Asking for It (3 page)

‘
Anyway
, back to the story,’ Ali says. She hates it when we interrupt her like this. ‘The hacker sent this girl the video of herself and told her if she didn’t, I don’t know, give him a blow job or something, he’d post the video on Twitter and send a link to everyone at her school. So she killed herself.’

‘How did she do it?’ Jamie asks, leaning forward on the bench until her belly touches her thighs, but Ali just shrugs.

‘It’s a pity it wasn’t Sarah Swallows.’ I stretch my arms out over my head. ‘She would have been only too delighted to help, the dirty slut.’

‘Who’s a dirty slut?’ a boy’s voice asks. It’s Eli, Conor and Fitzy behind him.

‘Hi, Eli.’ I push my sunglasses back into my hair and smile at him. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good—’ he begins, but Maggie screams as if she hasn’t seen him in years, and jumps up into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. He manages to sit down with her still like that, murmuring hello to her through kisses. He doesn’t finish his sentence to me. Conor sits beside me, of course.

‘Hey, Emmie,’ he says. I raise an eyebrow at him. ‘Emma, I mean.’

‘Hey.’ I lower my voice so none of the others can hear me. ‘How’s your mam?’

‘She’s fine. Still very tired, but I guess that’s to be expected. Thanks though.’

‘For what?’

‘For asking.’ He looks at me intently, his left shoulder grazing off mine.

‘Lads, would ye get a room?’ Fitzy says to Maggie and Eli as he sits next to Jamie.

‘Sorry.’ Maggie breaks away, but only barely, their faces inches away from one another. She brushes a hand over Eli’s tightly cropped Afro. ‘I can’t resist him.’

My phone beeps. Ali has checked us in again, this time including the boys. I roll my eyes and stretch out my legs, only half listening as the heat melts through my bones.

‘It’s roasting, isn’t it . . .’

‘Suncream . . . factor fifty . . . fair trade . . .’

‘Fair what?’

Laughter. A patch of sun breaking through the trees, the sky moving. The buzzing fly is back, landing on my legs, tickling my skin.

‘. . . and I can’t get the exact right shade of blue. I want it to look exactly like . . .’

‘. . . yes, I
loved
that piece, even though Mr Shanahan said he thinks the Turner Prize is worthless these days.’

‘Mr Shanahan is basically mentally unstable.’

Fitzy and Maggie have become really good friends since Fitzy had to get a special dispensation to come to St Brigid’s so he could take art for his Leaving Cert. ‘She’s cool,’ he told me at his last birthday party. ‘She’s pretty, but she’s still smart
and
funny. Let’s face it, you can’t say that about too many girls in Ballinatoom, can you?’ I couldn’t think of a response for a second, and he looked triumphant. ‘Maggie’s the best,’ I said at last. ‘Although I’m surprised to hear you think she’s pretty. I didn’t think you were into . . .’ He stopped, fear freezing his features, and I felt a grubby joy. ‘Never mind.’ I smiled, and took another slice of birthday cake. ‘You don’t mind if I have some more, do you?’ I looked around at the nearly empty room. ‘I’m sure there’s plenty left.’

There is a screech of brakes, tyres against concrete. A blast of heavy metal music, a girl’s voice screaming over it, ‘I’m warning you, if you . . .’ A car door slamming, a horn blaring. ‘Fuck off, you stupid cunt,’ a boy’s voice yells as the car speeds off.

‘Dylan and Julie?’ Ali says, without even sitting up to check.

‘Yup.’

‘God,’ Maggie sighs, reaching to give Eli a kiss on the neck. ‘I’m so glad we’re not like that, baby, aren’t you?’

‘Aw, baby,’ Fitzy does a perfect imitation of Maggie’s voice before a rugby ball whizzes past his face, almost hitting him. He fumbles over Conor’s outstretched legs, Jamie snapping, ‘Hey, watch it,’ as he falls against her. He apologizes, shaking his hair out of his eyes, and gets to his feet, brushing grass off his rolled-up chinos.

Dylan runs towards us, Jack and Sean close behind him. He rescues the ball, tossing it from one hand to the other. He doesn’t even look at me, just stares at Jamie.

‘Hey, Jamie,’ he says. ‘How’re things with you?’

She ignores him, slumping down in her seat, tucking her chin into her chest.

‘I said, “Hello, Jamie,”’ he says again. ‘No need to be ignorant about it.’

‘Take it easy, Dylan.’ Maggie pushes her round John Lennon glasses up into that mane of unruly hair and squints at him.

