‘How attached are you to your second kidney?’ asked Colin. He was sprawled across my bed, on my laptop, as I sat on the floor finishing off a new song.
‘Very attached,’ I said, between strums.
Colin had come over to my house as soon as I got back from Dublin. I’d had an idea for a new song during the three-hour bus ride, and wanted to get the melody down before I forgot it. Colin was used to me randomly working on music and scribbling lyrics, so he didn’t mind that I wasn’t giving him my full attention. Besides, he was busy scheming. I’d told him it was pointless, but he wouldn’t listen.
‘It says here that you can get five thousand dollars for one on the black market.’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Jacki, you’re going to have to be a bit more flexible,’ he said. ‘Desperate times and all that.’
‘Let’s face it,’ I sighed. ‘I’m not going to New York.’
‘I’m maid of honour,’ said Colin, so seriously that I had to force myself not to giggle. ‘It’s my job to make sure all of Lydia’s favourite people are there.’
‘Well then, tell her to get married in Avarna!’ I said, playing louder.
Lydia and I had become pretty good friends over the past year. She’s a designer and owns a shop that sells clothes and accessories in the village, so we share a love of fashion. Colin had introduced us. Even though she is technically Colin’s aunt, I guess they’re more like friends too, hence he got the job of chief bridesmaid. Lydia had met her American piano-player fiancé, Seth, when he came into her shop last year. He was touring Ireland with his band and wanted to buy something to take home to his mum. They got talking about the Josh Ritter CD Lydia was playing on her stereo, and he’d left the shop with a turquoise suede clutch bag and Lydia’s phone number. Six months later there was a wedding invitation in my mailbox. Ever since they’d met, I’d noticed a change in her – it was like she’d learned to trust again. Most people in the village thought the entire thing was very sudden and a little bit crazy, but I thought it was wonderfully romantic. Like Seth had said – when you find someone as awesome as Lydia, you don’t wait around. They were getting married in New York, as Seth was from Brooklyn. I was so happy for her. Happy she’d found someone she loved so much. And also happy that she was moving to New York, a place she’d always wanted to go. I wanted to go there too, and hopefully I would some day. But not this summer.
I was disappointed that I was going to miss Lydia’s big day, but there was one advantage to staying at home – I’d get to spend lots of time with Nick. He’d been practising a lot with his band lately so I hadn’t seen him that much. Sometimes I went to watch them practise, like the other guys’ girlfriends, but I never felt comfortable sitting on the spare amps in Chris’s garage, smiling and nodding along to the music. I found it very hard to stay in a room full of guitars without playing one. The whole thing seemed a bit pointless anyway; I didn’t get how the other girls could do it. I usually ended up bailing after fifteen minutes and going over to Emily’s. When the summer came, I’d be able to see way more of Nick, out of the practice room.
‘Sing your song for me!’ said Colin as I hummed quietly. He sat up and smiled at me expectantly.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘It’s not finished though.’ I’d been excited about the song at first, but now I wasn’t so sure if I was happy with it.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Colin. ‘Sing it anyway.’
I took a breath and sang softly.
You said I was your angel,
A treasure in the dark.
I thought I was your everything
And that I’d made my mark.
You took my heart and crushed it,
This torture can’t be true.
Still, when I think of happiness -
I only think of you.
A tiny part of what we had
In everything I see.
It hurts to see you with her,
With anyone but me.
I thought I was your angel,
A treasure in the dark.
I’d kill to be your everything
Can’t stand to be apart.
I’m sure that it was love,
I couldn’t stop the fall.
Pretty lies and empty words,
Now I’m nothing at all.
‘Cheery,’ said Colin.
I gave him a fake glare.
‘It’s fabulous, Jacki!’ he laughed. ‘Just like everything you sing.’ A mischievous look crossed his face. ‘Can I sing you something?’ he asked.
‘Go ahead,’ I said curiously.
Colin launched into ‘New York, New York’, jumping up on the bed and using my hair straightener as a microphone.
This time I actually glared at him.
‘It’s NEW YORK,’ said Colin. ‘You HAVE to go.’
‘The wedding’s in five weeks,’ I said. ‘It’s not gonna happen.’
I was thrilled for Lydia, but I kind of wished Colin would talk about something else for five seconds.
‘There has to be a way,’ he said. ‘We’ll find a way. I know it, I’d bet my life on it.’
