Asking For It

by Louise O'Neill, Louise O''Neill

Genres: YA Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In a small town where everyone knows everyone, Emma O'Donovan is different. She is the special one – beautiful, popular and powerful. And she works hard to keep it that way. Until that night… Now, she's an embarrassment. Now, she is nothing. And those pictures, those pictures that everyone has seen, mean she can never forget…

Release date: September 3, 2015

Publisher: RiverRun

Print pages: 217

Sample

My mother’s face appears in the mirror beside my own, bright red lips on powdered skin.

Her hair is still in its neat bob despite the sticky heat. She gets it done every Saturday. ‘I deserve a treat,’ she says as she leaves the house. ‘I don’t care how expensive it is.’

Karen Hennessy gets her hair blow-dried three times a week. She never mentions the cost.

I’m flushed, patches of red breaking out on my cheeks, the greying vest top I wore to bed sticking to me. I look from her face to mine.

You’re so like your mother, people always say. You’re the image of her.

‘Morning,’ she says. ‘What are you doing, just staring at yourself in the mirror?’ She frowns at my chest, at where the nipples are outlined through the sweat-stained fabric.

‘Nothing,’ I say as I wrap my arms over them. ‘What do you want?’

‘Just checking you were awake.’

I point at my desk, my open laptop, the folder full of notes, a copy of Fiche Bliain ag Fás and an Irish–English dictionary next to it. ‘I’ve been awake since five,’ I say. ‘O’Leary is giving us an oral test today.’

Jamie will get full marks, of course. O’Leary will close his eyes as she speaks, leaning back in his chair. He always looks surprised when he looks up again and remembers who is talking. He can never quite believe that the best Irish he has ever heard from a student is coming from someone who looks like Jamie.

‘Oh, never mind Diarmuid O’Leary.’ She half smirks. ‘Does he know you’re my daughter?’ I don’t answer.

‘I brought you your vitamin tablet,’ she says. ‘You’re supposed to have it before your morning meal.’

‘I’ll take it later.’

‘Emmie, come on. The Health Hut had to order these in especially for you.’

‘I know that, Mam.’ Her lips go a little thin, so I make myself smile at her. ‘And I really appreciate it.’

‘I’ll leave it here, shall I?’ She places the tablet and a glass of water down on my bedside locker, next to my iPhone and a collection of mismatched earrings.

She stands behind me again, placing one hand on my left hip, the other at the base of my spine, and tucks my pelvis in. ‘You need to watch your posture, pet.’ She smells of flour and cinnamon, undercut with the same floral perfume she has used for years. I can still picture her sitting at the vanity table in her dressing area, a silver silk dress spilling over her body, a slash of bright lipstick, her pale brown hair twisted into a chignon. Her hair was longer then. Dad would call up the stairs, ‘We’re going to be late, Nora,’ and she would reply ‘I’m coming, dear,’ using that special voice she used with him, with all men. (And I would wonder why she never used that voice with me.) The last thing she would do was take her perfume, unscrewing the gold top, and spray some on to her wrists. I’d sit at the top of the stairs, watching her hips move under the silk as she walked down towards Dad, waiting for her. His eyes never left hers, not even when I started to cry as they left, arms flailing as the babysitter restrained me.

Her fingers rest on my stomach. ‘Do you have your period?’ she says. ‘You look a little bloated.’

I push her hand off me. ‘You don’t need to worry, Mam. I’m not pregnant.’

I walk away from her and check my phone. Ali has texted. Again. Even though I still haven’t replied to her last two messages.

‘Please don’t speak to me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘With that tone.’

‘There was no tone.’

Her shoulders are tense, and I know that she’s ready to go downstairs and tell Dad, tell him that I’ve been disrespectful and rude. He will sigh and tell me that he is disappointed in me. He won’t listen to me, no matter what I tell him, no matter how hard I try to explain. There are no ‘sides’, he’ll say. Please treat your mother with more respect.

There is only one side in this and it’s never mine.

‘Sorry, Mam.’

She pauses. ‘Take that vitamin,’ she says, ‘and then come downstairs to join Daddy and me for breakfast. He wants to see you before he goes to work.’ She turns at the door to look at me, her gaze working up my body, lingering on my face. And I know exactly what she is going to say to me.

‘You look beautiful this morning, Emmie. As always.’

