This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Roof
I could not sleep that night, so I took my blanket up to the school roof.
It was flat and gravelled, with a low wall around it.
The mountains stood black against a sky with more stars than I had ever seen.
I sat with my back to the chimney and my knees up inside the fleece.
My hands would not stop shaking.
It was not the cold, and it was not Colson. It was the sentence from the afternoon.
Like somebody who has been afraid of it for six years.
The roof door creaked.
"I thought you'd be here," Padraig said.
He had two tin cups in his hands, steaming.
"Bess says tea is a medical treatment."
"Bess says a lot of things."
"She also says you're not to be left alone after a visit from a husband." He held a cup out. "I'm only following orders."
I took it.
He sat down on the gravel a careful arm's length away and stretched his long legs out in front of him.
For a while we did not talk.
Far down the valley, a few lights burned in the dark where the town had been.
"His name was Ben," Padraig said.
I turned my head.
"You've said it. But I'd like you to hear it from me." He turned the cup in his hands. "He was five years younger than me. He built furniture. He couldn't spell and he never wore a helmet, because he said it flattened his hair."
I laughed, and then I put my hand over my mouth.
"It's all right," Padraig said. "It's a funny story. My mother tells it at dinner."
"Does she?"
"Every Christmas. She tells the helmet one, and the one where he painted the dog."
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