Bayside was for bikes.

I couldn’t cycle it. I could get my leg over the saddle and onto the pedal and push but that was all. I couldn’t go; I couldn’t stay up. I didn’t know how. I was doing everything right. I ran the bike, got onto it and fell over. I was frightened. I knew I was going to fall before I started. I gave up. I put the bike in the shed. My da got angry. I didn’t care.

–Santy got you that bike, he said.—The least you can do is learn how to cycle the bloody thing.

I said nothing.

–It comes natural, he said.—It’s as natural as walking.

I could walk.

I asked him to show me.

–About time, he said.

I got up on the bike; he held the back of the saddle and I pedalled. Up the garden. Down the garden. He thought I was enjoying it; I hated it. I knew: he let go: I fell over.

–Keep pedalling keep pedalling keep pedalling—

I fell over. I got off the bike. I wasn’t really falling. I was putting my left foot down. That made him more annoyed.

–You’re not trying.

He pulled the bike away from me.

–Come on; get up.

I couldn’t. He had the bike. He realised this. He gave it back. I got up. He held the back. He said nothing. I pedalled. We went down the garden. I went faster. I stayed up; he was still holding. I looked back. He wasn’t there. I fell over. But I’d done it; I’d gone a bit without him. I could do it. I didn’t need him now. I didn’t want him.

He was gone anyway. Back into the house.

–You’ll be grand now, he said.

He was just lazy.

I stayed on. I turned at the top of the garden instead of getting off and turning the bike and getting back on. I stayed on. Around the garden three times. Nearly into the hedge. I stayed on.

We ruled Bayside. We camped up on the garage roofs. We lit a fire. We could see in all directions. We were ready for any attack. There were boys in Bayside but they were mostly smaller and saps. The ones our age were saps too. We got one of the small ones; we held him hostage. We made him climb up on the saddle, onto the roof. We surrounded him. We held him over the side of the roof. We kicked him. I gave him a dead leg.

–If we get attacked you’re dead, Kevin told him.

We held him for ten minutes. We made him jump off the roof. He landed the right way. Nothing ever happened. No one came after us.

Bayside was great for knickknacking. In the night. There were no walls or hedges, no real gardens. A straight row of bells. It was easy. There was a path or a lane at the end of each row. Escaping was nothing. The really great bit was doubling back and doing it all over again. Our record was seventeen. Seventeen times we rang the five bells in the row and escaped. One of the houses didn’t have a bell so I knocked on the glass. We were dizzy by the time we’d finished. We did it in a relay. Me first, then Kevin, Liam, Aidan, me again. The thrill was coming round to start again, not knowing if there’d be a door open waiting to catch you.

–Maybe they’re all out.

–No way, said Kevin.—They’re all in.

–How?

–They are, I said.—I saw them.

It was getting cold. I put my shirt and jumper back on.

–Is it morning yet?

–Morning not to get up.

I was good at waiting for the scab to be ready. I never rushed. I waited until I was sure it was hollow, sure that the crust had lifted off my knee. It came off neat and tidy and there was no blood underneath, just a red mark; that was the knee being fixed. Scabs were made by things in your blood called corpuscles. There were thirtyfive billion corpuscles in your blood. They made the scabs to stop you from bleeding to death.

I was the same way with sticky eyes. I let them stay sticky and they got hard. In the mornings this happened sometimes. One eye was sticky where I’d had my head on the pillow. My ma said a draught caused it. I turned on my back. I concentrated on the eye; I kept it shut. Sleepy eyes, my ma called them. She’d cleared them out with the facecloth when I’d shown her them the first time, both of them sticky. I didn’t tell her any more. I kept them for myself. I waited. When my ma shouted up at us to hurry up for our breakfast I got up and got dressed. I tested the eye. I pulled the lids as if I was going to open them. They were nice and stuck, and dry. I finished dressing. I sat on the bed and touched the eye carefully, around the outside and the corners. The outside corner first, I scooped the crust away on the top of my finger and looked. There was never as much on the finger as it felt there’d be, only a tiny bit of flake. They’d pop open and I could feel the air on my eyeball. Then I’d rub the eye and it was normal again. There was nothing when I looked in the mirror in the bathroom. Just two eyes the same.

Sinbad didn’t notice the way I did. There had to be shouts and screams and big gaps between them before he knew anything. When it was quiet it was fine; that was the way he thought. He wouldn’t agree with me, even when I got him on the ground.

I was alone, the only one who knew. I knew better than they did. They were in it: all I could do was watch. I paid more attention than they did, because they kept saying the same things over and over.

–I do not.

–You do.

–I do not.

You do, I’m afraid.

I waited for one of them to say something different, wanting it—they’d go forward again and it would end for a while. Their fights were like a train that kept getting stuck at the corner tracks and you had to lean over and push it or straighten it. Only now, all I could do was listen and wish. I didn’t pray; there were no prayers for this. The Our Father didn’t fit, or the Hail Mary. But I rocked the same way I sometimes did when I was saying prayers. Backwards and forwards, the rhythm of the prayer. Grace Before Meals was the fastest, probably because we were all starving just before lunch, just after the bell.

I rocked.

–Stop stop stop stop—

On the stairs. On the step outside the back door. In bed. Sitting beside my da. At the table in the kitchen.

–I hate them this way.

–They’re the same as last Sunday.

Da only had a fry on Sunday mornings. We had a sausage each and black pudding if we wanted it, as well as what we always had. At least an hour before mass.

–Gollop it down now, Ma warned me,—or you won’t be able to go up for communion.

I looked at the clock. There were nine minutes before half-eleven and we were going to halftwelve mass. I divided my sausage in nine.

–I told you before, I hate them runny.

–They were runny last week.

–I hate them this way; I won’t—

I rocked.

–Do you need to go to the toilet?

–No.

–What’s wrong with you then?

–Nothing.

–Well, stop squirming there like a halfwit. Eat your breakfast.

He said nothing else. He ate everything, the runny egg as well. I liked them runny. He got it all up with about half a slice of bread: I could never do that properly. The egg just ran ahead in front of the bread when I did it. He cleaned his plate. He didn’t say anything. He knew I was watching; he’d caught me rocking and he knew why.

He said the tea was nice.

He was still chewing at halfeleven. I watched for the minute hand to click, up past the six; I watched him. I heard the click from behind the clock. He didn’t swallow for thirty-six seconds after that.

I kept it to myself. If he went up for communion I’d see what happened. I knew and God knew.

I loved twirling the dial on the radio. I turned it on and put it on its back on the kitchen table. I was never allowed to bring it out of the kitchen. I got the dial and turned it as much as my wrist would let me, as quick as I could. I loved the high-pitched scratch and then the voice and the scratching again, different, and a voice, maybe a woman; I wouldn’t stop to find out. Around and back, around and back; music and bloops, voices, nothing. There was dirt in the lines of the plastic front, where the sound came out, like the dirt under your nails, and in the letters of the gold BUSH stuck on the bottom corner. My ma listened to The Kennedys of Castleross. I stayed in the kitchen with her when it was on during the holidays, but I didn’t listen to it. I sat on a chair and waited till it was over and watched her listening.