‘Who asked you?’

Eli stands up, his six-foot-four frame dwarfing Dylan. Eli used to get into a lot of fights before, whenever some kid decided that calling him the N-word seemed like a good idea, but he promised Maggie that he’d learn to control his temper. ‘He says that he’d do anything for me, that he’s never felt like this about anyone else before,’ she told us when they first started hooking up, almost three years ago now. I wanted to tell her that boys always say that, in the beginning.

Eli starts to say something to Dylan when his phone beeps. He looks at the screen and frowns.

‘Who is it?’ Maggie asks.

‘Mum. She can see all of us out here.’ He turns towards a primrose-coloured house in Connolly Gardens, three doors down from Maggie’s, and waves at a shadowy figure in the front window. ‘I have to go home. Dad’s on nights this week and she needs me to mind Priscilla and Isaac.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

Eli helps her stand up, untangling her sunglasses from her hair and gently placing them back on her face. It falls silent once they’ve left, and I try and think of something to say.
Emma O’Donovan is hot
, I overheard a boy in my year say when we were fourteen and had just started going to the Attic Disco,
but she’s as boring as fuck.

‘How are you guys feeling about the match tomorrow night?’ I direct the question at Jack, still standing at the edge of the group. His dark hair is spiky with gel, despite the heat, his navy T-shirt clinging to his torso. He’s a bit short for a boy, about five foot eight, but he’s built. ‘My dad told me there’s a rumour that a Cork selector is going to be at it.’

‘Well, he’s Ciarán O’Brien’s brother, so he’d be at the match anyway.’ Jack shrugs.

‘Still an opportunity though,’ Sean butts in. He comes closer to me, smelling of sweat and grass, and sits by my feet. ‘We had a team meeting about it yesterday.

‘Speaking of the match,’ he continues, ‘I’m going to have a party afterwards. My parents will be out of town.’ Ali sits up, but Sean’s eyes never leave mine. ‘What do you say, Emma? Are you up for it?’

I’ve told him that I’m not interested in him like that, that I’m never going to be interested, because Ali likes him. ‘But I don’t like Ali,’ he said that night when he cornered me outside Reilly’s pub. ‘I like you.’ I pushed him away. ‘I would, Sean. You know I would,’ I said. ‘But Ali’s one of my best friends. I couldn’t do that to her.’

‘It had better be a good show,’ Dylan says. ‘Especially after my last party. Am I right, Emma?’

‘Yeah, it was good.’

‘Just good?’ He raises an eyebrow at me. ‘That’s not what Kevin Brennan said.’

(Kevin, throwing me against a wall at the party, his teeth sharp.)

‘Why?’ I say. ‘What exactly did Kevin say?’

(. . . he is dragging me into a dimly lit bedroom that smells of Play-Doh. Tripping over a headless Barbie. A candy-pink duvet, people laughing outside.
Let’s get back to the party
, I kept saying.)

‘Oh –’ Dylan smirks – ‘just that you had fun.’

(Kevin’s hands on my shoulders, pushing me down, saying,
Go on, come on, Emma.
It seemed easiest to go along with it. Everyone is always saying how cute he is anyway.)

‘What kind of fun?’ My voice is tight.

(Afterwards I made him
swear
he wouldn’t tell anyone.)

‘Well, I don’t know what Kevin said, but nothing happened,’ I say.

‘That’s not what he told us.’ Dylan looks to Jack for confirmation.

‘Then he’s a fucking liar.’ I stop. ‘Look, whatever,’ I say, making myself sound calm. ‘If he has to invent stories to make himself feel like more of a man, that’s not my problem.’

‘Girls are all the same,’ Dylan says, rolling his eyes. ‘Get wasted and get a bit slutty, then in the morning try and pretend it never happened because you regret it.’ He directs this at Jamie and I laugh, a little too loudly.

‘I have to go,’ Jamie says, grabbing her school bag. A notebook and a tin pencil case fall out and Ali jumps up to help her, but Jamie waves her off, shoving the stuff back into her bag. ‘I have to get to work.’

‘OK, hun,’ Ali says, sitting back down. ‘Call me later?’ Jamie doesn’t reply, just walks away alone. Dylan stares after her.

‘Come on,’ he says to Sean and Jack when she’s out of sight. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ And they leave, throwing the rugby ball between them. None of them looks back at me.

‘I think I’m going to head,’ I say. ‘Wait . . .
shit.
Maggie said she’d drop me home.’

