Episode 5: Jennifer Hudstone and the Upside-Down World

Episode 5

Jennifer Hudstone and the Upside-Down World

Jennifer paces up and down in front of the living room window. She looks out the window as she passes by again, the window overlooks the walkway to the front door.

Jennifer's waiting for Enoch and his family to arrive. She's been waiting since forever and, to her, it seems like they might never come.

There is still about five minutes left before the arranged time and Jennifer's mother is running around frantically, the way she always does when they get visitors, even though everything was already put in order the previous night.

"Dear reader, I could hardly sleep last night, as my author would have already mentioned... seeing as it is a crucial part to the development of my plot line."

Jennifer had hardly slept a wink the previous night, but lived under the illusion that her author and audience would find her sleeping habits important, somehow.

"In my sleepless state last night, I came to a rather startling conclusion. I have a stalker. Enoch is a stalker and, definitely, the so-called Author's Advocate too! Who else would choose such a stupid name?" Jennifer continues to pace, completely losing track of her surroundings. "That is the only explanation that makes sense. He's new in town and wasn't at school, so he couldn't have asked my name there... I've been very careful not to mention my own name and no one else did either, so the only logical explanation is that he is an obsessed stalker and..."

"Ding! Dong!" Someone yells and Jennifer's shocked back to reality. She pears through the window just in time to see a woman scolding a young girl in an orange dress and ladybug backpack. Next to the woman is Enoch, he knock-knock-knocks on the door. Jennifer ducks under the windowsill, just to peer over the rim immediately after.

Enoch hesitantly waves at Jennifer with a frown, she sheepishly waves back.

Mary Hudstone runs to the door and welcomes everyone in.

After about ten minutes, all pleasantries have been exchanged, all seats have been taken and all parties regard each other uncomfortably as they sip, sip their chosen hot beverages.

Enoch's mother, whose name Jennifer's already forgotten, drinks tea with two sugars and no milk. The little girl, Enoch's sister whose name Jennifer is sure wasn't mentioned, is holding a plastic cup of no-sugar-no-milk tea between her hands as her polka-dotted-legs dangle from the sofa. Mary made sure that the tea was barely hot, for the girl. Enoch is drinking no-sugar-no-milk coffee. How fitting for a sociopath. Jennifer regards Enoch and watches as he takes a sip, only to burn his tongue.

Jennifer sips her three-sugar-half-milk coffee.

Mary carries in a tray of biscuits and rusks and places them on the table. The two women start chatting and Enoch quickly joins in. Enoch's sister's eyes sparkle as her mother hands her a cookie and takes her tea from her at the same time. She doesn't look much older than Patrick...

"Enoch," Jennifer suddenly says. "Why don't you and I and your sister go play in the nursery?" Enoch looks at her quizzically for a second and then his face suddenly lights up.

In no time the three are walking up the stairs to the nursery, where Jennifer's mother decided to leave Patrick under the supervision of her husband. Usually, that would be Shawn's job, but he's at band practice.

Jennifer nervously babbles on about nothing and everything every step of the way – telling the two about her little brother and how fun it'll be for the two kids to play.

Upon entering Jennifer's father quickly puts Patrick down, he was airplane-ing the boy above his head again – something her mother had strictly talked to him about. The nursery doubles as a playroom and bedroom for Patrick. Patrick's crib is in the far-left corner, next to the cupboard with all his clothes. Then there are two chairs – one for her mother and one for her father – they usually like to have afternoon tea there. Next to the crib is a large toy box that Jennifer's father had built for Shawn when he was still a mere baby (which he'd outgrown rather suddenly), there's a large rug in the middle of the room and each wall is painted a different colour. Mary Hudstone had planned to paint pictures on each wall and, even though the forest scene she did paint was rather good, she stopped right there – according to her it was way too much work. There is a bookshelf to the other wall and, obviously, there are random toys laying all over the place.

John Hudstone regards his daughter before giving her a wink. Enoch's sister immediately runs over to Patrick, who doesn't seem to know what to do with the brightly coloured creature.

"Da, ye is being summoned to adult conversation," Jennifer says rather seriously. Her father stiffens his stance.

"Many thanks, Messenger," He answers with a slight nod of the head in Jennifer's direction and then regards Enoch. "This must be the new court Jester! Very pleasant to meat you," He shakes Enoch's hand furiously. "I hope-ith thee doesn't taste as funny as the last Jester..."

Jennifer bites her lip so as not to burst out laughing – "Dad jokes, here we go," – all while her father still regards Enoch seriously. Enoch only smiles, looks at the floor of a second before saying, "He must-ith been spoiled rotten, I promise thee, sir, that is not-ith the case with me."

