‘Let’s see,’ Holly says, sitting up and scooting over to Julia.
‘I’m deleting it.’
‘So let’s see first.’
‘You’re a pervert.’
‘Me too,’ Selena says cheerfully. ‘If you’re scarred for life, we want to be too.’
‘God, don’t be so gay,’ Julia says. ‘It’s a dick pic, not some kind of bonding experience.’ But she hits buttons, finding the picture.
‘Becs,’ Holly says. ‘Coming?’
‘Ew. No.’ Becca twists her head away, so she doesn’t see by accident.
‘Here you go,’ Julia says, and hits Open.
Holly and Selena lean in against her shoulders. Julia pretends to look, but her eyes slide past the phone, into the shadows. Selena feels her spine clamp up, and leans harder.
They don’t giggle or scream, the way they did when they went looking online. Those were primped and plastic as Barbie, no way could you imagine a real guy attached. This is different: smaller; shoving itself up at them like a thick middle finger, like a threat, out of a mess of dark sticky hair. They can smell it.
‘If that was the best I could come up with,’ Holly says coolly, after a moment, ‘I wouldn’t exactly advertise it.’
Julia doesn’t look up.
‘You should text him back,’ Selena says. ‘“Sorry, can’t tell what pic is, way too small.”’
‘And get a close-up. Yeah, no thanks.’ But the corner of Julia’s mouth twitches up.
‘You can come on over, Becs,’ says Holly. ‘Totally safe, unless you’ve got a microscope.’ Becca smiles and ducks her head and shakes it, all at the same time. The grass squirms under her legs, prickling.
‘Well,’ Julia says. ‘If you perverts have seen enough mini-dick for one day . . .’ She hits Delete with a flourish and gives her phone a finger-wave. ‘Bye-bye.’
Tiny beep, and it’s gone. Julia puts the phone away and lies down again. After a bit Holly and Selena drift back to their places, looking around for the thing to say, finding nothing. The moon is strengthening, as the sky turns darker.
In a while Holly says, ‘Hey, you know where Cliona is? She’s in the library, looking for a sonnet to copy that Smythe won’t know.’
‘She’s gonna get caught,’ Becca says.
‘That’s so typical,’ Selena says. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just write the sonnet?’
‘Well, totally,’ Holly says. ‘This always happens. She ends up working harder to get out of doing the thing than she would just doing the thing.’
They leave space for Julia to say something. When she doesn’t, the space gets bigger. The conversation falls into it and vanishes.
The photo isn’t gone. The faint rank smell of it is still stained onto the air. Becca breathes shallowly, through her mouth, but it greases her tongue.
Julia says, up into the smeared watercolour sky, ‘How come guys think I’m a slut?’
The red is blotching her skin again. Selena says gently, ‘You’re not a slut.’
‘Duh, I know I’m not. So why do they act like I am?’
‘They want you to be,’ says Holly.
‘They want all of us to be. But I don’t see anyone sending any of you guys dick pics.’
Becca moves. She says, ‘It’s only the last while.’
‘Since I snogged James Gillen.’
‘Not that. Loads of people snog someone and the boys don’t care. It’s since before that. Since you started having a laugh with Finn and Chris and all them. Because you make jokes, because you say things . . .’
She trails off. Julia says, ‘You are shitting me.’
But Holly and Selena are nodding, as it sinks in and clicks into place. ‘That,’ Selena says. ‘You say stuff like that.’
‘So you figure they want me to be some prissy hypocrite bitch like Heffernan, who let Bryan Hynes finger her at the Halloween dance because he had booze, but she acts totally OMG-so-outraged if you make a dirty joke. And then they’ll respect me.’
Holly says, ‘Just about, yeah.’
‘Fuck that. Fuck them. I’m not doing it. I’m not being it.’ Her voice is raw and older.
Thin clouds are running across the moon so it feels like the moon is moving, or like all the world is tilting under them.
Selena says, ‘Then don’t.’
‘And just keep taking this kind of crap. Sounds great. Anyone got any more genius ideas?’
