The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5)(96)

Selena is smiling. ‘Yeah, that’s like Becca. That’s sort of why she’s wearing jeans.’

‘Well, what the f*ck?’ Chris’s hands fly up, frustrated. ‘I’m not asking her to cut her arm off. I’m like, who cares if you actually want a dumb bracelet? You definitely don’t want to be that girl who no one will go near her and everyone’s texting around stories about how she eats her snot and pees herself in class. So just do this one tiny thing that everyone else is doing.’

‘Did she?’

‘No. I bought her the f*cking bracelet, and she binned it. And if she pulls something like that in Kilda’s? People like Joanne, if Carly swans in here like it doesn’t matter what any of them think, they’re going to . . . Jesus.’ He rakes a hand through his hair. ‘And I’ll be in college by then; I won’t even be around to do anything about it. I just want her to be happy. That’s all.’

Selena says, ‘Has she got friends?’

‘Yeah. She’s not super-popular or whatever, obviously, but she’s got these two girls who’ve been her best friends since they were all in Junior Infants. They’re coming to Kilda’s too. Thank God.’

‘Then she’ll be OK.’

‘You think? They’re two people. What about everyone else? What about all them?’ Chris jerks his chin at the hall doors, the muffled jumble of beats and screams. ‘Carly can’t just ignore them and hope they leave her alone. It’s not going to happen.’

He sounds like they’re one great bristle-backed creature, laser-eyed and dribbling for throats to rip out, never sated. Selena realises that Chris is afraid. For his sister, for Becca, but bigger than that. Just afraid.

There are things stronger than that creature. There are things that could rip it limb from limb if they felt like it, spike its head a hundred feet high on a cypress tree and use its sinews to string their bows. For a second Selena sees the white arc of a hunting call flash across the sky.

‘Not ignore them,’ she says. ‘Just . . . not let them matter.’

Chris shakes his head. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ he says. For a second the full curves of his lips harden; he looks older.

Selena says, ‘Becca’s happy in there, right? In her jeans.’

‘She can’t exactly be happy about those geebags bitching about her.’

‘She’s not. It just . . . like I said. It doesn’t matter.’

Chris stares. ‘If that was you. If they were bitching about your dress. That’d be fine with you?’

‘I bet they are,’ Selena says. ‘I don’t care.’

He’s turned towards her on the steps. His eyes are hazel, a cool hazel speckled with gold. Selena knows if she could just touch him she could draw out the fear like snake venom, roll it into a glistening black ball and throw it away.

He demands – like he’s really asking, like he needs to know – ‘How? How can you not care?’

People talk to Selena. They always have. She doesn’t talk to them, except Julia and Holly and Becca. She almost never even tries.

She says, slowly, ‘You have to have something else you care about more. Something so you know that some geebags bitching aren’t the most important thing; you’re not the most important thing, even. Something enormous.’

It’s just words, sounds, it doesn’t come near what she means. This isn’t something you can tell.

Chris says, ‘What? Like God?’

Selena considers that. ‘Probably that would work. Yeah.’

He’s open-mouthed. ‘Are you guys going to be, like, nuns?’

Selena laughs out loud. ‘No! Can you see Julia being a nun?’

‘Then what . . . ?’

The more she tries, the more she’s going to get it wrong. She says, ‘I just mean: maybe, depending, Carly could be fine just the way she is. Better than fine.’

Chris is looking at her, very close and very intent, and his eyes have warmed. He says, ‘You’re a once-off. You know that?’

Selena wants to say nothing at all. The thing finding its shape in the space between them is so new, so precious, the wrong touch could burst it like a bubble. ‘I’m not anything special,’ she says. ‘It just worked out this way.’

‘Yeah, you are. I never talk to people about stuff like this. But this, talking to you, this is . . . I’m glad we came out here. I’m really glad.’

Selena knows, like he’s reached out and dropped the knowledge into her lap, that he’s going to try to take her hand. The handprint on her arm burns, a painless gold fire. She wraps her fingers hard around the cold stone edge of the step.

The hall door flies open, and Miss Long points at them. ‘Your time’s up. Back inside. Don’t make me come out there and get you.’ And she slams the door.

Chris says, ‘I want to do this again.’

Selena is still working to breathe. She can’t tell if she’s grateful or something else to whatever sent Miss Long. She says, ‘Me too.’

‘When?’

‘Next week, after school? We can meet outside the Court and go for a walk.’

Chris shifts on the step, like the stone hurts him. He presses his thumbnail into the wood of the banister. ‘Everyone’d see us.’