Every gift a curse, p.12
Every Gift a Curse, page 12
Lily opens her bag and takes out a sketch pad, and Aaron draws a tree. It does look like a claw, the bark bent to the right, the branches like talons.
“Hawthorn,” Nuala says. “They’re hardy and they can grow anywhere, but they grow to the right where there’s a lot of wind.” She pauses. “Meaning it’s probably coastal.”
“Coastal?” Roe clarifies. Kilbeg city is at least forty minutes from the coast, and even then, the county’s coastline is ragged and vast.
I notice a shimmer of raindrops on Roe’s shoulders. “Did you go outside?”
“I was going out of my mind with worry,” they respond, “so I walked around outside for a bit. I told myself that by the time I came back, you’d be home safe.”
I reach my hand out and touch their damp hair, curling frantically as it dries.
“It wasn’t raining,” I suddenly say. “At the Lodge. There was no rain on the windowpane.”
“The rain sometimes skips the coast. It’s a microclimate out there,” Nuala says, then turns to Fiona. “If Paolo sets out tonight, could he find somewhere coastal with the driest soil? With the bent hawthorn trees, like Aaron’s drawing?”
Fiona motions to the magpie, who flies to her shoulder. She strokes his feathers with her thumb and murmurs something, her eyes unfocused. Then she goes to the window, pulls it up, and allows Paolo to swoop out. We all watch him as he disappears into the darkness. Each of us with our own gift, each of us a little jealous of Fiona’s.
We head back to Nuala’s house, all of us too wired to go home, and all too aware of the Christmas holidays to want to. We stop to get fish and chips on the way, our arms heavy with greasy paper bundles as we walk up Nuala’s drive.
Something is obstructing Nuala’s driveway. Something lumpy and difficult to make out in the darkness. For a brief, horrifying second, I am sure it is a dead body. But whose? Lorna McKeon? Squirrel Girl? I do a quick head count. We’re all here, so no one in the core gang. A family member. No—not Jo, or my parents? Not Tutu?
As I get closer, I see that they are separate packages, and my first thought is: So they decapitated the body, then?
And then I am closer, and I see they are gifts. Christmas gifts, wrapped up in paper. Food hampers covered in cellophane. A box that looks like it’s filled with wine bottles. Before I can even vocalize that I think it’s a trap, I hear Nuala groan.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” she says. “Manon!”
“What!” Manon says. “What have I done?”
“You know.”
Everyone who is not Nuala and Manon immediately feels awkward, knowing we are about to witness a family spat whether we want to or not. Our paper packages of chips burning our hands, our faces going numb in the cold.
“Can we go inside, or . . . ?” Lily volunteers.
“There’s cheese!” Fiona says. “French cheese. You shouldn’t leave it out here, Nuala, the foxes will take it.”
“Manny,” Nuala says sharply. “Did you tell him where I live?”
“Yes, of course. I had to,” Manon says, not sounding remotely sorry. “He’s my father, he wants to send Christmas presents. It will be my first Christmas without him, and he’s lonely.”
“Lonely!” Nuala exclaims, with a sourness that feels incredibly uncharacteristic. “Lonely! I have had sixteen Christmases alone in this house, Manny. And not by choice.”
“Yes, by choice,” Manny snaps. “Yes, very much by choice.”
“I have a key,” Aaron whispers. And we all carefully walk around mother and daughter, avoiding the hampers like they’re land mines.
“RESPECTFULLY,” ROE SAYS AS SOON AS THE five of us are in the kitchen, “what the hell was that?”
“Don’t get me started.” Aaron sighs. “They do that all the time, you know. Last time I was living here, too.”
“What’s the deal, then?” I ask. “Do you know?”
“I try not to pry, but, like, they’ll be absolutely fine and then Manon’s dad, René, will come up and they’ll just go nuclear on each other. What I can gather is that Nuala walked out on Manon as a kid, and there seems to be some dispute over whether or not that was Nuala’s choice.”
We have all put some version of this together ourselves, and still remain puzzled by the missing pieces.
