‘Yeah, it’s just crowds that really distress him. We’d said about going to Portrush as well, but … But it makes sense because I read this thing that said that for Ronan it’s pretty much like having a new identity to get used to. Things like that aren’t going to happen overnight. Even I struggled to get used to the difference …’
An image of Ronan in my head in his wheelchair staring at himself in the mirror alone in his room.
Then an image of Ronan in the boys’ toilets combing his hair on the day the school photos were to be taken.
‘… but I don’t think about it much anymore,’ I said.
‘Whereas Ronan must be thinking about it all the time.’
‘I know. But his speech is coming on leaps and bounds; he said my name!’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, it was actually pretty emotional.’
She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. It felt good. It felt natural.
‘That’s so lovely – what else did you two get up to?’
I told her how I visited nearly every day, about our movie mornings, our walks from his house to the village at the quiet times, about our lunches and dinners along with his parents and the board games we played afterwards with dessert. About how there never seemed to be enough hours in the day. About how I didn’t want the Easter break to end.
‘You weren’t working at the funeral home on top of all that, were you?’ she asked.
‘I was, actually,’ I said, almost having forgotten I’d told her about that. ‘Any day I wasn’t at Ronan’s I was there and if I wasn’t at Ronan’s then I was doing extra driving lessons with Dad. Theory test coming up, which should be OK, then the practical on the 3rd of July, most stressful birthday ever!’
‘God, July, when it’ll all be over and the gruelling wait for results!’
‘Speaking of which, I did lots of studying too.’
‘Good, because I feel guilty that you’re missing Science revision right now.’
‘Ah, don’t worry. It was worth it.’
‘Oh, gee, thanks, you’d choose me over the periodic table, such a lucky girl.’
‘Actually it was Physics today – the solar system – so to choose us over the infinity of space is pretty decent.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s not bad; to choose us over all that stuff up there,’ she said, looking skyward.
The bell rang.
‘Geez, what happens to time when I’m with you?’ she said. ‘It seems to go on hyper drive or something. Feels like we haven’t had that in a while.’
‘Well, we haven’t.’
‘I didn’t eat anything!’
‘Me neither, here, take half,’ I said, taking out my lunch box and handing her half my peanut butter sandwich. We both took a bite at the same time and chuckled with full cheeks.
‘Missed you,’ Jennifer said amidst her chewing.
‘Me too,’ I said.
There were a lot of things I missed. I never thought school would become one of those things, but that place had given me so much.
Soon, it would be a place of memory.
Soon, all of it, in the past.
