Jelly

by Jo Cotterill

  When she finishes reading, there’s a small silence, and Avalon, who cries at everything, wipes her eyes. “That’s very, very good,” says Mr. Lenck. “Well done, Verity.”

  I press my lips together and stare at the table. I should have written a proper poem. If only Mr. Lenck knew what I had in my poetry book at home! He’d know I can do way better than a stupid poem about needing the toilet. But it’s too late now, and anyway . . . now everyone knows Verity’s secret. Doesn’t she mind?

  I’m a bit quiet on the way to lunch. Verity is ahead of me in the corridor, and some of the kids from our class are talking to her and giving her hugs and saying how brilliant her poem was and how brave she was to share it.

  And I think: If I shared how I feel, my fears and my anger . . . would they call me brave?

  But I don’t think they would—because your parents’ divorce is one thing, but being fat is another.

  Chapter 12

  Mom goes out on a date with Lennon, the singer. I eat half a tube of Pringles while she’s out, because I am restless with anxiety and the Pringles are in the cupboard.

  I’m ashamed to say I tried to persuade Mom not to go. “Stay here with meee!” I said, doing a little dance. “I’m way more fun!”

  She laughed, but she went out anyway. “Maybe she thinks he’s Mr. Right,” Rosie says, eyes fixed as ever on her phone. “Except there’s no such thing. Mom says she married Mr. Right and look how that turned out.”

  Rosie’s mom and dad got divorced and now her mom has a girlfriend who, Rosie says, is very cool and runs a marathon every year. “What if you find Mr. Right, and then he turns into Mr. Wrong, and instead you find Miss Right?” Rosie adds.

  I go to bed but I can’t sleep. I wouldn’t admit it to my friends, but I’m still bothered by the poems we did in class, even though it’s over a week ago now. I was stupid to write that silly poem. I should have made up something more like Sanvi’s. I could have done that. Why didn’t I?

  Why isn’t Mom home yet?

  It feels like a whole day has passed by the time she comes home, but according to the clock it’s 10:57 when the apartment door clicks open. She’s humming.

  I desperately want to get up and ask her how it went, but somehow I can’t. I listen to her humming quietly as she moves around the apartment, and I try to remember the last time she sounded as happy as that. The date must have gone well. But that just means it’ll be longer before it all goes wrong.

  I pull my pillow around the sides of my head to block out the sound, and I squeeze my eyes shut. A black cloud swirls inside me as I finally fall asleep.

  The next morning I’m very tired. I kept having weird dreams about laughing faces, and falling into holes and not being able to get out of them. Mom has to pull the duvet off me before I’ll get out of bed. “You’re going to be late for school,” she says.

  “Don’t care.”

  “Get up, Jelly.” She changes tack and says in a coaxing voice, “I’ll make you pancakes with chocolate chips. . . .”

  Oooh. I fall out of bed onto the floor with a flomp.

  My mom makes very good pancakes. She never uses that premixed stuff, she does it from scratch with eggs and flour and milk and sugar. Yum.

  She sings along to the radio while she heats up the batter. I look at her suspiciously. “Are you OK?”

  She gives me a warm smile. “I am. I had such a nice evening with Lennon.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Um . . . good.”

  Her phone pings and she reads the message. Her face softens and she literally says, “Awww.”

  “That him?” I say, drizzling a generous amount of syrup over the hot pancakes.

  “Yes,” she says with a sigh. “He’s lovely. So funny and kind and talented. I can’t think what he sees in me. I felt like such an idiot yesterday evening. He’s had all this life experience, traveling the world—he’s been to the Great Barrier Reef!—and I’ve never been further than France, and that was just the once, and it rained all the time.”

  “You’ve had life experience too,” I point out, feeling quite cross with Lennon for making my mom feel inferior. “It’s just different. But it still counts.”

