Sinead’s mouth formed every shape under the sun before she spluttered out, ‘Oh! You jealous cow! It’s you that fancies Killian!’
Aoife laughed; she hadn’t meant to be quite so direct, but while she was at it she might as well continue. The fizzing in her blood was surprisingly pleasant, like the time she’d been given champagne at a neighbour’s wedding. ‘I wouldn’t go out with Killian if he was the last person on earth. I’ve no idea why Carla even likes him. But while she does, I’m going to make sure he doesn’t upset her – and you’re going to keep your thieving paws off him.’
Sinead’s cat-shaped face flushed crimson, her eyes flashed. She spat, ‘You’ve got no right to say who goes out with who – you can’t tell me what to do, and what Killian does is none of your business, and I’ll go out with whoever I like, when I like, and you can’t tell me any different.’
‘Be careful,’ said Aoife. Her blood felt icy now.
‘Don’t you point your finger at me, Aoife O’Connor! Carla doesn’t have any reason to think Killian is her boyfriend or anything just because he sat next to her on the bus. He was only messing and it’s not like she’s pretty, she’s not even in his league— Aargh!’ Sinead jumped backwards with a scream, crashing into the desk behind her.
Aoife cried out, alarmed, dropping her hand. ‘Are you all right?’
Sinead retreated towards the door. ‘Keep away from me, you maniac!’
‘But what happened?’
‘You punched me, you bitch!’
‘I didn’t—’
‘Get away from me!’ And Sinead turned and rushed from the room.
Aoife stared after her, bewildered. She hadn’t gone anywhere near Sinead, let alone punched her – although she would have done, given half a chance. How dare Sinead say Carla wasn’t pretty . . . In a fresh rush of rage, Aoife clenched her fists. And a terrible pain stabbed through her left palm.
Her heart sinking, she uncurled her fingers – the bee lay dead. Sadness overwhelmed her – she’d crushed the poor little creature she’d been trying to save. All it had wanted to do was get out into the fields, and fly, and drink nectar from flowers, and make honey, and be happy. And now it was dead, and it would never see the sun again, or drift on the warm breeze.
There was a bin by Mr Vaughan’s desk, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw the tiny body away like rubbish. Instead, she opened the window and climbed out.
Outside, the rain had eased to a soft dampness, and the sky was brightening. Aoife breathed in deep. The breeze coming down from the bog was flowery with heather. So much better to be outside than be stuck in a glass-and-concrete box. She was standing on the path that ran round the school building, but there was a long stretch of grass between the path and the boundary fence. She knocked a divot out of the soft soil with her heel, dropped in the bee and footed the earth back over its corpse.
Her hand throbbed; the bee’s sting was still buried in her skin. She eased it out with her fingernails, and a little blood welled from the puncture wound. No, not blood . . . She peered at the centre of her palm. The round drop of fluid was a shimmering silver, rainbow-tinged. Poison from the sting? She licked it off her hand. It tasted sweet.
Before climbing back in through the window, she squatted down and prodded the roots of a displaced daisy and a few shoots of grass into the earth of the bee’s grave. And as soon as she had done so, she knew with sudden joyful certainty that through this process the bee would be transformed. The roots of the daisy and the grass would sink into the bee’s flesh and draw up its energy as through a straw, and as a flower it would feel the sun and wind again, and bees would drink from it, and make other bees.
Life would spring from death. There was no end.
CHAPTER SIX
She was starving. The school canteen was open for first break, but she had no money on her. Still, she checked her pockets just in case and found she did have a few coins after all, and they added up to quite a lot – almost four euros. Odd, because her uniform always got washed over the weekend, and her mother would have emptied the pockets. And even stranger, she didn’t remember having had the money in the first place. It wasn’t like there was a lot of it to spread around – since the recession, James O’Connor had been out of work and the family relied on what her mother earned from doing the accounts for local farmers.
The canteen was a long open-plan area with plate-glass windows that looked out into the gravelled courtyard in the centre of the school building. Everyone from her class was sitting at the same table.
No, not everyone.
