Not My Problem

by Ciara Smyth

  “What subject is it? Maths?”

  “French. I got the Maths done the other day. Your nemesis helped me actually.” I don’t know why I told her that. Especially after I’d resolved not to defend Meabh in front of Holly. It felt like a confession.

  She was silent for a second.

  “Come back to bed and I’ll do it for you in a bit.” She patted the space beside her. “I’m cold.”

  I climbed back into bed beside her but she didn’t go back to sleep. We lay facing each other and she pouted.

  “Why was she helping you with Maths?”

  “You know what she’s like. I was doing it in PE and she just couldn’t help herself.”

  “So what, you’re, like, friends now?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just she’s not in PE anymore because of her foot so she sits up in the balcony with me and does her student council plan stuff. I mean, not with me. Just there. And I’m there.”

  I tried not to sound guilty. Why did I even feel guilty? I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t told Holly about the favor I’d done Meabh. Or the favor she’d done me. Or that I’d told her to start with her green initiative, even though I hadn’t known what it was at the time. But then she’d never asked me specifically, Aideen, did you push Meabh down the stairs in order to give her more time to work on her student council plans and then did she help you break into the school in the middle of the night and then did you inadvertently advise her to kill the hard copy of my beloved school newspaper?

  So, like, it hadn’t come up.

  “Is there anything you want to tell me?” Holly said.

  My heart went from zero to sixty. Or whatever the heart equivalent numbers are.

  “Like what?”

  I thought about Meabh’s long, dark eyelashes and strong arms and the way her skirt rode up when she sat on the bench. My throat felt hot.

  Holly appeared to think about it for a moment, but I knew she wasn’t really thinking. She knew whatever she wanted to say next. But she wanted it to seem like it was off the top of her head.

  That, or she’s deliberately trying to make you anxious.

  That was silly. Why would she want to do that?

  “Did you know she was going to kill the paper?” Holly asked finally.

  “What? No, of course I didn’t.” I was surprised that she’d even thought that. I might not be being 100 percent honest with Holly, but I loved her and if I knew about something that was going to hurt her, I would have prepared her.

  She should know that about you.

  Before I opened my mouth to say so though, I caught myself. Holly was angry and she was upset and she didn’t mean to be hurtful. If she didn’t mean it then I shouldn’t be annoyed with her. I swallowed my indignation.

  “If I’d known, I would have told you. She had her laptop and papers and graphs and stuff spread out but she never said anything about exactly what she was planning.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Holly sighed. Almost immediately she perked up again. “Now that we’re going to be campaigning against each other, she’s probably going to work on that during PE too.”

  “I mean, she also does things at home, I’m sure,” I said, not liking how excited Holly suddenly was.

  “But you said she spread out all her papers and she had her laptop?”

  “I mean—”

  “You can be my spy! If she says anything about her plans. Any tiny thing she says or you overhear, tell me, okay?” She leaned her face so close to mine, the tips of our noses touched.

  My stomach gurgled, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t had dinner last night.

  “I don’t . . .” My words got lost on the way out of my mouth.

  “Let’s get some sleep.” Holly rolled over. “I have to get up in an hour to do your homework.”

  “You don’t have to, I can do it,” I said. I hadn’t asked her to do it and somehow I felt guilty anyway.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, and I could hear in her voice that she was already falling asleep again. “It’s only ordinary level. It’ll take you an hour and it’ll take me ten minutes. That’s not an efficient use of time. Keep me warm.” She yawned and pulled my arm around her waist and she snuggled into me.

  After that, I might as well have got up because I didn’t get back to sleep. I lay awake looking at the back of Holly’s head and wondering why I felt good and terrible at the same time.

  A few hours later, Ms. Devlin was wrapping up registration and I could see Meabh was bouncing nervously on her ball. She had the same kind of expression as when she knew the answer to something and could barely contain herself long enough for the teacher to finish asking the question. As soon as the bell went for the first class, she launched herself off her exercise ball, utilizing the momentum provided by its bouncy surface. With surprising speed for someone wearing a space boot, she accosted Holly.

  “We need to speak to Ms. Devlin,” she said.

  “Why?” Holly said suspiciously. She was clearly caught off guard by Meabh speaking to her.

  “We need to discuss the election. There are issues.”

  “What issues?”

  “I’d rather discuss it with Ms. Devlin present as an arbitrator.”

  Holly rolled her eyes at me but relented.

  I followed Holly and Meabh up to Ms. Devlin, feeling very much like this was my business, but Ms. Devlin disagreed for some reason, citing that I was neither on the school paper nor part of the election.

  “You could always sign up to run,” she added as I huffed out of the room, walking a little quicker away from that suggestion.

  I pretended to walk off into the distance, toward the main building, while the door slowly closed itself, but as soon as it shut, I hurried back to it and pressed my ear against it.

  “What are we doing?” Kavi said. I jumped.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked, confused.

  “Never mind.”

