Jelly

by Jo Cotterill

  Mom is sipping her tea quietly and not saying anything.

  “What did you think, Mom?” I turn to her.

  “Oh.” She smiles but it looks like an effort. “It was beautiful. Well done, love.”

  She doesn’t sound all that enthusiastic. Why can’t she say it was amazing, like Lennon?

  “Jelly,” Lennon says, “could you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  He fiddles with the tuning pegs on his guitar. “I . . . I’ve written your mom a song. I wondered—”

  “You’ve what?” asks Mom, as though suddenly connecting with what’s going on.

  He looks at her. “I’ve written you a song. I’d like to sing it to you, but—” He looks at me. “Jelly, would you mind going to your room while I do? I’ll gladly play it to you afterward, but I think your mom should be the first to hear it. Would that be OK?”

  “Oh! Uh—yeah, of course.” I get up, feeling suddenly flustered. Is he going to propose to my mom in song? That would be so romantic! I rush out, trying to keep the biggest smile off my face, and go to my room. Of course, I don’t stay there—that would be stupid! No—instead I come straight out again and tiptoe back along the hall. No way am I missing this moment!

  “Lennon,” I hear Mom say. I press myself against the hallway wall so they can’t see me. “Look, I need to talk to you—”

  “Will you let me sing this first?” Lennon says, and his voice sounds soft. “Please, Arlene. I really want you to hear it.”

  There’s a small pause, and then my mom makes a little sighing noise and says, “All right.”

  Lennon starts to play. And then he starts to sing. It’s a song about a boy who fell in love with a girl and she broke his heart. The boy was so hurt, so lost, that he resolved to keep his heart locked up so that it couldn’t be broken again. And then, years after his lost love, he met another girl, one with eyes of fire and water and air, and a heart that needed caring for, because this girl was also lost and broken in her own way. The boy tells himself he mustn’t fall again, but he can’t help himself, and now he can’t imagine life without the girl, and the chorus repeats over and over . . .

  Can’t you see? This is me

  Where you are is where I want to be

  When I’m with you, it all seems new

  The past can heal with love that’s true

  You make me bigger, make me stronger

  Make me better, make me long for

  You

  Only you

  I stand and lean against the wall and tears stream down my face because this is what Lennon was saying to me the other day: that music and poetry can let other people see into your soul and your heart. Singing your own words shows everyone who you really are, your hopes and dreams and cares and fears. You’re risking everything by singing it—but if you don’t, those words and thoughts and feelings stay locked up inside you, as you pretend to be someone else.

  I think, as I listen, that Lennon is very, very brave to sing such things to my mother.

  And if he can do it, then so can I.

  Chapter 27

  It’s some time before Lennon comes to find me. By then, of course, I’m safely back in my bedroom, having opened and closed the door very, very quietly. I look up. “Everything OK?”

  “Yeah.” He smiles, though I can’t help feeling there’s something slightly unsure about it. “I think she’s a bit surprised. She said no one’s ever done anything like that for her before.”

  I cast my mind back over Mom’s previous boyfriends. “No,” I agree with certainty. “No one’s ever done that before. In fact, most of them haven’t been very nice to her at all.”

  “I can’t understand that,” he says. “Your mom is one of the kindest, sweetest, most beautiful souls I’ve ever met.”

  I open my mouth to agree that of course she’s beautiful, and then realize what he said. He didn’t say she was beautiful, he said she had a beautiful soul.

  I’m not sure I know what a soul is really. I think it must be somewhere in your tummy. We once had a visit from a member of the priesthood. He talked about the soul being a person’s essence—something that could go on after death. He didn’t mention it being beautiful though. I imagined it was a kind of blob. But when Lennon says Mom has a beautiful soul, it makes it sound like something swirly and sparkly, like glitter on the breeze.

  “Jelly?”

  I realize I’ve just been frowning in a puzzled way at him. “Sorry, what?” I say.

  He smiles. “We’re going to order in pizza and watch something. Want to come join us?”

