‘You’re giving me a headache.’
Becca says, in a too-loud burst, ‘I’m scared of the exams!’
They stop and look at her.
‘Duh, you’re supposed to be,’ Holly says.
Becca looks like she half-wishes she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘I know that. I mean really scared. Like terrified.’
‘That’s what the Junior Cert’s for,’ Holly says. ‘To make us so scared that we’ll behave. That’s why it’s this year, right when everyone starts going out and doing stuff. All that blahblah about how if you don’t get all As you’ll be working in Burger King for the rest of your life? The idea is, we’ll be so petrified we won’t do anything like have boyfriends or go to discos or for example get out at night, in case it distracts us and oh noooo! Whopper with fries please!’
Becca says, ‘It’s not Burger King. It’s . . . Like, what if I fail, I don’t know, Science, and they won’t let me do Honours Biology for the Leaving?’
Julia is surprised enough that she almost forgets about Holly and Selena. Becca’s never said anything about what comes after school, ever. Selena’s always wanted to be an artist, Holly’s been thinking about sociology, Julia likes the idea of journalism more and more; Becca watches those conversations like they have nothing to do with her, like they’re in a language she doesn’t speak and doesn’t want to learn, and is prickly for hours afterwards.
Holly is thinking the same thing, apparently. ‘So?’ she wants to know. ‘It’s not like you have to have Honours Biology because you want to do medicine or something. You don’t know what you want to be. Do you?’
‘I don’t have a clue. I don’t care. I just . . .’ Becca’s head is down, over her hands moving faster and faster. ‘I just can’t be in all different classes from you guys, next year. I’m not going to be stuck in, like, Ordinary Level everything when you’re all doing Honours and we never see each other and I have to sit next to Orla Stupid Burgess for the rest of my life. I’ll kill myself.’
Holly says, ‘If you fail Science, me and Lenie are too – no offence, Lenie, you know what I mean.’ Selena nods, carefully so her hair won’t tug. ‘We’ll all be sitting next to Orla Stupid Burgess together. It’s not like we’re all smarter than you.’
Becca shrugs, without looking up. ‘I practically failed it in the mocks.’
She got a C, but that’s not the point. She’s electric because there’s something in the air, scraping at her even though she can’t figure out what or where it is, and she needs to feel the four of them holding tight because she believes that’s what will make everything OK again. Julia knows what she wants to hear. It doesn’t matter what marks we get. We’ll pick our subjects together, we’ll pick ones we can all do. Who cares about college? That’s a million years away . . .
Selena is the one who says stuff like that. Then Julia tells her to quit being such a sap and anyone who fails English is on her own, because personally she’d rather snog Orla Burgess with tongues than do Ordinary Level English and be forced to listen to Miss Fitzpatrick sniffing up her nose-drip every ten seconds like clockwork.
Selena says nothing. She’s drifted away again, eyes on the sky, swaying with the rhythm of Becca’s fingers.
Julia says, ‘If you fail Science, we’ll all do Ordinary Level together. I’ll survive without my world-famous-neurosurgeon career.’
Becca glances up, startled, looking for the snide edge, but Julia smiles at her, a real full-on smile. One confused second and then Becca smiles back. Selena’s swaying eases as her hands gentle.
‘I don’t want to do Honours Bio anyway,’ Holly says. She stretches her legs out luxuriously and clasps her hands behind her head. ‘They make you dissect a sheep heart.’
‘Eww,’ all round, even Selena.
Julia tucks the pebble into her pocket and stands up. She bends her knees, swings her arms, and leaps; hovers above the bush for a second, arms outspread, head back and throat bared to the sky; and floats down to land, one-toed like a dancer, on the grass.
On Thursday Julia barfs at the beginning of Guidance, right when Sister Cornelius is winding up for a long bewildering rant involving nightclubs and self-respect and what Jesus would think of Ecstasy drugs. She figures she might as well get something out of all this.
Selena’s phone is still in the same place. Chris has been sending her predictable texts. She hasn’t answered them.
Julia texts him: 1 o’clock tonight. Usual place. DON’T text me back. Just come. Once the text has gone through, she deletes it out of Selena’s Sent box.