  I paused, expecting Kavi to tell me why he was waiting for me. I assumed he’d heard of a new client and unexpectedly I was excited about what we might do next. I was kind of killing it in the favor business so far. Client made me sound like a fancy businessperson though, which I wasn’t. Beneficiary? Made me sound like the queen or something. We were distracted almost immediately by a loud, high-pitched scream of “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

  Kavi and I both put our ears to the door, facing each other. We sent silent facial expression messages that I’m pretty sure followed the line of Do you think what we’re doing is wrong? Okay, good, me either.

  “Holly. I realize you’re upset, but Meabh makes a valid point here. I know you’re smart enough to see that.”

  That was Ms. Devlin.

  “She’s just doing it to get me to stop running.”

  I mouthed Holly’s name at Kavi.

  “I am not. Run if you want but I genuinely think it would be unfair for you to keep working in the press and running for public office at the same time.” Meabh’s voice was unmistakable. It had that I’m-right-and-you’re-wrong tone even when she wasn’t arguing about something.

  Kavi widened his eyes at me. My heart sank.

  “Public office? The press? It’s a school newspaper and student council.”

  “The paper will be open to accusations of bias even if you leave, so this is the very least you can do.”

  “Miss, come on.”

  “I’m sorry, Holly, you’re going to have to choose.”

  There was silence then for what felt like a long time. When Holly finally spoke, her voice was steely.

  “I am going to run for student council. And I’m going to win. And then I will go back to being editor of a paper that is still printed on paper.”

  Kavi bared his teeth in an anxious grimace.

  “They’re gonna kill each other,” he said in a stage whisper.

  “Yes,” I agreed. This was not good.

  “You don’t even want to be president,” Meab
h shrieked.

  “I really, really do,” Holly replied.

  I felt sick. I didn’t want to listen to any more.

  “I’m going to class,” I said dully. “You should too.”

  “I’m so late,” Kavi said anxiously. “Mr. Kowalski will be so mad at me if I get in trouble again.”

  He was ten minutes late. At most. I resisted the urge to strangle him.

  “You’ll be grand. Go over to the nurse’s office and ask for a painkiller. You can say that’s why you’re late. Don’t be surprised if Sister D asks you if you’re on your period though.”

  “I don’t get periods,” he said seriously.

  “You don’t say.”

  I started off toward my own class, heading in the opposite direction.

  “Will you meet me for lunch?” Kavi said across the growing space between us.

  Right. He was bringing me a new client.

  “Sure. The prefab?” I suggested.

  “Our usual place.” He winked.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.” I shook my head to myself. Strange boy.

  I muddled through French, with actual completed homework that Miss Sullivan held up to the light as though she would be able to spot the counterfeit. She was not. Or rather she had so few examples of my own handwriting that this could plausibly be it. I tried to arrange my face into pleasant befuddlement, as though I had no idea what she could possibly be doing.

  I didn’t text Holly. I knew it was selfish but she was going to be so angry about being basically forced off the paper and when she got like that, nothing I could say was right. I did pass Meabh in the hall between French and geography and she gave me a small smile. She looked a little bit confused when I didn’t smile back. But what did she expect? That she could help me with one set of Maths problems and I’d ignore that she was waging war on my best friend?

  I hated that this was escalating. They both assumed the worst in each other and were both totally convinced that they were right to do so.

  Besides, I reasoned, if I did message Holly, then she’d know I’d been listening in. She didn’t know I knew. And she hadn’t found me. She hadn’t sent an expletive-laden text about Meabh’s treachery. I know you might think, well, it had only been a couple of hours—but Holly had texted me three and a half minutes after she had her first kiss. She was still with the guy at the time. Was I self-absorbed for feeling hurt now just because she didn’t need me, especially when I was deliberately avoiding her?

  I felt even worse when I thought about the French homework I’d just handed in. If she hadn’t done it, I would have got in trouble again. The guilt gnawed at me until I finally fired off a message, trying to sound merely curious about what had happened with Ms. Devlin. Holly could be annoyed with me because I didn’t ask, after all. When I realized that, I felt a flood of relief. Of course. She was annoyed that I hadn’t been thoughtful enough to ask her what happened.

  Bet she messaged Jill.

  Jill was on the paper. It only made sense. It didn’t mean anything. I didn’t even know if that was true.

  AIDEEN

  What happened with Ms. D?

  I waited for an answer and kept checking my phone through the morning classes but got nothing. I went on Instagram and saw she’d been active since I sent the message. So she’d looked at her phone but she hadn’t opened my message on purpose. I tried not to dwell on why that made me feel so terrible. I was being stupid as usual.

  When the lunch bell rang, it took all my willpower to go and meet Kavi instead of going to find Holly.

  He was sitting on my stoop at the back of the prefab and he had a lunch box.

  “Well?” I said, expectant.

  “Do you want a samosa?” he asked, removing the lid and holding out his lunch box to display his wares. They smelled amazing.

  “No. I’m good, thanks. What’s up?”

  “Well, I had a good morning after I saw you. The trick about going to get a painkiller worked, although Sister Dymphna did give me a suspicious look when she was taking the ibuprofen out of the cupboard. I think she was onto me.”

  “No, she thought you were drug seeking. She thinks everyone is. Don’t worry about it. I meant more like, what’s up with the . . . the business? Has someone else been seeking my very special services?”

