34
I Will Try To Fix You
Niall
November, 2007
I'M NOSHERLOCKHolmes,but I’m usually pretty quick at figuring out what I did wrong.
I’m a simple lad, known for destructive impulses. But I could not for the life of me figure out what had made Molly Lockhart go so stone-cold on me all of a sudden.
I’d ask Claire, but I don’t want to raise concern or make her think there’s a problem. And I’m not exactly keen on the idea of spilling out my girl problems to my baby sister. And I’d ask one of the lads to try to figure it out for me—but Fitzy will say he doesn’t want to get involved, give me sound advice I won’t want to carry out, and the other two gobshites are too, well, gobshite-like.
It’s almost like I’ve looked into a fun-house mirror that reversed our roles from last month—because instead of me ignoring her, Molly was ignoring me.
But we’d worked all that out? Apologies were made? And no crazy kisses have happened since—at least not between us. Was there some other lad? Should I be publicly staking my claim to her, like this is the fifteen-hundreds or something?
Something tells me she wouldn’t appreciate that very much.
It’s only been two days of this behavior, but it’s really,reallyeating at me. I’ve still picked her up on Blackenridge every morning as usual, and dropped her home in the afternoons. But she barely spoke to me—she mostly focused on JJ and Claire, spending her rides turned to the backseat. And when I’ve dropped Jay and my sister off at our estate, she spends our car rides alone to her house with her nose in her phone.
I’ve just about had a bellyful of it.
“Mate,” JJ nudges me, snapping me out of my brooding train of thought. I’m seated at our normal table (the girls’ have gotten their table back, at least one half of it, compromised to share with Stephen Rafferty and his friends at the other end of the table) with my chin resting on my hands.
“Lad,” I say casually, as if this is just how I normally sit during lunch—not touching one bite of food and staring off at (seemingly, if you’re a blind fool) nothing. Just in the general direction ofsomeone.
“Are ya trying to burn a hole in the glass, or what?” JJ looks at me, and then towards the window behind the girls’ table as if my lost marbles were somewhere in that general direction. “The window’s done nothing to you, Nialler.”
I don’t tear my eyes away from the girls’ table. Fitzy and Finn (seated across from JJ and I), turn to look over their shoulders almost comically in sync, and shake their heads as if in mourning.
“Hopeless, lad,” Finn sighs.Says him, Mr. Loverboy.
“I think it’s sweet,” Fitzy shrugs, and you might think he was being sarcastic if you didn’t know the lad.
“Creepy, maybe.”
“Jealous Chloe Holland has a different lunch block?” JJ pipes up.
“Wind yer neck in, lad.”
“I’m going over there,” I say suddenly, grabbing my plastic tray and standing up. All three of them look at me like I’m a loon.
“Not it,” I hear Finn and Fitzy say at the same time, followed by JJ groaning and I know he’s following me without having to look back. It was one of our childhood rules—no one can do something crazy alone.
“Niall, Nialler, don’t be a plank, you’ll only make it—why hello, ladies,” JJ turns his whisper into a flirty lilt, dropping down in the empty seat next to my sister. The girls and Rafferty’s lads all have book bags piled in the middle to separate their sides of the table. “Claire-Bear, how’s yer lunch?”
I steal a chair and force myself right next to Molly—though I have to squeeze against the corner of the table, which I don’t really mind. But by the look on her face, she definitely does.
If she’s mad at me, I don’t have a problem groveling some more or leaving her alone. But it’s not fair to leave me in the dark. It’s not fair to not even let metryto fix things.
Claire is busy talking to JJ, but Niamh, Marissa and even shy Rory Towney are looking at me like I’ve grown two heads as I rearrange the bread loafs on my tray.
“Mols,” I say, waiting till she looks at me. “Finally got that necklace fixed—sorry it took so long.”
I’m not sorry. It was done yesterday, I was waiting for her to ask about it. But since shehasn’tnow I’m using it as a trojan horse of sorts.
Maybe not the best analogy but I don’t have a better one.
