by Chloe Walsh
My brows furrowed. "What do you mean she's not stable?"
Dee chewed on her pen, looking uncomfortable.
"Dee?" I pressed. "What do you mean by that?"
"Maybe stable isn’t the appropriate word," she admitted, tone low. "But there's something… off about her."
"Off?"
"Troubling," Dee clarified and then corrected herself by saying, "Troubled. She seems troubled."
Well shite.
Trust me to fixate on the crazy.
"Right," I muttered, turning for the door again. "Thanks for the head's up."
"Keep your distance, Johnny," she called after me. "And stay away from the hospital."
Deep in thought, I strolled out of the office with the envelope in hand.
I wandered down the left wing of the main building, stopping at a row of freshly painted blue lockers outside the third-year common area.
I scanned the rows for locker number 461.
When I found the one I was looking for, I pushed the envelope through the tiny gap at the top of the metal door.
I didn’t care if her mother didn’t want the money, she could burn it for all I cared, but I had to give it to them – to her.
Readjusting my school bag on my shoulder, I slid my hand into my pocket and retrieved my car keys, decision made to blow off the rest of the day and wait in the car for Gibsie.
Besides, there was no point in going to class right now.
I couldn’t concentrate on business ABQ's if I tried.
My head was too clouded with words of warning and images of sad, blue eyes.
Strolling down to the students' car park, I unlocked my car and dropped my shit into the back seat before collapsing inside.
Exhausted and sore, I pushed back the seat and adjusted the recliner so I could stretch my legs out.
The thought of driving with the pain currently burning its way up my thighs was an unwelcome thought, but it wasn’t my main concern right now.
We had a lot of boarders at Tommen, students coming from all over the country and some parts of Europe to study.
I lived half an hour from the school so I was one of the day-walkers.
Most of my friends were.
I knew Shannon was from Ballylaggin too, but I'd never laid eyes on her before that day.
It wasn’t a massive area, but it was big enough that our paths had never crossed before today – or maybe they had and I just didn’t remember her.
I wasn’t great with faces. I didn’t look at one long enough to commit it to memory. I didn’t care to. I had enough names and faces I needed to remember as it stood. Adding unnecessary names of strangers to that list seemed a pointless feat.
Until now.
Troubled.
That's what Dee called her.
But weren't all teenagers a little fucked up and troubled sometimes?
I was so consumed in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice the final bell ringing, forty-five minutes later, or the flood of students climbing into cars around me. It was only when the passenger door of my car flew open that I jerked back to the present.
"Hey," Gibsie acknowledged, dropping into the passenger seat beside me. "I see your heart's still set on sporting the semi-homeless look in here," he added, kicking a pile of shit away from his feet. Reaching around, he tossed his bag into the backseat. "It fucking stinks in here, man."
"You could always get plenty of fresh air walking," I grumbled, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Yeah, I was that fucking tired.
"Relax," Gibsie shot back and then snickered when he added, "no need to get so testy."
"Very funny, asshole," I deadpanned, my hand immediately moving to my dick. "Now you really can get out and walk."
"Here," he paused to dump a vanilla colored folder on my lap, "you can't make me walk after getting you this."
I stared down at the folder. "What's this?"
"A present," Gibsie replied, adjusting the visor.
"Homework?" I deadpanned. "Wow. Thanks so much."
"It's yer one Shannon's file," he corrected, rolling down the sleeves of his jumper. "No doubt your obsessive ass was looking for it."
Well, shite.
An unsettling surge of excitement coursed through me as I stared down at the folder in my hands.
My best friend knew me too well.
"When you didn’t come back to class after training, I figured you were out here sulking over her – or pining," he shrugged before adding, "Or whatever the fuck you'd call what you did in the locker room earlier."
"I don’t sulk."
He snorted.
"I don’t fucking sulk, asshole," I bit back. "Or pine. I wasn’t doing any of that shite. I was just –"
"Losing your head?" Gibsie filled in with a wolfish grin. "Don’t worry about it. Happens to the best of us."
"Why would I be losing my head?" I demanded and then swiftly answered, "I wasn’t losing my goddamn anything!"
"My mistake." Gibsie held his hands up, but his tone assured me that he was far from sorry. "I must've read it wrong. Give me her file and I'll put it back."
He reached for the folder and I snatched it away. "What – no!"
Gibsie laughed but didn’t say anything else.
The knowing grin he gave me was enough of a response.
"How'd you manage to convince Dee to hand it over?" I asked, changing the subject.
"How'd you think?"
I repressed a shudder. "Jesus."
"It's not all bad." Gibsie smirked. "The woman sucks like a hoover, and the thrill of getting caught always makes for fun times."
I held a hand up. "Didn’t need to know that."
He snorted. "You already knew that."