The door closes behind her and the air in my room turns to soup. I wade through it, pushing up my sash window in search of relief, and I can taste the tang of sea salt on the breeze. There are six other houses curving around the bay like a wishbone, all painted in the same canary yellow with black window frames and doors; sensible, boxy cars lining the glistening tarmac drives, Toyotas and Volvos and Hondas in black or silver, as if any other colour would attract too much attention. Nina Kelleher from two doors down is herding her daughters, Lily and Ava, into the back of a station wagon, a slice of toast between gritted teeth as she slams the door behind Lily, waving at Helen O’Shea who is on bended knees in the next driveway, retying her son’s shoelaces. ‘God, the state of the place,’ Jamie had said last year when we drove past a council housing estate on the outskirts of Ballinatoom, the neat houses crammed together, carefully tended flower baskets on the windowsills, gangs of snot-nosed children playing red rover in the small patch of green in the centre of the houses. Maggie had just gotten her driving licence then, and the four of us had piled into her parents’ Volvo, giddy with the sense of freedom, that we could go anywhere or do anything we wanted, although we never went much further than Kilgavan. We drove around Ballinatoom, through the roundabout, up Main Street, past the church, left at the garage at the edge of town, past the playground, down the bypass, and then we were at the roundabout again. We went around and around and then around again, eating penny sweets and watching out for boys we knew in other cars, Maggie insisting we turn down the music as we passed O’Brien’s funeral home, a thin line of people queuing up outside to pay their respects. ‘It’s just so yellow,’ Jamie said, turning to look out the back window as we drove past the estate. ‘Is there some sort of rule that says every housing estate built in this country has to be painted in bright yellow?’ Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ali, sitting next to her in the back, elbowing her, jerking her head at me.

‘Here,’ I said, turning around and handing Jamie the iPod. ‘Choose something else to put on, I’m sick of this playlist.’ And I could hear Ali breathing a sigh of relief that there hadn’t been any fighting, not this time.

Jamie wouldn’t say that now. She would be happy to live in our estate now.

*

‘For fuck’s sake, Mags,’ I say when I open the passenger door, shoving empty Tayto packets, a hockey ball, her mouth guard, a leaking red pen and about twenty balled-up pieces of paper out of the way.

‘Sorry.’

‘You say that every morning. And yet it’s still the same.’ I take a book out of my bag to sit on to protect my skirt from the red ink. ‘It’s roasting in here. Are all of the windows opened?’

‘Yes,’ Jamie says from the back seat. ‘Such a pity you’re not allowed to use the Volvo any more, Mags. That has air con, doesn’t it?’

‘I brought some of Mam’s muffins,’ I say. I don’t want to talk about the Volvo. I reach into the bag and hand one to Maggie.

‘They’re still warm. God, your mom is amazing,’ she says, steering with one hand as she takes a bite.

‘Yeah,’ I say, looking out the window. ‘She’s the best.’

I turn around to offer the sandwich bag to Ali and Jamie. Ali pushes her blonde hair extensions back off her face. ‘No, I shouldn’t.’ She takes a sip of coffee from her Nespresso travel mug. ‘Mom has signed us up for this paleo food challenge thing.’ She bites her lip. ‘Emma?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Are we OK?’

‘What?’

‘You never texted me back earlier. I was just wondering if you were mad at me or something.’

She’s wearing too much eyeliner, black gloop crusting in the corners of her eyes. Her dad bought her a Mac beauty case a few months ago, like one a professional make-up artist would have, filled to the brim with products and brushes. ‘Just because,’ Ali had told us with a shrug. Maggie had squealed with excitement, grabbing a liquid eyeliner to practise on Jamie. ‘Cool,’ I said. My fingers gripped a highlighting cream I had wanted for ages, but Mam said was too expensive. ‘Although I always think the Mac girls look like trannies.’

‘God, Ali,’ I sigh. ‘Get a grip, will you?’

I hold out the muffins to Jamie. It doesn’t register, so I wave the bag at her. ‘Hello. Earth to Jamie.’

She hesitates, looking at the bag and then at me again. She pulls a muffin out and takes a huge bite, almost swallowing it whole.

‘Take it easy,’ I say. ‘Even Maggie didn’t eat hers that fast.’

‘Shut up,’ Maggie says. ‘I had swim club at 6 a.m. I think I can have a muffin if I want one.’

‘I don’t know how you get up that early,’ I say. ‘I got out of bed, like, ten minutes before you arrived. I’m a disaster.’

Jamie crumples the muffin case in her hand. ‘I was up earlier than that, Mags,’ she says. ‘I had to study for the Irish exam we have today.’

‘Oh shit,’ I say. ‘I totally forgot about that. I am so screwed.’

‘Didn’t you forget to study for physics last week as well?’ Jamie narrows her eyes at me. ‘What a coincidence.’

I got seventy-eight per cent in that test, Mr O’Flynn placing the booklet on my desk with a wink and a murmured ‘Well done’. I left it on my desk so everyone could see it. ‘And then in first place,’ he continued, ‘congratulations, Jamie.’ Jamie took the booklet from him, ‘93%’ scrawled across the front in red marker. Her expression didn’t change as she shoved it into her school bag. I looked at my own again, and it was as if the number drifted off the page, rising towards me, searing itself into my eyes. I wanted to rip it into fifty thousand pieces.