There was no way I was going to New York. I’d love to go, of course, but I couldn’t afford it. I didn’t want to ask Mum for a loan because the baby was arriving in five months and she was always talking about how much babies cost. We’d already spent so much on the renovation of the cottage. It was worth it though; it looked beautiful and my room was just perfect – I loved the purple walls, the polished wooden floor and the multicoloured chandelier. Whatever money we had left over had been used to turn one of the spare rooms into a nursery, which was all set for the baby’s arrival in October. It wouldn’t be fair to ask Mum to pay for my flight to New York too. But ever since Lydia had sent out the invitations Colin had been trying to come up with a way to get me a ticket. Most of his ideas were either very improbable or very illegal.
‘I think you’re just going to have to accept it,’ I said. ‘I’m not going.’
‘Well, that’s not very optimistic now, is it?’
I knew Colin meant well, but his determination was also just a constant reminder that I wasn’t going to be at the wedding.
I heard his phone beep. I looked up two seconds later to find it shoved right up to my face. ‘Oh my god,’ he said. ‘Oh. My. God.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘He texted me. He TEXTED ME!’ Colin started hyperventilating and I read the screen.
Hey, Colin, it’s James. What’s up? Was just wondering if you wanted to hang out this Friday night?
I smiled.
James worked in an art gallery in Sligo. He was seventeen, very cute and Colin had been crazy about him for the past six months.
‘This is brilliant!’ I said. ‘What are you going to say?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sat down beside me on the floor.
‘This is so exciting!’ I said, bouncing up and down on the spot.
‘I know.’ Colin was smiling, but I could sense that he was a bit nervous.
‘Reply!’ I said, prodding him on the shoulder.
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to seem too keen. I figure I should wait at least half an hour.’
‘Then it might seem like you’re over-thinking your reply though,’ I said, resting my guitar against the bookshelves.
‘Oh my god, you’re right,’ said Colin, his eyes widening. ‘What should I say?’
‘I dunno, er… yes?’
He suddenly looked concerned. ‘What if he means hang out just as friends? What if he doesn’t actually like me? What if I’ve made the whole thing up?’
‘Colin, I had to look at art I didn’t understand for an entire hour last Saturday because he wouldn’t stop talking to you.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said, taking a deep breath.
James seemed lovely. I had high hopes for him and Colin. It would be great if they went out – Colin deserved a nice boyfriend, and lately he was always complaining about the fact that he’d never had one. James has curly blond hair and is a little bit taller than Colin. I thought they would make the cutest couple.
‘What should I say?’ asked Colin. ‘What says I like you, but not a scary amount?’
I considered this carefully. ‘Hey, James, I’m great, how are you? Yeah, sure, that sounds fun… smiley face.’
‘You’re a genius, Jacki King,’ he said, his thumbs quickly tapping across the phone’s screen.
‘I try,’ I said with a laugh. ‘This is so exciting!’
‘I can’t believe I met someone as awesome as James,’ he sighed. ‘Isn’t it funny how you can just end up in the right place at the right time?’
‘Colin, you stalked him for six months. You made me visit that Matisse exhibition four times just so you could look at him!’
‘Whatever. It worked, didn’t it?’ he said and then turned his attention to the phone.
I watched as he reread his text a couple of times before sending it. I considered telling him about Kayla Edwards and the case I was now working on, but I didn’t want to wreck his fun. He’d only start to worry. I’d tell him tomorrow – I’d have to. He was my self-appointed sidekick, after all, and he’d been such a support to me last year, when even I didn’t believe what was happening to me. I’d also have to tell Mum. They both knew that I’d met Detective Sergeant Lawlor when he’d first asked me to help the police, but they didn’t know that I’d heard from him again – or that I had met him that morning in Dublin as well.
‘I better go,’ said Colin, after he’d pressed Send.
‘OK,’ I said, jumping up to hug him. ‘Text me if he texts you.’
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Sweet dreams.’
I grimaced. I knew I wouldn’t be dreaming anything sweet for quite a while.
