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

“Two days!” she gasps. “I had to wait two weeks.”

The lift doors open and we trail up the halls. It smells like chlorine. The girl sees me sniffing and grins at me.

“It’s because we’re near the roof,” she says, glee in her voice. “There’s a pool on the roof and in the summer, we’re going to be allowed to use it!”

When we get to Apartment 44, the boys knock on the door, and I’m expecting some kind of secret password to be uttered. None comes. Instead, the door flings open, and a tall, blond man in his mid-twenties welcomes us in. He’s all smiles, and I immediately recognize him as one of the men from Basement.

“Clara! Ian! Cormac!” he says, ushering them in.

He takes an extra moment considering us. “Rory –” he smiles benevolently – “I’m so glad you were able to come. I’m Aaron, the chapter leader. Please, make yourself at home.”

He shakes Roe’s hand rigorously, the whites of his knuckles glowing.

“And you brought a guest,” he says, his eyes scanning me. “You know, we have a very strict policy here around guests. Especially on your first meeting. We don’t allow it, Rory.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Roe says, grappling for an excuse. “I didn’t realize, and, I just thought that Maeve might benefit from…”

The man puts his hand up. “Don’t worry, Rory. We can make an exception this time.”

He turns to me. “Hello, Maeve. I’m Aaron.” He takes one quick look at my blue duffel and smiles. “Can I take your coat?”

I shrug it off and give it to him.

“Wow,” he says, his voice mildly flirtatious. “And here was me, hoping you had a wedding dress on under there.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ONCE, YEARS AGO, ME AND LILY WATCHED A DOCUMENTARY about cults. It was on very late on the Bravo channel, and it was advertised for weeks as “a disturbing look at how one man could drive ordinary American girls … to murder.”

The thought was electrifying. Someone could just make you commit murder? How?

It was on at 1 a.m., so we had a sleepover at my house and watched it. I don’t remember much about it, but there was definitely an interview with a former cult leader who was known for recruiting teenage girls. The interviewer asked him how he recruited his followers. Simple, he said. He just approached groups of girls at shopping malls, singled one out and told her that she had beautiful eyes.

“If she said ‘thank you’, or even just laughed, I would move on,” he said. “But if she tried to deflect the compliment or looked down at the ground, I would ask her for her number. Because that girl is the one with the hole inside of her.”

That is what it is like inside the apartment at Elysian Quarter.

I am standing in a room full of people with a hole inside of them.

There’s about thirty of them all together, ranging from mid-teens to early twenties. Everyone is drinking orange juice out of wine glasses and they have that kind of nervy, tremulous energy that makes them cover their mouths when they laugh and bite their lips as they listen. There’s nothing individually wrong with anyone, just a collective sense of unease. They’re all standing in groups of threes and fours, their shoulders slightly hunched. Absolutely nothing in their body language suggests, “Hey, come talk to us.”

The apartment is big, open and airy, like living rooms are on sitcoms. There’s a large window overlooking the city that we gravitate towards.

“What did that guy say about wedding dresses to you?” Roe asks quietly.

“Oh,” I say, my face turning red. “Fiona and I were in Basement trying on wedding dresses the day of the protest. We saw him there, trying to give out to the shop manager.”

He looks at me in confusion.

“As a joke, like,” I say hurriedly. “We weren’t trying on wedding dresses seriously. Fiona told them she didn’t believe in God.”

“Wow.”

A small, flutey voice suddenly pipes up from behind us. “I didn’t use to believe in God.”

We turn around and a tiny girl with a long fringe is beaming at us. She’s about seventeen.

“Hello,” I say uncertainly.

“I used to think it was all crap. And when I learned about the Magdalene Laundries and the way they put girls in these horrible prisons just for getting pregnant, I thought, Wow, the Catholic Church has ruined Ireland.”

“And then what … you changed your mind?” Roe asks.

“I realized that it wasn’t the Church that ruined Ireland. Bad people ruined Ireland.”

I want to ask her a little more about this, but at that moment the man who let us in stands in the centre of the room and taps his wine glass full of orange juice with a teaspoon.

“Circles, everyone. Circles.”

A hush falls over the room as everyone forms a circle by sitting cross-legged on the floor. Roe and I copy them. I’m desperate to blend in, to be inconspicuous. But I already feel as if there’s a big red dot on my head, singling me out as a non-believer. The girl next to me edges away slightly. She can tell I don’t really want to be here.

“Hello, everyone!” Aaron says. He’s the only one standing. He’s not wearing the suit I saw him in on Friday, and, without it, he looks far younger. Twenty-five or -six. He’s dressed casually, in jeans and a navy Hollister hoodie, with red Converse on his feet. “How are y’all today?”

A mumbling of “good” and “fine” fills the room.

“Oh, come on. I know we’re all better than fine. How ARE y’all today?”

A grateful laugh rises. “GREAT!” one guy shouts, and another, louder laugh shoots up like a flare.

“Great! We’re great? C’mon, everyone. Are we great?”

The room is feeling looser now, like stretched-out chewing gum.

“YEAH!”

“That’s more like it.” He smiles. “Now, I know we have a few new faces here today, so, as always, I thought we’d start with a game to warm up our circle