Shay sat perched sideways on the wide low windowsill, with his feet up, staring out into the rain-swept courtyard, drinking a cup of tea. He was wearing his school coat now, with the collar pulled up.
Aoife lingered at the counter. She was so hungry she felt she needed a serious quantity of calories. Maybe it was all the mad cycling and running she’d been doing yesterday. She hesitated between a strawberry and a chocolate yoghurt, then bought both, then a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps, then an apple, and then, just in case that still wasn’t enough, an extra-large Mars bar. The white-capped woman behind the counter said, ‘How nice of you to treat all your friends.’
‘What? Oh, right, sure.’
She sat down beside Jessica, whose brown eyes widened. ‘Hungry?’
‘Starving.’
‘I don’t know how Lois gets the idea you’re anorexic.’
Lois, hearing her name, glanced over. She did a double-take at Aoife’s loaded tray and whispered in Sinead’s ear, loud enough for the whole table to hear: ‘Bulimic.’
But Sinead just said, ‘Stop shouting in my ear,’ and shot Aoife a sour look. It was as if she were slightly scared of her – maybe she really did imagine Aoife had punched her in the history room.
Aoife ate her way steadily through the food in front of her, all the time feeling vaguely troubled by what had happened. Sinead was sitting a long way away from Killian, and that was a good result of the fight. But at the same time, even if she hadn’t attacked Sinead, she did owe her for messing up her outing – and she still hadn’t given her a birthday present. She should have hung onto the four euros, and added it to the card. She checked to see if there were any more coins, and to her astonishment there was an actual note, folded small and pushed right down into the corner of the same pocket. A brown note. Ten euros.
She went round the table to Sinead, who said tightly, ‘What do you want now?’
‘Nothing. Just, here’s your present – sorry it’s late.’
Sinead glanced down at the folded note, then went slightly pink. ‘Oh. That’s . . . Thank you . . .’
‘Sorry it’s not more.’
‘No, really, thank you, that’s really generous.’
Aoife suddenly realized that the brown note she was handing Sinead was not a ten-euro note but a fifty. The shock was so sudden, it took all her willpower not to snatch it back again. She said as brightly as she could manage, ‘No problem, and sorry about Saturday.’
‘That’s all right . . .’ Sinead pocketed the fifty, exchanging a round-eyed look with Lois.
Aoife was so shaken she hardly knew what to do next. How had there been a fifty-euro note just lying around in her school trousers? Had it been there for a long time, and been washed and forgotten about? Yet when had she ever been rich enough to forget about fifty euros? Why hadn’t she checked what sort of a brown note it was before handing all that wealth to Sinead? She could have bought those tyres for her bike.
‘Hey, Aoife, any more of those to give away?’ Killian had been watching the exchange from the far end of the long table; he was one of those types who could smell money. Aoife remembered Carla had made her promise to give him a message. She moved on down the table. He stood up as she got to him, smiling, making eye contact. ‘You gonna give me money as well?’
‘No. Just, Carla asked me to say she says “hi”.’ She looked away as she was speaking. Shay was finishing his tea, getting
ready to leave the canteen.
Killian said, ‘What about you?’
She looked back at him, surprised. ‘Me?’
‘Do you say “hi” to me?’
Aoife sighed. Why couldn’t Carla have crushed on someone a bit less irritating? ‘Don’t be such an eejit.’
‘Ah, come on, you know you like me. That’s why you didn’t tell Carla about kissing me at the disco.’
Her blood cooled. She looked steadily at Killian; her fingers tingled, and she flexed them slightly, experimentally.
Killian winced, and touched his stomach. ‘Hey . . .’
‘What?’
‘You poked me . . .’
She felt a faint, startled flicker of triumph. ‘I didn’t touch you. And I wouldn’t, if you were the last boy on earth.’ Again, her eyes strayed towards the windowsill; Shay was gone, his cup abandoned.
Annoyed, Killian said, ‘What d’you keep looking over there for? I know Bogger Boy chatted you up on the bus, but he’s not so pretty now, is he?’
