I didn’t feel very powerful by the time I went back inside. But I had figured out what I wanted: to be a completely different girl from Jemima Small. And I knew it would take something much stronger than moonlight to do that.
That night, I stayed up late reading Astral Projection: How to leave your body and travel the universe, the book I’d borrowed from Luna. I could not put it down. Astral projection was the best thing ever. You lie down, close your eyes, concentrate really hard, then your soul leaves your body and soars through the universe. It’s not dying or consuming someone’s soul like a Dementor or anything. It’s this special thing which meant I could escape from my body. Even if it was only for a moment, I’d know how it felt to not be Jemima Big. Like magic, only real.
I waited until Dad had gone to bed, then I lay really still under my duvet, trying not to fidget. I looked up at my bedroom ceiling. It was still covered in bits of Blu Tack from when I put posters up ages ago. They all fell down because gravity is a lot stronger than Blu Tack.
I closed my eyes and imagined the night sky above me, mapping out the constellations in my mind with their billions of stars, trillions of miles away, expanding into infinity. I took a deep breath and tried as hard as I could to push my soul out of my body. Only I wasn’t sure where to start pushing.
I needed to find out where the human soul was located exactly, so I could push it out. I didn’t want to push out the wrong body part. I didn’t want my intestines floating about in space for ever. I wondered if my soul was inside my brain somewhere, but what if it was inside my heart? Astral projection was kind of confusing actually.
I put my hands in the mudra position that Auntie Luna had shown me ages ago, with my middle fingers touching my thumbs. It was supposed to stimulate energy flow, so I hoped it would stimulate my soul to hurry up and get going. But after about ten minutes nothing had happened.
I opened my eyes. I could just make out a blob of Blu Tack on the ceiling that still had part of Hermione Granger’s face stuck to it. I wished I could astrally project my soul into Hermione. But I was pretty sure souls can’t go into made-up characters.
I closed my eyes again and pictured my soul travelling through space, hoping it had some kind of built-in satnav. I imagined having to tell Dad that my soul had gone missing somewhere between my bedroom and outer space. He would kill me. It was bad enough when I lost my phone at the beach that time.
I don’t know what happened next. But somehow, the strong urge to push out my soul must have been replaced by the strong urge to sleep. Because the next time I opened my eyes, my bedroom was filled with light. I was lying on the same bed, in the same body, and I had to be Jemima Small all over again.
On Sunday it wasn’t raining, which meant I had to help Dad clear out the garage with its fifteen years of accumulated junk. My punishment for smashing a few stupid beakers. I explained to Dad that most of the stuff in there came from before I was even born, so technically it wasn’t my responsibility. But he said that was irrelevant and handed me some overalls.
“It’s gargantuan!” I said as Dad swung open the double doors. “There’s no way I can clear all of this out in one day!”
“There’s always next weekend as well,” Dad said, actually laughing.
I surveyed the never-ending stacks of boxes, old toys, planks of wood, tools, and approximately ten billion cobwebs. “This is so unfair,” I said, stepping into the overalls and rolling up the sleeves. “Smashing the beakers was an accident. I’m being punished for an accident.”
“Mrs Savage didn’t seem to think it was an accident.”
“She wasn’t there, so how would she even know?”
Dad sighed. “I’m not getting into this again. You’re helping clear this out and that’s that. A bit of physical labour isn’t going to do you any harm, is it?”
I glared at him.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean…”
I blew out my breath and tied my hair back. “Fine. Let’s get on with it. But, if I find any disease-carrying insects or rodents then I’m going back inside.”
Dad laughed. “Deal. I’m sure they’ll all be hibernating at this time of year anyway.”
“I doubt it,” I said as Hermione padded in. She rubbed against an old box, then caught a spider in her claws and started chewing on it. “Gross.”
“See?” Dad said with a grin. “You’ve even got your own spider catcher. What more could you want?”
“Basic human rights?”
Dad chuckled and handed me a broom. “I’ll bring you an apple juice.”
After a couple of hours, my arms felt like they’d moved a thousand boxes, but the garage was only half clear.
“Wow! Well done!” Dad said. “Give me a hand getting this lot into the van then you can have a break while I go to the tip.”
We filled up the van and Dad shouted to Jasper that he was going. He still thought Jasper needed to look after me, even though I’d be thirteen in a matter of days. Thirty-five to be precise.
“Give the floor a sweep while I’m gone, hey?”
“I thought you said I could have a break!”
Dad got into the van and gave me The Look through the window. “It will take you two minutes!”
I watched Dad drive off, then sat on an old armchair at the back of the garage, watching sunlight stream through the gaps in the wooden door. Dust particles floated in the air, glittering like tiny stars. And this moment I will probably remember for ever. Because there, right in front of me, was a box covered in a thick layer of dust, with one word written on it in black pen: JOANIE.
The whole garage could have collapsed around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. There’s this story in Greek mythology called Pandora’s box. It’s about a box with all this evil stuff inside. Only Pandora doesn’t know what’s inside. She only knows she isn’t supposed to open it. Sitting there with that box in front of me with my mum’s name on it, that’s sort of how I felt. Like opening it might tell me something I didn’t want to know. Maybe why she left. I was too scared to open it and too scared not to.
I looked at it for a minute, surrounded by dust and cobwebs and rusty toys and Jasper’s old scooter. Then I stood up, wiped the dust off the box with my sleeve, and opened it.
Something gold caught the light. It was a jewellery box with a broken clasp at the front. Inside were some silver bangles that had tarnished and turned almost black. They felt cold and smelled kind of rusty. Normally, when I thought about Mum, I got that horrible empty feeling. But looking through her old stuff, I didn’t. It felt like goosebumps, only warm. Like for once she didn’t feel so far away.
There were a few boring-looking documents, some old postcards, a framed certificate from an accountancy course dated a few years after I was born, some old gloves and a CD. I pulled out a brown envelope and some photos dropped out.
I picked them up and there we were. In our back garden. In the summer. I was sitting on Mum’s lap looking at a piece of chalk or something in my hand, maybe three years old. Dad had his arm around her and Jasper was standing next to him pulling a funny face. Above Mum’s head were little circles of lens flare, those coloured spots you get in photos when the light’s too bright. She was leaning against Dad with her arm wrapped around my tummy. There she was. My mum. Smiling into too-bright sunlight. And I was sitting on her lap like it was no big deal. As if she would be there for ever.