🎖 Featured on Teen Fiction Reading List #YA Ambassadors🎖Love or Music... Which should they choose and what price do they have to pay? Love will give Kit and Tully a future together, but music can make Tully's dream come true.
Sixteen-year-old Kit...
Accident and Emergency in Drimshanra on weekend nights looks like a hospital in a war-zone, but Felice and I are unfazed as we skirt the trolleys crowding the passageways.
We've been here before and we know what it's like. We're used to the constant threat lurking behind the blood-soaked bandages and high-pitched moans. It's the cost of living in Drimshanra.
Maybe I should feel worried but I don't. I'm exhilarated because after weeks of nothing happening, I've come alive again.
This right now, clattering through the overcrowded A&E, air shifting around us, looking for our friend, this is life.
The three of us will be together again and when we're together, nothing can touch us.
Felice stops a harried nurse. "Where's Spike, I mean, Peadar, Peadar O'Toole?"
"And you are?"
"His sister."
"It's not visiting hours. It's the middle of the night."
"I've got a bag here with his stuff." Felice never takes no for an answer.
The nurse's eyes flicker over us both, before deciding she's too busy to waste time arguing with us. "He won't be needing it. It looks worse than it is. The doctor has seen him and he's not being admitted. He's in that one over there, if you want to take him home." She points to a cubicle, curtain slightly askew.
We exchange glances. This is going better than expected. But, like I said, when we're together, we're an irresistible force.
Spike blinks as we push aside the curtain, flooding the cramped cubicle with light.
"What took you so long?" he mumbles.
Felice tosses the bag on the floor and we both lean over him to see what the damage is this time.
"Your face," Felice says as I smother a gasp. His head is swathed in bandages with dark bruises around his eyes.
"Yeah, I know, they went for my face." Spike's words are slurred and I've to bend in close to hear him.
"He shouldn't be speaking." The voice coming from the corner startles me, and I leap back from the bed. Felice raises her eyebrows and we both stare at the figure huddled in a chair. The cubicle was so dim we didn't notice him when we came in.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." As he stands up uncurling himself into the shaft of light, I glimpse the orange t-shirt underneath his jacket and recognise him.
New guy from the video shop.
"Hey, nothing scares us!" Felice is smiling as she waves over at him. "I'm Felice and this is Kit."
"And I'm Tully. Tully Cabe."
So Tully really is his actual name.
"Did you find him?" Felice's eyes move to Spike's bandaged head.
"Yeah, I was heading home after work and saw him lying on the street near my house. There was a lot of blood." Tully's voice shakes, in shock. He hasn't been here long enough to know fights and rows are a normal part of weekend life, though he'll get used to it if he stays.
He speaks quickly, the words pouring out of him. "He looked really bad so I went home and dialled 999. I didn't know what to do then, so I got my duvet and went back outside and covered him with it. I was just going to wait until the ambulance came, make sure he was being looked after, but then he asked me to go to the hospital with him."
"My saviour!" Spike's voice is so distorted I can't tell if he's for real, or if it's his usual sarcastic humour. But the chaos that is Accident and Emergency in Drimshanra is not something anyone wants to endure on their own.
"I thought I'd better wait till the doctor saw him, to see if they were going to admit him or not."
Felice and I exchange glances, surprised new guy knows how A&E works. It's all about triage. They only admit those who actually need to be hospitalised. Everyone else gets bandaged and sent home.
"Well, thanks for looking out for our friend." Felice's sincerity rings through the stuffy cubicle. She may have been pissed off with Spike earlier but all is forgiven now.
"It was no trouble." Tully shifts awkwardly and looks at me properly for the first time since we entered the cubicle. "I saw you earlier, didn't I? You rented Strictly Ballroom."
"Jesus, don't tell me you paid for it?" Felice rounds on me, Spike's injuries and Tully's heroism temporarily forgotten.
"Felice is your boss's daughter," I explain to Tully before she erupts.
"What, Matt has a daughter?"
Felice snorts and almost laughs at Tully's look of total confusion. "I guess you haven't met my dad," she says. "Matt's the manager. Dad owns the whole chain."
"Your dad is Axel Carr?"
"Yeah, me and my friends always get our videos for free."
"I'm really sorry." Tully sounds distraught and I know why. Jobs are like gold-dust in Drimshanra, even a crappy job like the graveyard shift on Friday night in More Videos 4 U. "I didn't know."
"It's not your fault," I say. "I didn't tell you."
He flashes me a grateful glance, but he still looks worried. The last thing he wants is to get on the wrong side of Axel Carr's daughter.
"So, can we leave now?" Spike croaks from the bed.
"The nurse said he can go." Felice shrugs as we look at each other, both of us thinking the same thing. Spike is not in great shape. He should go home and rest up, but we know he won't. His parents are almost as old-fashioned as mine.
They don't even know he's gay, at least, not officially. Felice and I are sure they must suspect, but maybe they don't. Parents can be so oblivious.
"It was you who rang earlier?" Felice says to Tully.
"Yes, I offered to call his family to tell them what happened, but he asked me to ring you instead. And then..." Tully falters, uncertain what to say next.
"I asked him to stay with me, until you got here." Spike rasps from the bed. "Come on," he wheedles, pleading with Felice. "Take me back to yours."
She makes him wait a beat that stretches out into a tense silence.
"Alright!"
A silent sigh of relief floats through the cubicle. We knew she'd agree, really, but you can never be entirely sure when it comes to Felice.
"You did good," she says with a nod at Tully.
"No problem, I wasn't doing anything else." His smile is rueful. "I don't really know anyone here."
"Hey, you know us now," she replies.
Steady on, I think, but I don't say it aloud. It would sound ungracious after the way he helped Spike, but I'm not happy. What Spike, Felice and I have is special. There's a dynamic between the three of us, that's ours, unique to us.
We don't need anyone else.
We don't want anyone else.
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