The Night Belongs to Us

Chapter 1-2

“Well, that’s easy. Gone with the Wind.”

“Gone with the—is that the brick I’ve seen you reading?”

I read Gone with the Wind for the first time that Christmas and read it an infinite number of times since. Sometimes I snuck it into class with me and stole a few pages when the Sisters turned their backs. A commendable task of course, given the size of it. I blushed at the thought that she had seen me hiding the book in class to read when Sister Anna was on a tangent. “Maybe.”

“Why would you bother reading something that long? It’d take me a year!”

“I finished it in twenty-four hours the first time I read it.”

“Jesus! See, I knew you were a snob. You big nerd.”

“Why won’t you tell me yours?”

“I don’t want to,” she replied, but there was mischief in her eyes. Something about her goaded me into feeling bold.

“Afraid I’ll tease you?”

“Yes. Or, worse, you’ll tell someone.”

“You don’t trust me? It’s not like I’ve got anyone to tell,” I retorted with a shrug.

“What do you mean?”

“I—well, I don’t have many friends. I mean, I don’t have a big friend group, or whatever. Most of my friends from Primary School went to other schools and stuff…But I hang out with Niamh Maguire and Lauren Dempsey, a lot. In school.”

Niamh and Lauren weren’t what anyone would consider well known, but after a brief pause something in Connie’s mind clicked. “Jesus, even the mention of their names nearly puts me to sleep. No wonder you read the Telephone Book for fun. Do you have a boyfriend?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Why not? You’re pretty enough.”

My face flushed a deeper shade of red. I scanned her over once more for some sign of mockery. “I don’t—I’m not pretty.”

“I never said you were pretty, Ryan,” she teased, rolling her eyes. “I said you were pretty enough. There’s a difference.”

“Oh. Right. Well. No, anyway. I don’t. Like I said, not many friends.”

“Hmm. I still don’t want to tell you.”

“Why don’t you think of it as payment for all the chocolate I gave you this year?”

She pursed her cherry-red lips. “That’s not fair.”

“It definitely is. Do you have any idea how much that costs me?”

Connie made a show of pondering it for a moment. “Well, if you really must know…my favorite book of all time is Peter Pan, alright?”

“Alright,” I shrugged. I tapped my fingers along the desk. “I’ve never read it.”

“You’ve never read it?”

“Nope. Never even seen the movie.”

“You read a book the size of an encyclopedia for fun but you’ve never read Peter Pan?”

“Yeah. Why’s it your favorite, then?”

“My dad used to read it to me every night when I was younger. Over and over. Knew the whole thing almost off by heart.” She smiled to herself before shaking her head. “You must love this class. Reading all these stupid books.”

“I do. It’s my favorite. This and History.”

“Boring. I’ll never understand why History is such a big deal when they’re all dead anyway. Mine’s PE, obviously. Except when we’ve to do gymnastics.”

“Jesus, I hate PE.” I wrinkled my nose. “Sport’s never really been my thing. My grandparents pushed me into playing Gaelic when I was younger and I lasted maybe a week before the coach politely asked them to never bring me back.”

“Surely you weren’t that bad.”

“Oh, I was. I spent most of my time on the pitch talking to the girl I was meant to be marking about the founding and origins of the GAA. I’m almost certain she was the one who put in a complaint to the coach because shockingly enough, most seven—year olds aren’t too fussed about things that happened back in 1884.”

Her white teeth gleamed when she laughed. If she continued to laugh at me, I was sure I would wind up in the back of an Ambulance before the day was out. “Well. If I had been her, I wouldn’t have complained about you. I’m sure I would have been absolutely riveted.”

I made a show of glancing at the watch on my wrist and raised an eyebrow at her. In all my life I had never felt so ridiculously daring. It was easy to soar under the radar, indifferent to anyone else’s thoughts or opinions, but I wanted Connie to like me. “I mean—if you’ve got the time, I can tell you all about it now.”

