gold writing: Your guide to the night sky. “Wow!” I said, flicking through the pages of sky maps. “This is brilliant.”
“The perfect guide for a star-gazer.” Luna looked at me for ages, like she knew exactly how many times I’d wished on stars.
I put my cards up on the mantelpiece, trying not to think about the one from Mum that wasn’t there. Every year I told myself it was stupid to think she’d send something. But every time, that empty space in my heart filled up with the thought that maybe this year would be different. And then, when nothing arrived, I’d tell myself that maybe she hit her head and got amnesia. Or lived somewhere that didn’t have a postal service, like the International Space Station. But I can’t ever make myself believe it.
Dad put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll have a great day, I promise. Hey, there’s a present here you haven’t opened.” He picked up a green box from the side.
“Oh, that’s from Gina,” I said. “And yes, I know. It’s weird.”
“I don’t think it’s weird. It’s really nice of Gina! Not quite the deranged fitness freak you make her out to be, hey?”
I gave him a blank stare. “We don’t know what’s in it yet. It’s probably a packet of buckwheat seeds.”
He shook it gently. “Hmm, not sure,” he said handing it to me. “Feels more like tofu.”
I opened the box and held up a silver key ring with a star dangling from it.
“Nice! Thanks, GGB!” I attached it to the zip of my rucksack and that’s when I noticed the writing engraved on the other side: You are capable of amazing things.
“Isn’t that lovely!” Dad said, reading it over my shoulder. And I agreed with him. One hundred per cent.
I spent the rest of the day trying to beat my highest score in Scrabble, until I’d beaten Dad three times and he forced us to go for a walk along the seafront. Then I beat Jasper at Zombie Crush in the arcade. The whole way home he said he let me win because it was my birthday. Which isn’t true. Even if I’d been dying of some terrible, mysterious illness and it was my last day on planet Earth, Jasper would still try to beat me at Zombie Crush.
Later, when I was getting ready, Dad yelled, “MIKI’S HERE!” Even on my birthday, Dad still yelled at me up the stairs.
Just then, Jasper came out of his room wearing Grandad’s old cape and a pair of sunglasses saying, “Show starts in five.”
“It’s getting a bit dark, Jasper,” Dad said as we came downstairs. “You still okay to do the show outside?”
“I’m always ready!” Jasper said, sliding down the banister. He clicked his fingers and a loud bang went off as tiny sparks flew out of his fingertips.
Nana almost fell out of her chair.
“JASPER!” Dad shouted, clutching his chest in shock. “I thought I told you not to do that!” He stood poised under the smoke alarm. When nothing happened he said, “Do I need to warn the neighbours, Jasper? Tell them to keep their pets inside or something?”
“It’s fine, Dad. That was the only loud noise, I promise.”
“Happy birthday,” Miki said and handed me the most beautifully wrapped present I’ve ever seen. The paper was light yellow with tiny lilac flowers. “Mum might have helped me wrap that.”
“It’s amazing!” I said. I stood up and let the gold dreamcatcher dangle from my hand. Its long white feathers spun round and the tiny jewels sewn into the net caught the light. “I love it, Miki! Thank you.”
“It’s supposed to stop you having nightmares,” Miki said.
“But will it stop her from being a nightmare?” Jasper muttered. Nana gave him The Look and Jasper quickly added, “I mean, great gift, Miki. Really thoughtful.”
Outside, the sky was clear, so I pointed out the intricate patterns of the constellations to Miki – t
he Plough, Ursa Minor and the Great Square of Pegasus – under the light of the full moon and the hundreds of tealight candles in jars Luna had hung on the washing line.
“What’s that flashing one?” Miki asked.
I smiled. “Miki, that’s an aeroplane.”
Dad did a drum roll on his thighs and pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket. Jasper always printed out his own introduction. “Please, welcome to the stage…the astounding! The incredible! The enigmatic! The…wait a minute. What does that say?” He flashed the paper in front of me.
I rolled my eyes at Jasper’s blatant overstatement. “Phantasmagorical.”
“The phantasmagorical illusionist, Jasper Small!”
“Jasper Diamond!” Jasper shouted, then leaped out from behind the fir tree carrying an axe.
Miki squeezed my arm. I couldn’t tell if he was excited about the magic or scared for his life.
Jasper’s show music started and he tossed the axe high up into the air. Its silver blade glinted in the moonlight as it somersaulted three times, then transformed into a shower of shimmering crystals. We all clapped and cheered. Apart from Dad, who was nervously sweating.
Next, Jasper placed a silver box in front of him and danced around it. I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from laughing. Finally, he opened the box and his tarantula crept onto his hand. Miki edged closer to me. Jasper raised and twisted his arms as Tornado climbed across his chest then from fingertip to fingertip. Slowly, Jasper placed her inside a large glass jar. He screwed on the lid, then began to spin the jar in the palm of one hand as it filled with smoke. The jar went faster and faster and I seriously hoped Tornado had a stunt double.
Suddenly, the jar stopped spinning. Jasper took off the lid, and when the smoke escaped into the atmosphere, the jar was completely empty. Tornado had vanished.
“Bravo!” Nana cheered as Jasper retrieved Tornado from one of Luna’s pot plants.
My teeth were chattering from the cold by the time Jasper performed his final trick: the Vortex Tube. I’d seen it loads of times before. He gets what looks like an empty tube, does his weird magical dancing as he fills it with coloured handkerchiefs, then he pulls them out and they are magically tied together. Only this time, each handkerchief had a letter sewn on it, so when he held them up, it spelled HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEMIMA. I guessed Luna had helped him with it, but it was still a pretty good trick. Kind of phantasmagorical, actually.
Jemima Small Versus the Universe Page 15