They’ve been meeting for more than a month. It gets more obvious with every text that Selena is gaga about Chris, gooey, stupid in love. Julia has a hard time deciding who is the world’s biggest moron: the one who’s fallen in love with Chris the Sleaze Harper, or the three who pranced along next to her while she did it without noticing one single thing. She grits her teeth and mashes her elbow along the wall next to her till it’s scraped raw.
And then Julia gets to this morning. No wonder Selena looks spaced out. She just dumped Chris’s nasty arse.
The rush of relief almost throws Julia flat on her back on the bed, but a second later it drains away. This won’t last. Selena can’t even get through the dump text without babbling about how much she loves Chris, and he’s already come back with a wild text demanding to know WTF and begging her to meet him tonight. Selena hasn’t answered, but another few days of oh-please-I-need-you-so-much and she will.
Julia hears it clear as tapped bronze. Your chance. Your choice.
It takes her a long humming minute to understand what that means. To hold in one hand what will happen if she does, and in the other what will happen if she doesn’t.
Julia can’t breathe. She thinks like a howl: That’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair, whatever I do I’m going to get— I didn’t get off with Finn. I barely fucking touched him. I didn’t do anything I should have to pay for. The silence that meets her teaches her: this is not McKenna’s office. You don’t get to play with nitpicks, dodge whining around the edges of But-Miss-I-never-exactly-actually, not here. Unfair means nothing. She has been weighed up and the decision has been made. She has these few days before Selena takes Chris back, one last gift, in which to choose.
Julia thinks about throwing the phone at the wall and lining the pieces up neatly on Selena’s bed. She thinks about going to Matron and telling her she needs to swap to a different room, today. She thinks about getting under the covers and crying. In the end she just sits there on Selena’s bed, watching the sunlight slide across her lap and her arm and the phone in her hand, waiting for ringing bells and brisk feet to make her move.
‘So?’ Holly wants to know, tossing her bag on the bed. ‘What were you doing?’
‘What did it look like? Puking my guts up.’
‘That was for real? We thought you were faking.’
Julia glances at Selena before she can stop herself, but Lenie doesn’t look suspicious; she’s flopped down on her bed, still in her uniform, and is curled up staring at the wall. Julia is obviously the last thing on her mind.
‘What for? So I could be bored off my tits all day? I have a virus.’
Becca is pulling clothes out of the wardrobe and singing to herself. She breaks off to say, ‘Want us to stay here with you? We were going to the Court, but that was ’cause we thought you’d come too.’
‘Go. I’d be shit company anyway.’
‘I’ll stay,’ Selena says, to the wall. ‘I don’t want to go anywhere.’
Holly makes a face at Julia, tilts her head: What’s with her? Julia shrugs: How would I know?
‘Oh, yeah, I meant to ask—’ Becca’s head pops out of her uniform jumper, flyaway hair everywhere. ‘Tonight?’
‘Hello?’ Julia says. ‘I feel like crap. Remember? I just want to sleep.’
Please can we meet tonite, Chris texted Selena. Same time same place I’ll be there.
‘OK,’ Becca says, not bothered by the edge on Julia’s voice. A year ago she would have flinched like she’d been hit. At least that, Julia thinks. At least one good thing. ‘Maybe tomorrow?’
‘I’m on,’ Holly says, throwing her blazer at the wardrobe. Julia says, ‘Depends how I feel.’ Selena is still staring at the wall.
That night Julia doesn’t go to sleep. She curls up in a loose ball the way she usually sleeps, keeps her eyes shut and her breathing long and even, and listens. She has the back of her hand up against her mouth, where she can bite into it if she feels herself drowsing off.
Selena isn’t asleep either. Julia’s back is to her, but she can hear her moving around, restless. Once or twice her breath has a wet sound, like she might be crying, but Julia can’t tell for sure.
After a few hours, Selena sits up, very slowly, one move at a time. Julia hears her hold her breath, listening for the rest of them, and forces herself to stay slack and easy. Becca snores, a tiny delicate noise.
