Chapter TEN
THE SATURDAY BEFORE I WAS DUE TO START AT LISTON COMPREHENSIVE, my father drove me into Hull to buy my new uniform. That morning, I’d asked my mother if she wanted to come with us, but she’d told me no. Unfortunately, although I’d succeeded in luring her out of bed with the Mr. Kipling cakes and her appetite had soon returned to normal, she hadn’t taken up her gardening as I’d hoped. Instead, she spent her days lying on the settee in her nightclothes, indiscriminately watching whatever was being shown on television. In the afternoons, it wasn’t unusual for me to come upon her staring blankly while the hyperactive presenters of Play School or Romper Room pranced about the screen, their big-gestured antics and exaggerated enunciations making my mother appear even more lethargic, like a limp cloth draped across the furniture. Still, I felt it was probably all right to leave her alone while we went to buy my new uniform. I was going to have to leave her on Monday, anyway, since I had no intention of missing the first day at my new school. After all, those first few days were crucial if I was to have any hope of making friends and establishing myself somewhere above the bottom of the student pecking order.
While I’d always considered shopping for clothes with my mother something akin to torture, going with my father was relatively uncomplicated. We went to one shop, the one recommended in the letter sent to us by the school secretary at Liston Comprehensive listing all my uniform needs, I picked out what I needed, and my father bought it. The one exception was the blazer.
“Bloody hell,” my father declared when he looked at the price tag hanging from the blazer I tried on. “Do these people think we’re made of money?” He gave the shop assistant an outraged look. She was an older woman with unnaturally bright auburn hair. She wore orange lipstick and thick orange powder that had sunk into all the lines and crannies in her face. She reminded me of the shriveled tangerines that sat uneaten in our fruit bowl after Christmas.
“Well, it is one hundred percent wool, sir. And I’m sure you’re aware that the school requires it.” She talked in a posh, plum-in-her-mouth kind of accent that I knew irritated my father no end. After the revolution, no doubt, he would want anyone who spoke like that to join the royal family in their toilet-cleaning duties.
“Yes, I am well aware of that,” he said, then turned to me. “The rate you grow, Jesse, that thing won’t fit you in three months.”
“It’s not my fault,” I protested.
“If it would help, sir, we do have a larger size that the young lady could grow into. That might make it a little more, erm, affordable.” The assistant smiled, her eyes shining with sympathetic disdain.
“But this one fits,” I said. Too late. The woman was already pulling down a larger size from one of the hangers. My father took it from her eagerly. I scowled at her, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“That’s better,” he said when I’d reluctantly tried it on, huffing and puffing as I slid my arms into its massive sleeves. It felt like wearing the jacket of an overweight gorilla. The shoulders hung down to the tops of my arms, it was far too wide, and the sleeves ended far below my wrists. When I looked in the mirror, my worst fears were confirmed. It looked ridiculous.
“I can’t wear this,” I said, staring at my hideous reflection. But no one was listening.
“It is an excellent brand, sir,” the shop assistant reassured my father. “Bloody extortion, it is,” he muttered, plunging his hands into his trouser pockets.
“It will wear extremely well, sir. And with room for the child’s growth, then—”
“I’m not ‘the child,’” I said. “I’m thirteen. I’m old enough to make my own decisions and I don’t think I—”
“When you start paying for your own clothes, you can make your own decisions,” my father interrupted me. Then, with a defeated sigh, he pulled out his wallet and turned toward the shop assistant. “We’ll take it,” he said.
IT WAS COOL THAT first morning I headed out to the bench at the bus stop on Midham’s main street, where the school bus would pick us up at quarter past eight. As I approached, there was already a small group gathered—Tracey, three boys of various ages who looked equally bleary-eyed, and a short, robust girl with ruddy cheeks whom everyone called Dizzy because of the way her eyes wandered in opposing directions behind the thick lenses of her glasses. I’d seen her a couple of times when I was out with Tracey. She lived in one of the shabby council houses that lined the road at the edge of the village. Dizzy had smiled and greeted Tracey each time, but Tracey had merely mumbled, “Hiya, four-eyes,” before marching past her. I’d felt a little guilty as I followed Tracey’s cue and walked on down the street, but clearly Dizzy wasn’t someone I wanted to be too friendly with if I didn’t want to end up on the social-reject pile again.
