Read Anytime Anywhere Easy Ebook Downloads at ebookmeta.

com

Snow Boys 1st Edition Simon Doyle

https://ebookmeta.com/product/snow-boys-1st-edition-simon-
doyle/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD EBOOK

Visit and Get More Ebook Downloads Instantly at https://ebookmeta.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Sofie s Boys 1st Edition Snow Jenika

https://ebookmeta.com/product/sofie-s-boys-1st-edition-snow-jenika/

ebookmeta.com

Pretty Cruel Boys Kings of McKenzie High 1 1st Edition

Layla Simon

https://ebookmeta.com/product/pretty-cruel-boys-kings-of-mckenzie-
high-1-1st-edition-layla-simon-2/

ebookmeta.com

Pretty Savage Boys (Kings of McKenzie High #3) 1st Edition

Layla Simon

https://ebookmeta.com/product/pretty-savage-boys-kings-of-mckenzie-
high-3-1st-edition-layla-simon/

ebookmeta.com

Practical Doomsday A User s Guide to the End of the World

1st Edition Michal Zalewski

https://ebookmeta.com/product/practical-doomsday-a-user-s-guide-to-
the-end-of-the-world-1st-edition-michal-zalewski/

ebookmeta.com
Machine Learning Simplified A Gentle Introduction to
Supervised Learning Andrew Wolf

https://ebookmeta.com/product/machine-learning-simplified-a-gentle-
introduction-to-supervised-learning-andrew-wolf/

ebookmeta.com

Terrible Maps Hilarious Maps for a Ridiculous World

Michael Howe

https://ebookmeta.com/product/terrible-maps-hilarious-maps-for-a-
ridiculous-world-michael-howe/

ebookmeta.com

Iran Islam and Democracy 1st Edition Ali M Ansari

https://ebookmeta.com/product/iran-islam-and-democracy-1st-edition-
ali-m-ansari/

ebookmeta.com

The Heart of Physics Grade XII 1st Edition M.N. Singh

M.Sc. (Binil Aryal Ph.D. Ed.)

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-heart-of-physics-grade-xii-1st-
edition-m-n-singh-m-sc-binil-aryal-ph-d-ed/

ebookmeta.com

Primary and Repeat Arterial Reconstructions Sachinder

Singh Hans Mitchell R Weaver Timothy J Nypaver Eds

https://ebookmeta.com/product/primary-and-repeat-arterial-
reconstructions-sachinder-singh-hans-mitchell-r-weaver-timothy-j-
nypaver-eds-2/
ebookmeta.com
Gentile Bellini s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II Lives and
Afterlives of an Iconic Image Rodini Elizabeth

https://ebookmeta.com/product/gentile-bellini-s-portrait-of-sultan-
mehmed-ii-lives-and-afterlives-of-an-iconic-image-rodini-elizabeth/

ebookmeta.com
Snow Boys

Simon Doyle

SD Press
 SD Press

A division of Nightsgale Books

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Copyright © Simon Doyle, 2023

The right of Simon Doyle to be identified as the author of this Work

has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved

First published in 2023 by SD Press, a division of Nightsgale Books,

Suite 97320, PO Box 26965, Glasgow, G1 9BW

Paperback ISBN 978 1 9163838 6 9

Hardcover ISBN 978 1 9163838 5 2

This publication may not be used, reproduced, stored or transmitted

in any way, in whole or in part, without the express written
permission of the author. Nor may it be otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it has been
published and without a similar condition imposed on subsequent
users or purchasers
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any similarity to
real persons, alive or dead, is coincidental

Cover layout by SD Press

Cover art by Wu Lei / B.B.E.

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British

Library and the Library of Trinity College Dublin
Contents

Dedication

1.DEAN

2.BEN

3.DEAN

4.BEN

5.DEAN

6.BEN

7.DEAN

8.BEN

9.DEAN

10.BEN

11.DEAN
12.BEN

13.DEAN

14.BEN

15.DEAN

16.BEN

17.DEAN

18.BEN

19.DEAN

20.BEN

21.DEAN

22.BEN

23.DEAN

24.BEN

25.DEAN
26.BEN

27.DEAN

28.BEN

29.DEAN

30.BEN

31.DEAN

32.BEN

33.DEAN

34.BEN

35.DEAN

36.BEN

37.DEAN

38.BEN
39.DEAN

About the Author

Also By Simon Doyle

 For all the geeks who dared to dream.

And for all my American readers who put up with my British-English

spellings.
 Chapter 1
DEAN
Ireland has only two seasons. Winter and not-winter.

The difference between the two is about six degrees Celsius. Which
isn’t a lot. But it makes all the difference when I’m trying to decide
which coat to wear to school today. Mum used to say, “It only rained
twice this week. First for three days, then for four days.”

It was true. Since mid-September, the rain hadn’t stopped. I was

sick of arriving at school looking like a wrung-out sponge. My hair,
which you could politely call dirty-blond, would turn to ocean-brown
when it got wet, and it clung to my forehead in clumps and dripped
rainwater onto my black-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down my
nose.

This morning, the rain was at a level eight on a scale of T-shirt to

Noah’s Ark. The trees on the street outside were bending under the
weight of the storm, and the bus stop was at the end of the block. I
put on my heavy parka that zipped up from mid-thigh to throat and
pulled the fur-lined hood over my head.

“Breakfast,” Mum said when I came downstairs. She was standing at

the hallway mirror, tying her hair into a knot at the back of her head.
She was lucky. She just had to get as far as the car in the driveway.

