Perfectly Preventable Deaths

7 Bird Cherry/Hackberry

Last night, Catlin woke up with a fever. I heard her coughing, groaning through the walls. She is a terrible patient. Even a mild chill turns her into a Victorian heroine, wasting away in bed while her husband is off fighting in the war. Only with more demands for toast and sympathy. The walk up the driveway on my own was OK. I saw Bob eating what was either a dead cat or a stray binbag. I am becoming increasingly suspicious of the birds here.

I narrow my eyes at a scrawny robin watching from the wall, as Layla and I wait. Our breath misting through the air so white it’s almost solid.

‘Corpse of the day,’ she says, and gestures down. I see another robin, lying there. There is a deep wound in the centre of his fat red breast. His claws in the air are twisted like the little branch that’s left when you have eaten all the grapes. I trace the downy underside of his wings with my finger. It’s delicate as lace. A little frosty. A thing that small would not be hard to kill.

‘When we were younger, Mam used to tell us he got the red chest from bringing water down to souls in hell,’ I say.

‘That’s dark,’ Layla says. ‘Your mam sounds metal. No wonder Brian married her.’ I look at her, trying to gauge whether or not she’s joking. With her voice, sarcasm can be hard to detect. It always seems to be there. Lurking like a hidden predator.

‘Brian is the least metal person I know, Layla. He wears socks and sandals,’ I point out.

‘Appearances can be deceiving,’ she says, narrowing her eyes at the robin, like a cat about to pounce. ‘Our mam used tell us that they were spies for Santa.’

‘We got that too,’ I say. ‘Little feathered narcs.’

‘Maybe that’s why the other lad killed him,’ Layla says, her aristocratic face serious. ‘Because he was a grass.’

‘That tiny little brain knew far too much,’ I say. ‘Do you really think the other robin, like, murdered him?’

‘It’s what they do,’ she says. ‘They’re vicious things, birds.’ She sighs. I notice something pulsing underneath the robin’s feathers. I kick it with my toe. One lonely maggot dribbles out. A fat, white, hungry thing.

‘Nature is cruel,’ I say to Layla. ‘Cruel and disgusting.’

‘As a teenage girl, I endorse that statement,’ she says back, rubbing her stomach ruefully. ‘And bleurgh.’

We move away. Closer to the clear grey road. I watch our breath cloud misty. No matter how early or late we are for the bus, we always end up waiting. It is like it’s playing hard to get.

‘What’s wrong with Catlin?’ Layla asks me. I can tell from her tone she’s just being polite. It’s weird that little deaths are easier to speak about than families here. I shrug my shoulders.

‘Temperature and things.’ I’m really boring. I can feel how boring I am welling up in me, waterlogging my brain … I’m one question away from comparing things to badgers, I can feel it.

‘So, you’re a triplet?’ I ask. ‘Sorry if that’s a really boring thing to say. I hate when people say it to us.’

‘No, it’s OK.’ Layla smiles, her eyes are really brown, like almost black. ‘Actually, I’m a quad. It’s just that Fiachra ate our brother in the womb.’

‘Wait – what?’ I look at her. I can’t tell if she’s joking.

‘I’m joking,’ she says. Which helps a bit. And then there is a pause. ‘Well, kind of joking. Actually, there’s no knowing which of us ate Aodh. He would have been called Aodh. If he’d lived.’ She swallows.

‘Fair enough.’ We stand together quietly for a while, the cold wind biting through our hats and scarves. I see a bright red dot move across a mountain. A drip of blood. It could be Mamó’s car. It’s not my business. There are more important things than creepy old women trying to be friends with me or something. I shake my head.

‘It’s freezing,’ I say.

‘Yup. The wind is horrible.’

The bus arrives, like a beautiful metal angel.

Layla smiles at me and she says, ‘Bye,’ before she sits with Charley. Are we friends now? Is that what that was?

We weave around, gathering people from different places. I think of Catlin, cosy in her bed and I feel jealous. She was good last night. She’s always minded me. Even when we were little. She includes me, and whatever I’m worried about, in her nightly prayers. Which is a very granny thing to do. I don’t believe in Mary, God and Jesus, but it’s nice to be a priority. It’s nice that I am loved like that. Religiously. And it seems to work a bit as well. Like, when Catlin asks for things, they tend to happen. She cares an awful lot about her friends; they take up space inside her heart. I want friends too, but moving here has taken something out of me. I need to calm myself. I need to gather. I wonder if I can leave it for a week this time. I normally last about three days before I give in. I work at that. The trying not to do it.

We’re halfway up the mountain when the bus stops. Past the old quarry. Centuries ago, there was gold and silver in these mountains, Brian told us. Over time, humans came along to leach it out. Maybe that’s why the hills have such a pallor, though they’re massive. They stretch towards the sun, all sickly stark.

