Chapter 11
In December the snow lay in chunks around the edges of the school; on the grass it had been churned into mucky curdles from snowball fights and the tarmac pathways had been salted into brown wet gravel by the caretaker.
It was Ronan’s first day back at school.
I hadn’t seen him since his parents brought him into Mrs O’Neill’s room at the beginning of November.
The McCoys had said that if all went to plan Ronan would be coming back before Christmas but they hadn’t said what day it would be.
In the meantime, Dad had offered to drive me to Ronan’s house to visit, but I told him Ronan and me only knew what it was like to be friends in school, we didn’t know what it was like to be friends anywhere else, our friendship didn’t need to change more than it already had.
Dad looked at me like he knew it was a bad excuse, but said that I knew best and that Mum and him were there to help if I needed.
Mum nodded along with him, but with the way she was it was hard to tell if she was aware of anything going on outside her own head.
And Dad wasn’t very good at talking about anything.
I used to confide in Ronan about my dad, how much he didn’t talk to me or seem interested in anything I did.
Ronan said it was a generational thing; he said our parents grew up in a time when our area was a dangerous place and keeping yourself to yourself was the safest thing to do, and that maybe they just got used to keeping a bit too much of themselves to themselves for a bit too long.
‘Is your dad like that as well then?’ I asked him.
‘He used to be.’
‘What changed?’
‘Dunno,’ he said, ‘Ma said he used to be all quiet and stuff, and then …’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I came along,’ he said with a wink.
We started laughing.
‘Want to come along to my house then?’ I said. ‘Maybe my dad would talk to you.’
‘And you can go to my house, you’d probably want my da to shut up!’
The McCoys had sent a book to school for me to read that they said might help me understand how Ronan would be different and how people could help.
I had never heard of a traumatic brain injury before.
The book had lots of pictures and cartoons and the writing was a font size that reminded me of books I used to read in primary school.
It explained how the brain can get rerouted after a traumatic injury, how the brain is like a road map and when it gets damaged some of the roads get closed off and new routes have to be taken, usually old routes that the brain first used when it was developing.
My dad had been teaching me to drive during the summer so Ronan’s rerouted brain pathways described as rerouted roads felt familiar in an unsettling kind of way.
But it wasn’t just Ronan’s brain that was different.
When I saw him in November he looked different too, his face was almost a different shape.
He couldn’t walk and wouldn’t be able to do all the sports he used to do.
He couldn’t talk and wouldn’t be able to read aloud the stories he used to write. There was so much that Ronan did.
I was nervous as I stood at the school gates waiting for him to arrive.
Since Ronan hadn’t been there for the first three months of term I’d gotten used to walking straight through those gates on my own.
Everyone at school had heard something had happened to Ronan and the rumours were flying around.
‘So he’s basically back from the dead, right?
’ Kevin Sherry said to me when he heard Ronan was coming back that morning.
‘I heard he was dead when they found him.’ I ignored him, but he grabbed me and, right up to my ear, said, ‘Bet you had the hearse all ready for him and everything, ya wee sicko.’
‘Wasn’t such a sicko for your granda’s funeral, was I?’ I answered back. I never answer back. I used to be so good at ignoring bullies.
He slapped me across the face. He actually slapped me, not even a punch, but it hurt. His friends in the distance started laughing. One of them shouted:
‘Punch the wee gaylord!’
Kevin looked over at them, holding me by the front of my shirt; he leaned into my ear and spat into it and then shoved my head off to the side with the flat of his hand over my ear with all his spit inside so that it made a sucking sound when he pushed on it, then he pulled me back up to his face with his fingers hooked around my shirt collar and, with his back to his friends, hissed into my face:
‘Say anything about my granda again and I’ll fuckin’ kill you, ya wee prick.’
I was going to say nothing, but it seemed that I wasn’t as quiet as I used to be when I had Ronan by my side. No one bullied me when he was there.
‘Before you kill me, Kevin, would you mind giving me a bit of notice, would you?’ I said. ‘I’ll need to get the hearse gleaming for my own funeral, can’t exactly do it after I’m dead, can I?’
