Not My Problem

by Ciara Smyth

  She read it out loud.

  “Aideen has permission to be absent this morning. She is attending treatment for an imbalance in her humors. She has an excess of yellow bile.”

  I nodded seriously. “Yellow bile, miss. It causes aggression and liver derangement.”

  Ms. Devlin pinched the bridge of her nose. “I could call your mother to verify this. What do you think would happen then?”

  “I’m sure she’d love to hear from you, miss. You can talk about how I’m your favorite student and how upset you’ll be when I die of humors.”

  The phone number the school had for my mother was my own mobile number. I’d filled in the registration forms myself way back when and I put down my phone number because at the time Mum was always losing hers or breaking her phone or leaving it in a taxi and just buying another cheap pay-as-you-go. I realized what a gift I’d given myself the first time my first-year form tutor, Mr. McCann, had phoned Mam to give out about something I’d done wrong (turned up to World Book Day without a costume. GASP).

  Ms. Devlin looked at me with an uncertain expression. After a long moment she sighed and shooed me into the classroom.

  “You better have your homework,” she muttered, casting me a mutinous glance.

  I smiled broadly. “Will I? Won’t I?” I said with mock anticipation. “It’s a thrilling time to be alive, isn’t it?”

  Thankfully I did actually have something. It wasn’t anything that was going to blow her mind, but I’d tried. I had to avoid raising too much concern.

  I scanned the room for Kavi and didn’t see him. The English room had tables that fit two people, instead of individual desks, and Holly was sitting beside Sinead O’Brien. I tried to smother the spark of jealousy. Holly didn’t look at me and I got the creeping sensation of realizing she was annoyed with me. What did I do?

  Right. Ditched her at lunch yesterday. Somehow with all the drama about Orla I’d completely forgotten to text Holly all night. That had never happened before.

  Choosing a seat in the corner, I wondered if I could position my hand over my ear in a way that would hide my earphones and then I could listen to my Culchie Wedding Classics playlist while Ms. Devlin droned on. Maybe it would be one of those days she got us to sit and write a story or something. When that happened she usually let us listen to music if we wanted to. Sure, I’d have to write an essay, but there were no rules about how good it would be. I mean, unless you count “grades” as rules. I’m not bound by such conventions. The last time we did “creative writing” I basically wrote a recap of the first episode of my favorite TV show.

  Ms. Devlin perched on the end of her desk. Perched is not the right word. Perched sounds prim. Ms. Devlin was not prim. She was sturdy and she spread her legs and gestured wildly like she was determined to take up as much space as possible.

  “Right, lads,” she said, clapping her hands together, “in light of our upcoming election, I thought we would start a unit on persuasive writing. Unfortunately, no one else has signed up to run for student council president. YET. There’s still time. Maybe this task will inspire you to give Meabh a run for her money. Not that you aren’t an ideal candidate, Ms. Kowalska, but choice is the root of democracy.”

  Meabh smiled tightly. I wasn’t sure she believed in democracy as much as she believed in being a benevolent dictator.

  “So, to stretch our critical-thinking muscles, I would like us to engage in some spirited debate.”

  The class groaned. Meabh beamed. Holly was also looking at Meabh, and I saw her roll her eyes and then whisper something to Sinead that made her snicker.

  “I will give you a topic and a position, and in groups—”

  Groups.

  I loathed group work. Everyone staring at each other waiting for someone to speak. The pressure to say something, make some kind of contribution mounting. The bit at the end where the teacher always asked someone to share the group’s work and everyone exchanged glances, a game of presentation chicken. It was only bearable if you got someone in your group who wanted to do all the work. Like Holly or Meabh.

  Kris raised her hand.

  “No, you can’t choose your own groups,” Ms. Devlin said without bothering to call on her. “Do I look stupid?”

  She pointed at each of us in turn and said, “A, B, C, D, E, A, B, C, D, E,” and so on until we’d been sorted into groups of five.

