Not My Problem

by Ciara Smyth

  “You’re Principal Kowalski’s daughter?” Kavi asked, seemingly surprised by this information.

  Meabh rolled her eyes. “Kowalska is just the feminine version of Kowalski.”

  “I know that. I don’t want to assume that just because you have a Polish name and Mr. Kowalski has the same Polish name that you’re related. I don’t want people assuming every Indian kid in school is related to me. I mean, that’s really offensive, and I don’t want to offend you.”

  “The only other Indian kid in school is your brother,” Meabh pointed out.

  “For now.” He shrugged. “Maybe next year there’ll be loads, and I don’t want people going round thinking they’re all my brother. Aren’t you the one who said the other day that Ireland is a country that has entered a period of racial and cultural diversification and that now is the time to address the issues of systemic racism and xenophobia embedded in our society? And then you spent like ten minutes giving out about that lady politician who keeps posting pictures of brown kids and Eastern European kids and complaining about there being no ‘Irish’ people left, until Mr. McCann promised that he would not use the words Celtic and Irish interchangeably again?”

  Meabh’s mouth dropped open ever so slightly.

  “I mean. Yes. I did say that. Exactly that.”

  Kavi grinned broadly. Not an I-caught-you-out-with-your-own-words kind of grin. He looked genuinely pleased that he’d repeated word for word what she’d said and now they were on the same page.

  Meabh eyed Kavi with new respect, even if he wasn’t smug enough to rub “winning” their exchange in her face the way she would.

  Then her face lit up. “By the way, don’t say lady politician. She’s just a politician. And a dickhead.”

  “Not a lady dickhead,” I added.

  Orla huffed loudly, deliberately. The three of us looked at her. She was standing with her hands on her hips and tapping her foot.

  “That was all very fun and everything, but you still haven’t explained to me why the hell you told Meabh Kowalska about my . . . problem. Or what on earth she’s doing here.”

  “Chill your tits,” I said. “I have not told her what your problem is. But do I look like feckin’ Columbo to you? You wanted into the school. I needed a way in. And Meabh here owes me a little favor.”

  Something occurred to me then. Call it divine inspiration. Call it a sudden spurt of genius. Call it the stupid idea that set me further down a path that had started with Meabh’s tantrum and would end up being either the best or worst thing that ever happened to me.

  In the moment all I thought was that it had sure come in handy having Meabh owe me one. And Orla worked in the school office. Maybe she’d be able to doctor my attendance record. Or my grades.

  “And so do you,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Orla asked suspiciously, glancing at Kavi. He was the one who’d brought her to me, after all.

  “I mean, I do this for you, then you owe me a favor. Get it?”

  “What about tickets to my modern dance class performance? We’re doing a Britney retrospective next month.”

  “Uh . . . no. I pick the favor.”

  “What if I can’t do it? What if you, like, ask me for a kidney or something?”

  “I don’t need a kidney. And I’m not going to ask you for something you can’t do. What good is that to me?”

  She bit her lip. Then she nodded.

  “Do you want to buy tickets to the Britney thing, then? They’re only €15 a head.”

  “All right, then.” I clapped my hands together, pretending I hadn’t heard that. “Let’s do this.”

  “So you do want me to give you a boost, then?” Kavi asked, clasping his hands together in preparation.

  “Are you kidding me? Kavi, you’re six foot ten. Climb the fuck over the wall and let us in,” I said, and threw the keys at him.

  8.

  Meabh insisted that there was no high-tech security, but I kept imagining invisible sensors crisscrossing the grounds and having to do an elaborate gymnastics routine to get through them. Or worse.

  “Don’t you think if there were school attack dogs, A) that would be terribly unsafe for a building full of children, and B) you’d have seen some sign of them before? Where do you think they keep these imaginary dogs of yours?” Meabh rolled her eyes.

  I answered by shrugging and leading our distinctly unstealthy group around the perimeter and up a grassy hill to the side entrance.

  “My feet are getting wet,” Meabh moaned. “Can we not go up the path?”

