The rain continues into my second week at Highfield, a leaden beat that fills every corner of the city with its perpetual monotony. I arrive at school each morning in various dank states after a thirty-five-minute cycle across South Dublin from Ballybrack to Sandyford. Mam doesn’t drive and the city’s radial bus service means there’s no other way of traveling the seven miles without going into town and back out again.
I love it, the freedom of the bike. That in-between time that’s not concerned with the past or the future, only an infinite present that stretches ahead like those days of summer that merge into night. When the tape in my Walkman decides my persona and I’m taken so far away from myself I don’t care if it’s grief or joy that surges my heart. Today it’s The Cure’s The Head on the Door, and I’m an eagle, soaring along the Leopardstown Road to the piano riff of “Six Different Ways,” reveling in the burn of “Push” as I make the final ascent to Highfield, sweat pooling in the small of my back. It’s the challenge of pain with a purpose that drives me, even with the earth damp and the tarmac wet and the sticky-sweet hair gel melting onto my forehead.
Most days I head straight to the locker room to change from my tracksuit to my uniform before assembly, but I’m late today and make it to the hall just in time for roll call. The whole school meets here every morning, all six years with four classes in each, almost five hundred day students in total. The last of the boarders graduated two years ago so they remain only in legend, stories that have already been elevated to mythological status. Melissa’s told me all the gory details, the sixth-year who had two boys climbing the drainpipe to her dorm on alternating nights. The daughter of a government minister who gave the Christmas address in the chapel while high on her da’s cocaine. The fourth-year who seduced a teacher and was promptly expelled. These myths are not about academic or sporting achievement—Highfield has plenty of that already. They’re a dangerous dip into the thrills of the outside world, the one that isn’t supposed to exist within these protective stone walls.
I slip into the back of the 6A line as Sister Shannon’s footsteps creak up the wooden steps at the side of the stage. Rain blurs the windows, all the blues turned gray, dulling even the heavy maroon curtains behind her, the ornate plasterwork overhead. Silence falls across the hall as she leads us in prayer, our reverence as mechanical as our refrain. It’s an illusion of control, the power the Church has over our lives. No matter how much they try to threaten and shame us, you can’t stop teenagers being themselves. Sometimes the more you have to rebel against, the harder you push.
As Sister Shannon starts her announcements—sick teachers, classroom changes—I take off my soaking school gabardine, hang it over my arm and lean forward to ruffle the rain out of my hair. The air is still warm and heavy, despite the damp, and I get a whiff of the sweat festering in my armpits.
Eva O’Brien, a prefect with windswept hair and red cheeks, makes her way along the line with a clipboard, marking off those present. When she gets to Carol Sheridan, a few places ahead of me, Carol leans into her, sniffing the air.
“What’s that smell?” she says.
I catch a sideways glance from Eva as I flick my head upright, and at least she has the remorse to look away, but Carol’s face is scrunched with intent as she looks down the line.
“Oh my god,” she says to Eva, “whatever about personal hygiene, it’s just good manners to shower in the mornings.”
A couple of girls turn around and back again when they see the state of me. Melissa is in front of them, either oblivious or indifferent. I’m about to explain to Carol, of course I washed, I just haven’t had time to change, but I know it’s not about that.
“I think somebody needs to have a quiet word with B. O. Baracus there,” says Carol to Eva, and I see the acne on the back of her neck shake with suppressed laughter.
You could pass it off as a few bitches but there are three fifth-years sniggering in the line beside us and nobody is telling Carol to shut up. Maybe it’s not even Carol at all, maybe she’s just a catalyst for the exclusion that is inevitable for people like me. I want to tell them all to fuck themselves and storm out, back to my natural habitat, where drugs and sex are not considered some high achievement. But nobody listens to the girl from Ballybrack, that much is clear. I have to take their crap, play their game and blend in as much as possible. It’s only from the inside that I have any hope of exposing the truth about Tina.
AFTER ASSEMBLY, I SLINK OFF to the locker room to banish my offending clothes and douse my bare skin in deodorant. My brain rattles with the need to show Carol I’m not the vermin she thinks I am while also trying to think of a killer comeback that will show her up as the ignorant snob she definitely is. I’m mouthing my way through an imaginary encounter with Carol when Shauna arrives at the door, blonde hair dark and wet around her shoulders. She doesn’t see me and she’s muttering too, as if practicing a speech.
“Hi,” I say.
“Oh.” She stops, startled, and pulls a smile together as she walks past me to her locker. “Hi, Lou.”
“Sorry about the smell,” I say, flapping my hand through the air. “I think I overdid it on the deodorant.”
“That’s OK,” she says. “All I can smell is chlorine anyway.”
“Have you been swimming?”
Of course she’s been swimming.
“Yeah, I just finished training. I hear Miss Carter is sick.”
“Oh yeah, I heard that at assembly,” I say, buttoning my blouse. “I don’t do German. I have French now.”
“With Madame?”
She puts on a husky voice and a French accent that makes me laugh. Mme Martel is a bona fide Parisienne, a sultry femme fatale who should be an icon to any teenage girl but instead is mimicked and mocked for her accent, for her status as a mere teacher. All behind her back of course—they wouldn’t dare do it in class. At Santa Maria, I never had a French teacher who sounded remotely like anyone from a Jean-Luc Godard film, and I can’t get enough of her. Unlike my classmates with their holiday homes and student exchanges, it’s film that has taught me French. À Bout de Souffle and Le Retour de Martin Guerre taped off the telly and watched with my finger on the pause button. It was the plan, before Tina died, to study French and English at Trinity, but I ended up dropping out of school before the final Leaving Cert exams had even begun.
