Jemima Small Versus the Universe

by Tamsin Winter

  Channel your inner goddess

  I looked down at my schedule. Unless my inner goddess had been revising logic and strategy games, Luna’s advice was kind of useless.

  Inside the Chaplin Suites, a man was on a stage at the back.

  “Welcome, Brainiacs!” he boomed into a microphone.

  Everyone clapped and cheered. There were two hundred and fifty people there, but it felt like thousands. Some were wearing their school uniforms like me, some were in jeans, a few were wearing business suits. I scanned the room for Lottie, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I felt instantly bad for accidentally wishing she’d get the norovirus last night.

  “I’m Damien Jones,” the man onstage said. “I’m one of the producers of the show. Thank you all for coming here to compete for a place on Britain’s toughest brain-busting competition…Brainiaaaaaaaaacs!”

  Everyone cheered again. I could feel the sweat on my palms each time I clapped my hands together.

  “As you can see, the room’s been divided into four zones. Each of you will complete timed tests in each zone, and our adjudicators – they are the very friendly looking people in yellow tops – will record your scores.”

  A sea of yellow arms went up as the adjudicators waved. A boy standing near me waved back.

  “Your families will be in the Garson Suite upstairs while the competition is taking place. If you need them urgently for any reason, please tell any member of our crew. Now, competitors!” The microphone squeaked. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you what’s at stake! The fifteen of you with the highest overall scores will go through to appear on our TV show for a chance to win the amazing Brainiacs trophy and five thousand pounds for your school! It only happens once a year, people! Make some noise!”

  Everyone cheered even louder, one of the adjudicators drummed on a table and the boy near me wolf-whistled. I hoped I wouldn’t get tinnitus after this.

  “You’ve read the rules, but here’s the most important one,” Damien said. “DO. YOUR. BEST! Good luck and may your brains be with you!”

  The klaxon sounded again so I headed towards a sign saying Logic and Strategy Zone. And that’s when I spotted Lottie. My stomach lurched. She was wearing her school uniform, but she looked different. She was wringing her hands and glancing around the room like she didn’t know where to go. I walked over.

  “Hey, Lottie,” I said. “Do you know which zone you’re doing first?”

  Her face changed and she said, “Yes, of course, Jemima. I’ve got the Languages Zone.”

  “I’ve got Logic and Strategy,” I said, and she stared at me. I could tell she was nervous because the water in the bottle she was holding was sloshing around. “Well, good luck. May your brain be with you!” I said and regretted it instantly.

  “Like I need you to tell me that,” she replied. “Oh, no! Look – they got your name wrong.”

  I automatically looked down at the badge on my lapel.

  “It should say Jemima Big.”

  She brushed past me and headed towards the World Languages and Spelling Zone. I knew it was only Lottie, but it felt like someone had thrown a bowling ball at my stomach. I glanced around to see if anyone else had heard. I didn’t feel upset, just stupid. And feeling stupid was not a good way to start Britain’s toughest brain-busting competition.

  I watched the back of Lottie’s head disappear into the crowd, then I surveyed the room. Two hundred and fifty people. Each one of them competing for a place on the show. Some of them probably wondering why I would want one. I turned and looked back at the double doors I’d just come through. A man in a yellow T-shirt with a Bluetooth device in his ear was about to close them. There was still time to turn back.

  Or, I thought, turning around and lifting my head up, maybe it’s time to channel my inner box jellyfish.

  In the Logic and Strategy Zone, an adjudicator with curly red hair showed me to a booth which contained a yellow table and two chairs facing each other. And it was tiny. My cheeks flushed as I pushed the chair as far back against the wall as I could.

  “I’m so sorry, Jemima,” she said, pushing the divider back a bit so I could at least breathe. “Space is really tight in this zone. The others aren’t so squashed.” Which was nice of her and totally embarrassing at the same time.

  She disappeared, then came back a minute later with a boy who looked a few years younger than me. He was wearing a suit with matching waistcoat and a yellow tie, and his hair was parted in the middle. He looked like he’d jumped straight out of a Charles Dickens novel, which was appropriate because his name badge said Oliver.

