Chapter 37
The first day back to school after Easter was filled with the usual post-break energy but, for some, there was a sadness underneath; it was the last time in our lives we would get the ‘coming back to school’ feeling because after June we’d never be coming back ever again.
The summer to come would have a different kind of excitement, in anticipation of new colleges, new faces and the unknown.
Or at least it felt unknown to me. I was working hard for exams to get good grades, but I had no idea what I’d use those qualifications for other than to get into the tech college I’d applied to for subjects that I had even less of an idea about.
I hadn’t seen Jennifer since before the break.
We hadn’t even spoken. She’d phoned my house twice and left messages but I didn’t get round to returning her calls.
When I saw her that first morning at the far side of the assembly hall she had the same look a wary but friendly cat might have; it wants you to come close but it might run away at the last minute.
I was supposed to join the Science revision group that lunchtime, but I’d been thinking about Jennifer all morning: guilty over not returning her calls, annoyed that she’d made me feel bad about making the night of the formal about Ronan and not about us, confused about how we had left things before the break, feeling pressure to apologise or at least talk to her.
I found her in the canteen; she was sitting with her back to me opposite Margaret, who looked at me with dead eyes which she then used to indicate to Jennifer that someone was behind her.
‘Hi,’ I said when Jennifer turned to look at me.
‘Hi,’ she said, her mouth twitching as if she wanted to smile but wasn’t sure if she should or even could.
‘Bye,’ said Margaret, standing up with a full plate of food on her tray, holding her dead-eyed look on me as she walked off.
‘Mind if I join you?’ I asked.
‘Sure.’
I walked round and sat down where Margaret had been.
The freckles on Jennifer’s face looked more prominent than before the break, her eyes even more blue.
‘You look like you caught the sun,’ I said.
‘Really?’ she said, brushing hair away from her face. ‘It was pretty sunny some of the days.’
‘Yeah, not too much rain.’
Were we really going to talk about the weather?
‘So how …’ we both said at the same time, then laughed.
‘You first …’ we both said and laughed again.
‘I’ll go,’ I said quickly. ‘Mum said you phoned, I didn’t get a chance …’
‘That’s OK, I was only phoning to see how you were.’
‘Ah right.’
‘So …’ She was shaking her head as if to provoke a response. ‘How were you?’
‘Busy.’
‘Right.’
‘I mean, I knew I would be …’
‘Yeah, you’d said …’
‘… but yeah, busy.’
‘Right.’
‘How were you?’
‘Probably not as busy as you. Actually, not busy at all. Well, pretty bored, I suppose. Pretty upset actually …’
‘Upset because of …’
‘No, not upset because of … geez, Brendan.’
‘What?’
She shook her head and looked down.
‘What?’ I said again.
‘Well, of course I was upset because of how we left things before Easter and then you didn’t even call me the whole two weeks when you knew I was dreading all that time stuck with my family and I would have loved for us to have done something.
Or if not done something, because I knew how busy you’d be, then at least to talk on the phone a few times. ’
‘I know, I just never seemed to have a minute.’
‘Not even for a phone call? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be the last thing on someone’s list?’
‘What’s this list?’
‘Actually, in fact, not even on the list!’
‘There’s no flippin’ list!’
‘So you didn’t have time for one, just one phone call?’
‘No, I really didn’t, Jennifer.’
‘That’s so hard to believe, Brendan.’
‘It’s true.’
‘It’s not, there’s something else.’
‘Well … if I’m honest … I was annoyed at you … what you said … about me making the night of the formal all about Ronan and you being jealous of that …’
‘I wasn’t jealous …’
‘Well …’
‘I wasn’t jealous!’ She said it so loud that heads at the table behind her turned to look.
‘Then what were you?’
‘I don’t know what I was but I wasn’t that! I told you it wasn’t the night I had expected it to be, and I’ve been regretting it ever since because it’s obviously made you think I’m a bad person.’
‘I don’t think you’re a bad person.’
She looked around to see if people were watching.
I reached across the table to take her hand and her head spun back to me.
‘Jennifer, I do not think you are a bad person,’ I said with precision. ‘Why do you think I think that?’
She looked down.
‘Because … because I want you to make time for me the way you make time for Ronan, but because Ronan is … because he’s …
I just feel like I can’t ask you for that because I’m …
I’m not in the same position … as him.’ She pulled her hand out of mine.
‘How do I even talk about this?’ she said as if she were talking to herself.
How did we even talk about this? I didn’t know either.
I hadn’t thought of her side of things. Like me, she was having to work something out that she had absolutely no experience of.
We were each other’s first boyfriend and girlfriend – because I suppose that’s what we’d become without either of us saying it out loud – and that was entirely new for us.
‘Jennifer, please look at me.’ She did. ‘I’m sorry.’
Her head was down but her eyes were looking up into mine.
‘You’re sorry?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I have no idea what I’m doing half the time when it comes to everything; how to be around you, how to be around Ronan, my parents, Ronan’s parents, behind the wheel of the car, flippin’ French!’ I said, laughing, and she let out a reluctant little burst too.
‘Yeah, you need to seriously knuckle down on your French, it’s pretty bad …’
‘I know …’
We simply looked at each other.
‘I guess … Can you help me try again?’ I said.
Jennifer’s mouth opened, closed and then widened into the beginnings of a smile and then closed again.