“Nuala would never willingly walk out on her kid,” Lily says defensively. “It must be Manon who has it wrong.”
“Divorce is hard on people. My mum had a first husband,” Fi says. “They had my brother together, and they’re still in his life, but not in each other’s. So.”
Fiona is not particularly close with her brother in Boston, so I’m inclined to think she’s only mentioning him so she can spring to Manon’s defense.
Manon and Nuala enter the kitchen, still tense, still unwilling to talk about it.
“Everyone,” Nuala says grandly. “How do we feel about a little Christmas party on Monday night? I suddenly have rather a lot of food to get through.”
Manon starts taking the hampers in from the porch, her back to her mother.
“She’s only saying that so she doesn’t have to eat any of it,” she calls back, and Fiona goes to help her.
“Well observed, Manny,” Nuala says airily.
Roe gets a phone call and takes it in the kitchen. Manon, Fiona, Lily, and I unpack all the hampers in Nuala’s living room, a shabby and rarely used space that is a temporary bedroom for Aaron. I notice his backpack and rolled-up sleeping bag propped next to the couch.
There’s packing straw everywhere, and seemingly endless jars, tins, and bottles of things. Cured meat, soft cheeses, a big jar of cassoulet. Cherry tomatoes that look like they’ve been polished by tiny elves. Chocolates. Bunches of dried lavender.
“Your dad is very . . . generous,” I say, trying not to betray Nuala by saying anything too positive about the mysterious René.
“It’s Christmas, and he’s rich,” Manon says, carefully unwrapping everything and noting it dispassionately, as if adding it to a household inventory. “She’s only doing this so that when he phones to ask if Fin enjoyed the food, I have to say ‘She didn’t eat any.’” Manon sighs. “She is such a baby.”
“I’m going for a drive,” Nuala says flatly. “Aaron, can I please have your cigarettes?”
Aaron throws his packet over without questioning her, and Nuala catches them midair.
“Thank you,” she says shortly. “And will you go check on the chickens? I saw some hungry-looking foxes on the road earlier, and I don’t want to lose the new batch.”
“Right-o,” Aaron says, pulling on some women’s Wellington boots and leaving the room. “And here was me thinking I had escaped farm life.”
Nuala silently heads out the door and to her car. We watch her from the window, smoking in the passenger seat, with clearly no intention of driving anywhere.
“Come on,” Manon says. “Help me with this stuff. Don’t pay attention to her. Try anything you want, it’s all the best stuff. It’s all delicious. Look, this preserve is from Céret, where I was born.”
It occurs to us then that while Nuala is our dear friend, so is Manon. And for the first time ever, she wants to share something with us. She talks, quite animatedly, about the town where she was born, the Pyrenees mountains, the way she and her parents used to drive to Spain for the afternoon when they still lived in the hills. “I could speak Catalan, too,” Manon says shyly. “I still remember some of it, even though I was only five.”
“When did Nu . . .” I start to ask, then wonder if Manon and I are at that level of closeness. I don’t know if I can ask her when her mother left. I break off, but I can feel Manon’s eyes on me.
“Has he talked to you,” Manon asks me, “about his power?”
“Who? Aaron?” I ask, realizing he is the only “he” left in our circle. She nods, looking at me steadily. “Not really. Why?”
She sits back, legs crossed, and stares absently at the mantelpiece. She looks like a little god. “Sometimes I feel like he is a foster brother, or something like that,” she says. “Like I have to teach him things he did not learn from his first family.”
“What do you mean?”
Manon shakes her head. “I suppose it’s probably private,” she says. “Here, smell this.” She passes me a bundle of dried lavender. It’s richer, cleaner than I remember lavender smelling. Not like old ladies at all. More like peppermint.
We sit on the floor, tasting and trying things. It is all delicious. At some point, I realize that Roe has been gone for a long time, and I drift into the kitchen to find them.
“Hey,” I say. Roe is leaning against the counter, typing on their phone. “You OK out here?”
“Yeah. Just, you know, band stuff.”
