The pages in front of me were covered in all the history notes I had crammed into my brain over the past few weeks. This was my final exam, and in these last two hours I’d been gripping my pen so tightly that my fingers felt stiff, and my wrist ached. I stretched both hands over my table to give them a sense of relief.

This classroom, which our sixth-year teachers normally used to gather us for attendance and uniform checks, was far emptier than it had been in our English Paper One exam, last Wednesday. I quietly did a head count; there were thirteen of us in total. Eight students were still writing.

The Callaghan brothers were both bent over their desks, scribbling away like their lives depended on answering each question. Just that morning they’d been boasting about how little they needed to study since they had gotten H1s in their mock exams months before, but now from the redness and sweat on their faces, I wondered if they might have underestimated how different the ‘real’ exam questions could be.

The whole room felt tense, you could almost touch the stress in the air. Marie-Clare, the girl I shared the most classes with, had also finished with her exam paper. She had her pages neatly piled on top of each other and her pens and pencils lined up across the table.

Marie-Clare was one of those people who soaked every bit of information in like she was a sponge. I liked that she was always so excited to help others; it didn’t come as a surprise when she told me during Maths class one day that she wanted to be a teacher. She was the class prefect, and had won a ‘Best Student’ award last year, so it seemed fitting.

The two students beside her, Dara and Josephine, looked anxious, as though they weren’t sure if anything they had written was correct. Their eyes kept darting from the wall clock at the top of the room to the pages they were flipping through.

I could see the back of Sinéad’s head, her straight black hair in a low bun. She was sitting sideways, her elbow on the table and her face pressed into the palm of her hand. She seemed tired and fed up, and honestly, I wasn’t far off feeling the same.

The woman in charge of supervising our exam looked just as tired as I felt. I wondered how much she would get paid for making sure we didn’t cheat. To me, her job seemed simple enough. I glanced up at the clock behind her, our eyes met and as if she could read my mind, she too turned around to look.

‘You can now stop writing,’ she announced. ‘Organise your answer sheets and remain in your seats until I’ve collected them all!’

This was the moment I had been waiting for.

A collective sigh of relief filled the room. I sank back into my chair, finally able to let go of the mountain of tension that had been building up all week. There is only so much studying and preparation a girl can do, but finally, this was it. The end of my last exam and hopefully nothing would stress me out this much for the rest of the summer.

It felt strange that my time at secondary school was finally over. I didn’t hate St Enda’s, but the thought of no longer rushing down these locker-lined corridors to reach my 9am classes filled me with joy.

With around a hundred and eighty students in total, it’s a small school: you’ve got the farm kids, the townies and the blow-ins. Even if we don’t all talk to each other, we all know – or at least recognise – each other. While that sometimes has its perks, it also means there’s no escaping the watchful eye of the teachers and the daily rumour mills.

‘Are you well!’ Sinéad screamed as soon as she spotted me amongst the crowd of maroon-uniformed students walking out of our red-brick school building.

Sixth-year students were now pouring out of the school’s heavy wooden doors and forming their friend circles. Some had come from history, like me. Others had sat their French exam earlier in the day. I tried to read their faces; some were happy and others looked worried about what they’d just left behind on those once blank pages.

I was finished! Others, like Marie-Clare and the Callaghan brothers, still had to sit Technology and Religious Education next week. They were heading in the direction of the school library, a separate building just beside the main one. Unfortunately for them, their misery wasn’t over yet. I waved at Marie-Clare as though I was sending some comfort her way and she waved back.

The school car park was just as busy with many anxious parents waiting. I skipped toward my best friend, holding my arms out to give her a big hug. ‘Sinéad, I can’t believe we’re really done,’ I said, smiling, ‘we’re actually free.’

I started to tell her about the history questions I found easy and the ones that surprised me.

‘Abi, the LAST thing I want to talk about is this nightmare we’ve had to go through,’ Sinéad said scoldingly mid-embrace. She hated that I cared so much about these exams and in turn, I wished she cared more. I knew it didn’t determine our entire lives, but I still wanted to look back and be proud of how I did in school, even if no one ever asks about it.

‘Let’s focus on the important things,’ said Sinéad, shaking me as though it would help her words sink in better. ‘We’re about to have the very BEST summer of our lives!’

Mrs McGann, our now-former Maths teacher, was watching us from the school gate and motioning for us to leave. Her face was all scrunched up; students joked that it was probably from her constant frowning.

‘Let’s go, let’s go…’ I said, forgetting that neither she nor our other teachers had any power over us now. Sinéad stuck her tongue and middle finger out at Mrs McGann, then pulled me by my jumper as she ran off, forcing me to do the same.

It was less than a ten-minute walk to Vinny’s Takeaway, also known as ‘our local chipper’. This was the hangout spot for many of us in Ennistymon. We loved it here because you could get a decent feed for good value.

There wasn’t a lot going on for us teens here outside of the summer months. If you were lucky enough to be friends with someone who could drive, then you’d have the option of going into another nearby town or village.

Around here, the most exciting calendar event was Electric, the monthly teenage disco that took place in Ennis town. It had always puzzled me how even students without cars would somehow find a ride there and back in the late hours of the night. The girls at St Enda’s would spend their lunch breaks gossiping about what went down on the dance floor, who kissed who and what drinks they snuck in.

The rest of us who couldn’t go would pretend to be too cool to care about something as frivolous as a disco. We cared, but some of us just had strict parents who were unwilling to hear us out.

I’m talking about myself.

The reason I knew I would never be allowed to go all boiled down to my dad; he had always made it clear that he felt that teenagers shouldn’t have interesting lives outside of school. Even though I disagreed, being able to say, ‘Sorry, my dad is kind of strict,’ when I’d get invited for late night parties or sleepovers at parent-free houses saved me from a lot of things I didn’t feel I was prepared for. Especially after hearing the stories of what ‘scandalous’ activities went down.

Out of curiosity, though, I tried to suggest going to Electric as a reward for good grades last year, but as expected, he snickered and said, ‘Abidemi, the days for parties will come, but not while you’re in this house!’

After that shut-down, I never bothered to bring it up again.

Sinéad couldn’t go either. Her oldest sister Margaret, who used to always go out, even to discos as far out as Limerick city, got pregnant before finishing her final year at St Enda’s. As a result, Sinéad’s mom, who herself had Margaret before finishing school, got stricter with the younger two sisters.

When we finally arrived at Vinny’s, we made our way to the counter and ordered two burgers and chips to share.

‘Nine euro please,’ said the man behind the till. Perhaps it was part of his look, but he always managed to have grease stains on his shirt and beads of sweat pooled around his wrinkled forehead. He was Vinny, the owner of the takeaway.

Behind Vinny was Jack Keane. Although he was in my French and Maths class at St Enda’s we never really talked at school. He had his own group of friends, mainly the football-obsessed lads whose yearly goal was to make the county finals in their sports clubs, but I’d never seen Jack share the same excitement with them. I’d always wondered if they were really his core friend-group or was it the case that he hung out with them because they all grew up together.

I also didn’t know for sure if Jack was...