SEPTEMBER 24TH 2001
JOEY
“WHOSE FIST DID your face get on the wrong side of?” were the first words Podge Kelly said to me, when I slid into the desk beside his at the back of the classroom for Monday morning tutorial. “You look like you went ten rounds with Tyson.”
Yeah, and I felt it, too.
I could still remember the feel of my father’s steel-capped boot as he drove it into my ribcage on Friday night. I could remember the smell, the sensation, the pain, all of it. It was ingrained in my memory in vivid technicolor.
“That’s right, ya little bastard,” he laughed cruelly. “Hide behind a locked door like your sister! Do I have a son or two daughters in there?”
‘Fuck you!’ I roared back, as I staggered to my feet, with a lifetime’s worth of beatings urging me on.
“No, Joey, don’t,” Shannon cried, as she tried and failed to pull me to safety. “Don’t go out there.”
Dragging the chest of drawers away from the door, I clumsily unlocked the door and swung it open, knowing that I wasn’t quite big enough to get the better of the bastard yet, but not giving two shits either way.
I would rather take another lifetime of beatings than let him think he got the better of me.
Refusing to curl into a ball like a wounded animal would, like my mother would, I had pushed onto my hands and knees, trying and failing to climb back up with every forceful hit of his boot.
With one hand slung across my aching chest, I had taken comfort in the feel of the frantic thump of my heartbeat against my ribcage, while silently counting my teeth with my tongue.
Forcing myself to swallow down the steady trickle of blood that was coming from my lip, I remained perfectly still, as my mind wildly pondered my predicament.
When he had me on the ground, good and beaten, the bastard had spat in my face.
Broken and barely breathing, I’d laid on my bedroom floor like a child, listening as his footsteps slowly retreated from my room.
You can go, a voice deep inside of my mind hissed, you don’t have to put up with his shit a second longer. Pack your bags, do a Darren, and run!
Refuting the notion, I shook my head and released a pained groan, feeling groggy as shit, and about three kicks to the head away from the grave. If you don’t get out of this house, you’re going to die in it…
Yeah, I had a real stellar weekend.
Shrugging, I dropped my bag on the floor beside me, and quickly tugged my hoodie off, knowing if I didn’t, I would be taking the familiar trip to the office. “Got it in a match.”
“We didn’t have a match at the weekend.”
‘Training then.’
‘We didn’t have training either, lad.’
‘Who are you, my mother?’ I snapped, bristling. ‘Do you want a list of my whereabouts? Fuck off with your questions, ya spanner.’
Leaning over, he pulled at the collar of my shirt. “Jesus Christ, Joe, your neck is black and blue.“
“Touch me again and won’t have a hand to wank yourself off with,” I warned him, shoving his hand away before quickly fixing the collar of my grey school shirt.
Frowning, Podge ran a hand through his bright red hair and mumbled, “Relax, lad, I was only asking out of concern,” under his breath, “Sorry for caring.”
“Well don’t.”
‘What? Don’t worry about my friend? Don’t ask questions when you come into school looking like you’ve had the living shite beaten out of you?’
‘Exactly,’ I shot back, reaching into my bag for my homework journal. “Don’t ask and don’t care.”
‘Fine,’ he snapped, and for a brief moment I wondered what would happen if I told him the truth, before mentally flinching when Darren’s words of warning reverberated in my mind.
“Go ahead and tell your teacher. See what’ll happen when you do. See what’ll happen to the rest of them. They’ll take us all away; split us up. Maybe your conscience can live with them having their innocence stolen, but mine sure as hell can’t.”
I’m trapped, I thought to myself, feeling my resolve seep back into my veins at a rapid pace, I’m all alone.
I felt snared, fucking cornered.
Surrounded by liars and cheats, I couldn’t turn my back for a goddamn second.
Exhausted from fighting a war I would never win, and cut open from betrayal, I struggled to rein in my tumultuous thoughts.
Nothing made sense anymore.
It felt like everyone was out to get me.
I couldn’t trust a goddamn soul, that was for sure.
Help wasn’t available for people like us, with families like ours.
We were fucked, royally screwed, and I was too broken to keep these kids alive any longer.
Not when I wanted to die.
It was at that exact moment that my phone vibrated, signaling a text message. Sliding it out of my pocket, I quickly glanced at the screen.
Holland: Smoke @ lunch?
Mentally sagging in relief, I quickly tapped out a response and pressed send.