‘I can try to help you try,’ she said. ‘Do you want to try?’
‘Yeah, I do. But I can’t make any promises I’ll get it right.’
‘Well, I can’t make any promises either,’ she said.
‘So, maybe we can promise not to make any promises about trying to try to help each other work this whole thing out?’ I said with exaggerated confusion.
‘Yeah,’ said Jennifer crinkling her nose, ‘something like that.’
‘Cool,’ I said.
We would have hugged, but the table was in the way.
‘Your food’s gone cold,’ I said.
‘It was pretty gross anyway,’ she said, looking down at her congealed pasta.
‘So, can I ask, how was it?’
‘How was … ?’
‘Your Easter break,’ I said.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘I really do.’
‘OK, well, night one, my sister arrives, we have dinner in this fancy seafood restaurant my parents love. They’re all talking about law school stuff and I make the announcement: I want to go to drama school.
I swear to God, my mum actually dropped her fork, you know how you see it in a film and it’s supposed to be for dramatic purposes?
Well, she actually did it! And they wonder where I get my talent for the dramatics from?
Then Dad said, “How stupid, Jennifer, don’t say things like that, eat your monkfish.
” I said that I was serious and I’m going to audition for RADA when I’m eighteen – it doesn’t mean if I get accepted that I’ll go but if I don’t try then I’ll never know and I’d regret it.
My sister was absolutely loving all this, sitting there smirking, crunching on croutons from her salad.
But it just goes to show how out of touch my parents are with me.
They shot down the whole notion, said there’s absolutely no way they’d pay for anything to do with drama school, that I should put it out of my head, don’t bring it up again, there’s a good girl, Jennifer.
Well, after that I more or less didn’t talk to them the whole two weeks and spent my time either reading in the back garden, studying in my room, but always having to attend the mandatory family dinner every evening that I’d eat quickly, excuse myself from and then go to my room to read some more. ’
She paused. I blew out through my lips.
‘Well, you did ask,’ she said.
‘I did,’ I laughed.
‘Nothing else to tell, really, pretty miserable.’
‘Feel even worse about not phoning you back now.’
‘Well …’
‘And your sister’s away again?’
‘Yeah, off to be the daughter that Mummy and Daddy want her to be and I’ll be … well, I’ll just be whatever.’
‘But drama school isn’t off the cards, is it?’
‘I don’t know, I’ll just get through my A levels first. I’ll probably get a part-time job and save up all the money I need to travel to London and audition when I’m eighteen.
I won’t even tell them, it’s clear they’re not interested in my happiness …
right, no, I’m off again! Just stop me, Brendan, I want to hear all about your break, some good news, please! ’
I told her all about our trip to Kilmare Forest Park and how it hadn’t ended as well as it started.
‘Goodness, poor Ronan,’ Jennifer said.
‘Yeah, it’s just crowds that really distress him.
We’d said about going to Portrush as well, but …
But it makes sense because I read this thing that said that for Ronan it’s pretty much like having a new identity to get used to.
Things like that aren’t going to happen overnight.
Even I struggled to get used to the difference … ’
An image of Ronan in my head in his wheelchair staring at himself in the mirror alone in his room.
Then an image of Ronan in the boys’ toilets combing his hair on the day the school photos were to be taken.
‘… but I don’t think about it much anymore,’ I said.
‘Whereas Ronan must be thinking about it all the time.’
‘I know. But his speech is coming on leaps and bounds; he said my name!’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, it was actually pretty emotional.’
She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. It felt good. It felt natural.
‘That’s so lovely – what else did you two get up to?’
I told her how I visited nearly every day, about our movie mornings, our walks from his house to the village at the quiet times, about our lunches and dinners along with his parents and the board games we played afterwards with dessert.
About how there never seemed to be enough hours in the day.
About how I didn’t want the Easter break to end.
‘You weren’t working at the funeral home on top of all that, were you?’ she asked.
‘I was, actually,’ I said, almost having forgotten I’d told her about that.
‘Any day I wasn’t at Ronan’s I was there and if I wasn’t at Ronan’s then I was doing extra driving lessons with Dad.
Theory test coming up, which should be OK, then the practical on the 3rd of July, most stressful birthday ever! ’
‘God, July, when it’ll all be over and the gruelling wait for results!’
‘Speaking of which, I did lots of studying too.’
‘Good, because I feel guilty that you’re missing Science revision right now.’
‘Ah, don’t worry. It was worth it.’
‘Oh, gee, thanks, you’d choose me over the periodic table, such a lucky girl.’
‘Actually it was Physics today – the solar system – so to choose us over the infinity of space is pretty decent.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s not bad; to choose us over all that stuff up there,’ she said, looking skyward.
The bell rang.
‘Geez, what happens to time when I’m with you?’ she said. ‘It seems to go on hyper drive or something. Feels like we haven’t had that in a while.’
‘Well, we haven’t.’
‘I didn’t eat anything!’
‘Me neither, here, take half,’ I said, taking out my lunch box and handing her half my peanut butter sandwich. We both took a bite at the same time and chuckled with full cheeks.
‘Missed you,’ Jennifer said amidst her chewing.
‘Me too,’ I said.
There were a lot of things I missed. I never thought school would become one of those things, but that place had given me so much.
Soon, it would be a place of memory.
Soon, all of it, in the past.