He picks it up and peers at it again. Again, the tug, the nausea, the sense that my body is connected to the cards and therefore connected to him.
“Roe, stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Touching them.”
“But … why?”
“I don’t know. It’s making me feel sick.”
“I don’t understand. Are you all right?”
“Give me a second, OK. Just give me a second.”
I line my back against the tunnel, close my eyes and breathe in and out, in and out. The wall is cold and damp, its grey wetness soaking through my coat and raising goose pimples on my spine.
Another car passes. Another flash of headlights, dancing on the thin skin of my eyelids.
A split happens inside my own head, like a TV screen divided into two. I am lost in the darkness of my own head, but I am also watching myself from the other side of the tunnel, seeing my head loll. Beads of sweat gather on my forehead, illuminated by the passing car.
“Maeve,” Roe says. Or I say. I can’t tell. I can feel my mouth saying my own name, but it doesn’t feel like my mouth.
I bury my face in my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs. Am I going to be sick?
Please don’t let me be sick. Please don’t let me be sick.
“Oh, shit, Maeve. Don’t pass out. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
He wraps an arm around my shoulder. “C’mon, Maeve. Get up. You can get up.”
“Mmmmno,” I mumble.
“OK, well, grand, I’ll just sit here with you until you can.”
He props himself against the wall, his arm still around me. I fall against him, snuggling into the crook of his neck. Through the sickening nausea, I can still pick up his smell. Smoky and sweet, clean clothes and faded deodorant. The faint hint of the O’Callaghans’ house underscoring everything. The ripeness of fresh sweat.
His hand starts stroking my hair, twisting a long brown length between his fingers.
I make a mental note to treasure this moment for when I don’t feel so dreadful.
After a few minutes, the nausea starts to lift. I still feel heavy and disorientated, but not quite as much like I’m about to vomit.
“You smell nice,” I say.
“Thanks.”
“I like that you don’t reek of boy.”
He laughs. “And what does that smell like?”
“Like Lynx Africa and Hugo Boss.”
“Ah,” he chuckles again. “No, this is a concoction of my own making.”
“Really?”
“Yep.” I can feel his face stretching into a grin. “Sure for Men and Chanel No. 5.”
We laugh together, the low chuckle of a secret reverberating through both our bodies.
I press my face deeper into his neck. “I just think you’re so cool.”
I can’t believe I’ve said it. Just like that. The word “cool” so ridiculous in my mouth, like an eighties throwback.
His chest expands and he lets out a long, low sigh.
“No one’s ever said that to me before,” he says. “I think you’re cool, too, Maeve. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. You’ve been cooler than me since you were eight.”
“Well, that is true.”
“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s go home. Your parents will be freaking out.”
I feel the warm, firm pressure of his hand in mine.
“Oh, hey,” he says. “We forgot the last card.”
He turns over the final card in the Lily spread and a tremor I mistake for passing traffic rushes through my head. A flash of light fills the tunnel, and I hear a scream that could be my own, or Roe’s, or that of a million people all screaming at once.
Spots form at the front of my eyes. Purple, blue, gold splotches that circle my vision. Within seconds, I feel the cold gravel embedding on my forehead. And I’m gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MY FINGERS WORK UP AND DOWN THE GUITAR FRETBOARD. As I press each string, I keep waiting for the sting of steel to prick at my flesh, but it never comes. The guitar feels natural. The strings an extension of my hand.
But I don’t play the guitar.
Examining my hands as they pluck out a jaunty, repetitive tune, I see that my hands are not my hands. For one thing, my fingernails are painted azure blue. For another, they’re about twice their normal size.
Holy crap, I’m in Roe’s bedroom.
Holy crap, I’m in Roe’s head!
I am sitting inside of his body like a spectator. His eyes are my cinema screen, his brain my armchair. The window is open and the vague flapping of laundry drying is just barely audible from the garden outside. It is summer. Last summer. It is nine months ago.
There’s a knock at the door. “Yeah,” I call, as way of welcome, and Lily comes ambling in. We might share the same gene pool, but she looks nothing like me. Never has. She’s all long and loping and fair. Skittish and strange like a springbok. I’m stocky and dark, a limping badger that fantasizes about life as a giraffe.
At that moment, I feel my Maeve voice crowding in, trying to break into Roe’s flow. How could he say that, it interrupts. How could he not know he’s as gorgeous as he is?
Lily sits cross-legged on the floor in front of my bed. I’m adjusting the truss rod on the guitar, determinedly not making eye contact with her.
“Mum is freaking out,” she says amusedly.
My Maeve voice says, About what? but my Roe voice just laughs bitterly.
“Do you want me to say anything to them?” Lily asks, peeking through her long fringe. “Tell them that it’s not a big deal, or whatever?”
“Nah, it’s fine. You don’t have to do anything.”
“OK,” she says.
We sit in silence. I start fiddling with the guitar. Just as Lily is about to excuse herself, my mouth – or, Roe’s mouth – starts moving.
“Do you think I should have denied it? Said it was … a computer virus, or spam, or whatever?”
Lily shakes her head. “No. They would have believed it, but no.”