“What kind of band stuff?”
“Um . . .” Roe gazes out the kitchen window for a moment, clearly wrestling with some competing emotions. “So, earlier. In the car.”
“Right.”
“I told you about the playlist thing.”
“Yes.”
“Turns out it’s a bigger deal than I initially thought.”
“OK . . . ?”
“So we were always supposed to be starting the tour with Honor in April, right? But now, well, some people have reached out to us. It might make sense for us to do more solo shows before the tour starts. With us headlining, I mean. Like a mini tour.”
“Wow,” I say, leaning back against the counter. “That’s great.”
“It would start in January, and probably go until the end of Feb. With some UK dates and everything.”
I blink. “So you’d have March at home,” I say slowly. “And then you’re out on tour again in April.”
They nod. “Well, March we’re supposed to be recording the album.”
“Right.”
There’s a silence, and then I remember myself.
“Well . . . uh, congratulations?”
But neither of us can muster up much enthusiasm. This is at least four months of Roe away from Kilbeg. They look at me, eyes streaked in black, their expression unreadable.
“Yeah,” they say. “Congratulations to me, I guess.”
Another tense silence. “Listen, let’s just say it.” I finally start speaking, trying to adopt as positive a tone as possible. “We’re not going to see much of each other for a few months, which, given that I’m supposed to be studying for exams, might be a good thing. Give me time to focus, y’know?”
I refuse to indulge the insecure part of myself that is always just a little bit frightened of being left behind. I remember Fiona at the party, quaking with nerves about leaving Kilbeg, wondering if it’s all a bit too soon. I can’t think about myself too much. Fiona and Roe are, after all, doing the scary thing. Not me.
Roe nods, trying to be reassured by this. “But . . . Dorey. The Children.”
I shake my head. “Listen, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Children, it’s that their concerns are bigger than us. From that horrible conversation tonight, we know we’re not exactly Dorey’s top priority now. We should relish that.”
I almost say, “Starving and emotionally torturing other people is her top priority right now!” but I don’t want Roe to feel guilty about leaving, so I stop talking about Dorey. “We have to live our lives, Roe. Fiona too. This was always in both of your plans. You’ve always known you want to be artists. Upending your life plan is . . . letting them win, in a way.”
Roe laughs softly. “You sound like one of those ‘If we don’t go on holidays, we’re letting the terrorists win’ people.”
“Well, maybe they have a point,” I say, and I wrap my arms around them. “This is amazing news,” I stress. “Let’s just have a fun Christmas, and a good New Year, and we’ll worry about long-distance stuff when we have to.”
Roe finally manages a smile, a real one. “God, look at you. Miss Emotional Maturity. What happened to that bitchy little schoolgirl?”
“I’m still a bitchy little schoolgirl.”
We kiss, the terror of losing each other so huge that suddenly my back is pressed against the fridge, and we have lost ourselves to making out in Nuala’s kitchen.
“Jesus,” Fiona interrupts. “Get a room, you two.”
“Don’t get a room,” Manon calls. “Go outside. Animals.”
I laugh. “I should go,” I say, looking at my watch. “My parents are going to be livid that I wasn’t home earlier. All my siblings are back today.”
“I’ll drop you,” Roe says. “Fi, Lil, I’m heading out soon.”
Lily gets up, still eating a chocolate Père Noël. “Bon.”
“I might stick around for a bit,” Fiona says quietly, then checks to see if Manon reacts. Manon is busy collecting the paper and cardboard for recycling.
“Yes, stay,” Manon says, sounding distracted. “So my mother can’t go crazy again.”
We leave soon after, Nuala and Aaron both smoking in the car, Fiona and Manon sitting on the living room floor. I make desperate eyes with Fiona as I put on my coat, trying to signal a please text me the instant anything happens.
As usual, Roe drops Lily off first and then me. We sit in the car and watch the windows of my house like it’s a theater.
“I better go in. Mum will be so annoyed I didn’t come home sooner.”
“Wait a second,” Roe says, pulling me back, tucking me under their shoulder. “You freaked me out today. You just disappeared into thin air.”
