Forking through her wardrobe, Jody desperately searched for something nice to wear for the day. Today was going to be a little tight; she was going to go to the park with Tyler first and then leg it to her mother's house so that Grant could pick them up and take them shopping. She still didn't understand why Mum couldn't tell Grant the truth so that he could collect her from her actual home. Actually, she did; Mum hadn't called her social worker yet so any contact Jody had with her mother and Grant, even a lift to the mall, wasn't allowed. What she didn't understand was why Mum wouldn't pick up the phone and make that all-important call.
Cold dread filled Jody as she stopped rummaging through her clothes. Did Mum not want her? Was she lying about wanting them to be a family with Grant? Was she talking to Kingsley again? Was he making her choose between him and Jody? She dropped the jacket she was holding, snapping out of her mental session of Question Time. She was being paranoid. Mum couldn't drop her even if she wanted to—she'd look like a bad mum in front of Grant if she did. But what if she was just using her to impress Grant?
"Woah! What happened here?!"
Jody spun around to see Sasha standing in the doorway to her room, her widened eyes fixed on the clothes strewn all over the bedroom floor. If Sasha was surprised, Jody was even more so; she hadn't realised when she'd made all this mess. She never even knew she had that many clothes. It looked like she had as much as Candi-Rose, or more. She shuddered at the thought. Carmen 2.0 had some of the stupidest frilly dresses she'd ever seen.
"Err, nothing," Jody replied, picking up the jacket she'd just dropped and putting it on. She looked back at Sasha who was still standing there with an amused look on her face. "Can I help you?"
"Nah," Sasha responded, grinning.
Jody gave her a dirty look before surveying herself in the mirror. This jacket wouldn't do—it didn't jibe with the false image her mother had created of her for Grant. She wasn't supposed to look girly per se but she definitely wasn't meant to look like a scruffy tomboy either.
"You got a nice bag I could borrow?" she asked without turning around, knowing that Sasha was still standing there.
"Not one that you could borrow, no," Sasha answered, and Jody could just hear the smugness in her voice. "Why are you so worried? It's just Tyler; he won't care what you wear."
Ugh, she didn't have time for this. She knew where this was going. "I'm not worried at all," she lied, taking her jacket off and throwing it on the floor. "Excuse me," she muttered, pushing past her small friend and going next door.
Just as she was about to knock on the open door, she spotted something that would make her mother very happy even though it made her skin crawl. She braced herself, knowing exactly what she had to do.
.:. QK .:.
"That's a nice jacket, babe," Mum commented, appraisingly eyeing up Candi-Rose's jacket. "Some jewellery wouldn't hurt."
Jody sighed inwardly. Tyler had already given her grief over the jacket the entire bike ride to the park. She could only imagine how much he would tease her over jewellery. "I don't really own any of that stuff, Mum."
"If you're lucky, Grant might get you something," Mum hinted, wagging her eyebrows.
Jody stared at her in disbelief, wondering whether her mother loved Grant or his wallet. She understood the desire for money better than anyone—care kids were frequently skint—but surely a man's personality mattered more than his paycheck? Well, Grant was a good bloke, there was no denying that, but Jody wasn't so sure that he was her mother's type at all. If he had been, Jody's father would've been someone like him rather than her actual father, a man she knew nothing of except his name.
Grant's car pulled up in front of the house, making Mum literally jump up and down in excitement. Jody cast a glance at the shed she'd put her bike in, through the kitchen window, before following her mother outside.
Over the next few hours, Grant took Jody and her mother around two whole shopping centres, listening to the latter rave on about how much she 'wished' she could afford to buy about half of the clothes she came across. Never too bothered about what she wore, Jody was more interested in furniture, particularly photo frames and lava lamps. Maybe she still felt guilty for stealing stuff from her housemates on a subconscious level but she really couldn't stop staring at one of the pretty but unremarkable purple lava lamps.
On the way out of the last shop, Jody spotted a poster/photo of a model with the same unruly hair as Tyler and laughed to herself. She loved Tyler's hair but it looked pretty ridiculous at times.
"What's so funny?" Grant asked, not unkindly.
Jody blushed, embarrassed at being caught, and saw her mother giving her a questioning look. She wasn't sure what to say. Tyler was on her mind a little too often to be deemed healthy and she just had this niggling feeling that her mother didn't like him even though she knew nothing about him.
