11.10 am

After the train stops you have to wait a few seconds for the doors to release. The button lights up green and Pen enjoys pushing it, she’s not a kid but it’s still good. Her travel card beeps at the gates and she manages not to freak out at the person coming through too closely behind her, she just breathes, takes the escalator handrail, and thinks of the colour blue. You can’t own a colour, but you can hold it so it’s always there, you can always find something blue to look at, especially the sky (today the sky is grey, but there is blue behind the cloud). The box around the screen listing all the trains is a dark blue, focus on that. When Pen said that blue makes her feel most herself (sustaining), Sandy said ‘that’s emotion’ with a high note in his voice.

Pen is here before Alice, which is good, she can stand with a view of the southbound stairs, by the key-cutting place opposite the doughnut shop. Maybe she should buy Alice a doughnut? Good or bad idea? Not good for you, but then that’s what makes it a treat. Pen should avoid spikes in blood sugar because they make her very good and then very bad. The sound of a train overhead. She’d rather be here waiting, especially what if she chose the wrong flavour, she’d have to make a quick decision, which is not her least-favourite-thing but not good either. Pen may as well save her strength for all the ways she will have to be not-like-herself today.

There is a stream of people hurrying past now and if Pen is reading them right, they all have worried faces, grey backpacks. ‘Is life meaningful?’ ‘Does she love me?’ ‘Am I enough?’ Pen asked Claire once what people think about and that was the list she gave, she hadn’t even thought about it. But Claire had laughed then and said, actually, they were probably all thinking, ‘Will it rain?’ or, ‘Am I late?’ It wasn’t ever as philosophical as you imagined. Pen had nodded and Claire had said, ‘A penny for them,’ which didn’t make sense because they don’t have pennies any more, they have cents, and besides, people don’t give you any kind of money for saying what you think. But Pen had said this to Alice once, and she’d said, ‘Except, like, in newspapers and on YouTube where you get lots of money for saying what you think,’ which was a fair point. To her mother, Pen had said she wasn’t thinking anything, which was not quite true, it was just better to keep some things to herself. For some reason this made Claire laugh again, and then she said Pen would never be judgemental because she never assumed she knew what people were.

The crowd is lessening so perhaps that wasn’t Alice’s train at all. Perhaps Alice isn’t really coming, perhaps she doesn’t know that this is a date, perhaps she is not looking forward to it the way Pen has been for so long?

But here is Alice. (Ecce! In pictura!) Pen sees the top of a reddish fair head, and it’s definitely her, she’d know her anywhere. Anywhere. Pen feels her inside light up as they shimmy hands at each other, Alice holding hers up, above her head, still halfway across the ticket hall, so Pen gets to enjoy her for longer and this is what she likes so much – that Alice literally does not care what anyone else thinks.

‘Wow, we’re really doing this, Pen! I’m so excited. But also nervous too, you know what I mean?’

Alice is perfect. Alice is a wave of perfect. Maybe that’s why Pen is having difficulty finding her breath. Smile, she tells her face, not wanting to lose the moment that they’re standing here together, the beginning of the day which is a date, though Alice maybe doesn’t know that yet. Alice’s eyes squash together, Pen is definitely smiling now, this is what other people do, every day, without even thinking.

‘Do you want to go?’

‘Yeah! Do you think,’ Alice asks as they turn left out the door, ‘there will be many people there already?’

Two girls leave the railway station, walking closely together, along a pavement not crowded, the sky brightening as they move southwards, pausing at the junction, crossing to the island then to the pavement, round where the road opens out wider and they can see the trees. Two girls see the crash barriers under this bigger sky. They pause, suddenly uncertain. Was it here they were to be? Was it today, not elsewhere, not another day? Two girls.

‘Wow, the whole street is shut off,’ Alice says.

‘Wow,’ says Pen.

‘Look,’ Alice points towards the top of the railed-in park, ‘there’s people up there.’

Two girls wait, cross when the lights change. Walk without saying anything, but excited, definitely excited. Important, even.

Pen sees people in bright yellow vests. On the backs they have symbols, a stylised hourglass, and too late she thinks she should have painted something to speak for her, maybe on an old T-shirt, or even on her mac.

‘Hi, are you from Extinction Rebellion?’ Alice’s voice sounds high-pitched.

‘Yeah, do you want to know about the protest?’

‘Actually,’ Pen clears her throat, ‘is Jo around? We kind of know her.’ Jo is Claire’s student, she is their pass to be here, to be one of them.

‘Em,’ says the woman, ‘do you know a Jo?’ She’s looking at the guy, they’re looking at each other, shaking heads. ‘No worries,’ she shrugs. ‘I’m Sinéad and this is David.’

‘Hi,’ he says, nodding.

‘We’re, em, gathering at half twelve at the Dáil,’ Sinéad says. ‘There’ll be lots more people then, and we’re walking at one. There’s signs and leaflets,’ she gestures behind her, ‘over at the stand, that’s only getting set up, but you can head over there?’

‘Thanks, guys,’ Alice says, ‘cool, thanks.’

Alice looks embarrassed maybe, but Pen could float because she spoke to a stranger.

Two girls move together and it’s a few steps only to get to the stall. Where they stand and nod to the people doing the setting-up. Where they pause at the kerb. Sure. Unsure.

‘Look,’ Pen says, pointing to the signs stacked against the railings, ‘“Rebel for Life”.’

‘Yeah, and “The Oceans are Rising BUT SO ARE WE”. Cool,’ Alice nods, smiling.

Two girls hover on the edge, watching the people assembling metal poles for the stalls. If they just stand here, will someone notice them?

‘I don’t see anyone else as young as us,’ Pen whispers.

‘But that’s why it’s so much cooler,’ Alice whispers back, ‘not just the people from school, not just kids being, like, indulged.’

Pen nods, but she needs something to do. Something to do or a destination. Standing here is too aimless, she’ll begin counting soon, not people because they move around too much, but the railings, the front doors, the colour blue, things to give the world solidity. She looks at Alice, and her face seems blank too.

Two girls on the south side of Merrion Square. Surrounded by buildings so tall, can people even still live in them? They’ve been here before, of course they have, to the Dead Zoo with their parents. But that was then. Now is different, they’re different, the situation is different. Urgent. They look around them. Slate-grey sky. Slate-grey ground. Trees whispering.

Limbo again.

Shy again.

No blue.

‘Are you looking to help?’ an older man says, coming over to them with a stack of leaflets. And when they nod, both temporarily muted, he says, ‘Okay, take some of these, hand them out over there, catch some of the foot traffic.’ His arm waves towards where they’ve come from.

‘Yeah, great,’ Alice says.

Pen nods and Alice divides the leaflets.

Two girls walk with purpose, saving the planet, saved for a while themselves.