After a long time, Selena lies down again. This time she’s definitely crying.
Julia thinks of Chris Harper waiting in their grove, probably throwing rocks at rustles and pissing on the cypress trunks. She wants to pray for a tree to drop a branch on his head and smash his slimy brain all over the grass, but she knows it’s not going to work that way.
On Wednesday afternoon, as they get their books ready for study period, Julia says, ‘Tonight.’
‘You’re over your virus, yeah?’ Holly asks, tossing a copybook on her pile. The sideways slant of her eye says she’s still not convinced.
‘If it comes back, I’ll make sure and aim for you.’
‘Whatever. I just don’t want you puking your guts when we’re right outside Matron’s room and getting us all caught.’
‘You’re all heart,’ Julia says. ‘Becs, you on?’
‘Course,’ Becca says. ‘Can I borrow your red jumper? I got jam on my black one, and it’s going to be freezing out.’
‘Sure.’ It’s nowhere near cold, but Becca loves borrowing things, lending things, all the small rituals that blur the four of them into one warm space. If she had the choice they’d all live in each other’s clothes. ‘Lenie,’ Julia says. ‘Tonight?’
Selena looks up from her study schedule. She’s shadowy and thinner, the way she’s been all the last two days, like she’s in dimmer light than the rest of the room, but the thought of a night has raised a spark of what looks like hope. ‘Yeah. Definitely yeah. I need that.’
‘God, me too,’ Julia says. One more, she thinks. One last night.
They run. Julia takes off the second her feet hit the grass below the window, and feels the rush of the others build behind her. They stream down the great front lawn like wild birds thrown across the sky. In front of them the guardhouse glows yellow, but they’re safe as houses: the night watchman never takes his eyes off his laptop except to do his rounds at midnight and again at two, and anyway they’re invisible, they’re soundless, they don’t cast shadows; they could sneak up close enough to touch him, they could press their faces against the glass and singsong his name, he’d never blink. They’ve done it before, when they wanted to see what he did in there. He plays online poker.
They swing right, white pebbles fly up under their feet and they’re in under the trees, faster and faster down the paths, chests burning, ribs aching, Julia running like she wants to take them skimming right off the surface of the path and up, into the cartwheel moon. By the time they collapse in the clearing, she’s run everything else out of her mind.
They’re all laughing, with what little breath they’ve got left. ‘Jesus,’ Holly says, doubling over with her hand pressed to a stitch. ‘What was that? Are you, like, going out for cross-country next year?’
‘You just pretend Sister Cornelius is coming up behind you,’ Julia says. The moon is almost full, just one blurred edge for the next night to fill in, and she feels like she could leap the waist-high bushes from a standing start, up and over with her feet pedalling slow underwater circles in midair, down on her toes as light as a dandelion seed. She isn’t even out of breath. ‘“Girls! I have told you and informed you and let you know that you should never run on grass and herbaceous plants and – and verdant pastures—’
That explodes them. ‘“The Bible tells us that our Lord Jesus never ran or jogged or galloped—”’ Becca is helpless with panting and laughter.
Holly stabs a finger. ‘“—and who are you to think or believe that you are better than Our Lord? Well?”’
‘“You, Holly Mackey—”’
‘“—whatever class of a name that is, there’s no saint named Holly, I think we’ll have to call you Bernadette from now on—”’
‘“—you, Bernadette Mackey, stop running this instant—”’
‘“—and moment and minute—”’
‘“—and tell me what Our Lord would have thought of you! Well?”’
Julia realises Selena hasn’t joined in. She’s sitting up, with her arms clasped round her knees and her face tilted up to the sky. The moonlight hits her full on, burning her out to something you can only half-see, a ghost or a saint. She looks like she’s praying. Maybe she is.
Holly is watching Selena too, and she’s stopped laughing. She says, quietly, ‘Lenie.’