“I know, that must have been so freaky. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t just that. It was that you disappeared together.”
“Oh.”
“It was, like, I finally understood why you would get so weirdly jealous about me and Fiona, or me and the band, or whatever. I thought you were just being immature. But . . . seeing someone you love have a connection with someone who isn’t you, even if it’s, I don’t know, platonic. It’s hard.”
A pause.
“I do trust you,” Roe says unconvincingly.
“OK,” I say slowly. “The way you’re saying it doesn’t sound like you trust me very much at all.”
I remember the moment at the school, when I thought Aaron might want to kiss me. The hint of excitement at what might happen. Shame burbles through me, but then I remember my own advice: it’s your actions that are important, not your thoughts. I had jumped up, ending the tension as soon as I realized it was there.
Suddenly, I’m annoyed. Why does everyone feel so comfortable reprimanding me all the time? If it’s not Fiona, it’s Roe; if it’s not my parents, it’s my teachers. If it’s not my classmates accusing me of making Lily disappear, it’s Lily herself, furious for bringing her back. I’m just a person. A person who didn’t ask for any of this—not for the magic, not for the responsibility of keeping the Well safe. Yet everyone else seems to cope just fine, and I have somehow become the lightning rod for every minor complaint.
“It’s just,” Roe continues, “you have this connection, the two of you, and I know you can’t help being sensitives. But the way you were at the school together, just by coincidence. And that note . . .”
“This is why you’re nervous about leaving, isn’t it?” I snap, suddenly very bored of this. “That whole business about being nervous about Dorey. You just think I’m going to cheat on you if you leave.”
“No,” Roe says quickly. “I don’t think that.”
I gaze out the window. “I have to go,” I say.
“Don’t go, Maeve.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid that if I stay a second longer, I’ll read your mind and find out how you really feel.”
I don’t slam the door. Slamming the door is something an immature person would do, after all. I kiss Roe on the cheek and leave the car quietly. I say hello to my brothers and sisters and act normal for an hour. Then I go upstairs to cry in bed. Maturely.
FIONA CALLS ME IN THE MORNING.
“I want to die,” she says.
“All right. Do you want me to come over?”
“No, god no. Let’s meet in town.”
“OK. An hour at Bridey’s?”
“You’re a good friend.”
“I know.”
Presumably things did not go well with Manon, then. I shower and get dressed quickly, making a mental note to do the rest of my Christmas shopping after I see Fiona. There are a couple of messages from Roe: nothing with an apology, just lots of positive, smoothing texts about how we should get lots of date nights in before they go on tour.
I’m in such a rush to meet Fiona that I run past a telephone pole and almost miss the familiar face staring right back at me.
MISSING PERSON
LORNA MCKEON
18 years old, white, medium build. Last seen on the 14th of December wearing blue jeans, white sweater, and yellow puffer jacket. If you have seen her or know of her whereabouts, please contact Kilbeg Valley Police.
I stare at the poster for a long time. Tomorrow, Lorna will have been missing for ten days. How was the alarm not raised sooner?
It occurs to me then that online classes might even be beneficial to the Children. People always talk about boys being radicalized while alone in their bedrooms. But what about girls? Who could be more vulnerable than a friendless girl alone in her bedroom all day?
When Lily went missing, the police came to school. The whole city was engaged. The teachers talked to us. But now there is no school, and our remaining teachers are desperately trying to bring us over the finish line, probably while simultaneously looking for new jobs. But even so, Lily was on the news. There were search parties. I take a photo of the MISSING poster and send it to our WhatsApp group.
Why isn’t there a fuss about this, I text. The way there was a fuss about Lily?
Because she’s 18, Nuala messages back. She has a boyfriend. Her parents probably thought that she had run off with him and were waiting for her to come back.
She has a point. Plus, Lily went missing in the middle of the night. There was a sense of mystery that involved the entire community. I keep an eye out for more Lorna posters on the way into town. I see three. Lily’s had blanketed the entire area. There was no one who wasn’t talking about it. Girls weren’t allowed out at night. One shouldered me into a locker because of it.
