Good Girls Don't (2 page)

On arriving home, I discover that Janet has eaten all the ice cream. This bothers me for a number of reasons, including the fact that I’ve been looking forward to ice cream all day, and the fact that Janet has moved out. I thought this meant actually leaving the house. Not being around. Not coming home whenever possible with laundry for Mum to do. Not eating my ice cream.

Ah, my sister. I’m sure I looked up to her when I was younger, but now my feelings towards her are more along the lines of “Stop pretending to be so sophisticated and mature and lecturing me about life when you still can’t do your own washing”.

I can’t see me being that clingy when I’m twenty. Then again, she has a much better relationship than I do with Mum. Janet tells her everything about her life, her friends, her relationships. I don’t do that. I mean, she hears the edited version of my life from time to time. In the edited version I am a perfect angel. I don’t drink, I have never touched drugs, I am serious about my education, I don’t flirt, I don’t hold parties in the house when she and Dad are away, and I don’t do anything inappropriate.

I can’t imagine, for example, sitting down to discuss my current situation with her over a cup of tea. “So, Mum, I left school early on Monday to go talk my friend out of killing himself and ended up sleeping with him. Yes, I was careful. No, I don’t love him. Funny thing, actually, I like someone else. She’s in Fourth Year at my . . . yes,
she
, Mum. Well, there’s no need for your jaw to have dropped
that
far . . . anyway, she was over here one night . . . well, two nights actually . . . no, you weren’t here. I had a party . . . oh, not that many people . . . it’s not a big deal . . . no, I’m sure that vase was broken
before
the party . . .”

Certainly not a conversation I want to have. So I keep quiet about anything personal and discuss school and what happened in
Eastenders
last night.

I don’t really talk to Janet, either. She’s doing History and Politics or something incredibly boring (to normal people, anyway) like that at university, which should give you a clue as to the sort of person she is. Incredibly ambitious and passionate about everything she sets her mind to. Loves starting intense political discussions around the dinner table just so that she can express her own opinions. She collects facts the way some people collect key rings. It’s exhausting just being in the same room as her. (“Janet, can you pass the butter, please?” “Have you been following the political situation in India? If you ask me . . .” “Janet, can you pass the butter, please?” “Do you
mind
, Emily? As I was
saying
. . .”)

I trudge up to my room, ice-cream-less. I have homework to do but my bedroom is a den of distractions. The TV, for a start. Janet got it as a present after her Junior Cert results (two zillion As, or something along those lines) and because it was too much of a ‘distraction’ during Sixth Year (and Fifth Year, actually – she’s always been one of those odd people who actually listen when the teachers tell you to study right from the beginning), I inherited it. I bought a DVD player for myself after working for a few weeks last summer, which has only added to my general lack of productivity when it comes to schoolwork. I love movies, though. I like all stories, I suppose, but movies are special. They fuse words and images and music together to create something incredibly beautiful. I get all mushy and excited about them, wanting to hold them and love them. My walls are a tribute to that, too, covered with posters and postcards of various films, the ones that stay with you and change you in some way, even if it’s almost imperceptible. Mixed in with those are the obligatory photographs-of-best-friends, so beside my
American Beauty
poster there’s a framed photo of me and assorted friends at my seventeenth birthday party last December. I’m sitting on top of Barry and Roisín is leaning on us. Andrew’s tickling Lucy and Hugh is rolling his eyes at them, as we all tend to do at the world’s happiest couple. That was just before Hugh and I got together.

There’s something special about going out with someone who’s been a good friend of yours beforehand. You can look back on your shared history and fool yourself into thinking that there was something there all along, some little spark, and that’s why this relationship is going to last forever. I’m sure we annoyed everyone with our “it was meant to be” rubbish. And it wasn’t meant to be, as it turned out, and we’re better off as just friends.

It was nice to fall into the fantasy while it lasted, though.