The next morning I found myself standing outside Miss Jennings’s office. I had no idea why I was there. I assumed I must be in some kind of trouble – that’s usually why people were summoned over the intercom to the principal’s office. I frantically got rid of any ‘customizations’ I’d made to my uniform. I rolled down the sleeves of my blazer, then took the Thin Lizzy badges off my lapels and stuffed them into my pocket. My skirt was at least five centimetres shorter than the required length, but there wasn’t much I could do about that now. I pulled up my knee socks, trying to minimize the amount of flesh that was showing. Miss Jennings was equal parts pleasant and terrifying. I suppose you had to be if you were in charge of 500 teenage girls. I tried to figure out what I could have done lately that would land me here. I couldn’t really think of anything though. It was especially difficult to get into trouble in transition year – it was pretty laid back and we didn’t have exams. Maybe it was because I’d been a few minutes late to music class this morning. Or because I wore too much eyeliner. Or because I’d signed Emily’s petition protesting about the ratio of male to female authors stocked in the school library. Whatever it was, I hoped my punishment wouldn’t be too severe. I was supposed to be meeting Nick after school, so I really hoped I’d be able to talk my way out of detention.
I listened closely, trying to catch what was happening on the other side of the door with whichever unfortunate person was in there before me. I couldn’t really hear properly, only catching snippets of the conversation – ‘self-destructive behaviour’, ‘I promise it won’t happen again’, and so on. I distracted myself from the agony of waiting by looking at the photographs on the wall, some of which I featured in. There was a picture of me on the hockey team and in the cast of Grease. The musical had been so much fun – the whole of transition year had been really. I couldn’t believe it was nearly over; we had less than a month left.
The office door swung open and a second-year girl, whom I vaguely recognized, walked past, looking kind of traumatized. She gave me a sympathetic smile; a show of solidarity to a fellow comrade destined for similar torture.
‘Come in, Jacki.’ Miss Jennings knew the name of every single pupil in the school, which was incredibly cool, but also a bit weird.
‘Take a seat,’ she said. She was wearing a black trouser suit and her auburn hair was tied back in a tight ponytail. She looked surprisingly cheerful for someone about to give detention. I settled down on the chair opposite her. Her desk was arranged in neat piles – paper, pencils, Post-its and two silver frames facing her.
‘First of all, I would like to say congratulations.’
‘Er… thanks?’ I said, with absolutely no idea why I was being congratulated. As far as I was aware, I hadn’t entered any competitions. I’d come second in an open-mic contest in Sligo a few weeks ago, but I was pretty sure Miss Jennings hadn’t heard about that. She tilted her computer screen towards her and started to read.
‘We are pleased to inform you that your student Jacki King has been chosen to intern at our magazine. Her application for work experience was successful and she is invited to begin a two-week internship in our Dublin offices, starting on May the fourteenth. We do apologize for the late announcement of our chosen interns. This was due to an administrative error. If Miss King is still interested in the placement, she should contact us as soon as possible.
‘Yours sincerely, Tim Kavanagh, Deputy Editor, Electric magazine.
‘Isn’t that wonderful news?’ said Miss Jennings. My brain was working really fast, trying to figure out what was happening before my body gave a signal that showed I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Then it struck me – Sergeant Lawlor had arranged this. Wow, Matt worked fast – I was impressed. But had I really heard that right? Electric magazine?
‘Are you not excited?’ said Miss Jennings.
‘Yeah… no, I’m… I’m really excited. Sorry, I’m just so shocked.’
‘That’s the music magazine, right?’
‘Yes. The music magazine!’ The one I read from cover to cover in Nick’s mum’s shop. The magazine whose first cover was a black and white portrait of Phil Lynott, the lead singer of my favourite band – Thin Lizzy. The magazine that so many people I knew would kill to be mentioned in. I’d heard they got sent twenty demos a day – mine was buried somewhere in their stack. I couldn’t believe I was actually going to be spending two weeks in their office. Miss Jennings’s phone started to ring.
‘Well done again, Jacki,’ she said. ‘Best of luck with it.’
As I left the office, I felt excited, but also a bit anxious. I couldn’t wait to see inside Electric magazine, and two weeks in Dublin would be great. But it also meant two weeks apart from Nick. I already saw him much less than I wanted to with all his band practice and our gigs at weekends getting in the way. I took my badges out of my pockets and fixed them back on to my blazer. I headed down the corridor to maths class, trying not to think about what Nick might say when I told him after school.
We lay on Nick’s bed, propped up by pillows, our legs outstretched. Nick wasn’t saying much at all, offering one-word answers when I tried to make conversation.
‘How was practice yesterday?’ I asked.
‘Fine.’
