by Jo Cotterill
“Oh, sorry!” I say.
Marshall swings around, rubbing his shoulder. “Ow, that really hurt.”
“I said I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see you.”
His lips scrunch up into a scowl. “Can’t you look where you’re going, Jelly? It’s like being hit by a tank.” Then he turns away and goes into the classroom.
I take several seconds more than I need to hang up my bag because my face is burning with shame. A tank. Because I am bigger and heavier than everyone else. . . .
There’s an old saying about sticks and stones. It says they can hurt you but words can’t. I don’t know who wrote that, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Everyone can see the bruises left by sticks and stones. Those bruises fade. The ones left by words are invisible, but they never go away.
I don’t feel quite myself for most of the morning. It feels like stuff is churning around inside me. I make a couple of people laugh by doing silly things with pencils, but it’s an effort.
And then when I go to the bathroom at break, there’s a dark smudge on my underwear.
Chapter 21
I stare at it in panic. Is that . . . ? What is that? Am I hurt? Have I cut myself without realizing? It looks like blood, only kind of brown.
Oh.
Oh, no.
No, no, it can’t be!
A sudden image of Kayma’s room: the Your Body and Its Changes book . . . the chapter on . . . periods.
Oh, yuck. Oh, this is so not fair. I glare at my underwear as though it’s somehow its fault. This is revolting. I can’t believe this is actually a thing that happens to girls. Bleeding, every month, out of my . . . YUCKYUCKYUCK, I can’t even think it! I’m only eleven!
Angrily, I thump my fist against the cubicle wall. “Hey!” comes a voice from the next cubicle. “What’s that for?”
“Sorry!” I blurt out. “Slipped!”
Panic sweeps over me like a cold shower. What am I meant to do? I haven’t got any . . . things. Any plastic-wrapped squares or tubes like my mom has. I don’t think I’d even know what to do with one. Some public toilets have machines where you can buy them—but there’s nothing like that here at school. And I haven’t got any money anyway.
How much . . . blood . . . will there be? If I just wait and don’t do anything, will it go right through my skirt? Will I end up sitting in a brown-red puddle? I’m paralyzed by fright, imagining everyone pointing and laughing at me. I’d never live it down.
I feel a bit dizzy. The book said it was a big moment, the first time. It shows a girl has become a woman. Am I suddenly a woman? Is that why I feel like I’m going to throw up?
A loud banging on the toilet door makes me jump in fright. “Are you all right in there?”
I can’t speak. There are murmurings outside the door. “Who’s in there?”
“I dunno, but she’s been ages.”
“Maybe she’s doing a poo.” Much giggling.
“Maybe she’s fainted. My sister said once there was a girl who fainted in the toilets at her school and the teacher had to break open the door and put her in the recovery position.”
“There was that bang a few minutes ago. I was right next to her, nearly made me pee my pants.”
More giggling.
“No, but maybe she hit her head?”
“She said she slipped. Maybe she passed out after that. Can you get delayed unconscious?”
“Should we get someone?”
“Look under the door. See if she’s lying on the floor.”
Hastily I grab a wad of toilet paper and stuff it into my underwear.
“I can hear the toilet roll going,” someone outside says. “She’s not unconscious.”
“Maybe she’s crying. Hello, are you all right in there?”
“I already asked that, but she didn’t answer.”
“I’m a Bullying Ambassador. Maybe I should try to talk to her. Er . . . hello in there. Is there anything the matter?”
“How is that any different from what I said?”
“If you ask someone if they’re all right, all they can say is yes or no.”
“You can say that to ‘is anything the matter?’ too.”
I flush the toilet and unlock the door. Three girls fall into the cubicle.
“Oh,” says one of them, “it’s you! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine!” I say, as though surprised to be asked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
The girls exchange glances. “You were in there for ages.”
“Oh,” I say, brain racing, “I was, like, writing a comedy sketch in my head.”
“What?”
