by Paul Murray
I wish I was eighteen, it would be so fine –
BETHani sings –
To show everybody how we pass the timeAnd all the boys around the world could peek into my homeSo there’s always someone watching and I never feel alone
Barry asks Gookette if she wants to make sexy. He licks his fingers and rubs them over his chest, going, ‘Me so horny, me ruv you rongtime’ to Gookette. Gookette stares at him like she wants to smack him, which is funny because she is about five feet tall and also because she probably doesn’t even know what he’s saying, all she knows in English are doughnut names.
Carl turns round to check the door and everyone who is watching quickly looks down at their doughnuts – except for two girls in a booth who look back at him.
‘Me rikee bro-job,’ Barry is saying now. ‘Bro-job, bro-job.’ He helps her out by sucking an imaginary dick using his curled hand and his tongue in his cheek. She stares at him with eyes like stones.
‘You stupid bitch, he wants a blowjob,’ Carl says. ‘How much is a blowjob?’
He takes a five-euro note from his wallet and crumples it up and throws it at her. It hits her on the arm and bounces back to land on the counter. ‘How much?’ he says again. Now he balls up a twenty and throws it at her. This one hits her on the cheek. It annoys him that she doesn’t scrabble after the money or even move at all. He takes out another twenty then sees Barry is staring at him.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Barry says.
‘What?’ Carl says.
‘What are you doing with the fucking money?’
‘Trying to get you a fucking blowjob, asshole,’ Carl says.
Barry’s face has flared up red. ‘No, you spa, I mean why didn’t you tell me you had all that money? What the fuck were we doing sniffing fucking furniture polish if you had money all along?’
‘I forgot,’ Carl says.
‘You forgot? How did you forget?’
Carl does not know how he forgot. Suddenly he feels quite tired. Everything is starting to fizz away at the edges, like a pill in water. He wishes he had the orange tube but it is in Barry’s pocket and Barry is looking way too angry to give it to him. But then hurray! here comes the Gook running out of the back room, waving his arms and shouting, ‘You bah! You bah!’
‘You bah! You bah!’ they shout back at him. Carl knocks over the plastic straw holder and straws with different-colour stripes spill over the floor. The Gook rushes through the hatch in the counter. Carl raises his fists just to see what’ll happen. Instantly the Gook clicks into this Jet Li-type martial arts pose and for a moment they both stay like that, no one moving, except the Gook’s nostrils get bigger and smaller. Then Carl and Barry turn and run out of the shop, laughing and shouting, ‘You bah! You bah!’
Across the road on the wall of the park, Barry is happy again so they can have more pills. Carl crushes them up with a key. In the big glass window of the Doughnut House, Gookette is crouched down picking up straws.
‘Do you think he’s riding her?’ Barry says. ‘Charlie?’ Sometimes they call the Gook ‘Charlie’.
Carl says, ‘I don’t know.’ Above them there is a full moon in the sky and stars. The moon is a ______ of the Earth that the Earth orbits around.
‘He wouldn’t get anyone else to ride him,’ Barry says. ‘Those gooks have wormy little dicks.’ He makes an imaginary rifle with his hands and points it at Gookette and fires two bullets into her. He discharges the shells and reloads. ‘I’d ride her,’ he says.
Carl doesn’t say anything. The pills keep squirting out from under the key, twice he has to pick them up off the ground.
‘It makes me sick to see gooks just walking around here like they own the place,’ Barry says. ‘After everything that happened.’
On eBay you can buy actual dog-tags from Marines that were in Vietnam, and even an old US Army jeep. But Barry never has any money to buy anything because his dad is a major scab even though he is loaded. Half the time Carl has to loan him cash just to buy beer.
They inhale again, and Carl feels the pills burn at the top of his nose like pure glowing energy that wants to lift him up and throw him all around the sky! So for a second he doesn’t realize that the door of the Doughnut House has opened. Then Barry says, ‘Well well.’ Carl looks up and sees two girls, the same two girls he noticed a minute ago. They are just standing there in the doorway, looking across the road at Carl and Barry. Then, when they see the boys staring back at them, they start walking away.
‘Looks like they want to party,’ Barry says. He hops down from the wall. Carl hops down too. Energy shoots through his arms, the pills make you feel like you are on a mission.
