Apart from the Christmas turkey my dad won in the Leitrim Arms pub quiz when I was five years old, my dad had never won anything in his life. The day Jenny-May Butler went missing was the day that my dad won £500 on the lotto scratch cards. Maybe he had a good thing owed to him.
It was a summer day. There was only one week left before we were to go back to school and I was dreading even the thought of it, but apart from the anxiety for the week ahead, without having to get up every morning for school over the past few months I had lost all sense of time. Weekdays were the same as weekends. For a few months a year, the dreaded Sunday nights were the same as Friday and Saturday nights. This night was a Sunday night but, unusually for this time of year, it was a dreaded one. It was six forty P.M., still bright, the cul-de-sac was busy with kids playing, just like me, forgetting what day it was but knowing that whatever day it was, it sure was a great one because tomorrow would be exactly the same. My mother was in the front garden with my grandma and granddad getting the last few warm evening sunrays. I was sitting at the kitchen table anxiously waiting for the doorbell to ring. I was drinking a glass of milk and watching the clothes in the washing machine go around and around, trying to identify each garment that flashed by, just to occupy my mind.
My dad had eyed me warily as he came back and forth from the TV room to the kitchen, grabbing food he wasn’t supposed to be eating while on his new diet. I didn’t know whether he was trying to scope me out or whether he was eyeing me to see if I had noticed him stealing food. Either way he’d asked me three times already what was wrong, and I’d just shrugged and told him nothing. It was one of those occasions when telling someone wouldn’t make it any better. He checked on me from time to time, noticing how I’d jumped when the doorbell rang (only my mum, who had forgotten to put the door on the latch). He made a few faces at me to try to make me laugh, cramming a few biscuits into his mouth all at once to pretend he was entertaining me and not his stomach. I smiled for his sake; he seemed happy enough with that and then moved into the TV room again, this time with a lemon square up his sleeve.
You see, I was waiting for Jenny-May to call around.
She had challenged me to a game of King/Queen. It was a game we used to play on the road with a tennis ball. Each person stood in the boxes that were drawn on the road with chalk and then the idea was to bounce the ball first in your own box before passing it into someone else’s. They had to do the same and if they missed it, if they failed to bounce it in their own box first or if the ball went outside the lines, they were out. The idea was to try to make it to the box at the top, which was the King’s box, which was where Jenny-May was for the duration of the game. Everybody used to always say how wonderful she was at playing the game, how amazing and brilliant and talented and fast and precise and how gag, gag, make me puke, she was. My friend Emer and I used to watch the games from our wall. We were never allowed to play because Jenny-May wouldn’t let us. I merely commented to Emer one day that one of the reasons Jenny-May always won was because she always started in the top box. This meant that she didn’t have to work her way up like everybody else did.
Well, somebody somewhere overheard, and word got back to Jenny-May what I’d said and the next day, when Emer and I were sitting on the wall kicking our heels against the bricks and flicking ladybirds from the pillars to see how far they’d go, Jenny-May marched up to us with her hands on her hips, surrounded by her posse, and demanded I explain myself, which I did. Red-faced and flustered at being answered back at, she challenged me to a game of King/Queen. As I said, I’d never played this game before and I knew all too well that Jenny-May was good; all I’d meant was that she wasn’t as good as people were saying. There was something about Jenny-May that made people see more in her than there actually was. I’ve come across a few people like that in my life and they always make me think of her.
She was clever, though. She made sure that everyone knew that if I didn’t show up, then she would automatically become the champion, and I suddenly wished my dreaded visit to Aunty Lila was a day early.
Word spread among everyone in the road that Jenny-May had challenged me to a game. They were all going to turn out and sit on the curb to watch, including Colin Fitzpatrick, who was way too cool to hang out on our road. He used to go skateboarding with the people around the corner whom no one else had the privilege of hanging out with. Word was that even the skateboard gang were all coming to watch.
I barely slept a wink the night before. I got out of bed, put my runners on with my nightdress, and went outside to practice King/Queen up against the garden wall. It wasn’t much use because the ball kept hitting against the stippled back wall and sent it flying in all the wrong directions. Plus it was so dark I could hardly see it. Eventually Ms. Smith from next door opened her bedroom window and stuck out her head, which was covered in hair curlers which I thought was odd because the next morning her hair was straight, and she sleepily asked me to stop. I went back to bed but didn’t sleep much, and when I did, I dreamed of Jenny-May Butler being lifted onto everyone’s shoulders wearing a crown while Stephen Spencer, who was on a skateboard, pointed a nail-varnished finger at me and laughed. Oh, and I was naked.
It was my challenge with Jenny-May that alerted her parents to the fact she was missing. During the summer months we all had complete freedom. We stayed outside together all day playing, rarely going inside and sometimes having lunch in one another’s house. So I don’t blame her parents for not noticing she hadn’t been around all day. Nobody blamed them because I knew they all understood. They all knew deep down that it could have happened to them too, that it could have been their child no one had noticed not being around for a few hours that day.
Jenny-May’s house and mine were directly opposite each other. Mum and my grandparents had come back inside now that the sun had finally disappeared behind the Butlers’ house. I knew everybody was gathering on the curb waiting for me and Jenny-May to leave our houses and meet in the middle. I saw my dad look out the front window and then back at me. I think he finally understood what was wrong and gave me a small smile. Then he put biscuits on the table and sat with me, munching away.
Eventually, as it struck seven P.M., everybody outside began chanting. Some voices called for me but they were drowned out by chants for Jenny-May. Maybe it was equal but I seemed to hear only her name. All my life, I’ve heard her name louder than my own. Suddenly there was a big cheer and I assumed Jenny-May had left her house. Then the cheering stopped, there was chattering, then it got quieter and then it was completely silent. Dad looked at me and shrugged. The doorbell rang. I didn’t jump this time because something didn’t feel quite right. Dad patted my hand. I heard Mum answer the door, her voice as friendly and chirpy as ever. Then I heard Mrs. Butler’s voice, not so friendly, no singsong tone. Dad recognized it too, and left the table to join them in the hall. Voices turned to concerned tones.
I don’t know why, but I couldn’t leave the table. I just sat there thinking of ways to get out of the challenge but at the same time having the strange feeling that I wouldn’t need an excuse. The atmosphere had changed-for the worse, I sensed-but I had that relieved feeling like arriving at school to find out the teacher’s sick and not for one second worrying about the teacher. A few minutes later the kitchen door opened and Dad, Mum, and Mrs. Butler came in.