Jennifer's dad breaks out in a broad smile and the two introduce themselves officially, before he reluctantly leaves. Jennifer knows that her father would much rather play with kids than engage in adult conversation, but she needs to talk to Enoch somewhere where no one is listening.

Jennifer glances around, the two kids are playing – Patrick with a superman doll and Ladybug started building, what looks like a house, out of Legos – as Jennifer turns around she finds Enoch looking at her.

"Why is he looking at me?" Jennifer says to her reader, rather nervous now that she's sort of alone with her stalker.

"Maybe because you're standing in his way," Enoch answers and Jennifer's mind freezes over completely.

Enoch walks around her and takes a seat with the kids, he starts talking to Patrick about Superman and completely nerds out about all his favourite superheroes while they play, but Jennifer is oblivious to all of it.

An eternity elapses.

"What did you just say?" Jennifer finally asks, as her mind fully processes what had happened and she regains control of her body – she turns around to face Enoch. He looks up with kind eyes, holding a hulk toy. "That Hulk and Superman aren't in the same universe. Hulk is Marvel and Superman is DC..."

"No that," She cuts him off. "You said that I was standing in your way."

"And you're asking me this, why?"

"You heard me?" Jennifer asks as she starts to shake.

"Yes?" He says confused by her answer.

"How is this possible?"

"How's what possible?" Enoch answers.

"Stop answering me!" Jennifer bursts and starts pacing the length of the room. Thinking, not daring to speak another word – aloud or silently-aloud. Suddenly she's poked, fear quickly sparks through her body, only for her to see that it was simply Enoch. He'd tried to get her attention by calling her name, failed, and decided to poke her instead.

Jennifer's blood starts to boil. Everything started going wrong when Enoch Reilly crashed into her life.

"Go away," She says and Enoch, looking rather sad, slowly turns around and starts walking to the door. "Don't go!” She says next and he stops and turns around.

"What do you want, Jenny?"

She plops down on one of the chairs in the corner of the room. "I want you to stop calling me Jenny, I want you to stop answering my rhetorical questions. I don't want you to hear me, how can you hear me?"

"You're speaking aloud!" Enoch takes a seat in the chair next to her. "Everyone can hear you," Enoch says, clearly baffled by what is happening.

Jennifer's brain freezes over again and she just stares at Enoch. He frowns, but before he can say anything Ladybug touches his leg. "Can we play?"

"What do you want to play?" Enoch asks as nicely as possible, despite being completely rattled internally.

"What you and Jenny are playing," She answers with a smile and Patrick gives a loud "Yes!" as confirmation. Enoch looks at Jennifer with confusion.

"They can't hear me, Enoch," Jennifer says with a concerned look and he bursts out laughing, but quickly realizes that she's not joking.

"That's not possible," is all he says.

***

Half an hour later Jennifer is sitting cross-legged on the floor with Enoch in front of her. Jennifer's mother had brought the kids a few cookies and left the two teens to deal with the sugar rush alone.

"It's called fourth-wall-breaking," Jennifer says and picks up the little Lego house that Ladybug had built earlier. While Jennifer talks, Ladybug unpacks Patrick's toy box... she thinks the girl wants to climb in, hide there, or something. Jennifer doesn't understand children.

"Hypothetically, on the stage of a drama, there are four walls. The fourth being imaginary so that the crowd can watch the actors," Jennifer taps on one of the walls of the house and suddenly Patrick runs between them with Superman in his hand, but neither of them bats an eye – they both know it's better to let the kids tire themselves out.

"The actors only act like they don't know there's an entire audience, because, within the context of the story, there is a wall there," Jennifer says. "Does that make sense?"

Enoch only looks at her wide-eyed.

"Do it again," He says after a second too long.

"Who wants sweets?!" Jennifer says and Enoch intently looks at the children for any form of a reaction, but receives none. It might actually be that they're so hyped that they wouldn't hear anyway, but that's not how Enoch sees their lack of response. He covers his face with his hands and grumbles loudly – the picture of a reality being shattered, Jennifer realizes. She's had a lifetime to come to terms with her own fictional existence, she hadn't thought about how the reality of her paper world would affect someone else.

"So, um, breaking the fourth wall is when the main character, or just character, ignores the proverbial wall and acknowledges the audience... in some cases, other characters can hear that character and see them talking to no one – like a loon – or they simply aren't aware of it."

Enoch takes his hands away from his face and looks at Jennifer as she talks. That makes her feel slightly better, not that she's sure she knows why...