“I’ll be late.”

“Then take an apple, Dean. You need to stop eating your lunch on
the bus.”

“I eat it on the bus because it’s too tasty to wait until lunchtime,” I
smiled.
“Remind me to give you oatmeal and water tomorrow.”

“Yum.”

I opened the front door and held it against the invasive push of the
wind. November was that time between crisp leaves and the thick,
burnt skies of winter.

By the time I got to the bus stop, you could have mistaken me for a
skinned squirrel. My parka glistened like violet flesh and the faux fur
around the hood had wilted into knots.

Huddled with Ashley under a very pink umbrella, Tony pointed and
laughed. I met them the day we moved to Paskill, Cork last year.
They’d been sitting on the wall at the end of the street watching as
we hauled boxes in from the back of a moving van.

“Welcome to Roadkill,” Ashley said when, in a moment of unusual

bravery, I waved at them. I wasn’t brave around people very often.
It hadn’t been raining that day. It was not-winter. T-shirt weather.

“Population: four jocks, one emo, two geeks and—where do you fall
on the social spectrum?” Tony said.

“I don’t fit on the social spectrum.”

Ashley and Tony looked at each other and then, as one, said, “Join
the club.”

So Paskill Roadkill, Cork now had a population of four jocks, one

emo, two geeks and three misfits.

Mum invited them in for pizza that day, knowing I never would. I
told you I wasn’t very brave, right? And although I still felt out of
place and out of sorts, at least I now had two friends to be out of
sorts with.
The wind caught Ashley’s umbrella and one of the spokes rapped
Tony on the head. “Karma,” I said, pulling my hood tighter around
my face against the icy rain. We stepped back from the edge of the
path as a passing car sprayed puddle water into the air.

The bus was warm and damp when it arrived, and Tony and Ashley
played Tic Tac Toe in the window fog. They weren’t a couple. Tony
said he was aroflux and Ashley refused to identify herself with any
preference. “We should put all labels in a box and burn it,” she said a
few weeks after we met.

“But without labels,” I said, “how am I going to know who’s gay?”

Here’s the thing. I’d come out to them during study group only
because Tony was quite vocal about being aromantic. Sexuality
didn’t seem to matter to them.

Ashley snorted. “They’re called dating apps.”

They made coming out seem like no big deal, even though it was. I
knew I was gay since I was eleven, but I could never say it out loud.
Saying it made it real, and the reality was that being gay in a small
town in the extreme southern butt of Ireland was a terrifying and
lonely prospect. Being fifteen had its own woes; there was no need
to add to that with a special brand of queerness. And I wasn’t sure
how my parents would take the news.

But Tony’s outspoken manner and Ashley’s righteous condemnation

for all forms of categorisation from sexuality to breakfast cereals
(“There’s no such thing as kids’ cereal. Calling it that won’t stop
adults from eating that chocolatey goodness.”) gave me the strength
to label myself before anyone else could, if only to my closest
friends. I pulled them into the closet with me and they helped me
keep my secret. It was better that way.

As the bus pulled into the school grounds and a sheet of lightning
brightened the dark November morning, Ashley asked to copy Tony’s
homework for one of the few classes they shared, and then she
kissed us both on the cheek before saying, “See you at study group
later?” Her class rotation differed from ours and her lunch break was
thirty minutes after mine and Tony’s so we only shared fifteen
minutes together. Which was hardly enough time to catch up on all
of Tony’s gossip. Tony had a lot of gossip.

We slouched off to class, glad to be out of the storm but suffering

the ill effects of a sweaty bus ride. Tony’s shoes squelched as he
walked down the corridor and one of the younger kids laughed until
he scowled at him. Tony didn’t care about anything. That’s one of
the things that drew me to them. Tony was so upbeat he could turn
the end of the world into a good day. Ashley wouldn’t call it the end
of the world, of course—that would be labelling it—but she, too,
would put a positive spin on it. “No more trig.” Maths was her
Achilles’ heel. “Maths can go screw itself with a sharpened pencil,”
she said, more than once.

I didn’t know what she found so difficult about maths. It was

structured. It was ordered. You knew where you were with maths.
Unlike English or philosophy where there was no right answer, maths
had your back. It said: this is the correct answer, and it cannot be
changed. You do not mess with Pythagoras.

Maths was linear, just like I considered my brain to be. One follows
two follows three, and it was never out of sequence. The world
could crumble to ash but as long as one plus one equalled two, I
would survive.

Catch a load of this prodigy, sitting at the front of maths class trying
to explain constancy to the teacher who either didn’t understand
how my mind worked or didn’t understand maths. When I was ten,
my maths teacher marked an answer wrong on a paper despite it
being correct.

“You worked it out wrong.”

“I still got it right. My working-out is correct.”

“But it’s not the way it should be done.”

I took a piece of chalk and recreated the sum on the board,

explaining my reasoning, and how I arrived at the answer, but the
teacher was unmoved.

“That’s not the way I taught you.”

“But my way is faster. And more accurate.”

“You got nineteen out of twenty, Dean. You still got an A.”

“But my answer is correct.”

“Do you want me to give you twenty out of twenty?”

“No, sir,” I had said, pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose

with a chalk-coated knuckle. “I want you to accept that my
reasoning is correct.”

“I didn’t teach it that way.”

But that wasn’t the point. I let it go. After that, I tried to conform my
mathematical reasoning to the school curriculum, even though I
knew they had an immature understanding of mathematics.

Numbers might be constant, but teachers weren’t.

