Ronan strolled around the corner. There they were: eight or nine guys, mostly his age or a year younger; and loudest and most self-assured among them, there was Seamus McConaghie. He was in Ronan’s year, and because of that there’d been no getting away from him for what was starting to seem like forever. For a long time Seamus had been one of the biggest and strongest kids in the year, but in recent months others had been catching up to him… which meant he’d been making up for it by being twice as nasty to everybody as he’d been since Ronan first fell afoul of him.
There were some mutters of greeting as Ronan ambled along toward the group, but just as many uneasy or hostile looks; and off to one side of the group, left a little by himself, was Maurice Obademi. He was taller than anybody else there, even taller than Ronan. But it never failed to strike him the way Maurice always stood with his shoulders bowed, as if trying to avoid standing out. Not that it’s possible, Ronan thought. So few African guys have made it in here as yet…
Maurice was game, you had to give him that. There he stood, wearing a grim and bitter half-smile, just taking Seamus’s bullshit… because he knew if he left he’d be accused of not being able to take it. He was standing with his head bowed, looking off to one side, and smoking his cigarette hard as if him inhaling deep enough might magically make Seamus choke.
Because something needs to, Ronan thought. Seamus loved riding Maurice. It had started as teasing him about his name. How’s a black fella get to be called Maurice? Bit posh for you, isn’t it? Royalty in the family somewhere? No surprise there, I guess. Your dear papa probably goes by Prince Whongo or something when he’s sending out all those emails.
That taunt had made Ronan almost irrationally angry the first time he heard it. Sure his name’s not his fault, he’d thought, why won’t they ever let him be about that? Maurice was smart, he was good at sports, a nice guy, a kind one. But the way they treat him any time he’s someplace without a security camera or where a teacher can’t hear—
“Never get tired of it, do you Seamus,” Ronan said. “So easily amused.”
“Absolutely, Nolan,” Seamus said. “Specially with the likes of you around. Letting wee Maurice here open for you now? If we were having a dull moment, it’s over.”
Some of the guys gathered around snickered a bit, waiting to see what Ronan would do. Ronan concentrated on keeping his expression casual, even though the back of his brain, the chicken-hearted part, was already yelling Do you really need to do this now, just when things were getting quiet after last time? Why are you always sticking up for the oppressed and downtrodden, couldn’t you let somebody else do it today? …Except he couldn’t.
Ronan wandered over to Maurice for all the world like someone not having frantic internal conversations. “Got one I can pinch, Mo?” he said, nudging him with an elbow, mostly because it allowed him to stand beside the guy without being too obvious about it.
Maurice fished around in his pockets and came up with a battered white packet of ten. Ronan fished one out and took the lighter Maurice handed him. I hate this bit but it’s part of the game… Ronan thought. He lit up and took a drag and concentrated on not coughing.
“Wouldn’t think you’d be interested in smoking like us plebs, Mr. Great Tings,” Seamus said.
Ronan flushed hot. Yeah, there it is, couldn’t wait three seconds, could he? “Great Tings Nolan”— He’d never been annoyed by his home accent before, the way the “h” got dropped out: had hardly even been aware of it. Now he’d started to hate the sound of it. “I can take it or leave it.”
“But you leave it, mostly. Can’t afford it, maybe.”
“Things’re getting tough all over,” Ronan said.
“Must be. Too tough for a smoke, too tough for a pint—” Seamus laughed his soft nasty laugh. “Not that your da’s ever seen in the pub like a normal person, booze or no booze. Thinks he’s better than everybody around the place…”
Coming from Seamus this was rich. His father was on Wicklow County Council and Seamus rarely forgot to let anyone who’d hold still know all about it, with the implication behind every word that they’d better be nice to him or “something would happen”. Never specifies what or to who. But he doesn’t have to. Because everybody knew that if somebody in the Council got on somebody’s bad side, their application for their new conservatory or a medical card for a sick relative might go straight down the bog. Or get lost behind some sofa at the Council offices until whoever had stood up for themselves had to go to the offices and grovel to get something that should have been theirs by right.
