Curious

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When she was ten, she sat her SATs with all the others in the class.  It wasn’t unexpected or an experience that she was not used to.  Their teacher had run through past papers for what seemed like the entire school year.  So, most of the children were not apprehensive about the tests today.  If truth be known they were simply bored of the routine.

Each child was given a form to fill in their details, with the information about their school and the timings of the examinations clearly written on the whiteboard.  Nothing was left to chance so that nothing could go wrong.  Being the polite child that she was, she raised her hand.  Normally her teacher would respond quickly to a request but today, the only person in the room who was nervous was her teacher, and therefore the teacher did not notice, did not see, so she had to call out to get attention and she did not normally like to draw attention to herself.

Although the issue was resolved quickly and efficiently it still left her baffled.  She did not think that she had done as well in her tests as she could have.  She was preoccupied with the mistake that the teacher had said was not a mistake.

They had got her name wrong.  It was fundamental.  It was something she knew.

Everyone knows their own name.

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She complied with their instructions and wrote her name on the examination paper.

JANET JONES

But her name was Jane.

She wrote the name, even though she thought it was not hers

Her name was Jane.

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She would ask Mum later and get it sorted out.

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Mum revealed that her name had always been Janet but everyone just called her Jane.  It seemed to suit her somehow.

It was an ordinary name.

A plain name.

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Jane was baffled even more now.  How, at ten years old, did she not know what her name was?  Why hadn’t anyone ever told her?

Jane was curious.

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It was years later when she discovered the truth.  It was a family party.  Jane was still too young to drink but everyone else let their hair down.  They spoke of her, about her, even though she was in the same room, even though she could hear.

Jane was sat in a corner quietly, as if she did not exist.

Apparently, it had begun with a taunt from the other children at play school.  Jane had nothing to define her – lank hair, skinny, not short, not tall, not fat, not skinny.  There was nothing different about her so the kids called her plain Jane.  At the time her mother had found this hilarious so everyone, including her mother called her Jane.  The name had stuck.  Jane’s mother regaled the story to the rest of the family.  By her delivery it was obvious that this was not the first time this tale had been told.

They all laughed.

They all laughed at plain Jane who sat in the corner unobserved, unnoticed.

*

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She noticed Mark.

She noticed the feelings she had.  It was not love.  They were just physical feelings which she did not understand.  It was more than curiosity.  It was excitement and it was fear.

It was between her legs.  The curiosity.

*

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Mark never noticed her.

She was just plain Jane.

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