Ó Bun go Barr (Frerard)

An Tús

"Mr Way, stop right where you are"

Gearóid sighed and turned around, his black school shoes squeaking on the lino floor. At the end of the long corridor which was lined with tall battered lockers and noticeboards with sign up sheets for the hurling team was Ms Murphy, dressed in her usual tweed skirt and salmon coloured cardigan. Her beady eyes were like slits as she marched towards Gearóid, swinging her arms wildly. He rocked back and forth on his heels stared at the ground.

"Why are you not in class like you're supposed to be" Ms Murphy screeched as she halted to a stop in front of him. Gearóid tried to look nonchalant and too cool by shrugging his shoulders and looking absentmindedly at his shoes but the truth was he was scared stiff of this tiny old woman and looking at her directly would cause him to suffer from a severe attack of nerves and there was high chance of him fainting which would definitely not do anything for the sort-of rebel image he had worked so hard to attain. The good old 'Fake it till you make it' method had yet to let him down.

"Mother of God, what have you done to your school jumper" Ms Murphy roared as she suddenly pointed a withered finger towards his hand. Gearóid quickly shoved his fists deep into his pocket but it was no use hiding now, she'd already seen. "Mr Way, show me your sleeves right this instant or it's off to the principal's office with you". A pulsing vein had appeared right in the middle of her wrinkled forehead and when she only received another shrug as a response, Ms Murphy yanked one of Gearóid's hands from his pocket and pulled it right up close to her narrowed eyes.

"God Almighty, would you look at what you've done". Ms Murphy glared up at Gearóid who was pretending to be fascinated by a crumpled piece of paper on the shiny floor and was avoiding looking at the thumb holes he'd ripped into the sleeves of his tatty navy jumper earlier that morning.

Ms Murphy welled up with rage, raised to her full height of 5'1" and jabbed a finger towards the office at the principal's office. "Straight to Mr Burke right this second. Do you have no sense at all in that head of yours? Do you have no idea how much those jumpers cost? Money doesn't grow on trees, by God it doesn't". She waved her arms around madly like a windmill, gesticulating everything she said as the sleeves of her salmon cardigan flapped around her bony wrists. Gearóid nodded curtly to the old teacher and with his hands in the pockets of his slate grey school trousers, he tried to swagger off towards the office. Sadly he didn't really posses the necessary amount of badassness to pull off a swagger but he tried very hard anyways.

The corridors were empty of other students and as he walked past, Gearóid glanced through the glass panes of the classroom doors to see his fellow pupils hunched over their desks, writing god knows what modh coinníollach drivel into their Aisling copy books with chewed up Bic biros as the teachers drawled on and on in monotonous tones about how they'd need to know all this "for the leaving cert". Gearóid shuddered at the thought of that haunting sentence. The state exams were not until the summer yet the teachers acted like they were happening next week and that everyone's whole entire worth in life was based on whether or not they could regurgitate an Irish essay about 'My summer holidays in France'. 

It was all a waste of time to Gearóid. He spent most of his classes sitting in the back corner beside the window where he could daydream, doodle and look out the window at the dreary Irish countryside full of green fields and grey skies. He always did the classwork and homework for fear of getting a phonecall home to his mum but with the least amount of effort he could get away with, making him feel like a rebel.

And that's all Gearóid really wanted to be: a cool, tough as nails, don't give a shit bad boy. He wanted to wear leather jackets and play guitar and have piercings and tattoos and a motorbike and a girlfriend called Saskia who wore thigh high leather boots all the time and they'd drive off into the sunset blaring some heavy metal and smoke and give the finger to the world.
In reality Gearóid was a 17 year old boy whose only jacket was his navy school one with the crest blazoned on the front, a rickety old bike with broken gears that he'd found in the back of the garden shed, no tattoos or piercings, certainly no girlfriend and the only instrument that he could play was the tin whistle. If you count only being able to play 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' on that screechy whistle that's more like an instrument of torture than an instrument of music as being able to play.

As he passed the geography classroom, he saw his best friend Bairille staring blankly his copy book as he chewed on the end of his orange pencil. Gearóid smiled fondly. Bairille was not the brightest crayon in the box and most certainly not the prettiest one either. Small and squat with a round face and curly black hair, he more resembled a barrel more than a teenage boy. But he was loyal, funny and the only person in the whole school who could knit an entire scarf during one episode of Fair City. Bairille's one major flaw however was that he was totally romance crazy and if someone so much as smiled at him or held the door open for him, he immediately came to the conclusion that they had been flirting and that he and the person were destined to be together forever and ever and ever and EVER!!! Gearóid had never in his life met somebody who actually owned a notebook in which they planned out in great detail elaborate weddings for them and strangers - apart from Bairille. But hey, who else could he rely on to help him with his Home Economics homework?

Ms Murphy could still be heard screeching like a banshee at the top of her lungs so loudly that you'd swear she was trying to communicate with a bloody whale in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Gearóid decided to ditch the sort-of swagger and instead speed walk to Mr Burke's office to prevent his ears from bleeding. Not run through. He was too cool for running. And running was exercise which was something Gearóid avoided at all costs. He removed his hands from his pockets and walked as fast as he could down the corridor to the office door. He grabbed the handle and yanked the door open without knocking first and then quickly stepped inside. The last part of Ms Murphy's rant that he heard was "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, your mother isn't made of money for God's sake!" before he slammed the door shut behind him.

There was nobody else inside the small office room with its olive green walls and brown carpet. There was a large wooden desk in the corner covered in stacks of paper, empty mugs and chewed up pens and a computer chair sat behind. Two uncomfortable looking grey plastic chairs sat in front of the desk. Gearóid shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, unsure as to what he should do. On the one hand, he was glad to be out of class and anyway from Ms Murphy but on the other, this had to be the most depressing room he could imagine and just looking at the horrible colour combinations of the furniture and decorations made him feel ill. 

The door of the office suddenly swung open and Gearóid spun around to see Mr Burke stride into the room with somebody following behind him. Although he didn't know it then, Gearóid would come to know that somebody very well. He would come to trust, support and love that somebody more than anyone else in his life. That somebody was about to change Gearóid's world as he knew it. Forever.