  He shook my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Oli. And I’m going to completely annihilate you.”

  Before I could say anything, the adjudicator turned over a chart on the wall. On it were pictures of fruits, each with a number next to it. It took me about 0.5 seconds to figure out we would be doing algebraic equations. A tiny fizz of excitement (and maybe relief) shot through me as she explained the rules. I tried to steady my hands. It was only choosing the right fruits to solve the equations, I told myself. It was mental maths. I’d done this a million times with Mrs Lee, and this time, I didn’t have Lottie blowing her cheeks out at me. I just had Oliver Twist glaring at me instead. I took a deep breath as the adjudicator placed a yellow buzzer on the table in between us.

  “One hundred and forty-eight,” she said and clicked a timer. I scanned the values on the chart, searching for a way to make 148. It took me almost ten seconds to work it out because I was so nervous. Luckily, Oli wasn’t any quicker.

  I pressed the buzzer. “Pineapple times apple squared minus grapes.”

  “Correct!”

  I blew out a long breath as Oli gave me evils over the table.

  After twenty questions, I’d beaten him 18–2.

  I stood up, shook his hand and said, “It was good meeting you, Oli. I mean, annihilating you.”

  After that, I beat a girl called Sinead at brain-teasers, solved logic problems faster than Diego, cracked more codes than Madison and then messed up a chess game against Zane.

  A klaxon sounded and Damien Jones bellowed down the microphone, “End of your first zone!”

  There was a short break, so I filled up my bottle from the water station near the stage and sat down. The room felt really stuffy, but I didn’t want to take off my blazer. I dabbed the sweat on my top lip with a tissue and wafted my schedule to get some air on my face. I kept forgetting I’d given my phone to Dad, and reached into my pocket a few times to get it. I had a cereal bar in there, but I hated eating in crowds, so I sat and watched the other people. Some competitors were standing in groups chatting, but a lot were like me, just sitting at the edge of the room. A boy nearby, whose name badge said Andrew, was reciting the two hundred and twenty-three times table. Some people were smiling; some looked defeated already. I guess I was in the middle. Like Jupiter. And approximately the same temperature as its core.

  When the klaxon sounded, I double-checked my schedule, then headed to the Memory Zone where I had ten minutes to memorize picture cards. One hundred of them. I spread them out on the table and took a few deep breaths through my nose. It’s called belly breathing. It helps get more oxygen to your brain, according to the NHS website. (I did some strategy googling on the train.) Not that I really needed it. I’d been able to memorize a whole pack of cards since I was seven years old and I’d managed all seventy-eight of Luna’s tarot cards last week. I cracked my knuckles, picked up the cards and shuffled them, just like Jasper.

  When ten minutes was up, a man with a thin moustache came in with a clipboard and a timer. I had two minutes to recite as many objects as I could. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  I was on thirty-two – a pink octopus – when I made the mistake of opening my eyes. Lottie was standing opposite my booth. She was about five metres away, but I could still see her filling her cheeks with air. I don’t know what happened to my brain after that. In fact, I do. There’s this chemical
called norepinephrine that makes your brain freeze up. After that, I could only remember a few cards before the time ran out. And you don’t have to be a Brainiac to know that thirty-five out of a hundred was light years away from good enough.

  In the next booth, I had to memorize a Metro map of Paris. It had approximately a million destinations and was approximately impossible to remember. My opponent was called Daniel. He’d drawn a smiley face with sunglasses on his badge underneath his name.

  “Hello, Jemima! Or should I say bonjour!”

  He over-pronounced bonjour exactly the way Jasper did; I knew I had to beat him.

  The adjudicator clicked a timer, then read out impossible-sounding questions like, “Which station is five stops north-west from Concorde?” and “How many stations contain the letter T?”

  Daniel kept over-pronouncing the French words, which was so annoying it seemed to supercharge the neurons in my brain. And in three minutes, I’d won 14–6.

