When she next looked up, the teacher was trying to stop a fight that had developed in a corner of the playground between two Year Six boys. It looked as if they were fighting over who got to kick a penalty. From the corner of her eye, she could see Colleen McLain and Andrea and Sonia Carney coming towards her. They were all smiling, nudging each other, arms linked. They were a group. Jess began to feel dread dripping slowly like water in her stomach. She shifted and cleared her throat, telling herself not to worry, not to be surprised.
What can they do to you anyway? They’ll only say stu f.
She should have expected this, should have known that no matter what she knew about Colleen McLain, it didn’t make Colleen the sort of person who wouldn’t pick on other people. True, Colleen’s mum pushed her daughter’s knickers into her face and made her cry, but Colleen was also clever and a leader and she didn’t like Jessamy. This confused Jess so much that she sighed deeply. She had a headache.
The group stopped in front of her. “Oh, is it a new girl?” they asked each other, expressions of mock wonderment on their faces, thoughtful fingers placed beside mouths. Colleen, clearly enjoying herself, even stroked her chin.
“I think it is,” one of them said.
Jess refused to look up from her book and couldn’t tell whether it was Andrea or Sonia. Although they looked nothing alike, they both had a high, nasal quality to their voices, as if they couldn’t breathe properly.
“It looks like Jessamy,” said Colleen.
“It can’t be!” said one of the others. “Jessamy never comes to the playground. She’s always off having a fit in the nurse’s room.”
“Yeah,” said Andrea/Sonia. “And she’s got no mates, either, so why would she come to the playground?”
Jess gritted her teeth.
“But she looks just like Jessamy,” Colleen said loudly, leaning closer to Jess. Jess thought that she could smell the saliva on her hair. Oh, the disgusting, disgusting saliva and this group not liking her; it took all the nerve she had not to let herself fall backwards off the bench and carry on screaming long after she’d hit the ground.
Then Colleen McLain poked her in the forehead, which shouldn’t have happened.
Jess lashed out and hit Colleen square in the face so that she staggered back, holding her cheek and shouting. She couldn’t stop there; she ran at the other two, needing to scatter them so that they wouldn’t be a group anymore. Andrea Carney pushed her and she grabbed Andrea’s struggling arm and stuffed four fingers into her mouth and
BIT her, and bit and bit, and even chomped (tried to eat her up), snarling, clawing at Andrea’s shocked face with her other hand until Colleen pulled her off by her ponytail, and the teacher on duty came running over, all jangling keys, blowing her whistle as if that was going to help, and Andrea was crying and nursing her hand, and Sonia was saying “Oh my God . . . she’s mad,” and Colleen was trying to tell the teacher that Jessamy started it.
The teacher on duty stared at Jessamy. It was always the quiet ones that suddenly lost it. Jess sat back down on the bench, clutching her copy of Little Women, staring at Andrea, who was being taken to the nurse by Sonia. “I’m gonna kill you,” shouted Sonia, crying herself. Jess was watching them both crying and did not really know what to think. She felt bad about biting Andrea: after all, it wasn’t Andrea’s fault; Andrea had taken her to the school nurse’s office once. It was Colleen McLain who was the problem and the puzzle. It was her.
“You,” said the teacher on duty. Jess looked at her. The teacher was pointing at her. “You’re on the wall for the rest of lunchtime play! And I’m putting you in the Incident Book as well! There might be a letter home about this!”
Jess got up and went across the playground to sit on the low wall that all the playtime offenders had to sit on. They weren’t allowed to get up without permission until the bell went. Nam Hong was on the wall as well, and Samantha Robinson. She didn’t know why, she didn’t ask.
“What are you doing here?” Nam asked. He was chewing bubble gum. Maybe that was why he was on the wall in the first place; it was just like him to reoffend whilst being punished.
“Had a fight.” Jess wanted to keep the conversation as brief as possible. She twisted her hands together, avoiding eye contact with the other two.
Sam Robinson leaned over.