  “Liar. Only one foot is getting wet. You’ll live.”

  The path was lined with solar lamps that were fading already, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. When we reached the building’s side entrance my heart was pounding, and only partly because I’d had to walk all the way up a hill. There was a keypad with a flashing red light.

  Meabh caught my eye for the briefest moment. Hers shone in the dark. I could tell she was having a feeling, a moment of pause. I didn’t know her well enough to read what it meant though. It crossed my mind that this really was a trap. That she was so offended that I’d do something as morally outrageous as break into this hallowed institution after hours that she had arranged a sting operation. Was her hesitation a sign that she felt bad about her forthcoming betrayal after I’d helped her? Or did it just mean she’d never done anything like this before and was concerned that it was some kind of stain on her soul that she couldn’t take back?

  “Hurry up to fuck,” Orla said, rubbing her arms. “This cold is going to seize up my muscles and I have a rehearsal in the morning.”

  I locked eyes with Meabh again, trying to tell her that it would be okay. She sucked in a breath and pulled her gaze from mine to focus on the keypad. Watching her, the thought occurred to me that when Meabh had her moment of doubt, her eyes had found mine. Like she trusted me or something?

  The light turned green and I stopped wondering about Meabh. A simultaneous four-person sigh of relief made us giggle.

  “Shhhh,” I said, pushing the door open. I motioned for Orla to stick behind me. Then I turned and put my hand out to Meabh for the keys to her dad’s office. She didn’t give them to me.

  Kavi tried to follow me and Orla into the building but I blocked his way. Sort of. I mean, he was twice my size.

  We had a silent standoff.

  “Lads,” I said after a second. “Youse can’t come in? We can’t have a fucking parade down the hall.”

  “Why not? There’s no one here,” Meabh hissed. “And it’s freezing out.”

  Kavi’s face fell. “I came all this way and I only got to go over the gate and now I’m being killed off?”

  “It’s not a film,” I said, bemused. “You’re not dying. You can go home, actually, Kavi.”

  “No he can’t,” Meabh said. “We need to get back out the gate, and then Kavi needs to lock it and climb back over. And before you say it, I’m not leaving the keys with you. I’m staying with you until you give them back. I need to replace them tonight and I don’t trust you on your own. How do I know you won’t ransack the office or something?”

  “What would I do that for?” I asked, offended.

  “I don’t know. For kicks. For all I know this is some kind of ruse to get in and make a mess and do whip-its and poppers and spray-paint the walls with rude words.”

  A loud “HA” escaped from my mouth.

  “For someone so smart, you have no idea what you’re saying, do you? What are whip-its?” I challenged her with a smirk on my face.

  “I know what they are. I don’t have to tell you.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “I do.”

  “You definitely don’t.”

  “I—”

  Meabh cut herself off. I followed her gaze. Kavi and Orla were watching us bicker. Orla was trying unsuccessfully to smother a laugh.

  “I guess if you can’t take standing outside for a few short minutes,�
�� I gave in with pointed resignation.

  After about three steps in, I realized each time Meabh’s hard plastic boot hit the tile, there was a loud click. My shoulders tensed up. There might not have been anyone in the building, but there was something about breaking and entering that made you want to be quiet. I swung around and Meabh stopped walking and looked around herself like she didn’t know where that sound was coming from.

  Our extremely conspicuous group made its way down the hall and around the corner. One more hallway, past the lockers, and through a set of double doors that would open up onto the atrium where the principal’s office was. Meabh clicked loudly the whole way. I pushed open the door into the atrium and the others followed me toward the office.

  It took about five seconds for the alarm to start ringing.

  It took zero seconds for our group to go from hushed voices and held breath to a loud argument in the middle of the atrium. Okay, not the group, me and Meabh.

  “What the fuck, Meabh?” I rounded on her, yelling over the blaring alarm.

  “Don’t shout at me!” she yelled back.

  “I have to shout because there’s a fucking security alarm going off!”