"Yeah," I sighed heavily. "Well, I didn’t need to be reminded."
"Jesus," he muttered, pulling at the collar of his school shirt so he could get a good look at his neck in the small, rectangular mirror. "Always the neck."
Unsatisfied with that view, he twisted the rearview mirror to face him and groaned.
Turning to look at me, Gibsie said, "See the sacrifices I make for you?"
My eyes landed on the purplish bruise forming on his neck.
"Better be something worth reading in there," he grumbled.
Turning my attention back to the folder, I flicked it open to the first page and then tensed, eyes moving to his. "Did you read it?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because," he replied, digging around his pocket. "It's not my business." He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. "I'm hanging for a smoke." He shoved the door open and stepped out, stopping to lean in and announce, "Orgasms make me crave nicotine," before closing the door and sparking up.
Shaking my head, I turned my attention to the file in my hands, riveted to every detail of information Shannon Lynch's confidential file revealed.
Pages upon pages of incidents and reports all neatly typed out on white paper, detailing every horrendous ordeal the girl had suffered in her old school – and there had been a lot.
Fourteen a4 pages of incidents.
Front and back.
A few pages in and I learned that Shannon had slipped from a solid C student at the beginning of first year to scraping D's and E's by the end of second year.
Attached to her less than stellar exam results were notes from her former teachers, praising her gentle nature and diligent and conscientious work ethic.
I didn’t need a note to explain the steady decline in her grades, I'd figured that out on page one.
She was the victim of bullying.
They cut her ponytail off when she was in first year. When she was thirteen. Their punishment for such a crime was a week's suspension. Seriously. A week off school for cutting a girl's fucking hair off.
Girls.
They were so goddamn sick and twisted.
How anyone could expect the girl to concentrate in a classroom setting as volatile as that was beyond me.
Seriously, what the hell was wrong with people?
What was the matter with that school and those teachers?
The fuck were her parents thinking leaving her there for two years?
The more I read, the sicker I felt in my stomach...
Incident in P.E resulting in a bloody nose.
Vomiting incident in the bathroom.
Incident in Woodwork with a glue gun.
Issue after school with third year girls.
Another vomiting incident in the bathroom.
Issue before school with fourth year girls.
Refusal to take part in overnight school bonding retreat. Were they fucking kidding?
Many, many more vomiting incidences.
Referral to educational psychologist.
Older brother lodges fourth complaint about the bullying. Older brother should have found some older female friends and had them kick the shite out of these mean girls.
Graffiti on bathroom walls.
Assault in the school yard, older brother suspended. Older brother must have sorted it himself.
Isolation reported by several teachers.
Serious physical assault by three older students, Gardaí called. No shit, Sherlock.
Older brother suspended again for intervening.
Removal from school at the request of mother. About fucking time.
School records requested by the principal at Tommen College.
Horrified didn’t being to describe my feelings when I was finished reading.
Pissed off didn’t quite fit the bill, either.
Disgusted, disturbed, and wholly enraged seemed a more accurate assessment of my feelings.
Jesus, it was like reading a goddamn police report of a domestic violence victim.
No wonder Shannon's mother flipped the fuck out on me today.
If I were in her position, I would have done a lot worse.
Christ, now I was even more pissed with myself for hurting her than I was earlier.
Who the hell did this?
Seriously, what kind of creatures were they breeding in that school?
"Well?" Gibsie's voice broke through my thoughts when he climbed back into car, smelling like an ashtray. "Find out what you need?"
"Yeah," I muttered, handing the folder back to him before cranking the engine. "I did."
He looked at me expectantly. "And?"
I turned my attention to the road. "And what?"
"You look pissed."
"I'm fine." I needed to do something, put my foot down, hit the weight room, anything to expel the tension building inside my body.
"You sure, man?"
"Yep." Tearing out of my parking spot, I shifted into second gear, and then third, ignoring the Caution Children Crossing signs in my bid to get onto the main road.
Sometimes we worked out in my converted garage at home, but right now, I thought the thirty-minute drive to the gym in the city might do me some good.
I knew I had stepped over a serious line by breaching her privacy like this, but I didn’t regret it.
Dammit, I knew she was vulnerable.
That feeling I had earlier today?
The pain I was so sure I'd seen in her eyes.
It was real, it was there, I recognized it, and now I could do something about it.
I could prevent anything like this from happening again.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Not on my goddamn watch.
6
Awakened Hormones
Shannon
I had a moderate concussion that resulted in an overnight stay at the hospital for observation followed by the rest of the week off school.
To be honest, I would have preferred to stay in the hospital the entire time or return to school immediately because the concept of spending the week at home with my father breathing down my neck was a special form of torture that no one deserved.