Another constant was school society. Tony and Ashley hadn’t been
kidding when they said Paskill had a population of jocks, emos and
geeks. It didn’t matter what class I was in. I could see the clear
division of the pecking order from day one. Sports jocks ruled the
stratosphere. You could tell them from the thickness of their thighs
and their brains. They said stuff that made me feel smarter just by
being around them.

There was one exception. Ben Hunter.

Ben was the tallest boy in class. He was already sixteen. He played
on the school rugby and basketball teams, and he played football on
the grass behind the cafeteria at lunchtime even though Clannloch
Community School didn’t have a football team. Schools in Ireland
were either rugby schools or footie schools. They couldn’t be both. I
was sure that was a rule written down by Douglas Hyde, the first
president of Ireland. It made total sense.

But Ben Hunter could string a sentence together, and his knuckles
didn’t graze the dirty tiled floors of the school corridors when he
walked. Not that I had ever had much of a conversation with him.
Misfits don’t mix well with jocks. You’d sooner put a cat in doggie
daycare and expect better results.

Ben was the envy of every kid in school. His girlfriend, Erin, was his
most ardent supporter. She sat on the sidelines of every game with
homemade placards and foam fingers. And rumour had it that she
was taking the pill. As if that was anything to boast about. Ireland
didn’t really have cheerleaders the way American high school movies
did, but Erin McNally was Ben Hunter’s one-person cheer team.

Gimme a B.

Gimme a break.

Ben sat at the back of the class with the other jocks, except in
History where he sat up front. The history teacher was also the
basketball coach. History was my second favourite class, so I put
myself in the front row between Alex Janey and Ben Hunter. Not
because Ben made me feel faint, even though he did, but if I wasn’t
in the front row, the teacher wouldn’t look at me. When talk of
three-pointers got out of hand, I tried my best to bring the
conversation back to the Irish civil war or the potato famine.

Alex Janey said, “Did your spuds bounce back inside your body when
they dropped?”
And Ben snickered.

And the teacher said, “Talking about bouncing balls, Janey, you need
to watch your dribbling. You can’t get caught out against West
Meath next week.”

Alex Janey’s face went red. And I looked back at my textbook

instead of anywhere else.

At the end of the day, when the downpour had been reduced to a
level five—not quite wetsuit weather but waders are advised—I
slinked out of class with the final bell and waited by the exit for my
friends. Study group wasn’t a real thing. It meant we could go to
Grainger’s Coffee Stop on Main Street and enjoy some time together
before we had to go home. At the start of our transition year, when
Ashley took different classes, it was her way of keeping the gang
together. Transition year in Ireland is where you start to study fewer
academic classes and transition into life. Like what we’d already
been studying was useless?

Our order was always the same. Caramel macchiato for her, chai
frappe for Tony, and a flat white for me to match my extraordinary
personality. I’d occasionally add a sugar packet just to spice things
up.

Today, listening to Tony talk about food technology class as if making

flan was the greatest thing ever, my thoughts turned to Christmas. It
was just over a month away and Mum was already talking about
booking a restaurant for Christmas dinner instead of cooking it
herself. She said that every year, but we never did. I figured it was
just something she said that got her through the trauma of the run-
up to Christmas.

“Secret Santa’s coming up soon,” Ashley said.

“Are we actually doing that? I thought Mr Dobbins was just joking.”

“Dobbins doesn’t joke about Secret Santa,” Tony said. “I heard if you
don’t participate, you flunk English.”

“There’s a five-Euro limit,” Ashley said. “It’s not like it’s going to
break you.”

“What do you buy for some random jock that you know nothing
about?” I asked.

“Who cares? Buy them a chew toy. Nobody’s going to know who it
came from. That’s why it’s called Secret Santa.”

“But the point of Secret Santa is for everyone to guess who bought
what. And I don’t want to be associated with that kind of
aggression.”

“You’re just scared of getting involved with your classmates,” Ashley

said. She curled her finger in her empty glass to pick up some of the
macchiato residue. “I don’t know what you’re so scared of. Maybe
you’ll buy a gift for some boy, and he’ll fall in love with you. Maybe
Secret Santa is your origin story.”

“My origin story?”

“Every hero has one,” Tony said. “Spider-Man got bitten by a spider.
Batman had a healthy bank balance and dead parents.”

“Spoiler alert,” Ashley said. “But he’s right. Maybe Secret Santa is
yours. This town isn’t that small. Someone out there must want a
nerdy maths kid with glasses that are too big for his face and a smile
that could melt butter.”

I pushed my glasses back up my nose and said, “Piss off.”

But I laughed. Despite myself.

It wasn’t likely.
When our drinks were empty, I refused the offer of a lift from
Ashley’s older sister who worked at the coffee shop and said I’d walk
home alone. Sometimes I just needed the space. The rain had been
reduced to a light drizzle.

The sun went down around four-thirty this late in the year and the
streetlights glowed bright white in the rippling puddles. I slouched
through the streets with my hood up and stopped for a while to
watch the workmen put up the town’s Christmas lights. They weren’t
lit; strings of dead bulbs blotting the black night. Men with hard hats
erecting pre-Christmas joy.

The beep-beep of a vehicle reversing.

The flashing colours of Happy Christmas signs in shop windows.

Christmas, for most people, meant togetherness. For me, it meant

being alone. Sure, I’d spend it with my parents. But I’d watch them
kiss under the mistletoe and lie on the couch as they watched
romantic Christmas movies where the boy always gets the girl, and
I’d understand how empty my life was.