“Hawthorn,” Nuala says. “They’re hardy and they can grow anywhere, but they grow to the right where there’s a lot of wind.” She pauses. “Meaning it’s probably coastal.”
“Coastal?” Roe clarifies. Kilbeg city is at least forty minutes from the coast, and even then, the county’s coastline is ragged and vast.
I notice a shimmer of raindrops on Roe’s shoulders. “Did you go outside?”
“I was going out of my mind with worry,” they respond, “so I walked around outside for a bit. I told myself that by the time I came back, you’d be home safe.”
I reach my hand out and touch their damp hair, curling frantically as it dries.
“It wasn’t raining,” I suddenly say. “At the Lodge. There was no rain on the windowpane.”
“The rain sometimes skips the coast. It’s a microclimate out there,” Nuala says, then turns to Fiona. “If Paolo sets out tonight, could he find somewhere coastal with the driest soil? With the bent hawthorn trees, like Aaron’s drawing?”
Fiona motions to the magpie, who flies to her shoulder. She strokes his feathers with her thumb and murmurs something, her eyes unfocused. Then she goes to the window, pulls it up, and allows Paolo to swoop out. We all watch him as he disappears into the darkness. Each of us with our own gift, each of us a little jealous of Fiona’s.
We head back to Nuala’s house, all of us too wired to go home, and all too aware of the Christmas holidays to want to. We stop to get fish and chips on the way, our arms heavy with greasy paper bundles as we walk up Nuala’s drive.
Something is obstructing Nuala’s driveway. Something lumpy and difficult to make out in the darkness. For a brief, horrifying second, I am sure it is a dead body. But whose? Lorna McKeon? Squirrel Girl? I do a quick head count. We’re all here, so no one in the core gang. A family member. No—not Jo, or my parents? Not Tutu?
As I get closer, I see that they are separate packages, and my first thought is: So they decapitated the body, then?
And then I am closer, and I see they are gifts. Christmas gifts, wrapped up in paper. Food hampers covered in cellophane. A box that looks like it’s filled with wine bottles. Before I can even vocalize that I think it’s a trap, I hear Nuala groan.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” she says. “Manon!”
“What!” Manon says. “What have I done?”
“You know.”
Everyone who is not Nuala and Manon immediately feels awkward, knowing we are about to witness a family spat whether we want to or not. Our paper packages of chips burning our hands, our faces going numb in the cold.
“Can we go inside, or . . . ?” Lily volunteers.
“There’s cheese!” Fiona says. “French cheese. You shouldn’t leave it out here, Nuala, the foxes will take it.”
“Manny,” Nuala says sharply. “Did you tell him where I live?”
“Yes, of course. I had to,” Manon says, not sounding remotely sorry. “He’s my father, he wants to send Christmas presents. It will be my first Christmas without him, and he’s lonely.”
“Lonely!” Nuala exclaims, with a sourness that feels incredibly uncharacteristic. “Lonely! I have had sixteen Christmases alone in this house, Manny. And not by choice.”
“Yes, by choice,” Manny snaps. “Yes, very much by choice.”
“I have a key,” Aaron whispers. And we all carefully walk around mother and daughter, avoiding the hampers like they’re land mines.
“RESPECTFULLY,” ROE SAYS AS SOON AS THE five of us are in the kitchen, “what the hell was that?”
“Don’t get me started.” Aaron sighs. “They do that all the time, you know. Last time I was living here, too.”
“What’s the deal, then?” I ask. “Do you know?”
“I try not to pry, but, like, they’ll be absolutely fine and then Manon’s dad, René, will come up and they’ll just go nuclear on each other. What I can gather is that Nuala walked out on Manon as a kid, and there seems to be some dispute over whether or not that was Nuala’s choice.”
We have all put some version of this together ourselves, and still remain puzzled by the missing pieces.
“Nuala would never willingly walk out on her kid,” Lily says defensively. “It must be Manon who has it wrong.”
