*It's only been three and a half years since the first part, so here's the second. Everyone involved is over 18.*
*****
I graduated with reasonable marks, but nothing special. Certainly not enough to get into the prestigious schools my aunt had hoped for. I was bored of education by the end of secondary anyway, and more importantly, just bored of thinking. The summer was strange. A heat wave set in around late June, cicada-strung and so humid you could barely move. My aunt, as she always did, set off for Europe as soon as the semester was over. She invited me with her, but I couldn't bear the thought of hopping from sight to sight and staying in hotels for two months, with no one for company but her. She shrugged in her usual way and told me it was fine, I could do what I wanted, but if I wasn't going to school in September then I must start earning money. And that was it, I was graduated from the bubble of school into the real world.
Of course, it's not like I was thrown out on the street. She set me up with a caretaker position at the school, and I was mowing lawns as I watched my plaid-skirted former classmates file out one by one through the gate, sly smiles and furtive waves as they walked out of my life forever. They were onto bigger and better things, entering the world of higher learning and higher potential. And there I was, in a wife-beater and covered in sweaty axle grease, attempting to look dignified.
A couple weeks after the end of the term the teachers left too. The nuns stuck around, but kept to themselves. And worst of all, she who'd been dodging my conversations and eye contact since that day we were together, Ms. Brown, was staying the whole summer to work in the library on archives. Not only was she the only woman on the grounds, she was an achingly beautiful and intelligent one, who'd not two months previously touched me in a way no other had done before. So I was left with the permanent groundskeeper McCreary for company, an ancient drunk Irishman who said only two things: "Yeah lad, that'll about do." and "No, I don't think so."
I spent the summer working hard, harder than I ever had. I wasn't making much, but being that my room and board were taken care of and I'd nothing else to do, all my money was spent on the pubs. McCreary and I would go down every night after locking up the equipment, without bothering to shower, through the dense woods and down the long gravel road to the village at the center of the local valley. When I first went to that pub, the Stag Lounge as it was called, they asked me for identification every time. At the end of the summer, either through familiarity or the setting in of a drunken disposition, no one in the village asked me for a card.
After a bit, growing tired of McCreary's company and the steep markup at the Lounge, I started in with buying whole bottles of whisky at the shop and just bringing them home. I'd putter about in the afternoon as the sun set, watching the old castle on the hill, imagining Ms. Brown alone up there with her head buried in old books, and I thought about her round cheeks and big breasts and sexy eyes, and as it went dark I'd settle down with my whisky in the easy chair by McCreary's fire, and drink until I fell asleep. Sometimes I'd walk around the village late at night, punching postboxes and streetsigns and whatever I could find. I'd show up at the pub after all the shops were closed, and before serving me the concerned waitress would ask, "What happened to your hands?" and I'd notice they were bleeding. Most days I'd wake with a blinding headache, but, "Lad, that'll do, work to be done." And I'd get up in spite of it, shake and vomit it off, and work all day in the sun.
As September came around, I was resigned to the idea that I'd never be anything more than a Catholic caretaker, and would eventually go as white and stooped as McCreary, and shuffle around the lawns sipping from a small flask and scowling at the schoolgirls. It seemed like a foregone conclusion, and I spent that whole Fall semester embracing the idea, drinking more and more, and ignoring the girls with their books and skirts and all the fantasies I'd had of fucking them, and the teachers up in their high halls.
Christmas rolled in, and with it tremendous banks of snow. Most of the girls went away for a few weeks in December, and about half the teachers as well. Some faculty brought their families in, and for a few strange weeks you'd see toddlers running about in the sleet with bright red faces, and whole families on the hill, instead of the usual lonely and solitary folks about their business and education. And then the day after Christmas, I came to work and McCreary was lying pale on his easy chair, staring up at the ceiling.
I stood watching for a minute. And then I walked over to him, and the air was so cold it hurt to breathe. His fire had gone out some time in the night.
"McCreary?"