“It would make for an easier life, though.”
“Easier for who?” Lily asks. “For them? So they can pretend they have a straight son?”
Oh, comes the Maeve voice.
“I guess.”
“Look,” she says, with a half-shrug. “Lots of people are bi.”
“Not everyone. Not O’Callaghans.”
We laugh, exhausted. We know we have good parents. But we also know that our mother and father look at their two weird children with a sense of growing unease. As if the sea monkeys they had acquired have evolved, too quickly, into parasites.
Parasites, giraffes, badgers. I never knew your head was so full of animal metaphors.
Get out of my head, comes the response.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE SNOW HAS GROWN HEAVIER NOW AND IS FALLING sideways into the underpass when I wake up.
Roe runs his hands through his curls in an attempt to get the mud out. We sit and gape at one another, unable to think of anything to say. Or at least, anything appropriate.
We look at each other, confused, and even though I’m no longer in Roe’s head, I know we’re both thinking the same thing: Did that really happen?
We have both, in a sense, been outed. I know that he’s bisexual. And he knows what I think of him. He could feel the long ribbons of adoration swirling around him as I lived in his head.
His face is mottled with confusion. Revulsion? I can’t tell. Oh God, somebody speak, somebody please speak.
“That’s why you wanted to leave the CoB meeting,” I say, finally. “You knew that Lily would never join a group that was that homophobic.”
Roe nods.
“I’m sorry your parents were rubbish,” I say. “About the … the queer stuff.”
“Thanks,” he says, his voice limp. “Sorry, Maeve. I don’t know if what just happened to
you happens all the time, whether that’s a side effect of your tarot readings or whatever, but I’m going to need a bloody minute.”
“Sure. Of course,” I reply hurriedly. “Only, that’s never happened before. Ever. Brand new. I have never lived in anyone else’s head before. I didn’t plan it! Oh God, do you think I planned it?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
Roe turns away from me. I scoop the cards up from the ground, the edges wilting. I brush them off on my coat, still protective of them despite all the drama they get me into. I chase after the final card in the reading as it tries to blow away down the tunnel, finally snatching it in my hands. This, the troublemaker.
The Lovers.
Oh Jesus.
I tuck the card back into the pack.
I am somehow extremely clear on what has just happened, but flummoxed as to how. I sat inside Roe’s mind like a guest, and lived his memories as though they were my own. His hands were mine. His reactions were mine. Yet at the same time, I could feel present-day Roe living through past Roe with me. We were all an orchestra: me, him and him in his bedroom.
We duck out of the underpass, the snow still falling heavily.
“Ever since I got the cards back, I’ve felt this strange … connection with them. Like there’s an invisible chain between me and them. And when you started touching them, I started feeling weird. It was like the chain grew another link, and you were it.”
“So you think this has to do with … her? The Housekeeper?”
“Maybe? Maybe it’s the cards in general. They’re haunted or something. Cursed.”
“Haunted. Cursed. Jesus Christ, what TV show are we on?”
“I don’t know,” I say miserably. “A hidden camera one?”
“You were in my memories, Maeve. You were inside my head.”
“I didn’t mean to be!”
“I have to go,” he says, massaging his temples and pacing in circles. “I have to go home.”
“Don’t!” I plead. “I mean … do, if you want to. But don’t stop talking to me over this. Please. It’s silly. And also, I don’t care that you’re bi. Like, at all. So if that’s a concern…”
“Jesus Maeve, will you shut up? For one minute will you just stop fecking talking?”
I nod, my eyes filling up with tears. I turn away and look at my phone. A message from Dad pops up.
Everything OK?
I stare at the screen. It’s only been twenty minutes since I texted Dad to say I was on my way home. We were only unconscious for a couple of minutes. Possibly seconds.
Yep. 5 mins away.
“I’ll walk you back,” Roe finally says.
“You don’t have to.”
“No. I do.”
Silently, we make our way to my house, the cosiness between us evaporated. I stare at the glistening leaves and frosted hedges miserably. This might be the most romantic Kilbeg has ever looked, and I am being punished by the boy I like for psychically occupying his brain. No way did those old Bunty annuals have this in their problem pages.
When we get to the driveway, I’m fully prepared to rush indoors and end this horrible awkwardness between us.
“Bye,” I say, turning away.
“Maeve, wait. We need to talk about this.”
Oh, now we need to talk?
“Look … I don’t know what’s happening. With us, with Lily, with your … cards. But I know that we’re linked to all of this, Maeve. I’m positive.”
“I think you’re probably right. And whenever I see … her, the Housekeeper, I mean, she’s always by the river. Always. Maybe some combination of you, me and the river made our brains come together in this weird way.”
Roe nods, so I keep talking, keen to build out the theory. “The memory we just … uh, shared … maybe these are breadcrumbs we’re meant to be following. And at the end, we’ll find Lily.”
Roe allows himself a small smile of relief. “That must be it,” he says. “You know, for someone who’s always beating herself up about being stupid, you’re pretty sharp, Maeve.”
“What do you mean always? I don’t go around wearing a dunce cap, or anything.”
