JOEY
“You need to do something,” Shannon all but begged when I stepped through the front door on Tuesday evening after an extra-long training session with the minors in the city. “Please, Joe, please, you have to do something!” With tear-filled eyes, she clung onto my arm like it was a life jacket. “There’s so much blood.”
“Jesus Christ, calm down,” I snapped, dropping my hurley and gear bag on the hallway tiles. “What’s after happening?” I demanded, flustered, as I glanced around wildly. “Who’s bleeding?”
Hiccupping out a sob, Shannon dragged me up the staircase, stumbling over her own legs, until we were on the landing.
“In there,” she choked out, pointing to the bathroom. “In there, Joe.”
“Mam,” I strangled out, chest-heaving, as I threw the bathroom door open and barreled inside. “Mam!”
“It’s not Mam,” Shannon cried out. “It’s—“
“It’s okay,” a small voice said, and my legs gave way beneath me.
“No.”
“It’s okay, Joe.”
No, no, no.
“Really, I’m okay.”
Please God no.
Sinking to my knees on the blood encrusted floor, I just stared helplessly at the small child leaning over the side of the toilet, and the steady flow of blood coming from his nose.
Completely fucking reeling, I felt my head grow light as memories from what felt like a lifetime ago bombarded me.
“It’s okay, Dar,” I wheezed, leaning heavily over the toilet bowl, as a mixture of vomit and blood continued to heave from my black and blue stomach. “I’m okay.”
“Joey,” Darren croaked out, as he knelt beside me and kept a steadying hand to my back. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. I had training.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I strangled out, as the pain of having my seven-year-old nose broken threatened to consume me. “I don’t care,” I continued to say over and over, hoping that if I said it enough times, it might come true.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Tadhg tried to comfort me by saying, as he spat a mouthful of clotted blood into the toilet bowl. He pressed a fresh wad of tissue to his clearly broken nose as the skin under his eyes already started turning a yellowish brown. “Really, Joe, it doesn’t even hurt.”
“He’s gone,” Shannon hurried to fill in. “I think he left because he knew you would be home soon.”
“Home soon,” I mumbled, shaking my head.
“Yeah,” she replied softly. “You’re usually home by now.”
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t here to protect you,” I heard myself whisper, numb to the bone, as I watched him churn in pain. “I had…training.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tadhg replied, giving me a horrible taste of Deja vu. “I don’t care.”
“What happened?” I strangled out, feeling my heart hammer violently in my chest. “What the fuck happened, Tadhg?”
“Dad hit Shannon,” Tadhg bit out. “So, I hit Dad.” He spat out another globber of bloodied snot. “Dad hits harder.”
“Jesus Christ,” I choked out, staggering to my feet, when a surge of panic rocketed through me. “Ollie and Sean?“
“Are in your room listening to music,” Shannon hurried to say. “I hope that’s okay. It’s the only place they feel safe.”
It wasn’t okay.
None of this was okay.
I’d been knocked on my ass again, and I was losing the will to get back up on my feet.
“Are you staying home tonight?” Shannon asked. “Or do you have plans with Aoife?”
“No,” I replied, pulling my phone out of my pocket and quickly unlocking the screen. “I don’t have any plans.”
Joey: Change of plans. Can’t meet up tonight. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.
Molloy: Absolutely unacceptable, Joseph. I’m outraged.
Molloy: Joke. Hope everything’s okay?
Joey: All good. See you in the morning.
Molloy: Okay.
Joey: I don’t love you. x
Molloy: I don’t love you back. <3
Sliding my phone back into my pocket, I pushed all thoughts of Molloy out of my mind and got down to the business of cleaning up my parents’ mess.
FAVORITE EXCLUSIVE FRIEND
SEPTEMBER 1ST 2004
AOIFE
“Look, Neasa, it’s the boyfriend stealing bitch herself.”
Resisting the urge to laugh out loud in their faces, I pretended to ignore the girls from my class, as they shuffled past me on the footpath outside of school on Monday.
“What a bitch.”
“Such a bitch.”
Grinning to myself, I continued to suck on my lollipop, thoroughly amused by Rebecca’s blatant dislike of me.
I had no doubt that the scarlet woman label they assigned to me back in fifth year would follow me into the months ahead, but I had a hard time caring.
Especially when. scarlet women got to kiss sexy bad boys like Joey Lynch.
Yeah, we had been liking each other exclusively for about nine months now, and while he went into panic mode every time I put a label on us, I considered myself to be his girlfriend.
Whether he liked it or not.
Sure, Joey fought me at every hand’s turn. He pissed me off to epic proportions, and drove me batshit crazy at times, but on the other side, I had never felt more alive, and more like, well, me than when I was with him.
The truth was that nothing about being with Joey was easy, and yet being with him felt so incredibly right.
Like I was exactly where I supposed to be, with exactly who I was supposed to be with.
Excitement thrummed to life inside of me the minute my eyes landed on him, walking up the road towards the school, with his little sister in tow.
Feeling ridiculously perky, considering it was the first day of a new school year, my last one, I tossed my lollypop in the nearby bin and strolled down to greet them both.
“Nice shirt.”
“Nice legs.”
Hooking an arm around my waist, Joey pulled me roughly to his chest and kissed me hard.
“Yeah,” he said against my lips. “It’s going to be a good day.”
“Is that an analogy for something dirty,” I teased, pulling back to look at him, only to feel my stomach somersault – and not in a good way – when my eyes landed on his face. “No.”
A surge of sadness threatened to drown me as I took in the sight of fresh bruises.
It hurt to look at him sometimes.
To see the marks and bruises on his skin.
It made me so utterly depressed to think about the life he lived when he wasn’t with me.
I loathed the fact that he had been thrust into playing the role of both mother and father to his siblings because his shitty parents wouldn’t do their job.
It sucked.
It pissed me off that they depended on him for every bloody thing.
Especially his mother.
She was the worst one of all.
Sometimes, I wanted to stand in front of him and scream back off to his family.
He has a life of his own to lead!
Because I knew in my heart that he would never leave Ballylaggin and take a year out to travel.
Not while those kids were still in that house.
No, because he needed to work to pay for his parents' mistakes.
I knew that I was extremely selfish for wanting his family, kids included, to back off and leave him alone. I mean, they were little kids for Christ's sake.
They depended on him.
Still, that didn’t stop me from wanting to snatch him away and keep him safe, from wanting to give him a safe place to fall, to stay, to rest, and recover.
Of course, Joey was as closed off now as he ever was when it came to his home life.
He never wanted to talk about it, and whenever I tried to broach the subject, it usually resulted in a fight, with him storming off with those assholes from the terrace.
And that was something that scared me almost as much as when he was at home.
I didn’t know what to do, how to help him, or how to exist in his complicated world.
His parents made me feel homicidal.
His siblings made me feel helpless.
His smoking friends at school made me feel uncomfortable.
And his friends from the terrace made me feel entirely unwelcome.
Especially that dickhead Shane Holland.
But I cared enough about him to want to stay.