Shining On Read online

  “Excellent choices,” said Mrs. Goodwin. “It'll be easier to choose your subjects for next year if you have at least some idea of what you want to do. But as I said earlier, no pressure.”

  Yeah, right. Thanks a mill, Mrs. G, I thought as we filed out to break. A-level subjects, university, jobs, it's all any-one seemed to be talking about.

  On the way home, I gazed out through the bus window into the May afternoon and thought seriously about “What I Want to Do When I Grow Up.”

  As the bus slowed down at the traffic lights, I watched an old bag lady sitting with a tramp on the bench outside Thresher's Wine Shop. Cans of lager in hand, they looked like they hadn't a care in the world. Round the corner came a very smart-looking businessman. I could tell by the way he walked that he was uptight about something. Short, stiff steps. Furrowed brow. He was on his mobile phone. He looked at his watch, ran his hand through his hair, talked animatedly into his phone. Bag Lady nudged Tramp and they watched Smart Man like he was putting on a cabaret for them. The tramp held out his lager to Smart Man. It was curtly refused. Even from where I was sitting, I could see the veins in his temple throb. Not a happy bunny, I thought as the lights changed and the bus chugged off once more. He reminded me of my brother-in-law, Richard. He works in the City. He works six a.m. (to miss the traffic) to nine p.m. (to miss his kids). My sister Gracie says that sometimes she feels that he is working for a lifestyle that he never gets to enjoy. Maybe the bag lady has got it right. Out in the sunshine, having a good time. No responsibilities. No cares. No bed in winter either. Bet that's not a barrel of laughs.

  Oh God. What do I want to do? Be free? Be secure? Be rich? Fulfilled? Help the poor? Help myself? Be what? What?

  After supper, I decided to quiz la famille: Mum, Dad, Gran, brother, dog, cat. They live with me—one of them ought to know what I'm capable of.

  Boris, the Labrador, tried to answer when I asked him. He barked his head off and I cursed the fact that I don't speak Labradorese. I know he was trying to tell me some-thing.

  Duchess, the cat, did her usual Zen thing, which is to look deeply into my eyes and purr loudly. Luckily we have a telepathic connection.

  “I know, I know. Be here now.” I nodded at her. “I get it. Chill. Trouble is, I can't. I have to make decisions.”

  Her response was to turn her back on me in disdain. She does that when she thinks I'm not taking her seriously.

  Mark, my elder brother, got up from the supper table and started mincing up and down with his hand on his hip. “Be a mo-dèle,” he said in a girlie voice. “Isn't that what all you stupid girls want to be? You've got the long blond hair, the long legs, you look OK if you make an effort and if you had plastic surgery to give you boobs, someone might employ you.”

  I flicked a forkful of mashed potato at him, which hit him square in the eye. Note for list of things that I'm good at: marksmanship. I could be a hit woman. Or a fe-male James Bond. Death by mashed potato could be my speciality.

  Mark sat back down and was loading up his fork ready to fire back when Mum passed by behind him and whipped it out of his hand.

  “But she started it,” Mark began to whine, but Mum gave him the evil eye.

  “Oh, grow up, for heaven's sake, Mark,” she said.

  Heh, heh. I do love it when he gets blamed for some-thing I did.

  “So what ideas have you got so far?” asked Mum, sitting down opposite me.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “You used to want to be a vet,” said Mum.

  “Too much blood involved. Gone off that idea. You have to put animals down. Couldn't do it. What would you like me to do?”

  Mum patted my hand. “Whatever makes you happy, love. That's what's most important to me.”

  Whatever makes me happy? Hmmm. In that case, I'll stay at home, then. Get up at eleven. Hang out at the mall with my mates, lie on the sofa watching MTV and eating chocs, sponge off my parents and never work at all.

  “Be a reality show celeb,” said Mark.

  “Like that's a career choice,” replied Mum.