I’d be alone this Christmas, just like every Christmas before.

I had no need for mistletoe.

And mistletoe knew it.

 Chapter 2
BEN
When I closed my bedroom door to blot out the sound of my warring
parents, I punched the wall and threw myself on the bed. The sting
in my knuckles wasn’t strong enough to take away the darkness in
my chest that burned hot and bright.

It never was.

I stared up at the hairline fracture on the ceiling that travelled across

the yellowing plaster. The glow-in-the-dark stars I’d put there as a
child no longer glowed in the dark. At night, with the light out and
the curtains drawn, the ceiling was a void where once there was a
galaxy of opportunity.

Downstairs, Mum raised her voice and Dad was crying again, his
words muffled by closed doors and angry tears. There’d be an empty
brandy bottle on the kitchen table. Brandy always made him bawl.

In the morning, the bottle would be stowed under the sink, or in a

cardboard box in the garage, waiting to go out on the garden wall
with the recycling beside a dozen other bottles, looking like it
belonged there.

And if one should accidentally fall…

I rolled over and grabbed my earbuds. I put on some death metal. It

wasn’t something I normally listened to, but when Mum and Dad
were going at it, it was the only thing that drowned them out.
Screaming overcomes screaming.

I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a normal evening at

home. Dad was coming back from work later every day. Mum spent
longer at the salon where she worked front-of-house, claiming she
had to sweep up a bazillion strands of hair because the cleaner quit
and nobody else would do it.

And three times a week, there’d be forty Euros on the kitchen

counter, trapped under the rusted coffee canister, and a note that
said some variation of working late. Won’t be home before nine.
Order pizza. Kill your father and don’t tell me where you buried his
body.

Dad bumped into things even when he wasn’t drunk. It’s like he just
wasn’t looking where he was going half the time. “Who put that
there?” he’d say, tripping over the shoes he’d discarded twenty
minutes before, angry at an inanimate object. Or he’d curse with
vehemence when his toe found the sharp corner of the coffee table.
It seemed like my very name became a swear word along with the
others. “For God’s sake, Ben,” and, “Dammit all to hell, Ben.”

“Where’s my keys?” Dad would say, with his keys in his hand.

“Dad’s going insane,” I told Mum a few months ago.

“He’s always been like that,” she said, stubbing her cigarette out on
the glass ashtray she stole from work and lighting a new one. “He
tripped coming up the aisle and your granddad and the priest had to
help him into a chair for a few minutes before the wedding could go
ahead.”

She laughed, but it was her tired laugh. Like she was sick of
explaining away her husband’s awkwardness.

“Your Nana, God rest her, she took one look at him and said, ‘Are
you sure you want to marry such a klutz?’”

Downstairs, something smashed. I heard it over the screeching in

my ears from the music that I didn’t want to listen to but had no
other choice.
When my phone lit up, I was half relieved to have someone to talk
to and half annoyed at the interruption.

errrinx

I have to use petrecor in a sentence and I don’t remember what it

means.

That was Erin. Not only did she not know the meaning of the word,
she couldn’t spell it either.

I paused the music, listening to the air outside the bedroom door.
There was silence. For a change.

benhuntss07

It’s petrichor. It’s the earthy smell after rain.

errrinx

You’re a genius. You know everything.

I didn’t know everything, but Erin never listened when I told her
that. I didn’t know how planes stayed in the air without falling out of
the sky.

Or how people worked.

Erin McNally had been my best friend since we were thrown together
in primary school. She stood behind me in the queue to use the
teacher’s desk-mounted pencil sharpener and said, “I like your hair.”
I’d dressed as the Hulk the day before for a kid’s birthday party—I
can’t remember who anymore—and there was still some green
washout dye in patches behind my ears.

We never dated. That’d be like dating your sister. But no one

believed me when I said we were just friends. In the early days,
before puberty added a couple of feet to my height and a couple of
airbags under her shirt, our parents let us have sleepovers as though
it was the most natural thing. And it was. We played dress-up and
Cops & Robbers. We slept top-to-toe in the same bed, and all the
grownups said how cute it was.

But it wasn’t like that. I liked boys. I always have.

I came out to my parents once, when I was fourteen. “I think I’m

into boys.”

Dad narrowed his eyes and Mum said, “No you’re not.”

“I’m serious.”

They didn’t buy it.

“Don’t let Erin hear you joking like that.”

The living room had been fogged by a cloud of cigarette smoke and
the nail polish on Mum’s toenails was chipped as she stretched her
legs out on the couch. Dad was on his knees in front of the coffee
table, trying to pour sambuca shots without spilling it everywhere.
Which he did anyway. Days like those were a million years ago now.

They were okay, when they weren’t arguing. Years ago, I might
come downstairs for a late-night snack, and they’d be lying on the
couch together watching an old Adam Sandler movie and whispering
with quiet smiles lighting up their faces and hands caressing each
other.
These days, if they weren’t arguing, they weren’t in the same room.

The silence below stretched out. One of them, probably Dad, will
have gone for a walk to cool down. I’d hear him come home again
sometime during the night. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and
got undressed.

It was raining outside but my room was cloyingly warm for mid-
November. I slipped out of my boxers and thought about one of the
boys from school.

But Erin texted again; the one friend who could bypass my Do Not
Disturb. I really should change that. I glanced at the partial message
on the lockscreen. Gemma Ademola is having a party next weekend
and she wants to…

I flipped the phone over, leaving her unread, and tried to sleep in
the lingering, oppressive heat of my parents’ anger under the
simpering darkness of my bedroom.

