Suzy Suzy

by William Wall

  John Brown shook his head and looked out the window at the passing fields. My brother indicated suddenly that he was overtaking and pulled right out into the other lane. Suddenly we were passing three cars and an artic. The lorry driver blew his horn like crazy. A car coming towards us swerved onto the hard shoulder. Another car flashed lights. Eventually we were clear but we were still on the wrong side.

  For fuck’s sake, John Brown said, pull in, you fucking wanker.

  Suddenly my brother let go of the wheel. He put his hands up. The car continued for five seconds in a straight line and then began to curve gently into the far ditch. I was like literally frozen to the seat. I could not move a muscle. Then John grabbed the wheel and guided us to our own side and my brother took over and we were OK again. I don’t know. Maybe we weren’t OK. It’s hard to know. John Brown said, What the fuck was that about? And my brother just shrugged. Will you or won’t you? he said. John Brown said, Since you ask me so nicely.

  Whatever it was, it would be bad news.

  Anything bad that has ever happened to John Brown happened because of my brother. So I should have stayed quiet, pretended to be asleep. Maybe if I could have known what it was I could have headed him off. Maybe. Idk.

  Like I remember my brother daring John Brown to drive a motorbike in a field. He knew and I knew that John could not drive a pedal bike, never mind a motorbike. But John did it. Because John couldn’t say no to my brother. Like every stupid thing he ever did was my brother’s doing. So he took off across the field and he panicked and just kept getting faster. We had to take him to the hospital, me pressing with both hands on his calf where his skin was shredded. He bled all over the back seat. He never said a word only gave me a look that said, How stupid am I? Or maybe it said, Your brother is a complete dickhead. Possibly THE complete dickhead. They gave him eleven stitches and some debriding, whatever that is. They also gave him a local anaesthetic which wore off on the way home. That was not fun.

  12

  So I was at home one evening and my brother got a text. It was from a friend. He read it and went pale.

  Fuck, he said.

  What’s wrong? my mam said.

  Nigger is dead.

  I burst into tears. My mother stared at him. My father said, How did it happen?

  They pulled his body out of the river.

  I could hear wailing and it took me a few seconds to work out that it was me. My brother was just opening and closing his mouth. Then he rushed out of the room.

  Oh Jesus, my mother said, it must have been suicide.

  Don’t jump to conclusions, my dad said, it was a right bad night last night. He might have got blown in.

  Don’t be stupid, my mother said.

  My dad shut up. The Dog left the room.

  My mam said, He broke up with Faith, of course.

  My brother left the phone on the table when he ran. I picked it up and looked at it. U hr nigger dead fire brigade pulled body out of river a hour ago fuckin random u hear anthing? I threw it on the floor. The back casing came off and spun away somewhere and it started to ring for some reason. It was a shite phone anyway.

  Pick that up, my mother said.

  I just walked. I am pro at walking out. Come back here, she shouted, come back here, come back down here this minute. But she didn’t come after me. If she did I wouldn’t be responsible for my deeds. I would tear her eyes out I swear. I went to my room and cried for three hours. And all that time I could hear my brother crying in the next room and sometimes hitting things. I fell asleep first.

  13

  Serena and Holly and Me. All through Primary that was the gang. Holly is a dote. She has these pale green eyes that are to die for. When she smiles they glow like that stuff inside a seashell idk some kind of pearl. Serena has long blond hair and eyes of blue and her figure is perf but her smile is the smile of a dead pollock. It just doesn’t work. She talks posh too. She was in America until she was seven. Her father Is A Surgeon. I don’t know for which part, maybe eyes. He used to have a head of brown hair but now he has a receding hairline and a comb-over like half a dozen shoelaces frayed at the ends. He makes a shitload on Private of course and he takes my dad’s advice and buys into property. Like my dad would identify an opportunity and phone around and see if people were interested. This was at a time when he was seriously growing his portfolio and he needed investors. But then the arse fell out of everything and now he gets complaints in writing from people who put money into things. He points out that there are no guarantees and the value of property may fall as well as rise. As they say.