  “It is,” said Mark. “All you have to do is eat bugs or slugs in a remote jungle someplace or get locked up in a house for a few weeks with a bunch of nutters or have a big boob job and marry a footballer and you could be set for life.”

  “I don't think you're being very helpful, Mark,” said Mum.

  “Yeah, you can leave the table now,” I added. “Go and do your homework like a good little sixth former.”

  Mark skulked off, but I added reality show celeb and footballer's wife to my list. Not bad ideas at all.

  “What do you think, Dad?” I asked.

  Dad looked up from his supper. “You've got a good brain, Jessica. I hope you'll use it.”

  “Yeah, but to do what?”

  “Do as your mother and I do. Teach.”

  “No way.”

  “OK, so think about your best subjects,” he asked.

  I shrugged. “English. Art.”

  “OK, now think about your worst subjects.”

  “Maths.”

  “So there's a start. Don't do accounting.”

  “I think she should be a dancer,” said Gran, getting up to take her plate to the sink. “You're a lovely mover, Jessica.” And she began to waltz round the kitchen with some un-seen partner. I thought it was supposed to be young kids who had imaginary friends. Not in this house. Gran has a gang of them in every room.

  As the family settled down to watch the soaps, they lost interest in My Great Dilemma, so I decided to try Aunt Em, who lives two doors down the road. She sometimes has a different angle on things and luckily she was in, wasn't watching the soaps and was up for discussing the matter at hand.

  “I didn't know what I wanted to do until I was thirty-five,” she said. “I left school, traveled the Far East, taught meditation, sang in a rock-and-roll band, taught art in a mental hospital, studied astrology, worked as a masseuse, worked as a journalist, sold books in a friend's shop, was a cook in a health store for a while and now I make jewelry. So what does that make me?”

  Good question, I thought as I glanced over her usual bohemian appearance and spiked up henna-ed hair. Experienced. Interesting. Slightly batty.

  “I don't think your job should define who you are,” said Aunt Em. “You meet so many people that identify so closely with what they do that it's hard to get beyond it to who they are as people.”

  “You mean, like Bill Newman,” I said.

  Aunt Em nodded. Bill lives at the end of the street. He's a politician. He looks like a politician. He introduces himself as Bill Newman, MP for Leighton South. As if MP for Leighton South is part of his surname. I think he was born with I will be a politician tattooed on his botty. People like him seem to know what they want to be from Day One. As if they're born grown up and responsible. Not me.

  Aunt Em offered to read the tarot cards. At the end of the reading I got the Death card. It was in the position that is supposed to show what the future holds. Oh great, I thought. Now I needn't decide what I want to do when I grow up because I'm not going to grow up. But then Aunt Em told me that actually it didn't mean what I thought. The Death card actually means a new beginning—a new chapter. I couldn't help wondering why, in that case, it isn't called the New Chapter card. Anyway, in the end, the reading wasn't very helpful. It just said that I had a new chapter coming. And I already knew that. Maybe I should redesign the tarot card pack. I'm good at art and it would be a fun job. I'll add designer to the list, which so far reads: fe-male James Bond, footballer's wife (but must get boobs as well as school-leaving exam scores) and card designer.

  Just to be on the safe side, we checked the I Ching. It said something about no harm in waiting and then some-thing else about crossing the Great Water. It always says something about the Great Water. If you're not already crossing it, you're about to. A bit like PMS, I thought. Since I had started my periods, it seemed that I was either having a period, was premenstrual or was postme
nstrual. There was no letup from hormone hell; no time off for good behavior. As the country-and-western song goes: Some-times it's hard to be a wombat.

  I'm not going to get the answers I need from fortune-telling, I thought as I left Aunt Em's house to go home. Unless what the cards and I Ching were trying to tell me was that I should be a fortune-teller. Or maybe a sailor with all that talk about crossing the water? Yeah. Maybe I should join the navy. Add it to the list.

  When I got home, I wrote down all the things I am good at:

  Art.

  English.

  Debating.

