fICTION

Excerpt from 12^th of March

He is trying to regain his composure despite the oats that are flying out of his mouth with each laugh. After a few seconds he says,
	‘Mickey got double-jocked in Geography today.’
	‘What. No way.’ I say as I giggle through my disbelief. 
	‘Mickey came into school today with a pair of joggers on. He said his other pants were ripped or something and that his auld lady was buying him a new pair. So, there he was hanging out the window at the start of class, shouting down at someone on the front lawn, having a conversation or whatever. Mr. Neary wasn’t in the class yet. He was late. Anyways, Johnny Burke got the attention of a few of us and said watch this. So he went over to Mickey, and quick as a whip he had his pants down around his ankles. I’d say he only meant to get his pants down but the jocks came as well. So Mickey whipped around with his bollocks out, and just as he did, Neary came walking through the door. Well, Mickey went as red as anything. He started chasing Johnny around the place but he couldn’t get his pants fully up. So his arse was just hanging out with Neary watching the two of them run around the room.’
	The two of us are in stitches now, the oaty sediment of the bar flying out of my mouth too. The story has me incapacitated as I imagine Mickey’s arse and the horrified look on Mr. Neary’s face. The two images blend in my mind until I transpose Neary’s features onto the pearly white canvas of Mickey’s cheeks. After we’ve regained our composure I say,
	‘That’s class.’ And then after a second, ‘I’d say Johnny will be in some bother though.’
	‘Ah yeah, probably,’ Eoin murmurs. ‘Neary took the two of them outside the classroom straight away. When Johnny came back in again he was as white as a ghost. Big smug face on Mickey then.’  
	‘Jesus.’
	‘I’d say he could be suspended. He wouldn’t talk to anyone after the class and he’s been in foul humour ever since.’
	‘Poor bastard,’ I sigh. ‘That Neary is only a bollocks anyway.’
	‘Fact.’
	The supposed repercussions of Johnny’s prank have us slightly subdued for the moment. A few other third years mull aimlessly around the locker area, clad in their dull grey uniforms with navy pants and scuffed brown suit shoes (No runners allowed – it has been made very clear to us). The area is awash with abandoned schoolbags that threaten to engulf the floor space. It is a dreary part of the school, and no light illuminates the space we currently inhabit between two tall rows of pewter-grey lockers. A woodwork room and career guidance office lie at the end of the rows beside myself and Eoin. A pungent smell of piss drifts across the air from the toilets at the main entrance. It is 1.30pm. We have about half an hour left of lunch break.
	‘Will we head outside?’ I ask Eoin, eager as I am for some fresh air.
	‘Go on so’ he replies in assent.
	The common area at the front entrance of the school is almost vacant as we head out into the open. As we are leaving the building, I notice a group of first years tittering quietly in an alcove to our left. There is another boy in the corner of the alcove, an overweight lad with a red blotchy face and a mop of greasy brown hair. He sits and reads his book – some sort of fantasy novel by the looks of it. I cannot quite tell whether the other first years are laughing at him or not. But then I decide that it doesn’t matter. Something of the uncomfortable way he sits there and fixes his jumper, of the contorted plumpness of his face tells me that this young man knows isolation; knows what it means to suffer in the grey oppression of this place. It fills me with a kind of anger. I want to go over there and shake him out of his inertia. I also want to tell him that it will be ok – that even though only a few years separate us I have seen that things get better. In the same breath, I want to scream at the other lads to fuck off and leave him alone. But instead, I do nothing.