  “Well, obviously I didn’t know about that, did I?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve always longed to have breaking and entering on my school record. Written up by my own father.”

  “Meabh, breaking and entering doesn’t go on your school record, it gets you a criminal one.”

  She turned pale, realizing the same thing that had occurred to me earlier. If we did get caught, of all of us, Meabh had the least to worry about. She would obviously get away with it, even though I’m sure her dad would have a full-on breakdown at the thought of her doing anything that didn’t further her greater ambitions. I was on my last chance of last chances and would definitely be expelled if we were caught. Sure, finishing up school and doing my exams, especially in this bloody prison, was not exactly high on my list of priorities, but I was scared that if I really fucked up, it would make things harder on Mam. It would alert the social and they’d blame her for not being there for me and she’d have a spiral and then . . . better not to think of that. I just couldn’t get caught. I eyed Kavi and Orla. I had no idea how this would work out for them.

  Kavi put one hand over each of our mouths. “Maybe we should stop arguing and Meabh could try turning off the alarm.”

  Meabh and I exchanged a look. Both our faces were still half covered with Kavi’s hands. Orla was biting her lip and hopping from one foot to another like she was getting ready to do one of her dances, or maybe just sprint home. I pointed at a panel near the door, assuming it was the one connected to the alarm system. As a group, we approached the panel and stared at it.

  “Do you think if I put in the wrong number something worse will happen?” Meabh said, and I wondered if she was picturing a net falling from the sky to trap us, like I was.

  Orla rolled her eyes. “What could be worse than this? My dad can probably hear this alarm and we live six streets over.”

  Meabh began entering her PIN.

  “Wait! Stop!” Everyone looked at me like I was losing it. “If we turn that off, won’t it show it’s been disabled? Which means someone who has the code broke in. If we just leave now then it could be anyone. It could even be a malfunction.”

  Meabh pulled her hand away from the panel.

  “Do you think it’s, like, connected to the police or something?” I asked, imagining a red wire running from the school all the way to a red flashing light in the middle of the police station.

  Meabh inspected the panel and shook her head. “I think it’ll be connected to a security company.”

  “They’ll probably ring your dad,” Orla said, looking nervous. Meabh nodded, agreeing.

  “How long do think it would take him to get here?” I asked.

  Meabh thought, shaking her head slightly. “Fifteen minutes?” she guessed. “We better go.”

  I glanced at Orla, who looked sick and pleading.

  “You cannot be thinking about still going to get your phone,” Meabh said with constricted breath, as though she couldn’t imagine anything more stupid.

  Orla was close to tears. “No, we have to leave, I know.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut for a second. We’d come this far.

  “Fuck it. We can do it,” I said. “But you two should go.” I pointed to Meabh and Kavi. “We’ll be quicker on our own.”

  “I’m not leaving,” Kavi pouted. “This is the exciting part.”

  I groaned. “It won’t be exciting if we get caught, Kavi. I’ll be expelled at best, and you three will be in serious trouble at the very least.”

  “Then you need a lookout,” he said. “And we’re wasting time.”

  He made a good point. A lookout would be helpful. It might stop us all from getting caught.

  “Well, fine. You go, Meabh.”

  She looked affronted. “I’m not going to be the only one who goes. How would that look? That you three end up in a jail cell and I walk free because I bailed on you?”

  “It’ll look great on your university application,” I pointed out. “You know, when you’re not a criminal?”

  “I have a very strong ethical code,” Meabh sniffed. She looked around. “Clearly I have extended it to include breaking and entering for this evening, but if I get caught then at least it’s honest. I will have a clear conscience. You know, Sartre’s conception of freedom was based on—”

  I exchanged an exasperated look with Kavi. He put his hand back over Meabh’s mouth.

  “We don’t have time for Sartre,” he said when the visible part of her face scrunched up in protest.

  “You can stay, but it’s your funeral.” I shook my head at her like I thought she was being silly.

  Secretly I was kind of impressed that she’d stick with us. But she didn’t need to know that.

