Chris’s eyebrows pull together. ‘What, like she thinks she can’t because she’s not . . . ? I mean, with the braces, and the . . .’ He nods downwards. ‘You know. She’s flat. She’s worried because of that? Jesus, that’s no big deal. It’s not like she’s some total ditch-pig. She just has to make, like, this much effort and she’d be fine.’
He was telling the truth about not being into Becca. He doesn’t want anything from her. He’s doing it all wrong, but all he wants is to build a castle around her and keep her safe.
‘Your sister,’ Selena says. ‘Who you were talking about. What’s her name?’
‘Caroline. Carly.’ That brings up a smile on Chris’s face, but it gets jammed with worry and breaks apart.
‘How old is she?’
‘She’s ten. In a couple of years she’s going to be coming here; Kilda’s. If I was at home I could talk to her, you know? Prepare her or whatever. But I only see her for, like, a few hours every couple of weeks. It’s not enough.’
Selena says, ‘Are you worried she’s not going to like it here?’
Chris sighs and rubs a hand up the side of his jaw. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I worry about that a lot. She won’t . . . aah. She does stuff like Becca: like she’s actually trying to be weird. Wearing jeans to the Valentine’s dance, that’s totally something she’d do. Like, last year everyone in her class was wearing those stupid bracelets, right? The ones with the different-coloured links and you all wear each other’s colours to show you’re friends, I don’t know. And Carly’s all pissed off because some girls slagged her for not having one. So I’m like, “Get one, I’ll buy you one if you’ve run out of pocket money,” right? And Carly turns around and tells me she’d cut off her arm before she’d wear one of those bracelets, because those girls aren’t her boss and she’s not their slave and she doesn’t have to do anything just because they want her to.’
Selena is smiling. ‘Yeah, that’s like Becca. That’s sort of why she’s wearing jeans.’
‘Well, what the fuck?’ Chris’s hands fly up, frustrated. ‘I’m not asking her to cut her arm off. I’m like, who cares if you actually want a dumb bracelet? You definitely don’t want to be that girl who no one will go near her and everyone’s texting around stories about how she eats her snot and pees herself in class. So just do this one tiny thing that everyone else is doing.’
‘Did she?’
‘No. I bought her the fucking bracelet, and she binned it. And if she pulls something like that in Kilda’s? People like Joanne, if Carly swans in here like it doesn’t matter what any of them think, they’re going to . . . Jesus.’ He rakes a hand through his hair. ‘And I’ll be in college by then; I won’t even be around to do anything about it. I just want her to be happy. That’s all.’
Selena says, ‘Has she got friends?’
‘Yeah. She’s not super-popular or whatever, obviously, but she’s got these two girls who’ve been her best friends since they were all in Junior Infants. They’re coming to Kilda’s too. Thank God.’
‘Then she’ll be OK.’
‘You think? They’re two people. What about everyone else? What about all them?’ Chris jerks his chin at the hall doors, the muffled jumble of beats and screams. ‘Carly can’t just ignore them and hope they leave her alone. It’s not going to happen.’
He sounds like they’re one great bristle-backed creature, laser-eyed and dribbling for throats to rip out, never sated. Selena realises that Chris is afraid. For his sister, for Becca, but bigger than that. Just afraid.
There are things stronger than that creature. There are things that could rip it limb from limb if they felt like it, spike its head a hundred feet high on a cypress tree and use its sinews to string their bows. For a second Selena sees the white arc of a hunting call flash across the sky.
‘Not ignore them,’ she says. ‘Just . . . not let them matter.’
Chris shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he says. For a second the full curves of his lips harden; he looks older.
Selena says, ‘Becca’s happy in there, right? In her jeans.’
‘She can’t exactly be happy about those geebags bitching about her.’
‘She’s not. It just . . . like I said. It doesn’t matter.’
Chris stares. ‘If that was you. If they were bitching about your dress. That’d be fine with you?’
‘I bet they are,’ Selena says. ‘I don’t care.’
He’s turned towards her on the steps. His eyes are hazel, a cool hazel speckled with gold. Selena knows if she could just touch him she could draw out the fear like snake venom, roll it into a glistening black ball and throw it away.
He demands – like he’s really asking, like he needs to know – ‘How? How can you not care?’
People talk to Selena. They always have. She doesn’t talk to them, except Julia and Holly and Becca. She almost never even tries.
She says, slowly, ‘You have to have something else you care about more. Something so you know that some geebags bitching aren’t the most important thing; you’re not the most important thing, even. Something enormous.’
It’s just words, sounds, it doesn’t come near what she means. This isn’t something you can tell.
Chris says, ‘What? Like God?’
Selena considers that. ‘Probably that would work. Yeah.’
He’s open-mouthed. ‘Are you guys going to be, like, nuns?’
Selena laughs out loud. ‘No! Can you see Julia being a nun?’
‘Then what . . . ?’
The more she tries, the more she’s going to get it wrong. She says, ‘I just mean: maybe, depending, Carly could be fine just the way she is. Better than fine.’
Chris is looking at her, very close and very intent, and his eyes have warmed. He says, ‘You’re a once-off. You know that?’
Selena wants to say nothing at all. The thing finding its shape in the space between them is so new, so precious, the wrong touch could burst it like a bubble. ‘I’m not anything special,’ she says. ‘It just worked out this way.’
‘Yeah, you are. I never talk to people about stuff like this. But this, talking to you, this is . . . I’m glad we came out here. I’m really glad.’
Selena knows, like he’s reached out and dropped the knowledge into her lap, that he’s going to try to take her hand. The handprint on her arm burns, a painless gold fire. She wraps her fingers hard around the cold stone edge of the step.
The hall door flies open, and Miss Long points at them. ‘Your time’s up. Back inside. Don’t make me come out there and get you.’ And she slams the door.
Chris says, ‘I want to do this again.’
Selena is still working to breathe. She can’t tell if she’s grateful or something else to whatever sent Miss Long. She says, ‘Me too.’
‘When?’
‘Next week, after school? We can meet outside the Court and go for a walk.’