She’s planning to lie in bed and study, because the real world still exists, whether that prick Chris and that fool Selena like it or not, the Junior Cert is still going to need taking, and today that actually feels comforting. Instead she falls asleep, too instantly and intensely even to fight it.
She wakes up because the others are banging into the room and there are people shrieking in the corridor. ‘Oh my God,’ Holly says, slamming the door behind them. ‘You know what that’s about? Rhona heard that somebody’s cousin queued up somewhere for something and the one with the stupid hair out of One Direction touched her hand. Not, like, married her; just touched her. That’s it. I think my ear died. Hi.’
‘I had a relapse,’ Julia says, sitting up. ‘If you want me to prove it, come over here.’
‘Whatever,’ Holly says. ‘I didn’t ask.’ This time she doesn’t sound like she cares. Her eyes are on Selena, who is rummaging in the wardrobe, head down so that her hair hides her face. Selena’s hands move through the drawer in slow motion, like this is taking almost more concentration than she’s got.
Holly is no idiot. ‘Hey,’ Julia says, shaking her arm that’s gone to sleep. ‘If you guys are going down to the Court, can you get me earbuds? Because I’m going to die of boredom if I’m stuck here any more without music.’
‘Use mine,’ Becca says. Becca is no idiot either, but all this is zooming straight past her; it’s outside her horizon. Julia wants to shove her deep into bed and tuck the duvet tight over her head, stash her in a warm safe place till all of this is over.
Holly is still watching Selena. ‘I don’t want yours,’ Julia says – there’s nothing she can do about the leap of hurt on Becca’s face. ‘They hurt. My ears are the wrong shape. Hol? Will you sub me that ten squid after all?’
Holly wakes up. ‘Yeah, sure. What earbuds do you want?’
Her voice sounds fine, normal. Julia holds on to the thread of relief. ‘Those little red ones like I had before. Get me a Coke, too, OK? I’m sick of ginger ale.’
That should keep them busy. There’s only one place in the Court that carries the red earbuds: a tiny gadget shop at the back of the top floor, last place the others will look. With any luck, they’ll be back just in time to grab their books for study, and Julia won’t have to see them for more than a few seconds.
The realisation that she’s trying to dodge her best friends slams her with another tsunami of sleep. Sounds spiral away from her, Holly saying something and the slam of Becca’s locker, Rhona still gibbering far away and a song playing down the corridor, sweet and light and fast, I’ve got so far, I’ve got so far left to— and Julia’s gone.
That night, after lights-out, Julia realises what the knockouts were for: now she’s wide awake, couldn’t doze off if she tried. And the others, wrecked after last night, are out for the count.
‘Lenie,’ she says softly, into the dark room. She’s got no clue what she’ll say if Selena answers, but none of the others even move.
Louder: ‘Lenie.’
Nothing. Their breathing, rhythmic and dragging, sounds drugged. Julia can do whatever she wants. No one is going to stop her.
She gets up and gets dressed. Jeans shorts, low-cut top, Converse, cute pink hoodie: Julia does drama club, she knows about dressing the part. She doesn’t bother to be quiet.
The corridor light gives the glass panel above the transom a faint grey glow. Julia flares it to a blaze a
nd looks down at the others. Holly is sprawled on her back, Becca is one neat curve like a kitten; Selena is a whirl of gold and a loose curl of fingers on the pillow. Their steady breathing has got louder. In the second before she opens the door and slips out into the corridor, Julia hates all of their guts.
Outside is different tonight. The air is warm and restless, the moon is enormous and too close. Every noise sounds sharper, focused on her, testing: twigs crack in the bushes to see if she’ll jump, leaves rustle behind her to make her whip round. Something is circling among the trees, making a high rising call that runs down her spine like a warning – Julia can’t tell if it’s warning something about her, or the other way round. It’s been so long since she was afraid of anything the grounds could hold, she’d forgotten it was possible. She moves faster and tries to tell herself it’s just because she’s on her own.
She is at the grove early. She slides behind one of the cypresses and leans against it, feeling her heart pound at the bark. The thing has followed her; it lets out its rising call, high up in the trees. She tries to get a look, but it’s too fast, it’s just the shadow of a long thin wing in the corner of her eye.
