OCTOBER 27, 1994
“THANKS, LIZZIE,” SHANNON WHISPERED FROM HER PERCH BESIDE ME. WE WERE SITting on the bench outside the principal’s office, waiting for our parents to come out from their meeting. “But you shouldn’t have done it.” She looked up at me with big, blue eyes. “You’re going to get in deep trouble because of me.”
“I don’t care,” I told her. “He hurt my friend. He made you cry.”
“Yeah, but you made him bleed,” she replied, chewing her lip. “You’re going to get punished.”
I knew that.
I saw how angry my dad looked when he went into the office with our teacher and the principal. How they all looked. All the angry faces all looking at me.
I didn’t feel bad, though.
I didn’t feel like screaming.
Instead, I felt warm.
My thoughts were nice and slow.
It always happened when I sat next to Shannon Lynch.
It made me want to sit with her forever.
“Thank you,” she offered, shoulders shaking. “I’ve never had a friend stick up for me before.”
“I’ll always stick up for you,” I promised. “And Claire,” I hurried to add, thinking about the curly-haired girl in our class who had become my friend since starting big school last month. Claire was loud and funny, and she made me feel happy. Shannon was quiet and calm and made me feel safe.
I was nervous when I started at Sacred Heart Primary School. It was a lot different from the school I used to go to that helped me to get my words out when they got stuck in my throat. But the grown-ups said I was doing such a good job that I was finally ready to go to this school now. I wasn’t sure what any of it meant, but I was nervous about moving schools and starting in junior infants. All the other kids in my class were four and five, and I was afraid they might think there was something wrong with me.
When our teacher walked me over to a round table and sat me next to a small girl with dark brown hair, I felt out of place. But when Shannon smiled and told me this was her second time in junior infants and that she was turning six next March, I felt better. That feeling only grew when I realized that I already knew her big brother, Darren. He was friends with Caoimhe, and I’d even met him a couple of times. He looked just like Shannon and was just as nice as her, too.
A little while later, the teacher brought another girl over to sit with us. She wasn’t shy like Shannon or strange like me. This girl looked like sunshine. Everyone wanted to sit with Claire Biggs and be her best friend, but she only wanted to sit with us and be our best friend.
“Why does your mammy have a scarf on her head?” Shannon asked then, distracting me from my thoughts.
“She doesn’t have any hair,” I replied, swinging my legs back and forth. “It fell out when she got sick.”
“Oh.” Her small hand covered mine. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I smiled back at her. “She got sick before and it grew back.” I shrugged. “Once she’s better again, she’ll get it back again.”
Shannon looked at me for a long time before whispering, “You’re different, Lizzie Young.”
“I am?”
She nodded and smiled. “You’re special.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.” She shook her head, still smiling. “You remind me of Joe.”
“Your brother?”
“Yep.” She nodded again. “And that’s a very good thing.”
“Calm down, Mike,” Mam said for the tenth time since we left my school. Sitting in the front seat next to Dad, she placed her hand on his knee and said, “It’s not the end of the world,” before turning around to wink at me.
Clasping my hands together tightly, I smiled back at my mother. I loved looking at her face. Mam had kind eyes, dark blue like Caoimhe’s, and she had my favorite voice. It was soft and gentle and wrapped around me like a hug. Daddy had blue eyes, too, but they looked pale and sad. Like mine.
“Calm down?” Dad shook his head, and I felt the car speed up. “Catherine, she bit a boy in her class. Like a feral fucking dog.” He sounded so angry. I didn’t like it. “What’s the point in spending a fortune on therapists when she reacts like that at the drop of a hat?”
“He pushed Shannon,” I heard myself say, growing angry. “He was being a bully, Daddy.”
“Did he push you?” Dad demanded, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. “Did he put his hands on you?”
Shaking my head, I turned to look out my window. “No, Daddy.”
“Then you had no right to put your hands on him,” Dad replied. “You’re lucky you weren’t expelled for that stunt, Elizabeth. God knows, they had bloody good reason to.”