“I saw! Wow, that was madness!” she said admiringly. “Sonia Carney’s gonna kill you, though. Her big brother’s at secondary school, you know.”
Jess shrugged, wondering if TillyTilly would be able to fight Sonia Carney’s big brother. She also wondered, briefly, what TillyTilly would say about what had just happened. She thought it might be something like, “ Brilliant! They’re all out of order anyways.” She hoped it would be something like that.
Then Colleen McLain came over.
Again.
What now?
“Don’t you ever touch me again,” Colleen shouted, jabbing a finger at Jess.
Sam and Nam looked at each other, almost rubbing their hands with anticipation. Jess didn’t respond.
“Did you hear me? You stupid freak show! Everyone thinks you’re mad, you know! You do all these . . . STUPID things and I bet you think they’re amazing but no one likes you because of them! You’re one of these people who’ll never be normal! You’ll probably end up in a mental hospital or something! You’re just lucky the teacher came before I belted you one!” Colleen’s face was red and although she stood some distance away from the wall, Jess could see that she was shaking with anger. Jess opened up the book to the page that she had last been reading. “Don’t you DARE ignore me!” Colleen raged. “You better apologise to me! APOLOGISE! Before I beat you up! My mum says it’s not your fault you’re mad, she says it’s the way you’ve been brought up. Your family is weird , didn’t you know?”
Nam gave a half laugh, half gasp. “Oh NO! Jess, are you going to have that? You should knock her out!”
Jess focused on the words and on making them not dance about on the page. She had to ignore Colleen, had to.
“You think you’re the cleverest girl in the school, don’t you?” Colleen shouted at the top of her voice, then reached over and knocked Little Women, Jess’s book, Jess’s mother’s book, out of her hand.
They both stared at it as it lay on the ground. Then Colleen stamped on it, and the paperback cover crushed and crinkled beneath her Caterpillar boot. Jess watched Colleen’s boot messing up her mother’s book. She shouldn’t have brought it into school.
Sam Robinson jumped in the air with astonishment and excitement before remembering that she wasn’t supposed to stand up while on the wall. She sat down again.
Jess didn’t move but began to speak in a low voice, so low that Sam and Nam had to come close to hear what she was saying. So did Colleen.
“I don’t think I’m the cleverest girl in the school, and I don’t think I’m amazing, and I’m not mad and you don’t know anything about me so you’d better shut up before you say anything else because I might hit you again and then my parents will be angry because I’ll be in the Incident Book twice.”
She paused, then looked up at Colleen McLain with an expression that made the girl draw back. Jess’s usually hazel brown irises seemed darker.
Jess’s voice grew in volume as more people from their class gathered, trying to see what was going on. She caught sight of Tunde Coker making signals to her, mouthing Are you OK?, but she ignored him. She continued speaking in a monotone, conscious of the fact that now that she was humiliating Colleen McLain she should be feeling happy, or remorseful but glad, or at least something:
“And my family is not weird. Or, if they are weird , they’re not as weird as your family. There must be something weird about your family, Colleen, to make you wet yourself every day, and there must be something weird about your mum that makes her go berserk about it and push your wet knickers in your face. If I’m weird , you’re weirder, so shut your big, fat, ugly, baby mouth.”
&nb
sp; There was a burst of laughter from all around. Tunde Coker smiled.
Nam Hong stood up on the wall, pretending to hold a microphone to his lips.
“Is it true, Colleen?” he asked, holding his microphone fist out to Colleen.
Colleen McLain’s mouth opened and closed in shock.
“It’s not true!” she said, finally, ignoring Nam’s “microphone” and speaking to the others from their class. Her cheeks were even redder than before. “She’s lying!”
Sam Robinson gave a guffaw of laughter. “We know it’s not true, Colleen. But it IS a pretty wicked thing to make up when you’re having an argument with someone!” She looked at Jess, who was picking up her book, with growing respect. “I never thought you’d say something like that!”