Miraculously, I managed to survive the week by holing myself up in my room all day, every day, and generally avoiding my father and his tumultuous mood swings like the plague.
When I returned to school the following week, I had been expecting a downpour of mocking and taunting to incur.
Shame was a problematic feeling for me, and sometimes it made it hard for me to function.
I spent the entire day in a sweaty, panic-ridden mess on high alert, waiting for something bad to happen.
Something that never came.
Aside from a few curious stares and knowing smiles from the rugby team – as in, they knew what I looked like in my underwear –I had been left generally unscathed.
I couldn’t comprehend how a humiliating event like that could go unspoken about.
It didn’t make sense to me.
No one brought up the incident on the pitch that day.
It was as if it had never happened.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the lingering headache, I would have doubted it happened at all.
Days turned into weeks but the silence remained.
Nothing was ever said to me.
It was never brought up again.
I wasn’t a target.
And I had peace.
Almost a month had passed since the incident on the pitch and I found myself falling into a steady routine with Claire and Lizzie by my side.
I found myself beginning to look forward to going to school.
It was the strangest turnabout of my life, considering for the majority of my life I had loathed school, but Tommen had become almost like a safe place to be.
Instead of the usual feeling of dread when I stepped off the bus, all I felt was immense relief.
Relief to get away from my house.
Relief to be off the bully-radar.
Relief to get away from my father.
Relief to be able to breathe for seven hours of the day.
I was used to coping alone, being alone, sitting alone, eating alone…you get my drift.
I was forever alone so my latest predicament, or should I say the latest development in my social status, was an unexpected one.
They say there's solidarity in numbers, and I was a firm believer in this.
I felt better when I was with my friends.
Maybe it was a teenage insecurity, or maybe it was a result of my past, but I liked that I didn’t have to walk to class on my own anymore, and that I always had someone to sit with or tell me if I had something in my teeth.
Their friendship meant more to me than they would ever know, giving me a support system that I desperately needed, and a buffer in times of panicked uncertainty.
At my old school, I was so stressed and anxious during my lessons that I fell behind a lot in class and had to work late into the night most nights to catch up.
Without the constant threat of attack from my peers, I was keeping up in my classes with little problem, inhaling my lessons like crack.
I even managed to pass most of my pre-junior cert exams, with the exception of Maths and Business Studies.
No amount of studying seemed to help with those subjects.
But I had scored my first A since first year in Science, so I took comfort in that.
During lunch, I had the girls to sit with – not a pity seat with my brother and his buddies – but an actual group of people.
I'd never had this level of normality before.
I'd never felt safe.
But I was starting to.
And I had a feeling he had something to do with it.
Johnny Kavanagh.
I mean, he had to, right?
I didn’t have that kind of power, so that left him.
It wasn’t a coincidence that the whole event had been erased from everyone's minds.
I had seen him plenty of times since that day, having passed him countless times in the hallways between classes and in the lunch hall during break, and while he never approached me, he always smiled at me in passing.
To be honest, I was surprised he smil
ed at me at all considering my mother's reaction towards him outside the principal's office that day.
I didn’t know whether or not to apologize for her behavior towards him or not.
Mam had overreacted to the point of being borderline threatening towards him, but then again, Johnny's actions had resulted in me spending a night in hospital and a further week at home with my father, so I decided against apologizing. Besides, I'd left it too long.
Approaching him now, after almost four weeks had passed by, would just be weird.
Through my friends – and the hushed whispers and rumors from girls in the bathroom – I had learned all kinds of details and information about Johnny Kavanagh.
He was in fifth year – something I already knew.
He was originally from Dublin – again, no surprises there.
He was incredibly popular – okay, so I didn’t know that but it didn’t take a genius to realize that, what with him being surrounded by students all the time.
He was a massive hit amongst the female student body – again, a blind man could figure that out.
And contrary to his terrible inaccuracy with the ball and his blatant maiming of me, he was supposed to be very good at rugby.
He was the captain of the school rugby team, and with that status came popularity, girls, and some fierce pull with both the faculty and the students.
I had no clue about the ins and outs of rugby, our family revolved around GAA, and I cared even less about the popularity ranks at school considering I was usually dumped at the bottom, but the way the girls at school portrayed Johnny Kavanagh sounded nothing like the person I met that day.
According to the girls, he was aggressive, intense, and a complete snob, with a body to die for and a horrible attitude.
They made him out to be a cocky, rich, rugbyhead who was obsessed with sports, played hard on the pitch, and fucked harder off it – evidently much older girls were his thing.
Okay, so it was quite possible that he did in fact do all these things, but it was hard to piece that information together with the person I'd met.
My memories of that day were still cloudy, the events leading up to my accident still hazy, and the ones afterwards a jumbled mess, but I remembered him.