  “As up here, Bs here . . . ,” she barked, pointing at various tables. I got lucky not having to move. Group E had to come to me.

  Within seconds, Mícheál and Bonnie appeared at my table. So did Holly. Which would have been great—I could have got a chance to clear the air about yesterday—except the last member of our group, frowning at the desk with her hands on her hips, was Meabh.

  We exchanged the briefest glance and in that second we agreed to pretend as though nothing had happened. As though I wasn’t dying to ask her if she’d seen Kavi this morning or convince her to pry some details from her dad about what had happened to him.

  Holly opened her mouth to speak but Meabh got there first.

  “We’re going to have to sort this into a more manageable configuration. Pull the table out two feet from the wall and one foot back and we can arrange the chairs around it so that everyone can see everyone. I’ll sit here where there’s more space because I’m going to take notes.”

  She said all this in one breath while Holly glowered.

  I hoped Holly wouldn’t start anything. Meabh was being her usual obnoxious self, but this could descend into chaos quickly if the two of them got going at each other. To my relief, Holly contented herself with a meaningful look at me, so I rolled my eyes, hoping that would satisfy her. Meabh noticed and for a second a hurt look flashed across her face. She immediately averted her eyes and pulled the table out to the “correct” position. My cheeks were on fire. I’d rolled my eyes at Meabh at least once a week for ten years, but suddenly I felt like a huge asshole.

  The only thing worse than doing group work with no one who wants to do anything is doing group work with two people who want to do everything. It becomes a battle of wills that everyone else at the table has to endure.

  Meabh took out her folder, which also had a clipboard clip on the front, and Holly snorted. Holly took out her own notepad and pen. Meabh raised her eyebrows.

  “I said I’d take notes,” Meabh said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take them,” Holly said sweetly.

  “I’ll present then,” Meabh replied.

  “I think it makes more sense if the person who takes notes presents. Otherwise you’ll have to read my messy handwriting.”

  Meabh and Holly glared at each other. Mícheál and Bonnie exchanged glances. Bonnie leaned back in her seat, realizing she wouldn’t have to contribute anything.

  “Hey, Mícheál, I heard Angela Berry is having a party at her house when her mum is away on some work trip. You going?”

  Mícheál shrugged. “When is it?”

  “Not this Saturday; next one, I think.”

  Ms. Devlin came to our table with a scrap of paper.

  “We have two pro groups and two anti groups, so I’m going to give you the option. Whichever you want.” She set a tablet down on the table too, for us to do research. “I’ll be checking the history,” she sang as she walked away.

  Meabh snatched the paper quickly as though Holly was going to take it from her. Holly didn’t move, she just smirked, and Meabh blushed.

  “Consuming meat should be illegal,” she read in as dignified a tone as she could manage.

  “Pro!” Holly said quickly. “We’ll be pro. We’ll discuss impact on climate change, trauma to the labor force. It’s easy. I did a piece on it for the paper.”

  Meabh shook her head. “Anti,” she said.

  “Aren’t you a vegan?” Holly asked.

  “Yes, but this is a state paternalism issue. We can argue much more effectively on a liberty and autonomy stance.”

  “Wrong! We can re
but those arguments by arguing that a libertarian state agenda fails society.”

  All I could think was that there was no way anyone else in our class even knew half the words they were using. They would win no matter what they chose.

  “There are race and class issues here too,” Meabh said through gritted teeth. “You wanna talk about labor? Let’s discuss the exploitation of farmers in the global south so that white girls can get mass-produced quinoa in Tesco.”

  “You mean like you do?” Holly said with exasperated disbelief.

  “NOBODY’S PERFECT,” Meabh roared. The entire class turned around to stare at our group. Ms. Devlin didn’t even look up.

  It was going to be a long class.

  “I hate her,” Holly said as we walked out of class. Me and the rest of the class had been traumatized by the last fifty minutes of our lives. I didn’t think Mícheál was ever going to be able to talk about it. At one point he tried to intervene and . . . well, at least he’d escaped with his life, if not his dignity. That was something.

