HAVING 13

8. At seventeen

MISSY
January 15th 2005

I woke up in Joey's room. This meant that either he already figured it out or he'd be wanting answers from me. I hoped for the latter, because then I could still make up a lie.

I was panicking, but I wouldn't make it known.

He was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed. I poked his head to see if he was awake, which he was surprisingly not.

"Joeyyy," I dragged on.

He sprung up immediately. "Huh?"

"Why am I here, doofus?" I sat up in the bed.

"Missy." His expression turned sour. "The real question is why the fuck I found you half-naked in the bathroom, covered in puke?"

"Well, the thing is," I started, trying to make up an excuse.

"No." He put a hand on his hip and ran the other across his face. "Don't you ever touch drugs again, you fucking hear me?"

Oh.

Oh?

He thought I ended up in my underwear on the bathroom floor because I'd been high.

As sad as it was, I could use this to my advantage.

I sighed, trying not to make it obvious I was just going along with it.

"Nod that you hear me," He demanded.

I nodded quickly, the guilt for lying seeping in. "Sorry for scaring you."

"Don't end up like me," He finished, walking out of the doorway with slouched shoulders.

This lie would hurt him, but at least I didn't have to tell the truth.

•

MISSY
January 16th 2005

Saturday passed by like lightning. I called in sick for work at the diner and Biddies for the weekend. Suddenly, it was Sunday and Da hadn't touched me since Friday.

Tomorrow, Shannon would go back to school and I would have my first day at Tommen. It would also be my birthday, January seventeenth, 1988; The cursed day I was born. I had forgotten all about it. I was turning seventeen.

I'd spent the last two birthdays with Tag instead of my siblings. I also missed two of their birthdays; Shannon and Joey's in 2003. Her fourteenth and Joey's seventeenth.

My own birthdays were unimportant to me either way. They were just one day in an entire year. The main things I remembered from my previous ages proved for an eventful life;

At ten, I drove a motorbike for the first time. I tried to use Darren's friend's, Caoimhe's, hair straightener and burned my hand. I kept a scar on my right hand to remember that. Caoimhe was now gone.

At eleven, I'd had my first whiskey on ice and also swore to never touch whiskey again.

At twelve, I stole a lipgloss from a corner store. Stealing gave me too much anxiety, so I put it back and never did it again.

At thirteen, I lost two hundred euros in a girl's car and she refused to admit she found and kept it.

At fourteen, I lost my virginity on Christmas while being too intoxicated to remember it.