The girls are talking to each other in a loud, fake sort of way, like they know someone is listening. They are from St Brigid’s, he has seen them before in the mall.
‘Hey!’ Barry calls after them. They ignore him.
‘Oh my God, she is such a leper,’ the shorter girl is saying.
‘Hey!’ Barry shouts again. This time the girls turn round and wait. ‘How are you doing,’ Barry says, catching up with them. The girls don’t say anything. ‘I’m Barry,’ he says. ‘This is Carl.’
‘We’re off our heads,’ Carl says. The shorter girl leans up and whispers into the ear of the other one and both of them start giggling behind their hands. Barry glares at Carl.
‘So, what are your names?’ he asks them, which sets off another explosion of giggles, like this is the most spastic thing you could ever ask someone. Classic girl behaviour: Carl is not going to let it throw him off. He pictures Morgan sprawled out on the waste ground, thinks about standing above him with the furniture-polish flame-thrower.
‘What have you guys been doing tonight?’ Barry says.
‘Uh… eating doughnuts?’ the shorter girl says, with a duh expression. She’s not actually short, it’s more that the other girl is tall. Both are thin. The short girl has crinkly hair and glasses like someone on TV, Carl can’t remember who. The other girl has long dark hair and pale skin. Her lips are a shiny lollipop-red. She is wearing mittens and looking at Carl.
‘Did you know tonight is your lucky night?’ Barry is saying.
‘Why, because we get to meet you?’ Crinkly-Hair says.
‘Not just that,’ Barry says. ‘We have a once-in-a-lifetime offer to make you.’
Crinkly-Hair laughs a sarcastic laugh and looks at Lollipop-Lips. ‘We have to go.’
‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’
‘What is it?’
‘We can’t show you here.’
She laughs again. ‘We have to go,’ she says, and turns away. But they don’t go anywhere, and a second later she turns back again and says, ‘Okay, what is it?’
‘Follow me.’ Barry leads the girls up the road. Carl wonders where he is taking them and what the once-in-a-lifetime offer is. He wants to ask Barry but Barry has walked on ahead of him, down a long driveway belonging to one of the new apartment blocks. The girls are dawdling behind Carl, talking to each other about something completely else as though they don’t care about what Barry has to show them and have almost forgotten about it. The pills are making Carl’s hands shake and want to do things.
Barry has stopped under a lamppost and is waiting for them there. They catch up and Crinkly-Hair looks at Barry like she’s saying ‘So?’ Carl is looking at him too but Barry pretends not to see. Lollipop waits a little way back with a mysterious smile as if she is thinking of a secret joke. Now and then she flicks back her hair with a white hand so the light goes shooting through it.
Barry takes the orange tube from his pocket. Wait, what?
‘Diet pills,’ he says. ‘The best you can get.’
The crinkly-haired girl’s face goes dark. ‘Are you saying we need to go on a diet?’
‘You will soon if you keep eating doughnuts,’ he says as a joke, but she doesn’t laugh. ‘Relax,’ he says. ‘I’m not saying that at all. These are designed so that you won’t ever n
eed to go on a diet. They’re actual medical pills developed by doctors. Take one of these a day and you’ll never have to worry about your weight again.’
Crinkly-Hair takes the tube from his hand and examines it. ‘Ritalin,’ she reads. ‘That’s the stuff they prescribe for ADHD.’ She turns to Lollipop. ‘It’s what they gave Amy Cassidy after she smashed up the nature table.’
‘You can take it for different things,’ Barry says.
‘If you snort it you can get really high,’ Carl says, looking at Barry. But Barry acts like he doesn’t hear. What is he doing? Is he trying to sell the pills to these girls? They are supposed to be for him and Carl, they have been planning to get them all week! Carl starts to get angry, but he keeps it hidden for now. Maybe Barry has a plan, like he is planning for them to fuck the girls.
‘Morgan Bellamy,’ Crinkly-Hair is reading from the label. ‘I thought you said your name was Barry.’ She lifts her eyes to Barry challengingly. Lollipop is hotter but Crinkly-Hair is sexy too, Carl thinks, he would ride her if the other one wouldn’t do it.