‘Mom texted me ten minutes ago. She’s in town,’ Ali says. ‘We can go meet her in Mannequin? She’ll drive you home once she’s finished.’

‘Maybe.’

It’s always the same when we meet Karen there. Pushing open the black door, hit by the cool air and the vanilla-scented candles; our school shoes sinking into the plush cream carpet, expensive clothes draped off black jewelled hangers. The manager looks up, the ready smile on her face dimming when she sees the grey uniform. ‘Yes, girls?’ she’ll say, her voice clipped, until Ali comes closer and she sees who it is. ‘Oh, Ali,’ she’ll coo. ‘You should see what your mother is trying on. It’s
divine.
’ Karen will push back the heavy cream curtain of the dressing room, wearing yet another dress, or coat, or a T-shirt that she
literally has to have.
She’ll force Ali into a dressing room then, handing her a pair of jeans to try on, and you can see she’s trying not to wince when she looks at the size. Then she’ll turn to me, and insist I try something on too, and my head will swim when I see the price tags (
That’s obscene,
I can almost hear my mother say,
and with people starving in the world
), but Karen will tell me not to think about that, just to pick whatever I want. There’ll be a dress that looks like nothing on the hanger, but when I try it on it moulds to my body like a second skin, and Karen’s jaw drops when I come out of the dressing room. ‘You look stunning. You could be a model,’ she’ll say as she stands behind me, and the two of us look so good together in the reflection that I can pretend for a moment that it’s really us who are mother and daughter. ‘You have to have it. Will you let me buy it for you?’ she’ll ask, and I’ll want to say yes. I will want her to buy me one of everything in the shop. She can afford it. But I won’t. I can’t.

‘I can give Emma a lift,’ Conor says, and I nod at him.

‘See you later, guys,’ Ali calls as we walk away. My phone beeps.

‘Emmie.’ Conor clears his throat to get my attention. ‘Sorry,
Emma.
We’re just here.’

‘It’s very . . . clean,’ I say as we get into his car.

He flicks the Lisa Simpson-shaped air freshener with a finger. ‘Is that annoying you? I can take it down if it is. I know perfumes can make you—’

‘I’m fine.’

He reaches into the glove compartment to get his glasses, then reverses the car, his hand on the back of my headrest as he turns to check behind him.

I stare out the window as the closely packed houses of the town centre melt away into a narrow road, curved trees on the right hanging over us, clinging to the ditch. The tide is out, turning the bay on the left to marsh, patchy with green weeds.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he says, turning the radio down.

‘Yeah.’

‘I feel like I never see you any more.’

‘I know. I’ve just been busy, you know, schoolwork, blah blah.’

‘I meant what I said earlier.’ His hands tighten on the steering wheel. ‘About being grateful to you.’

(The O’Callaghan house. A smell of disinfectant. Dymphna smiling as I give her the paisley headscarf I had bought in Dunnes for her.)

‘It was nothing, Conor.’

(Sitting on his bed, staring at the Anchorman poster on the wall. He started to cry. I didn’t know what to do.
Be a big boy
, my dad used to tell Bryan.
Stop that
. Wrapping my arms around Conor, heads pressed together.)

‘It wasn’t nothing to me,’ he says. (His head turning slightly then, his breath on my cheek. And I could feel something melting inside me, something that I needed to keep under control.) ‘I want you to—’

‘Yeah, cool,’ I interrupt as the car pulls into our estate. I look through the Kellehers’ window, Nina and her husband Niall thrown on the couch, each with a glass of wine in hand. They’re clinging to either side as if they’re afraid they might accidentally touch. One of the kids runs in. A hand sneaks down, a ruffle of her curly hair, eye contact with the television never breaking. My gaze drifts across all the houses in the estate, a similar scene playing out in each one, chairs and faces focused on their TVs.

Conor parks next to his dad’s Merc, and I have the car door open before he has a chance to pull up the handbrake. He reaches across me, grabbing my wrist. ‘You shouldn’t have laughed.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘Earlier. When Dylan said that about Jamie. You shouldn’t have laughed.’

I can see my mother through the window, a neat lace-trimmed pink apron on, waiting for my father to come home.

You’re just like your mother, you know.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Conor,’ I say. ‘It was just a joke. Lighten up, will you?’

(Jamie’s face in the park, stricken.)

(Jamie coming to my house after it happened last year, crying and crying.
What’ll I do, Emma? What am I supposed to do now
?)