The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(26)

At night other things happen. Some afternoons people come in and find like a dozen condoms, used ones, or a scatter of syringes. Once someone found blood, a long splashed trail of it across the bare ground, and a knife. They didn’t tell. The next day the knife was gone.

Late October, a sudden blond smiling afternoon that popped its head up in the middle of a string of shivering wet days, and it set the Field stirring in people’s minds. A gang of Colm’s fourth-years got someone’s big brother to buy them a few two-litres of cider and a couple of packs of smokes; word spread, till now there are maybe twenty people sprawled in the tangle of chickweed or perched on the breeze blocks. Dandelion seeds drift, spiky ragwort is flowering yellow. The sun melts over them, fools the wind-chill away.

The makeup hall in the Court is pimping a new line, so all the girls have had their makeup done. Their faces are stiff and heavy – they’re afraid to smile, in case something cracks or slips – but the new way they feel is worth it. Even before they got a first swig of cider or breath of smoke, they were sashaying bold, their new careful head-high walk turning them haughty and inscrutable, powerful. Next to them the boys look bare and young. To make up for it, they’ve gone louder and they’re calling each other gay more often. A few of them are throwing rocks at a loll-tongued grinning face that someone spray-painted on the back wall of the Court, roaring and punching the air when anyone gets a hit; a couple more are shoving each other off the rusty machine. The girls, to make sure everyone knows they’re not watching, get out their phones and take photos of each other’s new looks. The Daleks pout and thrust on a pile of breeze blocks; Julia and Holly and Selena and Becca are down among the weeds.

Chris Harper is behind them, blue T-shirt against the blue sky as he balances arms-out on top of another pile of breeze blocks, crinkling his eyes down at Aileen Russell as he laughs about something she’s said. He’s maybe eight feet away from Holly and Selena wrapping their arms around each other and puckering up their new lipstick ready for a dramatic smooch, Becca rounding her heavy lashes and her Fierce Foxxx mouth at the camera in fake shock, Julia hamming up the photographer act – ‘Oh yeah, sexayyy, gimme more’ – but they barely know he’s there. They feel someone, the green fizz and force of him, the same way they feel hot patches of it pulsing all across the Field; but if you closed their eyes and asked them who it was, none of them would be able to name Chris. He has six months, three weeks and a day left to live.

James Gillen slides in next to Julia, holding a bottle of cider. ‘Oh, come on,’ he says to her. ‘Seriously?’

James Gillen is a babe, in a dark slicked way, with a curl to his mouth that puts you on the defensive: he always looks amused, and you can never tell whether it’s at you. Plenty of girls are into him – Caroline O’Dowd is so in love with him that she actually bought a can of Lynx Excite and she puts it on a piece of her hair every morning, so she can smell him whenever she wants to. You look over at her in Maths and she’s there sniffing her hair, with her mouth hanging open, looking like she has an IQ of about twenty.

‘Hi to you too,’ Julia says. ‘And: what?’

He flicks her phone. ‘You look good. You don’t need a photo to tell you that.’

‘No shit, Sherlock. I don’t need you, either.’

James ignores that. ‘I know what I’d like a few pics of,’ he says, and grins at Julia’s boobs.

He obviously expects her to blush and zip up her hoodie, or squeal and get outraged – either one would be a win for him. Becca is blushing for her, but Julia isn’t about to give him the satisfaction. ‘Believe me, buddy,’ she says. ‘You couldn’t handle these.’

‘They’re not that big.’

‘Neither are your hands. And you know what they say about guys with small hands.’

Holly and Selena are getting the giggles. ‘Jesus,’ says James, eyebrow lifting. ‘You’re pretty f*cking forward, aren’t you?’

‘Better than being backward, dude,’ Julia tells him. She clicks her phone shut and puts it back in her pocket, ready for whatever’s going to happen next.

‘You’re so disgusting,’ Joanne says from her breeze block, wrinkling her nose cutely. To James: ‘I actually can’t believe some of the stuff she actually says?’

But Joanne’s out of luck: James has his eye on Julia, not on her, for today anyway. He gives Joanne a grin that could mean anything and turns his shoulder to her. ‘So,’ he says to Julia. ‘You want some?’ and holds out the bottle of cider.

Julia feels a quick puff of triumph. She shoots Joanne a super-sweet smile, over James’s shoulder. ‘Sure,’ she says, and takes the bottle.

Julia doesn’t like James Gillen, but that’s not the point, not out here. In the Court, back in the Court any eye you catch could be Love peal-of-bells-firework-burst Love, all among the sweet spray of the music and the rainbowing prisms of the lights, this could be the one huge mystery every book and film and song is sizzling with; could be your one-and-only shoulder to lean your head on, fingers woven with yours and lips gentle on your hair and Our Song pouring out of every speaker. This could be the one heart that will open to your touch and offer up its never-spoken secrets, that has spaces perfectly shaped to hold all of yours.

Out here in the Field it’s not going to be Love, it’s not going to be the mystery everything talks about; it’s going to be the huge mystery everything talks around. The songs try so hard to pump it in your face, but they’re just throwing the right words into the air and hoping they sound dirty enough to fuzz your mind till you can’t ask questions any more. They can’t tell you what it’s going to be like, someday when; they can’t tell you what it is. It’s not in the songs; it’s out here, in the Field. In the apple and smoke of everyone’s breath, in the reek of ragwort and the milk of broken dandelion stems sticky on your fingers. In the emos’ music, rising up through the earth to pound at the bottom of your spine. Everyone says the reason Leanne Naylor didn’t come back for fifth year is because she got pregnant in the Field and she didn’t even know which guy it was.