‘What do you mean?’
He brightened again at her reaction, though still prodding at his stomach tenderly with both hands. ‘What? You didn’t notice the state his brother left him in?’
‘His brother?’ It was as if a hand had reached in and squeezed her heart.
‘Yep, Bogger Boy stole his brother’s car yesterday and crashed it, and my dad says John Joe Foley was in the pub last night getting drunk and guilty about beating Shay up for it— Aargh!’ Killian doubled up, clutching his stomach.
Shay was already halfway down the corridor towards the gym.
‘Wait!’ She was damned if she was going to let him keep disappearing on her, just because he was too proud to let her know he’d been beaten up. ‘Shay, wait.’ Aoife sprinted down the empty hallway and grabbed his sleeve, and finally he stopped walking and stood with his back to the wall, his arms loose by his sides. There was a violent crimson bruise over his cheekbone, and a black cut on his mouth. ‘Oh, Shay . . .’
He half smiled, although it was more of a lopsided grimace, presumably so as not to split open the newly healed cut on his lip. ‘Not as bad as it looks. Crashed again and hit my face off the wheel.’
‘You did not – your brother did this to you.’ She was having a hard time keeping her voice steady, between fury at John Joe’s violence and fear for Shay with no parent to stand up for him at home, and above all the despair of not knowing how to make things right.
‘No, I crashed the—’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘I’m not, I—’
‘Shay. People know. John Joe was telling everyone down the pub.’
He looked taken aback and annoyed. ‘Was he indeed, the gobshite? I hope he told people I gave as good as I got.’ He showed his knuckles to her with a look of pride; they were bruised and cut. So that’s why he’d had his sleeves pulled up over his hands, as well as hiding his face.
Aoife, who had been feeling so light, felt suddenly weighed down. ‘I’m so sorry about this.’
‘Not your fault. It was me crashed the car, and now he’s got no wheels apart from the tractor and I owe him, that’s all.’
She said fiercely, ‘You don’t owe him, he’s a brute.’
Shay’s face closed down; he looked off to the side. ‘He’s not, he’s just mad strong and he forgets his own strength. And I do owe him. He’s minded me since I was five years old. The social had foster parents lined up for me. He was only seventeen but he fought for the right to raise me, and he got me back after a year and I was right happy to get home.’
‘OK, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that.’ Though it didn’t really change her mind about John Joe.
He said, ‘I can work off what I owe him by doing stuff around the farm. I’m good at lambing. I never lose a lamb, never.’
Aoife felt even worse now about giving the fifty euros to Sinead. If only she’d known that she’d had it and that Shay needed it. She longed to stroke the dark cut on his mouth, to heal it somehow. She shoved her hands hard and deep into the pockets of her school trousers, to keep herself from touching him. ‘I want to help.’
‘Aoife, it’s not your problem. I’ll sort it.’
In her pocket, her left hand closed on a slim packet. She fingered it – absently, and then with growing puzzlement. She pulled it out. An envelope full of hundred-euro notes.
For a long moment she just stared, incredulous. This finding money was getting . . . ridiculous. She flicked slowly through the thin sheaf of notes. Three, four . . . Her heart gave a frightened thump . . . Six, seven, eight . . . Twelve hundred euros? What . . .? Where . . .? She looked up at Shay; he seemed dazed yet transfixed by the sum of money she was holding. On a wild impulse, before she could think about it, she thrust it at him. ‘Here. There’s plenty enough there to buy a decent secondhand car.’
He came to with a start, pushing it back at her like it might burn him. ‘No! Jesus! Where did you get that?’
‘I don’t know. Take it!’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I mean it’s . . .’ She scrabbled in her head for inspiration. ‘It’s an early birthday present! From an aunt! Take it.’
Shay’s green-brown eyes grew hot, cheekbones flushed. ‘I will not – are you cracked? I don’t need your money.’ He said ‘money’ in a fierce voice, like he really meant ‘charity’.
‘Look—’
‘Aoife, leave it!’ And he was gone, striding away round the corner towards the gym.
