Chapter 25
‘You haven’t been avoiding me, Brendan, have you?’ said Jennifer, leaning against the wall beside the library as I ran towards it.
I hadn’t. It was my schedule; it turned lunchtimes into study times; it turned home times into rushes to catch the bus to get back for an early dinner so I could do more studying or go to Ronan’s house for Buddy Time; it turned any chance to catch up with Jennifer into something that, accidentally, just didn’t happen.
She was staring at me.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘No way, why would I be avoiding you?’
‘I don’t know, I know you’ve a lot of juggling going on, but I’ve definitely been trying to catch you all week and it’s pretty impressive that you’ve been able to evade me.
Did you get an invisibility cloak for Christmas or something?
’ she said, trying to look into my eyes until I eventually looked properly into hers.
‘Want to come into the library? To talk?’ I said.
‘Do I want to come and talk in the one place in the whole school where you’re not allowed to talk?’ she said slowly with a grin.
‘Oh yeah, of course, want to go and talk somewhere else?’
We sat in the Music Room corridor. She wanted to hear all about Ronan and our Buddy Time together. I told her how the first one hadn’t gone so well.
‘And last night was more or less the same as Tuesday,’ I said. ‘We tried the same vocabulary stuff and he switched off after ten minutes and I had to leave early again.’
I knew the second Buddy Time wasn’t going to go well as soon as I walked into Ronan’s room because he didn’t even do his laugh-greeting when he saw me.
‘That’s not like him but he is exhausted today, Brendan,’ said Mrs McCoy, reading my disappointment at the silent look Ronan had greeted me with.
‘Not a wink of sleep last night, plus he’s been awake most of the day and hasn’t ate much since breakfast. Where’s Brendan’s “hello” this evening, Ronan? ’
But Ronan, in response, turned his gaze away from me and out the window.
When Mrs McCoy wheeled him up to the desk and I began picking words from the booklet and using the alphabet chart, Ronan just stared at me and after three rounds of words he nodded off to sleep.
But a part of me wondered if he really was asleep.
Something about the look he had given me before he closed his eyes made me suspicious.
‘Maybe it’s just another way of him communicating with you?’ Jennifer suggested. ‘Like, I don’t know about you, but I feel like my friends know me way better than my own family.’
‘Yeah I definitely feel that way,’ I said. ‘My mum’s not too bad but my dad hasn’t a clue.’
‘Well, you’re Ronan’s best friend, so he’s probably thinking you’re the best one to help him. It’s just that he’s not able to actually tell you, but actions speak louder than words – so what’s his action?’
‘His action?’
‘Yeah, it’s kind of an actor thing we use in Drama class sometimes; the thing you do to another character in a scene to get what you want from them. So, for example, right this minute my action could be to “generate” you.’
‘Generate me?’
‘Into figuring out what Ronan might be thinking and what his action might be with his silence.’
‘Well, I suppose he might be trying to get me to do the right thing for him?’ I said.
‘OK, yes, so maybe he’s trying to “activate” you, or “motivate” you …’
‘Could he be trying to “confuse” me?’ I laughed. ‘Because that’s how I feel.’
‘Well, maybe, but if you think about it, he was laughing and engaging with you the times before this …’
‘Except in the canteen when he screamed at me … ’
‘Well, he didn’t scream at you …’
‘No, I know, it’s just that’s what people are saying …’
‘So if he was laughing when you visited at Christmas and at New Year and really enjoyed reading the book with you, and is even laughing when his mum or dad mention your name, but now he’s the opposite when you’re doing home schooling stuff with him, then what’s he trying to tell you?’
‘That …’ I began to form it in my mind, ‘… that he doesn’t want me to do that with him?’
‘That he doesn’t want you to be the teacher …’ She looked at me encouragingly as she let the last word linger.
‘He … wants me to be the friend?’
‘Bingo!’ said Jennifer. ‘I could be wrong, of course, but I think that’s certainly a possibility.’
‘Yeah, I think you’re right, Jennifer.’
‘You were saying his parents have all this routining and scheduling for every single thing, even your Buddy Time. The thing they might need to do is just let you and Ronan hang out without being told how to do it. I seriously think that’s all Ronan wants – he just wants to hang out without there being a reason behind it. ’
‘Especially not an educational one,’ I said.
‘Exactly! I mean, Ronan was always smart but I don’t think he ever needed to study, he was just gifted that way.’
‘Jennifer, you’re a genius!’
‘Well …’ She did a pose with her hands either side of her face as if they were leaves and her face was the flower.
‘I don’t really know how to have that conversation with his parents, though,’ I said. ‘They’ve worked so hard to make everything work.’
‘Yeah, but remember, parents don’t know us as well as they think they do.’
‘Speaking from experience?’ I said.
‘Ah, I don’t know, sometimes I just want to …’ she made a strangled kind of sound then said, ‘scream.’
‘What have you to scream about? “Smartest girl in the year,”’ I quoted.
