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61 " Perhaps there simply is no grain of goodness in the heart of man, waiting to be brought to the light, "
― Paul Murray , Skippy Dies
62 " According to string theory, which Professor Tamashi and other scientists have been using to try to solve the Big Bang, in addition to the four dimensions of spacetime we know, there are six of these very small, curled-up dimensions, making ten all told. And the strings, which are little strands of energy, wiggle around vibrating in these ten dimensions.’‘Like Dennis’s mother,’ Mario, seeking vengeance for the ant slur, interjects, ‘wiggling around vibrating with her vibrator, because she is a famous slut, and also, she has ten dimensions because she is a fat bitch. "
63 " She pulls a face and mutters something.‘Seriously, though, why don’t you?’‘Oh, for Christ’s sake – I don’t know, Howard. Maybe this is all I’m good for. Maybe office equipment is all there is to write about.’He withdraws his hand, exasperated. ‘Well, if you won’t do anything about it, then you’ve got to stop complaining.’‘I’m not complaining, if you ever actually listened to what I –’‘I do listen, that’s the problem, I’m listening all the time to you telling me you’re unhappy, but then when I try to encourage you to do something about it –’‘Just forget it, I don’t want to talk about it.’‘Fine, but then don’t tell me I’m not listening when the problem is you don’t want to talk –’‘Can we just forget – Jesus, would you put that fucking thing down?’ She stares at him, alight with wounded fury, until he slides the camera’s panel shut. Right, right, this is how they act. She grabs another cigarette, lights and tugs at it in a single blur of antipathetic motion.‘Fine,’ says Howard, picking up his book and getting to his feet. ‘Fine, fine, fine, fine. "
64 " Dennis and Mario, meanwhile, have fallen behind to debate the merits and demerits of Mario’s new phone. ‘The thing you don’t understand about this phone is that it’s state of the art, which means, this is the best phone you can get.’‘I do understand that, you moron, I’m saying what’s the point of having a state-of-the-art phone when everyone who’s going to call you on it is living six feet away from you?’‘I think what it is, is, you are jealous of my state-of-the-art phone, which has a camera and an MP3 player.’‘Mario, if you can’t see why your parents suddenly gave you that gay phone you’re even dimmer than I thought. I mean, think about it, they leave you in school for the entire holiday, and then they give you some rinky-dink piece of plastic so they can talk to you without having to see you face-to-face. They couldn’t say, “We don’t love you” more clearly if they wrote it in skywriting over the rugby pitches.’‘That shows what you know, because my parents do love me.’‘Well, why did they leave you here over mid-term, then?’‘They did not go into it, but they were very specific about it not being because they didn’t love me, and I know because I asked them that very question. "
65 " Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious than singed trousers; the word backdraught clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator’s mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely artificial, ‘just part of the show’ as Trevor puts it) his hand brings the match between his legs and – foom! a sound like the fabric of the universe being ripped in two, counterpointed by its opposite, a collective intake of breath, as from Trevor’s bottom proceeds a magnificent plume of flame – jetting out it’s got to be nearly three feet, they tell each other afterwards, a cold and beautiful purple-blue enchantment that for an instant bathes the locker room in unearthly light.No one knows quite what Trevor Hickey’s diet is, or his exercise regime; if you ask him about it, he will simply say that he has a gift, and having witnessed it, you would be hard-pressed to argue, although why God should have given him this gift in particular is less easy to say. But then, strange talents abound in the fourteen-year-old confraternity. As well as Trevor Hickey, ‘The Duke of Diablos’, you have people like Rory ‘Pins’ Moran, who on one occasion had fifty-eight pins piercing the epidermis of his left hand; GP O’Sullivan, able to simulate the noises of cans opening, mobile phones bleeping, pneumatic doors, etc., at least as well as the guy in Police Academy; Henry Lafayette, who is double-jointed and famously escaped from a box of jockstraps after being locked inside it by Lionel. These boys’ abilities are regarded quite as highly by their peers as the more conventional athletic and sporting kinds, as is any claim to physical freakishness, such as waggling ears (Mitchell Gogan), unusually high mucous production (Hector ‘Hectoplasm’ O’Looney), notable ugliness (Damien Lawlor) and inexplicably slimy, greenish hair (Vince Bailey). Fame in the second year is a surprisingly broad church; among the two-hundred-plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncrasy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated.As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to the shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence; now – overnight, almost – it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of them, consider mastery of Diablos to be a feather in your cap – even when you explain to them how dangerous it is, even when you offer to teach them how to do it themselves, an offer you have never extended to any of your classmates, who would actually pay big money for this expertise, or you could even call it lore – wait, come back! "
66 " I don’t know what just happened here. But all those things I said before, about how you were a big fat fake and a liar, and your portal was a piece of crap that couldn’t heat a bowl of soup, and you were gay and all scientists were gay?’‘Yes.’‘Well… I was wrong. I’m sorry. "
67 " Okay, so one night a couple of weeks ago – it would have been about the same time as the Hop, I suppose – Niall’s sister and her friend are down in their room, rehearsing. They get quite caught up in what they’re doing and they end up staying down longer than they planned.’‘This friend, is she hot?’ Mario puts in. ‘I have seen Niall’s sister, thanks but no thanks – however, how about the friend?’‘I haven’t met her,’ Dennis says. ‘It doesn’t really affect the story either way.’‘Yes, yes, carry on. "
