*
Chapter 5
I wake up again.
I blink. The light shining into my eyes is bright and slightly painful.
I look about me, wondering if the operation’s over. I can’t hear any of the excitable sounds that had surrounded me earlier.
There isn’t anyone there.
There isn’t any operating theatre either.
I’m lying surprisingly comfortably between two large rocks.
And, looking up, I realise I’m lying amongst the rocks at the base of Kingstown Bridge.
*
So all that weird operation was – what?
A bizarre dream?
A delusion, caused by the fall?
I tentatively glance down across my body – being careful not to move my head too much, in case my back’s broken – dreading what I’m going to see.
I can’t feel any pain. And, strangely, my body, at first glance, looks okay.
I move an arm. It moves as I want it to move. It doesn’t even ache, not even slightly.
When I bring my hand and forearm up to my eyes, I’m amazed to see that it isn’t cut or grazed. There isn’t any sign of bruising either. There isn’t any sign of any damage that I can see.
My other arm’s exactly the same; it moves easily. There isn’t any obvious injury. I can feel my legs rise and lower, see them come into the lower edges of my view.
When I raise my head, I’m still expecting a sharp surge of pain, a warning that my back had taken all the impact of the fall – but once again, there’s nothing. No pain, no strain on my movement.
I push myself up onto my feet.
I dust myself down.
That’s it; that’s all I’d suffered from the fall. A light smattering of dust covering parts of my clothes.
There aren’t any rips in my clothes. They’re just a little creased. Mainly, it seemed, from the awkward way I’d been lying between the rocks.
I glance back at the looming Kingstown Bridge, looking up towards the road where I’d fallen from.
How could I survive a fall like that?
Had I simply imagined it all?
Had I just come down here for a sleep, and dreamt absolutely everything?
*
Chapter 6
No, I hadn’t just gone to sleep down there in King’s River valley.
I realised that when, after struggling my way up through a tangle of bushes and brambles, and slipping back a number of times on loose shale, I emerged from the valley with more bruises, cuts and tears in my clothes than I’d suffered from the fall.
There was no way I would have made my way through this miniature jungle just to have a nap between two large, uncomfortable rocks.
No way that I was that mad.
Mad enough to think of jumping off Kingstown Bridge? – Maybe, what with the way Jase has been treating me lately.
Mad enough to fight my way through brambles and tear myself to shreds so that I’d look a complete mess when I got to school? – No siree!
I shouldn’t complain, I suppose, seeing as how, by rights, by any understanding of how physics works – namely, when you drop something off a high bridge, it isn’t going to come out of it very well, is it? – I should be at best a mangled, barely-alive mess. But know what? – I am complaining, because I’m suffering the nearest equivalent to death by a thousand cuts!
‘Jill! What…what are you doing here?’
Jackie says it like she’d be less surprised to see her Grandma Hezzy walking towards her. She’s all gawping mouth and wide, disbelieving eyes. Then again, I do look a complete mess.
‘Same as you Jackie,’ I reply miserably. ‘Turning up late for school. What are you doing here, come to that?’
‘I…I hadn’t seen you, so I’d sorta hung around, waiting for you.’
Her mouth’s still hanging wide, like she can’t work out how I could have possibly ended up looking like I’ve had an argument with a bear.
‘You know; on account of how you haven’t been yourself lately?’ she continues. ‘I was worried for you.’
Yeah, you and absolutely no one else it seems, Jackie, I want to say to her.
No one else is hanging around outside the school gates, worried for me, wondering why I hadn’t turned up twenty minutes before the bell goes, like I normally do.
Obviously, all my so called friends hadn’t really cottoned on to the fact that I was really really really depressed that Jase had fallen out with me!
Well, all of them apart from Jackie, of course.
(Course, my ex-friends would point out that Jackie’s the reason they haven’t been hanging out with me. ‘You don’t call on us anymore, remember Jill?’ Cath would remind me, as she does every time I’ve complained that they’re all avoiding me.)
‘What happened to you?’ Jackie asks, looking me up and down, taking in the dishevelled hair, the cuts, the ripped clothes.
‘Don’t ask,’ I grumble. ‘Let’s just say, don’t ever take a short cut through the brambles in King’s River valley.’
‘King’s River valley? What on earth would you be doing down there?’
‘Oh, I sort of, you know – fell into it.’
‘Fell into it? How do you fall into King’s River valley?’
Damn! Just great! Now I’ve gone and made myself sound like I can’t even keep steady on my feet. As if it’s all just an everyday occurrence for me to go tumbling into a valley full of brambles.
‘I mean, I didn’t fall, so much as – well, it was Fiona, if you must know!’ I blurt out defensively.
‘Fiona? Fiona pushed you into the valley?’
Jackie’s appalled, her mouth once again gaping in shock.
‘Why would she do that?’ Jackie adds suspiciously. ‘I mean, no offence and all that Jill – but she, well, let’s face it, she…’
‘Spit it out, Jackie!’ I say resignedly, even though I’ve got a good idea where this is going.
‘Well, sorry Jill, but you know – I could understand if you pushed Fiona into the brambles, but…’
‘But Fiona’s already humiliated me enough, right?’