The silence in my room was swollen and bruised. Even the relentless
rain had stopped battering the windowpane. Mum’s weeping came to
me like a snake from the gap under the door, sharp tongue touching
my cooling skin. I pulled the quilt over my legs.

Dad came home after two in the morning.

There was no more crying.

When my alarm woke me, my eyes were glued together. Sleep

wasn’t coming easy anymore. Not for months. I showered and
skipped breakfast when Dad said he had to get to the office early.
The car ride was punctuated by the rattle of the exhaust that
needed to be repaired and when Dad pulled up at the school gates,
I said, “See you,” and Dad nodded. We were at that awkward stage
now.
I got out of the car. And when I did, I turned my back on him and
dragged a smile over my face.

Smiling was easy. It said, I’m good. Go on, ask me how I am. I’ll tell
you I’m perfect, thanks, and how are you?

I pulled the hood over my head. I saw Dean O’Donnell going

through the front doors with his friends, but I didn’t wave. We didn’t
have anything in common except our class schedule.

And then Erin waved.

I cracked my smile wider to show how ordinarily fine I was.

I’d come out to Erin two years ago, too. The day after I’d told my
parents.

“You’re not gay,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Because you love Ariana Grande, and you play rugby.”

As if the two were mutually exclusive. “Gay guys don’t like music or
sport?”

“Maybe you’re bi.”

“I’m not bi.”

“Gemma Ademola’s brother was in a knife fight last night,” Erin said.

I didn’t know if that connected to my coming out or if she was just

changing the subject. “Is Gemma Ademola’s brother gay?”

“He was nearly killed,” she said.

I understood why my parents didn’t want to believe me. They
wanted grandchildren. They weren’t homophobic, as far as I could
tell, although we’d never openly spoken about the subject. Why Erin
didn’t believe me, I wasn’t sure.

I sat at the back of maths class between Erin and Alex Janey and
stared at the back of Dean O’Donnell’s head. Dean moved to
Clannloch Community School last spring, a short, reedy boy with thin
lips and a straight nose. The opposite of me. I was tall and my nose
had been broken twice from playing rugby. We spoke once,
sometime during Dean’s first week in school.

I was standing behind him in the lunch queue and accidentally

nudged him with my tray. The sharp scowl that Dean threw me over
his shoulder made me laugh.

And blush a little.

“What?” Dean said.

“What?”

“What’re you laughing at?”

I shrugged and stopped laughing. His cute face tied my tongue.

“Where are you from?”

“Blarney.”

“Where the stone is?”

Dean’s lips flattened further. “It’s famous for more than just the
Blarney Stone.”

“Is it?”

“It’s even got a McDonald’s.”

“You’re in the big smoke now, Dean.” I liked saying his name. Dean.
It sounded like a dimple. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

Dean said, “Just watch where you’re putting your tray, Ben.”

And I wasn’t even mad. I couldn’t be. I wanted to pick Dean up and
squeeze him tight.

Since then, that was the longest we’d ever spoken. These days, we
barely acknowledged each other in the school halls. I was almost
certain that Tony and Ashley, Dean’s friends, had warned him against
talking to the sports kids.

When the bell went at the end of class, I realised I’d been staring at
the back of Dean’s head the whole time. I liked the little tails of hair
that curled there, like fingers that touched Dean’s pale skin the way
I longed to.

But if nobody believed I was gay, I’d never get to touch a man.

In the hall between classes, I chatted to Alex Janey and a few other
boys from the basketball team, but I wasn’t paying attention to their
words. I yawned, wondering if I could duck into the space under the
assembly stage and grab some sleep, and when I went to the men’s
room to splash water on my face, Dean was standing at one of the
urinals.

I wanted to turn around and leave, but my brain froze. I went to the
row of sinks and ran the cold water. Dean didn’t look over.

When he stood beside me to wash his hands, I gave him a small nod
and he twisted his lips into what was probably a perfunctory smile,
joyless and brief, macabre in the warped mirror. I held my hands
under the freezing water as Dean warmed his fingers under the
spitting air of the weak hand dryer. And when he was gone, I
splashed water on my face and kept my eyes closed, pressing my
knuckles into my eyes. The cold water woke me up, but my brain
was still too noisy. One of these days, I’d get a full night’s sleep and
feel almost human in the morning.

And starting the week in maths class didn’t help. Alex Janey said
maths was invented by the devil to torment mankind.

By the time I got home, Mum and Dad were still out. The note in the
kitchen said, Get pizza. I’ll be back before nine.

I texted Erin who was there within twenty minutes. She came with
vodka and her homework.

We took the pizza up to my room and drank the vodka straight from
the bottle. The sting of it was as weak as my knuckles had been on
the wall, but at least it dulled my brain. I had no intention of ending
up like my parents, but a few sips might help me sleep.

I pulled out my textbooks and Erin leaned across them for another
slice. A string of coagulating cheese died between the pages of Irish
civil history.

I closed the book. “What’s the point?”

“The point of what?”

“Anything,” I said. “School,” I added.

She nudged my thigh with her foot. “Because you’re clever, Ben. And
one day you’ll get the hell out of Cork.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere you want.”

“Anywhere is a lonely place,” I said, and I wasn’t exactly sure what I

meant.

“When are you ever lonely?”

I looked at her narrow face and false lashes. “Do you even know
me, Erin?”

“Are your parents still getting you down? You should talk to them.”

