Full Circle

Chapter 4. TASTING SILVER

"Excuse me," said Jenny, standing up from her chair. "Nature calls."

"My, we are nervous today," said Alison, with a particularly nasty sneer bitterly twisted all over her face.

Jenny hurried into the nearby toilets that were conveniently right next to the music room, but not before she had answered Alison with a gesture of her right forefinger.

Inside the toilets, the moment Jenny had locked herself into a toilet cubicle was the moment she felt she had locked herself out of the world.

She pulled down the lid of the toilet seat, took off her backpack and sat down on it.

She rummaged about inside her backpack and was pleased to see herself plucking out the brown thin paper bag.

Good, she thought to herself, I was beginning to think I daydreamed the whole anachronism of this morning. Everything so out of kilter. So out of time and place. So impossibly wrong.

She pulled the banana out of its bag.

Still silver. Not yellow. What have I got to lose?

She peeled the silver leathery fruit and was slightly surprised that it was a very light grey colour inside.

How can I eat this?

Jenny's sniffed the fruit and it surprisingly smelled very pleasant. A powerful banana aroma the likes of which she had never smelled before.

"I'll just try a nibble..." whispered Jenny.

The first taste of the banana was delicious. Irresistible. And like the fictitious bottle of cough syrup in her excuse for being late for school, before she knew it, she had consumed the whole banana. She quickly put the peeled silver skin of the banana into its brown paper bag and stuffed it back in her backpack.

And then the most delicious banana she had ever eaten began to take effect...

An incredibly satisfying sensation came over her. She felt a warm surge of energy spread from her stomach throughout her entire body. The sensation eventually subsided with a distinct electrifying tingle running through her fingers, which she found herself wiggling great speed.

"Gosh," she said loudly as her fingers stopped wiggling, not caring if anyone had sneaked into the toilets, "I've never felt so good, also confident. I hope that banana wasn't injected with drugs. Maybe that might explain the silver colour. Funny though, I don't feel scared."

Just as she approached the exit door of the toilets, she heard a voice.

"Jennifer Sullivan," said the voice. Jenny recognised it as the voice of the strictest teacher in the school, the Head of the Music and Drama department, the once world famous Russian concert pianist Mrs Anna Nikolayeva. "Where is that girl?"

Jenny came enthusiastically barging out of the girls toilets.

"Here I am, Mrs Nikolayeva!" she cried. "Fit and ready for action!" Jenny's lime-green eyes gleamed brightly. She couldn't have been more filled to the brim with confidence. Alison's mouth fell open at Jenny's unusual appearance, but a mouth soon formed into a sneer as if she believed such put-on bravado would soon evaporate once she sat on the piano stool.

"Well, hurry up then, I dismissed Sabrina Schumacher five minutes ago. I know you must be nervous, but surely you didn't need to spend that long in the toilets, did you?"

"I ate something unusual, Mrs Nikolayeva. I think it affected me." This was an honest statement by Jenny, even if Mrs Nikolayeva quite naturally misinterpreted it.

"I see," said Mrs Nikolayeva. "Well, let's hope you can manage not to interrupt your examination. Any time spent out of the room will score against you."

"There's no chance of that, Mrs Nikolayeva," said Jenny cheerfully. "I'm primed and ready to go."

Mrs Nikolayeva gestured for Jenny to enter the room, and then she followed in behind her, closing the door.

Inside the room was Mr Armstrong, Jenny's music teacher who had been unsuccessfully attempting to teach her to play the piano. There was no doubt in his mind, or anyone else's, including Jenny's, that Jenny was the most untalented pupil, Mr Armstrong had ever had the impossible task of teaching. But despite this, like most teachers, excepting her registration class teacher, Mr Sims, he liked her because of her innocent and kind, carefree character. He once said in the Staff Room that if Jennifer Sullivan was the mother of every man, woman and child on the Earth, then there would be no more wars. Mr Sims quipped back that they would be nothing worth having a war over. That nothing would be done, and what would be done, would be next to useless.

"Come and sit on the stool, Jenny," said Mr Armstrong. "There's no need to be nervous. All you have to do is your best. That's all we can ask of anybody."

"Mr Armstrong," said Jenny, "I'm not nervous at all, and I'm very much looking forward to playing for you and Mrs Nikolayeva. You're probably the best teacher in the world, but Mrs Nikolayeva is definitely the best pianist in the world. So what pupil could ask for more? Certainly not I."

"Enough of the platitudes," snapped Mrs Nikolayeva. "You won't receive extra marks through such obvious boot licking. You're lucky our school doesn't have a gulag, or you would spend most of your school life in it. Now sit down on the stool and prepare to play the pieces we shall reveal to you shortly."

"Righto, Mrs Nikolayeva," said Jenny, quickly sliding herself onto the piano stool with her fingers raised ready to plunge down on the keyboard when commanded.

"Now let me see..." murmured Mrs Nikolayeva to herself, lifting up her clipboard from the lid of the harsh mahogany polished grand piano. "Yes... Of the three pieces you were given to study, I have selected Ludwick van Beethoven's 'Fur Elise'."

Mr Armstrong's face took on a particularly stricken look. Of the three choices, this was by far the hardest.

"I see that look on your face, Mr Armstrong," said Mrs Nikolayeva. "However, you need not be too disheartened, for the difficult middle piece is not compulsory in Jennifer's case."

Mr Armstrong breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Nevertheless he still looked mightily concerned because he had never got Jennifer to even manage the first few bars of the piece successfully.

Mrs Nikolayeva looked to Jenny. "I'm afraid in order to get even the lowest pass mark you will need to perform the easy beginning and end of the piece reasonably adequately. It seems such a shame for such amateur fingers to tickle the ivories of our school's great grand piano. I had it personally imported from Moscow. However, we must all humble ourselves in this short life, must we not? So with that, are you ready, Jennifer Sullivan?"

"Are you?" retorted Jenny, surprising herself at her out-of-character unsubstantiated swagger, looking up confidently at Mrs Nikolayeva with a tooth exposing almost Draculian ear-to-ear smile. Her fingers began rapidly wriggling in eager anticipation ready for their downward plunge.

"Just get on with it, Jennifer," snapped Mrs Nikolayeva, "and don't put my humility any further to the test."

Jenny directed an audacious wink at Mr Armstrong, causing him to gasp and adjust his glasses in disbelief.

"Here I go..." said a smiling Jenny, as her eyes widened and her fingers plunged gracefully and somewhat dramatically downwards...

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I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).

T. J. P. CAMPBELL.