Chapter 28
‘King. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K …’
‘Kyah!’ said Ronan.
‘K. Great,’ said Mr McCoy, sitting in front of his son and smiling over at me enthusiastically as I stood, open mouthed, in the doorway. ‘A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I …’
‘Eye-ah,’ said Ronan.
‘I. Great. A, B, C …’
Mr McCoy continued until Ronan had vocalised each letter of the word ‘king’.
‘He’s speaking!’ I said. ‘Ronan! You’re speaking!’
He began to laugh, almost smugly.
‘Out of the blue,’ said Mrs McCoy, standing behind me, ‘he was making a lot of sounds over the weekend, different sounds he hadn’t made before, but it was only yesterday with the tutor that he started articulating.’
‘She ended up staying an extra hour just to make sure she wasn’t imagining things,’ said Mr McCoy.
‘Said she’s never seen anything like it, that she’s going to have to move a lot faster to keep up with him,’ said Mrs McCoy, laughing.
‘That’s unbelievable,’ I said. ‘Making everyone keep up with you as usual, Ronan.’
‘And we told the tutor how Buddy Time had been going and, hands up, that was our mistake, Brendan,’ said Mrs McCoy. ‘We thought it would be a good thing for you to do the vocabulary stuff but the tutor said it’s best if it’s you two simply spending time together as friends and nothing else.’
‘We’ll be scrapping this alphabet chart soon anyway by the sounds of things,’ said Mr McCoy. ‘So yes, Buddy Time’ll just be you two doing whatever you want really – within reason.’
I was so relieved. I’d been building myself up to try to tell them what Jennifer had made me sure of, about Ronan just wanting me to be his friend. But they’d beaten me to it.
I don’t think Ronan was too happy about me being his teacher anyway,’ I said.
‘You and me both,’ said Mr McCoy.
‘Right,’ said Mrs McCoy, packing up all the tutoring books, ‘so it’s officially non-educational, non-parental time for you two from now on, how does that sound, boys?’
‘Yee-ah!’ said Ronan.
‘Ha! What he said!’ I said. ‘Geez, I just can’t believe you’re speaking.’
‘Right, I’m off for a nap,’ said Mr McCoy.
‘Oi! No you don’t!’ said Mrs McCoy.
‘Well, you might as well,’ I said. ‘I think Ronan and me’ll be OK.’
‘I think you will too,’ said Mrs McCoy.
‘The only problem you might have now, Brendan, is getting him to shut up,’ said Mr McCoy.
Ronan made a noise that was clearly meant for his mum and dad to leave us alone.
‘I think that’s our cue,’ said Mrs McCoy. ‘Shout down the hall if you need anything.’
‘Me or Ronan?’ I said, which tickled the McCoys as they left us.
When the door closed it was Ronan and me all by ourselves, just like he’d wanted all along.
‘Ronan, you are flippin’ amazing!’ I said and we both laughed for a long time.
It wasn’t only Ronan’s voice that was coming back, his head seemed steadier too and he was holding eye contact longer and more directly, but not in the effortful way he had done the week before.
He did a neck circle as if to loosen out tension and then his eyes met mine.
‘Remember Jennifer Beattie?’ I said. ‘I think I fancy her.’ He held his look, circled his head a little bit but his eyes stayed tied to mine – ‘and I think she fancies me.’
He was very still.
I don’t know why that’s the first thing I said to Ronan on the night he started to speak.
We didn’t ever talk about anyone we fancied and neither of us had had girlfriends before.
I didn’t think Jennifer was my girlfriend but I definitely didn’t feel the same way about her as I did other girls.
Ronan’s eyes were shifting around the room, avoiding me.
His breathing increased and he began to wriggle in his chair.
I was expecting a laugh to come but it didn’t.
He screwed up his face and held his breath and then let it out slowly.
‘I mean, what could she possibly see in me?’ I said to try and make him laugh.
He looked at me quickly and then closed his eyes for a few seconds and opened them again. There was a wetness forming around them, not tears, but there was a shine.
His reaction made me think something. Something that I couldn’t have said even if I’d known how to say it.
If his legs were affected and he couldn’t walk, if he needed help going to the toilet, if his brain was injured and he thought certain things about certain girls, or whatever, I wondered if he could feel things in his body when those thoughts happened.
Because I felt feelings in my body when I thought about those things.
I knew other boys at school did too because every Wednesday lunchtime John McKeever sold condoms for a pound in the toilets and there was always a queue.
I went there one Wednesday and Kevin Sherry was there with a twenty-pound note saying how that should be enough to last him the weekend.
I bet him and Leanne haven’t even done it yet.
‘Do you think she’s good looking?’ I asked him, having no idea why I kept talking about Jennifer when it seemed to be having a strange effect on him.
He didn’t say anything but made a humming noise and tilted his head from side to side.
‘What? You don’t think she is?’ I said with a bit of a laugh, hoping he’d do the same.
He wriggled and kept eye contact.
I was staring at him thinking, would he ever get the chance to fancy someone? To be fancied by someone? Is that what he was thinking too? Is that what was causing him to look so sad? And why couldn’t I just stop talking about this?
‘But, like, I was thinking of asking her to the formal. I wasn’t going to go at all because I think the formal isn’t really for people like me but then before Christmas Jennifer …’
I thought of the poem Jennifer had written.
Ronan was simply staring at me.
I thought of the framed photograph Jennifer had given me: Ronan held high on sports day.
