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“I can take extra shifts at work,” Mam hurried to say. “I don’t mind. I will pay for it myself —“
“I said no,” Dad barked. “It’s not happening. Get it out of your head.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, walking into the kitchen.
“Your mother thinks your sister needs to go to private school next year when she finishes up primary,” Dad, who was sober for a change, told me. “Thinks she’s too sensitive for BCS.”
She was.
Shannon had a hard time fitting in with people, a very fucking hard time, and I often wondered what would happen to her when she eventually started secondary school.
To be honest, it was a thought that terrified me to my core, so I tried not to think about it.
Because they kept her back in baby infants, Shannon was three years below me at school, so when we went our separate ways at the school gates of BCS next year, with her as a first year and me as a fourth year, she wouldn’t have anyone to look out for her – something that she badly needed.
The girls in her class at primary school were septic, and had given her hell since baby infants, and those were pubescent girls.
The teenage girls she would face when she started secondary school would be a different kettle of fish to handle.
My sister did have a couple of friends – one nice girl called Claire, I remembered in particular, who, would, no doubt, be heading off to Tommen College after primary school to join her rugby-head brother, Hughie.
Unfortunately for Shannon, she would be heading for BCS with me.
There wasn’t much I could do for her, besides get myself suspended defending her honor, which I had no doubt would happen.
One of these days, my sister was going to have to fight back.
“How much is Tommen?” I asked, raiding the fridge for a packet of ham.
“Several thousand a year,” Mam replied. “But it looks to be a fantastic school. And I have an entire year to save up for the tuition. She’s only finishing fifth class now, so I have plenty of time to make it work. I really think it would be the best place for her—”
“There’s nothing wrong with the local community school,” Dad rebuffed with a snort. “It’s free and we both went there, Marie. And would ya look at Joey. He’s doing just grand there. He’s flying road with the hurling. He’s already training with the underage team and didn’t need a fancy fucking education from Tommen to get there, either.”
“Yes,” Mam said carefully. “But Shannon isn’t Joey.”
“Thank Christ for that,” Dad muttered.
I tensed, unsettled by the rare compliment, before finishing preparing a ham sandwich and grabbing a can of coke from the fridge.
I tried to keep a cool head, a calm disposition, and a handle on my temper. It never came easy to me, though, and was growing more impossible with every extra second that I spent in his company.
It didn’t sit well with me when my father complimented me or spoke like a civilized human being.
In a messed-up way, I preferred his drunken slurs and angry slaps.
At least I knew where I stood with those.
He’d been on the dry for three weeks now, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he fell off the wagon.
Because my father was an alcoholic.
Addiction ruled his life.
That was the pattern his life had taken, and I hated him for it.
But not as much as I hated myself for following in his footsteps.
A smoke to sleep, a line to function, and whatever else I could get my hands on to escape.