Becca props herself up on one elbow.
Selena doesn’t move. She says, ‘Mm.’
‘What’s wrong?’
Julia throws it at the side of Selena’s head like a rock: Shut up. This is my night my last night ever don’t you dare wreck it.
Selena turns her head. For a second her eyes, still and tired, meet Julia’s. Then she says, to Holly, ‘What?’
‘Something’s up. Isn’t it?’
Selena watches Holly tranquilly, like she’s still waiting for the question, but Holly is sitting up straight and she’s not backing down. Julia’s nails dig into the earth. She says, ‘You look like you’ve got a headache. Is that it?’
Those tired eyes move back to her. After a long moment: ‘Yeah,’ Selena says. ‘Becs, do my hair?’
Selena loves having someone play with her hair. Becca scoots over behind her and carefully takes out her elastic; hair spills down her back almost to the grass, a hundred kinds of white-gold, glinting. Becca shakes it out like delicate fabric. Then she starts running her fingers through it, in a steady, confident rhythm. Selena sighs. She’s left Holly’s question behind.
Julia’s hand is clamped around a smooth oval pebble that her nails dug out of the ground. She rubs damp dirt off it. The air is warm, flickering with tiny moths and with smells: a million hyacinths, the deep-water tang of the cypresses, the earth on her fingers and the cold stone in her palm. By now they have noses like deer. If someone tried to sneak up on them, he wouldn’t get within twenty metres.
Holly has lain back, one knee crossed over the other, but her hanging foot is bobbing restlessly. ‘How long have you had a headache?’
‘Jesus,’ Julia says. ‘Leave her alone.’
Becca stares over Selena’s shoulder, big-eyed, like a little kid watching her parents fight. Holly says, ‘Well, excuse me. She’s been like this for days, and if you have a headache that lasts that long, you’re supposed to go to a doctor.’
‘You’re giving me a headache.’
Becca says, in a too-loud burst, ‘I’m scared of the exams!’
They stop and look at her.
‘Duh, you’re supposed to be,’ Holly says.
Becca looks like she half-wishes she’d kept her mouth shut. ‘I know that. I mean really scared. Like terrified.’
‘That’s what the Junior Cert’s for,’ Holly says. ‘To make us so scared that we’ll behave. That’s why it’s this year, right when everyone starts going out and doing stuff. All that blahblah about how if you don’t get all As you’ll be working in Burger King for the rest of your life? The idea is, we’ll be so petrified we won’t do anything like have boyfriends or go to discos or for example get out at night, in case it distracts us and oh noooo! Whopper with fries please!’
Becca says, ‘It’s not Burger King. It’s . . . Like, what if I fail, I don’t know, Science, and they won’t let me do Honours Biology for the Leaving?’
Julia is surprised enough that she almost forgets about Holly and Selena. Becca’s never said anything about what comes after school, ever. Selena’s always wanted to be an artist, Holly’s been thinking about sociology, Julia likes the idea of journalism more and more; Becca watches those conversations like they have nothing to do with her, like they’re in a language she doesn’t speak and doesn’t want to learn, and is prickly for hours afterwards.
Holly is thinking the same thing, apparently. ‘So?’ she wants to know. ‘It’s not like you have to have Honours Biology because you want to do medicine or something. You don’t know what you want to be. Do you?’
‘I don’t have a clue. I don’t care. I just . . .’ Becca’s head is down, over her hands moving faster and faster. ‘I just can’t be in all different classes from you guys, next year. I’m not going to be stuck in, like, Ordinary Level everything when you’re all doing Honours and we never see each other and I have to sit next to Orla Stupid Burgess for the rest of my life. I’ll kill myself.’
Holly says, ‘If you fail Science, me and Lenie are too – no offence, Lenie, you know what I mean.’ Selena nods, carefully so her hair won’t tug. ‘We’ll all be sitting next to Orla Stupid Burgess together. It’s not like we’re all smarter than you.’