Gay mob descends on Christian charity group!
‘Art’ collective goes wild!
Life’s a Drag: how the city’s drag scene turned violent!
I imagine the pieces in the paper, the segments on the radio, Aaron giving perfect soundbites to the press, the endless talk panels. “Yes, of course, the CoB shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but I think we can agree it’s all gone a bit too far…”
The crowd is too thick for me to be able to get over. Fiona, who seems to have realized the intention to all this at the same time I have, is recording it on her phone. “These guys have showed up and started attacking people,” she shouts over the din. She is on Instagram Live. “They’re attacking queer people.”
Above the wall where Aaron stands, there is a framed photo of the Cypress the year it first opened.
And then I see her. The Housekeeper is standing by Aaron, river water trailing off her. Her dress is wet and plastered to her body.
By now, it seems normal for her to make an appearance. When an imbalance occurs in the world, something else must rise to meet it. Aaron came to Kilbeg because he spied a hole in the fabric, the hole the Housekeeper cut for him. But whose side was she on? Was she here to support Aaron, or to support me?
I hold on to my bracelet. My sailor’s knot. I keep my eyes on the frame. I try to remember the spell, and imagine myself tying a lasso around the picture frame and bringing it forward. I picture it smashing on Aaron’s head. I breathe. I start a chant.
“Tip the frame, tip the scales.
Where Roe wins, Aaron fails.”
I keep it up, over and over, faster and faster. Roe keeps shouting at Aaron, Aaron keeps his shit-eating grin up. Another kid gets grabbed and thrown into some water.
“Tip the frame, tip the scales.
Where Roe wins, Aaron fails.”
“Maeve, what are you doing?”
The frame is wobbling. It’s moving.
“Fi, give me your hand.”
“What?”
“I said, give me your fecking hand.”
She gives me her hand, and I slide it into the sailor’s knot bracelet. The white satin of my dressing-gown cord is netting us together in a single spell.
“Just hold it. And watch the frame. Watch the frame, Fiona. Above his head.”
You’re a sensitive, Maeve. You can do this.
I start the chant again, and soon Fiona starts it, too. We do it together, urgent, frantic.
“Tip the frame, tip the scales.
Where Roe wins, Aaron fails.”
And then it happens. The wood frame falls heavily on Aaron, glass shattering around his shoulders, a crimson wound opening at his temple. For a moment, everything in the room stops as people flinch at the sound and instinctively move away from the glass. The Housekeeper, like a speck of dirt in the corner of your eye, is gone with a blink. Still tethered by the sailor’s knot, Fiona and I dive into the crowd, fighting to get to Roe.
“Jesus Christ, Maeve,” I hear her call. “Jesus Christ.”
I clamp my free hand on Roe. He turns, his eyes wide and panicked, like an animal.
“Are you OK?”
We both say it at the same time.
At that moment, the Gardaí fly through the door. I recognize Griffin immediately.
“Maeve,” she says, then her eyes fly to Roe. “Rory.”
I can see her making a million tiny judgements, levying a thousand questions and answers in her brain.
“Get out of here,” she says. “Now. Neither of you can afford to be taken home in a squad car. Your parents have been through enough.”
I nod and barge past her, Fiona in tow.
“We can’t just go,” Roe says. “We can’t just leave them.”
“We have to. Do you really want your parents to see a squad car outside their house? Tonight? With you dressed like this?”
He nods.
“Fine.”
And we fall down the stairs, into the street, and to the sounds of sirens outside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE THREE OF US ARE IN DEASY’S WITH OUR ORDER OF CHIPS and curry sauce. We’re not diving in, fighting for the big chips. We’re just staring into space, beginning sentences and then having no idea where to end them. Families are picking up their Saturday night order of fish and chips.
“What … what time is it?” Fiona suddenly asks.
Roe looks at his watch. “Just gone eight.”
“How can it have just gone eight?” she says, dazzled.
“I know,” I agree. “Hate crime always feels like much more of a late evening thing.”