  Sciences. Yeah. I'm OK at them, but don't know if I want to do a job in science.

  History. I get good marks but not sure I want to do anymore.

  Not maths. Not maths. Not maths. At least that's one thing decided.

  Snogging Josh Ryan (my boyfriend). He's so cool. Says I'm the best kisser he's ever been with. Maybe I could be a professional snogger. Teach it as an art.

  I added that to the list. Snog teacher. Mrs. G was going to be well impressed with my fabuloise options.

  * * *

  Over the next few days at school, I talked to careers advis-ers. They were in most mornings, armed with brochures for college courses, talking to everyone in our year. Doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse, media studies, business studies, endless choices. I couldn't sleep at night as a hundred job options swirled through my head.

  I bit my nails down to the fingers.

  I had bags under my eyes.

  A spot was forming on my nose.

  So much for the happiest days of my life. It was all too difficult. I so wished that there was something I could do. Some way I could opt out …

  Of course, I thought as a brilliant idea popped into my head one night after supper. I immediately picked up the phone to call Josh.

  “Hey, bug face,” I said. “I think I know what I want to be.”

  “Hey, yourself. So shoot.”

  “A pregnant single mother.”

  “OK. Interesting one,” said Josh, and I could hear him laughing softly at the other end of the phone.

  “I'm not kidding. I was reading about it in Mum's paper at the weekend. You get an allowance and housing and clothing for you and the kid.”

  “Cool. I'll come right over and help you get started,” he said. He was still laughing.

  “OK. So you'd support me?”

  “No way. But I am more than willing to be there for the fun part. The start. The sex. But after that, count me out. No, while you are wiping baby's bum and snot from his nose and trying to lose your pregnancy flab-a-dab and weeping because you have no social life, I will be away at university having a fab time misbehaving and meeting lots of young academic babe-types who will worship the ground I walk on. When you snivel past me during the uni hols with said snotty baby in pram, I will blank you, then go back to my groovy digs and write poetry about how I almost got caught by a fifteen-year-old tall blond looker. But didn't.”

  “Love you too, babe.”

  “It's your choice,” he said. “But anytime you want an irresponsible seventeen-year-old to father your children, then leave you pregnant and penniless, I'm your man.”

  “Yeah, right. Thanks for taking me so seriously, Josh. I know I can always count on you.”

  “Anytime.”

  I wasn't serious either. Grainia Riley did the young single mum thing last year and I saw her in the park last week. She looked tired and sad. Although the housewife-mother thing might be an option way down the line, I am soooo not ready yet.

  So what should I do? All my mates knew. Why not me?

  My “I'm going to be rich and famous” friend Allie (who knows exactly what she wants to be—a journalist) called at seven and suggested that we take a stroll down to the job center to look in the window and on the way name as many jobs as we could.

  “Hairdresser, shop assistant, bank manager, zebra-crossing person …,” said Allie as she flicked her long dark hair back once we got to the High Street and she saw that she had an audience. A guy on a bike almost rode into a lamppost as soon as he saw her. Men always react like that when they see Allie. She has the X-factor. That and very short skirts.

  “Ambulance driver,” I said as an ambulance whizzed past, sirens blasting.

  We both said, “Mo-dèle,” and minced à la catwalk for a few yards as we went past a clothes shop with dummies in the window (hips thrust forward, bottom lip pushed out, sullen expression and then you glide, dahling, glide …) “Nurse, optician, fashion designer …”

  “Hey, you know what, Jess?”

  “What, Allie?”

  “I think you're thinking about this in, like, totally the wrong way.”

  “OK. So what's the right way?”

  “I'll tell you,” she said. “See. You're thinking, like, all this choice you have is a curse …”

  “Well, it is.”

  “No. It isn't. It's a blessing. Don't you see? You … you could do any of these things. Don't you see? You are pretty, tall—yes, maybe you could be a mo-dèle… .”

  Cue more silly catwalk gliding.