‘Hello.’ A girl, her smile brighter than it should be on Tuesday morning riding in a death-coach, sits down beside me. Her eyes are bright and her hair shines with drops of what looks like rain. It isn’t raining though. So cold and dry the earth looks like its thirsty.

I realise I’m staring. Say hello. Her smile broadens. It looks a little like a crescent moon. Familiar-strange.

‘I am Oona Noone.’ Her voice is warm. So warm.

I look at her.

‘You are new here? I am new as well. I come from France.’ She’s still smiling. Her voice is low and clear, with a smoothness to it. A voice that could convince you to do anything. I work the muscles in my face a bit. I show my teeth. It’ll have to do. How did she know I was new? Do I look new? And what does new look like? I look down at my shoes. They’re nicely scuffed.

Oona from France has wide, chocolatey eyes and soft-looking brown skin. She’s even smaller than we are, and we’re barely five foot tall. Oona looks up at me through her lashes when she speaks. She has thick, wavy hair. She’s curvy – but her neck is slender, snappable. Something about her makes me feel protective. I want to mind her, put secret jars of stuff under her bed. To tell her to turn back. This place is harsh. Full of little corpses. Empty nests.

Oona tells me about France, about the move and how she finds Ballyfrann. She likes the landscape. They have a freshwater pond behind their house; her father fishes in it and she swims. The water’s warm compared to the wind apparently. I raise an eyebrow at her, from inside two jumpers and a duffel coat. Warmer than the wind does not mean warm.

‘It is,’ she tells me, putting a hand on the crook of my arm. ‘You’ll have to try it sometime.’

‘That sounds cool,’ I say, and almost mean it. Oona is convincing. She’s so friendly. She doesn’t belong here in this school full of Ballyfrann sullenness and rejection. I don’t want her to bat her eyelashes at cold shoulders. Somehow, Oona’s presence makes me more confident about things. I have a small, perfectly formed, French girl to support now. I am going to be sociable. I am going to say, ‘Hi!’ to people and follow it up with other things as well.

I will not mention badgers. Even once.

‘Oona isn’t a French name,’ I say, presumably like many other idiots before me.

‘I am half-Irish,’ she says. ‘My mother’s French; my father, he’s from here.’ She pronounces father ‘fazzer’, like a cartoon French lady. It shouldn’t be as adorable as it is. I wonder if she has a spare pen.

‘We came here to have more space. To be free. In France it can be … difficult.’ I don’t know what she means. Is she an olden-days Huguenot? Or, like, a naturist? She could just mean racism, I realise. I don’t know what it’s like to be brown in France. Or in Ireland either, for that matter.

‘Difficult how?’ I ask. Her hand is still on my arm. It’s soft and warm. A lovely kind of heavy. I look at it. On me. I swallow down.

She stares at me for a moment, and then says something about people not understanding Irish culture, and her mother being an artist and needing to be somewhere wild, with landscape. Something about the way she phrases things niggles. It feels less real than what she said before. In her almost perfect second language. It’s not the words themselves, but something underneath them. A sort of effort.

Chocolate eyes on mine. There are little flecks of blue inside them.

She says ‘artiste’, not artist, for her mother.

She smiles at me.

I want to be her friend.

‘We just moved here as well,’ I tell her. ‘Mam married Brian, who’s from here, like your dad.’

‘I have heard of Brian,’ she says. Of course she has. Because he is apparently Ballyfrann-famous and possibly metal. ‘You live in the …’

‘Castle,’ I finish her sentence awkwardly. There is no way to tell someone you live in a castle without seeming like an entitled brat. I wish that I could run away and hide somewhere with my salt boxes and pride remnants. But there’s nowhere to run to. Even my enormous castle is a bus ride away. I wish I also had a private jet. Or a Higgins to call in case of emergency.

It’s almost a relief when classes start. But also not. Because there are so few of us, so there’s pressure to interact more. Answer questions. If people talk or pass notes, everyone notices. The Ballyfrann kids are friendlier to Oona than they were to me and Catlin, and I can see why. She’s basically a human ray of sunshine. At lunch, they include her almost right away. What is the secret? Maybe being lovely, and not trying. They’re nicer to me than they were last week as well. Fiachra even compliments me on a well-made sandwich, bless his greedy heart. I give him half. He eats it in two bites. I think about the fourth quad, and shudder.

I wish Catlin were here. I wish I had an oak leaf or some rowan berries in my pocket. I need to stop all that. It isn’t real. I can’t let what I am when I’m all by myself bleed into school. It’s hard enough. I need to do my best. I need to try.

Maybe if Oona likes me, and my sandwiches are on point, I could weasel my way in here. I listen to them talk about people in the village, on TV. About the youth club. They’re all in this youth club and they’re super into it in a very real way. They almost ordered hoodies, but Lon, who apparently facilitates the youth club, said no. Lon detests hoodies, and I am becoming increasingly convinced he is the worst. He is head of a one-man campaign to change the youth club’s name from ‘The Youth Club’ to ‘The Hellfire Club’.

