When the egg eventually hatches on top of the paralysed-but-still-living cockroach, the squirmy wasp larva begins to feast. A live meal for the newborn.
By the time the larva has finished its meal over many days it is practically fully grown. It digs its way out of the burrow and comes out into the world all shiny and emerald green.
It has an immediate need.
It must do what it was born to do. It must complete its life’s work.
Without delay, ruthlessly and determinedly, it begins looking for a cockroach.
10
Sometimes when bad things happen people won’t talk about it. When Granny got sick nobody told me until she got taken into hospital.
Not knowing the truth can make things worse. I have a vivid imagination, so if I don’t know the truth I’ll imagine the worst possible scenario.
‘It was an accident’ is all anyone would tell me. But I didn’t know what ‘an accident’ meant, it could mean anything. ‘A traumatic brain injury,’ they said. I didn’t know what that meant either. I just wanted the truth. What happened to my friend Ronan?
We were in Mrs O’Neill’s form room; Ronan in his wheelchair, his mum and dad, Mrs O’Neill and me. No one was being honest with me. Mr and Mrs McCoy looked haunted standing there. Silent like their son. Of coursetheyknew what had happened to Ronan, but I could see it was too painful for them to squeeze words out. Mrs O’Neill must have known too but was holding back.
I looked up at them. I’m not an angry person but I felt angry then.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘you don’t need to tell me what happened.’
Maybe I thought that would break their silence, that they’d see the unfairness and include me in the truth. But no. They nodded as if excluding me was the right thing to do. I was just a boy, after all, what business had I in knowing what horrific thing had happened to my only friend in the world?
With air that felt like fire as it passed my lips I said:
‘I don’t want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from Ronan and he’ll tell me when he’s ready.’
Mrs O’Neill raised her eyebrows. I was supposed to be the boy who never spoke up for himself. I was the boy who was the best friend of Ronan. Ronan the leader. Me the follower. But in that moment, in that room, with Ronan in front of me and nothing making sense, I put all my focus on my friend and not on the people who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me the truth. I knew what they were thinking; how could I possibly imagine this boy, their son, Mrs O’Neill’s student, my friend, would ever be capable of speech again? But I knew Ronan. I knew him better than they did. And Ronan was always honest with me.Heknew what had happened to him, even if his brain was injured like they said. He trusted me. I trusted him. If anyone were to tell me the truth I needed it to be him. He just wasn’t able to tell meyet.
‘Brendan …’ began Mrs McCoy.
‘I’ll wait for however long it takes,’ I said, not taking my eyes off Ronan.
Because, to me, every word of a person’s own story is like a beat of their own heart.
I could even picture the scene somewhere in the future; I would be sitting opposite Ronan and he would be telling me his story from across the room. And years later, in our old age, still the best of friends, we’d reminisce about the time I let noone speak for him until he could speak for himself and I’d be absolutely convinced, as I thought back over the years, that with every word Ronan spoke when he told his story for the first time, I could hear the beat of his heart.
‘It’s his story,’ I said, ‘I want him to tell it.’
11
In December the snow lay in chunks around the edges of the school; on the grass it had been churned into mucky curdles from snowball fights and the tarmac pathways had been salted into brown wet gravel by the caretaker.
It was Ronan’s first day back at school. I hadn’t seen him since his parents brought him into Mrs O’Neill’s room at the beginning of November. The McCoys had said that if all went to plan Ronan would be coming back before Christmas but they hadn’t said what day it would be. In the meantime, Dad had offered to drive me to Ronan’s house to visit, but I told him Ronan and me only knew what it was like to be friends in school, we didn’t know what it was like to be friends anywhere else, our friendship didn’t need to change more than it already had. Dad looked at me like he knew it was a bad excuse, but said that I knew best and that Mum and him were there to help if I needed. Mum nodded along with him, but with the way she was it was hard to tell if she was aware of anything going on outside her own head. And Dad wasn’t very good at talking about anything. I used to confide in Ronan about my dad, howmuch he didn’t talk to me or seem interested in anything I did. Ronan said it was a generational thing; he said our parents grew up in a time when our area was a dangerous place and keeping yourself to yourself was the safest thing to do, and that maybe they just got used to keeping a bit too much of themselves to themselves for a bit too long.
‘Is your dad like that as well then?’ I asked him.
‘He used to be.’
‘What changed?’
‘Dunno,’ he said, ‘Ma said he used to be all quiet and stuff, and then …’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I came along,’ he said with a wink.