‘Barry is my middle name,’ Barry tells her. ‘Nobody calls me Morgan except my grandparents.’
‘Where did you get these?’
‘The doctor prescribed them for me. But now I don’t need them any more.’
‘Oh, you’re cured, are you?’
‘That’s right,’ Barry says, smiling at her. She tries to stop herself smiling back at him but she can’t. ‘So what do you think? I’ll give you this entire bottle for thirty euro. That’s only fifteen each,’ he says to Lollipop, trying to bring her into it. But she hangs back and doesn’t speak.
‘We don’t have any money,’ Crinkly-Hair says.
‘Or I’ll give you five for five,’ Barry says, deliberately not looking at Carl while he is saying this. ‘This really is a great offer, ladies. Normally you can’t get this stuff without a prescription. Here, take a look.’ He takes the tube back from Crinkly-Hair and pours some of the little skin-coloured discs out onto his palm and holds it out. Crinkly-Hair hovers over it, like she’s breathing in the smell of the pills, though they don’t smell of anything. Then suddenly light flashes over them. Barry folds up his hand. A car comes up the driveway, a grown-up face suspicious in the window as it goes past.
Lollipop tweaks her friend’s elbow. ‘We should go,’ she murmurs. Her voice is low and soft like cat’s fur.
Crinkly-Hair nods. ‘It’s getting late,’ she says, and steps back.
‘Wait,’ Barry says. ‘Why don’t you take a couple of these, as free samples? I’ll give you my number, and if you like them I can get you some more.’ He holds out the pills. The girls look at him, swaying slightly from side to side.
‘Or, okay, why don’t you give me your numbers, and I can call you to see if you changed your mind?’ He takes out his phone. Carl takes out Morgan Bellamy’s phone and flips it open too. He points it at Lollipop but doesn’t speak. She gazes back at him, biting her bottom lip gently.
‘Okay,’ Barry shuts his phone without stopping smiling. ‘How about this, how about we just come and meet you tomorrow? You two are in St Brigid’s, aren’t you?’
The two of them look sideways at each other then back at Barry.
‘How about we come and meet you after school, and we can talk about it some more. Maybe we can work out a better deal. Like if you don’t have enough money right this second, we can work something out. How about behind Ed’s, say we meet you there, at four o’clock?’
The girls swap glances again and shrug their shoulders.
‘So see you tomorrow?’ Barry calls after them as they walk off down the driveway.
‘Definitely,’ Crinkly-Hair says, without looking back. Then she and Lollipop burst into giggles again.
‘Fucking St Frigid’s bitches,’ Barry says, when they have passed out of sight.
What the fuck are you doing? Why were you trying to give away our drugs? Carl wants to shout. But instead he just says, ‘Is that stuff true? About diets?’
‘I read about it on the Internet,’ Barry says. As they walk down the driveway back to the road, he starts telling Carl how in this thing he read these lads were dealing it and making serious cash. ‘Think about it, dude. All birds ever talk about is their fucking weight. They’ll go mental for this shit. Those two totally would have bought some, if that bloke hadn’t driven past. I’ll bet you anything they’ll be there tomorrow. And say they bring their friends, I bet we could sell all of these and more.’
But why does he want to sell them? Why doesn’t he just want to snort them with Carl? Wasn’t that the plan? This is the way Barry’s brain works though, new ideas are coming all the time, turning into plans. Carl has no ideas, no plans; he is just carried along on Barry’s like a piece of plastic on the sea.
‘I wonder if we could get more from Morgan,’ Barry is saying. ‘Like we could offer him a cut. Or there must be other people in school – or shit, junior school! I bet there’s loads of kids with prescriptions down there that…’
Carl tunes him out. He flips open Morgan’s phone and presses a button. Lollipop-Lips appears and gazes darkly, velvetly, out at him, biting her bottom lip, swaying from side to side. Then she freezes. Then she is there again, gazing, biting, swaying.
Now they have left the village behind, the shopping malls and pubs and restaurants, to go up a sleeping avenue with neat trimmed hedges and black SUVs. Carl feels the night become heavy again and knows that this time there will be no fighting it, it will keep getting heavier and heavier as he gets nearer to the house that is his house until it has dragged him all the way into tomorrow.
