Somehow only a week had passed since the day I’d pushed Meabh Kowalska down the stairs. On my way into school on Monday morning I saw Orla get out of her dad’s car. There was a beat between when she saw me and when she waved. I waved back.
“Who’s that?” her dad asked. He was a handsome man with a shaved head and dark skin like Orla. “I’ve not seen her before. Did she join your dance class?”
Orla sighed and cut her eyes to me as if to say, See what I mean? It made me feel like I’d done the right thing, even if Kavi had had to sacrifice his phone for a few days. A bit of pride swelled in my chest like a balloon inflating. I wasn’t used to that, but I’d helped her and it felt great.
She made a “come here” gesture at me and I actually did that thing where you look around to see if the person is gesturing at someone else. She wasn’t.
“Uh, hi,” I said meekly when I reached the car. I never knew how to act around parents. Holly’s mam thought I was bad news and I wondered if there was something about me that gave that impression.
“This is my friend Aideen. Aideen, this is my dad.”
For some reason I blushed.
“Hi, Mr. . . .” I trailed off, realizing I didn’t know Orla’s surname.
“Nice to meet you, Aideen,” he said, his lips quirking. “You must be new friends?”
“Yes, Dad, new friends. And now we have to go to class.” Orla pulled me away by the elbow and I waved goodbye to her dad, feeling a pang, wishing just for a second that it was real.
Holly and I bounced on our exercise balls during registration. I would have abs of steel soon. You wouldn’t be able to see them because of the comfortable layer of squish on top, but that was fine with me.
“Do you think if you were rich and famous and you gave loads of cash to charity, you’d tell everyone, or would you keep it a secret because then everyone would ask and you’d have to say no to some people?” I asked Holly seriously.
“I’d definitely tell everyone,” she said without missing a beat. “And I’d say I was telling them to ‘raise awareness’ and encourage other people to donate. Win-win.”
“Good point. So you don’t think there’s any secret philanderers?”
Holly stared at me for a minute.
“I think you mean philanthropists,” she said.
“Oh, what did I say?”
“Philanderer.”
“What’s that mean, then?”
“Someone who does loads of affairs.”
“Definitely not the same as doing loads of good deeds, then.”
“Not unless they’re really good at it,” Holly said.
“Like they want to make sure as many people as possible get to experience their mind-blowing moves.”
We both laughed and Ms. Devlin hmphed.
“Anything you’d like to share with the class?”
“We were wondering,” I started. Holly elbowed me to tell me to shut up. “How good you’d have to be at sex for it to be considered a public service to bag as many people as possible?”
There was a ripple of laughter.
“If that level of talent exists, girls, I haven’t yet encountered it,” Ms. Devlin drawled, neither scandalized nor particularly annoyed.
Ronan shuddered. “Miss, you cannot be telling us you’ve had sex.”
“There are a few nuns wandering the halls of this place, Ronan. I am not one of them. I’m sorry that comes as a surprise to you.”
Before he could reply, Ms. Devlin clapped her hands together and pressed on. I heard him mutter, “Devlin has the clap,” to the boy next to him. I really judged Holly’s friend Jill for going out with him. He was handsome, in a bland-white-guy-with-blond-hair-and-blue-eyes kind of way, but he was such a knob. There was a moment when the whole class realized that Ms. Devlin had heard him say it. I think every single person held their breath.
Ms. Devlin looked at Ronan like he was a spider and she was considering whether or not to squish him.
“Ronan. My sexual health is none of your business. However, chlamydia is a serious infection with long-term consequences, and is often undetectable. If any of you are concerned about sexually transmitted infections, I advise you to visit your doctor for regular testing. There’s no shame in that and you can talk to me anytime.”
We all exhaled. Ronan’s shoulders relaxed. He’d gotten away with it. I was a little disappointed. I knew Ms. Devlin liked to make things into a teachable moment, but still. Ronan was a worm.
Ms. Devlin smiled, and then added, as though she’d forgotten, “Oh and Ronan, go to Mr. Kowalski’s office and tell him what you said, please.” Ronan paled.
Ms. Devlin clapped her hands together. “Now, anyone in Mr. Walker’s geography class first period, you’re in luck. He is not in this morning and there was no sub available at short notice. So! You’re with me in PE with the third years.”
“Aideen cannot take part in PE today because she is suffering from hysteria.” Ms. Devlin sighed. “Aideen, tell me, what is hysteria?”
“Um, you know, when bitches be crazy?” I said.
“This is your most offensive illness yet.”
“Tell me about it.” I nodded my head vigorously. “Of course my doctor is a man. He was all like, you should stop reading and having opinions. So maybe I shouldn’t do any homework either?” I tried to look simply curious about her thoughts on the matter.
