‘Yeah, but you know what I mean.’ KellyAnn reaches for a napkin and wipes her fingers one by one. ‘Like, I don’t understand how she could even be attracted to someone like that, who’s on drugs and hangs around with scumbags from the flats and cuts his own arm? I mean, hello? Probably not Mr Right?’
Janine doesn’t answer, grinds the waxy doughnut paper into a little tiny ball.
‘My mom says girls who like those kinds of boys have problems with their self-esteem,’ KellyAnn says. ‘But why would Lori have problems with her self-esteem? Every boy in South Dublin is completely in love with her.’
Now Janine mashes the paper through the slit cut for a straw in the lid of her empty beaker.
‘Like, she’s so beautiful,’ KellyAnn continues. ‘She could have any guy she wants.’
Janine doesn’t say anything to this either.
‘Anyway, I’m glad she’s found someone she can be happy with. Now all we have to do is find a nice boy for you!’
‘Don’t bother,’ Janine says.
‘Oh, Janine, don’t give up!’ KellyAnn reaches over to stroke her arm. ‘I know there’s someone out there for you!’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ Janine turns at the sound of the door opening, then quickly turns back again as four more shaggy-haired losers come in through it. ‘Men are such assholes,’ she says.
‘Titch isn’t an asshole,’ KellyAnn says emphatically. ‘He cares about me.’
‘They’re all the same,’ Janine comments sweetly. ‘Now, can we please get out of here? And maybe go somewhere something might actually happen?’
Now you’re deep in the forest, searching for the final Demon’s castle. The sun is going down, the tree trunks glow pale silver, wrapped root-upwards with spiderweb. You left your horse down in the valley, there was no way to take it along. Where will it go? Someone kind will take it in and afterwards you can come and collect it.
Afterwards.
When you came back from Lori’s, Ruprecht was still out on his mission. You put the frisbee in the wardrobe and got the tube of pills from under the mattress. Through the dorm window the sky is the same dead black as the empty schoolyard, as if they’ve tarmacked over it, and on the desk, like a yellow leaf, the note you found stuck to the door: BUS LEAVES FOR BALLINASLOE 8 A.M. SEE YOU THERE!
No one knows much about the Third Demon, even on the Internet it’s hard to find any information. You’ve crossed the Realm three times hunting for this Castle. You leave the woods for the wetlands now, in blazing moonlight heading north. You run until there’s no further you can go and you hit the border of the Realm, the invisible wall where though the grass and water continue into the distance your legs move without taking you anywhere. Okay, try going west instead.
According to one solution of M-theory our universe is a HYPERSPHERE, which is to say it’s shaped like a bubble. That means that if you were to run as far as you could go, i.e. for fifteen trillion light years, which is the size of the universe, you would eventually end up right back where you started. So how would you end up somewhere else? Ah, well, from inside the bubble, that is to say hyperspace, you could go wherever you wanted. Like back in time? Backwards, forwards, any point in space, not to mention the other universes, an infinity of them maybe. So how do you get into the bubble? Well, that’s where it gets tricky. Because we’re too big and heavy for the dimensions? You could put it like that.
Djed running and running, west and west, through the predawn gloom. Now you come to a fork in the path you don’t remember being there before. Both ways look identical, lined with trees and mist. You pick one at random and start walking. Before long you notice the mist getting thicker, soon it has spread to cover everything, leaving only ghosts of trees, ghosts of a path. Still, if you keep going the same direction you’re bound to get somewhere eventually. So you keep going.
Sleep pulls at your eyelids. The clock ticks, pushing you closer and closer to tomorrow.
BUS LEAVES FOR BALLINASLOE 8 A.M.
Flu epidemic, ebola, plague. Bus explosion, revolution, dinosaur skeletons in the museum coming to life and wreaking havoc. Alien invasion. Death.
SEE YOU THERE!
The mist goes on and on. As you walk things come up out of your thoughts, frazzles of memories swirling around you and binding together, gathering like ghosts out of the dark. The swim meet, the last one, in Thurles. Grown-ups squeezed into plastic bleachers: country parents in frilly blouses and jumpers with diamond patterns, Seabrook parents in sunglasses, jewellery, fake tan. The other teams had bogger accents and broad shoulders, in the changing rooms they called you ‘townie ponces’, you were huddled in a corner not talking, with your goggles you looked like scared insects. Then Coach pulled you in together. You can do it, guys! They’re already afraid of you! Because you’re better than them! Then the whistle blew.
On and on, deeper into the mist.
As soon as you hit the water you stopped being scared. Water is the same everywhere! Your body moved without even thinking, you realized all the times before in training were just shadows of this time and the realness made you fly. The cheers from the bleachers were crashes of sound like the breaths of a monster that hit you whenever you came up for air. Your arms burned, they ploughed and dug like you were travelling right through the Earth. You didn’t know what was happening around you, just kept hurling yourself forward till your fingers touched the wall. Then you saw Coach jump up with his fist in the air.
The metal trophy Made in Korea in the fat fingers of the judge. Coach’s blue shirt black from carrying you on his shoulders. The space in the crowd where Mum and Dad would have been, that’s where you kept looking. She can’t come to the phone right now, sport. Okay, Dad, maybe later. A black hole is a region where the rules break down, where we don’t know why what happens happens. Likewise, the word ‘cancer’ does not designate a specific disease, instead you should think of it as the name we give to a huge hole in our knowledge, a blank space on the map so to speak.
Who wants hamburgers?!! McDonald’s in Thurles tasted different to home. Then back to the hotel, it was green like mint ice cream that had been left in the rain for years and years. In the next bed Antony Taylor fell asleep straight away. The others were in Siddartha’s room watching Dunston Checks In. Is she awake now? She’s just gone to bed, sport. But she’s so proud of you, Danny, she wanted me to tell you.
You lay there in the dark. Antony’s snoring was like a cement mixer. You just wanted to talk to her! You just wanted them to tell you what was happening! And then your leg felt like it was twisting up inside, you couldn’t lie still. It was twisting you right up out of the bed! You got up, you hopped around. Then you opened the door, the wallpaper in the hotel was green too, it looked like you were underwater, the gold numbers on the doors counting down, you raised your hand to knock – and then –
How long have you been walking in this mist?!! It’s got so thick that everything else has been blotted out, all you can see is this endless pearly-grey sea. Crap, maybe when you came to that fork in the path you should’ve gone the other direction. Now there is no path. You turn round, head back the way you came but it does not seem to make any difference. East, south-east, south. Nothing but mist. You start to wonder if maybe the game has crashed, leaving you stuck in some corner at the edge of the map, and you’re just leaning forward to press the reset button on the console when you catch sight of something, a way off in the distance.