PRESENT
After breakfast, Amber, Rupert, Kelly and LB walked down the sloping grass from the Lodge.
‘Johnny is so unprofessional,’ said Kelly. ‘Like, if parents knew what he was like—’
Amber laughed. ‘Parents are looking at the man, just… “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” ’
LB nodded. ‘And they’re knocking back champagne and drawing smiley faces on the calendar.’
‘My mom definitely is,’ said Kelly.
‘No she’s not,’ said LB. ‘She’s too busy standing over Dad with a whip. “Write more songs, make more money, make more money!” ’
Kelly laughed. ‘And your dad’s like, “I can’t, I caaan’t.” ’
LB laughed. ‘And your mom’s like, “My daughter has needs!” In Brown Thomas. In a size five.’
Rupert led the way through the gap in the trees that led onto the campus.
‘You expect something magical on the other side,’ said Rupert, ‘and you get this.’ He gestured down to a long single-storey flat-roofed building, two classrooms wide. On the grass in front of it there was a row of picnic tables with benches. Some of the students sitting outside the classroom glanced up.
‘We’re like those tribes who emerge from the trees to confront interlopers,’ said Rupert.
‘We’re not here to make friends,’ said Amber in a movie-hero voice.
‘We brought our own,’ said LB.
‘And already lost one of them,’ said Amber.
‘No,’ said Rupert, looking behind them to where Lockie was squeezing through the gap in the trees.
‘This whole thing is nuts,’ said Lockie. ‘I feel like… it feels like we’re in an alternate universe. One minute I’m in Dublin, next thing I’m climbing through trees—’
‘Oh my God, shut up everyone!’ said LB. ‘Shut up! Stop making me feel like crap.’
‘No one’s making you feel like crap,’ said Kelly.
‘You are!’ said LB. ‘Apart from Amber.’ She turned to her. ‘But I can tell you’re freaking out.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Amber.
‘OK – fine,’ said LB. ‘My point is, you know none of us would be here if Dad hadn’t pulled strings. And he wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t because of me.’
‘LB,’ said Rupert, ‘none of our parents were forced to send us. We’re here because they voluntarily forced us.’
‘But there wouldn’t have been any place to send us, is my point,’ said LB, ‘if he hadn’t got us in here at the last minute. And this is, like, a nice thing he did.’ She shrugged. ‘And you’re all just moaning non-stop. Apart from Amber and Rupert.’
‘So, just me and Lockie,’ said Kelly. ‘Thanks.’
Lockie shot Kelly a look. ‘Yes, just us!’
Kelly matched his look. ‘It’s not my fault—’
‘No!’ said Lockie. ‘It never is!’
‘Oh my God, seriously,’ said LB, storming down the slope.
‘Nice one, Lockie,’ said Kelly, pushing past him and running after LB.
The Irish teacher, pretty and bright-eyed, with red corkscrew curls to her shoulders, was sitting at the edge of her desk at the top of the classroom, nodding and smiling as everyone walked in. She gave an extra ten minutes to allow for stragglers, then stood up.
‘Miss Breathnach is ainm dom,’ she said. ‘Fáilte go Coláiste na Carraige.’ She looked around the classroom at the miserable faces. ‘Or should I say “hell”?’
Everyone laughed.
‘We love her,’ mouthed Rupert to the others. They all nodded. ‘Mouthing in English doesn’t count,’ he added.
Kelly listened for a while at the beginning of class, understanding some of the obvious words, but then zoned out. She couldn’t make sense of any sentences spoken at high speed by a native speaker, even one who made Irish sound way nicer than anyone else she’d heard. Ugh, though. She was still going to fail. She looked around the room, wishing she could have someone else’s brain. Her eyes fell upon a pale guy in a sports jersey, skinny shoulders hunched to his ears, jaw clenching and unclenching… Not that freak’s, though. He caught her eye and smiled. Of course he did. Kelly gave him a tight smile back. Just in case he was a psycho. Or knew someone hot.
Amber’s pen hovered over a mostly blank page. It was an introductory class; she was beyond this level, but right now, she really wished it was advanced enough that she could be focused on the teacher instead of this weight. Instead of being pulled around the classroom, looking for someone else who was feeling what she was feeling. It was as if, when she walked through the classroom door, she had stepped through a portal and an invisible cloak of negative energy had been dropped onto her shoulders and she couldn’t shake it off. She shifted in her seat, shook out her arm, and refocused on Irish. Of all the six subjects she was doing for her Leaving, Irish was the one she pretty much knew she’d get a H1 in. She already got H2s, and sixth year would have bumped her up, anyway. These three weeks, she knew, were her mother’s insurance policy. Her mother always needed insurance. And spare wheels. And life jackets on dry land. Amber stopped breathing, and then she noticed. She put her hand to her chest and pressed against it, as if to remind it how it was meant to move, to remind herself to just… breathe and let things be. She looked over at beautiful Rupert, her circuit breaker to the spirals of doom which her mother managed to draw her into. Even when she wasn’t around.