“Yeah . . .” I warm to my lie. “I was just thinking about Mrs. Belize and Ms. Jones meeting at the dentist, and Mrs. Belize has just had a filling and her face is all numb, and she can’t speak properly, so she’s like, ‘Hewwo, Mtth Joneth, what a thurprithe,’ and Ms. Jones is leaning back because Mrs. Belize is dribbling everywhere.”
The girls are laughing now.
“I was in there so long,” I say, waving at the toilet, “because I was so busy thinking up stuff I forgot to get off.”
“My brother takes his phone to the bathroom,” one of the girls says. “He can be in there for hours.”
This sparks an enthusiastic conversation between the girls about what people take with them to the bathroom and the longest one of them has ever had to wait, and the time Hetty Callaghan peed all over the floor because the toilets were all occupied. I push past them to wash my hands and leave them to it.
You know how sometimes time speeds up? This is not one of those times. Every single minute that goes by feels like an hour. At lunchtime I rush back to the toilet to change the wad of toilet roll. There isn’t as much . . . stuff . . . as I’d expected. Which is a relief but doesn’t make me any less paranoid for the rest of the day. And the tissue in my pants makes me wriggle uncomfortably.
Do you ever get this weird desire to shout out something completely inappropriate? Like when you all have to be dead quiet in assembly, and you just want to shout “BIG HAIRY BUTTS” or something, and you have to swallow it down because although it would be hilarious for about half a second, you know you’d go bright red afterward and be seriously told off?
Well, that. I spend the whole afternoon biting back “I AM BLEEDING DOWN THERE,” but because I’m not very good at being quiet, I make up for it by being super-silly and annoying. I know I’m doing it, but I can’t stop because I’m worried that if I try to sit quietly, the embarrassing words will burst out of me like a fountain and then everyone will stare at me and screw up their noses in disgust and I’ll end up crying on the floor and never be able to go back to school again.
“Angelica,” Mr. Lenck says, more than once, “be quiet, please.”
But I can’t. He frowns and starts to make a mark on the board next to my name every time he has to speak to me. “Get to five, and you’ll lose break time,” he warns me.
I scrape to the end of the day on four warnings and when the bell rings, I start to laugh hysterically. No one knew! No one guessed! I go out into the hall and do an extra-funny version of Mrs. Belize at the dentist for Kayma and Sanvi. They fall about laughing. “That’s brilliant,” Kayma says, wiping her eyes. “You have to put that in your K Factor act.”
“Do you think?” I ask.
“Well . . .” says Sanvi, cautious as ever, “Mrs. Belize will be watching, so maybe it’s not such a good idea to make fun of her. . . .”
“I could change it,” I say, “so that it’s more about the dentist. Oh, I know! How about I make it that Mr. Lenck is the dentist! And Mrs. Belize is totally shocked to see him and he says this is my second job because everyone knows teaching doesn’t pay well enough, so I’m being a dentist part-time—and she says, ‘Are you qualified?’ And he says, ‘I’ve done a four-day course and I’m really good with a drill.’ And Mrs. Belize faints on the floor!”
Sanvi is nodding along, her eyes shining. “That sounds very funny,”
she says. “Much better!”
“Cool!” I turn to grab my bag.
“Oh, hang on a minute,” Sanvi says, bending down. “You’ve got something stuck to the back of your skirt . . . oh! What’s that?”
I feel like someone’s tipped a bucket of iced water over me. I twist out of her grasp, pulling at my skirt with my hand. “Oh, nothing. I sat in some chocolate earlier,” I lie. “Mom’s going to kill me.”
“Oh, dear.” Sanvi loses interest. “See you in the morning, yeah?”
“Yep.” I wave them off, then carefully tie my cardigan around my waist so that no one can see the back of my skirt. Then, trembling, I set off for home. Mom will help. I can talk to her.
But when I open the door to my apartment and go into the living room to dump my bags, the only person there, sitting in the armchair and strumming his guitar, is Lennon.
Chapter 22
“Hey, Jelly,” Lennon says, smiling at me. “What’s new with you today?”
“What do you mean?” I say sharply. “Nothing’s new.”
He looks surprised. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound weird. Don’t you hate it when people say, ‘How was school?’ I was just trying to ask something different.”
“Where’s Mom?” I ask abruptly.