  He shrugged with a mouthful of samosa and made an I dunno noise.

  Was he doing this on purpose to annoy me? Why make me meet him if he didn’t have something to tell me?

  Kavi swallowed. “It’s not a really a business,” he said. “I guess it’s not a charity either . . . it’s more like a social enterprise!”

  “What’s a social enterprise?” I said, unable to hide my annoyance. Though it didn’t seem like Kavi even noticed.

  “It’s like a business but instead of keeping the profits you do something good with it.”

  I liked the sound of that.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. So he had noticed. I felt bad for being grumpy with him when he was always nice to me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just. You know. Life.”

  He nodded seriously.

  “You sure you don’t want one?” He waved his food under my nose.

  “Oh all right then, budge up,” I said, and Kavi scooted along the stoop and made a space for me. I bit into one of the samosas.

  “Christ alive. Did you make this?” I said. Kavi was a food genius.

  “I helped. But my dad did most of the work. He spent like four hours doing these yesterday and I’m surprised there were any leftovers.”

  Mam’s cooking was more the fish fingers and beans school of culinary delights, and if we got a takeaway, it was a chippy. I’d never even been to a restaurant. But I didn’t say any of that. I didn’t want Kavi to think I was uncultured or sheltered because I’d never had proper Indian food. I didn’t think Patak’s curry in a jar was really the same thing. “Does your mam cook too?”

  “Mam can’t make cheese on toast, never mind samosas. Try the sauce.”

  I was about to when I heard the crackle of the tannoy system and with a jolt realized it was my name they were calling.

  Could Aideen Cleary please come to the school office. Aideen Cleary to the school office, please.

  My heart sank. That couldn’t be anything good. Had something happened to Mam? I checked my phone in case I had a missed call but there was nothing. Maybe I was just being expelled.

  16.

  There was another student sitting in the office when I got there. A Black girl with light brown skin and braids. Angela Berry. She was the kind of gorgeous that made people slow down when she walked past. And she was older, a sixth year. Social media influencer. School play star. She had her own car supposedly paid for with endorsement money. Rumor had it, though, she’d crashed it twice already.

  Everyone knew her.

  She was tapping her foot nervously but there was no principal, teacher, or social worker waiting for me. Orla was behind the counter. She smiled, relieved, when she saw me.

  “Thank God. I was afraid to call for you again in case anyone noticed. I thought one wee quick callout wouldn’t be suspicious.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “I thought my mam had died or something.”

  Orla appeared stricken by this. “Why? Is she ill? I’m so sorry.”

  “No. I was exaggerating. I mean, I thought something serious had happened.”

  She cringed. “I didn’t think of that. Sorry. But look, I really need your help.”

  “Again?”

  She nodded. Then she shook her head.

  “Not me.” She waved Angela over from where she was sitting chewing her fingernails and tapping her foot.

  Angela sprang up and walked toward us, giving me a once-over.

  “Her? Really?” She narrowed her eyes at me. I suppose I didn’t look like the kind of person who could fix things seeing as I just about grazed her shoulders.

  Orla reassured her, “I told you she helped me. You can trust her.”<
br />
  “What did she do for you?” Angela asked. Orla hesitated.

  That was when Kavi made his presence known.

  “Oh my God, such a good story,” Kavi said excitedly.

  Everyone jumped. Including me. I didn’t realize he’d followed me, but I was beginning to think he simply had the ability to materialize out of thin air.

  I cut him off. “All transactions are confidential,” I said.

  “I wasn’t going to tell the story,” he said indignantly. “I was just saying it was a good one.”

  Angela nodded approvingly. “Well, that’s good business,” she said. She seemed to consider us for another second.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you,” Angela said finally.

  I waited. When she didn’t say anything I gave her my best go on then face.

  “Out here? Where anyone can walk in on us?” Angela frowned.

  “You can go in here.” Orla unlocked the supply closet and the three of us squeezed in. More dark closets, less breathing room. Kavi sat on a box of printer paper and I flattened myself against the wall. Angela somehow managed to look confident and at ease even here. That must be what self-esteem does for you.

  “Why is he here too?” Angela eyed Kavi.

  Kavi and I exchanged a look. Mine said, Why are you here? His said, Why wouldn’t I be here?

  “Whatever, I don’t have time for this.” Angela waved off our hesitation. “So you know Mr. Walker? Super strict, minus craic, face like a slapped arse?”

  I nodded. I had him for geography. We did not get along. Surprise surprise.

  “Well, I had him last period and I may or may not have written some kinda rude comments about him on a sheet of paper for my friend to read.”

  I nodded. We’d all been there.

  “Well, I also had to hand in a long essay. I borrowed my friend’s stapler to keep the sheets together and—”

  I cringed. Kavi clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Exactly,” Angela groaned. “I handed in the essay and then realized I’d also included the sheet with the, um . . . comments.”

  “How bad are these comments?” I asked, barely able to breathe from secondhand cringe.

  “Uh . . . I suppose they span the range from mildly rude to a suggestion that he’s a case for post-birth abortion?”