The Spirit of Jenny Jones (Part One of Two)

The Spirit of Jenny Jones (Part One of Two)

Jenny Jones believed in things. She believed in fairies and legends; she had faith in magic. With a love of reading, she would also often get lost in a Jacqueline Wilson story; tales of domestic angst, joy and sadness. In books she could escape; break free from the pain that swirled around her. Life could be difficult when you were twelve.

Today was another school day. The sun shone in a July sky, clouds gliding in a sea of hazy blue. Jenny sat at the kitchen table scooping sugar puffs into her mouth. She stared at the screen on her mobile phone perched next to her bowl, conscious not to let any of the food spill onto her white, school shirt.

“We need to go in a minute.” Jenny’s mother, Sylvia, announced as she patrolled the kitchen counter thinking about her day ahead at work. She had striking, brunette hair. With a slight frame, short at five feet two and pretty with blue eyes, she was considered attractive by most.

“Nearly finished, mum.” Jenny assured. The latest updates on Instagram and TikTok were always top of the list first thing in the morning. It was unthinkable to leave before checking messages and finding out what her friends had been up to the night before. She was short for her age; her facial features with blue eyes made her a ringer for her mother although she differed having blonde hair.  With a svelte, slight build, Jenny was athletic and did well in sports lessons. 

The school run was fifteen minutes in Sylvia Jones’s Honda Civic allowing for negotiating suburban streets and other parents’ cars clogging the roads.

Jenny sat in the back, gazing out of the window, thinking about stuff. Her mind wandered as she recalled her mum and dad’s latest row. Things hadn’t been going well for some time. She didn’t pretend to understand what was going on. As shouting had penetrated through the ceiling from below like a kind of osmosis, Jenny recalled the conversation and had cried for hours after listening in her bedroom.

The Honda pulled up at a kerbside a few hundred yards away from Riverside Academy and Jenny jumped out. Her mother waved in the wing mirror and drove off, weaving slowly between oncoming traffic and parked cars at the side of the street taking up road space. It was the usual melee that revolved around dropping children off. Pulling her backpack strap tighter, Jenny made her way along the pavement and towards the school gates.

It seemed like most schools were academies these days. Riverside was a typical amalgam of grey, concrete buildings lined with windows. It was as though the architect had mixed up educational institutions with facilities designed to detain degenerates. Teachers and support staff wearing hi viz jackets with their names on the back would attempt daily to blur any comparison by smiling politely and greeting students as they entered the grounds each morning.

Jenny negotiated her way through the school gates and the obstacle course that was the litany of people all ushering children to their place of teaching. She made it to her classroom where the form tutor was perched at the front, hunched over a laptop ready to take the register. Behind him, a whiteboard had been doodled on in marker pen with hand-drawn pictures of ghosts and ghouls signalling Halloween.

Jenny sat at the back of the class looking out at all of the other pupils. They formed a panorama of chatter, pokes and giggles with hands covering mouths and silent scowls. Black blazers with the badge of the school crest sewn on, white shirts, dark trousers and skirts fuelled the school’s identity as worn by all of the students. From here she had a clear view of the round clock that sat on the wall above the whiteboard. The second hand seemed to tick her life away as it made its way around yet another minute. Nearing the last name on the list, the teacher stopped briefly as a tall girl and a gangly-looking boy with acne sloped in through the wedged-open door.

Making her way down the centre of the room, she headed for the corner desk next to Jenny. Of the late arrivals, the girl had a thin face, pinched cheeks, short, blonde hair that bunched at the sides and an imposing disposition. She faced down the looks of disapproval from several members of the class for being tardy with arrogant disregard although the vitriol could just as easily have been aimed at the boy with spots. They were shoulder to shoulder without acknowledging each other as they headed towards waiting desks. The tall girl was still something of a mystery having only joined the school a few days ago; little being known about her as she was a loner. The only person she had spoken to so far was Jenny. Where there was once an empty chair next to her, now it was filled by a new classmate.

The bell rang for the end of registration and the room became awash with the noise of scraping chairs and the hum of snatched conversations. The first lesson of the day was maths. Jenny felt forlorn already, what with a string of classes ahead that she wasn’t looking forward to. Pounding down the corridor, she could feel the presence of someone next to her. Looking across, she could see that, Addison the new girl, was tracking her, walking in sync as they both negotiated the torrent of human flesh that was other students.

