The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney Page A

it?”
    “What?” Ryan said again.
    Didn’t matter how many whats he managed; those bits of the night before he needed to access had been erased by shots and dope and bile. Gone. Slipped down the back of Tara Duane’s couch, on which he’d spent just one too many nights getting stoned for the sake of having something to do. Had he shown her the film he was so privately proud of? Had his traitorous dick been fuelled by her reaction? There was no room for remembering in any case; he was being slapped back out into the hall, pinned to the wall by the front door, cuffed between accusations.
    “How did that bitch know it was there?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know? Is she fucking psychic, is she?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Ryan…Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”
    This is how he knew he was in the biggest trouble of his life; his dad was crying. He grabbed Ryan’s neck and slid two clammy thumbs up to his cheekbones. “Where were you last night?” he howled.
Nowhere
wouldn’t do; Ryan started into it by loose instinct, and Tony shook him. “Where!”
    “Next door,” Ryan whimpered.
    “What were you doing next door?”
    Hiding out coz you were fucking langers, you useless, bitter prick.
    None of the truth for Tony Cusack. Instead Ryan blubbered, “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to. She started it. I was really, really drunk.”
    “What the fuck does that mean?”
    Ryan was pushed onto the stairs. His forehead clattered the fourth step. His father continued the interrogation with one knee between his son’s knees and both hands down hard on his back.
You didn’t mean to what?
Ryan shut his eyes and coughed out brackish remorse. Tony wasn’t happy with rescinded answers from a spineless child. And sure why would he be? Why should he be?
    “What the fuck do I do with you, boy? What the fuck else can I do?”
    —
    “You are going to have to calm down,” said Barry. “Into the office here. We’ll talk over it.”
    “We’ll talk over it, will we, boy?” Ryan said. “What’ll we talk over?”
    Mrs. Cronin wasn’t even bothering to hide her interest. She stood by the photocopier with her outrage hung on the set of her mouth.
    “We’ll talk over your behaviour,” said Barry. “We’ll talk over what it is that’s compelling you to spit in the face of your potential, Ryan. And the best place to do it is behind closed doors, don’t you think?”
    “Fuckton that happens behind closed doors, don’t you think, sir?”
    “Watch your language.”
    “I will,” said Ryan. “When you start watching. When you start opening your fucking eyes.”
    “Fill me in, then. I’m on your side, Ryan. Tell me what I’m missing.”
    Ryan’s fingers, which had the grace for concertos so long as there was no one there to hear them, closed around the baggie in his pocket and he flung it at his headmaster, and it fluttered to his feet, inconsequential and shining bright.
    “You see that, I bet. You see that all right.”
    Mr. Barry looked down at the offering and said, “What. Is that?”
    “That’s cocaine, sir.”
    The principal looked up again, and for once in his eyes, proper fury; not disappointment, but something Ryan could deal with.
    “You’re a fucking stupid boy, Ryan Cusack,” he said.



The city isn’t going to notice the first brave steps of a little freeman, especially one emancipated only by tearing down all around him, but all the same, Ryan Cusack walked on like he was being watched.
    That was an easy strut. Chest out, shoulders back, the heavy gatch of a lad whose balls hung low. Locomotive chicanery for after the tears had dried up. Once school had finished for him he’d had one last run-in with his father, anticlimactic in that there wasn’t room in his throat, past the gawks and the hot mass of babyish misery, to force the words up from his belly. Then he’d left home, followed (courtesy of his cousin Joseph) by his hobo’s kerchief of personal effects: socks and