She pretended to contemplate it, tapping her chin. “Perhaps at some point in the future you can tell me all the fascinating facts you know,” she answered with a thoughtful smile. After a moment she peered at me again, almost analytically. “You know, Ryan—for a massive nerd with a horrible sense of fashion you’re actually not half bad.”

I snorted. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“You’ve managed to hold a conversation this long, which is impressive. Most girls at this school can barely manage to string together a sentence of more than five words.”

“Well…I mean, I’m a bit awkward.” To accentuate my point I waved my hands around nonsensically.

“Yeah, no s**t. But you’re also kind of funny and like I said already you’re pretty enough. Granted, you need a haircut badly and I’m not sure even God himself could save those eyebrows, but…with a bit of work…we could actually hang out.” She nodded carefully, her eyes still boring into me. I had to fight back the urge not to squirm under the heat of her gaze. “Yeah. I think you could hang out with us. I could use someone with your…”

“Charm? Charisma?”

“I’m not quite sure what it is,” she admitted, “But you know, with some makeup, of course, and probably a new wardrobe if the jacket you wear to school is anything to go by…There’s a lot of potential here.”

I clicked my tongue. “Am I a potential friend or a dress-up doll?”

“Your cheek would be the first thing to go.”

I found myself fighting back a smirk. “And what makes you think I even want to be your friend in the first place? What if I want to say no?”

“Didn’t we just agree that you’re one of the smartest people in our year? Don’t make me take that back. I’ll be throwing a party to celebrate the end of the exams next weekend and if you’re not still completely braindead by then, you should have the common sense to show up.”

I was never one for making friends but it was a lot easier to do so than the books I read made it out to be. Niamh and Lauren, the only girls in the school I considered to be my consistent friends just sort of picked me up along the way without a friendship actually being declared. I entered class that afternoon ready to close my eyes and doze off to the soothing sounds of Robert Smith and left a potential friend of the most popular girl in the school. I wondered how many people would have thrown their own best friends to the gutter for a shot at a personal invitation to Connie O’Reilly’s party—to have Connie O’Reilly spontaneously show up at their house to hang out even after acting like a complete flop at said party, when I really ought to have been written off—to find themselves, over the span of a few short months, elevating to the esteemed position of Connie O’Reilly’s Best Friend.

Nobody else seemed to understand just why she insisted on dragging me around that summer to different parties and gatherings and hangouts, but she was Connie O’Reilly, and nobody with any sense of self-preservation was willing to actually call her out on it. I was awkward, as she ought to have expected, showing up in mismatched outfits and sticking to the margins of the group. I stammered when anyone that wasn’t her tried to talk to me, hiding in the corner. There was no disguising the way the others would watch me from the corner of their eyes, eyebrows creased, whispering to each other about why Connie had invited me of all people to hang out with them. I paid them no heed, of course, when I too pondered over how exactly I wound up in such situations. And normally such a flop would have had Connie surrendering and giving up, but something about me had caught her attention, and where everyone else saw clumsiness and a bundle of eccentricity, she saw potential. I just needed a little bit of work.

Early in July she had dragged me into town and had spared no expenses on the makeover she decided I badly needed if I was to gain the acceptance of our peers. We threw out all of my old clothes in one afternoon—my cardigans, my striped long-sleeved tops—to make room for a new wardrobe funded entirely by her unknowing father. And I showed up to her next party in black jeans that were cut out at the knees, a band T-shirt and leather jacket, dressing like I was on the cover of one of Claire’s old record albums. Everyone was starting to reimagine what it meant to be hip and original that summer and it was clear this was a major win on my part—on Connie’s part. It didn’t matter that I looked nothing like the rest of her friends. I stood out, and it wasn’t in a bad way. For once I caught people’s attention and that wasn’t judged to be a negative thing. I was unique. Cool. Different. I started to smoke cigarettes that Aidan’s older brother was happy to buy for me and stopped standing to the edges of the room. I said stupid, funny things to make girls laugh. I was charming and I was smooth, and it didn’t take long for most of Connie’s friends to want to be my friend, too. I didn’t care one iota what any of them thought of me, but an odd sense of satisfaction nestled in my chest, knowing I wasn’t going to go my whole life overlooked. I became the type of cool that a year earlier I would have hated; swaggering, nonchalant, and cripplingly insecure underneath it all.

