Mice, he says, pushing the stool back and standing. I’ll lay another trap. He opens the top. That’ll stop them.
He leaves the room, the smell of his BO staying in the room with me.
Katie is on the train. She’s sitting alone, nobody else beside her. I deliberately followed her into this carriage and watched the empty seat beside her for twenty minutes, anxiously. It’s been about two weeks since she said what she said to me about Pops being a perv and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, it has kept me awake late into the night doing more scrapes of my skin from freckle to freckle than usual, and to top it off I’m under pressure from girls at school to win back our star player. Something bad was said to me and I’m the one who’s supposed to be apologising for it. Sometimes it would be easier to be a human if there weren’t other humans. I finally build up the courage to sit beside her, and when I do, she looks at me with such fear on her face. I’ve never seen her look like that before and I wonder if her fear is because she’s afraid of me, or because of Pops.
Her eyes widen and she looks around as if trying to catch somebody’s eye for help. What do you want, she asks angrily.
I want to know what you meant about my Pops.
Your Pops, she rolls her eyes. Freckles, I shouldn’t have said anything. I said sorry already, okay. I got mad and it came out and it shouldn’t have.
If you tell me, then I’ll tell Sister Lettuce that I forgive you and to let you back on the team.
She sits up at the mention of that. We’re getting closer to Limerick station, I want her to hurry up.
It’s just something I heard, she says finally.
From who.
My cousin Stephanie. She recognised your dad when he was picking you up from the station a few weeks ago. She said, That’s Mr Bird, he’s a perv. He slept with a girl in my class. Bird the perv. They had a song. Bird Bird Bird, Bird is the perv.
My heart hammers. I ready myself. But she just stops talking. Go on, I say.
Well that’s it. He was a teacher, she was a student. That’s gross. They were out one night in a pub and other lecturers and professors were there, and him and her got talking and when my cousin was leaving her friend wouldn’t go with her, so they figured she was in safe hands and left her. Anyway they slept together. She told my cousin after that she totally regretted it. Then no one heard from her for months before the finals, she just disappeared. That’s all I know, she says with a shrug.
Do you know where the student is now, I ask.
How the hell would I know.
I mean, is your cousin still friends with her.
No it was, like, a million years ago, Freckles. Before you were born, not last weekend. Don’t freak out about it.
She hasn’t put two and two together. That Carmencita is my mother. That the Spanish-sounding name matches my Spanish-looking skin, my Spanish hair. But all she sees is the freckles that match my Pops.
And it wasn’t Limerick University, she adds, it was in Dublin. Stephanie was in college with her there. She says he shouldn’t be allowed to teach in Limerick. That she should do something about it. It’s like the priests, they all get moved around to different places. Look, it’s all I know, okay.
The train pulls into the station and she stands up, cocky again. Puts her bag on her back. You can think whatever you want, but my cousin isn’t a liar. Your Pops is a perv teacher who slept with a student, which is frankly totally gross but whatever. You’ll get me back on the team now. I told you what you wanted.
I follow her off the train, and out through the station. Pops usually waits outside in the car, but this time he’s in the station, at a vending machine.
Ah Allegra, there you are my love, and who is this.
I didn’t know Katie had stopped beside me and she’s staring at him like he’s a disgusting piece of filth, all the twisted hatred back in her previously scared little shit face. I hate her.
This is Katie. From school.
Nice to meet you Katie from school, Pops says with a chuckle.
Katie gives him a look as though he’s the most disgusting thing she’s ever seen and she hurries away as quickly as she can.
Interesting girl, did I say something wrong, he asks as he watches her leave, then turns his attention back to the vending machine. I watch him as he puts the coins in the slot, carefully counting them out, enters the number. I watch his fingers, his hands, the hands that Katie thinks are disgusting, the hands that reared me and that I see move over the piano keys and cello so beautifully.
She’s not my friend I say finally.