Her words are like fists, driving into my stomach, leaving me winded. ‘What?’ My head is spinning. Did Ali just say that to me?
Ali?
‘I told you, I didn’t sleep with Aaron that time, no matter what he said afterwards. We only—’
‘Oh, stop lying.’ Ali bangs her fist on the table, and both Maggie and Jamie start. ‘That’s all you ever do,’ she says, ‘
lie, lie, lie, lie.
’
‘Why are you being like this?’ The words come out of my mouth in a plaintive whimper. ‘What have I done that is so terrible, Ali?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. How about the time you told me you didn’t want to lend me that red top from River Island because you were afraid I would stretch it? How about the time you went on for an hour about how beautiful my mom was, and then ten minutes later casually dropped it into the conversation what a pity it was I didn’t look like her? What about the time you told Maggie that Eli kept coming on to you and they nearly broke up? What about the time—’
‘OK,’ I say, feeling pressure building up behind my eyes, ‘I get it. I’m a fucking bitch. I’m the worst friend in the whole entire world. Why are you making such a big deal out of it this time?’
‘You slept with him,’ Ali whispers, and she blinks away tears.
‘Aaron?’ I’m confused. ‘Oh, wait,
Paul O’Brien
? What do you care?’
‘Not
Paul
. Although I suppose the fact that he has a
girlfriend
is irrelevant. Emma O’Donovan always has to get whatever it is she wants.’ Her voice trembles. ‘I can’t believe you had sex with Sean.’
‘Sean?’ I almost laugh in her face. ‘Sean Casey? What are you on about?’
‘Oh, shut up, Emma.’ She stares out the window for a moment to compose herself, then looks at me again, and it’s like I’m looking at a stranger. ‘You are absolutely disgusting, do you know that? Four guys in one night? Do you have any fucking self-respect, Emma?’ I just stand there. I am waiting for someone to defend me. But no one does. They look gleeful, like they have been waiting for this for the last eighteen years and it hasn’t come a minute too soon. ‘Like Paul wasn’t enough for you,’ Ali continues. ‘You had to ride Sean too, and fucking
Dylan Walsh
– like, what is wrong with you, Emma? You’re sick. You’re actually
sick
.’
‘Julie is going to kick your ass,’ Sarah Swallows adds helpfully from the row in front of us. ‘Just so you know.’
‘I don’t know what the fuck
any
of you are talking about.’ I grip on to the edge of the desk with my fingertips.
‘Maggie.’ My voice cracks, and I hate myself for it. ‘Maggie. Please.’
She puts her hand out to cover mine. ‘Emma.’ She waits until I look up at her, my eyes pricking with tears, but I can’t cry, not in front of all these people. ‘Listen to me – were you taking stuff at the party?’
‘Of course she was.’ Jamie rolls her eyes. ‘Did you not see her? She was chewing the face off herself.’
‘J,’ Maggie warns her, then squeezes my fingers. ‘Emma, come on, just tell me – did you take anything?’
‘No, of course I—’
‘Please, Emma.’ She pulls her hand away and starts to massage her temples. ‘Please. Just tell me the truth. Is that why you did this? Because you were off your face?’
‘But I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is—’
‘There’s no point in denying it.’ Maggie is getting exasperated. (She is sick of me.) (They are all sick of me.) ‘Eli told me. You’re just making things worse by lying.’
‘But I’m not lying. I admit I slept with Paul, but—’
‘Stop it. He has a girlfriend. And besides that, you knew how Ali felt about Sean. She doesn’t deserve this.’
‘But I
didn’t
have sex with him. And it’s not my fault that he doesn’t fancy her. I mean, I told him that she . . .’ I stop myself just in time.
‘Told him what?’ Ali’s face is stricken. ‘Told Sean what, Emma? What did you tell him about me?’ I look away. ‘You told him I liked him, is that it?’ she says. I don’t deny it and she looks like she wants to kill me.
‘Well, maybe I should tell him to get an STI test as quickly as possible,’ she says. ‘Chlamydia is
so
easy to treat these days, isn’t it?’
As soon as she says it, I think I see regret in her eyes, but then it’s gone. Maybe it was never there in the first place.
‘Fuck you,’ I hiss, as the classroom gasps in delight. I can hear people fumbling in bags for phones, the clicking of keys as people text. Lisa Keane has taken out her iPhone and is pointing it at us. ‘If you’re filming this, I will literally cut you.’ I make a lunge at her, but she just laughs at me. Lisa Keane is laughing at
me.
