Authors: Claire Hennessy
“I’m going to do it tonight,” he told me.
“No, Declan, don’t.”
He stared at me. “There’s nothing you can say to make everything better, so don’t even try.”
“I have to try. You’re my friend.”
“You don’t really care about me.”
“Of course I do. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? That’s why I’m talking to you, trying to make you realise what you’re doing.”
“It’s just so you won’t feel guilty when I go through with it.”
“No, it isn’t. Don’t, please. Look, I’ll stay here tonight, we’ll watch a movie or something, we’ll listen to music, we’ll have fun.”
“Fine,” he conceded. “But I don’t know why you think it’ll make a difference.”
I wanted to snap at him and tell him that I was trying to help him and be his friend and be there for him, and that maybe, instead of being mean, he should be grateful. But I was scared of setting him off, so I said nothing.
***
My phone was ringing, and I sleepily reached for it, chastising myself for not turning it off before I went to bed. But then again, what if someone – like Declan, whose caller ID was coming up on the screen – needed to talk to me? So I had left it on.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hello,” he said, sounding distant.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“I just wanted to say goodbye,” he said in that same distant tone.
“Oh, Declan. No. You haven’t done anything stupid, have you?”
“I have to do it, Emily,” he said.
I breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t actually done anything yet.
“No, you don’t. Think of everything you’ve got going for you. You’re smart, you’re attractive, you’re interesting –”
“Don’t lie just to try to keep me alive.”
“I’m not lying, don’t be silly. Would I lie to you?”
“You might, if you thought it would do any good.”
“I just don’t want you to waste so much potential,” I said. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. The whole summer, even. No school for months – tell me that isn’t a cheerful thought.”
“It just means I’ve more time to be bored and think about things,” he said miserably. “Do you want to do something tomorrow?”
“I can’t, I have my maths exam.”
“Your exam?”
“My Junior Cert, Declan?”
“Oh, right.” He paused. “You should really get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I hear that’s a good thing to do.”
“Goodnight, then.”
“Night,” I said, throwing the phone across the room and burying my head in my pillow in an attempt to speed up the process of falling asleep.
***
“Everything in life is so futile,” he said. “You’re born, you go to school, you work, you get married, you die. You’re just going through the motions. It’s such a waste.”
“That’s a pretty pessimistic view, Declan,” I said.
“It’s realistic,” he said glumly. “Take you and Natasha, for example.”
“What about me and Natasha?” I said warily.
“Well, you’ve said yourself that you know it’s not going to last. If that’s the case, then why bother? What’s the point in wasting your time?”
“It’s fun,” I shrugged. “I like being around her. Even if it’s not going to last forever, it’s what’s making me happy at the moment.”
“It must be nice to be happy,” he said.
***
I’d known him for a year. I’d seen him happy before. Often it was due to being under the influence of various substances, but other times I’d seen him smile and look content, and then hide it, as if it was afraid someone would see and realise that there was more to him than being depressed.
It was the attitude that a lot of that crowd shared, this need to be permanently down and dour. Once I’d stepped back from it, I’d started to see them for what they really were. Apart from Lucy, Andrew and Declan I wasn’t really friendly with any of them anymore. I’d made a couple of new friends in school since September. It was Transition Year, which seemed to be consisting mostly of time-wasting and gloriously non-academic activities, so there was plenty of time to get to know people that I hadn’t really talked to before. There was this girl Roisín who I’d always pegged as one of the serious academic types – the sort that I avoided like the plague after having Janet as an older sister – but once we’d got talking, we seemed to agree on a lot of things. She was sort of sheltered, but I thought it was endearing in a way. It certainly made a difference from the cynicism and the jadedness of Lucy’s friends.
She didn’t strike me as the sort of person who thought the world was such a terrible place that the only way of dealing with it would be to remove yourself from it completely.
But I couldn’t just ignore Declan. I couldn’t take the risk that one day he’d actually follow through on his promises.
“Well,” I begin. “I want to strangle him. So the usual, really.”
“He is a bit of a pain, isn’t he?” Lucy sighs. “The poor guy, though, he’s got so many problems.”
