Authors: Claire Hennessy
“I think we can add Natasha to the list of people who think we’re destined to be together,” I tell Barry as I return to the dance floor. “It’s clearly fate. We should probably just declare our love to the world.”
“You’re right.” He nods. “The people deserve to know the truth.”
I laugh, and twirl around. “It’s crazy, though, isn’t it?”
“Not really. We’re close, people assume it’s more than what it is.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“And people are silly.”
“Yes, yes they are,” I say. “Especially Roisín,” I add, noticing that she’s giving me more pointed looks. “She thinks there’s a spark between us. There’s no spark.”
“No, no spark.”
“People are just . . .”
“Silly.”
“Hey, what time is it?”
“Nearly three.”
“Yeah, that’d explain the tiredness.”
“Are you getting a lift with Andrew and Lucy?”
“I think so. I don’t know when they’re leaving, though.”
“We could get a taxi.”
“Yeah, we could.”
“We could.”
“Or.”
“Or we could do something crazy.”
“We could start dancing on the tables.”
“That’s old. People were doing that earlier.”
“We could show off our Irish dancing skills.”
“What skills?”
“Exactly.”
“We could sing.”
“Oh, that’s just cruel. We couldn’t inflict that on people.”
“You’re right. They’d never recover.”
“We could start a food fight.”
“There’s no food left, though.”
“Ah, forget it. I’m tired.”
“Come on, let’s go home.”
***
We wish Lucy a happy birthday once again and wait outside for the taxi. It’s freezing, and I am in my impractical dress. Barry, being chivalrous and also sick of hearing me whine about the cold, offers me his coat.
I think about what everyone says about the two of us, and how they’d be greatly amused to see me wearing his coat. And it would be romantic – if it wasn’t him.
I sleep gloriously late on Saturday morning. Lie-ins are the ultimate luxury, I think. Especially when you’re sensible the night before and drink in moderation. Ah, being sensible. It’s not something I have very much experience with but it seems to be a good thing.
Janet’s at home for the weekend, naturally, and she’s sitting at the kitchen table eating her lunch when I go downstairs. Lunch, because of course she’s been up since eight and has already had her breakfast.
“That can’t be healthy,” she says as I help myself to a chocolate mousse.
“Probably not,” I agree.
“Aren’t you going to eat anything else?”
“Well, I would be having ice cream, but you ate all of mine.”
“Oh, don’t be so childish.”
“Childish? Me? I’m not the one who’s still pathetically clingy at the age of twenty.”
“I’m not clingy, Emily, I just enjoy spending time with my family. You’ll understand when you’re older,” she says condescendingly.
“You’re three years older than me. Get over yourself,” I tell her.
She just sighs and shakes her head in that I-know-better-than-you-but-I’m-going-to-be-mature-and-leave-it sort of way that she does so well.
I want to pull her hair or slap her across the face, but I wisely decide not to. She’d fight back.
She has a superiority complex because she’s incredibly smart. I really don’t think that’s enough of a reason to act like you’re better than everyone else, nor do I think the educational system is based on intelligence. It’s mostly based on an ability to learn off by heart and then regurgitate the information within a short space of time.
I really dislike exams. Of course, I can’t ever express this dislike around her, because she’ll start talking about how everyone has to do them, and they test how much you
know,
and blah blah blah. Whenever she starts talking about any of her passions, I have to tune her out. It’s the only way to stay sane.
Which is why I go and eat my incredibly healthy breakfast in front of the TV. I’m sure she’ll be in later to ask me why I waste my time staring at the idiot box, but for the moment, she’s leaving me alone, and it’s peaceful.
The phone is ringing. “Emily, it’s for you,” Janet calls from downstairs.
I pause
Amelie
and go down to the hall, accepting the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Em, it’s Lucy.”
“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Great, everything’s great. Did you get home okay last night?”
“Yep, the taxi came after about twenty minutes.”
“You seemed to be enjoying yourself,” she says. “You and Barry.”
“Lucy, don’t start.”
She laughs. “Okay, I won’t. Anyway, since I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to you last night, do you want to come over sometime today? I have pizza.”
“Pizza, you say?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there,” I laugh. “I’ll see you in a while, I just have to get dressed.”
“Oh, don’t bother. Come naked,” she giggles.
“Now
there’s
an idea.”
“See you.”
“Bye.”
***
“Do you love him?” I asked her one day when it was just the two of us.
She smiled. “Yeah. I really do.”
***
“I’m pretty much grounded until after the Junior Cert,” I told her.
She made a sad face, but I wondered if she really cared. “But that’s so unfair.”
“Yeah, I know. But there’s not much I can do about it,” I said.
“You can just not listen to your parents,” she said. “What can they really do to you, anyway?”
“Lock me in my room? Stop feeding me? Kick me out of the house,” I suggested.
“You could come live with me.” She smiled.
“I’d get in the way,” I said in a very self-pitying sort of tone.
“Of course you wouldn’t! You’re one of my best friends, Emily.”
“Yeah.”
“You are.” She kissed me lightly on the cheek, then the lips.