This first day of school was particularly important in the remaking of myself. I’d been nervous for days, had slept little the previous night, and that morning had been unable to down anything other than a cup of milky tea before heading out the door. As I made my way to the little crowd, I felt painfully self-conscious in my new school uniform—my shiny, lace-up shoes, my white knee-high socks, my black pleated skirt, and, of course, my hideous, oversized blazer. It didn’t help that as soon as Tracey saw me she started to laugh.
“Jesus Christ, Jesse, what’s that you’re wearing?” she said as I reached the bench. She was sitting on its back, her feet (clad in a new pair of the most fashionable buckle-up platform shoes) resting on the seat. Two of the boys sat beside her. They had already started to giggle. Even Dizzy had a smile tugging at the edges of her thin-lipped mouth. “Looks like a cast-off from a giant. Bet you must have searched high and low for that thing. What, get it from the church jumble sale, did you?”
“No,” I blurted, trying to hoist up the blazer’s sleeves to reveal more than just my fingertips. But it was a vain effort, and when I tried to rearrange the sleeves it only made the blazer’s padded shoulders fall down my back. “My dad bought it,” I said.
“What, for himself?” Tracey laughed harder, and all the boys joined in.
“No,” I said again, this time more weakly, as I let my arms drop and my hands disappeared once more into the vast cavities of the blazer’s sleeves. I scanned the laughing faces around me and felt a sickening dread.
“Well, in that thing we’ll have to think of a good nickname for you,” Tracey said. “Now, what would fit?” She pursed her lips as she considered this. The boys creased their faces into pensive frowns. Dizzy regarded me with something close to pity in her blinking blue eyes, magnified behind her thick-lensed glasses. I glared back at her—the last thing I needed was sympathy from someone like her.
“What about Monster Mash?” one of the boys suggested.
“Don’t be stupid,” Tracey said. “There’s already a Monster Mash in the fourth year. Can’t you think of anything original?”
“We could just call her Monster,” another of the boys suggested, but Tracey dismissed him without comment.
“I’ve got it,” the third boy said, jumping off the bench, dangling his arms monkey style as he staggered forward and groaned. “What about Yeti?”
Tracey considered this for a moment, then beamed. “Yeah, that’s perfect. Jesse the Yeti. That’s bloody brilliant!”
My future at Liston Comprehensive became radiantly clear. I could already see scores of my fellow students sniggering at me in the cloakrooms, tripping me in the corridors, flicking food at me in the canteen. I’d live my life to choruses of “Jesse the Yeti,” my big, ugly, clumsy self acclaimed by everyone around me, so that no amount of trying to blend into the background could help. It had been foolish to think it would be otherwise.
“We could even make up a song about you,” Tracey continued. “We’d have to find a good tune, though.” She looked sparkling, alive, thriving on my spiraling despair.
I wanted to grab her arm, to pull her from the bench and drag her to me. “But you’re supposed to be my friend,” I wanted to say to her. Instead, I stood silent. After all, she was only pointing out what was apparent to anyone who looked. I was hopelessly flawed. I could never really be good enough to be her friend.
“Jesse the Yeti,” the boy who’d made up the name said. “Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti,” he began to chant, finding his rhythm, stamping his feet. The other boys joined him. “Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti,” they chanted together, their dull, early-morning faces transformed with gleeful animation. “Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti,” Tracey repeated, adding her voice to the chorus.
I wished I could stand there, distant, unaffected. Or I wished I could come up with some clever retort, some way of making myself bigger than this stupid name-calling. But I couldn’t. Instead, I felt myself sucked under, into a whirlpool of humiliation. Their chorus melted into all that taunting in my memories. I saw myself standing in a playground utterly alone, or with the other glum-faced rejects like Dizzy, wishing for acceptance and inclusion more than anything in the world. “Leave me alone!” I yelled. “Leave me alone!” Even as I tried to sound fierce, my voice was breaking and the tears were coming. I didn’t want to cry in front of them, so I considered turning around and running home, loping away like a terrified animal. Like a yeti, too monstrous to be seen.
“Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti,” they continued. Only Dizzy hadn’t joined in. She stood back, frowning, watching, her eyes flickering back and forth between Tracey and me. But her sympathy was no comfort; it only made me feel worse.
I imagined myself arriving at my house, scrambling upstairs to my room, diving under the bedclothes and spending the day there. When my father came home from work that night, he’d find that both my mother and me were going through bad patches.
“Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti, Jesse the Yeti,” the chant went on. Tracey had started to clap her hands to its rhythm. She was smiling in my direction, but looking through me. I was nothing more than ugliness and air.
“Shut up!”
When I heard the voice, I spun around. At the same time, the chorus ground to an immediate halt.
“How old are you lot, anyway? You should be bloody well ashamed of yourselves.” It was Amanda; she stood with her hands on her hips, her gaze moving across each of the now silent faces. One of the boys sputtered out a giggle. “One more bloody peep out of you, Nigel Curtis, and I’ll knock your bloody teeth out,” she said, prodding the air with her index finger. The boy opened his mouth as if to speak. “Or maybe I’ll get someone to do it for me.” The boy snapped his mouth shut. “I know for a fact there’s a couple of fifth-year boys would like nothing better than to beat the living daylights out of you.”
“Oh, leave off, Amanda,” Tracey said. “We were only having a laugh. It was just a laugh, wasn’t it, Jess?”
I blinked back my tears. Maybe I should have been able to go along with it. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it so seriously. Perhaps I was too sensitive. It was, after all, only a joke. “I suppose so,” I answered.
“See?” Tracey said, looking at Amanda defiantly.
“Yeah, well, some people don’t always appreciate your sense of humor, Tracey. You’ve got a nasty streak, and you know it. Just don’t start taking it out on Jesse. I like her, and I don’t want anybody picking on her. And if I hear any one of you lot has bothered her, I’ll make sure you’re sorry about it. All right?” She paused and folded her arms across her chest. No one said anything.
I looked around at their faces, no longer bright and taunting, now tight, eyelids flickering, mouths stretched silent. They didn’t look ashamed, exactly, but it was as if they had been slapped into silence. Stung and brought up short. I felt the fear slip off me, the way I might shrug off my awful oversized blazer, leaving a dark pool of rumpled fabric at my feet. No one, except teachers, who, after all, did it only out of a sense of obligation, had ever stood up for me before. When I looked at Amanda, she gave me such a broad, reassuring smile that I couldn’t help smiling back. But, really, I wanted to throw my arms around her, murmur “Thank you, thank you” over and over into her smooth and milky neck.
“Kids,” she said, making her eyes wide, implying that she and I together were somehow above their silly antics. I shrugged, hoping to indicate my own mature exasperation, but the gesture made the shoulders of my blazer fall backward so that the garment lolled over my body even more ridiculously than it had before. Someone behind me coughed out a laugh. Amanda spun around. “I told you lot,” she said. A couple of the boys nervously shuffled their feet. She turned back to me. “Let’s see if I can make that a little better,” she said, and began rearranging my blazer, straightening it up on my shoulders, then turning up the ends of the sleeves into cuffs so that they no longer hid my hands. As she worked, I breathed in her scents—her shampoo as her hair brushed across my face, the perfume she wore that wafted over me as her hands moved busily, and the smell of her, her body, as she leaned across me, raw and slightly sweet. I breathed deep, pulling all of that inward, and it was as if something inside me eased up, let go—something at the center of me that I hadn’t even known had been coiled tight. I felt the urge to sink, fall into her, knowing she would hold me up.
“There, that’s better.” Amanda smiled approvingly as she gave the shoulders of the blazer a final adjustment, then stood back to admire her own handiwork.
“I bloody hate you, Amanda,” Tracey said. “You should mind your own business, keep out of things that don’t concern you.” Then she turned toward me. “And you should learn how to take a joke, Jesse,” she said, scowling. “People don’t like being friends with people who can’t take jokes.”