“Opinion like that,” Ronan said, trying hard to sound mild, “it’s the kind of thing that usually gets somebody pounded.”
“Why not then?” said Seamus. “Nothing stopping you.” The implication hung in the air: even here out of sight, you don’t dare.
Ronan scowled. “Could be that some of us aren’t wild about beating people up any way at all,” he said. “Maurice here, I heard that, what’s the matter with you? He was born here just like you and me--”
“He’s not, he’s not just like you and me, what’s the matter with you Nolan, you blind as well as stupid? He could be born here a hundred times over, he’ll never fit in, just look at him! And it’s fecking kindness to tell him so. Otherwise he’ll be breaking his heart and wasting his life here trying to be happy, when he could just faff back off to 409 Land or wherever his mammy and daddy came from, and be all fine there.”
“Oh, and you’re all about having him be happy. This is going to be for his own good, is it?”
“Yes it is! At least he’ll be honest about it, instead of like other people, sneaking in and taking our jobs and then sneaking off again now that things are going down the bog. Sure you see them all leaving now, now that they’ve got our money, all their little shops closing up, like that wee dump in Main Street, the sklep or whatever they call it—”
Ronan was losing whatever patience he had left. “That’s the Polish shop, ye dim gob, does Maurice look like his people come from Poland?”
“Well he sure doesn’t look like his people come from here!”
Laughter at that. Ronan scowled so hard he felt like his whole face was going to fold up. “If it’s stupid we’re talking about,” he said, “it’s somebody who’s not gonna keep his place as a prefect long when the Year Head hears the kind of thing you come out with. The kind of thing that makes it pretty clear someone doesn’t give a shit about the college’s antibullying policy. Specially the bit about hate speech. You can stand out here in the dead zone all you like, but it’s only a matter of time before when you’ve got your gob open somebody hits the button on their phone and catches you in the act. In a manner of speaking.”
The way the look of smug self-assurance slid slideways off Seamus’s face was worth something. But the nasty narrow-eyed expression that replaced it made Ronan have to concentrate on not taking a step back. Nope, nope, hold your ground, here it comes. “Like you?” Seamus said softly, moving toward Ronan. “Yeah, even a downmarket last-year’s crap phone like yours might have got a word or two of that. Might have.”
And when I have to go into disciplinary for this, Ronan thought with almost a sense of glee, my phone won’t have had anything like that in it. The teacher who ran the school’s computer labs was way too expert at finding files in people’s phones that they were sure they’d erased; Ronan was grateful he wasn’t going to wind up as one of those horror stories. Though maybe another one—
“Won’t know until it’s too late, will you,” Ronan said.
“Probably not, with a treacherous little snitch like you,” Seamus said, eyes narrowing. “Specially with you coming over all Social Conscience Boy this last year. Friends with the likes of him and acting like you don’t care what people think.” Maurice scowled at the ground, sucking the rest of his cigarette down to a long bright coal. “And don’t mind fecking ‘round with history, either, when it suits you.”
Seamus’s face went suddenly gri
m. “Last couple years you seemed normal enough. But then all of a sudden you stand up with that essay in history last month. All nicey-nice to the Brits. Cromwell didn’t kill every innocent Irish person he came across, it seems. Historians think it wasn’t so bad, now. As if the people he did kill aren’t dead enough, as if their blood didn’t soak into the ground deep enough for you!”
Seamus was getting close, now, getting right up into Ronan’s face. Ronan didn’t dare step back, because it would give Seamus an excuse to take another step forward and then it would be all over. He could feel the spittle splattering against his skin as Seamus yelled at him from a about an inch away. Okay, got problems now, he thought. Seamus was a republican-fancier, everybody knew that, but this had more of an edge to it than Ronan would ever have expected. “Haven’t we had enough fecking Brits here for the last, how long, eight hundred years now, crapping things up, maybe that’s not enough for you? Going for nine? Bad enough they won’t get the feck out of the Six Counties, you have to be making excuses for them?”
