AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How did you get home last night?”
Stopping at the front door, I swung around to face her. “What?”
“Your father thinks Aoife dropped you home from school last night,” she said, eyes laced with concern. “But I know that’s not true. She works on Tuesday nights. So, how did you get home?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters because it’s fifteen miles to Tommen from our house, Shannon Lynch, and I want to know how you made that journey!” she demanded. “Are you having trouble again? Did you miss your bus on purpose to avoid more bullies?”
“No, Mam, I’m not having trouble at school,” I choked out.
“It wouldn’t be the first time you avoided the bus, Shannon,” she countered, blue eyes locked on mine. “If you’re in trouble, you can tell me. I can help you.”
“I love Tommen, Mam. I’m happy there!” The words that came out of my mouth surprised me because they were true.
Shockingly, I realized that I did, in fact, love my new school.
“Then how did you get home?” she repeated for the third time. “Tell me!”
“Johnny Kavanagh dropped me home,” I bit out, fighting back the urge to scream. “Okay? Are you happy now? He’s the boy I was with in the newspaper. I had my picture taken with him last week, and then I went and got in his car and he dropped me home last night, so I suppose you can run upstairs and tell Dad that he was right all along and I’m a fucking whore.”
Mam’s face turned deathly white. “I’m calling the school.”
“What?” My eyes widened. “Why?”
“That boy is not supposed to go anywhere near you,” she spat out.
“Why not?”
“Because he hurt you, Shannon!”
“It was an accident.”
“I’m phoning Mr. Twomey.”
Mam turned to walk back into the kitchen to get her phone, and I found myself chasing after her. “Don’t… Mam, don’t!”
“Give me my phone, Shannon,” my mother ordered when I wrestled it out of her hands. “Right this minute.”
“You don’t even know why!” I cried, clutching her mobile to my chest.
“I don’t care,” Mam barked and yanked the phone out of my hands. “He knows the rules. They were explained to him very clearly. He is not supposed to talk to you. He was warned, Shannon. In no uncertain terms. He should have been suspended for what he did to you. By the time I’m finished with him, he will be.”
“Johnny is not the problem here,” I strangled out. My heart was hammering in my chest; the thought of getting Johnny into trouble again was making me feel light-headed. “He apologized for what happened. He replaced my uniform. He stuck up for me at school when a boy was giving me trouble. He has been nothing but good to me, Mam.”
My mother was not a big woman, but at five foot eight and four and a half months pregnant, she made me feel very small in this moment. When her fingers tapped against the keypad of the phone, I reached my breaking point.
“I missed my bus!” I screamed, panicking when she began to dial. “I was scared of being late. I was scared of coming home late to him. I took the spin because I was desperate! Because I knew what he’d do if I waited for the next bus.”
“Shannon,” Mam whispered, pausing mid-dial. “You don’t have to feel scared to come home.”
“Don’t I?” I brushed my hair off my face and pointed to the scar on my temple.
The one that my father put there when he almost maimed me with a whiskey bottle when I was eleven. There were many more where that one came from, but she already knew that.
“You are so concerned with fighting the bullies at school, Mam,” I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks, “when the biggest bully of them all lives under this roof.”
My mother flinched like I had physically slapped her. I hadn’t. What she was feeling right now was a cold hard dose of reality smacking her in the face.