‘Well done, J.’ I smiled at her, in case anyone thought I was jealous. ‘God, I wish I had actually studied now.’

‘Did you get new sunglasses?’ Maggie asks when Ali reaches into the yellow Céline backpack her mother bought her in Paris to grab a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans. ‘What happened to the Warby Parkers your dad got you?’

‘It’s weird,’ she says, and I make my face stay very still. ‘I can’t find them anywhere.’

‘Ah, no,’ Maggie says as she turns into the car park.

‘Can’t you just get a new pair?’ I ask, and my voice sounds normal. She can afford it.

‘You can only get that style in the US. I told you that.’

‘Oh yeah, I think I remember them.’ I hang my backpack off one shoulder and start rooting through it to find my Irish textbook. ‘They were a bit big for your face anyway, hun.’

St Brigid’s Secondary School lies ahead of us, a grey concrete building with square windows glinting in the sunlight, squat prefabs lined up beside it. The gym, tennis courts and car park are to the front; steep grass fields at the back, cows mooing frantically whenever students sneak behind the gym to smoke. The nuns had sold the land to fund a new convent at the other side of Ballinatoom, the remaining five rattling around the cavernous building, just waiting to die. I look around me at the hundreds of girls getting out of cars, flushed and uncomfortable. The dark grey pleated woollen skirts, grey knee-high socks and dark grey blazers are not suited to this heat, but Mr Griffin, the principal, made an announcement over the intercom yesterday that ‘the uniform must be worn in its entirety, girls, no matter what the weather. There are no exceptions to that rule.’

All the students walk forward, laughing and linking arms and rifling through backpacks and yelling out at each other to wait up. I nod at the girls passing who call my name, say hello, ask me where I got my sunglasses, or what lip gloss I’m wearing, or how I’m feeling about our Irish exam today. I smile, telling them, ‘Thanks, you’re such a pet,’ and doling out compliments in return. I imagine them whispering to themselves once I’m out of earshot about how nice I am, how genuine, how I always seem to have time for everybody, how it’s amazing that I can still be so down to earth when I look the way I do.

*

By the time the final bell rings, I am exhausted. I have to smile and be nice and look like I care about other people’s problems or else I’ll get called a bitch. People don’t understand how tiring it is to have to put on this performance all day.

‘Hey.’ Ali is lying on the concrete by the Fiesta, using her blazer as a blanket, her skirt rolled up and shirt open to catch as much of the sun as she can. ‘Did you get my text messages?’

‘No.’

I check the time on my phone, putting my hand above my eyes as I squint back at the school.

‘For God’s sake,’ I say, ‘where is she? I don’t have any suncream. I’m going to start burning if she doesn’t get here soon.’

‘Shit,’ Ali says. ‘I didn’t bring any with me. I’m so sorry. I should have thought.’

‘You know how delicate my skin is,’ I say, holding my blazer over my head as a shield. ‘And remember what Karen said about sun damage, she said those UV—’

‘Yeah, if I wanted a lecture from my mother, I’d ask her for one myself.’

‘Emma!’ I wince when I hear that squeaky voice. ‘Hi!’

‘Hi, Chloe.’

It’s Chloe Hegarty, her hair standing up in a halo of frizz at her hairline, breakouts all around her jaw and chin, one patch of acne crusted over with yellow pus. I wish she would go and see a dermatologist. I turn away, pretending I need to get something from my bag.

‘Ouch,’ Ali says as Chloe slinks off.

‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘Oh, thank Christ, there they are.’ I see the girls coming out from the prefab nearest to the gym. Maggie’s head is bent over her iPhone already, her fingers keying furiously, Jamie trailing behind her. ‘Hurry on,’ I call out to them.

‘Sorry,’ Maggie says when she reaches us. Her blazer is wrapped around the straps of her bag and she fumbles underneath it for her keys without looking up from her phone. It beeps again, and she lets the satchel fall on the ground, her face softening as she reads the new text.

‘Mags,’ I say. ‘For fuck’s sake, I’m roasting. Can you at least open the door first?’

‘Sorry,’ she says again. ‘Eli says he’s going to be in the park at five with the lads if we want to meet him there.’ She puts the phone on the bonnet of the car, placing the bag next to it as she searches through it. She pulls out three tattered copybooks, old tissues, a leopard-print headscarf, an iPod, Tic Tacs, a leaking lunch box and an A4 pad. ‘They’re definitely in here somewhere,’ she mutters, using a tissue to wipe away the oily residue of her tuna sandwich from her fingers. ‘Wait! Here they be.’ She opens her own door first, recoiling as a blast of hot air hits her in the face. She crawls into the car, opening the other doors from the inside.

