Not My Problem

“Time,” Meabh said hopelessly, “I need more time. I’ve worked out my schedule to an inch of its life.” She pointed at some papers that were scattered across the room like she’d thrown them. “I simply can’t do everything unless I give up sleep. And I’ve tried that before. It did not end well.” She got a dark look on her face.

I had a mental image of her pacing a room with her hair on end. There was writing all over the walls and lots of red string connecting things. It felt very real.

“All right, weirdo. Give me your timetable. There’s definitely somewhere you can cut back.”

With great effort Meabh picked herself up off the floor and retrieved the timetable, handing it to me. It was blurry where it had got damp from being thrown near the showers and I had to gingerly remove a long blonde hair.

Meabh had a sensible dark brown bob and I had an explosion of brown curls that could not be tamed by either product or professional and simply had to be restrained for visibility purposes. So it was shower hair. I shuddered.

“Okay, what about . . . cello lessons?”

“No, I can’t quit those.”

“Do you have to practice for two and a half hours a day though?”

“Yes.”

“Two hours? Come on, isn’t, say, ninety minutes plenty?” I joked.

“Some studies show that two hours is the point of diminishing returns but I have it carefully planned, splitting time between scales, études, and repertoire, and I wouldn’t call that research empirical, you know?”

I didn’t understand any of that. But I guessed the cello was not something we were going to budge on.

“What about these classes here, what are they?” There was a yellow-coded ninety-minute block on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Her face darkened. “Yoga.”

“Ah yes, of course, you do seem the type, after all.”

“Mum makes me. She says I need to relax.”

“If she wants you to relax, maybe she should schedule some relaxation.”

“If I schedule relaxation, all I’ll do is think about all the things I need to do. Which is not relaxing.”

“Well, you must be super flexible at least.”

“I can barely touch my toes,” she grumbled. “The instructor says I won’t be able to be ‘flexible in body until I am flexible in mind.’ I tried explaining that that is not how hamstrings work.”

“How long have you been doing it?”

“Since last year after the exams when all my eyelashes fell out.”

“Huh . . . and you can’t touch your toes yet?”

She demonstrated. She was almost there, but she did look exceptionally awkward.

“Your instructor might have a point, don’t you think?”

“Mum won’t let me quit yoga,” Meabh said, and pursed her lips.

If my daughter’s eyelashes had fallen out because of an exam I’d probably be crushing blues into her cereal every morning, but my family did tend to take the chemical route to our destination whenever possible.

“What’s this?” Everything was acronyms and initials.

“The gym.”

“You already go to yoga!” I protested.

“The gym is for working on strength and speed. For camogie.”

I rolled my eyes. At least now it was obvious why Meabh was continually beating Holly for captain.

“That’s Polish reading,” Meabh continued, pointing to the schedule. “That’s current affairs. What? I have to read about what’s going on if I’m going to be in politics. That’s showering.”

“Your showers are scheduled?”

She shrugged. “I’m busy. That’s kind of the problem.”

“I know, but it’s transition year. It’s meant to be a doss.”

Transition year is the best thing about our whole education system. You do three years of studying to do your Junior Cert exams; then you get transition year, which is meant to be for “personal development,” before you do two years of study for the Leaving Cert exams. When adults remember their Leaving Cert year, they get this haunted look in their eyes, like they’ve been through shit you can’t imagine, so the least they can do is give us a year of farting around.

“Transition year is an excellent opportunity to round out my skill set and get a head start on the senior curriculum.”

Her lip wobbled and then tears filled her eyes. She pressed her fists into her eye sockets and pushed hard.

“All right, all right, that’s probably how you lost your eyelashes,” I said, pulling her fists away from her eyes by grabbing her wrists.

Meabh had always been a hectic mess, but I guess I’d assumed that was her personality and that she liked being like that. Now I was a bit worried about her. At the same time I was also mentally trying to tot up how much all these lessons and instructors cost. Did principals make that much money? Or was Meabh’s mam the one raking it in? I had no idea what a cello instructor charged or how much yoga class was. I knew for a fact there was free yoga on YouTube though.

“There are two options.” I stroked my chin. “We can break your wrist or your ankle.”

I waited for her to laugh. She didn’t so I continued. “If you ask me, your wrist will free up way more time. No more cello, homework, or yoga!”

She stopped crying and sniffed up an escaping trail of snot. “You’re right.”

I wrinkled my nose. Upset Meabh was gross. “Huh?”

“I mean, not about the wrist thing, that’s ridiculous. I can’t break my wrist.”

“Oh good. I was really worried you’d completely lost it there for a sec—”

“But my ankle definitely. I’d be able to stop taking PE, that’s two doubles a week, and all my yoga classes and gym sessions . . .” She wasn’t really talking to me anymore. She was daydreaming about the free time she could fill with more work.

“Eh . . . I was joking, you know?” I said quickly. I could see she was deadly serious and I was a little alarmed. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was concerned for her or because I didn’t want to end up in trouble and having to explain how yes, it was all my idea but I didn’t mean it.

She rounded on me. “No, you’re brilliant. It’s the only solution.”