  “Yes,” I say. He turns to go. “Wait though. I wanted to say: I’m going to do my song in The K Factor. Um . . . if you’ll come too, I mean. And help me.”

  The biggest smile I’ve ever seen spreads across his face. But he simply says, “Cool. That’s cool. Of course I’ll be there.”

  Chapter 28

  I wake up the next morning feeling different. The thought of singing my song in The K Factor still scares me silly, but knowing it’s the right thing to do brings a kind of calmness. Well, more like terrified acceptance. It’s Monday, so I’ll need to go to see Mrs. Belize today to explain that I want to change my act.

  I hope she doesn’t make a fuss about it. I don’t know if anyone has changed their act before. I’d like to keep it a secret, so that no one knows until the actual night. That way, I tell myself, I can still back out if I need to.

  But I won’t back out. I want to sing my song, I want to let everyone see that I’m more than jokes and a size.

  I get up with enthusiasm and put on my school clothes. The apartment is quiet, but maybe Mom is sleeping in a bit. It doesn’t matter—I can get my own breakfast.

  I sit at the table eating my cereal when I become aware of a faint noise from Mom’s room.

  The hairs prickle on the back of my neck as a cold chill creeps through me. No, no . . . it can’t be. . . .

  I push open her door very gently. She is there, huddled under the duvet.

  Crying.

  There is no sign of Lennon, but I’m sure he was staying over last night.

  “Mom,” I say gently, sitting on the bed next to her. “Mom, what is it?”

  Slowly she turns over. Her face is streaked with tears and her eyes are all swollen and red. “Oh, hi, darling. Sorry. I didn’t want you to hear me.”

  “Mom, what’s happened? Where’s Lennon?”

  She sits up and blows her nose. Then she sighs and says, in a voice as quiet and gray as mist, “He’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

  “I mean gone. We’re over. Here we go again and all that.”

  I can’t take it in. The cereal clogs in my throat. “What? What—why?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she says, waving the tissue at me. “You’re too young.”

  “Mom. He’s the best thing that ever happened to us!”

  “Things aren’t as simple as that.”

  I get up off the bed. I’m struggling to understand. “Mom, he wrote you a song.”

  “Jelly—” her voice sharpens “—I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But . . .” My confusion is turning to anger. He wrote me a song too and I was going to sing it and I made a big decision about it and now . . . “But what about me? He’s my friend too!”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she says, turning away from me and curling up again. “It’s not about you.”

  I stare at the lump in the bed, and at that moment I hate my mother. Hate her with a blind fury, a bitter passion. Because she’s ruined everything. Taken away the only person I could really talk to.

  And she has no idea what that means to me.

  I turn away, pick up my school bag, and leave the apartment without saying another word. I’m half an hour early so I sit in the park and glower at the gravel.

  Some people feel better after being on their own for a bit. Not me. It just makes things worse. Stuff goes around and a
round in my head: meeting Lennon in the coffee shop before I knew who he was, Mom’s eyes shining softly, him lending me his harmonica, showing him my poetry . . .

  He made me feel better about myself. He made Mom feel good, I know he did! So what happened?

  I end up being late to school because I lose track of time in the park. I have to sign in at the office and, because my luck is bad, Mrs. Belize is in the office when I arrive. “Angelica,” she says, giving me a penetrating glance, “everything all right? Why are you late?”

  I open my mouth to say, “Sorry, miss,” but instead what comes out is, “Oh, Mrs. Belize, you wouldn’t believe what happened on my way to school this morning. There was this little old man crossing the road, right, and he was walking like this—” I do a demonstration of an elderly man shuffling extremely slowly “—and I went over to help him, and he went completely mental at me! Seems he thought I was a spy from the Cold War, and he broke into this massive rant!” (Here I adopt what could possibly be a French or Russian accent that occasionally slips into Welsh.) “‘Leetle gurrl, ha! You arrre a spy, I tell you, and—’”

  “That’s enough,” says Mrs. Belize crisply, and I shut my mouth abruptly. The words just poured out of me, I didn’t have any control. Miss Rasheed, the receptionist, is hiding a grin behind her hand, but Mrs. Belize is not in the tiniest bit amused. “I’m not in the mood, Angelica. I’ve been hearing reports about you from Mr. Lenck, and I’m not impressed with your lack of concentration and your constant habit of playing the fool. And don’t use the word ‘mental’ in that context, it’s insulting and unacceptable.”