Jackie at least has the decency to look embarrassed for pointing out this undisputable fact. Then again, it’s not really that easy to tell how she’s feeling from her facial expressions, seeing as how she’s plastered it with white and purple makeup, like she’s been in permanent mourning since around eighteen hundred and eighty.
‘Sorry, Jill, but…well, that is true isn’t it?’
‘So you don’t believe that Fiona made me fall into King’s River valley?’
‘I was, well, just asking, that’s all.’ She makes an attempt at a conciliatory smile. ‘Look, do you want to head to the toilets and start cleaning yourself up a bit while I head on to class and make an excuse for us both?’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as we both fell into King’s River valley? And you got the worst of it helping me out?’
She gives me another weak smile as I glance down disapprovingly at Jackie’s long black dress.
‘They might want to know how you’ve come out of a row of brambles without a single tear to your dress.’
‘You’re right!’ Jackie agrees, bending and taking a handful of pleats in her hands in readiness to rip the material apart.
‘No, no, don’t be silly Jackie!’
I quickly place my hands on hers, just in time to stop her pulling them apart and tearing her dress.
Her dress is all black and layers of frills and lace, just one of a whole wardrobe of similar dresses she’s bought from junk and second-hand shops.
Does any of it come anywhere near what school rules allow?
No way.
Rumour has it, her pare
nts have informed our headmistress that Jackie’s a manic depressive. Stopping her from dressing how she wants might tip her over the edge again.
Me, I’ve got my own theory on why Miss Hedges lets Jackie get away with it.
I reckon Jackie lets Miss try on the gloves every now and again. That would account for how sour-faced Miss Hedges no longer stalks the corridors looking like she’s always snacking on lemons. Now, rather, she floats around with the blissful smile of someone in the very first stages of a glorious love affair.
Yeah, that’s what the gloves can do for you, as unbelievable as it sounds.
‘Thanks,’ I say to Jackie as she lets the folds of her dress go and looks up at me. ‘Thanks for trying to make sure I don’t enter class looking like a complete freak.’
Jackie grins, a grin that once again looks odd on her mournful face.
‘Hey, no problem,’ she says. ‘I mean, it’s not as if I want you taking over my role as class freak, right?’
*
Chapter 7
Yeah, today, I am running pretty close to looking even freakier than Jackie.
Even her hair – frizzed up and tangled like it’s been like that eons before anyone came up with the idea of conditioners – has nothing on the way mine looks at the moment.
It’s almost impossible to run my fingers through it. A comb just becomes some dainty, colourful decoration stuck amongst the maze of intertwined strands.
Great, huh?
Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I could cry; and I mean like really cry!
Is this what I’ve become?
Some pathetic, suicidal freak, who looks like she’s been modelling herself on every ugly Goth she’s seen.
I’m even tempted to head on home, but I’ve had enough humiliation for today, thank you very much.
Who would I catch coming out of the bedroom, demanding to know what I’m doing home from school so early?
Mum again, trying to make out her pilates coach is just there to help her practise her breathing exercises?
Or Dad and whoever his Personal Assistant happens to be at the moment, someone who’s bound to be not much older than I am? (As the delicately divine little Miss we-could-be-friends-maybe-even-like-sisters Flowers always points out.)
Thing is, would little Miss Flowers think Dad was ‘really quite dashing’ if she’d seen him before his last and most successful hair transplant? Or, for that matter, would Enrique continue to see Mum as ‘all woman’ if he realised just how much of her is nothing but surgical enhancements?
Anyway, fine welcome I’d get.
Nope, no matter how terrible I look, I’m going to have to attend class.
*
As soon as I turn up in class, I recognise the kind of looks I’m getting; pitying at best, barely controlled sniggering at just about the worst.
I say ‘just about the worst’ because the worst is undoubtedly the disbelieving stare I’m getting from Jase.
Like he really can’t work out how I’ve managed to sink so low in just a matter of days.
Like he really really really can’t fathom how he ever thought I was attractive enough for him to go out with.
Cath even briefly glances up from hypnotically staring at her mobile’s screen. That’s a rare enough occurrence at the best of times, but even more so when she’s trying to call up the last few pages before she’s told to put the phone away as class starts.
Her eyes widen in surprise as she sees me, a look that says she wishes she hadn’t looked up after all. Like she’s wondering just what the heck is happening to the girl she used to call her best friend, her ‘soul girl’.
As I sit down next to Jackie, I think I pick up another kind of look from Jase.
One that says, ‘Well, if you’re gonna hang out with a freak, you’re gonna end up looking like one, aren’t you?’
*
The day Jackie had first arrived in class, she’d received more or less the very same kind of looks from the rest of the class that I’m suffering.
Pity. Barely hidden amusement. Disbelief.
And yeah, I’d been one of those recoiling with distaste. Recognising straight away that hanging around with a girl like that was a sure way to end up just as freaky and unpopular.
Look, I was a different person then, okay?
Popular, extremely pretty, lots-of-fun Jill. As opposed to the abandoned, raggedly dishevelled, near-suicidal girl you see before you now.