  “I know you do. Although sometimes I think if the two of you were friends, you could plot to take over the world.”

  It was a chilling thought actually. On the one hand I had no doubt they’d quickly sort out all the world’s problems. On the other they would inevitably disagree on some minor detail and blow us all up rather than compromise.

  Holly wrinkled her nose. “I could never be friends with her. Don’t you think she’s just the worst possible human being on the face of the planet?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Meabh was annoying. She was arrogant and a know-it-all and self-righteous and a craicuum. But the worst possible human?

  “Yeah, probably.”

  That gnawing feeling of guilt came over me again, though, and I looked over my shoulder to make sure she wasn’t walking right behind us or something.

  “I would love to take her down a peg or two. I wanted to beat her out for captain fair and square, but she took that away from me.”

  “She sprained her ankle. I don’t think that was about you.”

  Holly cut her eyes to me and gave me an icy look that made my stomach roll over.

  “Sorry. That came out wrong. I just meant . . .” I didn’t know how to end that. What else could I have meant?

  Holly didn’t let me off the hook. She waited. My heart pounded as I grasped for some words that would smooth things over. I hated when she was mad at me. I hated when anyone was mad at me, but especially Holly. Then, as though she’d just remembered, she snapped at me again.

  “What was that yesterday, anyway? You were helping Kavi with a presentation? Seriously?”

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Stop. She’s annoyed with you. Understandably annoyed. She doesn’t mean anything by it.

  “Yeah. I. Just Irish. I know he should ask someone else but he asked me. I felt bad.”

  “You ditched me for lunch. It was so rude.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I wouldn’t have done it if you were going to be left alone, but you had Jill.”

  Holly seemed to weigh up whether I was making a point about Jill or not.

  “Here, you know what I remembered last night? The time we put rose hips from your garden in Meabh’s costume for the play.”

  Holly laughed and my heart felt safe enough to slow down again. “Oh my God. I had completely forgotten that. We ruined the whole play. Totally worth it though.”

  I spent the rest of the day trying to make it up to her and get us back to normal. I completely forgot about finding out what happened to Kavi. I couldn’t explain it. Whenever things were weird between us I felt like I couldn’t live with it. It was a black hole sucking the life out of me and I needed it to go away.

  I’d do anything to make it go away.

  11.

  By the time I left school that afternoon, Holly seemed grand with me.

  I walked her over to the office so she could oversee the paper printing. Orla was behind the desk with earphones on and she was clearly running through the steps of her dance. I tried to guess which Britney song it was.

  She looked up and saw me. I waved and she took her earbuds out and grinned.

  “‘Toxic’?” I guessed.

  “How did you know?!” she laughed.

  Holly glanced between us, confused. A crease formed between her eyebrows.

  “Do you wanna stay? Hang out?” Holly asked me.

  Just then Jill arrived, literally rolling up her sleeves, and said hi to everyone.

  Part of me wanted to stay. I wanted to make sure things were okay with us, and also watching Holly in her element was kind of nice. The paper came out every other Thursday, and Holly always spent most of the evening before in the school office, tweaking the final layout and making last-minute edits. I’d gone with her before and watched her work. Which I know sounds boring, but it wasn’t. She got this super intense look on her face and she’d roll up her sleeves and put her hair in a ponytail. She’d take it out an hour later when she was yelling that there were six typos that the copy editor hadn’t noticed in one article and did she have to go through the whole thing herself?! She’d tie it back up when she realized there was a blank space where a photo should be and she had to call up the photographer and give out. It was cute, though.

  By the end of the night her hair would be greasy and she’d be five minutes from a coronary, but as much as she complained, I knew that she loved it. Becoming editor in chief this year had been her crowning achievement. I knew it meant much more to her than captain of the camogie team, which I suspected she only wanted because Meabh had it all three junior years. This was the thing she actually loved.

