Not My Problem

by Ciara Smyth

  I glanced then at Meabh, who was highlighting parts of her manifesto and making notes, with her nose all scrunched up. I didn’t know if I was helping her win, but I wasn’t going to let anyone make her lose.

  Seeing as the PE hall was out of use for PE, Ms. Devlin had agreed to let me use it during my free period to work on my project with Dylan. She was impressed that I was involved in “such a commendable endeavor,” or whatever she called it.

  “What is all this?” Dylan tapped a box with his foot.

  “These are your supplies. These are going to make people forget about stupid Ronan’s stupid prank.”

  “You think?” he said, not quite sure but optimistic. “It looks like a box of crap.”

  “Only if you have no imagination!” I said cheerfully. “These are what we need to set a world record.”

  He looked at me. I beamed.

  “I’m going to need more information.”

  “Right. Okay, so, I had a look at some of the easiest to beat world records. I thought we do a whole bunch of them and make you the guy who set like ten world records.”

  I watched his face for a reaction. He grinned, then it faded into a frown.

  “Don’t you need a Guinness person to come and watch?”

  “Yes. Technically. Don’t worry about that. It’s a two-part plan. Part one: We set the records here, in school. Everyone hears about it. You become a huge sensation.”

  He raised his eyebrow at sensation.

  “All right, well, it becomes a talking point. And then we rally support to make it like an event. Which leads to part two: we invite Guinness, and it becomes a whole school thing with everyone supporting you, because they’ve already seen you do it!”

  Dylan chewed on the inside of his cheek. He inspected the boxes. I held my breath, afraid he’d say no. I really didn’t have a better idea and I didn’t want Ronan’s foul mood to backfire onto Dylan, even if he never realized Dylan had been the one to plant the letter.

  “It does appeal to the showman in me,” he said finally with a wink. “But how are we going to make sure everyone knows about it?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. It’s sorted. You worry about this.” I pointed at the box of items, most of which I’d pilfered from around the school. “I stole these eggs from the home ec room and I want to get rid of the incriminating evidence.”

  I helped Dylan unpack the first task onto a table tennis table I’d pulled from the storeroom. Most eggs cracked with one hand in a minute.

  Twenty minutes later we were dying with laughter. The video footage I took on my phone was so shaky from laughing, one of the tech guys who’d got interested in what we were doing agreed to hold it instead. But he started laughing so much that eventually we took a break so he could find a way to keep it steady. We ended up taping the phone to a mic stand with gaffer tape.

  By the time the bell rang, Dylan had successfully:

  Peeled an orange blindfolded in 15 seconds

  Cracked 38 eggs with one hand in one minute

  Blown a pea across 24 feet and 8.1 inches (something we all spontaneously cheered for)

  Clipped 52 wooden pegs to his face.

  Dylan failed to:

  Type the alphabet on an iPad in fewer than 3.14 seconds

  Peel more than 8 bananas in a minute

  Hold more than 26 tennis balls in one hand

  Assemble a Mr. Potato Head in less than 16.17 seconds.

  Afterward he lay back on the floor, catching his breath. It was surprisingly sweaty work and he had pink marks all over his face from the pegs.

  “Do you think this will really work?” he asked, sitting up.

  “I do.” I grinned. I wasn’t even lying. “It’s so funny. Everyone is going to love it.”

  “And it goes up tomorrow?” he asked, wiping his forehead.

  “First thing,” I said. “You’re gonna be huge, dahling.”

  “Is everything sorted?” I asked Daniel. We met behind the prefab building and I was shivering and rubbing my hands together to try and prevent frostbite setting in. It was the kind of morning where you felt the cold get into your bones.

  He nodded. “You got the text, didn’t you?”

  Daniel had accessed the school’s records and sent a mass text to the student body with a link to the school paper’s website and a countdown to just after nine a.m. this morning.

  “Yeah. It’s definitely going to work though, isn’t it?”

  “Do you mean the link or the plan?”

  “Both.”

  “The link is fine. It wasn’t hard. The plan . . . well, the video is funny. I promise. Do you want to see it now?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t think that would help. It would just give me more specific things to worry about.

  Stomach acid leapt around my stomach and I wasn’t sure if it was nerves or missed breakfast.

  “And the other thing?” I asked. I couldn’t quite meet his eye and I watched a spider crawling out of a knot in the door frame behind him instead. Daniel took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and held it out to me. I hesitated before taking it.

  “Thanks,” I said, nodding.

  He patted me on the shoulder and left.

  I turned the piece of paper over and over. I’d asked Daniel to find out who had posted the video of Meabh. I’d confided in him that I thought it might be someone I knew but I had to find out for certain.

  “Do you really think that’s necessary?” he’d asked me.

  “I need proof.”

  He said he’d trace the IP address to a location and get me the answer.

  I knew it was just a video of Meabh being Meabh and honestly it made me laugh. I loved that she was that passionate. But it had hurt her and it had given people an excuse to make fun of her and talk about how annoying she was. I wanted so badly for it not to be Holly. Holly would never make up a fake story or spread false rumors. But she would use the truth against you. She could make you feel like it wasn’t her fault that you were hurt because she hadn’t lied.

