Primperfect Read Free Page A

really indecisive about what he wanted from a relationship and bad at texting back. And not kissing other girls. But we never really defined exactly what we were, so I suppose it doesn’t really count as cheating. It felt like cheating, though. I was quite hurt. Anyway, even though Kevin isn’t gay I totally hi-jacked Joel’s crush and made it into my own on-again/off-again dramatic thing that I (admittedly) talked about a lot. Because I was thinking about it a lot. And Ciara kind of encourages that sort of boy-obsession. The analysis of texts and looks and tones of voice.
    So Joel felt kind of horrid about that, and sometimes I would kind of break up with Kevin, vowing never to kiss him on sofas, on dance-floors, in his parents’ kitchen or behind cinemas again because of that, but I kind of always ended up regretting it and getting back together. Or hooking up in Ciara’s parents’ walk-in wardrobe at her Sweet Sixteenth house party. We initially went in there to talk, but with Kevin it never really ends with talking. We say things and then there are pauses that we kiss each other to fill. I’m not even sure if we’re proper friends, not really. I kind of have always seen him as a kind of sex-object. (Not that we’re having sex.) First, he was Joel’s crush, and then he was my first kiss. Then he was my undefined-sort-of-boyfriend, and now he is my – ex? But somehow he has insinuated himself into our group of friends and now he is a part of the stuff we do. He’s still friends with Joel, at least a bit, so he helps me to find out what he (Joel) is up to. I miss just knowing. I miss being able to ask Joel myself.
    They’re always off doing things together, Karen and Joel. Probably talking about how much better friends they are than he and I could ever have been. They’ve been to gay bars in town together and everything. Karen knows how to get fake age cards. Karen knows how to get fake everything. I wish I hadn’t outed her during big break over the intercom, but I paid my dues and got suspended for a week for bullying, which is rich because she is always bringing up my dead mum and putting me and my friends down, like reminding Ciara about how she used to eat her own hair. Last year at this dance thing we all went to, she actually referred to the way Mum died as ‘squishing’. But that doesn’t count because it wasn’t on school premises and I’m white and straight and incapable of being hate-crimed, even if I wanted to be. Dad was

    with me and I know I was in the wrong and I did do the whole school-imposed apology thing that they made me write to her, but I didn’t mean it and I had my fingers crossed the whole time I was writing it, which meant it was all lies and nigh illegible. I did write a real one. But I don’t think sending it would sort things.
    LETTER TO KAREN draft 24 (UNSENT)

Sometimes I wish there were two of me so I could give myself a smather. Sometimes I wish Fintan and I had never met at all.
    Quote from Prim’s mum’s diary
    saw a dead badger on the road this morning on the way to school and it looked like it was sleeping. I have always loved the black and grey and white look of badgers. There’s something so sensible about how sturdy and stripy they are. I know they’re supposed to be vicious and everything, but because they look like an illustration from a beloved childhood book, I kind of associate them with benevolence and sensible countryside wisdom. Its forepaw was draped halfway across its belly, as though it was snuggling into the side of the road to get comfortable. It wasn’t, though. It was dead. I didn’t expect the sight of it to have such an effect on me. I actually felt like I had seen a dead unicorn or something. I never expected that badgers lurked in grassy bits of Dublin. An omen, Sorrel (Mum’s co-best friend, my sort of auntie) would call that.
    Mum’s diaries are