  I took the key ring dangling from Meabh’s pocket while both of her hands were prying Kavi’s hand from her face. He let go easily but she jumped when she felt my hand sweep over her hip. Her hand reached out on instinct and grasped my fingers. The second it took her to realize I was just reaching for the keys was the longest second of the night. It was like for a moment every sense I had homed in on her hand clutching my fingers. When it passed, it felt like time sped up again. She blushed and we both did that smile you do when you’re trying to pass someone in the street but you keep stepping the same way. The “oops, aren’t we silly” smile. I had to shake off the feeling as Orla grabbed me and dragged me toward the door, while Meabh and Kavi stayed in the atrium as lookouts.

  Orla and I hurried over to the cabinet. The bottom drawer was where Mr. K kept confiscated items. I knew this from when he took my phone. And the time he took my vagina embroidery that I’d made for home ec. And the time he took my plastic ruler that I’d spent ages filing down into a point because he said it was now a weapon and “shivs are against school rules.”

  I was five foot nothing, what did he think I was going to do? Poke someone hard in the knee? It had just been something to do instead of conjuring French verbs. I tossed the key ring to Orla and let her try each of the approximately four million keys in the lock. I couldn’t watch her going through each one knowing we had maybe three minutes to get out of here. How long had that stupid argument in the atrium taken? One minute? Two? More?

  But I wasn’t going to waste my one opportunity to look around. This was the enemy’s lair and I would be unlikely to ever have unfettered access again. I tried the desk drawers but they were locked too. Were two security alarms and a door key not enough for this man? Who did he think he was? Fuckin’ Jack Reacher or something. On the desk was a framed photo of Meabh, her mum, and a dog that looked like an old lady. For real, this dog looked like its name should have been Mildred. Meabh looked a bit younger than she was now, maybe thirteen? They were at a lake and there were snowy mountains in the background. I
t didn’t look like it was in Ireland. It looked like what I thought the Alps probably looked like, but I’d never googled them so I couldn’t be sure.

  “Thank God.” Orla sighed with relief as the bottom drawer slid open, revealing four phones and a bottle of nail polish. Relief flooded over me. I checked the time. We’d taken another three minutes. I began chewing on the inside of my cheek.

  Orla pressed down on the phone’s on button and mumbled a prayer under her breath.

  “Please, God, don’t be out of battery, you piece of shit, please, God.”

  One of the lesser-known prayers. You heard it around, sure, but only if you stuck it out to the end of the rosary.

  Orla tapped her foot as she waited for the phone to boot up. It was taking an absurdly long time. I popped my head out the door and Kavi shook his head. No one coming yet. Maybe the alarm wasn’t connected to anything?

  The electronic bleep of Orla’s phone pulled me back into the room. Orla blessed herself, as though God really did have a vested interest in her deleting some sexts.

  “You know what I don’t get,” I said, trying not to show I was getting seriously antsy.

  “Hmm?” Orla barely heard me, but she was furiously tapping her screen.

  “I’m amazed you could feel all sexty in the middle of geography. I know all it does for me is put me to sleep, but to each their own or whatever.”

  “We weren’t really sexting,” Orla admitted. “Believe it or not, Ms. Kavanagh’s droning doesn’t do it for me either.”

  “So then why are we here deleting your messages?”

  She seemed like she was considering something when I heard a noise coming from her phone.

  “Are you calling someone?” I hissed, finally reaching the breaking point.

  Orla ignored me and held the phone up to her ear.

  “This is not really the time? We are all going to get in deep shit and you want to make a phone call?” My screeching alerted Kavi, whose face appeared in the door frame. I gestured at Orla holding the phone to her ear and my eyes bugged. I didn’t even have words.

  The person on the other end picked up. A deep voice said Orla’s name. He sounded confused. I’d also be confused if someone called me at—I checked the clock on the wall—1:30 a.m. Actually I wouldn’t be confused. It would be Holly and she’d be drunk and crying about whoever her latest crush was and all I’d have to do would be to murmur “mmmm” over and over until she calmed down.