  In the next zone, I got full marks in the spelling test, anagrams and vocabulary match-up, but didn’t do so well in the foreign words round. It started okay. I mean, when you live with Jasper, you can’t not know that araignée means spider in French. And when Miki’s your best friend, you know sensei is teacher in Japanese. Afzal had taught us some Arabic in form time last year, and I knew a few Polish words from Alina. But I had to guess the rest, which was annoying. They really ought to teach you Luxemburgish at school.

  When the klaxon sounded it was time for my final zone: the Universe of Knowledge. I sat at a yellow table with a buzzer in front of me and the late morning sun blazing through the windows onto my face. Sweat was soaking through my shirt at the back. I had to take my blazer off. I peeled it down my arms and put it over the back of my chair, then tucked my chair right up against the table.

  “Jemima! We meet again!” It was Zane, who’d beaten me at chess earlier. “Good luck!”

  I wished him luck too. And silently wished for there not to be any sweat on the plastic chair when I stood up.

  Our adjudicator told us, “This game’s really straightforward. Quick-fire general knowledge. Buzz as soon as you know the answer. If you’re wrong, you lose a point and your opponent gets a try. Good luck! May your brains be with you!” He raised the question cards and I placed my trembling hand on the buzzer.

  “The first question is: the chemical symbol Au—”

  Before I even had a chance to blink, Zane had hit his buzzer. “Gold!”

  “I’m afraid I hadn’t finished the question, Zane,” the adjudicator said, adjusting his glasses. “You go on to minus one point and, Jemima, you now have a chance to answer. The chemical symbol Au has which atomic number?”

  I smiled awkwardly at Zane. “Seventy-nine?”

  “Correct!”

  Time flew by faster than a cosmic ray, and after twenty questions, our scores were tied. Which could only mean one thing: a tiebreaker. Zane wished me luck and the adjudicator said, “Which constellation is home to the Ring Nebula?”

  I hit the buzzer at approximately the speed of light. “The northern constellation of Lyra.” It’s the kind of thing you know when you gaze at the stars with your auntie a lot.

  “Good match, Jemima Small!” Zane said, shaking my hand. “You’ve got a big brain in there!”

  And my smile probably went as wide as the Ring Nebula. But it faded quickly. Because the next opponent walked in: Lottie Freeman.

  I closed my eyes. I knew she’d be staring at me. I wished I hadn’t taken my blazer off. I folded my arms tight across my tummy, and tried to ignore my heartbeat, which was increasing by the second. I took some deep breaths and focused on what I knew about the nervous system. It releases chemicals in your brain to help you respond to danger. It’s probably what helped our early ancestors survive all those millions of years ago. Sometimes those chemicals give you brain-freeze, but sometimes they surge through your brain like a super power. I opened my eyes.

  Predictably, Lottie was staring at me. “Thought you’d fallen asleep!” She tilted her head slightly. “This is probably quite exhausting for you.”

  Just then, an adjudicator with bright-blue hair walked into our booth. “Take a deep breath, girls! It will help your nerves.” A titanium crystal was hanging from her neck, glowing electric blue in the light. Luna had one of those. She said they’re so energizing, they awaken all of your seven chakras. Before that, I didn’t even know I had one chakra.

  “Good luck, Jemima!” Lottie said in her angelic voice.

  “That’s right, Lottie! It’s not a battle! Just answer as many questions as you can in three minutes. May your brains be with you!” The lady smiled and held up the question cards. The Brainiacs lightning bolt logo glinted gold in the sunshine. My heart pounded in my chest as Gina’s words came back to me: Hold your head up.

  I sat up straight in my chair, put my hand on my buzzer and looked at Lottie with stone-cold eyes. Eyes like my great-great-aunties’ in those old photographs. As though I could feel their blood pumping through my veins.

  It is a battle, I thought. But I have beard-growing-bare-knuckle-fighting-mind-reading women in my DNA. And I don’t plan to lose.

  Lottie put her hand on the buzzer and inflated her cheeks. I took a deep breath, looking directly into her beady eyes. The rodent has a lot of predators. But none so deadly as the human.

  “Kosciuszko is the highest mountain in which country?”