  “That’s what he said,” she replies, her eyes softening again. “He said that people all over the world are just the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re on an estate or in a jungle tribe, everyone still faces the same worries: whether you’ve got enough to eat or keep warm, how to make friends, how to be safe. How to be happy with what you’ve got. He said the happiest people he found in the world were the ones who didn’t have a lot of things but they had love and friendship and music. And if you have a guitar, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world because language is a barrier but music is a gateway.”

  “Wow,” I say, staring at her. “That’s . . . um . . .” I don’t really know what else to say because this isn’t the sort of thing Mom’s boyfriends usually talk about.

  “Anyway,” she says, shaking herself as though suddenly remembering I’m there, “I mustn’t go on—you’ll be late for school!” Her phone rings and she makes a face at the name on the screen. “Oh great, it’s Maggi again. . . .” With a sigh she swipes to answer, and then says brightly, “Hi, Mags, how are you doing today?”

  I take my plate and mug to the kitchen and go to brush my teeth. I don’t like looking at myself in the mirror because I don’t like what I see, but this morning I stare into my eyes, trying to figure out what I’m thinking and feeling. It’s kind of slippery and topsy-turvy. Like trying to grab a wet fish or catch smoke.

  As I leave the apartment I hear Mom say, “But, Maggi, you know that’s not true. It’s your mind playing tricks on you. No one really thinks that about you.” She sounds kind and sympathetic, even though I know she’s fed up with hearing Maggi’s moans.

  It makes me think that even when people are grown-ups they wear masks, like in the poem, and sometimes they don’t even know they’re doing it.

  Chapter 13

  Of course in the end, I was bound to meet him. It’s about a week later—a week filled with pinging texts and Lennon’s songs, which Mom plays obsessively. Annoyingly, I like the songs a lot. I even find myself singing them at random moments during the day, which makes me feel very weird.

  Then Mom says casually at breakfast one morning, “Oh, Lennon’s going to drop by later, after school. He’s got an old record player he wants to lend me.”

  “An old what?”

  “Record player. You know, a turntable. What music used to be played on.” She chuckles. “Lennon says anyone who loves music needs to listen to it on vinyl.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I . . . OK.” What if I come home and they’re in the bedroom, like with Chris? “I might go to Coffeetastic after school.”

  “No, don’t,” Mom says quickly. “Come and meet him. You’ll like him, I know you will. He’s different from the others.”

  At break time, Sanvi says to me, “You OK, Jelly?”

  “Me? Yeah—why?”

  “You’re really quiet. Is something the matter?”

  “No,” I say, too quickly. “No, I’m fine. Honest.” I beam at her, the effort making my cheeks ache.

  “Oh,” she says. “OK. That’s good then. Kayma and I are going to practice our song. Want to come?”

  I’ve heard them sing their song for The K Factor about sixteen times already. “Um . . .” I say, looking around for an escape. I spot it in the form of a bunch of boys heading to the field with a soccer ball. “Sorry, I promised Will Matsunaga I’d teach him how to take a penalty kick. You know how it is.” I shrug. “When you’re a top soccer player like me . . .”

  Sanvi smiles. “It must be hard when you earn so many millions and have to pose for all those photos.”

  “It is,” I groan theatrically. “And I daren’t pull a muscle, or my career will be over.”

  Sanvi laughs and gives me a wave. “All right. See you in a bit.”

  Having said I’m going to play soccer
, I now have to, in case Kayma and Sanvi find out I was fibbing. I jog over to the field, feeling irritated and stormy.

  A game is underway, though it’s not clear who’s on which team. I run straight into the middle.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Marshall shouts at me. “Get out of the way, Jelly.”

  “Got a new game for you,” I call. Then I stand up straight and tuck my arms into my sides. “It’s called Hit the Lamppost. You kick the ball at me. If you hit me, you get one point. I’m a wide-enough target—it should be easy!”

  The boys look at each other and laugh. “You’re crazy, Jelly,” Will says.

  “Go on then,” says one of the other boys.

  I place myself in the middle of the goal, standing up straight. “From the penalty spot!” I tell them. “No closer!”

  The boys line up to take turns kicking the ball at me. Most of them miss. Will is good, he hits me twice.

