AND BY THE WAY
Butterfly Novel #1
FIRST KINDLE EDITION
Denise Deegan © 2011, 2012
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In memory of Rosemary
(and inflatable shamrocks)
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ONE | THE ROCKSTAR
OK. So it’s 3.40 p.m. All anyone’s thinking of is going home. In ten minutes. Make that nine. At the top of the class, Ms Kelly (think sparrow) is rocking onto her tiptoes and off them again, waiting for an answer to the question she’s just asked.
‘What is a friend?’
We’re sixteen years old. I think, by now, we know what a friend is. No one’s going to answer a question that lame. I scan the class. Tired and bored sums up everyone. Including me. But then, a voice. It’s Sarah, a friend of mine, who’s so not into this touchy-feely stuff.
‘A friend,’ she says, looking meaningfully at Rachel beside her, ‘is someone who returns texts.’
Uh-oh.
‘Yes, Sarah. Very good,’ says Tiptoes, cheerfully missing the point. ‘Someone who returns text messages.’ She looks around. ‘Anyone else?’
Mark Delaney’s hand goes up. The class stirs. Delaney fakes Attention Deficit Disorder so he doesn’t have to work. That he’s actually paying attention is, like, a total novelty.
‘A friend,’ he says, ‘doesn’t lose it when you point out that her fake tan’s patchy.’ This is directed at Orla Tempany.
Who’s already snapping back, ‘A friend wouldn’t say something like that in front of a whole class.’
And suddenly it no longer matters that we’re minutes from freedom.
‘A friend pays back what they borrow,’ says Peter Sweetnam to Simon Kelleher.
‘A friend doesn’t leave you alone on the dance floor.’ (Amy Gilmore.)
‘All right. All right,’ says Tiptoes, raising both palms towards us. ‘Some very good examples of respecting each other and, yes, respect is a big part of friendship.’ She places her hands gently together, like a nun. ‘But I’m looking for something else, another essential element of friendship.’
She is Buzz Lightyear, who thought he was a superhero, but was just a toy. She thinks she gets us. She so doesn’t. If she hadn’t butted in, we might have got a decent debate going for a change. I check the clock. Four minutes. If everyone stays quiet, maybe she’ll just let us go.
‘A friend is someone who listens.’ David McFadden says it simply, in his usual laid-back way. I look at him like he’s a total loser, because if there’s one person who bugs me, it’s David McFadden. He just smiles and starts to close his books. Which is when I get it: the only reason he answered the question was to get the lesson over with.
It’s worked.
‘All right, people.’ (I wish she wouldn’t call us that.) ‘Don’t forget. The sailing course starts tomorrow. So, no showing up here at nine. It’s down at the Motor Yacht Club.’
The class starts to empty. Rachel and Sarah make their way to my desk, as usual. They glide, rather than walk, movements fluid, posture perfect. Catwalk material. Rachel’s a cross between Pocahontas (the hair) and Anne Hathaway (the face). Sarah’s more Paris Hilton (but good-looking).
‘I didn’t actually get your text,’ Rachel’s saying. ‘I told you that.’
‘It sent OK.’
‘Well, I didn’t get it.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say, and start to walk. They follow, still arguing.
‘I was just making a point.’ (Sarah.)
‘Well, you didn’t need to. I return most of your texts.’
‘Most. Not all.’
‘Some of them, Sarah, don’t need an answer,’ Rachel says.
A good 70 per cent, as far as I’m concerned. I’m surprised Sarah doesn’t have repetitive strain injury. In fairness to Rachel, it’s me who should be under attack here. I only reply to direct questions from Sarah – like, maybe, 30 per cent of her texts. Rachel’s much more polite. She puts in the work. Though she’s been slacking off lately. Which is probably why Sarah’s being so sensitive. She thinks she’ll run out of people to text.