We were fifteen years old, on the verge of turning sixteen that summer, and yet nothing I did or was at that age reconciles with most images of how an adolescent girl should act. Giddy, head full of whimsical dreams of pop stars and cheesy song lyrics. Connie embodied that stereotype in so many ways. Even back then I would marvel at the infallible differences between us. She was attuned to attention in a way that I ignored it, dressing even for the most informal of events in a manner that begged for the acceptance of her peers, designed to ensnare the admiration of boys. She waited to be told that her hair, conditioned the night before with tomato ketchup, had a glossy shine to it. That her skin, masked for hours with avocado, was clean and fresh. That she looked every bit the image she strove with unsullied determination to attain, the reminders of her beauty that gave her picture-perfect life its shimmering glimmer. She was vain and she made no efforts to conceal that fact. Of course, she would never openly call herself pretty, or offer up a transparent self-compliment, but her ego thrived on the insistences of others that she was as beautiful as everyone knew she was. She radiated desirability, insatiable appeal, and to say otherwise would be blasphemy, but she was more than just appearances to me. She was a hidden genius, witty and bright, but at it was dimmed by the ever-persistent need to be both similar and different to everyone else. I figured that was what drew her to me. I made no efforts to conform and she liked me all the same. I was proof of the fact that individuality, on the rarest occasions, could work.

We were a matching set; where she went, I followed. We finished each other’s sentences and learned to communicate without words, and for the very first time, I discovered what it felt like to enjoy the intimate type of teenage friendship all young girls craved. A friend whose company I sought out, who made me happy, whose time and attention I thrived on. If I could have, I wouldn’t ever have left her side that summer—and all of the summers that followed. Connie didn’t just make me feel cheery but protected, too. And wanted. She made me feel a little less lonely, when all I had ever known of friendship before was to bite my tongue and keep in line. When Molly told Connie she wouldn’t be coming to Adam’s party, Connie had a fit and didn’t talk to her for a week. When I told her the exact same thing, Connie rolled her eyes and warned me to come to the next one. When Kyle spilled a glass of water all over her gorgeous white dress at Jim’s birthday, she ripped him a new one in front of all of his friends and left him a spluttering apologetic mess. When I spilled not one but two glasses of Coke all down her front less than a week later, Connie huffed and dismissed my apologies away. Connie treated me differently from how she treated everyone else, but I came to ascertain that she couldn’t really help it. I came to learn that I would have to do something really f*****g stupid to warrant Connie’s wrath. Testing Connie’s patience, speaking out of turn, questioning her authority—they were things she let slide for me, and me alone.

When school started back in September, I realized very quickly that the easy routines and wallflower persona I carved out for myself in the past were turned on their head. I sat at her right-hand side at lunch and if we shared a class everybody knew we would be sitting together, desks pushed much closer than was allowed. We walked back to Connie’s house every day after school, even on the days she had hockey training—I sat in a secluded area I found outside the gym where I could wait for her with my headphones in—and every morning it was me she waited for at the school gates. Connie had a general aptitude for tardiness and since I was constantly at her side, I was constantly late to class, too. She managed to worm our way out of detention without fail every week, and her incredible penmanship meant that when she decided we would be taking an afternoon off we always had a note to excuse ourselves.

Mitching became a regular but reluctant activity for me, something I never would have dreamed of doing before—but what Connie wanted, Connie got. I was certain that the school was well aware of the fact that our notes were forgeries and our excuses pathetic, and yet she had each and every person she encountered in her pocket. If one of us called in sick, they knew the other would soon follow. If one of us was caught hiding in the bathrooms mid-class, they knew the other must be lurking behind one of the closed stall doors. People came to know who I was, students and faculty alike, and I wasn’t entirely sure I enjoyed the constant scrutiny even if popularity did have its perks. It was for Connie that I stayed in the limelight. Everything, every word and action and thought, was for Connie.