‘Maybe that’s not why,’ Becca says, wishing she had kept her stupid mouth shut. ‘Maybe I’m totally wrong. Maybe he was trying to text someone else with a J, Joanne or someone, and he hit the wrong—’
Julia says, ‘When I snogged James Gillen.’
The dark condenses, under the cypresses, at her voice.
‘He tried to put his hand up my top, right? Which I was expecting – I swear, I don’t know why guys all have such a fixation with tits, did their mommies not breastfeed them enough or something?’
She isn’t looking at the others. The clouds move faster, setting the moon speeding across the sky.
‘So since I’m not actually interested in James Gillen feeling me up and let’s be honest I’m only even snogging him because he’s cute and I want the practice, I go, “Whoa, I think this is yours,” and give him his nasty clammy hand back, right? And James, being a total gentleman, James decides the appropriate thing to do is to shove me back against the fence – like an actual shove, not just a little nudge or whatever – and stick his hand right back where it was. And he says something incredibly predictable along the lines of, “You love it, don’t act so pure, everyone knows about you,” blah blah whatever. Prince Charming or what?’
The air feels chilly and searing all at once, feverish.
They’ve had it spelled out a dozen times, in cringey classes, in cringey parent talks: when to tell an adult. The idea never comes near any of their minds. This thing opening in front of them is nothing to do with those careful speeches. This mix of roaring rage and a shame that stains every cell, this crawling understanding that now their bodies belong to other people’s eyes and hands, not to them: this is something new.
‘The little shit,’ Holly says, through her heartbeat and her breath running wild. ‘The little prick. I hope he dies of cancer.’
Selena stretches out a leg so that her foot touches Julia’s. This time Julia jerks her foot away.
Becca says, ‘What did you do? Did you, did he . . . ?’
‘I kneed him in the balls. Which actually works, just in case you ever need to know. And then when we came back here I showered the living shit out of myself.’ They remember. They never thought to connect it up with James Gillen (Julia offhand, flipping a shoulder, Shouldn’t have bothered, like snogging a Labrador). Now, in the seething space of their new knowledge, it feels slap-in-the-face obvious.
‘And I don’t know about you, but being the genius I am, I figure James Gillen didn’t feel like telling the rest of Colm’s that all he got out of his afternoon was a bruised ballsack, so he told them I was a slut who couldn’t get enough. And that’s why Marcus fucking Wiley feels I’d just love a photo of his dick. And it’s just going to keep on coming, isn’t it?’
Selena says, but there’s a thread of uncertainty flawing her voice, ‘They’ll forget about it. In a few weeks—’
‘No. They won’t.’
Silence, and the watchful moon. Holly thinks about finding out some disgusting secret about James Gillen and spreading it till everyone laughs whenever he walks past and finally he kills himself. Becca tries to think of things to bring Julia, chocolate, funny poems. Selena pictures some yellowed book with curled writing, a low rhyming chant, knotted grass and the smell of burning hair; a shimmer closing around the four of them, turning them impermeable. Julia concentrates on finding animals in the clouds and digs her fingernails through the layers of grass into the ground, till clumps of dirt stab up into the quick.
They have no weapons for this. The air is bruised and swollen, thr
obbing in black and white, ready to split open.
Julia says, hard and final as a slamming door, ‘I’m not touching any guy from Colm’s again. Ever.’
‘That’s like saying you’re never going near any guy ever,’ Holly says. ‘Colm’s guys are all we meet.’
‘So I won’t go near any guy ever, till college. I don’t care. Better than having another of those stupid pricks telling the whole school exactly what my tits feel like.’ Becca goes red.
Selena hears it like a single ding of silver on crystal, shivering the air. She sits up. She says, ‘Then me neither.’
Julia shoots her a ferocious stare. ‘I’m not just being all, “Oh, my ickle feelings are hurt so I’m giving up men forever.” I mean it.’
Selena says, unruffled and sure, ‘Me too.’
In daylight it would be different. In daylight, in indoor light, this would never come to them. Powerless and stifled, the rage would turn ingrown. The stain on their skin would burn deeper, branding them.
The clouds are gone but the moonlight is speeding faster, turning around them. Becca says, ‘Same here.’
