I jumped into the sea and swam back to shore without stopping. Jasper called me a few times to come back, but I carried on, even though I was almost out of breath. When Nana asked why I was crying, I told her some boys had called me a whale.
She rubbed a towel over my hair and said, “Oh, sweetheart, it’s because whales are strong swimmers!”
But I knew she was lying. She gave me a packet of soft mints and Dad sighed extra loudly then looked at her the same way he had that morning about my bikini, so I didn’t say anything else.
Maybe you think people can’t weigh you with their eyes, but they can. Maybe you think people who love you don’t lie, but they do.
For the rest of that day, I sat on one of Nana’s beach mats with a towel wrapped around me watching people walk past. I listened to their feet sinking into the pebbles, and felt the tiny crystals of sea salt on my skin. And this is what I figured out: there are good-shaped bodies, and bad-shaped bodies, and mine was one of the bad ones.
It’s called having a moment of realization. Like when Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree and discovered gravity. Well, I discovered I sucked. And once you’ve figured out something like that, it stays lodged in the frontal lobe of your brain. And each time you look in the mirror, or get changed for PE, or stand up in class, or feel your stomach roll over your school skirt, or notice someone giving you a second look, you get reminded. The frontal lobe is kind of annoying like that.
I didn’t move from the beach that whole day. I didn’t go swimming or push Nana along the promenade in her chair, or go to the arcade, or get an ice cream. I just sat there trying to figure out a way I could hide my body from everyone. Including myself. But it was impossible. How can you hide from your own body? Especially when you’re wearing a neon-yellow swimsuit with a picture of a flamingo on it.
Almost every night after that, before I went to sleep, I wished on the stars to have a body like the other girls in my class. To be the right shape, like them. I wished for my mum to come back too. Because when your dad thinks your body is the equivalent of an outer-space emergency and complete strangers find you grotesque, you kind of need her.
According to my Auntie Luna, when you wish on the stars, it gets beamed out into the universe. She says if you keep wishing, eventually the universe will listen and it will come true. But, when it’s the first full moon of the year, Auntie Luna strips totally naked and bathes in the moonlight to capture its cosmic energy. So, she’s not exactly a reliable source of information.
Anyway, no matter how much wishing I did, my body stayed the same shape, and my mum didn’t reappear either. She was probably like the stars: too far away to hear my wishes. I tried not to think about her, but I could feel this empty space growing in my heart where she was supposed to be. The human heart is only nine centimetres wide, but the empty space inside mine felt bigger than the universe sometimes.
I still wasn’t immune to the name-calling, even after my first year at Clifton Academy. I’d been called Jemima Big so many times, my heart should have developed antibodies or something, like my blood cells did after the flu jab. But it didn’t. Which is probably why hearing the stuff whispered about me during the end-of-year Awards Assembly kind of hurt.
Jemima Big knows so much about space because she takes up so much of it.
Jemima Big should do some exercise instead of reading so many books.
Jemima Big can solve maths problems but not her weight problem.
Being clever when you look like me isn’t a formula for success. My achievements just meant everyone gawped at me like they’d never seen someone my size holding a certificate before. And instead of feeling proud, I felt disapproval clinging to my skin each time I went up. So when Ada MacAvoy in Year Nine tripped over a chair walking up to the front, I did feel bad for her. But mostly I felt grateful no one was looking at me any more. And she knocked into this annoying boy in my class called Caleb Humphries, which was an added bonus.
I thought Year Eight would be better. I knew I’d still be called Jemima Big, but I thought I’d get used to it. Like Dylan Taylor’s voice shouting “sumo” at break times eventually fading into the background. And I had things to look forward to. Like turning thirteen in October, which meant I’d be a teenager and Dad would finally have to raise my pocket money. It would still be way below the minimum wage, but unfortunately my dad thinks household chores don’t count as exploitation.
I was still sort of dreading the first day back. I knew people would look to see if I’d had some kind of dramatic transformation over the summer. Well, I hadn’t. I was still Jemima Big. And stupidly, I thought that would be the worst thing.
But it’s like when you look up at the night sky – what you see isn’t the whole picture. And it wasn’t long before I started wishing that the entire universe had an escape hatch.
It was the first day of Year Eight when it happened. Dad woke me up by shouting my name up the stairs over and over again, and making threats like, “JEMIMA! Get out of bed NOW or I’m taking you to school in your PYJAMAS!” Like I needed another reason for people at school to say stuff about me.
I put my uniform on and looked in the mirror on my bedroom wall. Even wearing my long, black pleated skirt, my calves looked too convex. And my stomach bulged out, even though I spent ages trying to tuck in my shirt to hide it. Nana had told me I’d lose the puppy fat around my face ages ago, but it was still there, creating a semicircle dimple under my chin like a second smile. Maybe it would vanish this year. Or maybe Nana had just lied.
My hair was also a major problem. It was the exact colour of the sludgy sand under the pier. I pulled my phone out of its charger and googled hair dyes. Every colour was named after something amazing-sounding: honey fire, champagne silk, natural gold. They didn’t sell hair dye in my shade, probably because sludgy sand isn’t exactly aspirational. I had award certificates and commendations from Clifton Academy up on my pinboard – each one said Aspire to Achieve and there was a little gold medal at the top. But brains aren’t aspirational either. Brains had precisely zero value at my school. Besides, they’re not even visible from the outside.
Dad yelled, “HURRY UP!” even though there was still ages before the bus. I practised facial expressions in the mirror for a while, then took a step back and examined my face again. It definitely looked asymmetrical. I googled asymmetrical face. The top result said: Do you need facial surgery? I sighed and started putting my books in my rucksack.
My dad would never pay for facial surgery. He told me off in the supermarket last week because I’d put a tea tree cleansing mask in the trolley. It’s like he actually wanted me to get spots. There’s this other operation called liposuction where they suck all of the fat out of your body. It’s good, but you can end up with loads of extra skin, like my nana. She has loose skin that hangs around her neck and the tops of her arms. It feels really soft squishing into you when she gives you a hug. I don’t know for sure where all her extra skin came from. I don’t think she had liposuction. Maybe it was just natural shrinkage.
“Dad, I need some money, please,” I said as soon as I got downstairs. Dad handed me a box of cereal, but said nothing, so I carried on. “For hair dye. It’s a human rights issue.” I’d read all about human rights ages ago after Dad made me do the washing-up three nights in a row. Just for informing Jasper that naming the magic show he did “spectacular” was a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act. No one in my family has a sense of humour. Or cares about human rights.