Me and Fiona look at each other in utter astonishment.
“What?” we say in unison.
“Yeah. The whole thing is a front.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s all online. It was on the Facebook group. The See-Oh-Bee group,” she adds shortly, seeing our blank looks. “Look, are you going to hold this or not? I really need to pee.”
“No.”
The girl glares at us, tucks her sign under her arm and stalks into the McDonald’s on the other side of the street. As my eyes follow her, I catch a flash of scarlet at the corner of my vision and feel a spark run through me.
Roe is standing outside the McDonald’s, staring at the mob with his mouth open. Our eyes meet. I put a hand up, palms flat, fingers straight. A gesture that is both “I see you” and “I’m not a part of this”. He watches me for a second, then looks away.
A few seconds later, the girl with the sign emerges from the McDonald’s looking furious. My guess is that they wouldn’t let her use the toilet without buying something. She looks at Roe in his red bomber jacket trimmed with leopard print, his school bag covered in badges, his hair long and curly. Everything in her body language is hotly, avidly disapproving.
Leave him alone, I demand silently, my inner voice sharp and protective. Don’t say a word to him.
The girl watches him for a moment, spits on the ground in front of him, and then crosses the street to rejoin the protest.
“Come on,” Fiona says. “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us with these nutters.”
“Sure,” I say. When I glance back to find Roe, he’s gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO FORGET ABOUT LILY. BUT WITH FIONA around, it becomes possible to forget about witchcraft, the tarot and the Housekeeper card. I get email updates from Raya Silver’s Patreon account that I delete immediately.
“Why don’t you just buy more cards?” Fiona asks.
Why don’t I? They’re not very expensive, after all, and I’m sure the woman in Divination would be delighted to help me pick out a new packet. But I feel frightened of that side of me now. Of the WITCH branded into my rucksack. Frightened that those first years who are afraid to come near me have a very good reason.
Because it’s not just that I was good at memorizing cards, or telling people what they wanted to hear. When the cards were in my hands, I felt like I had discovered some part of myself that was better off hidden. Something troublesome and strange, thorny and not completely under my control.
“… she’s always been a bit of a bitch of course, but once she started getting a bit of attention for that witchy shit, she got really nasty…”
There was a truth to that, I think. When I had the cards, the girls in my year seemed silly and small. Their problems boring, their fights stupid. They exhausted me. Something about the tiny spark of power the cards gave me made me feel apart from the rest.
I couldn’t feel any more distant from my year group than right now. People are still deeply invested in Lily’s disappearance. Fliers with her face on are everywhere, a photo from our Junior Cert results. I wonder if they cropped me out, or whether Lily had cut me out long before.
Girls start coming to school with wild, exciting stories about being followed home from school by a vast and inconsistent variety of strange men. At first the guards were interested in these stories, but it became clear pretty quickly that the younger girls were getting weirdly swept up in the strange romance of being kidnapped. No one ever wanted to be like Lily, but now suddenly, everyone sort of does. There is a kind of glamour to being “chosen”, I think. I understand it, but it still makes me feel sick.
On Saturday morning, Fiona texts me and asks if I want to come to a party at her house.
What kind of party? I ask.
Just some food and music with my aunts and cousins
I don’t know how formal the party is, but I figure it’s only polite to wear something nice, so put on a light-blue knit dress that I last wore a year ago to a christening. Fiona opens the door and I can smell meat and garlic and onions. My mouth starts to water.
“You’re here!” she says, delighted. “Wow, nice dress. You’re going to want an apron.”
“Why?”
“My mum’s food is basically barbecue. You will have stains.”
“How come you’re not wearing an apron?”
“Because I’m a professional.”
I kick off my shoes and Fiona leads me into the kitchen, where a bunch of women are hovering over hot trays, yelling at one another about where a certain kind of bowl is.
“Mum!” Fiona says, putting her arm around a pretty woman that I assume is her mother. “This is Maeve. Do we have anything she can put over her dress?”
“Maeve!” her mum says, putting both arms on my shoulders. “We’ve heard so much about you! I’m Marie. It’s always a thrill when Fifi brings home someone who isn’t at that stage school.”
Fiona makes a face, and I can’t tell if she’s more annoyed by “Fifi” or her stage school being dissed. Her mother catches it.
“Ni, it’s true. They’re all so pretentious. So serious. Maeve, I hear you’re fun.”
“I try to be fun,” I reply.
“Do you sing?”
“No.”
“See, more of this. I married an Irish man, thinking that the Irish are so musical, and he doesn’t sing either. Well, he does now. Fifi, where’s your daddy?”
“Upstairs.”
“Get him down! Maeve, have you met everyone? Fiona, introduce Maeve to your titas.”
I meet everyone. Fiona has two titas, Sylvia and Rita. They have two brothers who still live in Manila, who they talk about like they have just popped out and will be back any minute now. Clutches of cousins and family friends move in and out of the kitchen, grabbing plates of meat and rice, then