He nods toward the hallway. “In her room, on the phone, with the door shut. Something’s happened at HQ. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it’s all very intense and she’s been in there fifteen minutes already.” He frowns slightly. “Are you all right? You look stressed. Has something happened?”
I don’t know what to do. Something weird is definitely happening to me right now. I stare at him, and I feel hot and cold and fuzzy, and a bit sick. The edges of my vision start to darken.
Lennon jumps up. “Jelly, sit down. You need to—” But I don’t hear what he says next.
When I open my eyes I’m on the floor. It’s very peculiar. Why am I on the floor?
Lennon is sitting cross-legged next to me. He says, “Hello! You fainted.”
“What?” I still feel fuzzy, and my body is heavy and tired. I don’t feel any desire to move.
“You fainted. My last girlfriend used to do it quite a lot, so I could tell you were about to. Don’t worry, I think you’re all right. You didn’t hit your head or anything. It was quite a graceful faint. Did you eat lunch today? My girlfriend used to faint when she hadn’t eaten enough.”
“Er . . .” I try to think. “I ate lunch.” I don’t remember what it was, but I’m sure I ate lunch. I always eat lunch.
“That’s good,” he says. “It might take you a few minutes to feel better. It’s OK—you can stay on the floor.”
Suddenly I feel very silly. I sit up.
“Don’t try anything too quickly,” Lennon warns me. “You might faint again.”
“I’m not going to faint again. I’ve never fainted before.” It wasn’t at all how I thought fainting would feel.
“I’ll go and get your mom,” Lennon says, unfolding his long legs. “I didn’t want to leave the room while you were unconscious.”
“No—no, don’t bother her.” Mom isn’t good with illnesses. She always gets really worried and starts fussing. I don’t want fussing right now. “Don’t interrupt her. I’m fine. I’ll talk to her in a bit.”
Lennon tilts his head to one side. “You sure? You still look quite pale.”
“I’ll just sit here for a bit.” I wriggle my legs around to be more comfortable.
“You’ve got something on your skirt,” Lennon comments.
I freeze.
This may be the single most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t know what to do. “It’s chocolate,” I blurt out.
Lennon’s eyebrows boing upward at my sharp and instant response. “Oh,” he says. And then there’s a pause, and my gaze drops to the carpet and my face burns red. After a long, long moment, Lennon says nicely, “Jelly, do you want to go to the bathroom?”
“Yes,” I gulp out, and I get up and stagger out of the room.
I dump my skirt and underwear in the bath. Mom will know what to do with them. Then I rummage through the bathroom cabinet and take out one of the plastic-wrapped squares from Mom’s stash. I tie a towel around my waist and scuttle to my room, where I attempt to stick the pad to a clean pair of underwear. It’s way harder than I thought. I have to keep un-peeling it and resticking it, and then I accidentally stick it to my . . . er . . . you know, and yelp with pain. Why didn’t we have a lesson on these at school? This is going to take a lot of practice.
By the time I’m dressed and sorted, I’m feeling frustrated and wobbly. Is this what made me faint? Is this why my tummy felt weird all morning?
I hesitate outside Mom’s bedroom. She’s still on the phone. Fragments of the conversation float through the door. “. . . get what you’re saying, but it’s not exactly fair of them, is it? I mean . . . last one in, first one out. How long before the rest of us are at risk? I don’t know, Cass, maybe it’s time to . . . yeah, me too. Not that easy though, is it, finding something that fits around the kids?”
My hand, which was on the doorknob, drops away. This isn’t a conversation I can interrupt. Mom sounds stressed.
“Jelly?” Lennon appears at the end of the hallway, waving an empty mug. “Hot chocolate?”
I smile. “It’s, like, seventy degrees outside.”
“So? Hot chocolate is what you give girls at that time of the month. Preferably with a side helping of actual chocolate. Or ice cream, if push comes to shove. That’s what I’ve always been told. Which of the three do you want? I guess it’s more ice-cream weather.”