Chris is early too. Julia hears him coming a mile away, or at least she hopes to Jesus it’s him, because otherwise something else the size of a deer is crashing down the paths like it doesn’t care who hears. Her teeth are in the bark of the cypress and she tastes it on her tongue, acrid and wild.
Then he steps into the clearing. Tall and straight-backed, listening.
The moonlight changes him. Daytime, he’s just another Colm’s rugger-bugger, cute if you have cheap chain-restaurant tastes, charming if you like knowing every conversation before it begins. Here he’s something more. He is beautiful the way something that lasts forever is beautiful.
It goes through Julia like the punch off an electric fence: he shouldn’t be here. Chris Harper, half-witted teenage tit-hound, could come here and do his half-witted teenage tit-hound stuff and wander away safe and oblivious, no different from a mating fox or a spraying tomcat; the grove wouldn’t shift a twig to take notice of something so small and so common, just doing what its kind do. But this boy: the grove has taken notice of him. This boy like white marble, lifted head, parted lips: the grove has a part for him to play.
Julia understands that the only smart thing to do here is get the fuck out. She is way out of her depth. Head very very quietly back to her bed, hope Chris thinks Selena was messing him around and flounces off in another snot. Hope the grove will allow him to walk back to his daytime self. Hope it all goes away.
It won’t. What got her here hasn’t changed: if she doesn’t do this tonight, Selena will do it tomorrow, or next week, or the week after that.
Julia steps out onto the grass, and feels cold moonlight pour down her back. Behind her, the cypresses shiver into readiness.
Her movement sends Chris whirling towards her, bounding forward with his hands out, his face blazing up with what looks like sheer joy – the guy’s even better than she thought, no wonder Lenie fell for it. When he sees who it isn’t, he screeches to a stop like something in a cartoon.
‘What are you doing here?’ he demands.
‘That’s flattering,’ Julia says, before she can stop herself. She knows better than to be a smart-arse tonight. She knows exactly what to be; she’s watched enough girls force themselves into the right shapes, pull the strings tighter till they can barely breathe. She does a lash-bat and giggle that’s pure Joanne. ‘Who were you expecting?’
Chris shoves floppy fringe out of his face. ‘No one. None of your business. Are you meeting someone? Or what?’
His eyes are everywhere but on her, leaping to the path, to every rustle. All he wants from her is a fast exit, before Selena comes.
‘I’m meeting you,’ Julia says, ducking her head coyly. ‘Hi.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Hello? I’m the one who texted you?’
That gets Chris’s attention. ‘Are you fucking serious?’
Julia does some combination of a shrug and a wiggle and a giggle.
Chris’s head goes back and he moves, a tight fast circle around the clearing. He’s furious with her, for not being Selena and for seeing that look on him, and Julia knows she should have planned for this.
She sends her voice up an octave, coaxing little whine, good and submissive to the big important boy. ‘Are you mad at me?’
‘For fuck’s sake.’
‘I’m sooo sorry for . . . you know. Fooling you. I just . . .’ Julia tucks her head down and looks up at him sideways. Itsy-bitsy voice: ‘I wanted to meet you. In private. You know what I mean.’
And just like that, Chris has stopped moving and he’s looking at her. The edge has fallen off his anger; he’s interested now.
‘You could’ve just come up and talked to me. At the Court, or wherever. Like normal people do.’
Julia pouts. ‘Excuse me, if you weren’t so popular? There’s always, like, literally a queue to get near you.’
And there’s the beginning of a gratified grin, at the corner of Chris’s mouth. This is so easy, Julia can hardly believe it; suddenly she can see why everyone else has been doing it all along. ‘Sooo,’ she says, doing a boob-stretch. ‘Can we, like, sit down and talk?’
Chris says, suddenly wary, ‘How did you . . . ? That phone you texted me off. How did you . . . ?’
He wants to know if Selena was in on this. For a second, Julia considers letting him think she was. But then he might go off on Selena about it, and that would complicate everything. She goes with the truth, or part of it. ‘Me and Selena share a room. I found her phone and I read your texts.’
‘Whoa,’ Chris says. He steps back, hands going up. ‘You know about us?’