“Ok if we hang out together again today?” asked Addison, her cobalt blue eyes shining in anticipation, her voice melodious, if low and gravelly for a girl.

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” replied Jenny although her preference was to be left alone with her problems. She was just too polite to give her new friend the brush off.

****

At mid-morning break, Jenny would often head for the school library. She liked the solitude that came with a part of the school that was often neglected. Today was no different even if she did have company on this occasion. Shelves of books beckoned complimented by rows of wooden desks for readers to sit at. Modern paintings gave the impression of an art gallery, a brass lamp on the head desk made it look important. A spiral staircase with a cast-iron handrail led up to a second floor. The girls paced up the white, stone steps. Reaching the top, they were now at the end of one of the rows. The only other person in the place was the librarian on the floor below. She was an intimidating woman with pince-nez glasses perched on the end of her nose and beady eyes that could burn into a soul. She looked like a hunched sparrow about to pick a worm from the ground.

Jenny and Addison looked at each other conspiratorially. Whilst students might occasionally go to the library to borrow books, it was often more a place to hang out, surreptitiously. As long as they didn’t attract the attention of the librarian, all would be fine. Jenny imagined the sweep of imaginary searchlights combing the top deck, looking for miscreants.

“I heard that strange things happen up here sometimes.” Jenny announced with gravity.

Some pupils were reluctant to go to the upper floor of the library. There were all kinds of stories ranging from it being haunted to children going missing then reappearing mysteriously with no recollection of where they had been. Some students refused to set foot in there at all. Many simply wanted to avoid the librarian at all costs.

“Like what kind of things?” Addison asked raising her eye-brows.

“Some say that these bookshelves are haunted. Have you seen “Ghostbusters?” Jenny smiled at the comic irony.

“Others talk about a portal of some kind. It transports you to another dimension.” Jenny stared at her partner. She sounded intense and looked older than her years as she recounted the whispers that had circulated around this part of the school for so long.

Adison scanned the books on the nearest shelf. She picked up a hardback copy of “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and flipped it open. She liked the idea of a dystopian story. She put the novel back noting it as a future read. Whilst she was interested in the conspiracy theories about the library, she wasn’t fazed by supernatural stories.

The atmosphere in the library was a quiet brooding. It felt like a storm was approaching. The librarian continued her silent duties, looking up occasionally in the hope of chastising those who would make any kind of noise. She was disappointed to note that the only activity was upstairs and that she couldn’t see anyone from her current vantage point.

“What do your mum and dad do?” Jenny had met Addison for the first time only recently. They had been sat next to each other in class. Jenny knew very little about her new friend and had many questions.

Addison looked blankly back at Jenny. “My mum and dad have…gone.” It was a statement made with scant emotion and in a closed way that suggested the subject was not to be discussed further.  The slight hesitation before the word “gone” gave a palpable sense of sadness to the revelation.

“You can have mine if you want.” Jenny smiled as she feigned to give away her parents. She scratched at the back of her head absently, a tell-tale sign that she felt guilty for saying what she’d said. She thought more of it and added.

“I’m only joking. I wouldn’t give them away really. It’s just that….”

Addison looked at her friend, scrutinising her last statement.

“Is there a problem with your parents, then?”

Jenny wished she had hadn’t said anything. She could either change the subject or expand on what she had said with a relatively unknown companion. She opted for the latter; she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she needed someone to confide in.

“Oh…my mum and dad haven’t been getting on of late. They are getting divorced.” Jenny’s eyes misted as she said the last of the sentence. She loved her parents and wished this wasn’t happening.

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds. Addison went back to scanning the shelves whilst Jenny stood daydreaming. They remained the only pupils in the library.

“Have you told them how you feel? Do you want them to get divorced?” Addison was holding a book in her hand, flipping the pages whilst looking up from time to time.

Jenny thought about the question. Maybe she had suffered in silence. There had been opportunities to speak up but she hadn’t. It was something that was happening and she was simply a bystander. Collateral damage.

“No, I don’t suppose I have. And…no….I don’t want them to split up.”

“Well maybe you should do something about it.” Jenny stared at her friend, taken by surprise at the direct nature of the statement made. Who was she to make comments like this? Addison had been around for five minutes. It’s not like they knew each other well.

“So you know all about stuff like this then?” Jenny was angry.

Before Addison could reply, a voice came from below.

Part two at: https://www.abctales.com/story/marandina/spirit-jenny-jones-part-two-two

Image free to us at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_library#/media/File:Library5.JPG