Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,65
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.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
AFTER STOPPING AT SEVERAL OTHER VILLAGES TO TAKE ON MORE children, our bus pulled into the car park in front of Liston Comprehensive and I was greeted by a sprawling complex of redbrick, flat-roofed buildings with big windows that looked