Chapter 41 #2
I used all my strength to pull out from under him. His arms gave way and he toppled down with his head slamming into the space between my eyes. My ears pinged and rang, muffling out sound.
Kevin’s face was above mine, red, sweating. Checking my face to see if I was OK. His lips moving. Saying something.
‘Can you not hear me?’ he shouted through the dullness in my ears.
I was trying to make his face come back into focus but it looked fuzzy.
‘Brendan?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That was flippin’ sore.’
‘Aye, well you shouldn’t have been such a wee pansy,’ he said, getting up onto his feet and looking down at me. It seemed like he was about to offer his hand to help me up but he stopped himself.
‘Did you see him?’ he said.
‘What?’ I said through the haze in my head.
‘Did you see him? My granda?’
Kevin was still out of focus but the memory I had of his granda was clear; seeing him looking peaceful in his coffin in the chapel of rest when I helped Mr Feeney carry in some bouquets of flowers the day before the funeral, the day before his coffin was to be sealed shut and put in the back of the hearse that I had gleaming for him.
‘Yeah,’ I said, confused.
Kevin scrunched his mouth up.
‘I didn’t,’ he said.
I lay there, looking up at him.
‘Did you hear me? I didn’t fuckin’ see him.’
‘Because … why?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Because … why? … Because it was too …’
‘Too what?’ he said. ‘Don’t say “hard”.’
‘Too … much?’ I said.
He looked down.
‘Because I just fuckin’ didn’t …’ he said ‘… and you fuckin’ did and …’ I thought he was going to kick me, but he stepped back. ‘And now I’ll never …’ He looked up into the sky and took an unbalanced step back. ‘I’ll never have to look at you ever again.’
He turned and stalked off.
I lay on the ground watching him go.
He never looked back; he meant what he said.
I sat up and felt blood run out of my nose. I leaned forward and caught the drips with my hand and stared down at the red pooling in my palm. I made my way to my feet, still catching the drips as I stood. I was the only one in the playground. I started to laugh.
My last day at school ending how my first day had begun – in blood.
My feet took me to the boys’ toilets. I stood over the sink, the same one I stood at when Ronan came with me that day all those years ago. The scene was just the same but I was taller and I was alone. I let the drips fall into the white basin.
‘If you could only see me now,’ I said to the Ronan who wasn’t there.
The drips stopped.
I straightened and looked at myself in the mirror.
I wiped the blood away with the back of my hand and washed it off under the cold tap.
I took a paper towel and blew my nose to clear it and then looked at myself properly.
Without the blood I might not have known anything had happened to me at all.
The only giveaway was my dishevelled uniform, which I decided to fix even though it didn’t matter anymore.
Tucking in my shirt, redoing my tie, straightening everything out. The model schoolboy.
But still the dark feeling was there.
Why?
I let my feet carry me once more.
It wasn’t a surprise that I ended up outside Mrs O’Neill’s room.
‘Brendan,’ she said. That voice. ‘All done?’
‘All done, Miss.’
‘How does it feel? You look very flushed or something.’
‘Do I? Must be the release of it all,’ I said, deciding not to mention the incident with Kevin. ‘I don’t know how it feels, Miss, that’s a good question. I feel a bit numb, I don’t know why, it’s not how I thought I’d be feeling. I thought today would feel, I don’t know … bigger.’
‘Well, the year you’ve just had was big, wasn’t it? A year like no other. I’ve personally never known a student to have a year like it. I don’t mind telling you this now, Brendan, because it’s the last day, but you’ve been in my prayers.’
‘Thanks, Miss. I’ve been praying a bit too, but only recently, St Joseph.’
‘Patron saint of exams, good choice.’
‘And pilots.’
‘Yes, that too.’
‘Because I did pray to him for me and exams but also for Ronan, I’ve had it in my head that Ronan should be flying, not the actual in-the-air sense, but do you know what I mean?’
‘Trying to kill two birds with the one saint, Brendan? Or, well, not kill …’
‘Yeah, maybe more like … launch two birds with the one saint?’