68 " Ruprecht can build another pod though, right? I mean it was mostly just tinfoil.’‘The problem is that he has no blueprint. From the original design he keeps making changes, but these he does not write down. So it is impossible to replicate exactly.’Later that day, Ruprecht approaches Skippy. His expression is feverish. ‘I’ve devised a foolproof plan to get my pod back from St Brigid’s,’ he says. ‘I call it, “Operation Falcon”.’Skippy looks dubious.‘This is your chance to get in on the ground floor!’‘No way, Ruprecht, not after how that last one went.’‘That was Operation Condor. This is Operation Falcon. It’s a totally different operation.’‘Sorry. "
69 " Just ahead of the Van Doren Quartet in the line is Trevor Hickey, aka ‘The Duke’, who with no visible means of making music is staring into space, mumbling a speech to himself: ‘… since the dawn of time… our oldest and most indefatigable foe…’Geoff keeps catching snatches of this, and curiosity eventually reels him in. ‘Uh, Trevor, where’s your instrument?’‘Shock and amaze – oh, I’m not giving a musical performance.’‘Not musical…?’ Geoff repeats, and then the penny drops. ‘Here, you’re not going to do Diablos, are you?’‘Mmm-hmm.’Geoff gazes at him with a mixture of awe and concern. ‘It’s just,’ he says, after a moment, ‘you know, the Automator’s in there.’‘Mmm-hmm.’ Trevor’s ceaseless shifting from foot to foot is only partly to do with nerves; he has eaten five cans of beans on either side of going to bed in order to build up a plentiful supply of trapped wind, or as he calls it, ‘The Power’.‘I’m just wondering, you know, whether the Christmas concert might not be more of a family-type show?’‘Your family don’t fart?’ Trevor turns on him.‘Well, they mostly wouldn’t set them on fire –’‘That’s the beauty of what I do, you see,’ Trevor interjects, eyes a-glimmer, already lost in his own myth. ‘Turning tedious bodily functions into a magical encounter with the elements – it’s what the whole world dreams of… "
70 " Next!’ The judgement issues summarily from the review panel before Sexecutioner has even a chance to drop his first motherfucker. For a moment, the boys remain rooted to the spot in ungangsta-like attitudes of woundedness, mocked by the drumbeat that is still thumping around them; then, unplugging the ghettoblaster, they clamber down and make the walk of shame to the exit.‘What in God’s name was that?’ the Automator says as soon as they have left.Trudy peers down at her clipboard. ‘ “Original material.” ’‘Our old friend original material,’ the Automator says grimly. ‘I’ve had some plumbing mishaps that sounded a little like those guys.’‘It did have a certain rough-hewn vitality,’ Father Laughton moderates.‘I’ve said it before, Padre, this concert’s not about rough-hewn. It’s not about “doing your best”. I want professionalism. I want pizazz. I want this concert to put the Seabrook name out there, tell the world what we’re all about.’‘Education?’‘Quality, damn it. A brand right at the top of the upper end of the market. God knows that’s not going to be easy. I’ve given serious thought to bussing in other kids, talented kids, just so we don’t have to drop the curtain after half an hour – "
71 " -so that for these few moments it actually seems that Ruprecht could be right, that everything, or at least the small corner of everything that is the Seabrook Sports Hall, is resonating to the same chord, the same feeling, the one that over a lifetime you learn a million ways to camouflage but never quite to banish - the feeling of living in a world of apartness, of distances you cannot overcome; it's almost as if the strange out-of-nowhere voice is the universe itself, some hidden aspect of it that rises momentarily over the motorway-roar of space and time to console you, to remind you that although you can't overcome the distances, you can still sing the song - out into the darkness, over the separating voids, towards a fleeting moment of harmony. . . "
72 " The Principal of Seabrook College came in to speak to her too, a couple of days after it happened. He was a tall, dynamic man, in his late thirties maybe? Basically he was doing the same thing she was, trying to protect the school’s image and explain that while it was a tragedy it was just this one crazy kid, and not anyone else’s fault. Having said that – he put his hand on her arm – on behalf of the school I want to apologize for any distress this might have caused you or your employees. He shook his head. I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years, he said, and I’m at a loss to understand this.Lynsey doesn’t understand it either. He’s fourteen, and he takes an overdose just because his girlfriend dumped him? Jesus, like, relax! That’s life! People get dumped! If Lynsey had killed herself over every fucking self-absorbed arsehole who’d dumped her, she’d… well, she’d be pretty dead at this stage. "
73 " It’s a confidentiality clause. No doubt you’ll be familiar with these from your days in the City. In signing, you consent by law not to disclose sensitive information pertaining to school affairs, including what we have discussed here today.’Howard gapes back at him stupidly. ‘Are you serious?’‘Merely a precaution, Howard, making sure we’ve got all our angles covered. No need to rush into it right away. Take it home with you, think it over. If you want to turn it down, do the honorable thing, I can’t stop you. I’m sure you’ll find a position elsewhere easily enough. Gather there are vacancies in St Anthony’s at the moment. Teacher got stabbed there just last week. "
74 " The fact is that, after the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, the Irishmen who’d fought in the Great War didn’t fit the new way the country imagined itself. If the British were our sworn enemies, why had two hundred thousand Irishmen gone off to fight alongside them? If our history was the struggle to escape from British oppression, what were we doing helping Britain out, fighting and dying on her behalf? The existence of these soldiers seemed to argue against this new thing called Ireland. And so, first of all, they were turned into traitors. Then, in a quite systematic way, they were forgotten.’The boys listen palely, the lucent grass-green of the empty park shimmering around them.‘It’s a good example of how history works,’ Howard says. ‘We tend to think of it as something solid and unchanging, appearing out of nowhere etched in stone like the Ten Commandments. But history, in the end, is only another kind of story, and stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn’t make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to leave out anything that doesn’t fit. And often that is quite a lot. "