  I slammed my hand down. “Australia,” I said and Lottie flashed a sarcastic smile as the adjudicator said, “Correct!”

  “Who was the third man to walk on the moon?”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure, but as soon as I saw Lottie’s hand flinch, I pressed mine down. It was worth risking a guess. “Charles Conrad Junior?”

  The adjudicator smiled. “Correct.”

  The questions flew so fast it felt like I was dodging bullets. Lottie did well on sports, and geography and she answered one about a composer I’d never heard of. So when the adjudicator said we only had one more question, I didn’t know if I’d done enough.

  “Good luck, girls,” she said. “Calculate the following…”

  I could feel my hand shaking on the buzzer. But I closed my eyes and watched the numbers she read out form a sum in my mind. I don’t know how long it took me to work it out. It felt like an eternity.

  All I know is it wasn’t as long as Lottie. “Eight hundred and seventy-nine.”

  “Correct, Jemima! The final scores are: Lottie six, Jemima nine.”

  The klaxon sounded three times.

  Damien shouted, “That’s it, Brainiacs! Game over! Well done!”

  Everyone around me was cheering, but I didn’t join in. I didn’t feel excited or relieved or happy or victorious. If I could pick an adjective to describe how I felt right then, immediately after beating Lottie at the Brainiacs Selection Day, I’d pick aliferous. It means having wings. I felt as though I’d soared above the Chaplin Suites, high above the city, right up to the very edge of our atmosphere and touched the boundary between Earth and space.

  Lottie’s chair screeched against the wooden floor as she stood up. She muttered, “Well done,” then left the booth without looking behind her. It had never felt so good to see the back of her head.

  “Thank you, competitors! You’ve been fantastic! This year’s show is going to be the best and the toughest EVER! I wish we could take all of you through, but we only have fifteen places. You’ll find out very soon if you’ve done enough. Don’t forget to collect your Brainiacs goody bag on your way out. Thank you!” Damien clapped his hands above his head and a huge cheer went through the room like a rip tide.

  I stood up and joined in that time.

  The Brainiacs people had put out a buffet for everyone, but Dad said we could eat somewhere else if I wanted. So I chose a Japanese restaurant near Paddington station where you pick your food from a conveyor belt going all the way round the room. We ate miso soup and cucumber rolls and aub
ergine nigari and I didn’t notice anyone looking at me twice. Not even once. Maybe because we were in a big city. Or maybe because I’d mixed too much wasabi into my soy sauce and I felt like my nose was about to explode.

  Later, as our train approached Clifton station, Dad put his arm around me.

  “I’m so proud of you, Jem.”

  “We don’t know if I’ve got through yet,” I said.

  “I’m proud of you regardless of that.” He smiled at the other passengers waiting to get off. “My daughter’s just auditioned for Brainiacs!” he said to literally the entire train.

  I considered hitting the emergency stop button but it said there was a one-hundred-pound fine for improper use and I’d only just cleared my pocket money debt from the conical beakers I broke.

  “Good luck!” a woman called as we got off the train. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, love!” And she smiled like she actually meant it.

  I took out my phone and read the messages from Miki:

  yessss!!!!! omg!!! lololololol!!!

  Dad wrapped his coat around my shoulders as I read the one from Jasper: proud of you sister.

  I’d read a lot of spelling and vocabulary books over the past few weeks, but I didn’t know a word to describe that feeling you get when you know people are proud of you. It was like being filled with sunlight, the kind of sunlight that refracts across the horizon. And it made that hole inside my heart feel not so infinite.

  The next morning, Dad said “Brainiacs Selection Day fatigue” wasn’t an illness, so I had to go to school. As I packed the Brainiacs mini dictionary, pencils, banana-scented tissues and lightning-bolt geometry set I’d got in my goody bag into my rucksack, I thought at least Lottie would finally leave me alone. Now I’d beaten her at Brainiacs, she couldn’t say anything to me. But my theory was proved wrong. Like, the-Earth-is-flat theory wrong. It made her worse.

  It was pouring with rain, so of course in PE we were playing hockey. I had no choice but to run my fastest because our teacher, Ms Newton, is demented.