Julia’s eyebrow flicks, half wryly. Becca can’t find how to tell her that it’s not nothing and that she wants it to be more, she would bring the biggest thing in the world to put in the middle of their circle and set it on fire if she could, so that she’d deserve this; but then Julia gives her a small smile and a private wink.
All their eyes have gone to Holly. She has a flash of her dad, his grin as he sideslips when you try to pin him to an answer: never get tied down, not till you’re beyond sure, not even then.
The others, blazing white against the dark trees, triple and waiting. The soft curve of shadow under Selena’s chin, the narrow back-bend of Becca’s wrist where she leans on her hand in the grass, the downward quirk at the corner of Julia’s mouth: things Holly will know by heart when she’s a hundred, when all the rest of the world has been scoured away from her mind. Something throbs in the palms of her hands, pulling towards them. Something shifting, the smoke-spiral ache of something like thirst but not, catching her in the throat and under the breastbone. Something is happening.
‘Same here,’ she says.
‘Oh, God,’ Julia says. ‘I can hear it now. They’re gonna say we’re some kind of lesbian orgy cult.’
‘So?’ Selena says. ‘They can say what they want. We won’t have to care.’
A breathtaken silence, as that sinks in. Their minds race wild along its trail. They see Joanne wiggling and giggling and sneering in the Court to make the Colm’s guys fancy her, they see Orla howling helpless into her sodden pillow after Andrew Moore and his friends ripped her apart, they see themselves trying desperately to stand right and dress right and say the right things under the guys’ grabbing eyes, and they think: Never, never ever, never never never again. Break that open the way superheroes burst handcuffs. Punch it in the face and watch it explode.
My body my mind the way I dress the way I walk the way I talk, mine all mine.
The power of it, buzzing inside them to be unlocked, makes their bones shake.
Becca says, ‘We’ll be like the Amazons. They didn’t touch guys, ever, and they didn’t care what people said. If a guy tried to do anything to them, he ended up . . .’ A second that whirls with arrows and flares of blood.
‘Whoa,’ Julia says, but the small smile is back and it’s her own smile, the one that most people never get to see. ‘Chill. This isn’t forever. It’s just till we leave school and we can meet actual human guys.’
Leaving school is years away and unimaginable, words that can never turn real. This is forever.
Selena says, ‘We need to swear it. Make a vow.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Julia says, ‘who does stuff like . . .’ but she’s only saying it out of reflex, it spins faint and dizzy away into the shadows, none of them hear.
Selena holds out her hand, palm down over the grass and the hidden trails of night insects. ‘I swear,’ she says.
Bats call, up in the dark air. The cypresses lean closer to watch, intent, approving. The rush and whisper of them lifts the girls, surges them on.
‘OK,’ Julia says. Her voice comes out stronger than she meant it to, so strong it startles her; her heartbeat feels like it’s going to lift her off the ground. ‘OK. Let’s do it.’
She brings her hand down on top of Selena’s. The small slap echoes across the clearing. ‘I swear.’
Becca, thin hand light as a dandelion clock on Julia’s, wishing fiercely and too late that she had looked at the photo, that she had seen what the others were seeing. ‘I swear.’
And Holly. ‘I swear.’
The four hands twist into a knot wrapped with moonlight, fingers tangling, all of them trying to stretch wide enough to tighten round all the others at once. A breathless small laugh.
The cypresses sigh, long and sated. The moon stands still.
Chapter 9
Rebecca O’Mara, in the art-room doorway, hovering on one foot with the other wrapped round her ankle. Long dark-brown hair in a ponytail, soft and straggly, no straighteners here. Maybe an inch taller than Holly; skinny, not scary-skinny but definitely could have done with a pizza. Not pretty – face still catching up with her features – but it was coming soon. Wide brown eyes, on Conway, wary. No glance at the Secret Place.
If Rebecca was low on the old confidence, the old self-esteem, I could bring that. Give it the sweet big brother, looking for help with the important adventure and shy Little Sis is the special one who can save the day.
‘Rebecca, yeah?’ I said. Smiled, not too big, just easy and natural. ‘Thanks for coming in. Have a seat.’