“Yeah,” I say. “I better make a move.”
I hang my damp clothes on the hooks inside my locker and shove the door closed.
“See ya,” I say as I sling my bag on my shoulder and head for the door.
“You knew Tina Forrester, didn’t you?” says Shauna, and I stop.
“I was in school with her, but…”
“How was she before, you know?”
Before she killed herself? She was depressed, angry. I barely recognized her.
“She was quiet, I suppose. Looking back, like, it’s obvious there was something going on.”
“Like what?” She feigns indifference but those blue eyes are begging for an answer and I want to know why.
“I dunno. Maybe boyfriend trouble or something like that.”
“Oh.” She looks away, reaches into her locker.
“Do you know anything about it?” I ask.
She hesitates and I wonder if I’ve pushed too hard.
“No, god. All we ever talked about was swimming.”
She underlines her comment with a smile that makes me certain she’s hiding something.
I DON’T HAVE ANY MORNING classes with Shauna, so I keep an eye out for her in the dining hall. Lunch at Highfield is a reverberation of chatter and clatter as girls queue for hot drinks and scramble for seats on the long oak tables and benches that line the hall. Light floods the walls that bear photos of girls past, prefects and teams gone but not forgotten. I wonder if they’ll ever let me up there, if I’ll do enough to achieve Highfield notoriety.
I spot Shauna at the end of a table with Melissa and Aisling, and I push past a large group of irritated fourth-years to reach them. I squash in beside Melissa while the others pick at their food opposite. It comes in colored containers with compartments that house batons of carrot and stuffed olives and brown bread topped with smoked salmon. I have my ham sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil, a slightly bruised apple and a United bar that seems to have survived the schoolbag.
“You made a real show of Carol in French this morning,” says Melissa to me, smirking. “She did not like that one little bit.”
“She was raging,” says Aisling.
“What happened?” asks Shauna, peeling a satsuma.
“Carol was talking about her summer in the south of France,” says Melissa. “They have a villa in…” She turns to me. “Where is it?”
“Beaulieu-sur-Mer,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s on the Riviera, near Monaco. So of course Carol thinks she’s the world expert on France. She was going on and on about the houses and cars and the shops and how she got a real Hermès scarf, except she pronounced it Air-may instead of Air-mez and Lou was straight in there correcting her. God, the look she gave you when Mme Martel said you were right.”
The glee on Melissa’s face tells me this is how to keep her sweet. The hierarchy in the school is based on money first, sports second and looks third, so even though Melissa’s pretty and thin and lives in Donnybrook, the power balance must always be wrested from Carol’s hands.
“I think you’ve definitely evened the score there,” says Melissa.
“For what?” I say, and she looks at her lunch as her cheeks flush. So she did hear her at assembly.
“Oh, you know, she’s just been having a bit of a go at you since you got here,” she says. “Hey, are you coming to the Rockdale social next month?”
Rockdale is a private boys’ school, Catholic of course, that is closely aligned to Highfield in ethos.
“Will it be any good?” I ask.
“Oh no, it’ll be terrible,” says Shauna.
“A school disco with no alcohol, supervised by priests,” says Melissa with a grin. “It’s every girl’s dream night out.”
“But you’ll still go,” says Shauna to Melissa.
“Of course. I don’t expect David Sharkey to ravish me right there on the hall floor, but there are ways and means.”
Shauna ignores her and looks at me.
“What do you do for fun, Lou?”
“I’ve been known to shuffle my feet to a bit of popular music.”
“What are you into?” asks Melissa.
“The Smiths, The Cure, The Jesus and Mary Chain.”
“You’re not a goth, are you?” asks Melissa, sharing a look of mock horror with the others.
“Nah. A Curehead maybe. But definitely not a goth.”
“I’m sure there’s a big difference, but maybe glam it up a bit if you come to Rockdale.”
“Sorry, Melissa, but this is Rockdale we’re talking about,” says Shauna. “It’s not exactly the Pink Elephant.”
“Oh my god, Shauna,” says Melissa. “Not all of us want to hang around with men old enough to be our dads. I’ll take a Senior Cup player over Bono or Joe Elliott any day.”
Shauna slumps back in her seat. “In your dreams,” she says meekly.
“Do you want me to tell you about my dreams?”
“Melissa, we really don’t…” says Aisling.
“In my dreams, David Sharkey knocks on my bedroom door and I open it, stark naked, and…”
“OK, we get it,” says Shauna.
Melissa leans across the table and lowers her voice.
“You don’t want to hear about the bit where he fucks me till I scream?”
“Fuck off,” says Shauna quietly.
“What?” says Melissa, looking to me for support. “What have I done wrong?”
“You know he’s only after one thing,” says Aisling.
“Would that be the same thing I’m after?” says Melissa.
Aisling shakes her head, but Melissa’s looking at Shauna, waiting for a reaction. Shauna puts the satsuma peel into her lunchbox, piece by piece, as if she hasn’t heard a word.
I’ve seen it before, the slow build of resentment that can tear a friendship apart. I should know to steer clear, but I can’t look away. Maybe those of us with secrets are destined to find each other. Maybe there was never any choice.