‘Anyway,’ I say, adjusting the bag on my back, ‘at least we’re out of there.’ I can’t believe how much we looked forward to Transition Year. It sounded great in theory – a whole year to prepare us for life after school, in other words a complete doss. Instead of actual schoolwork, most of our time is taken up with projects, community service, adventure weekends, trips abroad, work experience. Or, at least, it’s supposed to be. Two weeks in and all we’ve experienced is an overdose of touchy-feely.
We head out the school gates and down the hill. It’s still not cold enough for coats, but I wrap mine tightly around me. For the last six months, I haven’t been able to get warm – no matter what’s been happening with the weather.
‘Want to come back to my place?’ Rachel asks.
‘Can’t,’ I say. ‘The Rockstar’s back.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Sarah perks up.
‘How did the recording go?’ Rachel gets on with her parents. If her dad was away recording an album, she’d be right up to speed on how it went.
‘Fine,’ I say to avoid questioning but, fact is, I don’t know. On the rare occasions he calls, I answer his questions. That’s it. I don’t know why I’m looking forward to seeing him. I know I’ll be disappointed. ‘Let’s go to the Jitter Mug,’ I say, deciding that, actually, I’m not ready to go home just yet.
‘Great,’ says Sarah, who never wants to go home.
The Jitter Mug is this great coffee shop in Blackrock. It’s big and airy with high ceilings and comfortable armchairs that you can lose yourself in. When school is out, we own the place. Ninety per cent of the customers are wearing our uniform. We get our usual order: three tropical smoothies. We find our usual spot, in the centre of the action, so that Sarah can keep up with the gossip.
‘Isn’t David McFadden seriously caliente?’ she says, now, widening her eyes on ‘seriously’.
‘Caliente’ is our code for ‘hot’. We’ve been using it since the day we first met, the day we became friends. This was Day One at Strandbrook College. We’d randomly sat together. Our first class was Spanish. In walked this amazing-looking teacher. Sarah started scribbling. Then she passed a note: ‘Señor Martin is SERIOUSLY caliente.’
Señor Martin might have been caliente, he wasn’t, however, amused. When he walked towards Rachel with his hand out for the note, Sarah snatched it from her and ate it. We were so shocked we laughed. And ended up in detention. A word of advice to teachers: if you don’t want three people to become friends, don’t send them to detention together on their first day.
Sarah, lifting the lid on her smoothie to check it out, continues o
n the subject of David McFadden: ‘He surfs, you know.’
‘Not a total shocker,’ Rachel says, ‘given that he’s from California.’
‘I could look at him all day,’ Sarah says dreamily. ‘He’s like one of those sculptures you get in Rome. God, I’m so glad he’d to stay back a year.’
‘I’m sure he wasn’t,’ I say. His mum died and he failed his Junior Cert exams.
‘Mark’s pretty caliente too,’ Sarah says. ‘I think that when two caliente guys hang out together it makes them extra caliente.’
Mark Delaney joined our class the same time as David McFadden, when his mum, a diplomat, returned from a posting in South Africa. And though they’re totally different, he and David hit it off.
‘David’s cute,’ Rachel says. ‘But Mark. That whole ADD thing. Imagine tricking your parents like that. They probably spent money having him diagnosed. And the way he boasts about it, about looking up all the symptoms on the Internet so he’d get it right. That’s just sneaky.’ She shakes her head like he’s not worth talking about.
‘So,’ Sarah says, leaning forward, ‘want to know why I brought up David McFadden?’ Sarah is a walking gossip column.
We wait. Something’s coming.
‘I’m pretty sure he fancies you, Alex.’ She sits back, having delivered her news.
