“Don’t be a bleeding eejit! You can’t be asking a little kid to look in the boot of a car! Are you thick?”
I grab Lorraine’s hand, yanking her securely to my side. It seems like a better time than ever to evacuate. “Sorry. We have to go. Have a good day, good luck with your... pets.”
I don’t wait for a response. I just yank our half-empty cart free and wheel my sister away, my speed increasing exponentially as I round the corner toward the safety of the checkout lanes.
“But I wanted to see the kittens,” Lorraine whines once we’re safely in line, her bottom lip trembling. God, my sister has the survival skills of a labrador puppy. We definitely need to have the Stranger Danger talk sooner than later.
“Listen. It’s rule number one of being a kid, and even just being a girl,” I say quietly, depositing a weird, dense loaf of brown bread onto the conveyor belt. “If a stranger ever offersyou candy, or kittens, or puppies, and asks you to go anywhere with them, you need to grab the nearest adult and run like hell.”
“What if the nearest adult is a stranger?”
“Just pick someone who looks... normal,” I say. I’ve never thought about that, never having been kidnapped myself.
“But those guys looked normal!” she huffs, shaking her head and smoothing out Bunny’s skirt. “You can be so confusing sometimes, Molly.”
3
Dead Dad Points
Niall
August, 2007
EVEN IN THEbest of circumstances—meaning I’m well rested and have had a decent fry-up for breakfast—I’m not particularly fond of venturing into public with JJ Biggs.
He might have been my best mate since before we could walk. And he might live right next door. And I might even trust my life in his (perpetually sticky) hands. But I utterly detest shepherding him through the aisles of a Tesco.
It’s like trying to leash a feral dog that has just discovered cocaine and a sense of entitlement. It’s even worse when he makes an absolute hames of us both—like today when he nearly sparked an international incident by taking out some American pair by the Cereal Bars. And one of them was a child, which he sounded like he wanted to kidnap.
So yeah. Not a great time at the shops so far. And Ihaven’thad my breakfast, so my patience started out thin and is now non-existent.
“You’re worse than a toddler, you know that? I’d rather be babysitting Finn’s sisters than hanging out with you,” I scowlat him, white knuckling the handle of the trolley. His steering privileges have been revoked until further notice.
“Don’t be a miserable aul’ sod, Nialler,” JJ chirps, sounding pretty breezy for a guy who nearly flattened a couple of tourists.
“Did I or did I not tell you to get off the cart and stop trying to ride it like a feckin’ push scooter? Tell me that, Jonathan?”
“Come on, lad. At least I never make a day boring, you know that.”
I just shake my head, steering him towards the till. He’s right—he is anything but boring, but his excitement always comes at the expense of my nerves.
??` ?? ?´?
UNTIL THE DAYhe died, my father drove this car—a battered, dark green Ford Escort. A nearly decade old beast that’s a testament to both my father’s memory and my own mechanical aptitude.
When I turned fifteen and asked Ma if I could perform my mechanical exorcism on the vehicle collecting dust in the garage, she told me to knock myself out. And so I’d spent the whole summer before last covered in grease, every cent I got from working at the bakery going into new brakes and fixing a rattling exhaust pipe that sounded like a bag of spanners in a tumble dryer.
It’s sat idle for the last few months while I was recovering from my surgery, but she’d turned over last week with only a bit of a cough.
My reward from my mother for fixing the car was being allowed to drive it around illegally. She, of course, made sure I was fit to drive it around first. But once she decided I was alright behind the wheel, she let me have the freedom.
My birthday isn’t until September, and I still have a few weeks to go until I’m finally 17 and can take the theory test. But as long as I don’t drive like a loon, the Mayville Gardaí usuallylook the other way when they see my car. They’ve been eating my Mam’s lemon drizzle for a decade; they aren’t about to bust me for a quick run to the shops.
Just another trophy in the sympathy pile of Dead Dad points.
Bad things happen to people all the time, but Da had been the social butterfly to end all butterflies. A pillar of the community, if you will. I didn’t inherit those qualities from him—even though we look practically identical when my hair isn’t bleached—it’s my sister who got that butterfly-flapping gift. It seemed like everyone in Ireland knew Patrick Blue. When the funeral came around, you’d have thought we were carrying the Pope.
They, not we. I wasn’t one of the pallbearers, I was too young.