I phoned home and Dad said he’d come and pick me up.
‘We got finished up a bit sooner,’ I said on the drive home to break the usual silence between us. ‘Ronan was tired so we let him get some rest.’
And because I didn’t want him to think anything different I said:
‘But it went well.’
‘Ah that’s good, start as you mean to go on,’ he said.
‘Yip.’
‘And on you will go.’
‘Yip.’
‘The main thing is you’re off to a good start.’
‘Exactly.’
And we left it at that.
25
‘You haven’t been avoiding me, Brendan, have you?’ said Jennifer, leaning against the wall beside the library as I ran towards it.
I hadn’t. It was my schedule; it turned lunchtimes into study times; it turned home times into rushes to catch the bus to get back for an early dinner so I could do more studying or go to Ronan’s house for Buddy Time; it turned any chance to catch up with Jennifer into something that, accidentally, just didn’t happen.
She was staring at me.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘No way, why would I be avoiding you?’
‘I don’t know, I know you’ve a lot of juggling going on, but I’ve definitely been trying to catch you all week and it’s pretty impressive that you’ve been able to evade me. Did you get an invisibility cloak for Christmas or something?’ she said, trying to look into my eyes until I eventually looked properly into hers.
‘Want to come into the library? To talk?’ I said.
‘Do I want to come and talk in the one place in the whole school where you’re not allowed to talk?’ she said slowly with a grin.
‘Oh yeah, of course, want to go and talk somewhere else?’
We sat in the Music Room corridor. She wanted to hear all about Ronan and our Buddy Time together. I told her how the first one hadn’t gone so well.
‘And last night was more or less the same as Tuesday,’ I said. ‘We tried the same vocabulary stuff and he switched off after ten minutes and I had to leave early again.’
I knew the second Buddy Time wasn’t going to go well as soon as I walked into Ronan’s room because he didn’t even do his laugh-greeting when he saw me.
‘That’s not like him but he is exhausted today, Brendan,’ said Mrs McCoy, reading my disappointment at the silent look Ronan had greeted me with. ‘Not a wink of sleep last night, plus he’s been awake most of the day and hasn’t ate much since breakfast. Where’s Brendan’s “hello” this evening, Ronan?’
But Ronan, in response, turned his gaze away from me and out the window.
When Mrs McCoy wheeled him up to the desk and I began picking words from the booklet and using the alphabet chart, Ronan just stared at me and after three rounds of words he nodded off to sleep. But a part of me wondered if he really was asleep. Something about the look he had given me before he closed his eyes made me suspicious.
‘Maybe it’s just another way of him communicating with you?’ Jennifer suggested. ‘Like, I don’t know about you, but I feel like my friends know me way better than my own family.’
‘Yeah Idefinitelyfeel that way,’ I said. ‘My mum’s not too bad but my dad hasn’t a clue.’
‘Well, you’re Ronan’s best friend, so he’s probably thinking you’re the best one to help him. It’s just that he’s not ableto actually tell you, but actions speak louder than words – so what’s his action?’
