Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,64

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