“Get away out of that. You’ve got this big chip about your so-called brilliant siblings. You really think you’re that hard to read?”
“Yes,” I say, sulkily.
“I’m just saying, you don’t need to compare yourself or beat yourself up. You’re pretty good as you are.”
And he smiles at me, and my chest feels like it’s about to burst open.
“Will you meet me tomorrow? Same place again?”
“Of course.”
“OK.” He smiles thinly. “Maybe we can grab the bus together, too.”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
“I’ll text you?”
I’m so relieved that we’re still talking – that we’re still in this – that I throw my arms around his neck and hug him as tightly as my body will allow.
“Easy, woman!” He laughs, taken aback. “You’ll break me.”
I don’t care. I breathe in.
Sure for Men, and Chanel No. 5.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THERE’S TALK THE NEXT MORNING OVER WHETHER SCHOOL should be cancelled due to the snow, which is still falling in thin, misty drifts. Mum drives me to the bus stop and I wait in the car with her, warming my fingers off the heater.
“Let’s give it ten minutes,” she says. “If there’s a bus within ten, then it’s safe for you to get to school.”
“But I could slip on the ice and break my neck.”
“A chance I’m willing to take,” she says, tuning in the radio. Alan Maguire’s show is on, and the weather is his guest of honour. He cannot stop effusing about the snow: the unlikeliness of it, the weight of it, the trouble it’s causing, the fact that it’s only in this part of the country. There hasn’t been a freak snowfall in Kilbeg, he says, since the year 1990.
“1990 was the year I was pregnant with Cillian,” Mum says. “I remember that snow. I was on bed rest and couldn’t take Abbie out to play. She was livid.”
There’s the beginnings of a snowball fight happening on the tarmac as the bus pulls up outside school, people scraping dirty handfuls off car bonnets and pelting it at one another. Some of the St Anthony’s boys are hanging around, stuffing snow into each other’s necks and into the girls’ school bags.
I wonder, for a moment, whether anyone will throw snow at me. I walk through with my breath held, my hands on the straps of my rucksack. Nothing touches me. People run around. Through me, around me. Gasping, red, laughing with their teeth showing and their breath visible. The snow has brought something, some return to innocence that they’ve all been craving. This is the first real thing that has happened since Lily went missing two weeks ago, and it’s broken the tension of the moment.
Of course, no one’s going to hit me with a snowball. No one wants to remember I exist.
At lunch, I do my best to explain everything to Fiona. She’s fascinated by the Children of Brigid meeting.
“Two Truths and a Lie!” she gasps. “We used to have to play that in acting classes. Some people would take it way too far. They would, like, use it as a way to confess everything they’d be holding in. I used to feel strangely guilty for not having any painful secrets.”
“This was exactly the same! There was this weird pressure for people to not just confess, but feel this profound guilt for completely harmless things. One guy almost broke down because he shaved his legs. Then Aaron gave a big speech about how gayness doesn’t exist.”
“Jesus Christ. What did you say?”
“That’s the odd thing. I found myself … playing along. Like … like I wanted to impress him.”
I immediately regret saying this, thinking that Fiona will judge me for it. You’re not supposed to want to impress guys like Aaron. You’re supposed to tell them to piss off.
But Fiona just nods solemnly. “My ex was like that. The one I told you
about,” she says. “I didn’t actually respect anything about him. I mean, I felt like a genius compared to him. But … I don’t know. I still wanted him to think I was … you know, cool. Fun. Insert vaguely positive adjective here.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
I decide, after a brief pause, that it’s time to tell her.
“Fi,” I say, testing the words out like you test your tongue against an open gum. “You know how Lily was spotted with that woman? By the river?”
She nods. Everyone has heard about the milkman sighting.
“I think … I know who she was.”
Fiona stares at me, her eyes practically popping out of her head, her lips pursed in complete confusion.
“And you … you’ve decided to keep that information to yourself, then?”
“It’s not as easy as that. No one will believe me.”
“Why?”
“Because the woman isn’t … a woman. She’s a…”
I break off. How are you supposed to explain this to anyone who hasn’t had the Housekeeper dreams? Who hasn’t found the Chokey cards back in their bedside cabinet?
“She’s a demon.”
Why aren’t there any less insane words for this?
“A demon,” Fiona repeats.
“Yes.”
“Not a ghost? Not a witch?”
“I don’t know. Either. Both. All I know is that me and Lily accidentally summoned her the day of Lily’s tarot reading. I mean, I literally said, ‘I wish you would just disappear…’ while the Housekeeper was staring at us.”
Fiona winces. “Oh God, I remember. That was bad.”
“And the night I got home from your party, I started dreaming about her. When I woke up, the Chokey cards were back in my bedroom.”
“The ones Harris took from you?”
“Yep.”
“Maeve. This is crazy.”
“That’s just the start,” I say, and explain what happened in the underpass with Roe last night. I tell her everything about the reading and the inside of Roe’s brain, skipping the part about Roe’s sexuality.
Fiona listens intently, her hands pressed together in prayer position, her thumbs tucked under her chin. After I’m done speaking, she’s quiet for a long time.
All Our Hidden Gifts Page 14