‘I’m pretty sure I don’t care.’ I don’t mean to snap but . . . The thing is, I did like David McFadden when he first joined our class. It wasn’t just that he was caliente. He was different. Not in that he was American. American is not exotic in our school. He was – I don’t know. Let’s just say, if I hadn’t known about his mother dying, I’d have guessed he’d been through something. He’s older than us by a year but seemed much older, as if he knew about life and wasn’t bothered by the small stuff. And, still, he hung out with a total messer. Which made him human. Likeable. But then, six months ago, everything changed. I lost my mum to cancer. Everyone fussed over me. Made their faces sad when they saw me. I hated that, the spotlight that turns on you when you lose a parent. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want anything. Just Mum back. Sometimes, I’d look at McFadden and think, You know. Because only someone who has lost someone they loved can know the hollowness, the feeling that your guts have been ripped out and there’s nothing left inside. I’d look at him and wonder if he ever wrapped his arms around himself and folded over to try to squeeze the nothingness away. I’d look at him. And he’d look away. David McFadden avoided me. Completely. That’s not the kind of thing you forget. Then, two weeks ago, he came back to school after the summer, smiling. Laughing and joking with Mark, as if life’s one big joke. As if losing a mum is nothing. So, no, I don’t care about David McFadden. I don’t think there is anyone I care less about. Apart from The Rockstar.
We finish our smoothies. Or, at least, the others finish theirs. I haven’t tasted anything in six months. So the motivation of all that sucking is kind of gone. Part of me wonders when I’m going to be normal again. Part of me doesn’t want to be. Because that would mean moving on. From Mum. The person I was closest to in the world.
I like that I’ve furthest to go on the DART, Dublin’s light rail system that runs along the coast. It means I’m alone when I come out of the station at Dalkey. This is a good thing. Because I’m met – by a driver. If The Rockstar had his way, I’d be collected directly from school, something he wanted after Mum died. I had to use all my powers of persuasion then. And I’ll use them again as soon as I hit seventeen, the legal age for driving. I have my arguments ready: (1) a car equals independence, a key ingredient of maturity; (2) if I drive, I can’t drink; (3) me driving will be a lot safer than taking lifts from friends, especially boys, who, as everyone knows, are lunatics on the road.
I won’t need to convince him that we’ll all have cars then. At Strandbrook, we are Kids Of. Kids of diplomats, media stars, musicians, artists, actors, oh, and wealthy people who aspire to all of that. I could give out about our school but at least no one stands out because of their parents. We know who they all are but it’s like, so what?
I climb up into the four-wheel drive with the blackened-out windows.
‘Hey,’ I say to Mike our driver, who also doubles as The Rockstar’s head of security. Mike’s not the total worst. Doesn’t drag me into conversations the way, say, a taxi driver might. He’s friendly when I get in. And out. He just drives.
I take out my iPhone, watch a downloaded episode of Friends, and pretend that my life is normal.
Outside the gates of our house, a group of fans has gathered. Mike gives them a careful once-over. They look harmless to me. Italian, I’m guessing by their cool clothes and the way they stand around, like waiting’s the best part of the whole experience. If I didn’t know my father was home, I’d know now. His fans are like a tracking device. When he’s away, so are they. The minute he’s back, we have company.
We drive past, hidden by the darkened windows. The gates close immediately behind us.
Mike drops me at the door, then goes to park. I let myself in. There’s no sign of Homer, my Golden Retriever (who’s too pale to be golden and who doesn’t retrieve). Instead, my father’s stylist, Marsha, struts across the hall, in tight black leather trousers, disappearing into his office, talking loudly in that brassy New York accent of hers. Her heels have left pockmarks in the wooden floor that my mother chose because it was environmentally friendly. I hear The Rockstar say something from the office. His manager, Ed, laughs. From the kitchen, people talk over music. The Rockstar’s back. And he is surrounded – reminding me how much lonelier I feel when he’s home. Not for me a reunion in front of a live audience, so I retreat to my room.
Homer’s lying on my bed, hiding too. His ears pop up, then he’s bounding towards me. I drop my bag and crouch.
He nearly knocks me over. I hug him, putting my head next to his. He turns quickly and licks my face.
‘So you met The Stylist.’
He whines. Which makes me laugh.
I lie on the bed, take out my phone and text Sarah. I make sure to sign off with the butterfly emote }|{ the three of us have been using since First Year. It’s, like, a symbol of our friendship. Sometimes I forget it and Sarah gets genuinely upset. I hit ‘Send’. I know that texting Sarah will set off an avalanche of messages about absolutely nothing. Sometimes there’s a right time for nothing, like when your home has become a circus and the ringmaster’s your father. It won’t click with Sarah that I’m texting instead of enjoying an emotional reunion. Which is why I’m not messaging Rachel, who’s so on the ball it’s scary.
