35 | The Consequences of Kissing Boys in School
The Consequences of Kissing Boys in School
Molly
FIVE OR SO minutes into getting lectured by Principal Lynch, it occurs to me that this is not my partner in crime’s first offense.
I shift my eyes toward Niall, narrowing them a little. But he doesn’t see me because his eyes are fixed ahead—horror filling the pools—watching Principal Lynch.
“—and while I understand that hormones are an inevitable factor at your age, Mr. Blue, we simply cannot have students engaging in this sort of flagrant behavior in the halls,” Lynch drones on, adjusting his spectacles.
“Especially not in the Art Wing, which, despite its reputation for creativity, is still part of a Catholic educational institution.”
This school is Catholic?
I hear Niall huff a frustrated sounding breath, not even bothering to argue the fact that if Deputy Walsh hadn’t decided to take his daily piss break at just the right time, no one would have even seen us.
His leg (the bad one, I think) is bouncing all over the place, and his fingers are drumming on his polyester clad thighs. Meanwhile I sat perfectly still, keeping my eyes fixed on the chipped little sign on Lynch’s desk displaying his name and status.
Lynch leans back in his chair. “Now, with all things considered, given your... history, Niall, and your status as a newcomer, Molly, I will be speaking to your mothers once they arrive. The three of us can discuss how to move forward.”
Niall’s knee stops bouncing. “What?”
“You called our mothers?” My eyes snap up.
Lynch displays a thin, mirthless smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Of course. School policy on public displays of affection requires parental notification. We find it’s the best way to ensure the... boundaries... are understood at home as well as on campus.”
Great. Just beautiful.
As if on cue, the intercom buzzes. Ms. Carrie, the receptionist, pokes her head in. “Mrs. Blue is here, Principal. And so is Ms. Lockhart. Shall I send them straight here?”
“Yes, please, thank you,” Lynch nods, looking way too pleased. I glance at Niall, trying to catch his eye, but he’s looking at his feet now.
Our mothers appear in the doorway a second later. Mrs. Blue looks resigned—further reminding this was not Niall Blue’s first rodeo when it came to kissing girls in school—wearing a grey knit cardigan. My mother was right beside her, in a yellow blouse and looking amused enough to piss me off.
Kill me now.
“Right,” Lynch stands up to greet them. “Molly, Niall, if you’ll just step outside so I can have a word with your parents in private, please.”
The two of us don’t need to be told twice. We scramble out of the office like the floor is on fire. Niall slumps into one of the molded plastic chairs in the hall outside of Lynch’s office, and I follow the repeat offender’s lead. He drops his head into his hands, rubbing his temples.
“We’re fucked.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, staring at our feet—his black shoes and my red converse against the background of the scuffed linoleum floor. My heart was racing inside my chest, beating like it wanted to burst out of my rib cage. “That’s an understatement.”
He’s silent for a long moment, before tilting his head sideways in his hands, looking at me through the messy fringe of his hair. A small grin is playing on his lips. “So... on a scale of one to ten, how good would ya say the kiss was? Worth the looming threat of whatever they throw at us?”
I smack his arm. “Shut up, Niall! We’re in enough trouble.”
“I’m serious,” he straightens up. “I mean, if I’m gonna be grounded until the Leaving Cert, I’d like to know if I put in a man-of-the-match performance.”
I try to keep a straight face—I really do. I want to stay angry at him for the drinking and the lying, and the way he made me melt against him in the Art Wing and forget about all that in favor of his lips. But everything about this was way too much, and laughter bubbled out of my throat.
Within seconds, the two of us were a giggling mess, clutching our sides and trying to muffle the sound with our sleeves to try and control ourselves.
“You’re such... such an idiot,” I say through my laughter, wiping the happy tears from my eyes.
He inches closer, his smile staying in place but his eyes thoughtful. “What do I have to do to be a forgiven idiot? Because I really am sorry.”
I open my mouth to answer, but before I can the office door opens and we both snap into faux poses of solemnity. Our mothers emerge, looking strangely pleased. They’re talking in hushed, friendly tones and smiling at each other.