“I wasn’t making excuses, we know more now, that’s all, what’s wrong with knowing the truth, what’s your—”
“We don’t know more, they’re trying to make us think we know less, it’s all about caring less, pretending the past didn’t happen—”
It always came to Ronan with shocking clarity—and somehow, always as a surprise—that moment when he knew there was going to be a fight and nothing would prevent it, paired with the knowledge that walking away would just make it worse. Over the past year Ronan had begun to be a bit disturbed at how naturally at such times his brain slid straight into a mode of calm assessment—as if he was examining the situation from above, or between sequences in a videogame. Those three, the younger lads, they won’t make a move, they don’t want to get mixed up in stuff out of their own year. Why get two Year Heads involved at the same time? Bad news for everybody. As for Seamus and his little friend, well, Bobby might pitch in but not unless it looks like Seamus is winning—
“It’s not like that,” Ronan said. “Not at all.”
“Well from the sound of you, you could have fooled me! Blood will out, me da says, and I bet he’s right, I bet you’ve got some dirty Brit in your genes. Probably from your gran’s side, the one in the upstairs room who’s gone all feeble and drooly. Have to stick her in a home pretty soon, shouldn’t wonder. But once you do, you and your lovely family can just take yourselves up off north somewhere, if you don’t like how things are here—”
A wave of cold and a wave of heat ran all over Ronan within about a second of Seamus mentioning his Nan. “You just leave my lovely family out of it, Seamus,” he hissed, and all his determination of just moments before about not being a jerk fell off him like rain off the unneeded brolly.
“Like that, wouldn’t you? But it’s no secret, because with your mammy getting all friendly with the boss up at that posh West Brit hotel up in Dalkey, heard all about that, who hasn’t, when she—”
Something must have shown on Ronan’s face at the shocked-anticipatory hiss around him from the other kids in response to “your mammy”. And all of a sudden Seamus was just that bit closer to his face, eyes practically bulging out of his skull.
That’s it, Ronan thought, and rammed his forehead right down hard onto Seamus’s so-convenient nose. As Seamus staggered back Ronan kicked out and swept sideways with his good kicking leg, pity it’s not your head instead of a football, ya weasel! Seamus’s legs went out from under him, and down he went flat on his back without even a push to help him.
Seamus started rolling around and groaning and holding his face. “You fecking little arsewipe,” he gasped between his hands, “when me da hears about this you’re gonna—”
“But Da’s not here right now, is he?” Ronan said. “You are. So better stay down and shut up, because whatever happens next, you’ll feel it way before he does. And if it’s arses we’re talking about, whatever happens to yours next isn’t gonna be wiping.”
Seamus went still except for some moaning. The others gathered around started to snicker, but when Ronan looked at them one after another, they quieted. Finally he turned away from them in disgust.
“God these things are shite,” he said to Maurice, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out under his shoe. “Honest, mate, you should quit, you can read the packet! Better than this lot.” He glanced around at the others.
“Um, right,” Maurice said, looking with some bemusement at Ronan, who was trying not to be seen gesturing sideways with his eyes in a suggestion that Maurice should get out of there. “Yeah, I should just… throw these away. Before class.”
Ronan just nodded, staying where he was while Maurice headed around the corner of the building and away.
“Anybody else?” Ronan said in a friendly way.
He got some sullen looks, but no takers.
“Good. Enjoy lunch. If you’ve got the stomach for it after watching him bleed out.” And Ronan peered down at Seamus in a fake-solicitous kind of way and then sauntered away.
Hope I don’t catch something from him spitting all over me, he thought. As the adrenaline buzz died back his head started aching from where he’d hit Seamus’s nose with it, and the saunter was very forced, as what he really wanted to do was run and hide in the bushes. Because you know what comes next… Feck it all, why do I keep doing this?
***
…No.
