Dead Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

light of the training area and in my head I can see the lads coming back and finding us likethis. Me and Seán, me covered in mud and sweat, Seán covered in tears and snot. They’d ask a lot of questions that Seán is in no state to answer. Me neither come to think of it.
    I’m thinking, if the lads come back, Seán’s going to look like a weirdo. I’m thinking this and a little Judas voice in the back of my head goes and you’ll look like a fucking weirdo too with your fancy fucking words and your too-good-for-us fucking attitude. You with your psycho fucking friend . That voice is starting to get a lot more frequent lately. That Judas screech. It terrifies me. Never before, never, have I been ashamed of Seán. I’ve never cared what people thought about him. He’s my best friend and that means something.
    Thinking this, trying to strangle the Judas screech, hanging on to Seán’s hawser of an arm, I’m going, ‘For fuck’s sake, Seán, don’t be such a handicap. Tell me what the fuck is wrong before the lads get back and kick the shit out of both of us.’
    Seán stills then. He goes quiet. Not limp but motionless.
    ‘I can’t tell you,’ he says. ‘It’s too bad.’
    And then his face collapses and his whole body loosens like a landslide and his eyes start spilling tears again. And through lips that are in spasm, his voice comes clabbered and soured with self-disgust.
    ‘I can’t tell you,’ he says again. ‘But I can show you.’

 
    Seán’s not stupid and he’s not some kind of monster. Let me get that straight. Me and him have known each other for so long now that all our memories are shared. I used to be friends with him because I didn’t know how different he was. Then I was friends with him because once you’re friends with someone you can’t just not be friends with them. Especially when they’ve done nothing bad on you. Especially when they need you because they’ve nobody else. No Mam. A Da sliding away like grease in a fire.
    There’s this girl in school. Jennifer O’Riordan. Jenny . She is far and away the best-looking girl in school. I think so anyway. A lot of the lads think so too and they know I’m head-over-heels about her. For months I get slagged at training and once someone stuck a drawing of two stick figures having anatomically incorrect sex into my kit bag. One was labelled Jenny with a big clumsy arrow scrawled in the direction of the stick figure with the giant boobs and the other one was obviously supposed to be me. I know itwas Brendan Currane who masterminded this because he always does his Js the wrong way round. The retard.
    This is last year when we were doing our Junior Cert and I’m finding myself staring at Jenny O’Riordan during class. A lot of teachers make us sit in alphabetical order and because my second name begins with a D I’m usually stuck up in the top half of the class while she’s usually behind me somewhere. Seán sits on his own because he doesn’t really like anyone except me sitting beside him.
    The school furniture consists of brown desks clad in a sort of slippery, fake wood veneer and brown plastic chairs that totter on the flexing tubular steel of their legs. You have to lie the chairs on their sides and straighten the legs before every class, the tubular steel is so kinked at the bends. The sixth years are too heavy for them and, if they’ve been in class before you, when you swivel in your seat you can feel the cheap steel start to give.
    Last year I find myself doing stupid things in class so that I can catch even a glimpse of Jenny O’Riordan. I turn around in my seat for no reason. I borrow pens from people behind me even though my pencil case has a blue pen, a red pen, a HB pencil and a full mathematical set in it. It’s gotten so bad at one stage that Mrs Prendergast keeps me back to talk to me about my attention span. I have never been kept back before and all the lads ooooooohhhh at this. My neck and face are radiating