His chest was working hard to take in air.
‘Do you think you and me would have went to the formal for a laugh? If we didn’t have anyone to go with, I mean?’
Ronan was silent, listening, shifting around a bit as he did so.
‘You probably would have talked me into going, got me to follow your lead.’
His mouth twitched.
Another thought came to me in that moment; if Ronan was progressing so fast, as the tutor had said, I wondered if he felt the same and thought himself capable of more than any of us imagined?
‘Do you think you’d like to go? To the formal? It’s four weeks away, Valentine’s night of all nights, so it’s soon enough, but would you?’
His face went red and he looked down. It was the way his face had gone just before he screamed in the canteen that day, but this time he seemed to control it and let air hiss out of his nostrils until his face turned back to its normal colour again.
‘OK,’ I said, ‘I understand.’
He took a big breath and released it slowly.
I did the same.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t go.’
He stared at me with those shining eyes.
‘Nah, I don’t think I will, not if you’re not going.’
He made a little jolt and a yelp.
‘What?’
He did the same thing again.
‘What?’
He sighed out loudly as if I was being stupid.
‘You think I should go?’
His chin went down to his chest and up again shakily.
‘With … who? With Jennifer?’
He did the same again. Shakily.
‘What if she says no?’
His eyes went to the right followed by his head and then back to centre again. He did this twice.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘she might say no, and probably Kevin Sherry will just so happen to be passing by at that exact moment and hear me getting rejected and start spreading it around school. He’s good at that.’
Ronan grunted with his lips bunched up.
‘Ronan, you know that people are taking about what happened to you, right? I don’t believe any of it, you’re the only one that knows. You’re going to be able to tell me one day, aren’t you? I’ve promised; I’m going to wait for however long it takes. You know that, right?’
Ronan held a steady gaze and then his chin went to his chest and up again in a single nod. I breathed a smile.
‘You remember?’
He swallowed hard several times, his Adam’s apple going up and down repeatedly.
‘It’s your story,’ I said.
He was starting to smile. It felt like I was winning him back again after the topic of Jennifer had made things confusing.
‘And then after you’ve told it to me you can tell it to anyone, like you used to in English with your stories.
You know, apparently, people are voting for Geraldine Rafferty to get the “Future Booker” award at the silly awards ceremony on the night of the formal.
They’re handing out sheets for everyone to vote.
When I say “they” I mean Kevin and Leanne, obviously trying to get everyone to fill their names in for King and Queen.
The “Future Booker” award would definitely have been yours. ’
Ronan did a half head shake to the right again.
‘Key-ah,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Key-ah. Eye-ah …’ He was breathless but I knew he was trying to spell the word ‘king’ again.
‘King?’
‘Key-ah,’ he said, nodding.
‘Who? Me?’ He started to go red again, scrunching up his eyes, as if trying to contain an outburst.
‘Key-ah,’ he squeezed out again as some tears ran down his face with the effort. Then he breathed out very weakly with the sound, ‘eye-ah … eye …’
‘You?’
‘Eye-uh.’
‘King?’
‘Key-uh.’
There was a tiny grin appearing on his wet face.
And then I knew what he was trying to do.
He was trying to tell a joke. Trying to make me laugh.
He was trying to joke that he’d be voted king of the formal.
Everyone at school liked Ronan so much that he could easily have been voted king, but we all knew it would be Kevin, it’s just the way school worked; it would have been weird if Ronan was voted king, even if Kevin and Leanne were so-called popular they weren’t as liked by everyone as Ronan was, but school was a strange place when it came to those things.
‘King over Kevin Sherry! I’d love to see that!’ I said.
‘Yea-ah,’ he said, laughing gently.
‘What would Leanne say?’
He blew out through his lips.
‘If I do go, and I don’t know if I will …’
He made a stern noise.
‘Well, I don’t know, what if I chicken out of asking Jennifer for the next few weeks and then it’s too late? Can I not just come here and hang out with you instead?’
‘Nahh!’ he said.
‘What?’ I said, laughing. ‘You won’t let me come here?’
‘Nahh,’ he said again with a scowl and a little grin.
‘Wow, OK, abandoning your best friend?’ I said jokingly.
He was making movements in his chair as if he was trying to get closer to me. He was flexing his tongue in his mouth with great effort, trying to work up a sound that his muscles seemed to be struggling with. I moved closer to him.
‘Guh … guh …’ He stopped, breathed, worked his muscles. ‘Guh … Go!’
His eyes, inches away from mine, were fixed and open and clear.
‘Guh … go,’ he said very quietly.
It wasn’t a suggestion; it was an order.
‘OK,’ I said.
He made a high, ear-splitting noise that shocked me, looking directly into my eyes and trying to lean closer.
‘OK, Ronan, OK!’ I said.
He did it again, but louder.
‘OK, I promise!’
He stopped but continued breathing heavily.
‘I promise,’ I said again, ‘I promise I’ll go. I’ll ask Jennifer to go with me.’
He was still holding that wide-open look.
‘I’ll ask her tomorrow.’
He blinked slowly and finally settled back in his chair.
I settled back too. I hadn’t realised how tense I had been until then.
I looked at my friend and I knew he’d just done something big for me.
He knew it too.
He did it despite knowing he was telling me to do something he might never get the chance to do himself.
He’d ordered me and I, his loyal subject, had to obey.
‘Ronan,’ I said, ‘you don’t need the formal to be voted king; you are a flippin’ king!’