“Unfortunately, this note only covers PE. Perhaps you could use the time to get some homework done? I believe the cure for hysteria is overthrowing the patriarchy, and you won’t get much of that done if you’re held back a year.”
We both knew I couldn’t be held back in transition year, but I saluted her anyway and skipped off to the balcony.
Meabh had dragged her leg up the same stairs that had aided in her deliberate downfall, and she was sitting on the floor of my balcony surrounded by papers, highlighters, and an expensive laptop. She wore a strained expression. Her booted foot was stretched out to one side, which looked very uncomfortable. I couldn’t help but notice how in her awkward position her skirt had ridden up her thighs. She was wearing tights, of course, but they were sheer, and I felt strange about even noticing such things about Meabh. She was not my type, after all. My type was . . . I didn’t know, but it wasn’t Meabh. Her face was scrunched up in concentration. It was kind of sweet.
Not a word I’d normally use for the likes of Meabh Kowalska.
“How are you tits deep in work and it’s only nine fifteen?”
“I’m always tits deep,” she said absently. “I walk around brushing work off my nipples on a twenty-four seven basis.”
“Sounds chafey,” I said.
She murmured an affirmative noise and I took to the far corner of the bench that ran the perimeter of the balcony. I leaned against the wall and opened my Maths book. Might as well start with the thing I was failing most, if there were degrees of failing, and go from there.
We worked in near silence for half an hour, except for her exuberant typing and the sound of me gnawing the inside of my cheek hoping that my mouth would fill with blood and drown me because nothing in this book made the slightest bit of sense.
“Do you mind?” Meabh said after a while, sounding irritated.
“What’s your problem?”
“You keep sighing.”
“Do I?”
“Every thirty seconds. It’s distracting. What are you working on?”
“Maths.”
“I can see that,” she snapped. “I mean what topic specifically.”
“Trigonometry.”
She lugged herself off the floor with exactly zero grace and lumbered over to me. The boot was throwing her off balance.
“Are you gonna do it for me?” I said, brightening. “That would really help.”
She gave me one of her Meabh stares. The one that was half teacher, half international despot.
“That would solve your problem for five minutes. Would it help you actually improve in Maths?”
That felt like a rhetorical question.
She scanned my work with a frown on her face that deepened as she turned the pages.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, looking up.
“Right? That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“No, I mean, I think you’ve missed something somewhere. Were you off sick at the start of this unit?”
How to answer that? No, I was not off sick. Yes, I was often off and had definitely missed something. Multiple somethings.
“Wow, I’m offended you don’t keep track of my attendance.”
Meabh and I hadn’t actually shared a lot of classes since we were in primary school. It didn’t surprise me at all that she didn’t notice if I was absent a lot, but I sort of assumed Mr. Kowalski had my photo stuck to a dartboard in his home office and maybe she’d have asked about that. So self-involved of her not to have bothered.
“All right, come on, then. We find the hole, we fill it up.”
“Yeo,” I said.
“Fill the hole in your knowledge, you degenerate.”
“With the fingers of information?”
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. And then I saw it. She wasn’t exasperated. She was trying to look exasperated, but she wanted to laugh.
“Hah! You think I’m hilarious,” I said, poking her in the side.
“I do not.” She swatted my hand away.
“You do.”
“I absolutely don’t.”
“You do. You do. You do.”
“I do not. I think you need help with Maths, so let me give it to you.”
I opened my mouth but she cut me off before I could say what I was going to say.
“—Don’t even dare.” She pointed an accusing finger.
“I was going to say thank you,” I lied. “Get your mind out of the gutter. Jeez.”
Meabh looked skeptical.
Just as I had budged up to make room for Meabh beside me, a girl I recognized from the choir, Laura, appeared at the top of the stairs. She had long, wispy blonde hair and pale skin. Her eyebrows were so white they almost disappeared on her face.
Laura glanced awkwardly between me and Meabh. I’d barely ever spoken to her so I assumed she wanted to talk to Meabh and I wondered if I was meant to give them privacy. Laura hesitated before striding over purposefully and then seeming to lose her nerve again. She began wringing her hands.
“Do you want me to go?” I said finally, unable to bear this a second longer.
Meabh looked confused.
“No. I wanted to talk to you,” Laura said tightly, as though if she said the words through gritted teeth Meabh wouldn’t hear them.
Bewildered, I shrugged. “Okay . . . ?”
Her eyes flickered over to Meabh again.
“Well, I can’t leave!” Meabh pouted. “Do you know how much effort it took me to get up here?” She shook her boot at us.