Lynchy: I’ll be there.
Shaking my head, I bounced my knee as I quickly typed out another message.
Lynchy: Got anything else?
Holland: Like?
Lynchy: Something stronger. Something to shut my brain off.
Holland: It’s your lucky day. Got a batch of 512s with your name on them.
Lynchy: 512s? Will that do what I need it to do?
Holland: like you wouldn’t fucking believe, my friend.
Lynchy: Then I’m all in.
Somewhere in my mind, I knew I was behaving in a self-destructing manner, bringing on unnecessary pain, inflicting harm upon my own body and mind, but I couldn’t stop myself – the depression eating me from the inside out forbid me to.
My body was in pilot mode. I was going through the motions, just trying to get from A to B by any means necessary.
A smoke used to do that for me, but not anymore. I could feel my love affair with cannabis beginning to wane, because as the beatings from my father continued to intensify, my control continued to slip, and my desperate need to escape grew to epic proportions.
I needed something stronger.
Something to make it all stop.
Something to help me make it through the days.
‘What’s the story with the two of you?’ Podge asked then, obviously trying to clear the air, as he gestured across the classroom. “And don’t feed me the same line you give everyone else.”
“Who?” I replied flatly, sliding my phone back into my pocket.
“Who?” Podge gave me a ‘don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining’ look. “Aoife, ya bollox. Who else?”
The minute he said her name, I found myself searching the room for her familiar blonde hair, only to discover that she was already staring at me.
With my brow cocked, I stared back at her, and mouthed the word stalker.
Proving, once again, that she was unlike any other girl in our year, who would blush and look away under scrutiny, Molloy arched a brow right back at me and mouthed fuck up.
I winked. Nice legs
Grinning, she scratched her nose in with her middle finger. Asshole.
Biting back the urge to laugh, I shook my head and turned away, knowing all too well how distracting she could be. Somedays, she wasted entire classes worth of my time with her playful, bullshit antics.
While we never actually cleared the air after the fight I had with her precious prick of a boyfriend a few weeks back, she had somehow wormed her way back into my good graces. Something I had vowed would never happen after witnessing her once again go back to him.
My attempt at ignoring her had lasted three days, because, in all honesty, staying away from Aoife Molloy was almost as difficult for me as staying mad at her was.
She was my boss’s daughter, and I shared a classroom with her for seven hours a day. Some of our classes had mandatory seating plans, where I was given no choice but to endure her witty banter for forty minutes at a time.
On Wednesdays, we had four classes in which we were partnered up. That was a hard damn day to ignore her, which was how I had only lasted three days in the first place.
I didn’t know what to make of her, if I was being completely honest. She was like the sweetest fucking smell that wouldn’t go away.
A part of me was terrified that she would keep digging, somehow manage to break through my walls, through every one of my rotten layers, until she got to the ugly center of me, and then run for the hills.
A bigger part of me refused to care.
Why should I?
What the fuck did it matter to me if she walked away or not?
I wasn’t losing any sleep over her.
I refused to.
She meant nothing to me, and she never would.
Plagued with an immeasurable weight of responsibility from the moment I fell out of bed in the morning until I collapsed back into it at night, I struggled to maintain anything more than a casual friendship or hookup in my personal life, which was fine by me.
I didn’t know how to trust people and I didn’t want to learn how. I had plenty of acquaintances, so-called friends to fuck around with at school and training.
Besides, I didn’t need the hassle of having any extra people draining from steadily depleting supply of energy.
My family did enough of that on the daily.
“There’s no story, Podge,” I said, clearing my thoughts. “She’s got it in her head that we’re friends.”
“Aren’t ye?”
I don’t know what we are.
Bumming a pen from his pencil case, I quickly forged a week’s worth of my mother’s signatures on my homework journal, and bad behavior report book, signing off on every note of warning I’d received from my teachers and year head, and then admired my handy work.
Marie Lynch
I arched a brow and smiled to myself.
Not bad.
‘Did you score with her?’
“Who?” I asked, distracted, as I carved my initials into the desk with his compass.
“The virgin Mary,” Podge replied drolly. ”Who’d you think?”
‘Did he score with who?’ Alec Dempsey asked, turning back in his seat to talk to us. His curious gaze flicked from Podge’s face to mine. “Who’d ya score with, Lynchy?”
“No one.”
“Aoife Molloy.”
