The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

drunk too much and smoked too much and lost control, which was the wrong thing to do because c’mon, fucking hell, he knew she had a bit of a thing for the young fellas, everyone knew she had a bit of a thing for the young fellas. He remembered her telling him the back story to the show she was watching on the telly, and he remembered her laughing at some piss-weak anecdote he couldn’t give two shits for, and then he remembered…
    He didn’t feel like remembering it even now, days after the fact and not even the worst thing that had happened that week.
    —
    The principal’s name was Mr. Stephen Barry. He came out into the corridor, in his shirtsleeves, like he was going to have a go and all.
    “I was planning on having a chat with you today, Ryan,” he sighed, “but not like this.”
    —
    He remembered waking up in his own bed on Monday morning, the house mercifully still, his siblings long dragged off to school. He was sick as a small hospital. He sent Karine a text, telling her he had caught the flu or something, got up and puked his ring out, went back to bed and put his head under the pillow and watched what was left of the night before jump and fade and bleed in over his eyes.
    Piss-weak anecdotes and carefully pitched laughter, and Tara Duane standing then with her arms folded as he pulled his tracksuit pants back up, saying: “You have a girlfriend.” Putting him straight, with her knickers crumpled on the floor beside the couch.
    Tony called up the stairs around midday, saying that he was heading out but that he’d be back soon, and Ryan couldn’t answer except under his breath:
I don’t care if you never come home, you prick; look what’s after happening.
He curled into terror and tears.
    Tara
fucking
Duane.
    If Karine found out, she’d never forgive him.
    But I’m sorry,
he told her, and she a mile away in a classroom and utterly oblivious.
I’m so fucking sorry. I fucked up. I didn’t mean it.
    Kelly came home at half past four and popped her head in the door and screeched, “You must be
dying,
boy. You were a mess last night. I’d to let you in at three in the morning and you fell down twice and it was un. Fucking. Real.”
    “Yeah,” he said. He rolled onto his belly and closed his eyes; the sheet smelled of sweat and sick. “I pulled a whitey I guess.”
    “Where were you, anyway?”
    “Nowhere,” he said. “Leave me alone.”
    —
    “You’ve been out for three days, Ryan. Is it too much to ask that you sit quietly for three hours on your return?” said Mr. Stephen Barry, Principal.
    Ryan said, “I might as well. I’m fucking invisible anyway.”
    —
    The penance was swift and as deserved as its supplier was ill-chosen. When his dad got back on Monday evening he let a roar out of him that ricocheted off each of the four walls in turn.
    “Ryan!”
    He inched into the kitchen. Tony was leaning on the sink, his lips and eyes bulging. “Gimme your phone.”
    Ryan handed it over.
    He assumed his dad needed the phone to make a call, because Tony was as often lacking credit as he was lacking everything else. He stood waiting for it to be handed back; that’s why he was only an outstretched arm away when the phone played out the soundtrack to Karine’s salve. The floor plunged under his feet and his blood pushed through pallor; Tony said, “What the fuck, Ryan? What the
fuck
?” and the first slap landed, on his left cheek, and he breathed in the shock and the whiskey stench and willed himself hard not to cry.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry?”
    “It’s just a video, Dad. Just a stupid thing.”
    “You’re proud of it, aren’t you?”
    There was nothing new in his father’s intent to wreck his head inside and out; whiskey had never agreed with Tony, no matter how convincing his arguments. Ryan puckered his brow. “What?”
    “Who else has seen this?”
    “No one.”
    “Then why the fuck did Tara Duane just tell me to go looking for