"I prefer the term soliloquy and I like to imagine it as my superpower because, it's rather clear that we're not actors on stage, and I like the thought of also falling under the category of other, famous characters that have the same superpower too. I mean, I'm not trying to be like Macbeth, but come on... what a name to be associated with, even if the only thing that connects us is a writing technique."

"Double, double toil and trouble..." Enoch says with a little smile. "It was one of Shakespeare's bests. I've read it so many times. How would all of this fourth-wall-breaking even... how does this work?" He swallows hard and looks directly at her.

Jennifer puts the Lego house down, only to have it snatched up by Ladybug within seconds.

"It's hard to explain," Jennifer says and slowly grows sad. "I've always just been able to speak in a way that people don't hear me, I've always known that I was the main character and that everything around me was fictional... that I was fictional."

"That's a little presumptuous, assuming that you're the main character," Enoch says.

"I don't assume," Jennifer says with pursed lips, but Enoch doesn't even notice her sudden change in mood and gets completely carried away with curiosity. Patrick throws Enoch with a stuffed toy and Enoch throws it back, almost knocking the toddler onto the ground in the process.

"What's your medium?" Enoch asks.

"Hu? I don't believe in that nonsense."

"Book, movie, series, radio drama, written drama, what is your medium?" Enoch asks and she smiles shyly. No one's ever asked her about this, she's almost a little shy to tell, as though it were one of her deepest darkest secrets – one of the things she holds most dear.

"Book, it's a novel," she says. Jenifer's never talked like this with anyone – no one's ever believed her, no one's ever cared. Maybe all she really needed was a reader. "You're the only person that has been able to hear me, well... that I've come across so far."

His ears slowly grow red, a subtle blush.

"How do you know when your writer is writing? Do you know if someone is reading?" Enoch asks.

"I don't know what my author writes or when someone is reading, I just know it happens..." Jennifer says. "I can guess which parts of my life are book-worthy, but other than that... I know nothing."

Suddenly Ladybug jumps on Enoch's back, squealing and laughing. She holds on, hanging around his neck as Patrick tries to tickle her. Enoch swings her around, in front of him and tickles her himself. She has the best, joyous laugh. It's hard to believe that none of it's real. It's hard to believe that Enoch is not real, it's hard to believe that Jennifer, despite everything she does or feels, is not real.

"I thought you said that you have two brothers," Jennifer says, stopping her train of thought, she can't go down that rabbit hole again – once was quite enough.

"I do," Enoch says as Ladybug snuggles up against his chest. The poor thing looks tired, for the first time Jennifer notices how small she is... it's almost unnatural.

"We're four kids. Three boys and a girl. The other two are older and live overseas, they started a company together about a year ago... I hear it's going well." Jennifer notices that Ladybug has fallen asleep.

"Have you found anything out about the Author's Advocate letter?” Enoch asks next, but Jennifer just shakes her head.

"I'm not sure who it could be..." Jennifer says and it's clearly not Enoch. "Here's the thing, throughout my life I've tried to tell people that I'm... the main character in a story, but no one ever believed me. They thought that I was just taking my over-dramatic-ness to a whole new level and dismissed it. I only ever told the people I really trusted..."

Enoch nods, becoming rather serious. "At least you have a suspect list to start with and, I'm sorry Jenny, but I'm still not convinced either." Jennifer smiles sadly at his response.

It doesn't really matter to her that he, a person she just met, doesn't believe her, but it did sting each time Angus made a joke out of it, or each time her mother dismissed it, or each time Tessa ignored it. Jennifer sometimes finds it hard to come to terms with her own fictionality. Jennifer likes to describe all feelings resulting from her unique problems with the word fictionality, it makes her feel better... a non-existing word to soothe a non-existent person's heart.

"Let's maybe get her downstairs," Jennifer tells Enoch silently, so as not to wake the sleeping beauty or continue on with her train of thought.

Enoch carries Ladybug down in his arms and, seeing as they couldn't leave Patrick alone, Jennifer piggy-backs him down as well. Patrick kicks with his knees every few steps, to make Jennifer go faster... Mary will be so happy, she'll have another riding partner soon enough. The sudden thought makes Jennifer long for the days where she and her mother would go riding in the mountains, but time passes and things change – people change.

Downstairs the two teens find an empty living room. They look quizzically at each other, only to hear a sudden clang! from the kitchen. Upon walking into the kitchen, they find Mr Hudstone throwing a bread roll across the kitchen into the breadbasket at the other side. The entire kitchen is a mess, there are dirty pots and pans everywhere. Ms Hudstone and Ms Reilly sit in hysteric laughter with a pot of tea, a plate of biscuits and jams between them on the breakfast table – a far cry from the nervous wreck she was that morning.

