‘How much further?’ came his yelling voice.
I kept on climbing, seeming to have no answer to his question.
‘I said, how much further?’ he called again.
‘In inches or miles?’ I called back.
‘Either!’
‘One!’ I shouted.
‘One?’
‘One. Inch. At. A. Time.’ I shouted out each word. ‘One inch at a time,’ I said quietly to myself.
I took a great big step.
‘One,’ shouted Ronan from behind.
‘One,’ I shouted back.
‘Two,’ he shouted as I took the next step.
‘Two,’ I shouted back.
‘Three,’ he shouted with the next step and on we went.
I don’t know if we reached the top or not but when I woke on Sunday morning my feet were freezing.
In the McCoys’ sitting room, after we turned the TV off and disconnected the camera, one last picture was taken. It was one of Ronan and me. He was in his chair with the award on his lap and I had my arm around him crouched by his side.
‘You ready?’ said Mrs McCoy, standing in front of us. ‘One, two, three.’
I think I blinked when the camera flashed.
35
Something had swept over the school in the weeks after the formal, something like change. People began noticing me and I wasn’t used to that, at least not in a positive way. Back when Ronan was in school we were inseparable. I really think people only knew I existed because I was beside him; when I wasn’t I might as well have been invisible. But after the formal everyone began to see me as if I was right back by Ronan’s side once again. They wanted to know if he’d seen the photos and what he thought of his award, which they were calling the ‘King Award’, even though that wasn’t its official title.
‘Do you think Ronan would come in to school one morning?’ Jennifer asked me on a stroll from English class. ‘Everyone’s asking about him, and I meaneveryone.’
‘Funny,’ I said, ‘youhaven’t asked about him in a while.’
I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Or maybe I had, since it had been bothering me that ever since the formal, Jennifer didn’t seem interested in how Ronan was doing.
She stopped.
‘I have asked you about Ronan,’ she said with her brow crinkled.
‘You haven’t.’
‘I definitely have, Brendan.’
‘Jennifer, I swear, you haven’t, not since the formal stuff.’
It wasn’t like me to confront things, but it also wasn’t like Jennifer to be so disinterested.
‘I’m sorry if I haven’t, Brendan, although I really think I have, maybe I’ve only felt like I’ve asked about him because he’s always in my thoughts, but I’m really sorry if I haven’t said things out loud.’ It seemed like she was thinking on the spot. ‘Maybe I’m also aware that you have a lot on your plate and you don’t always want to talk about Ronan all the time.’