  “Seriously,” Allie continued. “You're good at art. You're good at English. You're OK at science. You can get by in all your subjects. Don't you see? You could be a doctor, you could be a dancer. You could be both. Or neither. You have choice. Choice. We both do.”

  “Duh. That's what has been driving me batty for the last week, you dingbat. I've got to plan my future.”

  “You know what Mr. McNelly said in religious education the other day?”

  “Oh no, you aren't going to go all holy moly on me, are you?”

  Allie slapped me lightly. “No. Listen, you ignorant peasant. Listen. No. He was quoting John Lennon. He said that life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.”

  “Meaning?”

  “OK, make a few plans, but be prepared to let them go if things change. You don't have to decide right now what career you're going to do. If you don't know, then you don't know, and that's where you're at. Notknowingness. Accept that. Yeah, you have to pick some subjects to study for A-levels. So do that. Pick the subjects you are interested in. You can always change courses if you're not happy. And maybe when you leave school, the way will become clearer. If not, take a gap year. But for the present, act on what you know now. And if you do get the wrong A-levels for what you eventually want to do, well, you can take the right ones at night school later—plenty of people do. Nothing is set in stone forever and ever, amen. It's true. Some people can't decide what they're going to be for the rest of their life at our age. You're one of them. You don't know at this very minute. But who knows what's going to happen? Or what life is going to throw at you while you're busy making plans? Things are changing all the time and stop looking at me like that….”

  “Well, you've come over all Wise Woman of Wonga.” “That's me,” she said with a laugh. “Wise and really rather wonderful, don'tcha think?”

  I laughed with her. I liked what she said and what John Lennon had said too. It was true. I thought about my sister. All through school she was adamant about being a lawyer. Earning megabucks. Expensive hols. No kids. Now look at her. Not even twenty-five and she's at home with twins. Our next-door neighbor, Robin. He was in telesales. He was Mr. Salesperson. Lived for his job. He was made redun-dant a couple of years ago. Now he does garden design and has never been happier. My uncle Martin was a successful photographer for years. Now with digicams and photo libraries on the Net, no one will pay the fees he used to get. He's gone into property with his wife. They buy up old places, do them up, sell them on. He never dreamed in a million years that he'd end up doing that. Mary Jacobs, two roads over, used to work as a cleaner. She won the lottery and moved to Barbados. Katie Palmer Smythe was married to a rich executive and had an affair. Husband found out, they had a messy divorce, now she works as a cleaner. Has Mary Jacobs's job, in fact. She never saw that coming.

  Yeah. Allie was right. John
Lennon too. Life is what happens when you're busy making plans.

  The following day when Mrs. Goodwin cast her beady eyes over the class, I was ready for her.

  “Now, Jessica. Have you thought any more about what you want to do when you leave school?”

  “Yes I have, Miss.”

  “And?”

  “Still don't know.”

  “Still don't know?”

  “No, Miss.”

  And this time, it felt OK to admit it. Yes, I'd pick my subjects for next year. Not maths. Definitely English. And art. And later, well, who knows what job I'll do. I'm not totally sure just yet what, but one thing I do know and that is whatever happens, whatever changes along the way, I will always have choice. And that's not a curse, it's a blessing.

  Lois Lowry is an award-winning author who has written many popular books for children and young adults, from her first novel, A Summer to Die, through the Ana-stasia Krupnik series, to her most recent novel, Gossamer. A two-time recipient of the Newbery Medal, for Number the Stars and for The Giver, Lois Lowry conveys through her writing her passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more and doing more for one another. Born in Honolulu, Lois Lowry has lived all over the world and now divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Maine.

  Meg' Rosoff was born in Boston and had three or four ca-reers in publishing and advertising before moving to Lon-don in 1989. Her phenomenal first novel, How I Live Now, won several awards in the United States and Europe, among them the Michael L. Printz Award and the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction. Her second novel is Just in Case. Meg Rosoff lives in London with her husband and their daughter.