The faintest sense of amusement stirs the aether. No what?
This is the day, isn’t it. This has always been the day!
More amusement. It would be easy to see why you might think that…
You played me!
You played yourself, sibling mine. You’ll always complicate things to spite me, to prove that good isn’t the same as smart; that good isn’t smart enough.
The aether stirs again, with softly-voiced fury this time. And how long have you been conditioning him to act like that?
You’ve got it exactly backwards. He is as he is. If I tried bending him into another shape, he’d spring back eventually. Exactly, in fact, when it would best suit you.
Now if you’re trying to say that—
And as for any thoughts of me seeking him out? It doesn’t work that way. In fact you could make a case that he found me, rather than the other way around. And which of us is conditioning the other? I wonder.
We’ll soon find out, I think.
Yes, we will.
Because whatever good you think you’re going to get of him, it’ll be simple enough to keep it from happening.
Oh indeed.
Yes indeed. Just watch—
***
“What comes next” came soon enough; it’d been only a matter of time before the shoe dropped. “Somebody’ll tell them if they don’t notice themselves,” Ronan muttered as he headed down the hall to his maths class. “Probably Seamus…”
All through Literature and well into the study period after that, Ronan waited in torment. It was almost a relief when the supply teacher who was minding the study period glanced down at her phone, which had just buzzed discreetly on her desk. Here it comes, Ronan thought, his stomach doing a flip as she got up and walked back to where he was sitting.
“Nolan,” she said quietly, and showed him the text, from the school’s front office. It said R Nolan to Principals office at end of session plz disc.
Disc was the unsubtle shorthand the front office ladies used for “disciplinary”. Seamus, Ronan thought, one of these days your diplomatic immunity’s gonna catch up with you. He sighed and nodded and went back to his book. All around him he could feel people’s stares lingering on him, and for the time being he ignored them. They knew as well as he did what was going on. At least he was being spared the embarrassment of the get-up-and-go-now treatment.
At the period’s end he made his way from the science library where his study period was held to the hallway holding the glass-walled main office. Past it was a wooden door with a polished wooden bench
next to it: “death row”, everybody called it. The bench was empty, though, and Ronan went to the door with its wired-glass window that said PRINCIPAL and knocked on it.
“Come in.”
What followed was all familiar territory now: the windows overlooking the school’s football pitch, the view downhill toward the water, the metal bookshelves full of files and file boxes and dictionaries (the Principal taught French and German when he wasn’t lurking in here), the broad metal desk with the computer keyboard and monitor all piled around with stacked up books (more dictionaries, jayzus, how many did a single human being need?) and a framed photo of a middle-aged woman and a dog like a ball of fluff and a young fella in his twenties somewhere, wearing Irish Army camo and a blue UN beret, all of them smiling.
In front of the desk were a couple of armless office chairs. Behind the desk, sitting in a beat-up typing chair, was the Principal, Mr. Flannery. He was a lean, graying, pinched-looking little man with eyes set close together and a nose pushed a little to one side by some fight or rugby scrum in his long-ago youth, never properly fixed. He looked tired. That didn’t surprise Ronan, who was certainly tired of seeing Mr. Flannery and suspected the feeling was mutual.
Ronan came to a stop near the right-hand chair in front of the desk and waited. Whether you were invited to sit or not was usually an indicator of how much trouble you were in. For the moment Flannery merely pushed the papers piled up in front of him to one side and looked at Ronan.
“Mr. Nolan,” Flannery said. “I was living in hope that these little meetings had become a thing of the past.”
“Sorry sir,” Ronan said, and shut up. Over a number of “these little meetings” he had learned that there was no point in either trying to jolly the man up or act as if the world was about to end; neither approach did anything but annoy Flannery, who disliked both flippancy and theatrics. He wasn’t a bad type, but he did seem sometimes to be stuck in some previous decade, and Ronan had realized there was nothing to do but let him get on with being that way and see whether he was going to act reasonably or unreasonably old.