“Yeah. ‘Hey, Mum, Dad—cool it with the fighting, you’re pissing me

off.’”

“Exactly,” Erin said.

I took another swig from the bottle and held it out to her.

“Talk to them,” she said. “It’s not good, all those raised voices and
broken promises. I don’t know how you’re even managing to stay
focused at school.”

“I’m not.”

She passed the bottle back. “Anywhere is looking far more appealing
now, isn’t it?”

I screwed the cap back on the bottle and kicked it under the bed out
of the way. I was feeling a slight buzz and didn’t want it to get any
worse. I had practice in the morning.

“I can’t even ask someone out on a date. What makes you think I’m
brave enough to get out of Cork?”

Erin wrapped her arms around one of the pillows and yawned. “You
can have anyone you want. You just have to believe.”

I had to nudge her awake ten minutes later.

When I crawled into bed that night, Mum and Dad were at it again.

I could hear their bitter words downstairs.

And the ceiling above my head was still dark.

 Chapter 3
DEAN
I stared at the blank lines on the sheet of paper tacked up outside
the Music room. I wasn’t in a band or a music group. I wasn’t even
sure if I could sing outside of my bedroom with earbuds in and my
mind oblivious to the outside world. But I wasn’t participating in any
extracurriculars this year and Mum had been on my case since the
start of term. “Learn the flute for all I care, just do something. It’ll
be good for you.”

“I don’t like the flute.”

Mum had leaned into me on the couch and pressed her lips against
my temple, pushing my glasses aside the way she always does. “So
learn Latin or play chess.”

I pulled away from her. “Why do you automatically go to the geeky

subjects? What about rugby or woodwork?”

“Do you want to play rugby?”

“That’s not the point. You shouldn’t go around assuming I’m a geek.”

She poked my skinny ribs through my thick hoodie. “Why don’t you
teach maths to other kids? That’ll be fun.”

“You do know the meaning of the word fun, don’t you?”

“Fine. But it’d be worthwhile. And it’d look great on your record.”

Teaching algebra to thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds wasn’t what I’d

consider fun or worthwhile. I understood maths, but I didn’t think I’d
be able to explain it to anyone else.
And now the sheet outside the music room said, Your School Choir
Needs You.

The city hall was to play host to a number of school choirs on

Christmas Eve in aid of the Irish Red Cross.

Christmas Eve. As if I wouldn’t have anything better to do with my

free time.

That was a lie. I’d be home alone on Christmas Eve while other kids
went to parties and got drunk and threw up and made out. In that
order.

I looked up at the sheet of paper again. There were four names on

it. The empty lines below the scrawled signatures were both
promises and threats, spaces where I could exist or not. If only I
could make the choice.

A pen had been Sellotaped to a piece of string that was tacked in

place beside the sheet. Your School Choir Needs You.

I was about to reach for the pen when I felt a nudge at my back.

“Can you even sing?” Ashley asked.

I turned, embarrassed. Tony studied the sign-up sheet like a myopic

mole, his finger tracing the names that had been scratched there.
“Is that Gemma Ademola’s name?”

Ashley said, “I’ve heard her sing. She’s good. When’s the audition?”

“It’s not a strict audition,” I told her. “They’re having a group session
where everyone sings together, and I guess they’ll pick whoever
sounds decent. It’s not like you have to stand in front of judges and
hope you don’t die on stage.”

“Can you even sing?” Ashley asked again.

I shrugged. I thought I could. But people only hear what they want
to. And I wasn’t about to ask them for their opinion. “Mum wants me
to do some after-school club. Just to get me out of the house longer,
I guess. But I’m probably not going to do it, anyway. I’m not good
enough.”

“Too late,” Tony said.

I heard the pen clatter against the wall. Tony had written my name
in capital letters on the sheet, with a five-sided star at either end.

“Shit, man, cross it out. I’m not getting up there to sing in front of
anybody.”

“Why not? I’ve done you a favour. You’d have kicked yourself if you
passed it up.”

I reached for the dangling pen, but Ashley grabbed it before me.
“When’s the audition?”

“Tomorrow.”

“So sleep on it. When you get to school tomorrow, if you’ve changed
your mind, you can take your name off the list.”

I shook my head. “It was a stupid idea. I don’t have the balls to sing
in public.”

“Maybe they’ll descend between now and tomorrow.”

“I hate you two.”

Tony smiled. “We know.”

Friends are just enemies that you trust.

I could feel the scratch of my name on the sign-up sheet like it had
been carved into my throat. Part of me wanted to slip out of class
and cross out my embarrassment, but it would make Mum happy
that I was even trying out, and it would show willingness at school,
something my teachers were already saying I lacked.

I didn’t really lack willingness. I was willing to be alone, to go

through life without taking risks. I was willing to hide. Hiding was
better than participating. When you participate, there’s a risk of
failure. Failure that can be avoided when you keep your mouth shut
and say nothing.

Maybe I could hide in the back row of the choir.

Thick raindrops performed a dance routine on the windows while our

English teacher droned on about William Golding. I wasn’t sure the
rain would ever stop. At the back of the class, Alex Janey made a pig
noise in reference to Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and Ben Hunter
laughed.

“That’s enough,” Mr Dobbins said, “or I’ll exclude the pair of you
from Secret Santa this year.”

Their laughter continued behind their fists. Alex Janey had one of
those snickering laughs that made him sound like a cartoon
character, and the more he snorted, the more Ben’s face went
purple.

Mr Dobbins wouldn’t exclude them from Secret Santa. From what I

could tell, it was obligatory.

