Jupiter Jones

Listen to Jupiter read her story

You see that photograph, end of term party in the school sports hall, everybody bright-eyed and smiling for the camera, perfect teeth flashing as they shout “sexy!” well, I’m the pink-striped puffer fish on the end, holding my dress out from my body, worrying in case it’s see-through when wet, worrying in case my pants are on show because my dress is soaked and sticky after Ted backed into me when he spiked the punch, and I’m flush-faced, close to tears because of how madly I saved for that dress, a dress that incidentally, I never wear again, and right next to me there’s Lola in a strapless number, electric blue, slinky as an eel, and you wonder why she picked me to be a friend when no-one, no-one, ever picked me for their rounders team, but anyway, in that photo, she’s next to me and laughing, in a totally photogenic way, with her other arm around Ted’s neck and Ted’s saying ‘jeez, what a dork’ loud enough for me to hear, but after the camera shutter clicks to capture that moment, Lola will turn to Ted and she’ll tell him not to be so mean, and she’ll take me to the changing rooms, freshly repainted, but with the old graffiti showing through on the girls toilet doors, and she’ll wet some paper towels and clean me up, make me stand in front of the hand dryer with my dress held up, and later, she’ll squeeze my shoulder when my stepdad comes to pick me up way before anyone else’s dad, and much later, when my exam results are nothing special, I’ll get a typing job at the builders merchants and she’ll go to the same university as Ted, and they’ll both become marine biologists and when they get married, I’ll wear too-tight peach sateen with a ruffle at the hem, and because I hardly know anyone, not even the other bridesmaids, I’ll spend a lot of time hovering round the buffet table with puff pastry crumbs on my face, and then, after the honeymoon – diving off the coast of Sharm el Sheikh – Ted will quietly photoshop the  peach whale out of most of the wedding photos, but two years after that, when Ted and his swishy little research assistant move to California to study orcas, then it will be me cradling Lola’s head while she sobs, me holding Lola’s hair while she spews up all the drink and pills, and when she’s through sobbing and spewing, and she’s fixed her face, she’ll get her phone out of her bag and take a picture of us, just us.

Jupiter’s prompts were: An Institution, any ‘Ologist, a Spillage

Jupiter Jones lives in Wales and writes short and flash fictions published by Ad Hoc, Aesthetica, Amphibia, etc. She is the author of three novellas-in-flash, including Lovelace Flats published by Reflex Press. Being a proper nerd with very little social life, she is currently working on a PhD on (dis)connectivity in the novella-in-flash. On Twitter @jupiterjonz