‘Well, I certainly don’t feel very smart around my parents, that’s why screaming is good, but I do it into a pillow in my room so I can get it all out and no one can hear me, although there’s not much difference between that and when I do actually talk to Mum and Dad.
Feels like they don’t hear me then either. ’
‘In what way?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t get to telling you but we went to Australia for Christmas.’
‘Wow. Sorry, how’d I not get to asking you about this?’
‘No, it’s OK, anyway, I love cold, cosy Christmas vibes and they hate the winters here so they try to get away as much as possible. We’re kind of opposites on pretty much everything.’
I nodded; it wasn’t the same as my parents but the feeling of distance felt familiar.
‘And then there’s all this pressure on me to follow in the footsteps of them and my sister and go to the law school they all went to and it’s all like, “Ooh, Jennifer, you’re next” type of vibe, but … oh doesn’t matter, I’m not talking about all this when there’s more important stuff, like Ronan …’
‘No, it’s all good.’
‘No, it feels stupid.’
‘What does?’
‘Well … I don’t want to go to law school. I want to go to drama school.’
She put her head down looking embarrassed.
‘Jennifer, you totally should, you were amazing in the school play. All the school plays!’
‘My parents had major problems with me doing Drama GCSE so I don’t think a drama school application is going to go down too well.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I could totally see you on the West End stage!’
‘Or in the unemployment line!’
‘Or busking on the street. We could do it together! My career plans are non-existent so I could really do with something to tell the parents so they can stop asking all the time.’
‘They’d be so proud – “Mum, Dad, I’m going to be a busker!”’
‘Hey, better than nothing!’ I said.
As we were both laughing, Leanne Newell, Kevin Sherry’s girlfriend, came up to us with a flyer for the school formal.
‘School prom, save the date,’ she said in her strange accent; a kind of American twang on top of her Northern Irish one as if she was trying to be a character from an American high school film; she even used the word ‘prom’ even though the flyer said ‘formal’.
Then she strolled off up the corridor as if she were on a catwalk, distributing the flyers as she went.
‘Oh geez,’ said Jennifer, ‘I cannot believe that is next month. This year is just flying by, it’s so scary; it’ll be over before we know it.’
I looked at the flyer. It had cupids and love hearts all over it.
‘It’s on Valentine’s night. I wonder whose bright idea that was?’ I said, as we both turned to gaze at Leanne retreating up the corridor.
‘Well, student council being run by Mrs Prom Queen Leanne and Mr Prom King Kevin seems to have sway.’
‘The perks of being popular, I guess.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jennifer said, ‘I bet that when they leave here they’ll be right back to square one.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I wonder what beyond square one feels like. I’d love to move past it myself one of these days.’
We smiled at each other and Jennifer started to fiddle with her hair.
‘So I take it you’re not going to this then?’ she said, holding the flyer out between her finger and thumb and letting it flop over. I looked down at mine and folded over one of the corners.
‘Nah,’ I said, ‘I mean, who would ask me?’
‘Yeah, me too. I can’t imagine anyone asking me either.’ She started rolling her flyer into a tube. ‘It’s so cheesy, Valentine’s night and everything, so much of a cliche.’
‘Yeah exactly,’ I said, folding my flyer into a square.
She put her tubed flyer into the inside pocket of her blazer.
I put my folded square version into my trouser pocket.
‘I was supposed to do French revision this lunchtime,’ I said. Jennifer looked like she was about to apologise, but I stopped her before she could. ‘But this was good. To finally catch up.’
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I was supposed to eat lunch.’
I was about to apologise too.
‘But,’ she said, ‘this was good. We should do it more. If the almighty schedule allows.’
I laughed.
‘We’ve actually still got ten minutes,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘You could do a quick cram session? So I don’t feel so bad about you missing it?’
‘Only if you go to the canteen so I don’t feel so bad about you not eating?’
‘Deal.’
‘Cool,’ I said awkwardly as I started in the direction of the library. ‘Maybe I’ll catch you in the Science corridor later when you’re on the way to the next class?’
‘Don’t you need to schedule that in?’ she said with a wink.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re the exception.’
I practically cringed at hearing myself say that.
Jennifer scrunched her mouth up to one side.
‘Exception accepted,’ she said. ‘Catch you then.’ And she skipped off towards the canteen.
When I got to the library and sat down, French revision for ten minutes was the last thing I felt like doing.
I would have loved to have gone to the canteen with Jennifer, but I had managed to keep to my schedule the entire week and if I stuck to the plan for the weekend as well, then I could tick off everything on it.
But when the bell rang I hadn’t even opened my French book.
I must have been in a daydream. I fumbled to put my things back into my bag.
I hadn’t done any work so technically I shouldn’t have allowed myself to tick that French revision session off the list. But it would have made the first week of my new schedule incomplete.
So I decided to let myself off the hook just this once; whatever I’d been thinking about to make me miss French revision must have been worth it.