"I just remembered something funny," she said casually, biting her lip. "Inside joke," she added, just in case either adult wanted an explanation.
"Jody and her friends!" Mum exclaimed fondly, playfully swatting Jody on the arm. She turned to Grant and said, "They're such a nice bunch of kids. They get top grades an' everything, just like our Jody does."
Mum definitely wasn't talking about the DG lot. Half of them couldn't even be bothered to do their homework until a week and a half after it was due and the other half rushed through their homework like there was no tomorrow (which there often wasn't). Her grades were better than Tyler's, but only slightly, and while the two of them had decent grades, they definitely weren't the cream of the crop like her mother was suggesting.
"Well, I should very much like to meet them someday," Grant commented as warmly as ever, smiling brightly at Jody. She'd never met someone quite as jolly as him—even when the man wasn't smiling, his eyes were. She returned the smile. "Who wants ice-cream?"
Jody thought it was a bit odd to eat ice-cream in January but who was she to talk? She'd spent a good hour cycling around town with Tyler in nothing but her usual attire and Candi-Rose's thin jacket, and had then cycled from the park to her mother's place.
"I've had a nice time," Mum told Grant as he handed Jody some chocolate chip ice-cream.
"So have I," Jody and Grant answered at the same time, exchanging a look before bursting into laughter.
One spilt ice-cream later, Jody watched on as Grant and her mother happily chatted away on their way back to the car. She could picture the three of them doing all sorts of things she'd missed out on in the last fourteen years. She could picture a real, proper home. For the first time in years, Jody Jackson felt like she had a real shot at being part of a forever family.
.:. QK .:.
"Ninety-nine, a hundred!" Jody shouted, removing her hands from over her eyes. "Ready or not, here I come!"
As she stepped out of the attic, she still couldn't believe she'd been roped into this. There she'd been, minding her own business, when Floss had stormed in and demanded that she play hide and seek with her and the other younger kids if she didn't want Mike and May-Li to find out that she'd been sneaking out to meet her 'gran'. Jody had acquiesced, not because she thought Mike and May-Li would believe Floss—the only grandmother she'd known had died over two years ago—but because she didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to herself.
After checking out Charlie's, Floss' and Sasha's rooms, as well as the spare, Jody burst into Tyler's bedroom only for Tyler to let out a resounding shriek.
"Well thanks for knocking!" he exclaimed sarcastically from his perch on the edge of his bed. She really had no idea why he'd shrieked; he wasn't naked, or even half-naked, and it wasn't like he had a secret girlfriend hiding away in the wardrobe. Actually, she wasn't sure about that last one. Without much thought, she threw open the doors to his wardrobe and checked to see if anyone was hiding in there. "Jody!"
"Sorry," she mumbled insincerely, already tired of the children's game. She turned to him, inwardly groaning when she realised she still had seven bedrooms to go. "Do you know where Floss, Finn, Joseph, Taz and Archie are?"
"No idea," he responded, yanking his earphones out of his ears and turning to her. "You'll be done in time for our movie, won't you?"
"Not if I can't find these kids!" she yelled, her temper flaring. Tyler stared back at her in shock. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to calm herself. These days, she was often on edge and it didn't take long for the anger to build up inside her. Even small things set her off and she couldn't stop herself from reacting harshly.
"Err, have you tried the garden?" Tyler implored, looking a little anxious. Jody sighed. The last thing she wanted was for her best friend to have to watch what he said around her like she was some sort of humourless, bitchy girlfriend.
"No," she replied calmly, turning towards the door. "Wish me luck(!)"
Walking towards the garden, she told herself that it'd all be over soon. She and Tyler had been waiting for the movie to premiere on TV for ages and, up until Floss had blackmailed her, she'd been wild (in a good way) with anticipation. She just had to rein herself in and be patient and it'd all be okay.
The first place she checked in the garden was the shed and she found Finn, who wasn't hidden very well, within seconds. She smiled as Finn dejectedly left the shed and followed him out, feeling a little bit lighter. One down, four to go. As she approached the bushes and trees, her phone beeped, indicating that she'd received a message.
Call me.
She frowned. Usually, her mother didn't bother with texting and went straight to calling. What was up? Looking around, she sat down on the green garden bench and called her mother.
"Hi?"
"Sorry, I ran out of voice minutes," Mum started, her voice riddled with urgency. "Anyways, you need to get here now. Grant's coming round any minute."