“Divorce is hard on people. My mum had a first husband,” Fi says. “They had my brother together, and they’re still in his life, but not in each other’s. So.”
Fiona is not particularly close with her brother in Boston, so I’m inclined to think she’s only mentioning him so she can spring to Manon’s defense.
Manon and Nuala enter the kitchen, still tense, still unwilling to talk about it.
“Everyone,” Nuala says grandly. “How do we feel about a little Christmas party on Monday night? I suddenly have rather a lot of food to get through.”
Manon starts taking the hampers in from the porch, her back to her mother.
“She’s only saying that so she doesn’t have to eat any of it,” she calls back, and Fiona goes to help her.
“Well observed, Manny,” Nuala says airily.
Roe gets a phone call and takes it in the kitchen. Manon, Fiona, Lily, and I unpack all the hampers in Nuala’s living room, a shabby and rarely used space that is a temporary bedroom for Aaron. I notice his backpack and rolled-up sleeping bag propped next to the couch.
There’s packing straw everywhere, and seemingly endless jars, tins, and bottles of things. Cured meat, soft cheeses, a big jar of cassoulet. Cherry tomatoes that look like they’ve been polished by tiny elves. Chocolates. Bunches of dried lavender.
“Your dad is very . . . generous,” I say, trying not to betray Nuala by saying anything too positive about the mysterious René.
“It’s Christmas, and he’s rich,” Manon says, carefully unwrapping everything and noting it dispassionately, as if adding it to a household inventory. “She’s only doing this so that when he phones to ask if Fin enjoyed the food, I have to say ‘She didn’t eat any.’” Manon sighs. “She is such a baby.”
“I’m going for a drive,” Nuala says flatly. “Aaron, can I please have your cigarettes?”
Aaron throws his packet over without questioning her, and Nuala catches them midair.
“Thank you,” she says shortly. “And will you go check on the chickens? I saw some hungry-looking foxes on the road earlier, and I don’t want to lose the new batch.”
“Right-o,” Aaron says, pulling on some women’s Wellington boots and leaving the room. “And here was me thinking I had escaped farm life.”
Nuala silently heads out the door and to her car. We watch her from the window, smoking in the passenger seat, with clearly no intention of driving anywhere.
“Come on,” Manon says. “Help me with this stuff. Don’t pay attention to her. Try anything you want, it’s all the best stuff. It’s all delicious. Look, this preserve is from Céret, where I was born.”
It occurs to us then that while Nuala is our dear friend, so is Manon. And for the first time ever, she wants to share something with us. She talks, quite animatedly, about the town where she was born, the Pyrenees mountains, the way she and her parents used to drive to Spain for the afternoon when they still lived in the hills. “I could speak Catalan, too,” Manon says shyly. “I still remember some of it, even though I was only five.”
“When did Nu . . .” I start to ask, then wonder if Manon and I are at that level of closeness. I don’t know if I can ask her when her mother left. I break off, but I can feel Manon’s eyes on me.
“Has he talked to you,” Manon asks me, “about his power?”
“Who? Aaron?” I ask, realizing he is the only “he” left in our circle. She nods, looking at me steadily. “Not really. Why?”
She sits back, legs crossed, and stares absently at the mantelpiece. She looks like a little god. “Sometimes I feel like he is a foster brother, or something like that,” she says. “Like I have to teach him things he did not learn from his first family.”
“What do you mean?”
Manon shakes her head. “I suppose it’s probably private,” she says. “Here, smell this.” She passes me a bundle of dried lavender. It’s richer, cleaner than I remember lavender smelling. Not like old ladies at all. More like peppermint.
We sit on the floor, tasting and trying things. It is all delicious. At some point, I realize that Roe has been gone for a long time, and I drift into the kitchen to find them.
“Hey,” I say. Roe is leaning against the counter, typing on their phone. “You OK out here?”
“Yeah. Just, you know, band stuff.”
“What kind of band stuff?”
“Um . . .” Roe gazes out the kitchen window for a moment, clearly wrestling with some competing emotions. “So, earlier. In the car.”