“He creates them for himself,” I say bluntly.
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“And I’m tired of being nice,” I sigh.
She strokes my hair. “He’ll grow out of it. Eventually.”
“Is that a guarantee?” I ask.
“Or your money back.” She laughs.
I look at her now and she really hasn’t changed much since the first day I met her, two and a half years ago. She’s a little bit prettier, and she’s replaced her cute-sexy-schoolgirl look with a sophisticated-almost-college-student look, but she looks basically the same.
The real change was inward, although to anyone who really knows her, the change isn’t as drastic as you might think. Lucy at eighteen is still a flirt, still fun to be around, still giggly. A lot more responsible than she used to be, I suppose, but that happens to everyone.
It was two years ago, during the Easter holidays, so I was allowed out. My schoolbooks had been put aside for the two weeks and I was ready to enjoy myself, only I’d realised that my world had become a lot smaller in the last couple of months. I’d alienated most of the girls in my class during my days of hanging around with Lucy and her friends, and now that I no longer had them in my life, there were very people that I was close to.
Not that I’d ever really been close to any of them. I still had Barry and Hugh, and they were all I needed, even if I missed Lucy. We talked on the phone occasionally but this was usually when she was drunk and she ended up rambling on and never making much sense. I daydreamed about her in school when I was supposed to be listening to the teacher, and then I’d snap out of it, worried that people would somehow be able to see what I was imagining.
Three days into the Easter holidays, she rang me.
***
“Emily? Emily, are you there?” She sounded panicked.
“Lucy, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” she said. “Emily, I’m in serious trouble. I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s wrong? Lucy, tell me, what happened?”
“I’m so stupid! I should have thought!”
“What did you do?” I asked her, my heart pounding.
“I think I’m pregnant,” she whispered. “Emily, I’m so scared, I don’t know what to do. If my mum finds out, she’ll kill me.”
“Have you done a test or anything?” I asked.
“No, not yet. I don’t even know where you’d get one,” she said.
“Boots would have them.”
“They’ll look at me,” she said hysterically. “They’ll look at me and they’ll know, and they’ll think, ‘what a stupid slut’ and they’ll be right, I am, and I’m going to be just another statistic and I’m going to have my whole life ruined and oh, God, Emily, I’m scared.”
“Breathe, okay? Just breathe.”
“I’m trying!”
“I’ll be over to see you in a little while, okay? Make yourself a cup of tea or something. We’ll sort this out,” I told her.
“Thank you,” she sniffed.
“You want to watch a movie?” she suggests as we go downstairs to the family room.
“I don’t know, Lucy, you know how I hate the film industry,” I grin.
“How does
The Talented Mr Ripley
sound to you?”
“Jude Law? Sounds good.”
“Or we could watch
Girl Interrupted.”
“That movie depresses me. Although, Angelina Jolie . . . it’s tempting.”
“How about a movie where you won’t spend the entire time drooling over the cast? Like
Shrek
?”
“I don’t know, Lucy, the donkey is pretty sexy . . .”
“I think that’s illegal, Emily.”
“Thinking about it isn’t.”
“I really hope you’re joking.”
“Don’t worry, I am.”
“The men in the white coats are going to come for you one day, you know.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“I didn’t mean it like
that.”
“No, but I like my interpretation better.”
“So are we going to watch
Shrek
or not?”
“Sure, but it always makes me get all mushy.”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s a kids’ movie, Em.”
“It’s not really,” I say. “It’s multi-layered, you see. Like
The Simpsons
. You can watch it as a kid and think it’s funny, and watch it when you’re older and see other meanings in it. And
Shrek
is a very complex film, dealing with the isolation of the outcast.”
“Mrs O’Shea must
love
you. Do you spout this type of crap in class?”
“When I’m awake.”
“Ah, I see. I hear it’s a good thing to stay conscious in school, now that you mention it. Something to do with learning.”
“I think that’s just a vicious rumour,” I say.
She nods. “You’re probably right.” She switches on the TV and puts in the video. The door opens, and Lucy’s mum sticks her head around it.
