“What—are you serious?”

“Yeah?”

“O’Reilly…”

“It’ll be fine.”

“You could stay here if you want—we could watch a movie, one of those shitty Rom-coms you and Molly love so much—”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

I walked her down to the front door in silence. When we bickered—and we bickered a lot—saying goodbye was interchangeable. Sometimes we hugged. Sometimes she huffed and stomped off before I even got a chance to open my mouth. But when I lifted my arms, she made no effort to back away and so I pulled her in, holding her tight until she squirmed. It was a short hug, and a tense one, too, but when I raised my eyes to meet hers, I could see that her expression had softened.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I opened the door and she stepped out, hugging her arms around herself. “And you know—if you ever wanna, like—talk about your Mam or whatever. You can talk to me. If you want.”

“Thank you, Alex.” She paused, her eyebrows creasing, but whatever more she had been meaning to say died on her lips. “See you tomorrow.”

Well, it was better than nothing.

* * * *

For the whole duration of the Easter break in Fourth Year I found myself on the verge of an early and entirely tragic death by means of the flu. I never seemed to fall ill at the anticipated time but instead at awkward stages throughout the year, and while flu season had long since passed, I awoke the morning the break began to find that I couldn’t move a single muscle in my body. It would be entirely my luck, of course, to become agonizingly sick as soon as school ended for two weeks—and to think, I even planned to take that time to study and catch up on schoolwork! Being bed-bound never suited me, and instead of just sucking it up and struggling through it I moaned and complained at every opportunity I got, to no one in particular, about my inconceivable misfortune.

Claire refused to allow anyone else in the house so long as I was ill and so I suffered through my misery entirely alone. Molly and Orla called every other day for a quick chat but I longed for some real company beyond voices on a phone and my own pitiful reflection in the mirror. I didn’t do being sick very well. Claire brought me meals every few hours and I drank my body weight in flat Seven-up every day, but I swore that I was inches from death. They were two weeks bestowed upon me from some hellish demon and even after my self—imposed quarantine was over and I was able to actually stand up without nearly collapsing, I was shattered. All I wanted was to crawl in search of a cool surface and lay down, so high was my temperature. I was groggy and heavy and my whole body felt murky, but the worst part, I decided, was not the constant stream of snot spewing from my nose or the bristles at the back of my throat, but the fact that Connie couldn’t so much as call me on the phone.