“Right.”
“I told you about the playlist thing.”
“Yes.”
“Turns out it’s a bigger deal than I initially thought.”
“OK . . . ?”
“So we were always supposed to be starting the tour with Honor in April, right? But now, well, some people have reached out to us. It might make sense for us to do more solo shows before the tour starts. With us headlining, I mean. Like a mini tour.”
“Wow,” I say, leaning back against the counter. “That’s great.”
“It would start in January, and probably go until the end of Feb. With some UK dates and everything.”
I blink. “So you’d have March at home,” I say slowly. “And then you’re out on tour again in April.”
They nod. “Well, March we’re supposed to be recording the album.”
“Right.”
There’s a silence, and then I remember myself.
“Well . . . uh, congratulations?”
But neither of us can muster up much enthusiasm. This is at least four months of Roe away from Kilbeg. They look at me, eyes streaked in black, their expression unreadable.
“Yeah,” they say. “Congratulations to me, I guess.”
Another tense silence. “Listen, let’s just say it.” I finally start speaking, trying to adopt as positive a tone as possible. “We’re not going to see much of each other for a few months, which, given that I’m supposed to be studying for exams, might be a good thing. Give me time to focus, y’know?”
I refuse to indulge the insecure part of myself that is always just a little bit frightened of being left behind. I remember Fiona at the party, quaking with nerves about leaving Kilbeg, wondering if it’s all a bit too soon. I can’t think about myself too much. Fiona and Roe are, after all, doing the scary thing. Not me.
Roe nods, trying to be reassured by this. “But . . . Dorey. The Children.”
I shake my head. “Listen, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Children, it’s that their concerns are bigger than us. From that horrible conversation tonight, we know we’re not exactly Dorey’s top priority now. We should relish that.”
I almost say, “Starving and emotionally torturing other people is her top priority right now!” but I don’t want Roe to feel guilty about leaving, so I stop talking about Dorey. “We have to live our lives, Roe. Fiona too. This was always in both of your plans. You’ve always known you want to be artists. Upending your life plan is . . . letting them win, in a way.”
Roe laughs softly. “You sound like one of those ‘If we don’t go on holidays, we’re letting the terrorists win’ people.”
“Well, maybe they have a point,” I say, and I wrap my arms around them. “This is amazing news,” I stress. “Let’s just have a fun Christmas, and a good New Year, and we’ll worry about long-distance stuff when we have to.”
Roe finally manages a smile, a real one. “God, look at you. Miss Emotional Maturity. What happened to that bitchy little schoolgirl?”
“I’m still a bitchy little schoolgirl.”
We kiss, the terror of losing each other so huge that suddenly my back is pressed against the fridge, and we have lost ourselves to making out in Nuala’s kitchen.
“Jesus,” Fiona interrupts. “Get a room, you two.”
“Don’t get a room,” Manon calls. “Go outside. Animals.”
I laugh. “I should go,” I say, looking at my watch. “My parents are going to be livid that I wasn’t home earlier. All my siblings are back today.”
“I’ll drop you,” Roe says. “Fi, Lil, I’m heading out soon.”
Lily gets up, still eating a chocolate Père Noël. “Bon.”
“I might stick around for a bit,” Fiona says quietly, then checks to see if Manon reacts. Manon is busy collecting the paper and cardboard for recycling.
“Yes, stay,” Manon says, sounding distracted. “So my mother can’t go crazy again.”
We leave soon after, Nuala and Aaron both smoking in the car, Fiona and Manon sitting on the living room floor. I make desperate eyes with Fiona as I put on my coat, trying to signal a please text me the instant anything happens.
As usual, Roe drops Lily off first and then me. We sit in the car and watch the windows of my house like it’s a theater.
“I better go in. Mum will be so annoyed I didn’t come home sooner.”
“Wait a second,” Roe says, pulling me back, tucking me under their shoulder. “You freaked me out today. You just disappeared into thin air.”
“I know, that must have been so freaky. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t just that. It was that you disappeared together.”