‘There we go, bodes well for your English exam.’
We smiled at each other.
‘I’m proud of you, Brendan. I only prayed not because I thought you needed it but because it’s all I felt I could do. You’ve been an exceptional student and you deserve good results.’
‘Ah, I hope so, Miss, I gave it my all.’
My hand went to the inside pocket of my blazer.
‘Miss, can I give you something?’ I took out my wallet and unzipped it. ‘It’s a wee holy medal I found earlier in the year, I forgot I had it until now but it just came into my head for some reason. I haven’t got you a proper present or anything but maybe this is something you’d like?’
‘Oh, Brendan, thank you, it’s a gorgeous wee medal, where’d you get it?’
‘I found it in the car park at St Matthew’s, it’s where I was doing my driving lessons. It’s one of those holy relic ones, it’s got a saint on the back but I can’t make it out.’
‘Thank you, Brendan, it’s lovely,’ she said, flipping it over and bringing it close to her face. ‘No, I can’t see what saint that is myself. Maybe I’ll get it polished up or …’
She seemed to drift off in her thoughts as she continued to stare at the medal in the flat of her palm.
‘Or maybe I’ll just keep it the way it is,’ she said, closing her fingers around it, ‘it’s not really about seeing, is it? This faith business.’
She looked up at me and smiled.
The inevitable ‘goodbye’ was coming, I think we could both feel it and didn’t know how to do it.
‘You know, hardly anyone in the class has called in to see me today and here was me thinking I was their special teacher,’ she said. ‘Straight home for you, is it?’
‘Yeah, but then going to Ronan’s for a reunion and a celebration thing too, I think. I haven’t seen him this whole time.’
‘I know, short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain; friends for life, you two.’
‘We really are, Miss. Remember that day I was in here crying and you made me see it the right way with Ronan? “The same old friends but in a new way”? Well, it doesn’t feel new anymore, it’s nearly getting to the “same old friends” part now and I wouldn’t have had that if it hadn’t been for you, Miss. ’
‘I don’t know, Brendan, I think you’d have found that path yourself, I just put it in words.’
‘Words that have made everything better, Miss. Today’s a better day.’
‘And what about you, Brendan? How are you today?’
The dark feeling hadn’t gone but I was still able to say a word, despite everything else, and know that it was close enough to being true.
‘Happy.’
‘Well, that makes me happy too. You’ve been a pleasure to have in my form class, I’m going to miss you, now go before I start crying.’
‘Another biblical flood, Miss?’
We both laughed.
‘I’m going to see you on prize day anyway,’ she said.
I wanted to hug her but it didn’t seem right.
‘OK, Miss. Thanks, Miss. Bye, Miss.’
I walked away from her room and through the grounds of the school one last time.
Past classrooms that had younger years’ lessons continuing on; just another day for them.
I walked through the gates that I used to wait for Ronan at.
Those gates were always open, but when I walked through them and away from the school for the last time, in my head, they closed. They locked.
I caught the public bus home. I was the only student on board.
Two other passengers were elderly women sitting together silently; another was a woman with a baby, it cried the whole way, she couldn’t make it stop.
The driver let me out near the petrol station for me to make my last schoolbag-lumbered walk home.
When I got there and stood on the front doorstep I could almost see myself from five years ago on that same step, posing for Mum to take a photo of my ‘first day at the big school’.
A tiny trace of that little ghost version of me was still standing there and I wanted to tell him to put a pack of tissues in his pocket, he’d need them for his nosebleed later; but then maybe Ronan wouldn’t offer to help him if he did that, so I let him go on.
When I closed the front door and stood in the hallway I was hoping that the dark feeling would be gone by then so that I could run upstairs, change into my normal clothes and get Dad to drive me to Ronan’s house, but it was still there.
‘Brendan?’
It was Mum’s voice from the living room.
When I opened the door she was sitting with Dad on the sofa. As soon as I saw their faces the dark feeling engulfed me. It had been trying to warn me about this moment.
‘What’s happened?’ I said. ‘What’s happened to him?’