“Yeah,” he agreed with a nod. “But—”
“We want to go to this public school, Ry.”
Ryder looked at Damien when he cut him off, and though he looked so much like our dad, I knew he was a much better person and wouldn’t react violently towards us. He looked at all of us, and as I knew he would, he bobbed his head in understanding. He was clearly worried about us, and I hated that. He always worried about us, but something as trivial as us attending school didn’t need to be added to that lengthy list.
“The school is ten minutes away from here, and it has a max of three hundred kids. There are forty-five kids in our graduating class, Ry. Nothing is going to go wrong. Not even Dominic can get into trouble here.”
“Don’t jinx yourselves.”
“We’ll be fine,” I assured him.
Kane was observing us quietly, like he always did, but when we stood from the table, he snorted.
I narrowed my eyes. “What’s so funny?”
“You’re both matching.”
Damien and I looked at one another, then down at our school uniforms, before we looked back at Kane.
“You have to wear a uniform at this school. We can’t wear regular clothes.”
“I get that, but you’re twins, so it’s funny to see you match.”
I never thought of that.
“Do we look stupid?”
“No,” Ryder answered instantly. “You look like regular school kids.”
He sounded damn happy about that fact.
I nudged Damien. “We have to be there ten minutes early to get our schedules, so we should get going.”
He nodded, and after saying goodbye to our brothers, we grabbed our backpacks and left the house. We decided on walking since every other kid would be walking too. No student parking was just one of the many things that was different about Ireland. We had been here exactly six weeks, and I couldn’t help but notice just how different everything was. The people, the accents, the food, the alcohol, the scenery, the currency, the driver’s side of a car. Anything you could think of, the Irish did it their own way, and I liked it. I had been to so many countries in a few short years fighting opponent after opponent, and Ireland was the first country where my brothers and I felt very much at home. It was a collective decision to stay here, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.
I was from New York but living there never felt like home. The compound where I grew up felt like a prison, but being here in Ireland with my brothers felt very much like home.
“Is it normal that I’m stoked to go to school?”
I laughed at Damien’s question.
“Nah, bro. I’m excited too. It’ll get boring fast but fuck it. At least we’ll be around regular people, and that’s all I care about.”
The walk to the school was quick, and by the time we entered the school grounds, I was sweating. It was too hot to be wearing the thick fleece sweater I had on, and when I caught sight of other students just wearing their school shirts and ties, Damien and I quickly rid ourselves of our sweaters and put them in our bags.
“Are you worried about your fight on Friday?”
“When am I ever worried about my fights?”
“Cut the bullshit,” Damien said as we searched for the main office. “It’s just me. You don’t have to lie.”
I glanced at my brother and sighed. “I haven’t fought since we were in Scotland. That was two months ago, and my training has been off since we moved here. It took us a while to find our house and get settled. I need to win because these next couple of bouts are it, and then we can finally be rid of Marco. I can’t lose. I can’t give him any reason to think he can ... keep us.”
I couldn’t let Marco retain his hold over us. I couldn’t.
“You’ll be great, Dominic. You always are.”
“Aw, thanks, brother.”
Damien punched my arm, making me laugh. I stopped laughed when I noticed more than a few pairs of eyes focused on us. Many of those eyes belonging to girls.
“Has your ego just inflated massively too?”
“It’s not the only thing to inflate massively.” I grinned. “Some of those chicks are hot.”
Damien laughed. We found the main office, knocked on the door, and introduced ourselves to the receptionist when she opened the door. The woman’s name was Ann, and she took all of sixty seconds to give us a crash course on the tiny school. We got our class schedules with a key, so we understood the abbreviations, and a school map. The school was tinier than I imagined. The school’s soccer pitch was bigger than its cluster of buildings.
“Ann explained that homeroom is what they call a tutor class here,” Damien said as we left the office, reading our schedules. “Our tutor is the teacher we go to if we need anything. We have registration class for ten minutes with her every morning to get marked in on the attendance role, and other mornings, like today, we have a whole period with her.”