All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

“I don’t blame you,” I say, observing his blue-green fingers. “I mean. I’m not really into make-up or jewellery or anything, but I feel like … the only reason I’m not is because everyone expects you to be, as a girl, y’know? Like, whenever I put it on, I’m so aware of how I’m supposed to be wearing it. It kind of ruins the whole experience.”

He nods, looking at me as if I’ve started speaking a language he hasn’t heard since childhood.

“Sorry, I’m talking out my hole. That probably doesn’t even make sense.”

“No, it does,” he says, his voice completely firm. “It really does. I guess neither of us wants to do what’s expected of us, then.”

We’re quiet for a moment, both observing the other in a completely new light.

“Hey,” I say, still feeling the warm, pink stone clasped in my palms. “Why don’t you just keep this?”

“What? No. It’s yours.”

“No, really. As I said, I don’t wear jewellery.”

I lift it over his head and it dangles outside of his jumper. He quickly tucks it under his clothes.

“Thanks, Maeve.”

We’re quiet for another few minutes as the bus rolls on, and when we get off, he lingers.

“Do you have to go straight home?” he asks.

“No,” I respond. “Why?”

“I just … can’t be arsed going home straight away.”

“Oh. OK,” I say, my stomach surging. “Well, where do you want to go?”

We walk along the Beg for a while, kicking stones and branches, not talking much. He doesn’t seem to have anywhere in particular in mind. I’ve been down this walk before, with other boys. No one important. They’re constantly looking around for somewhere private, secluded, somewhere they can touch me and I can let them. It’s happened twice before. Never full sex though. Just enough so that I can feel like I’m keeping up with everyone else.

I wonder if Rory has had sex. He is seventeen, for what it’s worth. I start to blush thinking about it, then rewrap my scarf around the lower half of my face.

We get to a long, narrow underpass where some people have abandoned beer bottles and cigarette packets. This has been a hideout for teenagers for years. There’s graffiti on the tunnel walls that mourns the passing of each generation’s tragedy: Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Mac Miller. We sit and look at it for a little while, and talk about how pop stars and rock gods and icons are just people, people who die.

“God, we’re being so goth,” Rory laughs, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“Do you know what would be even MORE goth?” I say, reaching into my school bag. “A homemade mixtape.”

“Holy crap,” he says, as if I just pulled a severed human foot out of my bag. “Spring 1990,” he reads. “Does it work?”

“You bet it works.”

I play the mixtape. We take an earphone each, and I’m amazed by how many songs Rory knows.

“The Cure!” he says when “The Lovecats” comes on. “Oh, wow! And the Pixies!”

“I didn’t know you knew so much about music.”

“Duh. Maeve. I play guitar. I’m in a band. You knew that.”

“How on earth would I know that?”

“I thought Lily would have—”

I cut him off. I don’t want to talk about his sister. “I didn’t know, OK? Now tell me all the song names.”

He tells me all the song names. I write them down in my phone.

The cold ground starts spreading a creeping chill up my back. I stand up.

“I should go home,” I say.

“Yeah, me, too.”

There’s a silence for a moment. I’m so confused by this surreal little afternoon with him. We’ve never spent this much time alone together in our lives, even though I’ve been having sleepovers at his house since I was six years old. There’s this weird nervousness I get around him, offset by a sense of over-familiarity. Like I could say anything and he would just smile, and smile, and say something funny.

Do I fancy Rory?

It’s too big a question, somehow. Usually when I fancy someone, I’m absolutely sure of it. It’s a gut thing. Not this weird muddle of adrenalin and friendship.

“Well, see you soon,” I finally say. I lurch a hug on him, an awkward clash of our bodies that is all odd angles.

“OK, yeah. See you tomorrow, probably.”

And then, something incredible happens.

He cocks his head to one side, and gives me the strangest smile. A sideways smile that doesn’t exist in the realm of ordinary friendship. A smile that makes my legs burn and my throat tickle.

“Maeve,” he says, and his voice is low, lower than I’ve ever heard it. He is very close to me now. I can see the roots of his lashes where they connect to his skin. “C’m’ere.”

Is he going to kiss me?

Am I about to be kissed by Rory O’Callaghan?

Well, Jesus, why not?

I close my eyes, and wait for it.

And then, nothing. No touch. Just a sound.

“My name,” he says, “is Roe.”

My eyes flicker open.

“Huh?”

“I want you to know what my name is,” he says simply, all the magic and intimacy of the previous moment either completely disappeared or, worse, totally imagined. “So you can call me it.”

“Roe. Roe,” I repeat. “You want to be called Roe?”

He nods. “It’s my name. I chose it.”

“Wow. OK, Roe,” the word settles on my mouth. “I like it,” I say, truthfully. “It’s kind of mysterious.”

Roe turns to go and gives me one last rueful smile. “All the witches in stories know things by their true names, don’t they?”

And then he leaves me to gape at the river.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“YOUR BOYFRIEND SOUNDS HOT.” SAYS FIONA. “I’M JEALOUS.”

Fiona is lying on her back in the Chokey, five minutes before our first class. I almost never see the girls she had with her the first day. I sense that, like me, Fiona knows a lot of people but doesn’t have any particularly special friendships. For the first week of the tarot phase, five or six girls would be here in the morning, but now that most people have had