  Serena’s family are religious. They got it in America.

  I don’t really get the religion thing tbf.

  Our parish priest is a Five Star Grade A Nutter. Once I heard him give a sermon at a funeral and he compared a dead person to a chicken coming out of the oven. Like the person wasn’t even being cremated. The coming out of the oven part was when the person got to heaven. I wanted to shout, But they’re going to eat him! Like who would want to go to heaven if a bunch of your family and friends were waiting around at the other end with a knife and a fork? He is An Absolute Spacer.

  And around that time Serena went to Fuerteventura, and that was that. It’s hate messages now. U fckin slag I hate u. Nobody likes u ur useless. I usd to lik u b4 but u were betr then. U have no frens. I hate your guts sht I hate you so much. Like quoting McBusted is a lethal weapon. But I don’t give a shit. I just know what she’s like. If she punctuated them and spelled them right I might take more interest. I couldn’t be arsed to block her.

  But she did one thing I will never forgive her for. She told people I was lesbian and I was with Holly. That was the end of her for me. Like, whatever about hating me, she didn’t have to do that to Holly.

  Calling people lesbian was like an emerging trend in our class.

  I never told Holly but she found out anyway. She told me. I said I was mortified about it. She said she didn’t give a fuck, and maybe we should do it anyway since we had the name for it. The two of us fell down laughing at that. Holly is one chick who doesn’t swing both ways. Her family is weird. Sometimes I think her dad really is an anarchist or a communist or whatever he says he is. My brother says he’s an ageing hippy. They have books. Like in my family the only room with books is my bedroom. Holly has read more books than me.

  Holly wanted me to fix Serena but I’m not getting into that shit. And she didn’t have a plan anyway. So.

  14

  My dad was complaining about chest pains. My mam said it was stress because of Ballyshane and like his plan of vengeance on Dan Kelleher. Like Dad was so George Bush. And that made Dan Kelleher Saddam Hussein and look where that went. And then she said it was indigestion because he was eating too fast. Like my mam should be a qualified surgeon or something. Then she said he was getting an ulcer. Then she said he was stressing because he thought he was having a heart attack and he couldn’t be because he didn’t have a pain down his left arm. When he got a pain down his left arm she took him to the Lighthouse Clinic which is Private so you get an appointment immediately and they did tests and said his heart was perfect and he had indigestion and a doctor there gave him a prescription for something to fix his digestion. I googled it and it was true. It was a proton pump inhibitor and it suppressed the production of excess acid, but the things it was used for were scarier than a heart attack. So idk. I’m scared. I’m so scared.

  My dad said the Lighthouse place was cat. He hated flowers and people calling him Sir. Would you take a seat, Sir? Would you fill out this form, Sir? Can you settle your account in advance please, Sir? Sir is cat to him. He says it’s English. But Americans say it too. Like boys say Sir to their dads. At least on TV. It’s totally bizarre. Like having a flag on a flag-pole outside your house. Like even who wants a flag pole in the garden? Even if you didn’t put a flag on it? It’s weird.

  And then he went to a point-to-point meeting. I was meant to go but I got a cold and stayed at
home. My mam was at work. And at the point-to-point meeting Dad met Dan Kelleher and they had an argument. My dad accused Kelleher of taking a finder’s fee. Then he went for a drink with some friends and drove home. He went straight to bed. Then I was really scared. Like my dad never goes to bed before midnight. My mam refused to check him out. She said he needed to sleep. He was tired. He had a tiring day. I went upstairs myself but I could hear him snoring so I didn’t go in. Later I heard him in the toilet. I went to my room because I could hear better from there. He came out of the toilet and went back to bed. An hour later I heard him in there again. He flushed twice. I heard him coughing. Then he went back to bed and soon I heard him snoring. By then it was eleven o’clock at night. I heard my mam coming upstairs. She usually goes to bed at eleven. It takes her half an hour to take her make-up off and everything. Their bathroom is en-suite but my dad prefers to use the main one. I heard them talking. Then it was silence. I did not fall asleep. I sat on my bed reading until after one o’clock, then I lay down reading. About three o’clock I woke to hear the toilet flushing again. I knew it was my dad. I got up and went to my door. I looked out and saw him going into the bedroom. I saw that my mam was awake. The light was on and she was sitting up. I closed the door again because, whatever was happening, it was too much. I heard them talking. I could not hear what they were saying but not being able to hear pissed me off so much. I put my earphones in and listened to Beyoncé. I like deeply hate Beyoncé but I paid for the album. I fell asleep listening to ‘Pretty Hurts’.