  Finally, nausea threatening to overcome me, I unfolded the sheet so hurriedly it ripped. I could still read what it said though.

  I’m not the fucking CIA. You already know who did this.

  I choked out a laugh and blinked back tears at the same time. He was right. I didn’t need proof.

  There was a buzz around the room. Everyone was waiting and curious. Holly and Jill were sitting at the back, heads bent together over Holly’s beloved hard copy of the paper. It had come out that morning, without the offending article.

  Holly was confused, but there was something else too that I struggled to identify.

  Jill spread her hands. “I have no idea what happened! It was in the final draft!”

  Holly saw me looking at them and I watched her consider if this was my doing. I looked away quickly and took a seat near the front. Meabh was oblivious and examining what appeared to be notes for her speech.

  Ms. Devlin marched into class about five to nine and before even calling the register she folded her arms and stared us all down.

  “As you know, today is the electoral debate between your candidates for student council president. Holly and Meabh. As both girls are in our own registration class I will expect you all to vote on Friday. However, I don’t trust a single one of you, so just as the debate is now mandatory—and I will be taking attendance—in an equal show of mistrust, the voting tomorrow will happen during registration.”

  Holly winked at me and I knew she must have suggested this to Ms. Devlin, like she said she would. She wanted Meabh’s defeat to be as brutal as possible. I couldn’t even muster a fake smile back. She’d been so busy the last few days I hadn’t even needed to avoid her, but things would come to a head soon. It was like a rumble of thunder in the distance.

  “Miss, you can’t force people to vote. That’s, like, fascist,” Ronan said.

  “Ah, much like with your mother deciding what sports you can and cannot parti
cipate in, school has its own peculiar rules.”

  “Miss, you can’t—”

  “Una Bannon?” Ms. Devlin started calling the register over the sound of Ronan’s complaints.

  At 9:05 I heard the chiming of several alarms going off at once. Ms. Devlin looked up, frowning.

  “Ronan. Put your phone away. You too, Alison.” She seemed more surprised than annoyed.

  “But misssss,” Ronan whined, “the countdown.”

  She opened her mouth to cut him off but whatever she expected him to say, it wasn’t that.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The countdown clock.”

  Someone else piped up and filled her in on the text the whole school had received this morning. Alison held out her phone and Ms. Devlin inspected it curiously. Seeing her resolve weaken, the class began a cajoling chorus of “Please, miss, can we look. Come on, miss.”

  “Fine. But—” She held her hand up to silence the cheer. “I’m putting it up on the projector and we can all look together. You better hope this is PG-13 or you’re all in major shit. Phones away.”

  She got one of the boys to retrieve her rarely utilized laptop and connect it to the projector on the wall. I really hoped this wouldn’t backfire. I was seized by a fear that people wouldn’t think it was funny or they’d think Dylan was stupid. My heart only settled when the page came up on the projector and all I could see was a video of Dylan, the preview shot of which was him in a silent scream with fifty-two wooden pegs stuck to his face. Immediately a roar of laughter went up and even Ms. Devlin looked amused.

  Daniel had done a great job editing it. The background music was overly dramatic and orchestral and it made the whole thing even funnier. He had clipped out all the boring bits and included slow-motion replays of the best parts. By the end almost the whole class was cracking up. Ms. Devlin had honest to God tears of laughter down her face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her laugh. I didn’t think I’d seen any PE teacher in the world laugh. No one has.

  Only Ronan didn’t think it was funny. He was seething in the corner and when his friend leaned in, laughing, Ronan pushed him away so hard he fell off his chair. I snuck a peek at Holly and even she was giggling and pink in the cheeks. For a second it reminded me of her, but from a few years ago. There were times when we’d laughed so hard it had hurt our stomachs, over the kinds of things you tried to tell other people about but they never made them laugh because you had to be there. I felt a powerful ache, a longing to erase everything that had happened the last couple of years, the dirty, ugly mess our friendship had become. If I offered her a clean slate, would she take it? Or would she roll her eyes and pretend she didn’t know what I was talking about?

  Meabh looked around from her seat and mouthed at me, This was you. It wasn’t a question. I winked and put a finger to my lips. She smiled and I forgot about Holly.

  28.

  At the end of the day I stood at the back of the PE hall, my stomach twisting. I really wanted this to go well for Meabh.

  We weren’t the only class who were being forced to attend the debate. All fourth years and up were here, and Ms. Devlin’s first-year class. They were tiny and excitable and I felt very mature next to them until a teacher tried to usher me into sitting down because she mistook me for one of them.

