by Jennifer Harvey
We were sat in the assembly hall when it happened. A hot day, towards the end of term, the room stuffy with the clammy mass of one hundred and eighteen girls, each of us dreaming of summer and longing for freedom.
We fell suddenly and without warning. A ripple effect, they call it. One by one, we went down, chairs clattering to the floor, eyes wide open and staring into someplace vacant. While up on the stage, the teachers watched and gasped, frozen by the sight of us as we swayed, then collapsed. It sounds sensational, but it wasn’t. There was a peace to the way we fell. It was calm. Like a wave, coiling towards the shore.
I remember looking through the stained glass of the west-wing window as a ray of sun caught the gold in the wings of some angel they had trapped there with lead. It was a nice distraction from the low drone of whoever was up on the podium speaking, and I liked to imagine the power of my gaze would one day be enough to release that poor trapped Seraphim and send him heavenwards with a fiery stretch of limb and wing.
Then Sinéad Fahy fell. Sinéad, with that sweet little mark on her belly, the strawberry bruise of a kiss left there by Jimmy Dillon. Jimmy Dillon with his brooding gaze and wayward lips. Jimmy Dillon, the boy we all wanted. Though when he looked at us, we turned away, our cheeks burning as we crossed our legs in shame. The only one who dared return his gaze was Sinéad.
Sinéad with her scandalous, scarlet blemish. She had shown it to Lydia Hutton and made her promise not to tell. But Lydia was not one for keeping secrets, and word had quickly spread until every girl in school knew about Sinéad’s secret liaisons and Jimmy’s deviant kisses and that luscious stain on Sinéad’s pale skin. We didn’t need to see it to be able to imagine it and to long for the touch of Jimmy’s lips on our skin.
And this is why we fell. This was the energy in the room that day. The contagious energy of one hundred and eighteen girls all wanting the same thing. We sat there and thought of Jimmy Dillon and Sinéad Fahy together. Jimmy leaving his mark, staking his claim. Sinéad seeing it there come morning and following the contours with the tips of her fingers until they tingled then strayed lower. His name on her lips, ‘Jimmy’. When she whispered it, we all heard her and shivered under the bedsheets.
And sat in that stuffy hall, Sinéad felt our longing, felt the burn of Jimmy Dillon on her skin, felt it press upon her, until she toppled and triggered the cascade of bodies.
When the ripple reached me, I slipped from my chair—my eyes fixed on the angel. I watched it break free of its confines, the glass splintering, the lead falling away, a ray of gold—the last thing I remember. That and a feeling inside of me that I can only describe as a sort of glow. It left me feeling I was connected to everyone in the room, as if the light held us together, all the way down the line from where I sat at the back of the hall to the front seat where Sinéad Fahy lay on the floor, her blonde hair gleaming and fanned out around her like a halo. As if, at any moment, she was about to float up into the light, into the gold and the glow, carrying us all with her. Imbued with her trembling and filled with a forbidden ecstasy that would never leave us.
Jennifer Harvey is a Scottish writer now based in Amsterdam. Her writing has appeared in various publications in the US and the UK, including: Carve, Folio, Bare Fiction, and The Lonely Crowd. She has been shortlisted for the Bristol Prize (2017), the Bridport Prize (2017, 2015, 2014) and placed 3rd in the University of Sunderland Short Story Award (2018), and her novels have been longlisted for the Bath Novel Award (2016, 2017). Her radio dramas have also won prizes and commendations from the BBC World Service (2016, 2009 and 2001) She is a Resident Reader for Carve Magazine, an editor for Carve Critiques, and serves as a member of the Editorial Board for Ellipsis Magazine. When not writing, she can be found sauntering along the Amsterdam canals, dreaming up new stories. You can find her online over at www.jenharvey.net or follow her on Twitter @JenAnneHarvey