  15

  And in the morning he was fine. He was a bit paler than yesterday. He had his breakfast. Did we keep you awake last night? Nope, I just couldn’t sleep. Don’t be worried. I’m not. I’m fine. I know, Dad.

  He was irritable though. Turn off that radio, Suzy.

  It was a report on the trial thingy. The guy who groomed the suicide ideation woman. It was so fucking weird. Like Five Hundred Shades of Grey. Five thousand even.

  How can I digest my breakfast with that stuff going on? It would put you off your food.

  Like nothing would put my dad off his food, even if it was irradiated by a nuclear explosion or if it was alive. My dad would eat a person if he needed to.

  TURN OFF THE RADIO I HEARD ENOUGH ABOUT BONDAGE!

  OK, Dad.

  But I was soooo not wanting to turn it off. I would google it later.

  Like I don’t know what happened to him during the night because as I said, nobody in my family told me anything. I was supposed to feel safe and secure because the house IS FULL OF FUCKING SECRETS. Jesus wept twice. It’s like we’re the fucking government except there’s no WikiLeaks. Or a secret society. A Regan NEVER TALKS.

  That was the day that Serena picked to be nice to me. She sat beside me in English. She didn’t say anything but I knew she was doing something. Like there are five empty desks in English. Then when the bell went and Mr Drew went out she passed me a note. I didn’t see her writing during the class which means she wrote it Before. It was a piece from her A4 pad and it was folded in four. I looked at her. She didn’t look at me. She stared at the blackboard.

  What’s this?

  Just read it.

  Why can’t you fucking tell me, you’re sitting right here?

  She looked away.

  So I unfolded the letter. It said: Hi Suzy.

  I swear. It was Hi Suzy, like it was after arriving in the post. And it was signed Serena xx. At least she didn’t have her address and the date.

  Hi Suzy,

  I am so sorry. I have been a bitch. I don’t know what got in to me. You are still my best friend and I am so so sorry.

  Yours sincerely,

  Serena xx

  I got one of my hot flushes. Why idk. I just coloured up. My face got hot and then my neck got hot and then I could feel it spreading down over my boobs. Inside my clothes I’m a neon sign that says FOR FUCK’S SAKE. I couldn’t believe it. Orla Power saw it and she stared at me. Then she looked at Serena. She said, This is like fucking lesbian central. She walked before I could think of anything to say.

  That was your fault, I said to Serena.

  I know.

  I folded the letter again. I thought about giving it back to her. Then I unfolded it and read it again. Then I folded it again. Like I could origami for Ireland.

  Like why didn’t you just say it? Like you’re sitting here beside me for the past fifty minutes?

  She says: Please?

  In that voice she can do. Like Princess Serena.

  I’m like: OK, but no more fucking hate messages, OK?

  Cool, she goes.

  The she starts to pack her books. Just like that.

  I have Biology, she says, I’m late. Did you see the thing about the murder last night on the news? Talk to you later.

  I don’t do Biology. Not as a subject. My next class was History and Holly was in it too. We were supposed to do some writing in the middle so we got a chance to talk. I told Holly about Serena. She said she would try to find out what was going on. We were both agreed that Serena was just too much.

  After big break, in Maths, she told me that everyone was saying that Serena was a bitch and nobody was her friend any more. A couple of people even unfriended her. Like unfriending is the nuclear option in my school. So now we’re the three musketeers.