  My face burns. “Sorry, Mrs. Belize.”

  She opens the door to let me through. “I’m keeping an eye on you, young lady.”

  Something inside me is fizzing, like when you open a bottle of soda. I can’t work out if it’s shame or rebellion or . . . I don’t even think I have the right kinds of words for it. It makes me feel very . . . alive. Like everything is brighter and louder and faster. I stride down the corridor and can barely feel my feet touching the ground.

  “Helloooo!” I call out as I step into the doorway of the classroom and strike a pose. “Did y’all miss me?”

  Mr. Lenck frowns. “Angelica, you’re late. Class has already started. Please sit down quietly.” I roll my eyes as I make my way to my seat, but although a couple of people laugh, most of them don’t. My breath speeds up. I don’t like it when people don’t laugh. I’ll have to try harder.

  Over the course of the morning I impersonate each of the staff one at a time. Ms. Jones takes the spelling test, not me. Mr. Harding hands out the paints and brushes in art. And Miss Rasheed, all fluttery nerves, isn’t sure whether she’s doing her math questions right or not. My friends catch on quite quickly. Kayma giggles, but Sanvi says anxiously, “Be careful, Jelly. You’ll get in trouble.”

  It takes Mr. Lenck a while to catch on, and by then I’m impatient with not getting the responses I need. So I ramp it up, and soon Mr. Lenck finds he’s trying to teach himself. “The square root of forty-nine,” he says, writing on the board, “is seven, and so the final answer must be four. Everyone get it?”

  I put up my hand. “Yes, Angelica?”

  “Mr. Lenck,” I say, in his voice, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but the answer can’t possibly be four.” I sniff. “It’s obviously three.” I grin at him.

  There is a long pause, and the room is suddenly, horribly silent. Mr. Lenck looks at me: a blank, tired look.

  And I know, with absolute certainty, that this time I have gone too far.

  Without saying a word, he sits down at his desk and reaches for a yellow slip of paper and a pen. As he writes, I can feel the eyes of everyone else in the room. Sanvi reaches for my hand under the table, but I snatch it away.

  Mr. Lenck finishes, stands up, and holds out the piece of paper to me. “Take this to Mrs. Belize’s office. Now.”

  I push back my chair, and one of the legs tangles on a bag on the floor. I shove it with more strength than it needs, and the chair falls over. Someone snickers. In that split second I decide to leave the chair where it is. I take the paper from Mr. Lenck without looking at him and walk straight out of the room.

  As soon as I’m in the corridor, I start to shake. My whole body quivers, my legs go weak, and I have to put a hand on the wall to steady myself. I don’t read what he’s written on the paper, even though he hasn’t folded it. I don’t need to. I know what kind of trouble I’m in.

  No one is ever sent to Mrs. Belize, apart from Harry, who has anger issues.

  It’s not pleasant. Mrs. Belize takes one look at the paper and her face darkens in disappointment and annoyance. Her lips press together. “Sit down,” she says.

  I sit on the chair opposite her desk and stare at a weird metal frame in front of me, with silver balls hanging on thin threads. If you lift the ball at one end and let go, it slams into the one next to it, and the ball at the other end suddenly springs out in reaction. Then that ball swings back, and the first ball jumps out, and it goes on and on. The balls in the middle stay exactly where they are. It feels like a metaphor for something.

  “Angelica,” says Mrs. Belize, “this behavior needs to stop. Being funny is fine, but not when it repeatedly disrupts lessons. Mr. Lenck has had enough, and frankly I can’t blame him.”

  I keep staring at the metal balls.