  As people piled into the room I heard snippets of conversations. Everyone was still talking about Dylan’s video. By nine thirty in the morning there had been several GIFs and memes floating around, the most popular one including a shot of Dylan trying desperately to hold on to dozens of tennis balls in one hand, a look of extreme concentration on his face before they jumped out of his hand in every direction. It was the look on his face that made it. I’d been the one piling them on, but per my request, Daniel had cut me out of the shot. Someone had posted the whole video on social media and that had racked up over two thousand likes so far from people who weren’t even at our school. I’d overheard one of the boys off the team asking him if he’d come back now that Ronan was benched. I’d smiled as I heard him shrug it off with disinterest. I was happy for him, but as soon as I knew that plan was working, my mind turned to the debate.

  The blackout blinds, the ones the drama club used when they were putting on a show, had been drawn down, so the PE hall was quite atmospheric for three in the afternoon. The stage, which I had learned yesterday was made of rostra, was lit dramatically, with both footlights and parcans, and there were two fixed profile spots. I waved to my new drama tech friend from yesterday, who was sitting up in my balcony with a lighting desk and a grin on his face. His moment to shine had come. Or rather, his moment to make others shine.

  Laura sidled up to me and hip-bumped me.

  “That was you this morning, wasn’t it?” she asked.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied loftily.

  “I’m glad. Someone needed to do something. Dylan was getting terrible shit for nothing. Now he’s a hero. It’s brilliant.”

  “How are things with the ex?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m so over it. I like someone else.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I don’t really know him that well but he seems super sweet and he is such a ride. We did shots at Angela Berry’s party. Well, I did, he just—”

  “Can we please stop gabbing and take a seat, ladies?” Ms. Devlin marched past.

  “Coming?” Laura asked.

  I was confused for a moment. Why would I come with her? Then I realized she meant for me to sit beside her for the debate.

  “Sure,” I said, trying not to sound surprised. You don’t want other people to know your first thought is, Why do you want to sit with me?

  We took two seats at the back beside her choir friends, who said hello in eerie harmony. In front of me Dylan was surrounded by people jostling to sit beside him. Laura pulled out a bag of popcorn and offered me some. In spite of all the fear I had about this stupid debate and what might happen, I laughed.

  When the lights went down, I wasn’t laughing anymore. The twisting in my stomach was threatening to bring up that morning’s toast. The vice principal came out onstage, squinting into the full-blast spotlight, and talked a bit about how wonderful it was to have a proper election and how that was what the democratic process was all about and some stuff about how the youth are more politically engaged than ever blah blah blah. He explained how the “event” would go and I thought the term debate had been applied rather loosely. When I thought about a debate I fully imagined Holly and Meabh at each other’s throats, both of them shouting increasingly louder and ending in a fist fight or a knife battle, perhaps. As it turned out, they would each give a speech and some students would ask questions after. That was it. There wouldn’t even be a winner.

  “Bit tame for these two,” Laura whispered to me.

  Holly opened the “debate” with her speech. She talked a bit about her time at the school and on the paper and why she wanted to be student council president. She didn’t go the anarchist route of promising people three-day weekends and free-pizza Mondays, which she obviously couldn’t deliver, but she made some modest suggestions about little things she’d like to change. A student lounge in the old art building for sixth years, no uniforms for Junior and Leaving Cert students during exam weeks, bringing back the ski trip for transition years, that sort of thing.

  I realized, watching her, that she didn’t have to have amazing ideas that would make a significant impact. She had something better. She was funny. She made jokes that the whole room laughed at. She was charming and engaging. And she’d begun to realize she had this glow and it was something she could use.

  The room cheered for Holly as she finished her speech. I wanted to close my eyes as Meabh walked up the steps and took her place. Her jaw was tight and her expression said I can’t believe you all think that was good. Idiots.

  I sent silent psychic messages to her, to loosen up, relax her shoulders, her jaw. I
listened to the ideas she had and I could see that she’d put so much thought into everything. For every idea she had, she gave reasons why it would work, how it would be easy for people to get on board with, how it would save the school money. But I knew that the rest of the room couldn’t see what I saw. Someone so passionate she didn’t know how to rein it in and tone it down. People around me were shifting in their seats or whispering to their friends. They were bored. Meabh didn’t even seem to notice. She plowed ahead and raced through a million different points. I knew it was because she thought they were all as important as each other and she had to let everyone know every detail even if it meant speaking at double speed.

  I glanced at Laura. Her face was stuck in a kind of shell-shocked grimace. When she noticed me looking at her, she gave me a sympathetic look.

  “She sounds really smart,” Laura whispered to me. “She knows what she’s talking about.”

  She did not have to say, But no one cares, they’re bored stiff.

  When Meabh finished, there was a beat before people began to clap. They were so tuned out I don’t think they realized it was over.

  When the applause had died, Ms. Devlin stood up at her table and clapped for both Holly and Meabh and congratulated them.

  “Now we’ll have questions from our audience. Anyone, any questions for the candidates? Don’t be shy.”

  One of the first years put her hand up and Ms. Devlin pointed at her to speak.

  “What would you most like to change about the school?”

  Immediately, I could tell that this was a prepped question. It didn’t even make sense, seeing as they’d both already talked about things they’d change.