Howard turns lugubriously back to Farley and Tom, who are immersed in a discussion about the junior swimming team’s prospects in the meet in Ballinasloe tomorrow. Tom is getting drunker by the minute, gesturing so expansively that at one point he knocks the glass clean out of Peter Fletcher’s hand behind him, although somehow it doesn’t break and Tom continues his monologue without even noticing, as Fletcher decamps stoically to the bar. Howard decides to follow suit, not wanting to be left with Tom if Farley should get called away.
He forges through the glistening Friday faces, the circular, alcohol-infused conversations. It’s not just Tom; since Halley left, all these exchanges, the countless minor social transactions that make up the fabric of the day, have come to seem impossibly difficult. He keeps saying the wrong thing, taking people up wrong; it’s as if the world has been fractionally recalibrated, leaving him chronically misaligned. In this kind of form, maybe his empty house would be better after all. He buys drinks for Farley and Tom and extricates himself from the proceedings with the excuse that he is driving, although at two drinks he’s already well over the limit.
Outside the crowded pub the night is clear, and walking back through the school he feels more himself again. The dark frost-spangled pitches, overhung by the laurel trees, glister all around him, and the silhouette of the Tower looms up over the null expanse of the yard as though rearing out of the past. He opens the car door and spends a moment in the austere radiance of the moonlit campus, before turning the key in the ignition.
And then all of a sudden there’s a kid in front of his car. He appears out of nowhere to flare up phosphorescent in the headlights – Howard swerves frantically, misses him by an inch, jolts up the kerb and onto the manicured lawn surrounding the priests’ residence, where he sits tilted in the cold interior, blood hissing in his ears, unsure what just happened. Then, switching off the engine, he climbs out of the car. To his disbelief – to his fury – the boy is continuing blithely down the avenue.
‘Hey!’
The figure turns.
‘Yes, you! Get back here!’
Reluctantly the boy makes his way back. As he draws nearer, a white slip of face discloses itself. ‘Juster?’ Howard says incredulously. ‘Jesus Christ, Juster, what the hell were you doing? I nearly drove right into you.’
The boy looks at him uncertainly, then at the car mounted on the grass, like he’s being asked to solve a puzzle.
‘I missed knocking you down by this much,’ Howard shouts, demonstrating with finger and thumb. ‘Are you trying to get killed?’
‘Sorry,’ the boy says mechanically.
Howard clenches his teeth, trapping an expletive. ‘If I’d hit you, you really would have been sorry. Where the hell are you coming from, anyway? Why aren’t you in Study Hall?’
‘It’s Friday,’ the boy says, in that maddening monotone.
‘Have you got permission to be out?’ Howard says, and then sees that in his hand the boy is holding, surreally, a white frisbee. ‘And what are you doing with that?’
The boy looks blank, then follows Howard’s finger to the plastic disc in his own hand, apparently surprised to find it there. ‘Oh – uh, I was going to play frisbee.’
‘Who with?’
‘Um…’ the boy scours the asphalt, bringing a hand to his head. ‘Just me.’
‘Just you,’ Howard repeats sardonically. Greg was right, there is something seriously awry with this boy. Someone needs to tell him a few home truths. ‘Nothing strikes you as odd about playing frisbee in the dark, on your own?’
The boy does not reply.
‘Don’t you understand –’ Howard feeling his temper beginning to fray ‘– that there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things? You exist in a society, in the society of this school, you’re not an island who can just, you know, do what he wants. Although I’ll tell you what, if you want to be an island, if you want to be some isolated weirdo out on the margins of things, you’re right on course. Just keep going as you’re going, mister, and before long people will be crossing the street to avoid you. Is that what you want?’
The boy still does not speak, merely huddles into himself, continuing to stare at the ground as if he can see his reflection in the tarmac; his breathing, however, has taken on the snuffling quality that presages tears. Howard rolls his eyes. Say a word to these kids and they just dissolve. It’s impossible, impossible. Suddenly he feels emptied out, as if all the exhaustion of the rollercoaster week has hit him in a single wave.
‘All right, Juster,’ he surrenders. ‘Get inside. Have a good weekend. And for God’s sake, if you’re going to play frisbee, find another human being to play with. Seriously, you’re giving people the willies.’ He returns to his car, opens the door. Juster, however, stays where he is, head bowed, passing the disc through his fingers like a vaudevillian’s hat. Howard feels a twinge of guilt. Was he too hard on him? Half in and half out of the car, he casts about in his mind for some neutral remark to take his leave with. ‘And good luck with your swim meet tomorrow! How are you set for it? Confident?’
The boy mumbles something Howard does not hear.
‘Attaboy,’ Howard says. ‘Well, see you Monday!’
Nodding agreement with himself, in the absence of any reaction from Juster, he climbs into his car.
At the gate he checks his mirror. It seems at first that the boy has gone; but then he sees the frisbee, a dim double of the moon, hovering a couple of feet from the ground, in the same spot Howard left him. He purses his lips. These kids, they want you to live their whole lives for them. Teach me! Entertain me! Solve my problems! Sooner or later you have to step back. There’s only so much a teacher can do. Good thing he got those brakes fixed, though. A dead student, that’s all he needs.
Ed’s Doughnut House is always half-empty on a Friday night, when anybody with a life and a fake ID heads somewhere that serves alcohol. But KellyAnn is going to die if she doesn’t get a Double-Chocolate Wonderwheel. So here they are.
‘It’s like I totally crave them all the time,’ she says, licking chocolate off her fingers. ‘I can’t explain it, it’s like this weird craving?’ After allowing a moment for suggestions that do not arrive, KellyAnn makes the connection for herself. ‘It must be because I’m pregnant,’ she says thoughtfully.
Janine rolls her eyes.
‘Oh my God, these are so… gorgeous,’ KellyAnn pronounces, through a mouthful of caramel gunk. ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’
‘I want to get out of here,’ Janine says. ‘This place is like Loser HQ.’
‘Okay,’ KellyAnn says. She has noticed that Janine is a little snippy this evening? But she’s not going to make a big thing out of it. ‘So where’s Lori tonight?’ she says, sucking her thumbs clean.
‘Beats me,’ Janine shrugs.
‘Is she seeing that boy Daniel?’
‘I have no idea,’ Janine declares theatrically.
KellyAnn unwraps another doughnut. ‘He sounds really sweet – are you sure you don’t want one?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘I’m always hungry these days. I’m going to be the size of a house!’ She chortles to herself, then remembers, ‘Yeah, Titch knows him. He doesn’t sound like Lori’s type exactly? Like he’s slightly a dweeb? But he sounds nice. And anyone’s going to be better than that psycho Carl. Like, oh my God. He’s totally going to wind up on like America’s Most Wanted.’
Janine’s eyes narrow and bore into her, and her voice is like a knife: ‘This is Ireland, KellyAnn. Not America.’