chapter one! the new boy
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"Caoimhe, fecking hurry up,"
Aoife O'Malley moaned, banging her pale fist against the chipping wood of the bathroom door, loose strands of bright red hair escaping from beneath her deep green headband, that coincidentally matched her uniform.
"Don't take that attitude with your sister, Aoife!" the O'Malley mother, Eileen, called out from the kitchen, where she sat nursing her second cup of tea of the morning as she watched over her youngest child.
"We miss the bus and Da will have to drive us," Orin added, leaning against the wall behind his twin, running a hand through his matching red hair, that all of the O'Malley siblings apart from Conor had inherited.
Half an hour had passed since the twins had first begun their attempts to pry their younger sister, Caoimhe from the shared bathroom. All they had wanted to do was brush their teeth before they left for their respective school buses.
Usually, by this time the twins would have left the family's flat, and would either be at their Aunt Mary's meeting up with their cousins or buying sweets from 'Denis's wee shop'.
At the thought of the O'Malley patriarch driving them to school, and embarrassing Caoimhe on her first day the young redhead opened the bathroom door. An annoyed look covered the young girl's freckled face as she looked at her older siblings. Orla's old green uniform covering her body, it had annoyed Eileen to no end that Caoimhe was too tall to fit into Aoife's old skirt and blazer. Luckily for Eileen, her sister had kept both Erin and Orla's old uniforms to pass down to Caoimhe.
"Finally," Orin complained, glancing down at the new watch he'd been gifted for his birthday as he and Aoife burst into the bathroom to rapidly brush their teeth,
"We're too late to go to Auntie Mary's."
"Are you sure?" Eileen asked, balancing the smiley, four-year-old on her knee, "That's a shame, Granda wanted to see Caoimhe on her first day."
"It isn't our fault, it was Caoimhe screwing around," Aoife sighed, walking into the kitchen with her siblings and kissing her mother and Imogen's cheeks before moving to retrieve her shoes.
"Imogen must have kept her awake," Eileen sympathetically smiled, bouncing the toddler on her knee.
"We'll go see Granda on the way home, Ma," Orin promised, kissing her mother goodbye.
"Caoimhe, come on," Orin called as Aoife slung her backpack over her shoulders.
"I can't find my shoes," the middle O'Malley called, presumably from the bedroom she shared with Imogen.
The redheaded twins glanced between each other, before reluctantly moving to help search for Caoimhe's missing school shoes.
• • • • • • •
Due to Caoimhe's morning antics, the siblings had managed to miss their school buses, forcing them to have to beg their father for a lift to school. Seamus had been downstairs in the family-owned pub, fixing a loose stool leg when Aoife had strolled into the pub begging the man for a lift.
The O'Malley girls arrived at Our Lady Immaculate College moments before the start of the year assembly had started. Aoife spotted her friends in seconds, standing in front of Jenny Joyce.
"Morning," Aoife smiled, stopping beside the big-haired Michelle not noticing the newcomer who had latched onto their group.
"Good morning, Aoife," Jenny Joyce smiled brightly, her prefect badge shining on the lapel of her dark green blazer.
"Ach, Jenny, mull this over!" Michelle Mallon snapped, flipping the girl off, the sudden outburst causing Aoife to jump in her place.
Michelle wrapped her fingers around Aoife's wrist dragging her away from the prefect, leaving the rest of their friends frozen in their place.
"Jesus, Michelle,"
"Where's your headband?" Michelle asked before Aoife could ask her any questions about the outburst with Jenny Joyce.
"I flung it at Caoimhe," Aoife shrugged, moving into line for assembly.
"Fair," Michelle mumbled, shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her blazer as the bell echoed through the hall, summoning the remaining girls to file into lines.
The Joyce girl and her best friend stood on the stage beside a large, fake plant plot preaching to the first-year girls, "A new school can be a scary place."
"What was Jenny saying to you?" Aoife whispered to the Mallon girl on her left.
"We threatened some first-year on the bus," the dark-haired girl quickly explained, struggling to remove her eyes from the tragedy taking place on the stage.
"And the fella?" Aoife asked, gesturing towards the lanky boy, who had appeared at her side once they had been summoned to file into lines.
"But try and think of it this way. Right now, you're a little seed, and the school is like the soil, a safe and stable environment, within which you can grow,"
"Kathy's wee' un, James,"
"As in Kathy who went to England?" Aoife checked, remembering what Michelle had mentioned to her about her Auntie Kathy, "For the abortion, Kathy?"
"Mmh," Michelle nodded, the two girls glanced over at James who had stuck himself next to Aoife in the line.
"Wow, what a great way to look at it,"
"Thank you, girls. Some lovely sentiments there, some very beautiful words," Sister Michael announced, moving over to the microphone grumpily,
"Unfortunately, that's all they are, sentiments and words. What you've witnessed is a piece of fiction. The reality, I'm sorry to say is much harsher and far more brutal.
So, let me take this opportunity to advise all our new girls to keep their guard up, watch their back. Oh, speaking of new pupils, who need to watch their backs, I'd like to introduce James Maguire."
"Show yourself, James," Sister Michael commanded.
The Maguire boy nervously lifted his hand, all the girls snapping around to look at him, "James will be the first-ever boy to study here at Our Lady Immaculate College. He was due to start at Christian Brother Boys, but there were serious concerns for his safety because, well, unfortunately, James happens to be English, but let me make one thing clear,
I will not have a repeat of the Mr Mullin affair."
"Is that understood?" Sister Michael asked a grumble of acknowledgement heard back from the girls in the hall.
"What's the Mr Mullin affair?" James asked the short redhead beside him, who he had assumed to be Aoife.
"Student-teacher. Two fourth-years cable-tied him to the monkey bars and started dry riding him," Aoife explained, sweeping her loose red hair out of her eyes, and flashing the English boy a sympathetic smile.
"He was really good-looking, so you've got nothing to worry about," Michelle added, leaning across her best friend to insult her cousin once more.
"Let us pray,"