We laugh, despite everything. Despite the fact that there’s blood drying on Roe’s neck. Despite the fact that Fiona and I just crashed a photo frame on a man without even touching it. Despite the fact that we have no idea what’s going to happen to the kids at the cabaret, or how Roe is going to go home without a spare change of clothes.
We laugh. Imagine.
“Do you think this is all part of Children of Brigid’s plan then?” Fiona asks. “To cause riots? Civil unrest, and all that?”
“I guess so,” I shrug. “My sister said that she was attacked recently. In Centra, of all places.”
Roe sinks his head into his hands, pushing his hair back off his face to reveal two pearl earrings. “What am I going to do?”
“You can come to my house. Pat has clothes you can borrow before going home.”
“No, I mean, what am I going to do?” he says, his voice breaking. He gestures to himself in his ripped red velvet. “How am I supposed to live?”
Silence. Neither me nor Fiona can find the words right away to comfort him. This is, after all, not a problem we have. What is he imagining for himself right now? What kind of future is he picturing? One where he gets assaulted in public for being who he is?
This is how bad sensitives prey on people. They make them afraid. This is exactly what Aaron wants to happen. For Roe to stuff himself into as small a box as he possibly can. A butterfly pinned into a frame.
“You’re going to live your fecking life,” I say, trying to summon every bit of authority I can muster. “You’re going to live your life, and you’re going to wear a dress when you want to wear a dress, and go by whatever name you want, and we’ll be here.”
“Maeve…”
“No. Roe. I can’t promise that stuff like this won’t happen again, but I can promise that… I can promise to have your back. For as long as you want it. Or need it. And you too, Fiona. We need each other. You’re the only people I have.”
“I promise, too,” Fiona says looking from me to Roe and back again. “I’m with you as long as you guys are with me.”
“Plus,” she adds bleakly, “you know when they’re done with the gays, they’ll move on to the foreigns.”
Roe gives us a smile, showing his teeth bathed in blood. “All right, all right, this is our Three Musketeers pledge, is it? All for one and one for all?”
“Yes,” Fiona and I both say, fiercely.
“Fine,” he says, smiling even wider. “I promise, too, I’ll kill to protect you two, or die trying.”
We don’t shake on it. We don’t do anything except look at one another under the fluorescent strip lighting of Deasy’s chipper. We’re smiling, but I know we mean it. That we’ve never meant anything like we mean this.
“And we’ve got something else,” Fiona ventures. “We’ve got magic.”
“Oh, Mrs Cynic believes in magic now, does she?” I smile.
“It’s actually Ms Cynic,” she says, sipping her Coke. “What we did in there, Maeve – I still can’t believe it… I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“I’m sorry, what is it you two did?” Roe asks.
“Only saved your life,” Fiona responds curtly.
“Uh-huh. How, exactly?”
I explain, as sanely as I can, the spell with the picture frame, the spell that broke the cold snap, and finally, the failed spell t
o get Lily back.
“Right,” Roe says, slightly dazed looking. “Right.”
“I believe my response to this was, Maeve, are you insane?” Fiona politely nudges.
“Maybe I got hit by that bottle too hard,” he says, evenly. “Or maybe things have just been too weird lately.”
I let out a short, barking laugh. “You want to talk about weird? I’m a sensitive now.”
Roe and Fiona cock their heads in utter confusion.
“Oh, good,” I reply, slightly relieved. “You haven’t heard of it, either. When the Divination shopkeeper told me, I thought I was the only one who didn’t know what a freaking sensitive was.”
“Well, what is it?” Roe asks irritably.
“It basically means that you’re born with a kind of … natural knack for magic-y things.”
“That doesn’t sound very … specific,” he says, his brows furrowed.
Fiona looks thoughtful. “Nobody could have made that crappy book work,” she says slowly. “Unless they had magic in them already.”
Roe still looks unconvinced.
“I think it’s just an explanation for why … I don’t know…” I’m suddenly flustered. I’m not used to being the special one. They are the special ones.
