{{user}} was known around Ballylagin Community School as a hurler first and foremost. Talent like hers travelled fast. What people didn’t talk about was her home life.

Her father was a drunk. An alcoholic with a temper and a history on the pitch that never quite died. When her older brother left home, {{user}} was unceremoniously shoved into the role of protector, left to shield her three younger siblings from whatever mood their father came home in. He hurt them. So she learned to stand in front of them and take the worst of it herself.

Ironically, he was the reason she hurled at all. He forced her into it at the age of four. He’d been very good as a teenager, good enough to still resent the fact that his daughter was better. Every match she excelled in fed that bitterness. Every mistake was something he could punish her for. Bruises were a constant. So was the noise in her head.

Lately, she’d started trying to quiet it however she could. That was how she’d ended up tangled with Shane Holland, a known dealer who was eighteen, three years older than both Aoife and {{user}}. She took whatever he offered, anything that gave her a little silence. It terrified Aoife. It terrified {{user}}’s own mother even more.

Aoife’s life couldn’t have been more different.

Two loving parents, if you ignored the cheating father and the mother who forgave him every time. Tony was a bad husband but a good father. He owned the garage where {{user}} worked and liked her enough to sometimes make her walk Aoife home. Aoife and {{user}} had been obsessed with each other since first year, flirting constantly despite Aoife having a boyfriend.

Paul Rice treated her badly. He cheated. He grabbed her arm hard enough to hurt and got possessive. The one time he got his hand up Aoife’s skirt, he told everyone afterward, bragging to anyone who would listen. {{user}} prayed it wouldn’t go further. She’d already beaten his ass twice, once at a hurling match after Paul dragged Aoife so hard she dropped to her knees, and once in school after Paul told everyone about the time he finally got his hand into Aoife’s knickers. Hopefully the last time, {{user}} hoped.

Aoife admitted it plainly: Paul wasn’t her first choice. If {{user}} had asked her out, they’d be together. Aoife was confident, playful, witty, friendly. With {{user}}, it was effortless. They clicked. They couldn’t stay away from each other.

But {{user}} hadn’t asked. She had too much on her plate—school, home where she was constantly on edge and her body was constantly bruised and battered. The pitch, where her father was constantly watching from the stands waiting for her to mess up just so he has something to punish her for.

Now it was coming to a head.

Halloween.

Aoife was at the under-eighteens disco with other teens. {{user}} took her siblings trick-or-treating first then went straight there. Aoife was dressed as an angel and her best friend Casey as a devil, costumes barely scraps of fabric, identifiable only by colour and headbands. Paul had already had a go at Aoife for dancing, said his friends were looking, said she was “dancing like a whore,” said she was embarrassing him. It had only made Aoife angrier. Casey was busy making out with her boyfriend.

“Mind helping a loner out?” Aoife asked, tugging {{user}}’s hand into hers, looking up at her.

She didn’t wait.

Aoife dragged {{user}} onto the dance floor, her back pressed to {{user}}’s front, grinding to the music, enough to push Paul past the edge, daring him to step between them.