Free A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride Page A

always bleed? When things are fit that tight how can there not be bruises? I did think about it too at school. To fill my head with something new that’s not this. Blackboard chalk and slime in the loos and the always stench of boys’ feet and impulse off the girls.
    He didn’t write or ever phone as aunt did often. Again again and how are you? Did you get that check? Your uncle tells say hello. That’s quite an impression young lady you made. She like me now. Strangely. I don’t know. I wanted to ask you. Someone. I knew you wouldn’t know. What this all this is.
    We were moving off now. From each other. As cannot be. Helped. I didn’t help it from that time on. You know. All that. When you said sit with me on the school bus. I said no. That inside world had caught alight and what I wanted. To be left alone. To look at it. To swing the torch into every corner of what he’d we’d done. Know it and wonder what does it mean. I learned to turn it off, the world that was not my own. Stop up ears and everything. Who are you? You and me were never this. This boy and girl that do not speak. But somehow I’ve left you behind and you’re just looking on.

 
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    Fifteen sixteen. Eat coleslaw sandwiches with ham on top. My legs tucked up underneath my skirt. Tights stretched tight that I hate for they rub. Coffee. Me and my friend on the mitch. This is neat and clean where I can be. My growing-up. She smells like biscuits. Crisps. Old fags in her oil and her hair. I think her knickers must stink down there. It wafts up sometimes when she crosses her legs. Or is it tights too. Skirt rolled-up polyester. But I like anyway.
    She and me. Like to lurk here in the day. Those gossips we have are the very best and we read and read. Quote quotes back forth. That’s good for sharing books of this and that. Word perfect. We snick snack at each other. Correct each other’s grammar. Chew gum and talk and think of sex. I do not say but hint a little. That’s a powerful thing I know.
    And we go on travels. Great worlds to our minds, like interrail from here to there. Slum it downtown Bucharest eat cheese in Paris fall in love. Take boats in Venice to Constantinople by the train. Where speak good Russian Portuguese. Know people. Flit around the world to New York parties. Kandahar. We don’t know the world but want and want and on the very tip of tongue I’d fly away if I could. With her. It is our love affair. How we’d be. Who we think we are beneath royal blue jerseys and pleated skirts. Icon in the making me someone new tell every single one at school to go to fucking hell. And sometimes we sit by the lake. An early morning or some after school – in the daytime monitors drive there to catch whoever’s on the hop. Read Milton and feeling moved discuss the heavens and the earth and film stars we’d do with a chance. It’s love. It. Is. Love. Or love waiting for a man to come and take her place. But how would someone fit, I don’t know, in between us two.
    She is sufficiently hated by all at home to make the escapade worthwhile – having a friendship outside that womb. Making it an empty shell. Escape of me. We don’t say lots of secret stuff but good for a laugh and that’s enough. Who is better? She or me? Quick quickest. Fastest putting down. I belt her to the canvas every time. Still. She has something I’ve not got. That’s. Everyone else on her side. This is being liked at school. She sway there here and there to this one that. Can I borrow your copy? Can I have a crisp? Always smells like cheese and onion for it at the break. Too looking in her books I find how square roots done I never bother learning that. My brain isn’t. I’m up for Art and nothing else. Strict in it I’m on the outside of these schoolmate mates, being drawn in somehow by herself. Working so hard at working the room. Having people say hello. What’s that? What’s that? I learn.
    For a change now I wear my skirts high. Rolled up to