Marooned in Manhattan by Sheila Agnew Page B

Sarah and now he’s going with Fauve Brennan. She’s Mark O’Toole’s cousin from Sandymount. She has a tattoo in Celtic script on her shoulder that says
Daughter of Ireland
or something like that, and she has peroxide streaks in her hair and her nose is pierced and she goes snowboarding in France every Christmas. She’s supposed to be brilliant at it. Almost everyone from the class got invited to the church part of Miss Butler’s wedding. Her dress was so gorgeous.’
    ‘Sounds cool,’ I said cheerfully.
    ‘Will you listen to her? In America only what … seven weeks and already has an American accent,’ said Deirdre.
    ‘That’s daft,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t. No way, and I only managed to get two words in. How could you think I sounded American from that?’
    ‘You have a bit of a twang,’ said Cate.
    ‘You’ll probably lose it when you are back here a day,’ she added reassuringly.
    I didn’t feel reassured.
    ‘Tell us all about what’s going on with you in New York,’ said Deirdre. ‘I’d kill to be there for a week.’
    The phone call with the girls bugged me for the rest of the day. I asked Joanna about it later as I helped her disinfect the examining table.
    ‘Do
you
think I sound American?’ I wondered.
    She laughed.
    ‘No, definitely not.’
    ‘Not even a tiny bit?’ I persisted.
    ‘No, you sound about as American as Kate Winslet.’
    ‘Who?’ I asked.
    ‘The
Titanic
chick, the British one.’
    ‘Oh.’
    It was hard to feel reassured by someone who couldn’t tell the difference between a British accent and an Irish one. I tried Scott next as we ate our take-out chicken burritos with extra guacamole.
    ‘Do you think I’ve started to sound American?’ I asked nonchalantly.
    ‘Nah,’ he said with his mouth full, ‘you’ve picked up some American words and expressions but not the accent. Why?’
    ‘It’s just that some of the gang from Ireland were slagging me. They said I sound American. I don’t want to go home with a new American accent.’
    Scott wiped some of the guacamole carefully from his chin.
    ‘Why do you care, Evie?’ he asked briskly.
    ‘I don’t know. I guess I don’t want to lose being me. I don’t want to be the
American Evie
. That would just be weird. Where would
Irish Evie
go? I mean, where would
I
go?’
    Scott offered me some of his tortilla chips as he thought about what I’d said.
    I spoke up again.
    ‘I’m not tough like Mum. She went through hundreds, maybe thousands, of auditions and dealt with so manyrejections. One time, she got rejected five times in a single day. I don’t want to be rejected for having an American accent, for being different.’
    I felt a little panicky.
    ‘It was hard enough fitting in when we settled back permanently in Dublin a couple of years ago.’
    ‘Evie,’ said Scott. ‘What kind of accent you have is not important. It doesn’t define you. You can be
you
no matter what your accent is like. Just be who you are. If that is different from others, so be it. When the Dublin kids realise that their teasing doesn’t bother you, they’ll get bored and move on to something else, like your blue hair.’
    ‘My hair hasn’t been blue in ages,’ I said, ‘but ok, I get your point.’
    I mustn’t have sounded completely convinced.
    Scott sighed.
    ‘Evie, you don’t need a stamp saying
100% Irish
on your forehead, like a packet of Irish sausages. You are half-American and that’s not so bad. We’ve got Thomas Jefferson and Bart Simpson and Marilyn Monroe and ice hockey and Harley-Davidson bikes and Quentin Tarantino and … and … and … Brangelina and raspberry-chocolate milkshakes and JFK.’
    ‘And RFK,’ I said proudly, showing off a little.
    ‘And Bobby,’ he smiled.
    ‘Who is Quentin Tarantino?’ I asked.
    ‘He’s a movie director.’
    ‘Can I watch one of his films?’
    ‘No, you have to wait until you are older. Now, get out of here and take your multiple identities down to the clinic and