Asking for It by Louise O'Neill

smirk at Dylan – ‘did someone say something about another party?’

Sunday
    ‘Emmie. Emmie! ’
    I don’t want to get up for school, Mam. I don’t feel well. I try to get up, but tiredness is holding my head underwater. Desperate for air. I am . . .
    Air.
    ‘Denis, help me. Will you help me , for God’s sake. We need to get her inside.’
    A pinch under my arm, squeezing tight. Too tight.
    You’re hurting me.
    ‘Emma, you’re making a holy show of yourself. Get up. Get up , I said.’
    Her voice is too loud.
    She touches my face, whispering angrily, wake up, Emma, wake up wake up wake up . I try and open my eyelids, but I can’t, the skin scraping as it folds against itself.
    ‘She’s burning up. Look at those blisters.’ My mother’s voice is panicked. ‘Feel her forehead, Denis. Denis, I said, feel her forehead . Her skin will be ruined.’
    Daddy? Daddy, help me, I want to say, but my tongue has been cut out of my mouth with the pain.
    He is silent. I hear the front door open, squeaking on its frame, and she tells him to run and get the thermometer. There are hands around my waist, dragging me off the ground, the material of my dress chafing the raw skin, and I almost scream. I see the open door, the hallway, then the roof of the porch before it dissolves into red flesh again, and the earth moves, it moves, and I move with it, falling to my hands and knees, feeling the concrete tear at me. I stretch my hands out before me, watching as the white scuffed skin fills with stripes of blood, carving lines into my palms, dripping on to the concrete below me.
    ‘Denis. Would you stop just standing there like an eejit and help me .’
    Dad reappears, and he has a strange look on his face. Words gargle at the back of my throat, coming out in a clotted mess. He takes a step away from me.
    ‘Denis, pick her up. For God’s sake, will you move?’
    He scoops me up in his arms, carrying me over the threshold; Mam telling him to mind the rug. Once inside the hall, I lie down on the wooden floor, tasting vomit in my breath.
    ‘What the . . .?’
    Bryan on the stairs, his eyes bleary with sleep. Jen is standing behind him, wearing his old Ballinatoom jersey, her long legs bare. Her jaw drops in horror, and I know something must be very, very wrong.
    ‘Please, cover yourself up, Jennifer,’ Mam hisses.
    ‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ Bryan says, taking a step back up the stairs to hide Jen from view. ‘Why are you even home so early?’
    ‘It’s four o clock in the afternoon.’ Mam is standing at the bottom of the stairs, her hand gripping the banister, the knuckles whitening.
    ‘I thought you said you weren’t going to be back until this evening.’
    I close my eyes again.
    ‘Yes, I can see that’s what you thought.’ She’s almost shouting now. ‘I gave you one job. One job. To mind your sister.’ I can hear her shoes squeak against the wooden floor as she turns on her heel towards me. ‘And look at her. Just look at the state of her.’
    ‘She’s eighteen, Mam.’
    ‘I don’t care what age she is. This is a respectable house and I expect you to follow my rules under my roof. I suppose you didn’t even go to Mass?’ Bryan snorts at this – unwisely, I think – and she screams at him: ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me.’
    Please be quiet, please be quiet, please be quiet .
    ‘Denis! Are you just going to let him talk to me like that?’ Dad mumbles something, shifting from one foot to the other. ‘Do you really think this is funny?’ Mam continues. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
    Don’t get sick, don’t get sick, don’t get sick, don’t get sick.
    ‘You were supposed to be taking care of her and we arrive home and find her lying on the porch. I thought she was dead – dead, do you hear me?’ I try to sit up and the room spins like I’m on a merry-go-round. ‘We left you in charge.’ Oh shit, I can feel it coming, boiling up inside me, crawling up my throat, and I try and