She didn’t move. Houlihan had to dodge past her, scurry off to her corner. ‘It’s about Chris Harper. Isn’t it?’
Not scarlet and tangled up this time, but her voice was barely over a whisper. I said, ‘I’m Stephen Moran – maybe Holly’s mentioned me along the way, has she? She gave me a hand with some stuff, a few years back?’
Rebecca looked at me properly, for the first time. Nodded.
I held out a hand at the chair, and she pulled herself out of the doorway and came. That gangly teenage half-prance, like it was only the heavy shoes bringing her feet back to the ground. She sat down, tied her legs in a knot. Wrapped her hands in her skirt.
Sucking feeling in my chest, like water draining: let-down. From knowing Holly, from Conway saying Just something, from all that wide-eyed shite about freaks and witches, I’d been expecting these to be more than the last lot. This was just Alison over again, a bundle of fidgety fears wrapped in a grow-into-it skirt.
I let my spine go loose like a teenager’s, knees everywhere, and gave Rebecca another smile. Rueful, this one. ‘I need a hand again. I’m good at my job, I swear, but every now and then I need someone to help me out or I’ll get nowhere. I’ve got a feeling maybe you might be able to do that for me. Would you give it a shot, yeah?’
Rebecca said, ‘Is it about Chris?’
Not too shy to dig in her heels a bit. I made a face. ‘I’ve gotta tell you, I’m still trying to work out what it’s about. Why? Has something happened to do with Chris, yeah?’
She shook her head. ‘I just . . .’ Gesture at Conway, with the bundle of hands and skirt. Conway was picking her nails with the cap of her Biro, didn’t look up. ‘I mean, because she’s here. I thought . . .’
‘We’ll try and figure it out together. OK?’
I shot her the warm crinkly smile. Got a blank look back.
I said, ‘So let’s start with yesterday evening. First study period: where were you?’
After a moment Rebecca said, ‘The fourth-year common room. We have to be.’
‘And then?’
‘We get our break. Me and my friends, we went outside and sat on the grass for a while.’
Her voice was still a scraped-down wisp, but it got stronger on that. Me and my friends.
I said, ‘Which friends? Holly and Julia and
Selena, yeah?’
‘Yeah. And some others. Most of us went out. It was warm.’
‘And then you had second study period. You were here in the art room?’
‘Yeah. With Holly and Julia and Selena.’
‘How do you go about getting permission to spend a study period here? Like who asked who, and when? Sorry, I’m a bit . . .’ I did shrug, head-duck, sheepish grin. ‘I’m new on this. Don’t know the ropes yet.’
More blank. Great with the young people, me, I’ll get them relaxed, I’ll get them talking . . . Lovely Big Bro was striking out.
Conway was squinting at a thumbnail against the light. Missing nothing.
Rebecca said, ‘We ask Miss Arnold – she’s the matron. Julia went and asked her day before yesterday, at teatime. We wanted to go for first study, but someone was already going then, so Miss Arnold said to go for second study instead. They don’t like too many people being in the school after hours.’
‘So at break yesterday evening, yous got the key to the connecting door off the other girls who’d been up here?’
‘No. We’re not allowed to pass it around. Whoever signs the key out has to sign it back in, when they said they would. So the other girls gave it back to Miss Arnold, and then we went and got it off her.’
‘Who did that?’
I saw the instant where a streak of fear flew bright across Rebecca’s face, and she thought about lying. No reason why she should, nothing there that could get her in trouble as far as I could see, but that was where she turned all the same. Conway was right about this one, anyway: a liar, at least when she was scared; at least when something pulled her separate from her friends, put her in the spotlight all alone.
Not stupid, though, scared or not. Took her half a second to realise there was no point. She said, ‘Me.’
I nodded like I’d noticed nothing. ‘And then yous came up to the art room. All four of you together, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘We have this project.’ She untangled one hand from her skirt, pointed at a table by the windows: bulky shape under a paint-spattered dropcloth. ‘Selena was doing calligraphy, and Holly was grinding up chalk for snow, and Julia and I were mostly making stuff out of copper wire. We’re doing the school a hundred years ago – it’s art and history together. It’s complicated.’