  “I know you like to be in the spotlight,” Mrs. Belize continues, “but there’s a fine line between being funny and being disruptive, and you’ve crossed it. So from now on, it stops. No more impressions of teachers. No more back talk. It’s not funny and it’s not clever. Most of all, it’s not respectful—which, as you know, is one of our core values.”

  I nod miserably.

  “And of course,” Mrs. Belize says, with a sigh, “that means—I’m afraid—no participation in The K Factor final on Friday.”

  My jaw drops and my eyes open wide. I stare at her. “What?”

  She raises her eyebrows at me. “You heard me. You’re disqualified from taking part. That will show you just how seriously I’m taking this.”

  Chapter 29

  I don’t know how I feel. Kayma and Sanvi burst into tears on hearing the news and hug me lots, but I can’t cry. I feel sort of . . . numb. Almost like I’m outside my body looking down on myself.

  “This is so unfair!” Kayma says fiercely, wiping her eyes. “I’m going to go and see Mrs. Belize and tell her she has to let you be in the final.”

  We both know she’s not going to do that of course. She wouldn’t dare. No one would. When Mrs. Belize makes a decision, that’s it. She doesn’t go back on it, ever.

  “You could have won,” Sanvi sobs. “It’s the thing you’re best at!”

  Yes. Pretending to be funny and bubbly and don’t-careish . . . that’s what I’m best at. Because I’ve practiced it all my life.

  Lennon didn’t think it was what I’m best at. He thought I was talented at writing, at feeling, at expressing things.

  I can’t think about him. It all hurts too much. So I stay floating outside myself, watching my body go through the rest of the day: mechanically eating lunch, walking around the playground, sitting through afternoon lessons. Sanvi keeps holding my hand. She’d be hurt if I told her it isn’t helping, so I don’t try to pull it away. Both she and Kayma stay protectively close to me, which means I don’t need to pretend to be all right—which is good, because I seem to have lost all my pretending.

  When I get home, Mom is working as usual. She comes out to take a cup of tea with me, and I can see by her eyes that she’s been crying. She asks me about my day and I answer in short phrases. I don’t tell her about Mrs. Belize and being disqualified from The K Factor.

  I am ashamed.

  I open my poetry book and stare at the blank page.

  Nothing comes. There are no words, no sentences to form.

  There is nothing, just a big empty hole inside me.

  I
drift through Tuesday and Wednesday. People look at me oddly. Everyone’s heard about my ban from The K Factor. News spreads fast in school. Even the little kids know who I am and what happened. Will says to me in passing, awkwardly, “Sorry about what happened, Jelly. I thought you were going to win this year.”

  I nod and thank him. At least, I think I do. It’s getting hard to concentrate on what’s actually happening around me. I suppose I’m doing and saying the right things, because I complete the work and I answer questions in class, and no one tells me off for getting it wrong, so I guess my body is just carrying on. Without my brain—or my soul? Maybe it is my soul that is in hiding—or has temporarily moved outside myself.

  The trouble is, when you’re not sure who you are, it’s sort of hard to figure out what’s going on.

  I thought I knew who I was, but now I don’t. And everyone else thinks I’m the same as I always was. Every now and then someone cracks a joke in class, and people look at me expectantly—and I just shrug. I don’t think that Jelly is coming back.

  Mom is quiet and sad too, so she doesn’t notice I’m not myself. Or maybe she thinks it’s just because I’m sad about her and Lennon splitting up. On Wednesday when I get home, she’s vacuuming the carpet and plumping the cushions, and I remember that Nan and Grandpa are coming over for dinner.

  They turn up promptly at five, and Grandpa as usual starts complaining: This time it’s other drivers on the road. It’s one of his favorite topics. Mom and Nan escape to the kitchen on the pretext of cooking the vegetables, and I sit and stare at the newly cleaned living room carpet while Grandpa drones on. “She was sitting in the outside lane doing bang-on fifty, and I signaled her but she wouldn’t move over, and there was plenty of room in the inside lane!”