Kit and Tully | Love or Music?

6 - Grunge Bands Rock

Saturday, July 199x

Saturday finally comes. Felice and I both look good leaving her house. I'm wearing the black lace top she got me under her old leather biker jacket and she's in her bright London gear. 

Spike is still the worse for wear. Both his eyes are black, but under his shaggy mop of hair, it looks kind of goth and deliberate. The only problem is everyone in Drimshanra knows they really are bruises.

It gets me thinking. Apart from Felice and I, Spike has no people here. He's just the queer kid who gets beaten up all the time.

Up to now, it's all seemed so far away, but suddenly I find myself wondering what will happen next year. When Felice and I come home from boarding school at the weekends, will Spike still be here for us? Of course he won't. He'll stay in Dublin with his new university friends. Why would he come back here?

Everything is changing. And there's no way to stop it.

It's my first time inside Fibbers. The three of us went to an Oasis concert in Dublin at Christmas, but I've never been to a small, local gig. Bathed in purple light, the dim interior of the converted cinema is bigger and more glamorous than I expected. The noisy, excited crowd looks exotic and otherworldly, the kind of place where Aonghus, if he existed, could pass unnoticed, just another music fan. Instead of standing out, the three of us fit right in.

And then Tully comes towards us, waving madly. In boring jeans, boring t-shirt and beyond boring runners, he definitely doesn't look like a hardcore supporter.

"What's he doing here?" I turn to Spike.

"I asked him along. Why? You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not," Felice replies. "He looked after you the other night. We owe him one."

But I'm not pleased to see him. This was meant to be just us, the three of us together watching our favourite band in our home town, a special night out to celebrate Felice's return and the end Spike's exams. I don't want to share it with anyone, least of all a stranger.

"Hey!" Tully's smile is wide and trusting.

"Hey." I don't look at him and my voice is not welcoming.

"Hey." Felice links her arm through his and winds her way through the crowd to the front of the stage.

She's just elbowed enough space for us all when the band leap onstage to the roars of screaming fans. Up front,  the hot, sweaty crowd presses tight around us, heaving.  But it doesn't matter because we all share the same emotion. 

We are here. This is history in the making.  Mac Whitehead glides around the stage, like a being possessed. Wild-haired and bare-chested, a bandana knotted around his neck, he dominates the space, all eyes on him, drawn irresistibly to his every movement.

He's the one we all want. It pulses through the crowd, this knowledge, this excitement, this sense of destiny.

Tully moves into my field of vision, waving his arms and pumping his fists. 

Those runners. Shudder. He's not my type, really not my type. Still, with a few basic changes, like if he ditched the runners, got better jeans, and wore a black t-shirt instead of a stupid wine one,  he'd get way more attention. It's easy for a guy to look cool. Much more effort for a girl. Life is so unfair.

Not that it matters what Tully wears. None of us would look twice at him anyway. 

Not when Mac Whitehead is in the room.

Time seems to melt away as he leaps from one end of the stage to the other, mesmerising us all with his husky voice and reckless moves.

He works his way effortlessly through the songs from the first album. We've been playing it back to back out in Felice's all week, and know most of the lyrics by heart, but hearing Mac sing them live is a completely different experience and it blows my mind.