By lunchtime, I’d forgotten about the choir and my big bold name
decorated with stars. And by the time I got home, the only thing I
could remember of the day was Ben Hunter’s face as he tried not to
laugh at whatever dumb thing Alex had done. Ben had one of those
faces that was square and blocky but symmetrical. A face to be
studied.
Maybe I should have joined the rugby team when I’d suggested it to
Mum. At least I’d get to see Ben Hunter in a pair of shorts. Or in the
shower block. Naked.

“What’re you doing?”

I looked up, guilty. I’d taken my schoolbooks out of my bag and put
them on the desk in my room but I hadn’t opened them. Mum was
standing in the doorway.

“You should knock.”

“I did,” Mum said. “Dinner’s ready.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.” I read the back of my chemistry textbook

just to take my mind off Ben Hunter’s naked body, covered in soap
suds in all the wrong places.

The next day, I tried not to think about the choir auditions after
school. I turned in my history paper, even though Coach spent most
of the class talking about basketball and Alex Janey and Ben Hunter
were playing table football with a balled-up piece of paper and their
fingers.

“You ready?” Ashley asked when the final bell sounded.

“No.”

“You’ll be fine. Do you want me to come with you?”

“To do what? Hold my hand?”

“Would it help?”

“Get out of here,” I said.

Outside the music room, I looked at the sheet. There were still only
five names on it. Mine and the four before me.
I could hear Mr Elliot inside, talking. The door was ajar, and
somebody was tinkering badly on the piano. Obviously not Mr Elliot.

I took a deep breath. And before I entered the room, I heard the
distinctive squeak of sports shoes on the polished floor.

Ben Hunter came down the corridor in his basketball uniform, yellow
and baggy, sweat on his face and neck and a basketball in his hands.

“Think fast,” he said, throwing the ball.

It bounced between us, and I caught it on its upward thrust. I

almost fumbled it. I passed it back, trying not to look at Ben’s legs.
Basketball shorts weren’t as tiny as rugby shorts.

Ben stowed the ball under his elbow and looked at the music room
door. “You’re in the choir?”

“It’s just an audition. For the Christmas thing.”

“I hear Gemma Ademola’s trying out for it.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s good.”

“I’ve heard.”

We both studied the sign-up sheet and I wished Tony hadn’t put
stars beside my name like I was some screaming bigshot.

Ben tapped the sheet with his finger. “Good luck.”

“You, too.”

“Me, too, what?”

I cleared my throat. “Your basketball game. Good luck.”

“It’s over. We won.”

I smiled. My words had run dry and I needed my voice for the
audition. I wanted a glass of water. I wanted to lick the sweat off
Ben Hunter’s neck.

Ben dribbled the ball up the corridor and I watched him go. He
wasn’t so much of a jerk when he was on his own. Before turning
the corner, he shot the ball against the far wall, caught it, cheered
for himself, and then he was gone.

Mr Elliot said, “Are you coming in?” He had the sign-up sheet in his
hand.

I nodded. My throat was tight.

Inside, Mr Elliot said, “All right. I was hoping for a better turnout,
but I guess this is it.” He looked at the sheet of paper. “Existing
choir, please take your places. Two rows. New people, just find a
spot between the others and try to blend in.”

I stood in the back row and took a song book when it was handed to
me.

“Let’s try something fun to begin with. Song one in your books is
Wake Me Up. I’m sure you all know it.”

I hadn’t been expecting Avicii. I thought I was trying out for some
Christmas carols, but I knew the song and as the music played from
Mr Elliot’s computer, I was able to sing along, if only with a reserved
voice.

The choir was good. Not amazing, but good.

Gemma Ademola, in the front row, was belting out the lyrics like she
was at the 3Arena in Dublin, and Mr Elliot stood at the back of the
room, listening. Halfway through the song, he stopped the music,
gave us instructions—some he told to sing a little quieter, some he
asked to speak up.

We started again.

It sounded better this time.

“Perfect. Let’s take it down a notch, shall we? I want to skip to song
three in your books.”

I checked the sheet. True Colors by Cyndi Lauper. I didn’t know it.

When the soft music issued out of the speakers, I tried to follow
along with the choir who had obviously practiced the song before.
They were singing too fast for me, and I had to just mouth the
words by the end.

“That was abysmal,” Mr Elliot said, but he was laughing. He sat at

the piano. “Can I have my newbies front and centre, please? Don’t
worry, I’m not going to ask you to perform on your own. Yet.”

I stood in front of the choir with the four other auditionees, forming
a third row. Gemma Ademola was the only one who radiated
confidence.

Mr Elliot said, “How many of you know music? For example, this,” he
played a note, “is a C. Can you hum it?”

We tried.

“And again.” He played the same note.

We hummed in unison this time.

“And again,” Mr Elliot said, but he played a different note.

We tried to hum the higher note.

“Well done,” Mr Elliot said. He had us hum a few more notes before
sending us back to join the choir.

This time, as we sang, he moved among us, listening. He moved

Gemma over to the left of the choir without stopping the song. Then
he took one of the others and moved him to the back row.

I tried to ignore him when he stood in front of me. I glanced down

at the music sheet and then trained my eyes on the far wall, singing
as much as I could before looking at the words again.

Mr Elliot nodded and moved on to one of the other auditionees. He

didn’t move me to another spot.

When the song was done, Mr Elliot told the existing choir to go
home, and he had the rest of us stand in a row. We practiced scales
for twenty minutes until I knew I’d be humming them in my sleep.