Mrs. Blue raises an eyebrow at Niall, and he starts to vibrate with repressed laughter again, while I do my best to look like I’ve spent the last twenty minutes in prayer.
“Right, so, we will be having a very long chat in the car, Niall Patrick,” his mother says, her voice pleasant but firm. She turns to my mother, smiling wider. “Genevieve, it was lovely to properly meet you. I’ll see you on Saturday evening, then. Is pasta alright for the girls?”
“Pasta would be wonderful,” my mom smiles, her eyes flicking to me with a look I can’t quite decipher. “Thank you, Aine.”
I follow my mother outside, to her car, my stomach twisting with dread the whole time. She doesn’t say a word until we’re both buckled in and the engine’s humming.
“So,” she says lightly, as she pulls out of her spot. “Kissing boys in school now, are we? That’s quite the social step, I’ll have to say.”
I groan, dropping my head against the cool glass of the window. “Mom, please. Just ground me and get it over with.”
“Ground you?” she laughs. “I hardly think that’s necessary. I was young once, I know how it is. And his mother and I convinced your principal we would deal with this issue at home.”
I lift my head a bit. “What does that mean?”
“We’re going to have a family dinner on Saturday.”
“A family dinner?”
“Yep,” she smiles brightly. “Our family... and his family.”
I shake my head quickly. “Mom, no, we can’t.”
“We can’t?” She looks confused. “Why not?”
“Because—” I scramble for an excuse, and realize I already have a perfect one. “Dad’s coming on Saturday, duh.”
“Oh. Right, well, I’m sure your father will be absolutely elated to meet your boyfriend while he’s here.”
“Niall is not my boyfriend,” I snap. The words hurt me to say almost as much as his words in the art wing hurt to hear—you’re not my girlfriend. But it was true. We weren’t together.
He wouldn’t want to be with you if he knew.
I had secrets far worse than a drinking problem or a sports injury.
“Okay, your ‘lover’ then. Your ‘paramour.’ Whatever terminology you prefer in this century.”
“I’m going to jump out of this car,” I mutter.
“You know, Molly,” she says softly, eyes still trained on the road ahead. “I’m sorry—for not being there for you the last four years, for everything that happened after Jamie left. And for just... coming back and dragging you and Lorraine to Ireland. I’m trying to be better.”
The sudden shift in tone catches me off-guard. I feel all the old, pushed down feelings bubbling up but I push them back down. Being angry or sad won’t fix anything.
“I think Lorraine likes having you around,” I finally say, staring at my lap.
My mother sighs, gripping the wheel tighter. She doesn’t push. She knows better.
We drive home in silence.
??ˋ ?? ?ˊ?
“WELL, THAT'S CERTAINLY an interesting story,” Dad says. I can tell by his amused tone Mom must have already relayed the story to him, and that his reaction was second-hand.
“Ha-ha,” I say sarcastically, flopping onto my bed and staring at the ceiling. “It’s so funny, Dad. Can’t you two just be normal, jerky parents and ground me instead of forcing me into a cross-family dinner?”
“Now why would I do that when I love torturing you?”
“You’re the worst.”
He laughs, the sound making me irrecoverably homesick for my father. He worked a lot when we lived at home, but at least we still lived in the same country.
“So,” he continues, his voice still in a playful, probing tone. “This boy, Niall. He’s one of your teammates, right? The captain?”
“Yeah, he’s Claire’s brother, I told you about her,” I say, trying to make my tethering to Niall sound as casual as possible. “It’s nothing, Dad. We kissed once, it’s not a big deal.”
“Once?” Dad repeats. “Just once, Molly?”
I cave. “Okay, fine, maybe three times. But we only got caught once. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“I never said he was.”
“Yeah, right, but I’m sure you’re thinking it,” I say. “And I don’t doubt Mother implied as much.”
“Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t,” he says.
I ask about Nona and how work is going, and he finally lets the endless teasing go and tells me about home. He says he’s considering getting cats and naming them after us, because that’s his idea of a joke.
Once we hang up, I’m ready to go to bed. I’m about to go say goodnight to Lorraine, when a tentative knock sounds on the door.