I pushed her away. “Don’t touch me, Lucy.”
She was taken aback. “What’s wrong with you? You know I’m always like this –”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be,” I told her angrily. “I mean, you go around playing mind games with everyone and flirting with them, and you think it’s okay. Maybe it isn’t.”
“Everyone knows I don’t mean it, Em,” she said softly. “No one takes it seriously.”
“Right,” I muttered.
She closed her eyes. “Oh, no.”
“I have to go,” I told her.
“Emily, I – I’m sorry,” she said.
“I have to go,” I repeated, and walked out the door.
***
She’s wearing jeans and a see-through shirt with just a black bra underneath it. On someone else it might look ridiculous or inappropriate for a Saturday afternoon. On her it just looks elegant.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi,” I reply.
“I have pizza, as promised, and I’ve tided my room just for you.”
“Your room’s always tidy,” I point out.
“Well, it’s especially tidy today,” she says as we go in. “See?”
“You’re such a neat freak,” I tease.
“I know. It lets me fool myself into thinking that my life’s okay. You know, if everything in my room’s in its rightful place, everything else is too.”
“Is everything okay?” I ask her.
“Yeah. Kind of.”
“Kind of? How are things with Andrew?”
“They’re . . . I don’t know. Confusing.”
“Confusing in what way?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I’ve been going out with him for two years now. That’s a long time. I mean, I hadn’t even turned sixteen when I started going out with him. And we were both really different people back then.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And we’ve been through a lot together, you know? We started off as kids, and now we’re – well, not grown-ups, really, but getting there, closer than we were before. But we’ve both changed so much . . .” she trails off. “I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say here. I still love him, honestly. But I’ve been thinking about all this lately.”
“It’s birthdays. They do that to you,” I say.
“Do you think I’m too young to be tied down?”
“Lucy, you’re asking the wrong person here,” I tell her. “Do you really feel ‘tied down’, though, or just committed?”
“I don’t know,” she sighs. “Emily, help! You’re good at this stuff. Tell me what I’m feeling.”
I laugh. “You’re having a coming-of-age crisis.”
She smiles. “That must be it.”
We sit in silence for a moment before she asks, “So, what’s going on between you and Declan?”
Third Year, a Saturday night a couple of weeks before the mocks. Declan and I were talking and out of the corner of my eye I was watching Lucy and Andrew. They were intensely engrossed in conversation, and every so often they’d stroke the other’s cheek, or kiss their neck. I’d never seen two people more in love.
I wanted to go over there and tear them apart and tell them to stop acting so intimate because it was sickening, and because every time they touched one another, I wanted to cry.
“If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?” Declan asked me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Pills, I suppose.”
“Yeah, me too. Although there’s always hanging yourself.”
“Or slashing your wrists.”
“Do you know the right way?”
“There’s a right way?”
“Yeah,” he said, eager to impart this information to me. “See, most people, when they’re doing it, slash across.”
“And that’s wrong?”
“Yeah, you’re supposed to go along the vein. Lengthways,” he said, turning my hand over and dragging his fingernails lightly down my wrist. “Then you’re supposed to make a couple of little gashes across, so that it can’t be stitched up quickly.”
I nodded. “I see,” I said, recording the information in my mind. I had no intention of ever making use of it – I hoped – but even having this knowledge seemed to give me a power. The power to say, “Hey, I know how to kill myself properly. I’ve thought about this. Does that scare you? Does it?”
“Do you think about it much?” he asked me.
“Not much,” I said, but not elaborating. What I meant was, not ever, but somehow I got the feeling he’d think less of me if I said that. “How about you?”
“Every day,” he answered.
“Haven’t you thought about getting help?”
“Help?” he said scornfully.
“Yeah, like counselling, or something.”
“That’s not going to help me,” he said dismissively. “Besides, I don’t need it. It’s sort of pathetic, don’t you think? Talking to a complete stranger about your problems? And it’s not like they really care, anyway. They’re just listening because they’re being paid for it. The whole idea of therapy is stupid. It’s just a way for people to make money. It’s sad, that’s what it is.”
“Yeah” was the only thing I could think of to say. I’d never really looked at it that way before. Declan was always thinking about these things. He had all these opinions on things I’d always taken for granted without questioning them.
“It’s something that’s become really popular because everyone thinks they have problems and need to see a shrink,” he continued. “And most of the time they don’t, they just think they do. Take the girls in your school, for example. They have, like, perfect lives, but I bet they think that their lives are so awful when they can’t find anything to wear or someone doesn’t like them or something stupid like that.”
“Yeah, they’re so superficial,” I agreed.
“People like you and me, Emily – we understand what’s really important.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t really get what he meant at that stage. But I wanted to be a part of it. I liked what he was saying.
“We see the world for what it really is, and they’re stuck in their little bubbles, protected from everything,” he said.
“They’re children,” I said. “They’re never going to grow up and realise what life’s really about. They’re just going to stay like that in their fantasy world forever.”
He looked at me, impressed. “Yeah, exactly.”
***
Ah, the joys of being a pretentious pseudo-intellectual fifteen-year-old.