“Oh.”
“It was, like, I finally understood why you would get so weirdly jealous about me and Fiona, or me and the band, or whatever. I thought you were just being immature. But . . . seeing someone you love have a connection with someone who isn’t you, even if it’s, I don’t know, platonic. It’s hard.”
A pause.
“I do trust you,” Roe says unconvincingly.
“OK,” I say slowly. “The way you’re saying it doesn’t sound like you trust me very much at all.”
I remember the moment at the school, when I thought Aaron might want to kiss me. The hint of excitement at what might happen. Shame burbles through me, but then I remember my own advice: it’s your actions that are important, not your thoughts. I had jumped up, ending the tension as soon as I realized it was there.
Suddenly, I’m annoyed. Why does everyone feel so comfortable reprimanding me all the time? If it’s not Fiona, it’s Roe; if it’s not my parents, it’s my teachers. If it’s not my classmates accusing me of making Lily disappear, it’s Lily herself, furious for bringing her back. I’m just a person. A person who didn’t ask for any of this—not for the magic, not for the responsibility of keeping the Well safe. Yet everyone else seems to cope just fine, and I have somehow become the lightning rod for every minor complaint.
“It’s just,” Roe continues, “you have this connection, the two of you, and I know you can’t help being sensitives. But the way you were at the school together, just by coincidence. And that note . . .”
“This is why you’re nervous about leaving, isn’t it?” I snap, suddenly very bored of this. “That whole business about being nervous about Dorey. You just think I’m going to cheat on you if you leave.”
“No,” Roe says quickly. “I don’t think that.”
I gaze out the window. “I have to go,” I say.
“Don’t go, Maeve.”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid that if I stay a second longer, I’ll read your mind and find out how you really feel.”
I don’t slam the door. Slamming the door is something an immature person would do, after all. I kiss Roe on the cheek and leave the car quietly. I say hello to my brothers and sisters and act normal for an hour. Then I go upstairs to cry in bed. Maturely.
FIONA CALLS ME IN THE MORNING.
“I want to die,” she says.
“All right. Do you want me to come over?”
“No, god no. Let’s meet in town.”
“OK. An hour at Bridey’s?”
“You’re a good friend.”
“I know.”
Presumably things did not go well with Manon, then. I shower and get dressed quickly, making a mental note to do the rest of my Christmas shopping after I see Fiona. There are a couple of messages from Roe: nothing with an apology, just lots of positive, smoothing texts about how we should get lots of date nights in before they go on tour.
I’m in such a rush to meet Fiona that I run past a telephone pole and almost miss the familiar face staring right back at me.
MISSING PERSON
LORNA MCKEON
18 years old, white, medium build. Last seen on the 14th of December wearing blue jeans, white sweater, and yellow puffer jacket. If you have seen her or know of her whereabouts, please contact Kilbeg Valley Police.
I stare at the poster for a long time. Tomorrow, Lorna will have been missing for ten days. How was the alarm not raised sooner?
It occurs to me then that online classes might even be beneficial to the Children. People always talk about boys being radicalized while alone in their bedrooms. But what about girls? Who could be more vulnerable than a friendless girl alone in her bedroom all day?
When Lily went missing, the police came to school. The whole city was engaged. The teachers talked to us. But now there is no school, and our remaining teachers are desperately trying to bring us over the finish line, probably while simultaneously looking for new jobs. But even so, Lily was on the news. There were search parties. I take a photo of the MISSING poster and send it to our WhatsApp group.
Why isn’t there a fuss about this, I text. The way there was a fuss about Lily?
Because she’s 18, Nuala messages back. She has a boyfriend. Her parents probably thought that she had run off with him and were waiting for her to come back.
She has a point. Plus, Lily went missing in the middle of the night. There was a sense of mystery that involved the entire community. I keep an eye out for more Lorna posters on the way into town. I see three. Lily’s had blanketed the entire area. There was no one who wasn’t talking about it. Girls weren’t allowed out at night. One shouldered me into a locker because of it.