He should have been in the next class, business, but he wasn’t. He must have been so annoyed with her that he’d walked out of the school.
Aoife sat scribbling flowers in her copy and thinking very seriously about the money. As much as she’d wanted Shay to take it, it was probably just as well he hadn’t. It couldn’t have come out of nowhere. It must be the money Declan Sweeney owed Maeve for doing his accounts, and somehow she had picked it up, thinking it was a note for school. She did most things on auto-pilot in the morning. Her mother would be going demented, turning the house upside down – hysterically berating herself for always putting things in a safe place and never being able to find them again.
When the bell rang between classes, she went to the school secretary, a maternal pinkish woman. ‘Rose, I feel really peculiar – could you phone my mam and ask can she come and sign me out?’
Reaching for the phone, Rose said, ‘You should eat more, Aoife. You’re too thin. You teenage girls are always on a diet, and then you wonder why you get tired and have headaches. Have a proper breakfast tomorrow.’
Aoife, thinking of everything she had eaten at first break, said earnestly, ‘I will, I promise.’
Maeve arrived with her dark blonde hair tied up on top of her head and wearing the shabby old green cardigan that she’d owned ever since Aoife could remember. She seemed very relaxed; clearly she hadn’t yet noticed that she’d mislaid a fortune. As they walked from the school to the car, she asked Aoife, ‘So, do you need to go to Doctor Lynn?’
‘No, I’m grand.’
Maeve shot her a look. ‘Grand apart from the splitting headache that’s making it impossible for you to concentrate in school?’
‘Yeah, apart from that.’ Aoife touched the envelope in her pocket. ‘Did Declan Sweeney pay you yet, by the way?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Oh. Are you sure?’
Maeve stopped walking for a moment, her hand on Aoife’s arm. Her expression had changed to one of concern. ‘Is this headache brought on by worrying about money? I know I’m always moaning about how poor we are, but we’re not going to starve.’
‘OK. Good.’
After they’d driven through Kilduff, Aoife said, ‘Did you or Dad lose any money at all recently?’
‘None to lose, sweetie. Why?’
‘Declan didn’t pay you anything in advance?’
Maeve sighed as she turned left into their lane. ‘I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something here,
sweetheart. What’s really bothering you?’
‘Nothing. I found some money.’
‘Well, that’s a good complaint. How much?’
Aoife opened her mouth to say twelve hundred. But then didn’t. If it really wasn’t her parents’ money, she needed to think about the whole thing a bit longer. At the same time, it seemed mean not to share her new-found wealth. So instead, she said cautiously, ‘A hundred euros?’
‘A hundred?’ Maeve, who was in the middle of changing gears, stalled the car. Instead of restarting it, she sat staring at Aoife in astonishment. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘In my trousers.’
‘An old pair?’
‘Mm . . .’ Her school uniform was pretty old, although she suspected her mother was asking if she’d found the money in a pair of trousers that she hadn’t worn for ages.
Maeve, shaking her head in amazement, started the engine again. ‘Well, lucky you. It must have been left over from your confirmation or something like that. I wish I could find a forgotten hundred-euro note lying around.’
Aoife took one of the several hundred-euro notes out of the envelope in her pocket, and laid it on the dashboard. ‘You have it.’
Maeve smiled, pleased by this act of solicitude – very tempted, then resolute. ‘No, God no – you found it. Buy yourself that fancy pair of trainers you’ve been wanting.’
‘Really. Take it.’
Maeve weakened again, picking it up. ‘Aoife, that’s so sweet of you. Maybe just . . . I could borrow it until Declan pays me tomorrow? He’s giving me three hundred.’
‘Sure, whenever.’ She turned to gaze out of the window. So it could never have been the farmer’s money anyway.
Pulling up in front of their house, Maeve said, ‘If I’d known you were going to lend me a hundred euros, I’d have bought some lamb chops for dinner! But I really have to work.’
Aoife offered quickly, ‘I’ll go to the shop for you if you like.’
Maeve gave her another look. ‘Headache better already?’
The Changeling Page 6