By midday, St Brigid’s had acquired the energy of a beehive hit with a hurley.
Teachers moved in pairs. Students were told to stay out of the music corridor, which naturally made the music corridor the most interesting location in the building. Year Eights invented three separate theories involving drugs, a secret pregnancy, and an underground gambling ring run through the choir cupboard. Year Twelves, who considered themselves above gossip, discussed the situation in grave whispers beside the lockers while refreshing their phones every thirty seconds. The younger kids stared at me with open terror, as if scandal were airborne and I had forgotten to cover my mouth.
I spent lunch in Ms Hartigan’s office with Priya, two cheese sandwiches, and a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps neither of us opened.
The hidden phone sat on the desk inside a clear plastic bag.
Garda Nolan had come to collect it. She wore her hair in a low bun and had the calm, tired face of someone who had long ago stopped expecting teenagers or adults to make her job easier. She asked Ms Hartigan where exactly it had been found. She asked who had access to the office. She asked me whether I recognised the case.
I did not.
Priya did not either.
“That phone was planted,” Priya said after Garda Nolan left.
Ms Hartigan looked at her. “We’re not making assumptions.”
“It was behind your filing cabinet.”
“An observation is not a conclusion.”
“It’s wearing conclusion’s jacket.”
I huffed a laugh despite myself.
Ms Hartigan pointed at Priya with her pen. “You are alarmingly good under pressure.”
“My mother says anxiety is just project management with worse branding.”
“Your mother is not wrong.”
I picked at the corner of my sandwich. The bread was dry. The cheese had sweated. My body wanted food and rejected the concept.
The message kept replaying in my head.
Tell Maeve to stop talking.
Not Maeve should stop talking.
Tell Maeve.
Whoever sent it expected the phone to be found by an adult. Or by Ms Hartigan specifically. They wanted the warning delivered through authority, wrapped in institutional fear. Clever. Ugly. Personal.
The thought made my skin crawl.
“Could Finn have left it?” Priya asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said too quickly.
Ms Hartigan heard the speed. Of course she did. “Why?”
“He was scared yesterday. Not threatening scared. Scared scared.”
“There are many kinds of scared.”
“I know.”
I did. Mum counting coins at the kitchen table scared. Dad coughing blood into a tissue and pretending it was from brushing his teeth too hard scared. Me sitting GCSE mocks with a hole in my shoe scared. Finn in the corridor had been a different kind. Cornered animal. Last exit. Hand shaking around an envelope he did not want and could not keep.
Priya unwrapped her sandwich with surgical precision. “Has anyone spoken to Lily?”
“Finn’s sister?” Ms Hartigan asked.
“She was on my bus.”
I looked at Priya. “You saw her?”
“I saw you see her.”
Naturally. Priya noticed everything except when people liked her, which was absurd because people liked her in self-defence.
Ms Hartigan made a note. “The guards are liaising with the family.”
“His mum?” I asked.
“His aunt, at present.”
Finn and Lily lived with an aunt near the ring road. Everyone knew it without knowing it officially. Their mother appeared at school events twice a year looking expensive and angry, then vanished. Their father was a rumour with a van. Finn had perfected the art of being charming enough that teachers forgave missing homework and good-looking enough that girls forgave worse. I had never decided whether I liked him. I only knew he was kinder to Lily than most brothers were in public, and that counted for more than I wanted it to.
A knock came at the door.
This time Ms Hartigan said, “Come in,” like she might bite if the wrong person obeyed.
The wrong person did.
Nessa Ward stepped into the office wearing her uniform like a costume designer had been paid to suggest effortless money. Her blonde hair fell in loose waves. Her skirt was exactly short enough to annoy teachers without inviting discipline. She had a phone in one hand and a face arranged into concern.
Nessa was not the most popular girl in our year because popularity implied something as crude as effort. Nessa was atmosphere. People adjusted around her. Teachers called her bright. Boys called her intimidating when she ignored them and a legend when she did not. Girls copied her jewellery and pretended not to.
She looked at me as if we were friends from a previous life.
“Maeve,” she said. “God. Are you okay?”
Priya’s expression turned to stone.
Ms Hartigan stood. “Nessa, this is not a drop-in space.”
“I know. Sorry. Mr Vance said I should give you this directly.” She held out a folded note. “It’s about what happened.”
“What happened?” Priya asked.
Nessa’s eyes slid to her. “The video.”
“Be specific.”
A tiny flash crossed Nessa’s face. There and gone. “I saw something.”
My heart kicked.
Ms Hartigan took the note but did not open it. “When?”
“Yesterday. Before choir.”
“Why are you only coming forward now?”
Nessa’s mouth tightened. “Because everyone’s acting like Maeve did something disgusting, and she didn’t.”
The room shifted.
I did not trust it.
Hope was a dangerous idiot. It rushed towards any open door and called it rescue.
“What did you see?” Ms Hartigan asked.
Nessa looked at me. “Finn talking to Cian Burke outside the sports hall.”
Priya sat up.
Cian Burke was captain of the senior hurling team, son of a county councillor, owner of a jawline adults described as “fine looking” and girls described in less printable ways. He had never spoken to me except once when he said, “Move,” because I was standing between him and a water fountain.
“What kind of talking?” Ms Hartigan asked.
“Not friendly.”
“Did you hear anything?”
Nessa hesitated.