There were several games of badminton going on in the hall below us. It was cold outside. I contemplated the options and then with purpose I marched over to the supply closet, opened it, and kicked aside a basketball. With a flourish I gestured Laura into the dark cupboard and gave Meabh a mystified look as I closed the door behind me.
“What brings you to my office?” I joked. It was pitch-black and only the crack from the door frame let any light in. Someday I would look back on this part of my life as a period when I spent more time than usual in dark cupboards.
“This is good,” Laura said, her voice wavering.
“It smells like rubber and sweaty hands,” I said, “but whatever tingles your jingles.”
“No, I mean it’s dark. Then I don’t have to look you in the eye when I say this.”
She was nervous and it was making me nervous.
“Okay . . . ,” I said warily. “Spit it out.”
“I need a favor,” she said.
I closed my eyes to gather patience. My “agent” was out there hustling on my behalf again, but it was just as dark with my eyes open as closed so it didn’t work.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Did Kavi send you to me?”
“Kavi? No, I heard from my sister that you had done some kind of favor for her friend Orla, and all you wanted in return was a favor back.”
So much for being sworn to secrecy.
“Well, that was . . . you know, a favor to a friend,” I said, smudging the details. I mean, initially I had thought she was Kavi’s friend, after all. Not that I owed him any favors either, but it was only a fib.
“But it’s true?”
“Yeah, I guess,” I said uneasily. It had been an interesting week. Meabh’s drama. The break-in. It was all kind of fun and exciting. So why did I feel unsure about doing it again?
“Would you do one for me?” she asked, a pleading note in her voice.
I thought about how happy Orla had been to see me this morning. Because she’d been desperate and I fixed it. But she’d deserved help. She was really stuck.
“Depends what it is,” I said finally. There had to be limits. If I was going to do this, and it looked like I was, then I couldn’t help everyone who asked. There’d need to be some boundaries. Though I didn’t know what they were yet.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said.
“All right.” I shrugged, though she couldn’t see it in the dark. It made no odds to me. I already hadn’t been able to tell people about my great . . . what was it? Philanthropy! My philanthropy had all been secret so far and I was good at keeping secrets for people. I’d been practicing my whole life. What was one more?
“No, I mean it,” she said, sounding very bossy for someone who wanted me to do her a favor.
“I offer a fully confidential service. Seal of the fuckin’ confessional right here,” I said. Then I thought of something else. “Unless you, like, murdered someone. I can’t be helping you move a dead body or anything. I do not have the upper-body strength. Trust me, I can’t even climb up a wall.”
“What has that got to do . . . Never mind. I didn’t murder someone.”
“Go on, then. Tell me your sins, child,” I said in my most priestly voice.
“If you’re not going to take this seriously—”
“No, I’m sorry, I am,” I apologized. I was dead serious in this room in the dark surrounded by deflated balls.
She took a deep breath. “I need you to get the morning-after pill for me.”
I waited.
That was it, apparently.
“Is that it?”
“Yes,” she said testily.
“And you’re willing to owe me a favor if I do this?” I said. One of us was getting the short end of the stick here and I needed to make sure she realized that for my own conscience. “A favor I can collect at any time.”
“That’s fine.”
“Why, though? I mean . . . okay, it’s a bit embarrassing. Like when you go in with a yeast infection and some nosy old biddie doesn’t give you space to say it privately to yer one behind the counter. But you’d get over it.”
“My dad is the chemist,” she said. “At Crossan’s.”
It was starting to make slightly more sense now.
“Well, he’s not every chemist, is he, though?”
“No, but he knows them all. It’s a small town. What if they recognize me?”
Far be it from me to question someone’s paranoia.
“Why don’t you get a friend to do it?” I asked.
“I don’t want to tell them!” she said, scandalized. “It’s awful enough as it is without everyone I know talking about it.”
“What’s so awful about you getting the ride?” I said. I hadn’t got the ride yet but I really wanted to get some practice in before I married Kristen and moved to Hawaii.
“Will you keep your voice down?” she said, though I was speaking at a perfectly low level and the only eavesdropper was a pile of gym mats covered in decades of teenage foot sweat.
“It was with my ex-boyfriend,” she went on. “They’re going to judge me for the backslide.”
“I don’t think you can get pregnant that way.”
“That’s not what that means,” she said, and I could practically feel the heat from her blush. “He broke up with me and broke my heart and then I slept with him the second he showed any interest again. I thought it meant he wanted to get back with me but it didn’t. It’s embarrassing. I should be less pathetic.”
She sounded really sad and I had an urge to hug her. I didn’t though because I was basically a stranger. I heard a sniff in the dark.