“Hi, Emily,” she nods to me. “I’m making tea, do you girls want any?”
“Sure, Mum,” Lucy says.
“Emily?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I say.
“Did you have a good time at the party last night?” she asks me.
“Yep, it was great.”
“Missy here wasn’t back until four in the morning,” she says, her hand on Lucy’s shoulder.
“That’s disgraceful, Lucy,” I say with a grin.
“You’ll have to knock some sense into her, I think.” She winks at me before going on.
Lucy turns to me and rolls her eyes. “How is it that my mother thinks you’re a responsible person?”
I shrug. “I have no idea. My mother thinks you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
“We really should swap,” she muses.
But I know she doesn’t mean it. Lucy and her mum get along really well. They go shopping together and they have long talks and share everything. I think it was the accident that brought them closer together. Before that, they were never really especially friendly.
Of course, before that, Lucy was out of control. Parents don’t like that. They like their children to be following the rules and doing everything correctly. Step outside the lines and you’re letting them down, disappointing them, making them wonder why they ever became parents in the first place.
I leave Lucy’s late in the evening. Her mum drops me home. I make a beeline for my room. I watch the rest of
Amelie
and consider whether setting a modern fairytale in Dublin would work – can anything filmed in Dublin be fairytale-like? The city looked pretty in
About Adam
, though, so I suppose you could make Dublin magical if you chose the right locations – before glancing at the Irish homework I’m supposed to do. If I were an organised person I’d do it now until of putting it off until tomorrow night. Or I’d have done it on Thursday, when we were given it. However, I’m not organised, so I leave it on the desk and stare at the walls instead. There’s a picture that Andrew took last summer of me, Barry and Lucy getting ready to go out one night.
***
“Barry, hold still,” I ordered.
“It’s hard to hold still when you’re poking me in the eye,” he said.
“I’m not poking you in the eye!” I protested. “The idea is that it goes
around
the eye.”
“And I don’t think you’re doing a very good job of it,” he told me.
“Well, we saw what happened when you tried to put eyeliner on yourself,” I reminded him.
“Let us not speak of that day.” Lucy giggled. She was painting his nails black.
He groaned. “Maybe I should just not look stupid.”
“You don’t look stupid,” I told him. “You look sexy. If anyone looks stupid, it’s Andrew.”
“Hey!” Andrew protested.
“I think he looks great in PVC,” Lucy said loyally.
“See?” he told us.
“Lucy’s your girlfriend. She has to say that,” I explained. “As your friend, I have to say – you look absolutely ridiculous.”
“Look who’s talking! You’re making poor Barry wear make-up!”
“I’m not making him do anything. Besides, he looks good.”
Andrew pretended to cough, muttering, “Drag queen!”
“I heard that,” Barry said.
“Gender-bending is trendy,” I said. “Look at Brian Molko. Early Brian Molko, of course. Sex on legs.”
“She’s got a point,” Lucy said, blowing on Barry’s nails.
I handed Barry a mirror. “What do you think?”
“Not bad,” he smiled.
“Great.”
“Smile!” Andrew said, holding up his camera.
“Oh, put it away,” Lucy told him, hiding her face in her hands.
“Are you going to carry that everywhere this summer?” I asked him.
“Pretty much,” he shrugged.
I groaned.
“I’ll make you a copy of the pictures,” he promised.
“Not much of a compensation for tormenting us for three months,” I told him.
“Oh, just smile for the camera,” he said,
Barry and I struck a pose, and Andrew clicked.
***
So Lucy’s to the side, trying to get out of the way of the picture, and Barry and me are in our rock-star pose, all made-up and dressed to kill. I remember that night. We got hassled at the bus stop for looking weird, and then we went into town where half the people there were dressed “weirdly” and we were nothing special. We had a good time. We went to a club that played mostly what you’d call “alternative” music, I guess, although I didn’t think it was that alternative – just not that much chart stuff.
We danced all night and were hot and sweaty at the end of it. Going home I realised that I hadn’t hooked up with anyone or done anything out of the ordinary, but I’d had a really great night out with my friends, and that maybe that was all you really needed to be happy.