‘Easy Emma,’ Jamie says, then smiles in delight. ‘Yes, Easy Emma. I do like a bit of alliteration. It’s nearly as good as Sarah Swallows.’
‘Hey,’ Sarah says. ‘Don’t drag me into this mess.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I don’t think name-calling is helping here,’ I say, trying to channel Hannah in therapist mode. ‘Can’t we go somewhere private and talk this out?’
‘No.’ I’ve never seen Ali so resolute, and suddenly I feel very afraid. ‘You
knew
how I felt about Sean, but it didn’t matter. Whatever Emma O’Donovan wants, Emma O’Donovan gets, right?’
‘But I
didn’t
—’
‘It’s not enough that everybody else
always
prefers you.’ Her lip starts to quiver, and Jamie wraps a hand around her waist. ‘You just had to prove that Sean liked you best too.’
I crouch down until I’m eye level with her. ‘Ali—’
‘Fuck off and leave us alone,’ Jamie says.
‘But I—’
‘Emma.’ Maggie’s voice is firm. ‘I think it’s probably best if you just leave now.’
‘Oh, whatever,’ I say as I stand up, moving towards my new seat at the front of the class. ‘I don’t give a fuck anyway. It’s not my fault Sean doesn’t like you. He’s probably not into
giants
.’
No one laughs. They always laugh at my jokes.
‘I’m relieved he doesn’t like me,’ Ali says. ‘Since he’s probably riddled now anyway.’
‘I told you,’ I say. (Who is she? Ali would never say things like this, especially not to me. Ali is good and kind and loyal.) ‘I didn’t . . . I don’t even fucking remember what happened on Saturday night, but I definitely didn’t—’
‘What are you trying to say, Emma?’ Jamie narrows her eyes at me.
The room goes quiet, muffled, like when you wake up in the morning and you can somehow sense that it’s snowed the night before.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.
‘That’s right,’ Jamie says. ‘Best not to say anything. No one likes a girl who makes a fuss, do they?’
*
10.00 a.m.
I wait for what feels like hours, then sneak a peek at the clock on the wall again.
10.04 a.m.
At small break, the bell rings and Maggie and Jamie form a protective circle around a red-eyed Ali. She is the victim.
‘You know you’re not allowed to stay in the classroom during break,’ Ms O’Regan calls at me from the open doorway. ‘Out you get.’
I walk to the ref alone. Why did I forget my phone, I need to text Sean and Dylan, I need to ask them what they’ve been saying, why are they saying things that aren’t true. (But I don’t remember, I don’t remember.) The ref is a large, dark room, the old-fashioned brown lino and oak-panelled walls swallowing any light. There are round Formica tables filling the middle of the room, a glass-plated hot-food counter at the top, about a hundred girls in there, chatting, laughing, arguing.
I join the queue for food, the two second years in front of me turning to look at me, smothering smiles. They nudge another friend, a plump girl with box braids. ‘What?’ she says, her eyes widening as they jerk their heads back towards me. I pick up an apple from the basket next to the stack of trays at the front and walk to the cash desk. Mr O’Flynn is on duty and I hand him a euro coin without comment.
‘Got a little bit of sun over the weekend, I see?’ he teases as he hands me back my change.
‘Hmmm.’ I’m not in the mood for flirting today.
I stand facing down the long hall, all the tables seeming to be full of gaping mouths and pointed fingers and whispers behind cupped hands. Ali, Maggie and Jamie are the only ones not looking at me.
‘Hey.’ I sit at the nearest table, throwing my bag at my feet and cleaning my apple on the folds of my skirt. ‘God, I am so dead in that Irish exam. I can’t believe I forgot about it—’
‘You can’t sit here,’ Chloe Hegarty says, her moon-shaped face screwed up as if she’s smelled something rotten.
‘What?’
Chloe Hegarty phones me at least three times a week, and believes me when I tell her that I must have ‘just missed’ her because I was in the shower. Chloe Hegarty gave me a present for my eighteenth birthday even though I didn’t even invite her to my party. Chloe Hegarty bakes a batch of mini apple pies for me every Christmas because she knows I hate mince pies. Chloe Hegarty told me once that she considers me to be her best friend.
‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘but you can’t sit here.’
I don’t know how I do it, but I get to my feet and I walk away.
I am Emma O’Donovan
, I tell myself over and over and over again, as I sit on the toilet seat in a bathroom cubicle, trying to eat my apple, waiting for the bell to ring.
