Slapping her hands over her eyes, she racked her brain trying to remember the last place she had seen it. She’d left it on her desk after her shower this morning.
Realisation struck Jaz like a hit to the head with a cricket bat. ‘That little bugger!’ she growled, wishing she’d thought of him sooner.
Jaz strode out of her bedroom, down the wide corridor to the other end, straight into her brother’s room, and stumbled. Argh! It was so bright she had to wait until her eyes adjusted before she could start looking. The gold of her necklace hung from his bedpost, taunting her. She stepped into Simon’s perfectly clean room. She was sure his shoes were colour-coded, along with his clothes. Jaz put her necklace on over her head, the medallion dropping between her breasts. She was about to leave but yanked at the crisp white sheets on his neatly made bed. A smile curled on her deep red lips. She knew he would hate that, Mr Oh-So-Tidy Simon, but he might think twice before going into her room. And what normal fourteen-year-old has a room this clean anyway.
‘Jasmine, are you coming or not! We need to leave now or we’ll all be late!’ echoed her mother’s voice up the staircase.
Jaz bellowed back as she grabbed her black school bag and headed down to the foyer. ‘Yeah, yeah, keep ya shirt on, Mum.’
She watched the expression on her mother’s face change from her normal calmness to irritation, as she looked Jaz over with her sharp eyes. Tasha Thomas’ blonde hair was pulled back into a hard bun and her cream skirt suit was immaculate. It went with the face she was making, like she was just about to ‘tut tut’ along with an exaggerated eye roll.
‘Jasmine, tuck in your shirt please,’ Tasha asked as she gestured to Jaz’s white school shirt. ‘We pay good money for you to attend a top school and I just wish you would be a little appreciative of what you have. You’d look so pretty if you did your hair and didn’t wear so much…black.’ Tasha’s eyes roamed down to Jaz’s thick black stockings and Doc Martens. ‘Oh God, I’m going to get another call from them, aren’t I? And is your skirt getting shorter or do they make them like that now?’ Tasha’s eyes were drilling holes in her red tartan skirt.
Personally, Jaz couldn’t see what was wrong; all the girls wore their skirts this short. She didn’t even mind the stupid thin black tie they had to wear, the guys had to wear it too.
‘You look like a high school drop out,’ sneered her brother, who was waiting patiently by his mother’s side with his shirt crisp and folded into his pants as carefully as origami. He was short for a fourteen-year-old, like his hormones hadn’t kicked in yet, still baby-faced with soft blond hair, fair skin and their mother’s blue eyes.
‘Better than dressing up like a fifty-year-old school teacher, you’re just missing the tweed jacket.’ Jaz snorted at her own joke.
Simon was about to open his mouth but he was cut off.
‘That’s enough you two, into the car.’ Tasha checked her diamond-encrusted watch as she followed them both out to the sleek, silver Mercedes. At the door, she stopped Jaz and reached for the necklace around her neck. The medallion slipped into her mum’s hand. ‘Jaz, I told you not to wear that. Why can’t you keep it in your room, where it will be safe?’
‘It’s safe on me, Mum.’
Tasha gave her a pained look. ‘But what if it’s lost or someone spots it and steals it? It’s real gold.’
Jaz had heard this all before. ‘It’s all I have of my real dad. Please Mum.’ The only reason Jaz had it was because she’d found it while snooping through her mother’s things a few years back.
‘I wish you hadn’t found it, Jaz. I wish I hadn’t told you it was from your real father.’
Jaz sighed. ‘But he’s not alive and seeing as you won’t tell me anything about him, I think of this as a compromise,’ she said taking the medallion back and slipping it back down inside her clothes.
A few times her mum had opened up, telling her about how much her smile was like her dad’s or that she was strong and determined like him, and what Jaz saw in her mum’s eyes showed she really did love him at some stage. Who knows why it all went south. She refused to tell Jaz anything, except he’d died in a car crash and that was it. So this was her life. Clinging on to a pendant of a guy she knew nothing about.
‘Okay, okay, you win. Just please keep it hidden under your clothes. Come on, we have to go.’
Jaz smiled on her way to the car. Her mum was getting soft in her old age.
‘I’m in the front, Knuckle Head,’ Jaz said to Simon as he reached for the car door.