‘Makes sense,’ I tell them, ‘seeing as he isn’t really a youth. What age is he anyway?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Fiachra says. ‘Old enough to boss people around. Maybe, like, twenty?’

‘Twenty seems fair,’ says Layla, popping a toffee into her mouth. ‘Like, any older and it would be seriously creepy for him to be in youth club.’

‘Because ye are, like, youths.’

Fiachra snorts, and Charley nods, as though I have said something incredibly wise. I smile at them.

Waiting for the bus, Lon approaches, gangly legs and neck. He’s really tall. Even for normal-sized people. He smiles at me. ‘How ya, Maddy?’

‘Hi, Lon.’

‘Tell your sister I’m sorry she’s not feeling the best. Could you give her this for me?’ He hands me an envelope. He looks at me like I am knock-off her. Inexpensive. Just a little … less. He pauses, leaning on the bus stop with one leg making a triangle on the pole, like a rockabilly flamingo. His arms akimbo. Lon likes to take up space. I blink at him. He’s saying things to Charley now, about the club. His hair is something else. I bet that takes him time. Time and product.

‘… the old Hellfire Clubs of the eighteenth century …’

His cheekbones are threatening to burst out from his skin. Lon is exactly the kind of boy who would secretly contour his own face for maximum rock-god impact. And lie about it. He’s spindling himself towards the gang of schoolkids, gesticulating like he’s holding court. He told Oona he liked her name, and grinned like he deserved a gold star for being kind. His grin’s the same way that it is with Catlin. If she weren’t beautiful, he wouldn’t care.

‘… in homage to their reckless, rebel souls …’

His voice is a low, quiet purr of a thing. Making fun of me, all latent sleaze. He releases a wisp of cigarette smoke, and I can’t help but inhale it and stifle a cough.

‘Lon loves history,’ Eddie tells me. His voice is unobjectionable. The sort of voice you could take anywhere. When it’s not wobbling, it’s actually quite manly. He would make a good Galway boyfriend for Catlin, I think. Solid. Dependable.

Oona sees through Lon a little bit as well, I suspect. She looks at him as though he were an interesting sculpture. Of a prick.

‘I too like history,’ she says, smiling. He smiles back at her. Not getting that she hates him. That we both hate him. I smile at Oona, then I smile at Lon. Everyone’s smiling, but only some of us know why.

‘I like history as well.’ This is not my finest conversational offering, but I run with it. ‘Especially the famine times. They’re fascinating. I kind of like reading about the struggles of the normal, underprivileged people. Like we would have been back in the day. Not aristocrats,’ I finish.

Oona smiles at me and I smile back. Look at me, saying things and getting smiled at like a proper human being.

‘Don’t you live in a castle though?’ asks Cathal.

He has me there, the sibling-eating bastard.

‘We only just moved in,’ I offer lamely.

‘Madeline and Catalina are the stepchildren of a local man called Brian,’ Lon explains, in case anyone would think I was a person in my own right.

‘Her name is Catlin, Lon. But, yeah. We are.’ I’m trying to make an effort, but I can feel the surly building under my skin, honing my usual sense of danger into something more immediate. My fingers twitch. I want to run away. Or slap him. Maybe both.

‘Brian’s great,’ Lon tells me. ‘Very involved in the local community.’ He says it like he’s complimenting me. On my breasts. At a bus stop. Outside a prison.

‘Brian is great,’ says Charley. ‘He offered to pay for our hoodies and everything.’

‘Would you ever shut up about them hoodies?’ snaps Lon.

‘Don’t tell my sister what to do,’ says Eddie, his voice an octave lower, thrumming. Very definite. I remember what Brian said at the wedding about the Collinses. And clearly so does Lon, who shuts right up.

‘He gave us the money anyway,’ says Fiachra. ‘We spent it all on beer and trampolines.’

‘Nice,’ I tell him, and he nods at me. It does sound nice. I wonder how many of them ended up in A & E that summer.

‘Brian is cool,’ says Layla quietly. ‘He lets people be who they are.’

I have never had a conversation this long about the merits of any adult with more than one person at a time. If I didn’t know Brian, I would be decidedly creeped out by him now.

‘He does,’ I say. ‘Mam loves him, like. They’re happy.’

Oona sits with me on the bus home. We chat a bit (not about Brian, thank God) but mostly kind of lull together. Looking out the windows. When I’m with a stranger, I normally feel like I should be saying things. Like if I don’t, they’ll find out what I’m like and then dismiss me. But this feels grand. Easier. Like I have made a friend. And one is enough for the time being.

I think of Oona’s expression when our eyes met. There was something there. A little pool of warmth. Something rare.

I walk with Layla up the driveway, smiling. I look for the robin, but something must have taken it away. There is no trace. Another day. Another body lost.

The mountains loom.