“Like, how I’m good at tarot, and how the Housekeeper is … attracted to me, and how I can sort of be in Roe’s brain. And the spells. I think I just have, like, one per cent more of a natural flair for it than regular people. That’s all.”
“One per cent!” Fiona says, outraged. “More like, fifty.”
“Eleven, Fiona. Eleven per cent.”
“I won’t take a penny less than thirty per cent.”
We all laugh, and making it into a dumb joke helps me to normalize this strange new fact about myself. It’s a bit like being in some elusive thirteenth house of the zodiac.
“But the woman at Divination, she also said that … bad sensitives exist, and I think Aaron might be one. She seems to think that Kilbeg is at the centre of some kind of energy shift.”
“Like the Housekeeper is throwing everything off,” Roe says slowly.
“Yes! And I guess the Aarons of the world … the bad sensitives, prey on that sort of thing. They get into people’s heads.”
Could it be possible that some grand Jenga match of forces and energy were thrown out of whack when I woke up the Housekeeper? Could the Housekeeper, who was awakened by spite and pain and anger, be feeding everything in the city – even a Christian fundamentalist group that has nothing to do with us?
I picture the river, flowing through the entire city like a blue vein. The river, filled with rainbow trout and cogs and keys. The river carrying the winds and currents and the secrets of a missing girl.
“So Lily’s disappearance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s part of everything else,” Roe says, suddenly. “The Housekeeper is just the start of a big chain reaction. I knew we were right to see a connection between those CoB creeps and Lily.”
Fiona starts to nod slowly.
“Remember when Sylvia said that strong human emotions are what create ghosts and demons?” she says. “Well, what if it can work the other way around, too? What if all this anger and resentment caused the Housekeeper, and now it’s spewing out anger and resentment, too? And Aaron is just … channelling it?”
“Some people are just assholes,” Roe interjects. “Aaron was clearly born an asshole.”
“A sensitive asshole,” Fiona corrects.
“Sure. But what if the Housekeeper just makes everything – I don’t know – more heightened?”
“We have to break the Housekeeper,” I say, nodding in agreement. “I’m not strong enough to do it by myself. We have to do it. Together.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But I know we’re close. I know it.”
Roe gets a phone call and steps outside, and Fiona checks her Instagram Live from the gig.
“Oh, God, I have like fifteen DMs. Two of them are from journalists.”
“What?”
“Yeah, looks like this thing is going viral already. Or, y’know – Irish viral.”
“Are you going to talk to them?”
“No, Mum would go ballistic. I’ll just say they can use the video.”
Roe steps back into the chipper, and the few people who are having their food in look up, startled. They take in his dress, his black dockers, the blood. It’s amazing how quickly I’ve gotten used to him in his new clothes.
“That was Miel. The band all got out OK.”
“What else did they say?”
“That a few people were hauled off. A couple of the queens were taken into questioning – I think partly because they are all over eighteen.”
“Oh, God. I hope they’re all right.”
“I’m sure they are,” Fiona says. “I’ve never met a drag queen who doesn’t know her rights.”
“We get it Fiona, you know drag queens,” I tease.
They turn the music off at Deasy’s and we take that as our cue to leave. Fiona hugs us both and heads south back to her house, and we head north towards mine. I don’t know what to say to Roe now that we’re alone. Despite all our pacts and promises to one another as a group, I still have no idea where he and I stand.
The feeling is clearly mutual. Roe is suddenly nervous of me. This exotic creature who I just witnessed fighting a Christian fundamentalist while wearing a velvet dress is now too anxious to look me in the eye. As we walk, he daubs at the cut on his lip, touching it with a wet napkin stolen from the chipper. His face is starting to swell. I want to touch the puffy skin, where the crimson of his lipstick meets the flush of new wounds.
“You were incredible back there,” I say, briefly squeezing his arm. “I’m sorry you needed to do it. I mean, I’m sorry those guys crashed the evening. But y’know, you should be proud. I could never be that brave.”