Sighhhhh.
It’s not Jackie’s fault, understand? It’s all my fault, no doubt about it.
Jackie didn’t mind being a loner.
She relished it, really.
She didn’t come seeking me out as a friend
Far from it; I used to catch her looking at me with as much distaste as I felt for her.
I could see it in her eyes, feel it in her glare.
She thought I was vain, preoccupied with my looks, the way I dressed. She despised the way I flirted with boys, how I’d giggle at everything slightly funny that they said.
She was far too serious for all that, her scornful expressions told me.
Yeah, like I cared. She was just jealous. That’s what I told myself.
Who’d ever go out with her, huh?
Sure, she might have been a reasonably okay looking girl underneath all that caked on makeup for all I could tell. But she obviously had no idea how to make the most of it.
She gave these airs like she didn’t care about the way she looked, that she wasn’t interested in boys. But I knew better. I knew plenty of other girls like that; and as soon as you ever offered to help them make a little bit more of how they looked, they always jumped at the chance.
Fact is, she creeped me out.
She creeped out everybody!
The way she’d stare right at you. Sort of wide-eyed, yet glaring at you from under frowning eyebrows, all at one and the same time. All combined with a knowing smirk, like she could see right into your mind. Like she was reading your thoughts, your innermost secrets, no matter how hard you were trying to hide them.
Course, behind her back, we’d all giggle at the way she was always hinting that she could read the Tarot. That she dabbled in witchcraft.
But, you know, they were always nervous giggles.
Like none of us were completely sure that she wasn’t telling the truth.
Best avoided, that’s what we all said.
Just ignore her.
And I did – until, one day, she’d whispered to me, ‘Jason could be yours, you know?’
*
Chapter 8
Through every class, every break, I feel that everyone’s staring.
Staring at the new school freak.
The girl turned down by Jason Withers.
The girl who didn’t come up to his standards.
The girl walking around looking like she’s been rolling around in the woods. Like she’s finally lost it. Finally gone crazy.
(Which, of course, for a horrid moment early this morning, was actually true.)
When lunchtime at last comes around, I decide that’s it – I’m heading on home to get tidied up. No matter the consequences of coming across either Mum or Dad ‘entertaining a friend’, I can’t hang around school looking like this a moment longer.
Better still, before that, as a real confidence booster – I’m going to ask Jackie to let me try on the gloves once again. If only for a few minutes.
‘Jackie, please, can we call in at your house? If I could just try on the gloves, just for a moment?’
Jackie isn’t listening. Her attention’s elsewhere.
Following her angry, puzzled gaze, I realise she’s watching Jase sloping off.
‘Fiona,’ I say miserably. ‘He’s probably got a lunch date with the impossibly gorgeous Fiona.’
‘What?’
Jackie whirls on me like all her anger is now all suddenly directed my way. Which is all a bit odd, really, when she’s obviously angry with Jase for humiliating me.
‘How could he be–’
She stops halfway through her irate outburst, at last seeing the shock on my face.
‘Sorry; I mean, well, you know – I mean how could he be going off to see her, when he knows how much it hurts you?’
I shrug.
‘I don’t own him,’ I point out, trying to be as mature and reasonable about all this as I can be. ‘He’s allowed to do what he wants, I suppose.’
Jackie turns back to watching Jase, glaring at his back as he continues his unhurried, nonchalant stroll down one of the smaller streets leading away from the school.
‘He’s not going her way; to Fiona’s school, I mean,’ Jackie says surprisingly irately. ‘Or wherever it is she lives.’
‘We don’t know where she lives, Jackie!’ I surprise myself by actually managing to say this with a hint of a laugh.
‘Well it’s not that way, that’s for sure!’ Jackie snaps.
‘Jackie, please; it’s no use getting upset with Jase on my behalf. It’s over between us, I’ve got to accept that.’
I sigh, pursing my lips as I pluck up the courage to finally admit that Fiona’s in a different league to me.
‘Fiona – well, she’s unbeatable, isn’t she? Even with the help of the gloves, I can’t compete against Fiona!’
As Jackie turns back to face me, I catch the suggestion of what could be an oddly satisfied smile.
‘Yeah, yeah, Jill; I suppose she is impossibly gorgeous!’
Immediately relenting her thoughtlessness, she reaches out to consolingly touch my hand.
‘Sure, come back and try on the gloves, Jill – but they won’t do you any good now, you know?’
*
The gloves are kept in a wooden box. The box is a wondrous work of art in its own right, all inlays of mother of pearl and finely crafted metallic ornamentation.
Unlike the gloves, however, the box’s condition has gradually deteriorated a little over the years, even though I suspect that it’s received nothing but the most tender and cosseted treatment. Jackie almost reverently produces it after carefully retrieving it from beneath a covering of soft linens within her drawer.
The wood’s varnish is scuffed, the mother of pearl tainted, the metal darkened and even tinted a filthy olive in places. The upholstered interior of dark blue satin is, here and there, worn down to a blacker, threadbare base. It’s particularly damaged in those areas grazed by the hands and fingers of people eagerly reaching for the gloves.