  The ball bounces off me, leaving a stinging pain. But in some weird way the pain is good. It’s easier to deal with than the big swirling worry in my stomach, and it means I don’t have to think about meeting Lennon after school. And the boys are all laughing and having a brilliant time, and when the bell rings they rush over to slap me on the back and tell me I’m a good sport—and I feel good. So making myself a figure of fun was worth it.

  I drag my feet on the way home. The sun is shining, but there’s still a dark stormy cloud inside me because I can’t put it off any longer. I’d like to fast-forward to tomorrow.

  As I go through the park, I hear a vaguely familiar sound. A tinny melody. I look around to see where it’s coming from. A man is sitting on one of the benches, holding something small to his mouth. Of course—it’s a harmonica. The instrument the man in Coffeetastic showed me. For a moment I feel a clutch of hope that it’s the same man, but it isn’t. The man on the bench is older, with a bald patch on the top of his head and graying tufts around it. Despite the hot weather he’s wearing a sort of brown woollen suit, with a pale blue shirt and battered Converses. In a weird retro way, he looks kind of stylish.

  The tune he’s playing is lilting and mournful. I stand and listen for a few moments, but then I realize it might look weird if he sees me standing there staring at him, so I move on. The haunting tune follows me out of the park, like a lost dog.

  I feel calmer by the time I reach home. It’s almost as though the tune was saying to me: It’s all right. You can do this. You just have to be the Jelly everyone knows, and not let things get to you. Whoever this new boyfriend is, he won’t be around for long. Smile and nod, and keep out of the way.

  I’ll say hi and go to my room and maybe look up harmonica videos online.

  And then I open the door and nearly fall over in shock. Because standing at the dining table, chatting animatedly to my mom as he puts a black disc onto an ancient record player, is the man from Coffeetastic.

  Chapter 14

  “You!” I say, astonished.

  “You!” he says back, equally surprised, it seems. Then a smile spreads across his face, and it’s wide and warm and his eyes sparkle, and he adds, “Well, hello again!”

  Mom looks baffled. “You two have already met?”

  He lets out a laugh of genuine amusement. “Oh, this is so great! I had no idea! You’re Angelica then?”

  “Jelly,” I say automatically. “Everyone calls me Jelly.”

  “All right,” he replies, nodding. “Jelly it is. I’m Lennon.”

  “You’re Lennon.” I must have realized this when I walked in, but my brain is only just catching up with my eyes. “I can’t believe it.”

  Lennon says to Mom, “I met Jelly in a coffee shop a couple of weeks ago. She was kind enough to share her table.”

  Mom frowns. “When were you in a coffee shop without me?”

  Uh-oh. “Um . . .”

  “You were on your way home from school, weren’t you?” Lennon breaks in. “You didn’t stay long.”

  “Er—yeah, that’s right,” I say, throwing him a grateful look. “I just popped in to say hi to Fliss, that’s all. And have a drink.”

  “You shouldn’t let a stranger share your table,” Mom tells me, changing tack. “It’s not safe.”

  “It was very busy,” Lennon says. “Hers was the only table with a spare chair. We were very sensible about it, weren’t we, Jelly?”

  I nod. “We talked about music.”

  “Hmm,” says Mom.

  “Speaking of,” Lennon says, “want to see some ancient music technology? I’m educating your mom.”

  Lennon shows me the record player which is in a case, kind of like a really big laptop. The lid lifts up to reveal a round platform with a metal peg in the middle and a wobbly arm on the side. At the end of the arm, a sharp needle points downward. “This is a record,” Lennon says, holding up a black disc as big as our dinner plates, with a small hole in the middle. “Or an LP. Made of vinyl. See the grooves on it? That’s where the music is stored.”

  “I have seen one of these before,” I say witheringly. “Kayma’s dad has one. They’re totally retro.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, they must seem historic to you. Like the wireless was to me.”

  I don’t follow this. “Wireless?”