“But he pushed Shannon,” I argued back, feeling my skin grow hot as my eyes followed the raindrops splattering against the window. “He pushed my friend.” Was I saying it wrong? Why couldn’t he hear me? “He’s a mean boy, Daddy,” I added, hands balling into fists on my lap. “He pulled Claire’s hair last week, and he made her cry on the first day of school, too.”
“Enough!” Dad snapped, banging his fist on the steering wheel. “I mean it. Don’t try to excuse your behavior because there is no justifying biting another child viciously enough to make him bleed!”
Breathing hard and fast, I glared at the back of his seat, trying so hard not to scream. To not jump out of my seat and scratch him. I didn’t want to make my mother sad again, but I could feel it growing inside of me.
“Jesus Christ, I thought you were past all this,” Dad continued to shout at me. “You know right from wrong, Elizabeth, so why can’t you just behave yourself? You’re six years old, for Christ’s sake. You’re too big in the tooth to be throwing tantrums. Why can’t you just be normal, huh? It’s not that fucking hard—”
“That’s enough, Michael,” Mam warned, cutting him off. “Lower your voice.”
“Lower my voice?” He turned his head to glare at my mother before driving through the enormous gates of my sister’s school. “You’d want to wake up, Catherine. The way that young one carries on isn’t normal. She’s old enough to be in first class, but instead she’s in junior infants and miles behind the rest, all because she can’t fucking control herself.”
“I said that’s enough,” Mam snapped, sounding just as cross now. “You’ve had your say, as has the principal. Now let it be.”
“She deserves a lot more than a few hard truths, but of course, that won’t happen because you’re blinded by your soft spot for her.” Shaking his head, Dad pulled the car into one of the parking spots and flicked the button to make the wipers go faster. “I thought the doctors said the new medicine would be working by now?”
“It is.”
“Well, tell that to the poor lad with teeth marks on the side of his face,” Daddy shouted again. “I knew it was a bad idea taking her out of St. Anthony’s. I fucking knew it. She had all the help she needed up there, with teachers equipped to handle the likes of her. But oh no, you had to have your way again, didn’t ya? Because this is the Catherine and Elizabeth show, isn’t it? Never mind what the rest of the family want—”
“Michael!” Mam snapped back, voice rising. “Now is not the time for this conversation.”
“I never should’ve listened to you or those fucking doctors,” he grumbled. “I’m so sick of living like this, Catherine, really I am.”
Covering my ears, I clenched my eyes shut and tried to swallow my voice down, while I tried to push hers out.
Come back to me.
I’m waiting.
I’ll find you.
Don’t fight it.
“Oh my God, it’s lashing down out there,” Caoimhe’s declared loudly, yanking the door wide-open. The sound of my sister’s voice made her go quiet in my head.
Breathing fast, I kept my eyes shut, too afraid to open them in case I saw her again—the scary lady, with the claws, the one with the voice that crawled inside my head at bedtime. Or when I got mad. She crawled out of the water, dripping wet, with her hair in clumps and her long claws. She was the lady I saw from my window sometimes. The one the doctors said wasn’t there. The one my family said was a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t supposed to see her. But I did.
“Elizabeth!” Dad said and the warning tone in his voice had my eyes snapping open.
I didn’t see the scary lady’s face, but I did see my dad’s. I was good at reading faces. It was my special power. And right now, my daddy was telling me with his eyes to behave.
“Scoot into the middle, Liz,” Caoimhe instructed, tossing her schoolbag onto the floor beneath my feet before climbing in beside me. “Mark’s coming home with us, remember?”
Yeah, I remembered.
“How’s it going, munchkin?” Mark’s familiar voice pulled me from my memories, and I turned to see him climb into the back seat of my dad’s Jeep, next to me. He smiled at me when he fastened his seat belt and ruffled my hair before turning his attention to my parents.
I covered my mouth with my hand to hide my giggle.
Mark always called me munchkin, and I liked it.
Dad started the car back up and I listened as the four of them chatted the whole way home. Nobody talked to me, but I didn’t mind. I was used to it.
When Mark draped his arm over my lap to hold my sister’s hand, I shivered all over. He noticed and gave me the special wink. The secret one he saved just for me. For when he was fixing me. It made me feel special, and I beamed back at him.