“You could talk to your parents,” I said half-heartedly. I wouldn’t talk to my parents either if it were me, and I was stupidly flattered by being called brilliant. Had anyone ever called me brilliant before? I felt like I would remember it if they had.

She laughed out loud for the first time. Maybe in her whole life. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen her laugh before.

“How though?” she mumbled. “That’s the question.”

She began pacing the room and then walked out the door into the main hall. I followed her.

“We could get a hammer from the woodwork room.” I shut my mouth. She’d probably do it. “I mean, no. Meabh. Seriously.”

She looked around, ignoring me. Then she ran up the stairs and stood at the top. I stayed at the bottom.

“One, two, three . . . seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.”

“Meabh, no.”

“That’s going to really bother me,” she said. “Nineteen. Why nineteen? What kind of self-respecting architect puts an odd number of steps in a staircase?”

“Meabh, you can’t jump down the stairs.”

She clasped her hands together like she was going to dive into a pool, then took a few steps back and did a sort of mock run toward the stairs. She even turned around with her back to me and teetered precariously on the top step.

“Meabh, you’ll crack your head open like that. You cannot do this.”

“I can’t do this,” she agreed. “My brain is rejecting it. You know how you can’t drown yourself either? Your body’s instincts won’t let you deliberately inhale water or stay submerged once the hypercapnia becomes overwhelming.”

“How do you know that?” I was amazed that even as she contemplated injuring herself, she still found time to show off.

“I know everything,” she said absently.

“Come downstairs and we’ll think of something else.”

“You come upstairs.”

“You come downstairs.”

“You come upstairs.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“You are so bossy,” I said, giving up. It didn’t seem wise to bicker with someone who was literally on the edge.

“So I’m thinking you could ask your dad if you could swap out doing cello for this term with doing your election stuff. The green whatsit and the application thingy.”

“Oh no. That won’t work. He can’t know I’m struggling. No one can know. No. I’m going to need you to push me.” She said it casually, as though it was the obvious solution. I guessed I counted as “no one.”

She wriggled in front of me and braced herself as though she thought I was really going to just shove her down the stairs. Briefly I considered that we really needed Holly for this. Meabh annoyed me, sure, but I didn’t have the edge it would take to maim her. Although Holly wouldn’t push her archnemesis down a flight of stairs if she had any inkling that it would benefit Meabh.

“I am not going to do this. Get out of my way.”

“Nope.” She blocked the stairwell with both arms.

“This isn’t going to work. I’ll just go watch TV on my phone,” I said, gesturing to the benches that lined the balcony. “You can’t stay there forever. And Ms. Devlin is going to come looking for you any minute now.”

For a second it seemed as though she was going to fight back. And then her whole body just collapsed. Her shoulders drooped, her head flopped forward, and her knees buckled. Silent tears sprang out of her eyes. How could one person cry so much?

“Please,” she said. She grabbed the front of my jumper and pulled me so close I could smell her breath. It was still pepperminty from brushing her teeth that morning. No pre-class coffee for Meabh. She probably thought coffee was a gateway drug to cocaine.

“I know you think I’m losing my mind, but this is the only way I can get what I need. I’ll owe you one. Anything you want. I will tutor you for the rest of the year!”

I frowned. That didn’t sound like a reward.

This wasn’t normal-person behavior. Her parents were obviously way too hard on her. If I inspected her timetable closer I’d probably find three minutes for peeing twice a day. Meabh irritated the life out of everyone, but the girl had once rubbed all her own eyelashes out, for Christ’s sake. If I didn’t do this, she would keep trying to do everything on that timetable and the election on top of that. Then she really would lose it and I would know there was something I could have done.

Something absolutely bizarre and possibly illegal? Were you allowed to injure someone if they asked you to?

“Fine.”

Her whole body perked up.

“Really?”

“Yes,” I said, not quite believing I was saying it. “I guess I can push you down the stairs. But don’t hold it against me if I enjoy it. Or if you injure something you don’t want to injure. I cannot be held responsible if your brains leak out your head or something.”

We both heard the bang of a door and exchanged a look. Meabh quickly ran downstairs and when she reappeared she shook her head. “No one there.”

She returned to her position standing on the edge of the steps, elbows bent so her forearms protected her face but her hands would be spared from the impact. I stood behind her, raised my hands to around shoulder-blade level, and took a deep breath. I was a lot of things but I was not naturally a violent person. I closed my eyes. They stayed closed for a long time and I didn’t move.

“JUST PUSH ME,” she shouted finally.

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“Aggggghhhhh!”

I pushed.

There was a clatter and a thump and a thwack thwack thwack and a screech of pain. When my eyes sprang open, I saw Meabh in a ball at the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you okay?” I called.

“No! I definitely did something to my ankle,” she groaned, but she sounded pleased. “Help me up.”

Nothing like a please or thank you, eh? Wonder how much it costs for manners instructors.

I ran down the stairs but before I could reach her, I heard something that made my blood chill.

“Here, let me help.” Kavi Thakrar crouched down beside Meabh and in one move scooped her into his arms.