Aisling's Diary

Chapter 27

Monday 19 December (continued) 

12:30p.m.

We’ve all got detention together. Booooooring. Oh well, at least we’re all in it together. What is it they say?: ‘small consolation’. I wonder how the Principal found out it was them?

3:45p.m.

So we’ve got Rat face Hughes for detention. I would be fairly surprised if he could see us doing anything without his glasses. It wasn’t too bad as detentions go, at least I got to look at Murphy for some of it. I kept smiling at him, but he was really cool with me though. He just looked straight ahead. What’s wrong with him? What have I done?

3:56p.m.

Can’t catch Murphy’s eye at all. What’s going on with him?

3:58p.m.

Bingo. I’ve worked it out. I saw JP say something to Murphy about me, and Murphy looked straight at me, really coldly, and nodded, like he was really agreeing with JP. Murphy thinks I ratted him out! He thinks I’m the one who told on him and the others. How can he think that? After all I’ve done for him. After getting Rory to get him all those votes, after giving up Irish Dance so I could dance with him, after ruining my Transition Project, and losing pretty much every friend I’ve made since we moved here, just so he can get to dance with Ace FX. After all that he still thinks I would just tell on him. I can’t believe it. I’m sitting here in detention, looking straight at him, my heart is pounding and I just want to scream at him: Murphy, you clown, don’t you know  how I feel about you, don’t you know I would do/have done pretty much anything I could to help you out and you won’t even look at me. Well forget it. I can’t do any more.

5:56p.m.

Just walked straight home after detention. I didn’t want to even see Murphy. And I definitely didn’t want to hear him start talking about how I ratted him out. No way. I was so pleased to see Granny Nora at our house. I gave her a massive hug, which almost put her off her GTA. I’m beginning to worry that she is actually addicted to the game. Why Rory should have introduced a sixty-something woman to Grand Theft Auto I’ll never know.I have noticed he’s not so keen to play her now since she’s started beating him.

As soon as I released her from the big hug she crashed the car on purpose. She must have really wanted to talk to me, because she really hates to crash. She kept asking about dance practise, it was really hard to answer because it doesn’t really matter to me any more. I kept getting the feeling that she wanted to talk about something else, you know, how adults sometimes get when they won’t say what’s on their mind.

She said Aunty Stell isn’t going to tell Mum about the party, or non-party, more like. Granny Nora says it’s OK sometimes to have secrets. But then she also said it’s neve OK to not be honest with yourself. Which has been making me think, have I been honest with myself?

6:15p.m.

Ice cream is the answer. I was in the kitchen trying to make myself the biggest, most comforting banana split sundae the world has ever seen. Which is as follows. Three bananas. Three slices of Neapolitan ice cream. Toffee sauce. Fudge sprinkles (we didn’t have any but I cut up some of Mum’s fudge into really tiny, tiny pieces and sprinkled those on top). Squirty cream (as much as you can get away with without actually finishing the can, so Mum can’t tell you off). More chopped bananas. For the particularly health conscious a big handful of chopped-up nuts. Finish off with melted chocolate sauce. And prepare to say Yu-hum.

It was quite hard to find somewhere to eat the mammoth ‘Aisling Goes Bananas’ Sundae what with Granny Nora on the PS in the sitting room, Rory doing his ‘day trading’ from the stairs (don’t ask – I have no idea) and Mum doing the ironing on the landing upstairs. Then I had a genius idea. The shed in the garden – at least there I can get peace and quiet. Surely, I thought, no one can be in the garden. I went into the garden and was halted by the wall of sound that was a humdinger of a ding-dong going on in the garden. In the red corner: Uncle Conor, and in the blue corner: Dad.

I guess they’d gone out there so they couldn’t be heard. Mistake number one, Dad and Uncle Conor. At that volume you could probably be heard by half of Dublin.

Conor was saying Dad can’t just come to Dublin and expect to be accepted by everyone. Yes, Uncle Conor, I SO know that that’s not the case. I think everyone in Ireland’s certainly made that clear to the returning branch of the Fitzsimons family. I heard my Dad saying it was his work that got the company going in the first place and now he’s getting no thanks for it. I think Dad means having to work like one of the lads. I think I really understand where Dad’s coming from. Nothing’s worked out like I thought it would since we moved to Dublin. All I’ve tried to do is the right thing for everyone and I’ve ended up pleasing no one. Something’s gotta change, but what?

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