I watched her fingers tighten around her phone.
“He said Finn had one job.”
My mouth went dry.
“Cian said that?”
Nessa nodded. “Finn said he wanted out. Then Cian told him people like him don’t get out. I thought it was just lads being dramatic.”
Priya said, “Lads being dramatic is how civilisation ends.”
Nobody laughed.
Ms Hartigan opened the folded note. Read it once. Then again.
“Nessa,” she said carefully, “why did Mr Vance send you here instead of taking this statement himself?”
“He said you were handling the welfare side.”
“The welfare side,” Ms Hartigan repeated.
The crack between institution and student widened another inch.
Nessa looked uncomfortable now. Real uncomfortable, not performance. She glanced at the bagged phone on the desk and went pale.
“What is that?”
“Evidence,” Ms Hartigan said.
Nessa stepped back. “I should go.”
“Nessa.”
“I have chemistry.”
“You need to speak to Garda Nolan.”
“No.”
The word came out sharp.
Everything in the room stilled.
Nessa swallowed. “I mean, my dad would want to be there.”
“Then we’ll call him.”
“No,” she said again, softer. “Please don’t.”
There it was: fear, wearing lip gloss.
I saw it because yesterday had taught me its shape.
Ms Hartigan’s voice gentled. “Are you unsafe?”
Nessa laughed. It sounded awful. “I’m rich. We’re not allowed to be unsafe. We’re only allowed to be complicated.”
Priya’s face flickered.
For the first time in four years, I looked at Nessa Ward and saw not a queen, not a threat, not a glossy person from a glossy life, but a girl with her hand wrapped too tightly around a phone.
“That’s not true,” Ms Hartigan said.
Nessa’s eyes filled. She hated it. You could tell. “You don’t know my house.”
The bell rang for afternoon classes, shrill and bright.
Nessa wiped under one eye with the heel of her hand, furious at herself. “I didn’t film it,” she said to me.
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You thought it.”
“I think a lot of things.”
Despite everything, her mouth twitched.
Then a shout rose from the corridor.
Not gossip. Not laughter. Panic.
Ms Hartigan moved first. Priya and I followed because apparently trauma had turned us into ducks. Nessa came too, probably because queens did not like being left out of revolutions.
Students had gathered near the noticeboard outside the assembly hall. Mr Daly was telling them to move back with all the authority of a wet tissue. Someone was crying. Someone else had their phone up.
On the noticeboard, over posters for debating society and the spring concert, someone had pinned a sheet of paper.
A photo.
Finn O’Rourke’s school ID picture, printed in black and white.
Under it, in thick red marker, were six words.
ASK MAEVE WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM.
The corridor blurred at the edges.
Priya said my name.
Nessa whispered, “Oh my God.”
Ms Hartigan tore the paper down before Mr Daly had finished saying, “We shouldn’t touch—”
“Then stop standing there,” she snapped.
Students stared at me.
All of them.
I could feel the old version of myself trying to return. Invisible Maeve. Quiet Maeve. Maeve who survived by lowering her eyes and letting other people’s assumptions pass overhead like bad weather.
But bad weather was not the problem.
Someone was making weather.
And Finn was still missing.
I walked forward before I knew I had decided to move.
“Maeve,” Ms Hartigan said.
I stopped in the centre of the corridor. My hands were shaking. Fine. Let them. Let everyone see. I was tired of performing calm for people who mistook it for guilt.
“Whoever did this,” I said, and my voice carried farther than I expected, “you’re a coward.”
The corridor went silent.
My heart pounded so hard I could hear it in my teeth.
“You filmed me because you thought I wouldn’t speak. You posted it because you thought everyone would look at me and stop looking at you. You’re wrong.”
A teacher said, “Maeve, perhaps—”
“No.”
It was the first time I had ever interrupted a teacher.
It felt like stepping off a ledge and discovering the ground had been closer than fear made it look.
I looked at the faces around me. Curious. Guilty. Excited. Frightened. Human, unfortunately.
“Finn O’Rourke is missing,” I said. “If you know something, tell the guards. If you shared that video, delete it. If you’re enjoying this, have a word with yourself because you’re being weird.”
Somebody snorted. A real laugh, shocked and nervous.
Priya muttered, “Excellent closing.”
My knees nearly buckled.
Then Lily O’Rourke pushed through the crowd.
She was still in her St Brigid’s jumper, cheeks blotchy, fringe stuck to her forehead. She looked smaller than she had on the bus and much, much angrier.
“Maeve,” she said.
The corridor held its breath.
Lily reached into her sleeve and pulled out a folded piece of paper, soft from being handled.
“Finn left this for you.”
Ms Hartigan stepped closer. “Lily, love—”
“No.” Lily’s voice shook, but she lifted her chin. “He said only Maeve.”
I looked at the paper.
My name was written across the front in Finn’s messy blue ink.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then I took it.
The paper trembled between my fingers. I unfolded it carefully, as if it might bruise.
There were only two lines.
I’m sorry.
Don’t trust the ones pretending to help.
Underneath, Finn had drawn a little bus.
Not a real bus. A stupid cartoon rectangle with wheels and smoke coming out the back.
My breath stopped.
Because nobody knew about the token except Mum, Priya, and me.
Nobody but someone who had been close enough to see what I held when I was afraid.
Or someone who had been watching longer than yesterday.