With Rachel, I have to keep my distance. When Mum died, I fell into a million pieces and into Rachel’s arms. She listened. She held me. She was there. Unlike The Rockstar, who’d taken off as soon as Mum got sick, always finding something to do rather than be there for her, or me. I hated him for that. Still do. But, Rachel. Rachel was there. Then one day, when she was holding me, my heart started to pound, as I realised I couldn’t go through losing someone I loved again. I pulled back from Rachel, then. And I’ve been pulling ever since.
Sarah’s been easier to stay back from. Poor Sarah. When Mum died, she didn’t know what to say. When she did speak, she usually put her foot in it. She couldn’t know, but this was usually a relief. Careful’s the worst thing you can be around someone who’s dying inside. Say something stupid, something totally inappropriate and you might actually make them laugh. Inside. For 0.5 of a second. So, no. I don’t do close. With anyone. At any time. Or anywhere.
I had this therapist once who said I had a ‘fear of attachment’. But I’m not afraid of attachment. I just don’t want it. The therapist – God. I had to go to her after Mum died. The Rockstar’s idea. Her name was Betsy. Betsy! Seriously. First time I went, she introduced herself as a psychoanalyst. If I had said anything (at all), it would have been (a) I’m not psycho and (b) I don’t need analysis. But I knew she’d analyse that too. And anyway I’d decided not to cooperate. The only reaso
n I was going was because The Rockstar wanted me to. On our way there, I realized why – so he wouldn’t have to talk to me himself.
I sat on a couch. She sat opposite. In the front room of her house. It was yellow. There were hankies on the table between us. Like she expected me to cry. So I laughed. She looked at me for a long time. So I looked at the floor. Under the table were crumbs. Which I counted. I went to The Therapist five times (enough for The Rockstar to think I’d tried), and always the crumbs. I’d sit and count them. Every time. I’d imagine who’d left them. A son aged fifteen, who liked biscuits. Chocolate chip cookies. He wasn’t the only one I imagined. Through the double doors to the right I dreamed up a dining room, filled with guests – people like Betsy, middle-aged and too intelligent. They’d be talking about art and vague writers from Eastern Europe. I wondered if she ever discussed people like me – her patients, clients, or whatever she called us. I decided she wouldn’t have much to say about me, seeing as I never said anything about me. I was angry for her other patients, though, the ones who did cooperate. I wanted to tell her it was unprofessional to use the same room for business and life. I wanted to tell her to tidy her front garden, polish her door knocker and get a decent haircut. But I never said any of those things. I never said anything. It was only when I got out of going that I realised it had actually helped. For the whole hour I was there, I was so busy distracting myself from Betsy that I forgot to be sad about my mum.
Sarah isn’t texting back. Must be out of credit. Or in the shower. I take out my laptop and send her an MSN. From downstairs, more laughter. I put my iPhone on speaker. Loud. I go into Games on my laptop. Solitaire seems a bit sad. Chess is a battle. And I feel like a fight. I put the computer aside and from under the bed take out my own, totally worn-out chess set. When I was a kid and we still went on tour with him, The Rockstar used to play me, to kill time. He’d let me have white so I could go first, but apart from that he never went easy on me. His favourite pieces were the knights because they were hard to see coming. I used to look up to him then. He could make people sing, dance, scream, clap, cry, light things and hold them to the sky. But afterwards, he’d always switch The Rockstar off and become Dad again, the person with the warm eyes and the hugs, the person who loved me. When we stopped touring with him, the chess stopped too. And when Mum died, he stopped being my dad. He just gave up. He’s still The Rockstar. Means nothing to me, though.
The Butterfly Novels Box Set: Contemporary YA Series (And By The Way; And For Your Information; And Actually) Page 1