Julia does a winsome giggle. ‘I’m smart.’
‘Jesus,’ Chris says, face curling up in undisguised disgust. ‘Isn’t she your friend? I mean, I know girls can be bitches, but this is, like, something special.’
‘You have no idea,’ Julia says. She doesn’t bother to put a cutesy twist on it, and for a second Genius Boy’s brow furrows, but before he can start to wonder if this is some elaborate scheme to take the piss out of him, she takes a condom out of her hoodie pocket and holds it up.
That knocks everything else out of Chris’s head. His eyes pop. He was expecting a snog and a bra-based struggle. This never entered his mind.
After a moment he says, ‘Seriously? I mean . . . like, we’ve talked, what, three times?’
Julia manages a giggle. ‘Come on. James Gillen must’ve told you about me. Right?’
Chris shrugs uncomfortably. ‘Well. Yeah. But James talks a load of bullshit. I thought you’d told him to get lost, and he was just being a prick.’
For one second, Julia feels that shake her. Here she thought everyone believed shitty little James Gillen, and all the time Chris, the last guy she would ever have thought of— The creature calls a warning in the cypresses again and things pelt at her, if Chris was actually serious about Selena, meant the things he texted, if he was someone she might actually like instead of— They’re chipping her away, battering her soft. Another second and she’ll be cracking apart, gone.
She says, ‘James is a total prick. But he’s not a total liar. Hello, it’s the twenty-first century? Girls are actually allowed to like sex too? You’re a babe, and I heard you’re a great kisser. That’s all I need to know. I’m not looking to marry you.’
And Chris can’t have been all that in love with Selena, after all, or else the condom has him hypnotised. He steps forward.
‘Whoa, slow down there,’ Julia says, and flat-palms him, giving her nose a cute little scrunch to soften it. ‘Just one thing. I’m not sharing a guy with my best friend. I don’t care who else you want to do, but starting now, Selena’s off your menu. Deal?’
‘Wha . . . ?’ Most of Chris’s mind is still on the condom, but his eyebrows pull together. ‘You said you didn’t car
e that I was with her.’
‘Hey. Pay attention. I’m serious. If you try to play us both, I’ll find out like that. I’m going to be watching Selena and watching that phone – I’ll keep texting you off it, just so you know I’m not kidding. If you try anything cute, I’ll tell Selena, and you’ll never get another shot with either of us. But if you leave her alone – like, alone alone, no texts or anything – then every time we get a chance . . .’
Julia shakes the condom, dry little rattle in the air. In the end it turned out to be easy, getting away from the others down at the Court, where all the toilets have machines covered in pregnancy-related posters and graffiti. Just going to the jacks back in a sec, already moving away from the fountain, and gone before any of the others could stand up. Easy as that, escaping, if you wanted to. Just none of them had ever wanted to before.
Chris hasn’t moved. Julia says, ‘Hello? Is there a problem? Because the only reason a guy’s going to turn down a deal like this is if he’s gay. Which I don’t have a problem with, but you could at least tell me, so I can find someone else to play with.’
He says, ‘I’m just not sure this is a good idea.’
He knows something’s wrong here. The poor bastard probably thinks he’s going to figure out what. There aren’t enough small words in the world. ‘Who cares?’ Julia says. ‘It’s not like you’ve got anything to lose: Selena doesn’t want to see you ever again, or she’d have answered your texts. And anyway, even if you turn around and go home right now, I’m going to tell her we did it. So we might as well.’
She gives Chris a big perky smile and unzips her hoodie. She can read every thought scrolling through his head, clear as print. She can see all the red-raw places where Selena used to be, the bruise-black hole where he thought she was going to be tonight, the bright flashes of him hating Selena and every girl he’s been with and Julia most of all. She can see the moment when he decides. He smiles back at her and reaches out a hand for the condom.
Julia knows what to expect. The wind in the cypresses rising to a roar like a hunting pack, the warning call screaming across the black sky. The clearing heaving and rolling under her. The moon smashing to shards, the sharpest of them all arrowing down to rip her open from groin to throat, the smell of hot dark blood spilling from deep inside. The pain, bright enough to blind her forever.