There are eight of us in Fifth Year music. Sarah is in the class, which is really how I got to know her. I mean, she’s been in a few of my classes since First Year, but we never really got talking until this year. We realised we had a couple of friends in common, like Shane and Hugh, which gave us something to talk about, and since she’s been spending more time with them recently, what with them starting up a band and all that, I’ve been seeing her and her friends outside of school as well.

Seeing as Abi is one of these friends, I am rather grateful for this, but it also makes things between Sarah and me a little awkward. I get the feeling she sees me as “corrupting” her best friend, somehow, which is completely ridiculous. I’ve got to learn to stop being so paranoid. It’s school that does it to me, I think. I go around thinking that sexuality is no big deal and that honestly, no one
cares
if you want to sleep with boys or girls, and then something at school reminds me that most people don’t think that way. The way “lesbian” is thrown around as an insult. Or this girl in my class, Joanne, talking about how people who are bisexual don’t really mean it. It’s just a phase, or they’re just trying to be different, or they’re just hiding the fact that they’re gay. Thank you for your opinion, Joanne. Can I hit you now?

Contemplating it gets me angry and stresses me out, though, so I don’t. It’s their problem, really. Besides, there are people who really don’t care. They just aren’t the more vocal ones.

The teacher is talking. We are supposed to be listening. Sarah and I are actually counting down the days to the summer holidays in our homework journals and sighing happily at the thought that it’s only a matter of weeks until Fifth Year’s over. I don’t know what I’m going to do over the summer. Work, maybe. Sleep. Watch DVDs and go to the cinema a lot. Dream about Abi and other attractive people. Do a lot of hanging out and spend the three months not really doing anything, but loving it anyway. The most perfect thing about summer is being surrounded by your friends and not having any responsibilities hanging over you. The days are long and warm and gentle and it feels like anything’s possible.

It’s still summery outside. I look out the window longingly and am told promptly to pay attention. The teacher dislikes me because I don’t give her the respect she deserves, apparently. I hate that attitude that teachers have. Respect isn’t something that you’re owed automatically just because you’re a teacher. It has to be earned.

The bell goes, and I sigh when I realise that it’s only the end of the first class of the day. The days are really dragging by. They always do at this time of the year, just when you want them to speed up.

Sarah and I discuss this phenomenon on the way to our Irish class, coming to the conclusion that the school has been cursed, so that summer always seems impossibly far away to us.

While we’re waiting for the teacher to get there, she turns to me and says, “Emily?”

“Yeah?”

“Has Abi ever talked to you about . . . I don’t know, anything that seemed kind of weird?” she asks.

I frown. “Like what?”

Sarah looks worried. “Like maybe wanting to kill herself?”

“She’s not suicidal,” I say. At least, I don’t think she is.

“Are you sure?” she says. “I’ve been reading this stuff she’s written, and it seems really dark. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m worried. She never talks about what she’s feeling.”

“Well, she doesn’t talk to me, either,” I tell her.

“Really? I thought she might have. You’ve been getting kind of close lately.”

I grin. “That’s one way of putting it.”

She laughs. “I was trying to be subtle, okay? But seriously . . . I worry about her sometimes.”

I nod. I think I do too.

She was crying because she’d just broken up with her boyfriend. She was rubbing her eyes and tear-stained cheeks and she still looked beautiful, and I took her in my arms and tried to comfort her, and the second I felt her body against mine I knew that I was seriously falling for her.

***

That was the night Hugh and I broke up. That was the night Abi stayed over at my house and I kissed her and then felt horribly guilty about it, because it made us both feel awkward. It didn’t last, though. She didn’t react the way some people would have, disgusted and revolted.

The second kiss was at my party. We were drunk. It happened. Or rather, she made it happen, and I got annoyed with her for doing it just for the shock value. It reminded me of something Declan would do, but she’s nothing like Declan, not really. Declan is all “Look at me! Look at me! Feel my pain!” and she’s quiet and enigmatic. He demands attention, and she (usually, at least) shies away from it.