‘… genius of diet pills,’ Barry is saying very quickly beside him. He is excited: maybe he is thinking about the US Army jeep on eBay. ‘You don’t just buy them for a night out. You take them every day. And also, it’s girls. When do you ever see girls down in the park, buying drugs off knackers? Never. It’s a totally untapped market. I swear to God, we’re going to be rich! Fucking rich!’ He grins at Carl, and waits for Carl to grin back.
‘Show us them a second,’ Carl says. Barry hands him the tube, chuckling some more. Carl opens it and pours the pills into his palm. Then, as hard as he can, he flings them away into the air. Pills skitter along the road, bounce off car roofs, pelt softly into the grass.
Barry is stunned. For a minute he can’t even speak. Then he says, ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’
Carl keeps walking. There is a sour fire burning in him the colour of dried blood.
‘You fucking twat,’ Barry says, ‘you spa, now what are we going to say to those girls tomorrow?’
Carl raises his palm and smacks Barry flat on the ear. Barry gasps and staggers sideways. ‘What’s the matter with you, you psycho?’ he cries, clutching his head. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
It’s tomorrow. Skippy’s bare-legged at the edge of the pool, chlorine and earliness stinging his eyes. Outside the morning is a grey fuzz, the first shapes just beginning to emerge from it. On either side of Skippy, boys are lined up, their white Seabrook College swimming caps making them look like clones with the school crest stamped on their bald heads. Then the whistle, and before his mind even realizes, his body’s thrown itself forward and into the water. Instantly a thousand blue hands reach for him, seize him, pulling him down – he catches his breath, fights them off, scrabbles his way to the surface –
Breaking through, he emerges into a commotion of colour and noise – the yellow plastic roof, the crash and foam of the other swimmers, an arm, a goggled head thrown sideways, Coach like a gnarled tree trunk bending over the water, clapping his hands and shouting Let’s go let’s go and in the lanes around Skippy the boys like disobedient reflections stealing ahead, disappearing behind their wakes. Everyone hurtling for the wall! But the water grapples against him, the bottom of the pool is magnetic and it’s tugging him down again, down to where…
The whistle goes. Garret Dennehy comes in first, right behind him Siddartha
Niland. In the seconds after, the others slide up alongside them, lean back against the wall, gasping, lifting off their goggles. Skippy’s still back in the middle of the pool.
‘Come on, Daniel, for Christ’s sake, you’re like an old granny walking in the park!’
Three times a week, at 7 a.m., training for one hour. Count yourself lucky, the Senior team trains every morning and Saturdays too. Breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, crawl, back and forth through the blue chemicals; repetitions on the tiles, crunches and squats, till every muscle is burning.
‘Being a great athlete is not just about natural ability,’ Coach likes to shout, pacing up and down along the poolside as you squirm through your sets. ‘It’s about discipline, and it’s about commitment.’ So if you miss a session, you’d better have a good excuse.
Afterwards, the team huddles shivering by the doorway of the changing room, hands pressed under armpits. When you get out of the water the air feels cold and nothingy. Your arm moves and it moves against nothing. You speak and the words disappear instantly.
Coach wraps and unwraps the cord of the whistle around his hand, everyone gathered round him like the Apostles with Jesus in old paintings. If you look closely you can see how his body’s all twisted up even when he’s standing still. ‘You lads did good work on Saturday. But we can’t afford to rest on our laurels. The next meet is on 15 November. That might sound like a long way away. All the more reason for us to work hard and keep our momentum going. I want to see us in the semi-finals.’ He tosses his head towards the changing room. ‘Okay, off you go.’
The showers never feel like they’re making you clean. The tiles are lined with scuzz, the footbath half-full of brackish water; hair shivers in grey clumps in the grating, like drowned mermaids.
‘You swam like a turd today, Juster,’ Siddartha says. ‘What’s the story? Were you up late last night bumming Van Doren?’
Skippy mumbles something about pulling a muscle at the meet.
Siddartha wrinkles up his nose, sticks his upper teeth over his lip and makes the kangaroo noise: ‘Tcch-tcch-tcch, I think I pulled a muscle at the meet. Well, you’d better speed up. Just because you fluked through on Saturday doesn’t mean you’ve got a right to a permanent place on the team.’