“Oh shit, lad. I thought that was just banter. You actually rode her?” Alec’s eyes widened. “Is that why the fight broke out?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” I repeated slowly. “What part of the word no is so hard to grasp?”
My gaze flicked to Ricey then, and he quickly turned his attention to the front of the class, avoiding eye contact.
I smirked, enjoying his discomfort.
Now this piece of shit, I had no problem ignoring, and with the exception of a few passing comments when we had to play together, I went about my business pretending that he didn’t exist.
I’d shown him with my fists how I felt about him that day, and he had the good sense to keep a wide berth of me since.
“Of course he did,” Podge accused, winking at Alec. “That’s why she’s always staring at him.”
“Lad, she is by far the best-looking girl in our year,” he groaned. “Maybe in the whole school.”
There was no maybe about it.
Molloy’s claim on that particular title was undisputed.
“That’s why Ricey’s so obsessed with her. He has to have the best of everything and be the best at everything. He hardly ever lets the girl out of his sight,” Alec offered, and then his eyes bulged in his head. “Seriously, lads, he’s fairly obsessed with Aoife and would lose his shit if she went behind his back… Holy fuck, did you score with her at the garage? That’s where you work with her da, isn’t it?”
“She’d be there without Ricey,” Podge offered. “It’s a good opportunity to get some alone time.”
“Oh my god, lad, it’s perfect,” Alec agreed with an enthusiastic nod. “That’s how you fucked her without him catching you, isn’t it?”
I narrowed my eyes in disgust. “See, this is exactly how the rumor mill gets started around here.”
‘I’m surprised you could pry her legs open,’ Mike Maloney laughed, as he joined in the conversation. “From what I hear, she’s tighter than a—
“Finish that sentence,” I said coldly. “Go on, I dare you. See what happens.”
‘And you’d know a lot about prying a girl’s legs open, wouldn’t you, Mike, with that big frigit head on ya,” Podge chuckled, trying to steer the conversation back to warmer waters – back to safety. “If you say that you weren’t with her, then I’ll take your word for it, Joe.”
“There’s no other way to take the truth,” I said flatly.
“Jesus, she’s a serious ride, though,” Mike added, sighing. “Ricey is some jammy fucker to have managed to convince her to go out with him.”
“Tell me about it, lad,” Alec agreed. “I swear I’ve had dreams about her legs.”
“The length of them.”
“And that skirt.”
Swallowing down a surge of bitterness, I forced myself to block out their voices, because if I didn’t, there was a very good chance I would lose my shit.
For once, luck was on my side.
“Joseph Lynch,” Mrs. Falvey, our year head, announced when she walked into the classroom a beat later. “You’re wanted in the office.” She clicked her tongue, disapproval etched on her face. “And bring your red book with you.”
“What did you do this time?” Mike whispered, nosey as usual.
“Fuck if I know,” I muttered, quickly rising to my feet.
Only delighted to be getting away from the conversation unfolding around me, I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.
“I am so disappointed in you,” Mrs. Falvey said when I passed her desk. “I thought we had gotten a handle on your behavioral issues last year. And what with it being a new term and all, I was willing to give you a clean slate, but then, four weeks into term, and I come to find that you’ve been fighting again.”
“With who?” I asked, tone laced with confusion, as I scratched the back of my head.
“Marcus Shorten.”
“Marcus who?”
“He’s from Kilcock community college,” she bit out. “Ring any bells?’
I stared blankly.
“You broke his finger, Joey,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “With your hurley. On purpose.”
“When?”
“Last Friday,” she hissed. “His mother phoned the school this morning. As you can imagine, she was very upset about the matter. She wants to take it to the board.”
“Oh yeah,” I mused, vaguely recalling the incident on the pitch last Friday when our schools met in a league game. “His mother actually phoned the school?”
“Yes, she did. She was very upset.”
“That wasn’t a fight,” I scoffed.
What a sap; telling his mammy on me.
The teacher’s eyes narrowed. “And what would you call it?”
Fucker nearly took my knuckles off with the steel band on the bas of his hurley. I was only returning the favor. “A minor disagreement.”
“Well, that minor disagreement has earned you your first suspension of the school year,” she snapped. “Congratulations.” Clapping her hands together mockingly, she asked, “Is there anything you’d like to say for yourself?”
“Yeah. We won the game last Friday,” I replied with a shrug. “And I was man of the match.”