He is silent.
“And the gig!” I burst out, desperate to get him talking. “The gig was so great! I had no idea how good you were.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, finally.
“Do what?”
“Pretend like … like you’re still…” He trails off.
“Like I’m still what?”
“Like you’re still attracted to me, I suppose.”
I look at him, clearly confused.
“I saw your face when I was onstage,” he snaps. “I know how it is. When we’re in our school uniforms and we’re on the bus and I have a little bit of nail varnish on, it’s all cute. I can pass for … for boy, I guess. But when you saw me dressed like this, you looked so shocked, and I knew that any chance of us…”
I start to laugh. Roe looks hurt.
“You think I don’t like this?” I ask, pulling playfully at one of the pearl drops hanging from his ears. It falls into my hand, falling off his lobe with a faint click. “Roe, I love this.”
He furrows his brow. “I saw you from the stage. Your face. You looked horrified.”
“I was surprised, sure,” I said. “I mean, it took me a minute, but…” I fumble for the words. I want so badly not to ruin this.
“I thought you were magic tonight, Roe. Like no one I’ve ever seen before. Which makes sense, because you’re like no one I’ve ever met before.”
He is so close to me now. My fingers nudge against his in the dark. The balled-up napkin is still in his fist. Gently, I ease the wet pulpy material from his hand and into my own. I start gently daubing his lip. Roe. My poor Roe.
“And,” I venture, “I thought you were … extremely sexy.”
“You did?” Roe asks, as if this is a trap.
“I did,” I confirm.
We are silent then, standing in the dark. I step forward and trace the edge of his cheekbone with my finger. He doesn’t back away, but he doesn’t move towards me either. Taking this as encouragement, I lightly kiss the skin above his lower lip, making sure I don’t graze his cut. Roe closes his eyes. I lean forw
ard again and kiss the empty ear lobe where the clip-on pearl just sat.
“Maeve,” he murmurs. “No.”
No?
His eyes flick open. “I’m sorry.”
“No?” I repeat uncertainly.
“I just think … we should focus on getting Lily back. For the time being.”
I can’t help it. I feel the embarrassment and rage bubble and spill inside of me. “Well, if that’s how you feel, Roe, why did you just interrogate me on whether or not I find you attractive?”
“Um, well…”
“And why –” my voice is getting shrill now, I can hear it – “why were you singing songs to me onstage about how we’re in hiding together? What is that about?”
“Look, I’m confused, too,” he says in desperation. “But … that thing you showed me – the tarot reading. I can’t forget it. The Secret Santa, the way you and Lily shouted at each other, you turning on the tap and drenching her stuff… It was dark, Maeve.”
“I’m sorry, Roe. I don’t know how I can…”
He puts his hand up. “I know. It’s fine. Fi has already given me an earful. Obviously, you weren’t to know what was going to happen. But every time I think about you like that, I just feel so angry and guilty.”
He looks at me mournfully, as though I were a game that he’s been dying to play. “And when we’re … together, like this, I thought … I thought I could forget about it.”
“But you can’t,” I say, tears rising to my eyes. “You can’t forget about it.”
“You’re so important to me,” he says. “More important than anyone. But I can’t … I can’t have this big romance with you and sleep at night. Knowing that my sister is still … wherever she is.”
“OK,” I say, my voice flat. “I get it.”
And I do. I do get it. In the same way that I needed to draw a boundary with Fiona about witchcraft, Roe needs to draw one with me. I don’t like it. But I understand it.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get you some clothes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
BY MONDAY, THE GIG AT THE CYPRESS HAS BEEN ALL OVER the media. A few people from the gig have even been on RTÉ, explaining how the violence broke out.
“This was a targeted attack on the queer community,” says one queen. “And this was an attack on our visibility. Children of Brigid specifically went after young, vulnerable kids who had found a safe space where they could express their gender orientation. This needs to be taken seriously as a hate crime.”
All Our Hidden Gifts Page 23