“Look,” said Nam, “Colleen’s gone off into the girls’ toilets!” And it was true. Colleen had fled sobbing across the playground, her hair bobbing frantically as she ran. Alison Carr volunteered to go after her, but to everyone’s surprise, Jess stood up from the wall.
“I’ll go,” she said.
Sam looked doubtful.
“You’re not allowed, you’re on the wall,” she said. Then: “Besides, it’s better not to have another fight in the toilets.”
“Yeah, also, I don’t think she’s, like, speaking to you,” Alison chimed in, to laughter from the others.
Jess shook all these objections off. She had begun to feel as if she had done something very bad and only had a few minutes to make amends before she was punished. There would be . . . consequences if she didn’t make an effort to sort it out. It didn’t matter if Colleen told Miss Patel or the teacher on duty, or even Mr. Heinz; the worry was vague and distant, but still there. She shouldn’t have said that in front of everyone, even if Colleen had stamped on her book. She didn’t think TillyTilly would think much of it, but she was going to apologise to Colleen.
Colleen was absolutely silent in the cubicle. If Jess hadn’t peered beneath the closed door and seen her feet in their Caterpillar boots, she would have thought that Colleen wasn’t there. She stood at one of the sinks, staring at herself in the mirror, shaking her ponytail from side to side, watching the fluffy hair bounce. It would be easier to talk to her own face, maybe.
“Colleen?”
Silence.
“Um, Colleen?”
“What. Do. You. Want.”
“I’m sorry.”
Silence.
Then the cubicle door opened with a grating sound as Colleen unlocked it, and Jess could see her leaning against the now open door, her face flushed, her eyes gleaming, angry. She had pushed all her hair behind her ears for once, and a tuft of it was sticking up on the top of her head. She looked around to see if Jess had brought anyone with her.
“So, what do you want me to do: apologise for stamping on your stupid book? Because I’m not sorry. I’m glad I did it.”
Surprised, Jess turned from the mirror to face Colleen. She hadn’t expected an apology from Colleen McLain; nobody got apologies from Colleen.
“I don’t want you to apologise. It wouldn’t help me anyway.”
More silence.
“Well, if you’re feeling better, I’m going to go now,” Jess said, feeling stupid.
But Colleen stopped her. “How did you know?” she demanded, flushing a deeper red and staring at the floor.
Jess grimaced. How had she and TillyTilly been able to do the things that they had done yesterday? Because now there was no question that it had really happened; Colleen had just indirectly admitted some of it herself. Jess had tried to push these sort of ideas away when she was with her friend, but now, seeing what her knowledge had done, knowing that for once she had actually hit someone with what she knew, she felt sort of (uneasy) about it.
Colleen was still looking at the floor.
“I heard Miss Patel talking to the school nurse about it one lunchtime,” Jess said, finally. She wanted to forget the stupid knickers. “I’ll say I was lying,” she offered.
Colleen glared at her, then stepped out of the cubicle and pushed her way past Jess.
“I already said that.”
SIX
It was Jess’s dad’s day off, and he picked her up from the school playground, taking hold of her hand but saying little as they crossed the road and began to walk through the park. She wasn’t sure whether a teacher had already phoned home about today, so she kept quiet too, swinging her book bag in little arcs through the air with her free hand.
“Daddy.”
“That’s me,” he replied, smiling.
Jess smiled too before her expression became serious again.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Her father swung their joined hands.
“I’m fine, Jess.”
She was half running along beside him to catch up with his strides.
“Daddy.”
“Me again!”
Jess looked down at the ground. It was moving past quite fast because she was scurrying now, almost tripping over her book bag.
“Something happened at school today.” She waited for him to interrupt, to ask Did you have another tantrum?, but he said nothing. “I got in trouble. I hit Colleen McLain and I . . . Andrea Carney was in the fight as well. They started it! And I had to sit on the wall, and I got put in the Incident Book. And they didn’t! It’s not fair.”
She bit her lip, waiting for him to let go of her hand and make her walk on her own so that she could “think about what she had done.”