  We were supposed to be problem-solving. Maths is all this shit now, problem-solving and approximation and guessing and several right answers and I hate it. In the old days there was a right and a wrong and you could know on which side you were. And I just know that if I was working for NASA and I said that there were three answers: the space ship will hit the moon, the space ship will hit the sun or the space ship will just go off into Kingdom Come like in that film 2001 Whatitsname, nobody would say, Excellent, well done, now take a guess at which one is the best shot. Like they would. Just at the end of the class my phone started to vibrate. It was this Sexual Groaning Sound because my bag was on the ground against the leg of the chair and the phone was vibrating against the leg. Everyone started to laugh. Peppa Pig, who is our Maths teacher, said: Turn that phone off. She looked straight at me. It took me five minutes at least to find it in my bag and it stopped and started to ring again. Sorry, Miss, sorry, Miss, sorry.

  Then I saw it was my mam and I just knew. I started to cry. I’m just looking at the screen and it’s still vibrating and I’m crying and everybody stops laughing.

  16

  So Serena had sex in Fuerteventura with an English boy a year younger than her. That’s what she told me. She did it three times. When she came home she was sure she was pregnant because they didn’t use condoms. Then it turned out she wasn’t pregnant because she was on her period on the nail. By then she was bitching everyone and it was too late to change. She said she bitched people because she knew what they were going to say as soon as she started to show. I said to her I wouldn’t have said anything.

  Yeah, she said, like silence.

  I said when Lauren O’Keefe had a baby I was the one who stayed friends with her.

  That was just because you wanted to find out what it was like, you have a baby kink.

  So yeah. I went through a phase where I was dreaming about being pregnant and having babies. I was like totally obsessed with it. I used to go to mother and baby websites and look up personal stories. But if you google it you’ll find it’s not as good as they say. Families of addiction. Your child is vaccine injured: a personal story. Cleft lip and cleft palate: a mother’s story. Fragile X syndrome: one mother’s story. Shaken baby syndrome. I was abandoned by my mother. One mother’s personal tragedy. Secret thoughts of an abusive mother. I decided, considering my own family circumstances in which I can’t stand to be in the same room as my mam, my dad is more or less a waste of space and my brother is weird, that I should give motherhood a miss. Because genetics. This was when I was fifteen and everything looked easy. I was all over Mumsnet reading about The Joys Of Pregnancy. I had reached Peak Baby. I
even used the online Ovulation Calculator. Up until then I didn’t even know I was ovulating. Like why would you ovulate if you’re not married? Fifteen year olds are weird. When Serena was fifteen she used to think that 1D was better than the Beatles or even Def Leppard. I never listened to Def Leppard except I watched a couple of videos on YouTube just to see, but Serena says they are awesome. Tbh if Serena likes them they must be shit. Especially if 1D is better than them. Serena was and still probably is a Directioner. Except now she’s undercover. Directioners are crazy. It’s like a religion and they don’t talk about it to Non-Directioners. It’s like a secret cult. Like if you tell the secrets of Directioners you must die some horrible death.

  My big mistake was telling Serena about the baby phase. I’d swear she had a little black book for stuff like that. A secret diary.

  I wanted her to tell me about the sex but all she said was it was amazing.

  Like, I totally expected it to be amazing but I wanted to know how it was amazing. She wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t even tell me if it hurt the first time. If you google does losing my virginity hurt you will get two hundred and thirty-one thousand hits. I asked her and she just looked stupid and said, Amaaaazing. When Serena puts on a Dreamy Look it’s just a stupid face. I always want to punch her. She thinks it’s Romantic. I try to tell her she looks like Miley Cyrus but with her tongue inside her mouth. She takes it as a compliment. I give up.

  Sometimes Serena is so pale it looks like all you’re seeing is the bone. Like one time I saw a human bone in a graveyard. I think it was human anyway. I didn’t look at it for long. Maybe it was an animal, like a sheep bone idk. It was the colour of dirty chalk. That is Serena’s face on those days. Maybe she is anaemic. Or constipated idk or maybe she doesn’t sleep. History does not record.

  17