Page 45 of The Inn on Bluebell Lane
With a pang, Jess remembered what had happened just before she’d left for the bus—some girls had seen her and Sophie looking at the audition poster again, and they’d teased them about it.
“Oooh, are you two going to try out?” one of them had asked with patently fake excitement, and then she and her friends had burst into raucous laughter as they’d walked away. Sophie had claimed she didn’t care, but Jess knew she did.
She didn’t want to, but she felt it all the same—that unpleasant, squirming sensation, like snakes were in her belly or pins needling her skin. She’d tried to hold her head up, but she’d ended up slinking away, and that had made her feel even worse, especially because she was afraid Sophie had noticed.
“Jess?” her mom poked her head into the hallway with a smile. “How was school?”
Jess didn’t even think about changing her answer, or all the things she never told her mom, because she knew her mom would just try to find a way to make it seem better, when it wasn’t. “Fine.”
Her mother’s smile turned playful, her tone a tiny bit petulant. “You always say that these days. I suppose it’s better than what you said before, but—”
“But what?” Jess cut her off, not wanting to get into it. There was no point explaining to her mother how hard she was finding everything, even with a friend. She would just tell her to be patient and keep trying, all the while looking like Jess had disappointed her for even saying anything. Her mom didn’t get it at all. “It’s not like you want to hear anything else,” she muttered under her breath. “I’m going upstairs.”
“Don’t you want to know how Granny is?” her mom called as Jess hurried up the stairs.
Guilt flashed through her for forgetting, and even though she knew it didn’t make sense, she was angry with her mom for mentioning it. She knew she should have asked about Granny.
She turned around, her shoulders slumped. “How is she?”
Her mother managed a small smile, although she still looked worried, a deep frown carved between her eyebrows that definitely hadn’t been there before they’d moved to Wales, or at least before her dad had lost his job. “She’s tired, but okay. Resting in her room now.”
“Okay,” Jess said, glad at least her grandmother seemed okay, and she headed upstairs. She heard her mother’s sigh—a sound of frustration and disappointment—as she rounded the corner, and she paused by her grandmother’s door. “Granny?” she asked cautiously as she peeked around the corner.
Her grandmother’s eyes fluttered open and she smiled. “Jess.” She sounded pleased to see her, but Jess was alarmed at how tired and, well, frail she looked. Did one round of chemo do that to you?
Jess inched into the room. “How are you?” she asked.
“Not too bad. Just a little tired.” She eased up against the pillows, a little color coming into her cheeks. “The more important question is, how are you? Is school getting any better?”
Jess hadn’t realized her granny had even noticed that school was bad, but then she supposed she had been slamming a lot of doors. “It’s okay,” she said. “Getting a little better, I guess.”
“That’s good to hear. You know, I never had to move schools, but I imagine it’s quite hard. Sometimes I wished I had the chance to move, because you can get a bit stuck in a rut, can’t you? Staying in the same place?”
Jess had never thought that before, but now she wondered. Would Chloe have become friends with Emily if she’d stayed in Connecticut? She’d always assumed not, but what if Chloe had dumped her because she wasn’t cool enough? She’d always been more interested in the in crowd than Jess had been.
Jess saw that her grandmother’s eyes had fluttered closed and she tiptoed out of her room as quietly as she could. Up in her own room, she looked at Chloe’s Instagram again. She hadn’t commented on either of the photos, but lots of other people had, with smiley faces and hearts and fire emojis. Maybe her grandmother was right, Jess thought, but she still wished she could have stayed in Connecticut.
With a sigh, she flung herself on her bed and opened Snapchat.
Hey what’s up? she wrote, with a photo of herself looking silly—eyes crossed and tongue sticking out, like she was happy.
Back in Connecticut, Chloe would have replied instantly. But now, as Jess lay on the bed and waited, she could see that her message wasn’t even opened. She told herself it was because Chloe was still at school, but she knew Chloe checked her phone during any breaks. Jess waited a whole hour, all the way through Chloe’s lunch break, when she almost definitely would have checked her phone, and the message remained unread.
It still hadn’t been read by the time Jess got ready for bed that night, feeling thoroughly miserable, because by that time Chloe would have been home from school, and Jess could see that she’d been online. She just hadn’t bothered to read Jess’s message.
She slouched downstairs to put her phone on charge, stopping when she saw her mom sipping a cup of tea at the kitchen table.
“I’ve got into the very British habit of having a cup of tea before bed,” her mother told her. “Do you want one? We have peppermint.”
Jess hesitated, because she didn’t really like any kind of tea, but she felt so lonely and mixed up inside, and she couldn’t remember when she’d last talked to her mom properly. They’d used to have some pretty fun times together; her mom could get in a silly mood sometimes, and Jess recalled them collapsing into giggles over some reality TV show they’d watched together. She missed those days.
“Okay,” she said, and her mom’s beaming smile was all the assurance she needed that she’d made the right choice.
It took her mom only a few minutes to make the tea, and then they were seated at the table together, and Jess wasn’t sure what to say, and her mother didn’t seem to know either, because they were both silent.
“I don’t know if I should ask you about school,” her mom finally admitted wryly. “Because I know you don’t like me asking about it. But when I do ask, it’s because I care, that’s all.”
Jess fidgeted with the handle of her cup, her hair sliding into her face. “I know.”