I scooched down and put my head on his chest. Nothing. He usually twirled my hair or put his arm round me or tilted his head down and smiled, but not this time. I’d rushed to his house after school and had been really looking foward to seeing him, but now I was begining to wish I hadn’t bothered. I wasn’t even watching the TV, I was just lying there, getting angrier and angrier by the second. I stared at the Nirvana flag on his ceiling, thinking about how annoying this was. I’m a fairly tolerant person and not very many things irritate me. However, there are four things that make me particularly angry:
Mum barging into my room without knocking. She hasn’t ever caught me doing anything, but it’s the principle of it.
Discrimination. Of any kind. It really bugs me.
Bad Thin Lizzy covers. I once heard a terrible cover of ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ at a music festival and felt sick for days. Just because it’s a good song doesn’t mean you have to cover it. Listen to it, appreciate it, don’t rip it to shreds.
Nick’s sulky moods. I’m especially annoyed when he gets into one just before I have to do something important.
We’d been having a silent fight for the past hour – after I’d told him I was going to Dublin for two weeks. It’s not as if I’d told him the full story though. I knew it was crazy. We’d been going out for almost eight months, yet something had stopped me from sharing everything that had happened to me over the last year – communicating with the spirit of Beth Cullen and now Kayla Edwards, and how I was going to help with a Garda operation. I knew everything about him: how he’d cried for three straight days after his gran died, how he was going to be a sound engineer even though his dad said he had to go to university, and how he’d graffitied the wall beside Clancy’s pub, but then swore to Joe that it wasn’t him. And yet, he didn’t know one of the most important things about me…
I sighed. I totally trusted Nick to keep a secret. And I loved him, I really did, but he wasn’t as open-minded as Colin. He was pretty sceptical actually. I used to be too, so I got that. But if I told him the truth now he’d think I was crazy. Certifiably insane. And I didn’t want him to think that – there was no need for him to know just yet anyway. The Gardai had told me not to tell anyone and I’d already told two people. Two was enough, a nice even number that was relatively easy to control.
‘You promised,’ he said suddenly. ‘You said you’d come to my gig next week.’
I sat up on the bed, rested my back against the wooden headboard and sighed.
‘I really need to take this work experience,’ I said. ‘You know they review one unsigned act every month; if I work there, then there’s a good chance they’ll listen to my CD.’ I regretted saying it as soon as I had. It sounded like I valued the slight possibility of getting a review more than going to his guaranteed headline show. Which wasn’t true. But I couldn’t tell him the truth – I would lose him. I would lose him over something I couldn’t explain.
‘But you promised you’d come on Thursday; it’s our first headline gig and you know what a big deal it is to me.’
‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘But I can’t miss this opportunity, Nick. It’s Electric magazine.’
‘You didn’t even tell me you’d applied.’ He looked hurt, which made me feel even worse.
‘I didn’t think I’d get it,’ I said.
The lies were stacking up now. It had become so easy.
‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said. He kissed me on the cheek. I tried not to smile, but I wasn’t capable, my anger was steadily dwindling. I could feel a shift in the air, that moment when you know somebody isn’t mad at you any more. I was relieved. I hated fighting with him.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ I said, lying back down beside him.
‘Then don’t go,’ he said, kissing me on the neck, right on my heart-shaped freckle. He always did it, and it always made me feel safe.
‘I have to,’ I said.
‘Well, in that case, I better give you this today.’ He turned round and opened his bedside locker and, to my surprise, took out a red box with a little bow on it. I wasn’t expecting any presents. He didn’t say anything, just handed it to me. I opened it up to find a red bracelet – a pretty design of woven stainless steel. I took it out of the box and noticed that it felt familiar.
‘Is this made from -’
‘Guitar strings,’ he said, taking the words out of my mouth.
‘That’s so cool!’ I said, examining it more closely. ‘It’s lovely, Nick, but what’s the occasion?’
‘It’s for our eight-month anniversary. Seeing as you won’t be here on the actual day, I thought you should have it now.’
I felt a pang of guilt. I’d forgotten about our anniversary. Nick always remembered – it was so sweet – and the bracelet was gorgeous. It made me so happy when he did things like that.
‘Thanks, Nick,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely.’
‘Sorry for getting upset,’ he said. ‘I just had a whole evening planned, and it’s a weekday so I figured you’d be in Avarna.’
‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ I reassured him. I slipped the bracelet on to my wrist and snuggled into him.
‘You should come over on Sunday,’ he said. ‘Before you go?’
‘I can’t,’ I replied, without looking at him. ‘I think my mum wants to leave really early.’ Another lie to add to my collection. But maybe lies weren’t so bad if they were what people would prefer to hear.