"What?!" Jody almost roared, feeling her barely controlled temper rise again. "I've got plans! Tell him I'm at Tyler's!"
"I told him that the other day! What's he gonna think? That my daughter would rather hang out with her boyfriend than with her own mum?!"
She chose not to tell her mother that most teenage girls would, in fact, put their boyfriends before their mums. Only desperate, love-starved care kids wouldn't. "He's not my boyfriend!" she protested, realising that her mother wouldn't even know her friends let alone any boyfriend of hers. "But you tell your boyfriend that I won't be there! I can't cancel on Tyler!"
"Look, Jody, I've already told him that you're at home. Don't turn me into a liar!"
"Tell him I went out at the last minute!" she said half-heartedly, knowing that that'd make her appear rude. Only a total bitch would go out at the last minute when she knew her mother's boyfriend was coming round to visit them both. However, she really didn't want to give up her time with Tyler.
"When you're actually living with me, you can go and hang out with Tyler as much as you want! But right now, you need to come here!"
Somehow, Jody doubted that her mother was telling the truth about her being able to see Tyler in the future but right now, she had no other choice. She lived in the same house as Tyler, she could get him to record the movie so they could watch it later, but she couldn't keep Mum and Grant waiting.
"Fine, I'll be there."
.:. QK .:.
She was so stupid. Why had she thought that things would be any different this time around? Denise Jackson would always be a useless, selfish cowbag. Kingsley Jackson would always be in and out of prison. Luke Jackson would always look after his own interests first, even if it meant cutting his little sister off when she had no other (known) blood family out there.
Blood. Betrayal and duplicity were in their blood, even hers, and bad blood would always out. She'd shown that she was the same as the rest of them these last few days and maybe she was always going to be like this. Maybe there was no escaping. She certainly couldn't escape her mother's words, that was for sure.
"I think I knew it would never work out," she'd said.
Had she now? Why hadn't she called things off before? Why had she made Jody believe they'd have a new family when she knew it was a lost cause from the onset? Had she been hoping for the impossible?
Now that Jody thought about it, maybe Jackson women weren't meant to get the men they wanted. Maybe they only got the men that they deserved: selfish idiots who'd use them and then drop them when it suited them best. Wasn't that what Jody's father had done to her mother? Wasn't that what Kingsley had done to the both of them? Even Luke, the brother Jody thought she could count on, had dropped off the face of the earth. Jackson women weren't meant to be happy. They didn't deserve to be.
"I've still got you though, eh?" she'd said.
As a consolation prize? The last resort? The one she conveniently remembered when Kingsley and Luke were lost to her forever?
"I mean, men come and go, but me and you, we're for keeps," she'd said.
Really? Where was she when Jody was desperately waiting for contact for years on end? Where was she when her own son had left her daughter for dead?
"Give us another chance?" she'd said.
"To do what? String me along and dump me again? You don't do that to the people you love."
"I think I'd best be going," she'd said.
Typical. Denise had known that she couldn't argue with that. That was all she'd ever done throughout Jody's life: abandon her and leave her to the mercy of others—first her brothers, and then the social services.
"I do love you, babes," she'd said.
No, she didn't. How could she? Jody was an accident, unwanted by both of her parents and a nuisance to her older brothers. That much was evident by her father walking out on her when she was tiny, Denise only talking to her a few times after the Kingsley incident before forgetting her again, Kingsley leaving her to burn to death, and Luke ditching her in favour of his posh friends.
"I'll be in touch when I'm ready."
She wouldn't be, and Denise probably knew it. It was a formality, that was all. Jody would be out of Ashdene Ridge within a couple of years and then she wouldn't need any blood relatives—any of the Jacksons. Even if it meant she had to be alone for the rest of her life, she was never going to let that rotten lot back in, least of all their matriarch. She didn't want anything to do with the Jacksons and she didn't even want to be one of them anymore.
In fact, she would officially cut them off forever. Shortly after Jody's father had walked out, her mother had signed deed polls to change all of her children's last names to hers. Jody Jackson had been born Jody Gray and now, fourteen years later, she was going to reclaim her original name.
A/N: This one will probably read very rushed but that's because this chapter sorta jumps from before S6E1 to the end of or perhaps after S6E2. I know the last name thing just seems a little random but there is a reason for it. A huge thanks to CharlieSMarts12 for the review!