The day crawls on. During class I can focus on the teacher, and everyone is quiet, people can’t whisper
slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore,
when they’re here.
But then the teachers leave.
The moments when we’re waiting for the next teacher to fill their place, or we have to travel in the halls to another room, shoulder after shoulder banging up against mine, my books knocked off my desk . . . Whispers. All I can hear are whispers.
Slut, liar, skank, bitch, whore
. . .
We’re waiting for the geography teacher to arrive. It’s the last class of the day. I can go home after this. I can curl up in bed, cover my head with my pillow to block out the world outside. I can fall asleep and forget this day ever happened. Everything will have gone back to normal tomorrow. Sean and Dylan will admit that they were lying, and Eli will tell Maggie, and she’ll phone me to apologize and she’ll make Ali and Jamie apologize too, and everyone will be sorry. I pretend to look over the essay on climate change that we had to write for today’s class. Where is Miss Coughlan? Would she ever just get here? If she was here they would all be quiet and stop whispering and I wouldn’t have to ignore the waves of voices around me, rising and falling, the peals of laughter, all melting away into one split second of silence in which I hear my name.
Emma O’Donovan?
A gasp, breaths held, heads turning in my direction to see my reaction, then fits of nervous giggles.
Laughing at me.
They are all laughing at me.
And I’m getting to my feet and I run, run, run; run away from them all, from the chatter and laughter and noise, I run down the corridor,
Emma O’Donovan? Emma O’Donovan? Emma O’Donovan?
beating in my bones. I sit on the toilet, heels of my palms digging into my eyes, trying to remember how to breathe.
Trying to remember. (I can’t remember, I can’t remember.)
Emma O’Donovan? Emma O’Donovan? Emma O’Donovan?
She’s waiting for me when I swing the door of the toilet cubicle open, her brassy red hair scraped back off her face in an unflattering ponytail.
‘Julie—’
‘Save it.’ She comes closer to me, nudging me backwards into the cubicle, giving me one hard push so I land heavily on the toilet seat. She bends over, her face inches away from mine. ‘Dylan told me what happened.’
‘But I’m telling you, I didn’t—’
‘You’re fucking finished, do you hear me? Finished.’ She places both her hands on my shoulders and squeezes hard, digging her fingernails into me. I try and get up, but she shoves me back down, spitting, ‘Did I fucking say that we were finished talking?’
‘You . . . you . . . you can’t speak to me like that.’ I’m breathless with the shock of it, but she laughs in my face.
‘Or what? What are you going to do about it?’
If this had happened last week, the girls would be here with me, they would have pulled Julie off me and told her to cop on. If this had happened last week, I wouldn’t be alone.
‘Julie, I don’t know what Dylan told you, but it’s not—’
‘Oh, shut the fuck up.’ She loses her cool. ‘Don’t fucking lie to me. I saw the Snapchat—’
‘Is there a problem here?’ Miss Coughlan pops her head around the door, her lips pursed at us.
‘No, miss,’ Julie says. ‘Emma ran out of class because she was feeling sick. I thought I should make sure she was all right.’
‘And that required screaming at her, did it?’ Miss Coughlan gives Julie a dubious look. ‘Is everything OK, Emma?’
‘Yes, Miss Coughlan.’ I try to smile at her. ‘I’m fine.’
After school, I stand on the footpath watching as Maggie’s Fiesta veers out of the car park, black smoke farting from the exhaust pipe. I practise in my head what I would say to anyone if they asked why Maggie didn’t give me a lift.
I just felt like the walk
, I’d say.
I needed fresh air.
But no one asks me.
I walk towards the exit, weaving my way through the throngs of younger girls, their hands clutching on to the straps of brightly coloured backpacks, threatening to fall backwards with the weight of their books. I wait for them to say hello, to ask advice on their hair, or how I get my skin so clear, or to tell me that I
should be a model, you’re so beautiful
. But there is none of that today, only miles of dead space around me.
I hear my name called from a passing car. I see it as it comes towards me, like a missile, and yet I do not step out of the way. I wait for it, the heaviness of it slamming against me like a broken promise. The unopened can of Coke falls to the ground. Julie Clancy leans out of Sarah’s dark green Yaris, her middle finger held up as the car screeches away.
‘And what time do you call this? You should have been home an hour ago. I’ve been phoning you and phoning you. Why haven’t you been answering your mobile?’ Mam says when I trudge through the front door. She’s sitting on the bottom step of the stairs waiting for me.