I’m not a big one for ice cream normally, but today it sounds like a really good idea. Together we rummage through the freezer and unearth a tub of salted caramel. Lennon hands me the whole thing, with a spoon. “I believe the thing to do is to eat it straight from the tub,” he says, “while complaining about the unfairness of being female. Do you want a hot water bottle?”
I can’t help but laugh. “It’s boiling outside.”
He shakes his head. “Hey, I never said it made sense.” Then he smiles and sits down next to me at the table. “What do you usually do for it?”
I dig into the solid ice cream. “It’s my first time.”
“No way! You poor thing. No wonder you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Bit of a shock?”
I nod, not looking at him.
“Happened at school, did it?”
“This morning. I didn’t tell anyone.”
“You should probably eat the whole tub,” he says kindly, which makes me laugh again. “Hey, listen, I keep meaning to ask for my harmonica back. I’ve got a gig coming up next week and I need it for a couple of the songs. Is that OK?”
“Oh. Yeah, of course.”
“You can borrow it back again afterward,” he says. “If you want.”
“OK.”
He looks at me curiously. “Jelly,” he says, “don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . is there something the matter? I mean, apart from what’s happened today? Are you worried about something?”
I lick ice cream off the spoon, cleaning every last bit. “Um . . . no . . .” I say.
“It’s just that . . .” He pauses. “You said once you write poems. I wondered—it reminded me of what I said about writing music to express things I couldn’t say to people. Does it . . . do you . . . are there things you can’t say to people that you want to? Are you maybe pretending to be something you’re not, to fit in with other people?”
I stare at the tub of ice cream. I want to laugh it off, tell him I’m fine, crack a joke—maybe even do an impression of him looking all serious.
I don’t do any of those things. Instead I get up, go to my bedroom, pull out the pink book from under my pillow, come back, and put the book on the table.
“Phew,” he says. “I thought I’d offended you there.Wow. Is this your poetry?”
I nod.
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�Are you sure it’s OK for me to look at? You don’t have to share it, you know.”
I shrug and sit down. Somehow I’ve lost the ability to speak.
He picks up the book and starts to flip through it. I see his gaze travel from side to side as he reads the lines. A range of expressions flickers across his face. I watch him as he reads my inner thoughts.
“Wow,” he says after a few pages. “These are really, really good, Jelly.”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but it wasn’t that.
“They really are. You have a gift with words. This one here, about hiding behind lies—‘Is this me? Is this you?’—it’s got a real rhythm to it, a musicality. In fact . . .” He pauses for a moment, and then takes another breath. “In fact, would you mind . . . could I borrow this poem? I just . . . it sings to me. I want to set it to music.”
My jaw drops. “Really?”
“It’s stunning, you know. Lyrics are so hard to write. They’re the thing that takes me longest, and you—you just breathe them, it seems. They pour out of you. How long have you been writing these?”
“Er . . . well, I got that book last Christmas.”
“So these are all from the last six months?” He shakes his head, incredulous, and flips the pages of my book. “That’s amazing. There are so many poems in here. You must write every day!”
“Not quite every day,” I say.
He opens the book to his favorite poem again. “What do you think?”
“You want to borrow the book?” I say, unsure. I need that book.
“Oh, no,” he says hastily. “I can take a photo of this one. But only if it’s all right with you.”
I’m such a mix of feelings I don’t know what to do, except shrug and say, “I guess—yeah, go ahead.” He pulls out his phone and snaps a photo of the pages. Then he closes my book and slides it across the table toward me. “Thank you for sharing it with me,” he says. “I’m really honored, honest.”
I hear the sound of Mom’s bedroom door opening suddenly, and I snatch the book off the table and sit on it quickly.
“. . . oughtn’t to be allowed to get away with it,” she’s saying angrily, and then sees me. “Hello, love. I’m so sorry. I was caught up in something.” She gives me a hug and I can smell a new perfume, something floral with a sharp citrus tang. “The company is reducing its number of agents so that we get to cover a wider area. Which is good news for me because I pick up more clients, but poor Maisie only signed up a month ago and they’ve revoked her license and she’s in tears, and I feel terrible about it.” She stops to draw a breath and adds, “I need a green tea.”