  “Never mind.” Lennon slots the disc onto the platform, lifts the metal arm, and carefully lines it up on the edge of the disc. Then he flicks a switch, and the record starts going round—and music comes out.

  It’s a band playing some kind of old-fashioned music. I saw a black-and-white program once about people in America on paddle steamers and cutting sugar. Something like that anyway. There was music like this playing on the soundtrack. Then a familiar tinny sound picks out a mournful melody. “Harmonica!” I exclaim.

  “That’s right.” Lennon grins at me. “Did you listen to some Stevie Wonder then?”

  “No. No, I meant to, but I forgot.”

  “You two seem to have had quite a lot of conversation in the coffee shop,” says Mom, and her voice sounds a bit odd.

  “I’ll bring some Stevie Wonder next time,” Lennon says. Then he turns to Mom and adds, “If that’s all right with you, of course.”

  “Of course it is,” she says with a bright smile.

  I watch the record going around and around, and the needle in the player skimming the grooves. It’s kind of hypnotic. The song sounds different from what I’m used to, not just because it’s old and jazzy, but sort of raw and immediate. Like the singer is right here in the room with us, voice cracking on a note and everything. If I close my eyes, I can imagine the band here in our living room, the bass drum pedal thumping on our carpet, and the musicians breathing. There are little scrapes and rustles in the music, as though the air is alive with it. Briefly I imagine I have a music net that I can sweep through the air to capture the fluttering sounds.

  When the song ends, Lennon switches off the player and lifts the metal arm with the needle off the record. “What did you think?” he asks.

  “Was that their final version?” I ask. “Only, it sounded kind of like a rehearsal.”

  Lennon laughs. “That’s the immediacy of the recording. You don’t get any of the polish from computer processing.”

  “The singer was a bit out of tune at one point,” I say, “but I liked how he put lots of feeling into it.”

  “Do you sing, Jelly?” Lennon asks.

  “Oh, no, not really. I mean, I can. But it’s not my thing.”

  “She has a beautiful voice,” Mom breaks in. She pulls me to her and puts her arms around me tightly. “It’s probably because she’s built like an opera singer. Big and solid and strong, my Jelly.”

  The words sting, and her arms are too tight. “Yeah,” I say, and grin at Lennon. “It’s not over till the fat lady sings, Mom always says. So beware the day I sing!”

  He laughs because I’m smiling, and then he says lightly, “Don’t be silly—you’re not fat.”

  A chill runs down my spine, but I don’t need to re
ply because Mom lets go of me and leans over the record player. “I’ve never really listened to one of these,” she says. “It’s so vivid, so fresh. I mean, it sounds old, but like it’s still alive. Like history is talking to you, or something.”

  Lennon says enthusiastically, “That’s exactly how it makes me feel. Shall we try another track?”

  We sit down and listen to some more songs on the record, and Lennon talks about how he first got interested in music as a boy, when his dad bought him a guitar. “It was way too big for me,” he says, smiling. “My hand wouldn’t go round the fretboard and I could only play three chords. But three chords can be all you need for a song. I guess that’s how I got into jazz and blues, because loads of those songs are just built on easy repetition of a couple of chords. Basic twelve-bar blues only needs three chords. I could teach both of you in an afternoon. And once you’ve got the basics you can sing all kinds of stuff. I used to make up little songs about how I hated going to school. How the PE teacher was a sadist, making us run round the field in pouring rain. There was even a song I wrote called ‘English Hell,’ because I was dyslexic and always came in last.”

  I laugh, but Mom says, “Oh, poor you.”

  “Don’t worry, it was funny. The song, I mean. ‘The sun is gone, now rings the bell, that summons me to English hell.’ I was pleased with that rhyme.”

  “Sounds like you used music as your way to cope with the world,” says Mom, leaning on her hand and gazing at him.

  “Yeah, I guess I did. Life wasn’t all that much fun, you know? But I always had my music.”

  Later, when Lennon has gone and Mom and I are eating baked potatoes, she says to me, “Isn’t he nice? I told you you’d like him.”