“Come in,” I call, thinking it’s my little sister.
But it’s not Lorraine. It’s Jamie.
“Hey,” she says softly, stepping further into the room without asking. I expect anger to fizzle up in my chest, to explode at her like I had the other day, but nothing comes.
She looks smaller than she ever has. When I was ten, Jamie was a giant. She was the coolest person in the world—the big sister who taught me how to braid my hair and fake a stomach ache so I wouldn’t have to do chores. Then she was just... gone.
She’s still gone. This young woman has her face, but my old sister is long gone. And for some reason, right now I’m realizing I’m never getting her back.
“Molly,” she starts, sitting at the chair by my desk.
“I can’t keep doing this. I can’t live in this house with you hating me when you don’t even know why I left.
I just want to explain everything to you, okay, and maybe you’d understand.
I’m not asking you to forgive me, I just want you to know. Mom thinks I should tell you.”
“I know why you left,” I snap. “You and Mom fought every single day. You hated it there. You hated her. So you ditched us. You ditched me.”
Jamie looks down at her hands, picking at her cuticles. “I didn’t hate her, Mols. We didn’t fight because of her, we fought because of me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I... I was using,” she says slowly. “Drugs. It started with pills and then it was anything I could get my hands on. Mom knew about it, and that’s why we were always fighting.
She... I left because she was going to send me to rehab.
I didn’t think I was an addict, Molly. I didn’t see it as a problem, and by the time I did I was already too dependent on it. ”
The room felt too small, like it was tilting sideways and I was being tossed against the ceiling, my mind replaying every fight Jamie and Mom had when I was younger. I had blamed Mom. I’d thought she was overbearing, cruel, a warden. I blamed her for Jamie leaving.
“I spent four years in a total blur,” she continues. “Living in cars, staying with bad people who only made things worse. Two years ago, when I was in Seattle, I hit rock bottom. I thought I was going to die. And she was the only person I could think of calling.”
I could feel a coldness spreading through my chest, lungs filling with phantom water. “Mom?”
Jamie nods, a tear finally escaping and trekking down her cheek.
“She flew out the next day. She got me into rehab there, but it didn’t stick the first time, or the second.
She had just started working in Ireland, and was able to get me into a specialized treatment center in Dublin.
I was there for a year—I’d just gotten out in September. ”
All the puzzle pieces were clicking together in my mind. All the times Jamie went to Dublin with Mom—I’d thought she just had some sort of job there too. But...
“I’m in outpatient therapy now, three times a week,” Jamie says, confirming my suspicions I hadn’t even voiced. “I’m clean now, Molly. But I still feel so shitty for what I did to you.”
I look away from her, my eyes landing on a photo of me and Dad on my bedside table. My dad, not Jamie’s. Jamie’s father was a man I’d never met, someone no one in my family ever talked about.
“Why didn’t Mom just tell me?” I hear myself asking. “I was so mad at her after you left. She just let me blame her for everything.”
“Because you were just a little kid, Mols. She wanted to protect you. I wanted to protect you,” she says, wiping under her eyes. “I can’t fix the last six years. I can’t take any of it back. But I’m here now, and I really want to try again.”
A wave of nausea rolls through me. My whole reality seems to have shifted all in the matter of a few minutes. Suddenly my sister didn’t just leave me because she couldn’t stand my mother. My mother wasn’t a cold, controlling woman who chased her daughter away.
I open my mouth, intending to tell her everything, but instead just say, “I’m sorry, too. For not letting you explain earlier.”
She rises from her seat, moving to sit next to me on the bed. She doesn’t reach out—she just sits beside me, leaving room for me to pull away if I want to.
“You don’t have to apologize, Molly. You didn’t know,” she says, brushing her fingers against mine. “But... I’m here now. And whatever happened while I was gone, whatever you need... I’m here. We can fix it together.”
My throat tightens.
You can’t fix it, I think. Telling her wouldn’t fix it, I reason. It would still be there. The pain would still linger, the nightmares would stay, the memories wouldn’t ever go away.
You can’t fix what he did.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper, squeezing her fingers.
It’s not everything—not even close—but it’s a start.