‘Jesus,’ Jamie says as we get in, cranking all the windows open. ‘When are you getting your new car again, Ali?’

‘Only three months to my birthday!’ Ali takes out her iPhone and swipes through her camera roll. She holds up a photo of a brand-new Mini Cooper in baby blue, and Jamie and Maggie ‘ooh’ in appreciation.

‘I feel like you see Mini Coopers everywhere these days,’ I hear myself saying. ‘They’re so popular now.’

Ali’s hand drops to her lap, the photo still open on her iPhone.

‘Slow down,’ I tell Maggie as we drive through the narrow main street of Ballinatoom, with its skittle-coloured buildings on either side, pubs and butcher shops and greengrocers all crammed in. A group of lads from St Michael’s are clogging up the footpaths, ignoring an elderly man trying to navigate his way past them with his walking stick. Their navy V-neck sweaters are tied around their waists, showing off sunburnt arms, sweat patches on unbuttoned white shirts, and blue-and-yellow striped ties hanging loosely around their necks, brown bags of penny sweets and cans of Coke clutched in their hands. There’s a large banner strung between two buildings, in black and gold, announcing a country and western music festival. It’s the same every year, hundreds of middle-aged fans from all over the country arriving in Ballinatoom wearing cowboy boots and Stetsons, humming Nathan Carter songs under their breath. ‘Aren’t you lucky to live here?’ they ask us, breathing in the country air. Why? I want to ask them. Why are we lucky to live here? But I know the answer that I’ll get.

It’s so beautiful here, they’ll say. There’s such a sense of community. People look out for each other.

It’s true, I guess.

Within minutes we’re at Connolly Gardens. There is a square of grass with a narrow ribbon of concrete path looping around it, and a marble fountain in the middle. A curved terrace of large Georgian houses surrounds the square, all painted pastel shades. We park outside Maggie’s house, a pale azure colour with cream window frames, a black cast-iron knocker in the shape of a lion’s head on the cream door.

‘Aren’t you going to come in?’ Maggie asks as she pushes the front door open and only Jamie follows her. Ali sneaks a look at me, waiting until I shake my head before saying, ‘No, I’m good, Mags. I’ll wait here with Em.’

‘And will you get suncream?’ I call after them. I don’t want to have to talk to Maggie’s mother. The last time I called, she disappeared into her ‘client space’ to get a ‘book that I think will really speak to you, Emma’. Hannah had caused quite a stir when the Bennetts moved here from North Cork five years ago. She was heavily pregnant with Maggie’s baby sister, Alice Eve, her bump bulging underneath tight T-shirts, and she didn’t seem to care that old ladies tutted and averted their eyes when they saw a flash of swollen belly. Everyone whispered about the new arrivals, about how the mother was ‘a play-therapist, whatever that means’, and the father was ‘an accountant, and must be doing well for himself if they can afford that house – you should have seen the price of it’, and that the other daughter was twelve or thirteen, and really pretty. I had been worried when I heard that until I saw Maggie and realized that, yes, she was pretty. But she wasn’t prettier than me.

‘I hear the wife is very attractive,’ Mam said to Dad the night they arrived, passing him the mashed potatoes at dinner. ‘And I do think it’s brave of her to allow herself to go grey so early.’

‘Ready?’ Maggie says when she opens the front door again.

‘Oh, you look so cool,’ Ali says. Maggie is wearing that men’s checked shirt she bought in a charity shop as a dress and her metallic silver Doc Martens. She has a paisley scarf holding her curls back, wrapped twice around her head and tied in an oversized bow on top, almost the size of her head, and multiple silver rings on her fingers.

‘Jesus,’ I say. ‘You look like you’re Amish or something.’

Maggie takes a look at herself in the oval mirror hanging above the spindly-legged hall table. I hate that stupid mirror, with the affirmation ‘You are beautiful on the inside’ scored into it in silver cursive script. I always want to scratch it out.

‘Savage,’ she says happily. ‘I love the Amish look.’

*

Connolly Gardens is quiet at this time of day. There are three women sitting on a bench at the other side of the green, all wearing black Lycra leggings, skintight vest tops and Birkenstocks, rolled up yoga mats and brown paper bags from the Health Hut at their feet. Another woman in cropped combat trousers and a baggy T-shirt is chasing after two toddlers, holding out suncream and wide-brimmed hats; some older children in swimming togs are running around the fountain, barefoot and shrieking.

‘Hey, sexy.’ A boy in a baseball cap leans out of the window of a car parked at the entrance to the g. . .