No answer. I detached a frozen arm to shake him.
"McCreary, wake up."
But he would not.
***
My aunt was still in Montenegro when we had McCreary's funeral. As per his will he was buried on the campus cemetery, and being as most of the faculty and students were still away, it was a fairly sparse and sombre affair. A few teachers looking confused, as most had never spoken to the man and so didn't exactly know who he was, a few attached children crying in the cold and asking to go home, myself quite drunk and not trying to hide it, and then off on the side, Ms. Brown, the only one who seemed genuinely sad.
As the casket squeaked on metal pulleys into its plot, Ms. Brown held a mittened hand up to her scrunched up face. I did my best not to stare, but it was hard not to. She was so beautiful, standing there in the snow all parka'd up and trying not to cry. And this woman who meant so much to me, who took me in her hand and gave me something no one else had, and then shunned me and forgot about me-
Anger and sadness. And unbelievable tenderness. Of course she never looked at me, throughout the funeral, and right after crept back up the hill with all the other mourners, as the grounds darkened and I was alone, the new McCreary. And would my funeral be as insincere and unpopulated? I went home and got very drunk.
***
It was the last day before the semester, and the day I turned nineteen. Students were trudging back in, forlorn and resigned to another semester and exams. Much of the snow had melted and the weather conditions were improving. And I was pissed.
I was both drunk and incredibly angry. The funeral had stirred up too much within me. The night after I'd moved into McCreary's house and no one stopped me. Here I was, so far from what I had envisioned for my nineteenth birthday, so far from anything I'd ever wanted. So far from the bright and eager boy that had drawn Ms. Brown's attention. I must have, right? I must have meant something, for her to do what she did.
I ran over all the possibilities in my head a thousand times, getting drunker and drunker. Getting so angry at this beautiful woman, so angry at this woman who I knew more and more was my first love. I loved her, and she spurned me. I finished my bottle, and wobbling upright from McCreary's chair, I smashed it against the wall and came to an absolute conclusion. She was going to talk to me, whether she wanted to or not.
It was a struggle to get my coat on over my stiff arms, and then to disentangle my hood from my shirt, and then my laces from inside my boots, until I gave up on the entire process and stomped out into the melting snow with half my clothing falling off. Crossing the lawn the sun off the snow was a bit blinding. I shielded my eyes with an arm, but this caused me to lose my balance and faceplant into the slush. When I rose I looked around, and saw a few groups of girls staring at me. The new ones I didn't recognise, and they were a bit frightened. Those that knew me from when I was still a student here seemed more concerned. Doesn't matter, I thought, and shook it off.
I hadn't been back into the school since I graduated, and for a moment it took my breath away, standing in the lobby steaming and dripping. It was a very old institution, and when I thought about it then, quite elegant. One of the many things I never appreciated at the time. But I was on a mission.
It took a moment to remember where Ms. Brown's English class was, and I flung open a few doors to surprised teachers before getting there. As it turns out she wasn't in her class, and as such it was locked. I banged the wall hard with my fist, and turned and slid down the door. My head was spinning, and for the first time I considered what I was doing, how it would look.
"Are you alright?"
I looked up. It was one of the octogenarian nuns, I couldn't remember her name. I closed one eye to keep her in focus.
"Yeah, just fine."
She nodded and began to turn, but I reached out and grabbed her cold wrist.
"Do you know where Ms. Brown's office is?"
She looked at me for a moment, with something like caution.
"I'm the groundskeeper. Official business," I explained.
She nodded severely. "Yes, follow me."
The nun led me around a corner and up a wide stone flight of stairs, past a group of shy eyed and staring girls, and at the landing she turned and motioned down a half lit hall.
"Her office is at the end there, on the left."
I thanked her and she nodded, before returning down the stairs. The girls were still staring. I decided to ignore them, and began down the hall. It was one of the older wings of the building, all wood and blown plate glass windows. A faint light flickered from an open door where the nun had pointed. I swallowed and felt much more sober.
