The Funny Thing about Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson (e book reader online txt) 📕

I looked in the mirror to see what I looked like when I was telling a joke all I could see was a little kid in a big jacket with bits of his skin falling off. And an empty space where the funny guy used to stand.

Jax would have been able to do both parts easily, though, and I know that because he actually did do it once. It was when he was trying to help me get my timing right for this really cool comedy sketch we made up about what would happen if the doughnut had been invented square instead of round. And if you want a laugh, you should maybe think about that for a minute. Jax was trying to explain when would be the funniest time for me to come in with my bits and so he kept on jumping from one spot to the other, pretending to be me saying my part and then really being him saying his part. It was so funny when he was putting on a squeaky voice and doing the me bits that I nearly peed and he had to get his puffer out because he lost his breath. But he never in a million years would have imagined that I’d be the one trying to do his part one day. And neither did I.

I knew that if Jax was really there with me in the Caramel Suite there’s no way he would have let me give up, though. He’d have made me keep on practising and practising until I got it kind of right. He’d be saying stuff like, pause for effect, Normie! Pauuuusssssssse for eeeeeeffect! Jax can stretch out a pause for effect better than anyone, and the longer he stares and says nothing, the funnier it gets. But whenever I pause for effect it just sounds like I’ve forgotten the next joke. Which is actually true some of the time.

And so, because I knew Jax would want me to, I kept on practising to try and get it right. I put all my Post-it notes in order, with the funniest jokes at the beginning and the end and the unfunniest ones in the middle, and then I tried. I really did. I tried loads and loads of times, because practice makes perfect, Jax says.

First I told every single joke in a different accent, which sounded lame and stupid. Then I tried making weird faces in the mirror when I talked, which just looked weird. Then I tried running from one side of the room to the other while I told jokes, which just puffed me out and then I couldn’t talk properly. No matter what I did, all I could hear was a bunch of random jokes floating around the room then landing on to the floor and flopping about like a load of fish out of water. Even the best first and last ones, which are most important. And all the time, I just knew that I wasn’t being funny. I was being the opposite of funny. I was being totally unfunny.

Nobody knows this, but I didn’t for one minute think I was actually going to get to go to the Fringe on my own. Not really. If Mum hadn’t seen the poster that Jax might or might not have changed while I was sleeping, I’m pretty sure I would still have been sitting on my bed back in Penzance staring at the walls and missing him. Instead of sitting on a bed in Edinburgh all by myself trying to do jokes and talking to invisible Jax. And missing him.

When I looked over at the clock beside the bed I didn’t need Jax talking in my ear to tell me I had exactly twenty-seven hours and twenty-three minutes before I was going to be up on stage at the Duke, most likely being the opposite of funny. Because maths is one thing I am good at.

42Sadie

As I bounced along on the bus on the next leg of my mission to rescue Leonard I had to admit that the job of ignoring the regular eye-watering jabs to my stomach was becoming quite considerable. I’d managed reasonably well up to that point by telling myself that as soon as Norman’s show was over and we were safely back in our lovely boring little lives my very next task would be getting to a doctor. Or a therapist. Whatever it turned out I needed most. Definitely. Absolutely. But now, what with the pain, the unexpected reminiscing about my father, the worry of both Norman and Leonard being on their own, and the regret of never having known how damn beautiful the countryside was just ten minutes out of Edinburgh, my mood wasn’t exactly what you’d call upbeat.

So it was never going to take much. When the bus hit a pothole half an hour into the journey my head jerked back with a snap. At first it just made me blink a couple of times, but then it was like the shock had loosened some kind of internal valve and, out of nowhere, my chest started contracting uncontrollably. Before I even knew what was happening I was sobbing into both fists, very much in view of a teenaged Goth girl with a small dog on her lap sitting across the aisle.

The burst water main only lasted about thirty seconds, but it was long enough that I definitely wasn’t going to be able to pass it off as a bad case of hiccups. When I’d managed to compose myself the young girl leaned over and patted my hand gently, tilting her head to one side and giving me an enigmatic pencilled-in eyebrow raise. Her dog did exactly the same, and to me it looked like they were saying, ‘Tell us, don’t tell us, it’s up to you.’

But there was something comforting about that small, smooth hand with its bitten-down black fingernails and the motion of