"What's going on?" Enoch asks as Mr Hudstone throws and misses.

"Dad's cooking and looks like you're staying for lunch too," Jennifer says with a sigh. "This is why women should cook – a lot less to clean in the end." Jennifer always liked it when her father cooked, until she had to help clean up. Her father's food is great and lacks most of the greens her mother makes, but it's just not worth the effort.

"You made me miss my throw," Mr Hudstone says and Enoch gets roped into throwing bread rolls into a basket, while waiting for the Lasagne in the oven. Jennifer quickly takes a seat before being roped in too.

"... and that was when the fox crawled out from under the house!" Mary says and both women burst out laughing – "Not this story again," - "Do you remember that, Dear?" Her mother asks and Jennifer only smiles and nods while pouring herself a cup of tea. Her mother continues on with the recount of Jennifer's fifth birthday party, but Jennifer grew bored of the story after about the hundredth time it was told. Initially, when her mother told the story, she was even a little embarrassed, but it seems that the repetition has worn even that down.

"It wasn't a particularly bad birthday, but it didn't go as planned..." Jennifer thickly spreads a biscuit with marmalade and pops it into her mouth a second before her mother asks her a question and she almost chokes.

"How did it go with Angus, Dear?"

Jennifer swallows the biscuit down with tea, after her near suffocation, but, once she starts talking, she realizes that she has no idea how to answer. She stumbles over her words before quickly shifting topics to talking about how she and Angus were friends since childhood. Her mother takes over the conversation from there, telling Ms Reilly all about her daughter's adventures.

Listening to a retelling of her relationship from someone else, Jennifer can't help but realize how wrong her entire perception has been. Since about a year ago Jennifer had started seeing things in her friendship with Angus that could indicate a relationship in future, so she distanced herself, but now that she's hearing their story from another point of view... the things she noticed aren't as clear anymore.

Maybe Jennifer misread the entire situation? Maybe she and Angus aren't meant to...

Shawn walks into the kitchen and gets hit on the head by a flying bread roll.

"Just in time for lunch, my boy," John announces and Mary asks how his soccer practice was.

"Soccer?" Jennifer does a double-take. "Wasn't he at band practice?"

Soon enough Jennifer has already forgotten about Shawn's sudden change in activities as lunch is served.

***

Later that night, Jennifer looks at the carnage left in the nursery. Toys strewn everywhere, cookie crumbs on the carpet, cups and so much more. Mary Hudstone had asked her daughter to tidy the nursery after dinner, while she helped her husband clean the kitchen.

Patrick is still downstairs and the Reillys had left a few hours before dinner. The quick tea didn't quite go as planned, but it seems that all parties did enjoy it.

Jennifer looks at the happy room. Only a child could make a playground of a graveyard, Jennifer thinks as she starts picking up toys, cradling them in her arms. The imagination of a child is truly something to look up to. Jennifer reflects on her life, on her childhood and wishes that she could go back. Go back to younger days, back to a life that had been lost, back to a childhood so quickly left behind.

As Jennifer reaches the chairs, she takes a seat after throwing all the toys in the toy box.

She sighs and breaths in the silence as a drowning victim would inhale water as their last breath. Jennifer used to see the silence as something that had to be filled, little did she know that it was already so thick with emotion that words weren't needed.

She doesn't feel like talking anymore. Her entire world has been turned upside down, her reality is ripping at the seams and her heart has been taken hostage by emotions she can't even begin to identify. She's not sure if she's happy or scared that someone can hear her. What is the use of her superpower anyway? She's not a hero by any form of the definition and, as far as she knows, it serves no purpose. At the moment, she would rather spend time with her own thoughts, maybe, after a few hours, she could make sense of all the questions haunting the hallways of her mind.

Why can Enoch hear her? Has everyone been able to hear her all along – seeing her talk to the air like a loon? Who's the Author's Advocate? Is the letter a direct message from her author? Is it a prank? What's with Angus' strange phone call and... texting in the middle of a coffee date?

Too many things to think about, too many mysteries to solve.

What an interesting situation detective Hudstone finds herself in. All mysteries can be solved, but only some with Jennifer's current methods. Gossip and curiosity can take even the best sleuth only so far.

Jennifer replays everything over in her mind, mauling over the facts and then she suddenly remembers Ronita and lets out a shy laugh – Jennifer would never invade his privacy like that. She brushes off the idea, only to return to it a second later.

"Maybe I should take Ronita up on her offer?" Jennifer jokes to herself, before seriously considering it.