“Dulcie’s going through a fighting period at school as well,” her father muttered. Jess couldn’t think what this had to do with her.
“Look, you know that it’s just not on for you to go around hitting people, even if they DID start it,” he began sternly. “I mean, what do you think the world would be like if we all went around hitting each other when we were cross?”
Jess blinked a few times, trying to imagine this.
“It’d be madness,” she offered.
“Exactly! So don’t you start! This is not going to happen again, is it?”
She looked at him, blinking, surprised and dismayed. He wanted her to say that it wouldn’t happen again, but she didn’t know, she couldn’t say; she hadn’t even known that the fight was going to happen in the first place. It was like saying: What a surprise! It’s raining! I don’t like rain, so it won’t happen again, will it?
“It won’t happen again?” her father insisted.
Hmmm. Jess could now see that she was agreeing to too many things. Perhaps now it was time to make a stand, time to—
“No, it won’t,” she muttered. Next time, next time would be make-a-stand time.
When they got home, her mother was in the hallway speaking on the phone, the cord twisting around her wrist, her other hand to her forehead. She gave them a look as they passed, pointing a finger at Jess to make sure she stayed where she was. Jess and her dad looked at each other somewhat guiltily.
“Oh no,” said Jess’s dad. “That must be the school on the phone.”
“Mmmm, yes, I see,” her mum said quietly. Then: “Right. Well, I’m sorry about all that. I’ll make sure she understands that it’s shocking behaviour.”
She directed the words “shocking behaviour” at Jess, raising her eyebrows with an angry sarcasm. Jess held on even more tightly to her dad’s hand.
When Sarah Harrison came off the phone, she beckoned Jess into the sitting room. Jess followed, half pulling her father along by the hand, but her mother said, “Daniel, let her go. She’s got to learn that she can’t keep on doing this, and you’re not helping.”
Jess’s father let go of her hand, but argued, “You’re saying she can’t ‘keep on,’ but this is the first time she’s actually hit anybody. I’ve spoken to her, and it won’t happen again.”
Her mum didn’t reply, but jerked her thumb in the direction of the sitting room again, and Jess bolted in, cringing past her mother for fear of getting one of the rogue slaps to
the side of the head that Sarah would sometimes give if she thought Jess had behaved badly. Her mother shut the door.
“D’you see what I mean?” Jess heard her father say. “She’s scared you’re going to hit her. This isn’t the way to make her behave herself, you know. It doesn’t matter whether you were brought up that way or not—”
“You can criticise my upbringing later, if you like. Right now, I’m trying to discipline my daughter. Did you know that she BIT someone? It’s bloody embarrassing, Daniel! Where on earth would she get that idea from?”
Jess sat on the very edge of a chair, craning to hear where her mother’s voice was coming from. The muffled quality of it suggested that she had her head in a kitchen cupboard. So it would be the tins. She heard her father clattering up the stairs, removing himself from the situation.
Her mother reentered the sitting room, and Jess flinched almost without realising what she was doing. Her mother, bearing an enormous tin of pineapple chunks in each hand, looked puzzled.
“For God’s sake! Nobody’s going to smack you, child,” she snapped.
Jess couldn’t hear her properly over the thwack thwack thwack sound that she had heard in Colleen McLain’s house, the sound that was replaying in her head over and over.
She wanted to put her hands over her ears, but her mum would lose it—Nigerian parents, her mother had once explained, could actually kill a child over disrespect. It had been known to happen.
Her mother thrust the pineapple tins at her, making her hold one in each hand. She felt the fleshy parts between her fingers stretching with the weight of them, felt the hard metal push into her palms. They were too heavy to hold. She wouldn’t last.
“See, I know for a fact that talking to you won’t help, but I just don’t know what to do with you anymore. So whenever you feel like hitting or, for God’s sake, BITING someone—like some kind of animal!—whether this is at school, or anywhere, you just remember these tins and how heavy they were to hold up for a whole half an hour.”
The Icarus Girl Page 10