And Declan isn’t that bad, really. I’ve stayed friends with him for the last couple of years, after all. It’s just that sometimes he frustrates me. When he first started talking to me about how depressed he was, I told him to talk to someone who could help him, like a therapist. He said he didn’t need to. I said that if he was depressed then he should, and then he got annoyed with me and didn’t speak to me for a week. This happens again and again, every couple of months. I can’t count the number of times I’ve soothed him out of doing something drastic, and sometimes I wonder why I bother. Am I making any difference? He’s just going to go through this again and again. Maybe I should just ignore him and see what happens, if he’d really go through with it. When it comes down to it, it’s not up to me to fix his life for him. It’s up to him.

But of course I’ve never tried that out, because I’m not willing to risk it. He knows that, too. Suicide threats are the ultimate in emotional blackmail.

I think about what Sarah said. I don’t think Abi wants to die. But what would I know? You can’t know a person after just a couple of weeks of semi-deep conversations, even if you’ve been in the same school for years. Maybe you never really know a person, especially one who doesn’t readily discuss what she thinks and feels.

I really do seem to want to play the role of the saviour, don’t I?

Barry and I have a Wednesday night tradition. Wednesday is a day when neither of us gets too much homework, so I go over to his house or he comes over here, and we watch a movie. Sometimes some of the others come, too, but Lucy and Andrew are too busy being seriously stressed out about the Leaving Cert being dangerously soon, and Roisín has maths grinds (she is scarily studious sometimes, veering on almost Janet-like), and Hugh has been busy with the band and of course his darling Fiona, so lately it’s just been the two of us.

It’s a good thing, because I see Roisín at school anyway, and I see everyone at the weekends, and sometimes it’s fun to have one-on-one talks with people. Besides, he likes the kind of movies I do, including
Velvet Goldmine
, which Lucy watched and said, “I’m confused. And there didn’t really seem to be a plot.” Whereas Barry understands the love I have for the glam rock era, and therefore the love for the movie (and the glitter and the naked Ewan McGregor), although thankfully he’s over his stage of dressing like they did back then. It was a happy moment for all, I think, although he does look great in make-up.

“So what have you been up to, Miss Emily?” he asks me, as we settle down on my bed to watch
Road Trip
. (Ah, mindless entertainment!) It’s a very teenage-drama-series moment, the two of us lying on the bed together, with the duvet pulled up over us, only without the sexual tension.

“Declan,” I say.

“No, Emily, I’m Barry.
Bar-ry.”

“Oh, stop, you know what I meant.”

“What has he done this time?”

“Well, we sort of –”

Barry looks at me. “What did you do?”

“Slept together.”

“You what?” He looks truly disgusted. I look at him carefully to see if he’s joking, but he seems to be serious. That was the last thing I expected.

I can’t say anything.

“Are you serious?” he continues.

I nod.

“Why?” he demands. “I mean, you don’t even like him half the time. He’s always manipulating you, and I can’t believe you’d – degrade yourself like that.”

“
Degrade
myself?” I exclaim. “I did not – no, you know what? This is stupid. I don’t have to justify myself to you. I just thought I’d tell you, because you’re my friend, and we
talk
about this sort of stuff. I don’t need you looking down on me like this.”

“I just don’t see why you’d do something like that, that’s all.”

“Because I
wanted
to! Because it felt like the right thing at the time, that’s why.”

“And you think that’s a good enough reason? You can’t just go through your whole life doing whatever you feel like, you know. I mean, do you care about anyone except yourself?” I’ve never seen him this angry. It scares me.

“I do care,” I say softly. And I
do
.

Maybe it’s the softness that snaps him out of it. “Sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have – you’re right, it’s your choice, I was just being stupid.”

“It’s okay,” I say, not meaning a word of it.

He hugs me, awkwardly. I return the hug, and then we stare at the TV screen. The tension is overwhelming.

“You know – I actually do have a lot of work to do tonight, so maybe I should go,” he says.

“Okay. I mean, if you have something to do – you should get it done,” I say.

He hugs me again and leaves. I close the front door after my best friend and watch him walk away.