  But I didn’t like being stuck with Holly’s newspaper friends. I could never relax around them. I was always thinking of whether I was acting right or if the thing I was going to say was stupid. So I told Holly I didn’t want to get in the way at the office and hugged her goodbye. I waved goodbye to Orla too and she waved back, mid-spin.

  On my way out I finally spotted Kavi sitting on a couch in the atrium. I instantly felt horrible for forgetting about him all afternoon. I sidled up, worried he was going to be really annoyed, but when he saw it was me, he grinned, so I sat beside him.

  “Well, what do I owe you?” I said, trying to make a joke out of it. When Kavi looked confused, I continued, “That was not a plan. That was a full-on martyr mission. Did you get in much trouble?”

  Kavi waved me off. “Not as much trouble as the time I swung a golf club into my little brother’s face—even though that was an accident, my parents were still really, really mad at me. Maybe they are just as mad this time. I’m not sure. They took my phone away for a week and I have in-school suspension.”

  “In-school suspension?” I asked dubiously.

  “For the rest of the week. I sit in a classroom by myself. Just me and Mr. Kowalski. He said he didn’t want me missing class and that I was normally a really good student and that he didn’t think that I ‘fully understood the gravity of my misdemeanor’ at the time. He is letting me off easy because he doesn’t want me to have a criminal record over a mistake. It was kind of tricky when he asked how I got in.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, and I winced, but Kavi had thought of everything.

  “But I just played stupid. Said the gate was unlocked—I figured there was no way you guys could have relocked it—and I climbed through an open window and accidentally set off the alarm. He seemed a bit suspicious so I need to be extra good I think. And of course now he thinks I’m in love with his daughter so that was a bit awkward. He had a long talk with me today about the difference between love and infatuation and about consent.”

  I grimaced.

  “It was nice!”

  How was Mr. Kowalski such a hippie at school and yet such a demon parent with Meabh?

  “Well, that’s amazing,” I said. I felt horribly guilty. It should have been me. It felt wrong to have someone protect me like that
. Selfish. “But you took a massive risk.”

  He smiled like it was no big deal, which made me feel worse.

  “Thank you,” I said, though it didn’t really feel like enough. I couldn’t work out what he was getting from all this. Just another story he couldn’t tell anyone?

  At that moment Mr. Kowalski stepped out of his office. Immediately Kavi flopped onto my shoulder and began wailing at the top of his lungs.

  “SHE’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WHOLE WORLD BUT SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW I EXIST.” He flailed backward and collapsed on the sofa with a hand over his forehead like an old movie star dying of consumption.

  I waved at Mr. Kowalski with one hand and patted Kavi’s knee with the other.

  Mam was already home when I got there. I tensed, on the lookout for signs of Dad. Nothing. My shoulders dropped. I should have realized he wasn’t there when I didn’t see the mark of Satan hovering over the building. Mam was hanging laundry in the windows. There wasn’t anywhere to dry clothes in our flat so I’d stuck a nail in either side of the wall beside the window and hung my own makeshift washing line. It was very effective but Mam always complained that you could see our laundry from the ground outside since the blind broke and the landlord wouldn’t replace it. Apparently, the fact that the cord on a twenty-year-old blind snapped was due to misuse and not normal wear and tear and so it wasn’t his responsibility.

  “You’re back early,” I said, a tight squeeze in my throat as I tried to sound casual. It’s not even humanly possible to sound casual if you’re not. It’s like licking your elbow: it seems like it should be possible but it isn’t.

  I squeezed up beside her and began helping to put the laundry out. She smelled like strawberry mist.

  “Oh, crashed around lunchtime. I was wrecked. Nadine let me go home.”

  Great. It wasn’t like we needed the money. And obviously she was irreplaceable at work. Mam unballed a pair of socks and hung them across the radiator.

  “We stayed up all night chatting.”

  “You and Bernie?” I asked.