“Look,” I said in my softest voice. “You got your heart pulped. You missed someone and then you wanted to feel like they loved you again. That’s not pathetic. It’s your heart, it’s soft and mushy and it’s supposed to be and I’m sorry he thought it was okay to mess with it but that’s his mistake, not yours.”
She sniffed again. Then quite alarmingly, as I couldn’t see it coming, I felt a pair of arms flung round me. When I recovered from the surprise, I hugged her back.
I agreed to go to the chemist at lunchtime and Laura insisted on staying in the cupboard for a bit to sort herself out. Meabh gave me a curious look when I exited.
“Don’t ask,” I said.
“Another favor?” she guessed.
“I couldn’t possibly comment.”
I thought she might be nosy about it but she just nodded.
“All right, then. Trigonometry.”
Half an hour later my brain was burning. I clutched my head in my hands.
“Oh God, is this what knowledge feels like?”
“You are such a drama queen. You’re doing fine. You’re lucky you’re near the start of the unit. You didn’t miss too much.” Meabh was standing behind me, resting her forearm on my shoulder. “Don’t forget the unit of measurement or your answer means nothing.”
“Yes, miss,” I said, looking up at her. I noticed then, when she was so close to me, how long and dark her eyelashes were. At least they’d grown back after the exam stress. You’d probably look quite weird close up if you had none.
She’d have an absolute heart attack if she knew how behind I was on everything. We might have been at the start of trigonometry, but there were at least three other units I had struggled through without picking up any new knowledge. In fact, aside from Irish, trigonometry was now officially my best subject, and believe me when I say the gap was wide. But I did manage to get through today’s homework at least, and when we closed the book, I felt this weird sense of lightness. Knowing that there was at least one class today where I wouldn’t disappoint or anger the teacher was kind of nice.
Meabh looked forlornly at her own stack of work. She sat down beside me, stretching her leg out on the bench, and it was her turn to sigh. My lightness turned to stone and I felt horribly guilty all of a sudden. She had actual important stuff to be at and I’d taken up her time with my stupid homework.
“I’m sorry,” I said, really meaning it.
“What for?” she said, surprised.
“I’m wasting your time. What’s the point of me helping you get extra time to do your work if I end up using it for myself?”
She looked taken aback, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she expected me to be selfish as well as stupid.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said slowly. “I offered to help you. That’s not the problem anyway. It’s just . . .” She gestured limply at the carnage of her work area.
“Can’t be fucked?” I said knowingly.
She laughed. “Kind of the opposite. There’s so much I want to do, I don’t know where to start. We have to submit a brief paper for each policy we’re proposing. They have to be approved by the staff. After last year.”
Last year the only senior who ran for student council president had attempted exactly one change to the school: a free nacho bar for the café. Needless to say his term in office was not considered a success.
“Start with the most important,” I said, thinking of my own homework strategy.
“They’re all important,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“Hey, watch that or you’ll ruin the Disney princess eyelashes again.”
“Disney princess eyelashes?” Meabh said, sounding like she was trying to figure out where the insult was.
“How about you start with the easiest one then?” I asked.
Meabh cleared her throat. “Why the easiest one?” Her cheeks had turned slightly pink.
I didn’t think because it’s the easiest would satisfy her as well reasoned, so I thought quickly.
“Because when you finish it, you’ll feel accomplished, and then you’ll have momentum for getting the rest done.”
“That’s a good idea,” she said thoughtfully. “I could submit a simple one right away. It will show the voters that I’m serious about getting things done and I have workable plans.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the voters too much. They don’t have anyone else to vote for.”
“Thank God,” she said. Then she realized what she’d said and backtracked. “I mean, not because I don’t believe in the democratic process. I’d just hate for it to be one of those popularity things. Can you imagine Ronan running against me? He’d win because everyone hates me but his big input to the school would be, I don’t know, jelly-wrestling Wednesdays.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Hey.” I shrugged. “I don’t care if you want to take control of the student council by force and declare yourself emperor. It makes no odds to me.”
I believed that Meabh really did want to use her power to do good things and God knows the people in our school were not smart enough to see that. It was like Holly had said, you had to tell them what they wanted to hear even if it wasn’t going to do anyone any good.
“Empress,” she corrected me immediately. She couldn’t help herself.
“So what’s the easiest one, then?” I said, ignoring her.
“I had an idea for a green initiative. It can be implemented with zero cost and zero labor. In fact it will save the school time and money. Really I’m surprised it didn’t happen years ago.”
“Go get ’em, Emperor.”
“Empress.”
I rolled my eyes.
The door to the storage cupboard creaked open and Laura emerged, looking calm and collected. Apart from the streaky mascara on her face. She gave us both a dignified nod and walked downstairs without another word, as though nothing had happened.
