A Leap of Faith

Day Three

“So St John falls in love with Jane, but she doesn’t like him back?”

“No – he doesn’t love her, he loves Rosamond Oliver but he can’t have her so he settles for Jane,” I sighed as I tried for the umpteenth time to explain Jane Eyre to Jessie.

“But Jane loves Rochester, but he’s dead from the house fire?”

“No! Have you even read the book? That’s so not what happens.”

“Hey!” Jessie said as she hit me with her unread copy of the book, “Give me some credit – I have read it. Or at least I tried to read the first bit… But it’s like reading a whole other language. And Jane is so dramatic about everything.”

“Hyperbolic. Use the phrase hyperbolic instead of ‘dramatic’ – it looks a lot better and gains more marks in the exams.”

I had to smirk as Jessie picked up a pen and hurriedly wrote down some notes. It was funny watching her failed attempts and, deciding to put her out of her misery, I reached over to take the pen out of her hand. Our fingers briefly touched and Jessie seemed to flinch away as our skin made contact. Not thinking too much of it, I crossed out the badly spelt terminology and corrected it with my neat, precise handwriting. “Thanks,” Jessie said just as the bell rang. “We still okay for after school?” she asked, and I could detect the hope in her voice. “Of course,” I replied, “Meet me at the gate; bring your coat. Now come on, we’ve got English: time to put your skills to use.”

 She laughed a rich sound as we packed our bags, and I found myself smiling too. Her laugh, her smile – they were both so contagious. Anxious not to be late, we broke into a jog down the corridor and up the stairs to our English room. Just in time we sat down at our desk and the copies of Jane Eyre re-emerged from our bags. I noticed Jessie’s eyes already begin to close, so I elbowed her in the ribs to keep her awake. I didn’t think I hit her all that hard – in fact my intention was to merely nudge her, but she let out a cry of pain.

“Are you okay?” I asked, but felt immediately embarrassed after asking such a stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay, she was clutching her side and tears were forming in her eyes. “Let me see,” I said as I reached to move her shirt and check that her side was okay. “No,” she replied abruptly, “It’s fine, honestly. It didn’t hurt that much – I just wanted to scare you.” I wasn’t entirely convinced by the smirk on her face seeing as there were still tears in her eyes, but I decided not to pursue it any further.

The end of the lesson eventually came around, and I was proud of Jessie for using the phrase ‘hyperbolic’ in front of the teacher. However I wasn’t so pleased when Miss told me that I could take a leaf out of Jessie’s book by learning some terminology myself. Once Jessie managed to stifle her laughter, the bell rang and I headed off to Religious Studies. I always looked forward to RS: the teacher never failed to make us laugh and actually make the lesson enjoyable. Even so, the majority of the hour was spent thinking about my plans for after school with Jessie. I was so thankful it was Friday, because it meant that soon it was the weekend and I’d be able to spend even longer doing things I wanted.

I met Jess at the gates and whisked her away from the school so we would catch the bus on time. Clutching her coat she asked, “Eva, where are we going?”

“Snow-boarding,” was my reply.

“No seriously, I want to know! It doesn’t always have to be a surprise.”

“I know that. Seriously – my mum used to work on the reception at a snow-boarding place and we still get a huge discount from it.”

“Don’t be stupid, there’s no snow.”

I winked at Jessie and remained silent. If she didn’t want to believe me, she didn’t have to. Three stops later however, she had come around to the idea that maybe I was telling the truth. We stepped off the bus and I led her through the main gate of the fake snow hill. It was amazing, it was exactly like real snow – sometimes I thought it actually may be and they just found a clever way of keeping it cool and fresh. We reached the reception desk and I handed over the money to the receptionist, making sure to hide the exact amount from Jessie. It wasn’t for any bad reason – I just knew that no matter what the cost she would insist on paying her share, which I didn’t want her to do.

We grabbed the snow-clothes and went in the changing rooms to pull them on. Once we’d changed, I grabbed two snowboards and took Jessie by her hand as we walked up to the top of the hill. It wasn’t too big of a hill luckily - it was designed for people to have fun, not exactly at professional standards. It was weird holding Jessie’s hand as both of us were wearing thickly padded gloves, so it was hard to actually maintain any grip on each other. Nevertheless we hiked upwards together, and then in our failed attempts at snowboarding we rolled back down the hill together. It took several more tries before we were somewhat getting the hang of it. By ‘getting the hang of it’ I mean staying upright for most of the way.

Eventually we realised that all hope was lost in terms of snowboarding, so we diverted to the other half of the hill, which was a curved, icy slide that you could ride rubber dinghy’s down. It looked incredibly fun and an awful lot easier than trying to maintain balance on a thin sheet of plastic. When we reached the start of the slide we climbed in to the inflatable ring and asked the people behind us to give us a push as a head start. Jessie’s scream told me she was feeling as petrified as I was as we hurtled down the slide, slightly tipping on corners and I began to doubt my earlier judgment about this activity being safer than the last.

All of a sudden, right at the end of the course we bashed into the side of the slope provoking a scream from Jessie. Whereas earlier she was screaming out of a mixture of fear and excitement, this sounded more like agony. I looked over in a panic and saw her clutching her side just as she had done earlier. We climbed out of the rubber ring and I put my arm tentatively around Jessie’s waist to help her to a bench. “Jessica what’s wrong? And don’t you dare try and tell me nothing again.”

Jessie remained silent, so I reached for her top. Initially she pulled away, but as she realised I wouldn’t hurt her or laugh at her she allowed me to gently lift the hem of her top – revealing a huge bruise on the side of her ribs. “What…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. So many thoughts were rushing through my head and none of them were pleasant. Eventually Jessie broke the anxious silence and explained, “I was trying to arrange a surprise for one of our days of living, and I fell whilst trying to set it up. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry, or ruin the surprise.”

“Jess… You could have just told me. It can still be a surprise whatever it is, but at least I’d know to avoid elbowing you in the ribs or taking you down the snow slope from hell.”

I felt slightly more at ease when Jessie laughed. “I’m fine, honestly. We can try snowboarding again – let’s just stay away from the rings of death!” Slightly unsure, I agreed. But eventually I managed to believe that Jessie was genuinely okay and enjoyed tumbling down the hill again. It soon became dark and we were freezing cold, so we traded in the snow gear for our uniform again and got the bus home. Before we went our separate ways I said, “Do I need anything for tomorrow – you said you’re organising something right?”

“Yeah it’s all sorted. You don’t have to bring anything, although you may want to leave your fear of heights at home.”

“What?” I retorted, worrying about what Jessie had in store for us. Without revealing a thing she kissed me in a friendly way on the cheek and said, “Night Eva.”