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“When I first read it,” he started in a whisper. “I thought it was great. The grief was so clear and concise. Then I decided it was more like a narcissist’s suicide letter; a man saying all the reasons he didn’t want to live anymore, and said be damned, if my love is gone and so am I, to hell with the world.”
“I don’t think that’s the case at all. The suicide part, I mean,” Áine countered against him and her pre-emptive decision.
His intense stare settled on her, uncaring who saw now. She wondered if it was because he’d become introspective or because he might like her after all. Because the only thing that held an exemption to her belief of knowing his mind, was how he felt about her. The objectivity was lost on insecurity.
“You’re right,” he conceded. “I’ve moved on from that idea too. It’s just his deeply personal perspective. He didn’t write it for fucking teenagers to decipher for the sake of getting an A in English. He must have written it out of pure pain, like those people who fall to their knees in the rain. You know the kind. Boomboxes and open white shirt folk.” He drew from his watch of her to underline a part with his pencil:
‘Drain out the mantle to let the Earth run cold.’
“I’d say this line is the best one, but it also made me think about my own grief. Like, I dunno.” He shrugged. “It made me realise it isn’t to this scale that I’m capable of mourning someone. It’s almost the opposite. Because I keep thinking to myself, I’m never going to feel her pushing hair out of my face again. Or have my name called with like . . . pure affection. You know? The kind only someone could give ya’ because theyloved you before they even met you.” He held something painful on taut lips. Something he bravely persisted to say, “She’s been gone three years, Áine, and it gets no easier.”
“It really is awful, Fionn.” As much as she and her mam butted heads, the idea of her being gone ached Áine’s heart and made her want to run home all ten miles to apologise for not living up to what her mam wanted.
Pulling from his vulnerability, Fionn straightened himself and drifted his focus back to Mr Walsh. Sometimes it was like his soul left his body and switched him to autopilot.
Áine wondered, unable to take her eyes from him, if she was nothing more than an outlet. A way for him to get out all feelings he had pent-up inside without having to worry someone would find out and slag him.
There were times, outside their mutual trust, that she felt she was being treated as a means to an end. Thathewas treating her that way. And it made her feel less in worth, like she was an old, weakened currency to be wheelbarrowed home for burning.
Áine was also quite grateful for his trust because she felt like she was born inverted, and that made people subconsciously uncomfortable. It was as if she lived separate from everyone until Fionn would come to visit from time to time at the back of their English class, and not being alone for a while made feeling like an outlet wholly worth it.
She smiled to herself, recalling a few months back when they had just finished having a lively conversation aboutDancing at Lúghnasa, and had rolled out of class for break. On her wander to the toilets to change her sanitary towel, she’d found Fionn in the school hall with his friends trying to touch the ceiling with their heads. The noise out of them resembled wild hyenas as one after another they sprang and jumped, most failing in their attempt.
Áine thought to herself as she clenched her cramping stomach:There he is with his lovely, beautiful brain, only moments before swirling with thoughts of performance and Meryl Streep, and now he’s walloping it off the ceiling for a laugh with the boys.
And yet, she didn’t think this other version of him was ‘faulty’. It was an extension of him she supposed had the entitlement of being loved just as much as his better parts.
“You could write one for her, you know. Your mam,” Áine suggested, wanting to say one last thing to him before class ended.
He stared at Callahan’s poem for the longest time before looking up at her. The whites of his eyes had gone a little red.
Jesus.
“I don’t think I could,” he said.
“Why not?” she objected.
He grumbled a frustrated sigh the way many people did when Áine suggested something like it was easy. “I don’t think how you do, Áine. I’m not smart enough.”
Sometimes people had a right to be frustrated with her, like when she gave maths grinds and would say, “Look, it’s easy, just do this,” to the struggling student. But Fionn was more than capable.
She spoke in a stern tone adopted from her mother, “There’s a reason they bumped you up to higher-level this year.”
He ruminated over that, which surprised her considering his exterior was so impenetrable. She chose to twist it into a compliment. That she, Áine, had the power to break past Fionn O’ Rourke’s wall, if only for a minute.
The bell chimed, interrupting the chance of him saying yes. Everyone moved from their seats, piling out in enthusiastic shuffles as Mr Walsh reminded them to study in lieu of whatever nefarious plans they had this evening.
Áine liked to stay behind to have five minutes of peace before heading home to her madhouse. Fionn was still taking notes from the whiteboard ramblings, but she didn’t mind the unexpected company when it was him.
The door swung shut after Mr Walsh.
Fionn put his copybook in his bag, still lingering.
She wanted to ask him why he stayed. Or expected him to ask whyshealways stayed.
But he didn’t, and neither did she.
Instead, they sat soundlessly for a while, apart from their audible breaths that seemed to intensify whatever was happening.
