It happened towards the end of secondary school. Sunlight was cutting through the classroom, and it must have been close to lunchtime because the air was caramel-thick with boredom. This was in the queasy final weeks before the Leaving Cert, the state exams every Irish teenager has to sit if they want to go to university.
We were a bunch of young lads, all acne and adrenaline, who had spent the previous summer passing through thresholds like hands through water: first loves, first time getting drunk, all that feverish giddy hormonal magic.