Kevin turned red. One of his friends shouted over:
‘What’s the wee dickhead saying?’
Kevin kept staring at me.
‘Want me to tell them about you, do ya?’
I didn’t.
‘Do ya?!’ he said, pulling me closer.
I really didn’t. Working at the funeral home was something I was proud of when I was there but ashamed of anywhere else and I didn’t have a good reason for feeling that way, I just did. But Kevin could spot a weakness and unfortunately he’d found mine.
I just stared at him.
‘Didn’t think so.’ He let go. ‘Say hello to Zombie Ronan when you see him, will ya? Maybe you can get some tips from him about being raised from the dead, you might need it down the line if you don’t keep your mouth shut.’
I wanted to ask him why he was so concerned about me seeing him upset at Feeney’s for his granda’s funeral arrangements and why it mattered. It didn’t make sense to me.
He walked back to his gang and I stood watching them go, laughing at me.
That particular rumour about Ronan coming back from the dead felt a little too close to the truth for me to handle; it didn’t seem as silly as some of the others.
There’d been an article in the Gazette, it didn’t mention Ronan by name but everyone in school said it was him.
My dad didn’t buy that edition of the paper because he knew I didn’t want to hear about it, and maybe he didn’t want to talk about it with me anyway, even if he had the ability to.
Mum actually engaged with us on one rare dinner time together and mentioned the article.
Even though I was surprised at her awareness of things in the real world I told her that I didn’t want to talk about it because I knew those printed words belonged to some reporter who didn’t know what they were talking about.
It made me angry and I felt bad for shouting at her.
I know Mum was only trying to connect with me but I wanted to put an end to those kinds of questions at home.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop the questions at school.
Everyone knew Ronan and me were best friends so they kept coming to me for details, but I put my head down and didn’t talk to any of them.
On that frosty December morning, after shaking off the run-in with Kevin, I saw a familiar vehicle arriving.
It was driven by Matty, Mr Feeney’s brother.
The eight-seater Matty was driving that morning was one I had cleaned after a hen party had been in it on Saturday night.
It didn’t even cross my mind when I was cleaning it on Sunday that Ronan’s parents might have arranged school transportation with the Feeneys.
Slushy mud had skited up around the sides of it, undoing the work I’d done just the day before, but when I saw Mrs McCoy in the front seat beside Matty and knew Ronan was in the back, it made all the cleaning seem like a stupid thing to care about.
Why was I thinking about that when all I should have been thinking about was Ronan?
Although I had done nothing but think about him for weeks, trying to adjust to his absence.
But now he was here and my day could begin like it always used to: with him.
Matty drove past me and came to a stop further along the road at the front of the school.
He hadn’t seen me, maybe I should have waved.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Matty driving Ronan because Matty made me feel a bit uncomfortable any time he came to the yard at the funeral home when I was cleaning his vehicles.
Sometimes he left dirty magazines on the back seats knowing I would come across them and then he’d says things like:
‘Hope you weren’t lookin’ at none of them there boobies, ye wee perv ye.
’ And laugh his hacking smoker’s laugh, with his wispy ginger hair sticking out as if it was statically charged and his nose filled with bristles twitching above his higgled yellow teeth.
But he had a different manner that day as he got out to help Mrs McCoy wheel Ronan out the back doors and onto the electric ramp to lower him down onto the tarmac.
Instead of the mousey smirk Matty’s face usually wore he had a gentle quality more like his brother when conducting a funeral.
‘Ah there’s the man himself,’ Matty said as he spotted me approaching, saluting me like an officer, ‘over to you, young Brendan.’ He climbed back into the driver’s seat.
As Mrs McCoy turned Ronan round in his wheelchair she saw me and pushed him forwards. I’d only ever seen Ronan arrive to school like he was an Olympic sprinter approaching the finish line. But that morning he was bundled up in fluffy blankets, gliding along like a husky sleigh rider.
‘Morning, Brendan,’ said Mrs McCoy. ‘Thanks, Matty,’ she called over her shoulder.
‘See yiz at home time!’ he said, pulling off with a burble of country music on the radio.