At the end, Mr Elliot said, “I was hoping to have to cut some of you
because I take great pleasure in tearing down the hopes and dreams
of impressionable students.” He paused, grinning. We didn’t laugh.
“Dean,” he said, holding up the sign-up sheet. “With two stars.”

“I didn’t write that.”

“You didn’t sign up?”

“I mean, I did, but I didn’t draw the stars.”

“I see,” Mr Elliot said. “Are you a countertenor?”

“Am I?” I shrugged. I didn’t know what a countertenor was.

“He’s very good,” one of the others said and I blushed.

“He is.” Mr Elliot sat behind his desk. “Welcome to the choir. We’ll be
practicing three times a week between now and Christmas Eve.”
One of the smaller guys said, “I have a dentist appointment on
Wednesday.”

“Anyone else?” the music teacher asked.

“That’d be a busy dentist’s room if we all went,” I said.

As we were leaving, Mr Elliot asked me to stay behind. When we

were alone, he opened the door wide—it was school policy—and
then he returned to the piano. “I don’t want you to feel shy or
embarrassed on your own, but can you follow along with these
notes?” He played three keys on the piano, and then another three
when I had hummed them.

“Okay,” he said.

When he didn’t say anything else, I asked, “Is that it?”

Mr Elliot nodded, a slow and pensive motion. He turned and wrote

something on a piece of paper. “I want you to learn these Christmas
carols as fast as you can. Can you do that?”

I studied the list. “I guess.”

“Don’t guess, Mr O’Donnell—do. I want you performing a solo on

Christmas Eve.”

I laughed. But Mr Elliot was serious.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. You just open your mouth and let the words come
out.”

“It’ll be vomit, that’s what’ll come out. Trust me.”

“Nonsense. You’ll be great. See you on Wednesday.”

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 Artillery Horses and Harness.
1. Ears; 2. Nape of the neck; 3. Forelock; 4. Foretop; 5. Eye-
pit; 6. Eyes; 7. Face; 8. Cheeks; 9. Nostrils; 10. Tip of nose;
11. Lips; 12. Chin; 13. Beard; 14. L’auge; 15. Nether jaw; 16.
Throat; 17. L’encolure; 18. Mane; 19. Withers; 20. Chest; 21.
Shoulders; 22. Arm; 23. Fore-arm; 24. Elbow; 25. Chesnut;
26. Knees; 27. Shank-bone; 28. Sinew; 29. Bullet; 30. Fetlock;
31. Pastern; 32. Coronet; 33. Hoof; 34. Fetlock of the hind
leg; 35. Heel; 36. Toe; 37. Back; 38. Loins; 39. Girths; 40.
Ribs; 41. Belly; 42. Flanks; 43. Sheath; 44. Croup; 45. Tail;
46. Rump; 47. Haunches; 48. Thighs; 49. Leg; 50. Stiffle; 51.
Hock; 52. Point of the hock.
1, Halter; 2, Crown-piece; 3, Cheek-strap; 4, Brow-band; 5, Nose-
band; 6, Chin-strap; 7, Throat-strap; 8, Throat-lash. Bridles,
composed of Head-stall, Curb-bit, and Reins. 9, Near Saddle; 10,
Girth; 11, Collar; 12, Hames; 13, Chin and Toggle; 14, Safes; 15,
Trace-tugs; 16, Trussing-straps; 17, Hame-strap; 18, Collar-strap;
19, Traces; 20, Front-trace chains; 21, Rear-trace chains; 22, Trace-
toggles; 23, Lion-strap, Crupper, including 24, Back-strap; 25, Body;
26, Dock. Breeching, including 27, Breech-strap; 28, Hip-strap; 29,
Breast-strap; 30, Sliding-loops; 31, Off Saddle; 32, Hook for Reins
and Valise-strap; 33, Valise, Coupling-rein, Whip, Leg-guard, and
Nose-bag.
Hoqueton.
Halberds.

Herse.
Fleur-de-lis.

Heuses.
Inescutcheon.

Pale.

Passant.
Patee.

Pheon.

Pile.
 Paly.

Party per Pale.

Pommé.
Quartered Arms.

Raguled.

Rampant.
Rampant gardant.

Rampant regardant.

Eagle recursant.
Regardant.

Respectant.

Roundel.
 Sable.

Salient.

Fanciful Variations of the Shield.

PLATE 11.
Lion statant.

Spread-eagle.

Saltier.
 Sejant.

Norman Shield.

Lozenge Shield.
Supporters.

Surmounted.

Tressure.
Sponge and Rammer.

Springhead Sponge.
Rammer.

Ladle.

Worm.
 Pass box.

Lifting Jacks.
Lifting-jack.
Jambes.
Jupon.
Lifting-jack.

Jack-boot.
Capstan or Prolonge Knot.

Javelins.

EYE SPLICE.

Mooring Knot.
 GROMMET.

NIPPER OR RACK LASHING.

MARLINSPIKE HITCH.

SHEEP SHANK.

TWO HALF HITCHES.

CLOVE HITCH.

BOWLINE.

Short Splice.
 Long Splice.

ROUND TURN AND TWO HALF HITCHES.

GRANNY.

SQUARE.

POINTING.
 BLACKWALL.
TIMBER HITCH.
ROLLING.
 CATSPAW.
FISHERMAN BEND.

HAWSER LAID ROPE.

 SHEET BEND.

CABLE LAID ROPE.

STRAP.

WHIPPING.

SERVICE.
WORKING.