I just stopped.
That day wasn’t just my breaking point, it was Joey's, too. He’d followed me into the house with a week's suspension under his belt for beating the living daylights out of Ciara Maloney, my main tormentor's, brother.
Our mother had taken one look at me and pulled me out of the school.
Going against my father's wishes, who thought I needed to toughen up, Mam went to the local credit union and took out a loan to pay the admission fees for Tommen College, the private, fee-paying secondary school based fifteen miles north of Ballylaggin.
While I worried for my mother, I knew that if I had to walk through the doors of that school one more time, I would not be walking back out.
I had hit my limit.
The prospect of a better life, a happier life, was dangled in front of my face and I had grabbed it with both hands.
And even though I feared the backlash from the kids on my council estate for attending a private school, I knew it couldn’t be worse than the shit I had endured in the school I was leaving behind.
Besides, Claire Biggs and Lizzie Young, the two the girls I'd been friends with at primary school, would be in my class at Tommen College – the principal, Mr. Twomey, had assured me of that when my mother and I had met with him during the Christmas holidays to enroll.
Both Mam and Joey encouraged me with relentless support, with Mam taking extra cleaning shifts at the hospital to pay for my books and new uniform which included a blazer.
Before Tommen College, the only blazers I'd ever seen were the ones men wore at mass on a Sunday, never on teenagers, and now it would be part of my daily wardrobe.
Leaving the local secondary school in the middle of my junior cert year – an important exam year – had caused a huge rift in our family, with my father furious to be spending thousands of euros on an education that was free in the public school just down the road.
When I tried to explain to my father that school wasn’t as easy for me as it was for his precious GAA-star son, he shut me down, refusing to hear me out, and letting me know in no uncertain terms that he would not support me attending a glorified rugby prep-school with a bunch of stuck up, privileged clowns.
I could still recall the words "Get off your high horse, girl," and "Tis far from rugby and prep schools you were reared," not to mention my favorite, "You'll never fit in with those cunts," coming out of my father's mouth.
I wanted to scream at him "you won't be paying for it!" since Dad hadn't worked a day since I was seven, fending for the family was left to my mother, but I valued my ability to walk too much.
My father didn’t get it, but then again, I had a feeling the man had never been subjected to bullying a day in his whole life. If there was bullying to be done, Teddy Lynch was the one doing it.
God knows he bullied Mam around enough.
Because of my father's outrage at my schooling, I had spent most of my winter break holed up in my bedroom and trying to stay out of his way.
Being the only girl in a family with five brothers, I had my own room. Joey had his own room, too, though his was much bigger than mine, having shared it with Darren until he moved out. Tadhg and Ollie shared another larger bedroom, with Sean and my parents residing in the largest of the bedrooms.
Even though it was only the box room at the front of the house, with barely any room to swing a cat, I appreciated the privacy that my own bedroom door – with a lock – gave me.
Contrary to the four bedrooms upstairs, our house was tiny, with a sitting room, kitchen, and one bathroom for the entire family. It was a semi-d, and situated at the edge of Elk's Terrace, the largest council estate in Ballylaggin.
The area was rough and riddled with crime and I avoided it all by hiding in my room.
My tiny bedroom was my sanctuary in a house – and street –full of bustle and madness, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
My privacy was on borrowed time because Mam was pregnant again.
If she had a girl, I would lose my sanctuary.
"Shan!" Banging erupted on the other side of the bathroom door, dragging me from my impervious thoughts. "Hurry up, will ya! I'm bursting for a piss."
"Two minutes, Joey," I called back, then continued my assessment of my appearance. "You can do this," I whispered to myself. "You can absolutely do this, Shannon."
The banging resumed so I hastily dried my hands on the towel hanging on the rack and unlocked the door, eyes landing on my brother who was standing in nothing but a pair of black boxers, scratching his chest.
His eyes widened when he took in my appearance, the sleepy expression on his face turning alert and surprised. He was sporting a roaster of a black eye from the hurling match he'd played in at the weekend, but it didn’t seem to worry a hair of his handsome head.
"You look…." My brother's voice trailed off as he gave me that brotherly appraisal. I braced myself for the jokes he would inevitably make at my expense, but they never came. "Lovely," he said instead, pale green eyes warm and full of unspoken worry. "The uniform suits you, Shan."
"Do you think it'll be okay?" I kept my voice low so I didn’t wake the rest of our family.
Mam had worked a double shift yesterday and she and Dad were both sleeping. I could hear my father's loud snoring coming from behind their closed bedroom door, and the younger boys would have to be dragged from their mattresses later for school.
As per usual, it was just Joey and me.
The two amigos.
"Do you think I'll fit in, Joey?" I asked, voicing my concerns aloud. I could do that with Joey. He was the only one in our family I felt I could talk to and confide in. I looked down at my uniform and shrugged helplessly.
His eyes burned with unspoken emotion as he stared down at me, and I knew he was up this early not because he was desperate to use the bathroom, but because he wanted to see me off on my first day.
It was 6:15 in the morning.
Like Tommen College, BCS didn’t start until 9:05am, but I had a bus to catch and the only one passing through the area was at 6:45am.
It was the first bus run of the day leaving Ballylaggin, but it was the only one that passed the school in time. Mam worked most mornings and Dad was still refusing to take me.
When I asked Dad about taking me to school last night, he had told me that if I'd get off my high horse and go back to Ballylaggin Community School like Joey and every other kid on our street, I wouldn’t need a lift to school.
"I'm so fucking proud of you, Shan," Joey said in a voice that was thick with emotion. "You don’t even realize how brave you are." Clearing his throat a couple of times, he added, "Hang on – I've got something for you." With that, he padded across the narrow landing and into his bedroom, returning less than a minute later. "Here," he muttered, fisting a couple of €5 notes into my hand.
"Joey, no!" I immediately rebuffed the notion of taking his hard-earned money. He didn’t make much at the petrol station to begin with, and money was hard to come by in our family, so taking ten euro from my brother was unimaginable. "I can't–"
"Take the money, Shannon. It's only a tenner," he instructed, giving me a no-nonsense expression. "I know Nanny gave you the bus money, but just have something in your pocket. I don’t know how shit works in that place, but I don’t want you going in there without a few quid."
I swallowed the lump of emotion fighting its way up my throat and squeezed out, "Are you sure?"
Joey nodded, then pulled me in for a hug. "You are going to be grand," he whispered in my ear, hugging me so tight I wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince or console. "If someone gives you even the hint of shit, then you text me and I will come over there and burn that fucking school to the ground and every posh, little rugbyhead fucker in it."