When Irish Guys Are Smiling (S.A.S.S.) - Softcover

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Suzanne Supplee, originally from Tennessee, lives in Maryland and works as a writer and teacher. She visited Ireland on her own many years ago and highly recommends traveling solo, at least once in a lifetime. Her favorite hobbies are reading and chasing her two Jack Russell terriers. Suzanne is married and has three daughters, Cassie, Flannery, and Elsbeth.

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Application for the Students Across the Seven Seas Study Abroad Program

Name: Delk Sinclair
Age: 17
High School: Junior at Overton Preparatory
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Preferred Study Abroad Destination: Connemara, Ireland

Why are you interested in traveling abroad next year?

Answer: I feel it is important for me to discover the world so that I can become a self-assured, self-aware young woman, and Ireland is so rich in culture and tradition and natural beauty. To me, there is no better environment in which to discover my true self and embrace the simple things in life.

(Truth: I want to get away from my father’s child bride—she is only ten years older than me. Besides that, she and my father are having a baby. Connemara, take me away. Please, please, please accept me, S.A.S.S. Powers That Be!)

How will traveling abroad further develop your talents and interests?

The new insights I gain while studying in Ireland will help prepare me for college life and the adult world. Traveling abroad will open my eyes to new opportunities and shed light on what I might chose for a future profession.

(Truth: Ireland seems like such a happy place. Maybe a little of that happiness will rub off on me.)

Describe your extracurricular activities.

Overton Preparatory Tennis Team
Overton Preparatory Junior Class Activities and Events Cochair
Overton Preparatory Sophomore Class Activities and Events Cochair
Overton Preparatory Freshman Class Activities and Events Cochair
West Nashville Country Club Junior Social Committee Member
Booth Coordinator for Find It Now (an annual fund-raiser for kidney disease research)

(Truth: As much as I look down on shallow people, I am one. Mostly, all I do is plan events and try to look hot.)

Is there anything else you feel we should know about you?

I lost my mother two years ago, and my goal is to live my life in a manner which would make her proud and honor her memory.

(Truth: I miss my mother, and I don’t think I will ever get over losing her.)

“Hi, I’m Delk.” She smiled, extending her hand to a broad-shouldered girl who was seated on a bench under an Aer Lingus sign at the Dublin Airport. “Delk Sinclair. You’re with S.A.S.S., right?”

“How’d you guess?” The girl smirked and looked down at the “Students Across the Seven Seas” logo imprinted on her wrinkled T-shirt. Delk had a top just like it, except she hadn’t worn hers yet. It’d come with the official S.A.S.S. acceptance letter.

“That was kinda obvious, I guess.” Delk laughed uncomfortably and waited for the girl to introduce herself. “So what’s your name?” she asked finally.

“Iris,” she said, and smiled broadly, which was when Delk noticed Iris was missing a cuspid. Plain as day there just wasn’t a tooth where a tooth would normally go. “Yep, name’s Iris. Suits me, don’t you think?” she said, sticking her tongue through the space as if to draw attention to the flaw.

Delk couldn’t help but stare. “What happened to your tooth?” she asked. The rude question shocked Delk herself, and she wondered if it was the jet lag that made her forget her manners.

“Congenital defect,” said Iris.

Delk stared at the girl in horror. “Genital defect?” she whispered.

“Con-genital. As in from birth,” she explained.

“Oh, right,” said Delk, embarrassed.

“I have an appliance I can wear—when I want to impress people. I rarely want to impress people, though,” Iris added. “So where you from, Delk? No, wait, let me guess! Alabama? Kentucky?”

“Nashville,” Delk answered.

“Yep, I could tell by your accent it had to be somewhere down there. It’s ironic, I guess,” said Iris.

“What’s ironic?” Delk asked, searching through her purse for rewetting drops. Her contact lenses felt like sandpaper. She was tempted to remove them and put on her glasses, but they were thick as Coke bottles, and unlike Iris, she did want to impress people, at least at first.

“Well, it just seems to me that you should be the one missing teeth,” Iris quipped. Delk felt herself bristle. She hated degrading jokes about the South, and she could tell Iris was about to make one.

“We have excellent dental care in Nashville!” said Delk curtly. “And, I don’t go ’round barefoot and playing a banjo either.”

“I was only kidding,” said Iris. “I’m a Jersey girl. I know every word to every Bon Jovi song ever written. I’m a Turnpike Rat. Proud of it, too.”

“Turnpike Rat?” asked Delk.

“A Turnpike Rat is your basic redneck, only from the North.” Iris took a small blue case out of her duffel bag and inserted a contraption resembling a retainer into her mouth. She flashed a now-perfect smile.

“Wow! You can’t even tell with that thing in,” said Delk, impressed.

Iris laughed and popped the appliance out. “I’m also freakishly muscular, thanks to my sports addiction.” She flexed her biceps.

“Good Lord!” cried Delk. “What have you been lifting? Small cars? Guys named Guido?” she threw in, a retort to the Tennessee jab. “So what sport do you play?”

“That’s sports,” Iris corrected her, “and I play everything.” She snapped the appliance back in its case and stuffed it into her one duffel bag.

“You’re not gonna wear your appliance?” Delk asked. She preferred to meet the S.A.S.S. director with a companion who had all her teeth.

“Oh, I never meet anyone for the first time with it in,” said Iris, as if this were the most obvious of choices.

“Why not?” asked Delk.

“Hell, you can tell a lot more about a person with it out,” Iris explained. “It’s like my own personal Myers-Briggs. I get to see if you’re a shallow ass or a decent person, you know, someone with depth who won’t judge me based on a congenital defect.”

“All this you can tell by revealing a missing tooth?”

Iris nodded and let out a noisy yawn. “You’re all right, though, Delk. You passed with flying colors. As long as you like Bon Jovi, we’ll get along just fine.”

Delk thought how different Iris was from her friends back home, the West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gowns, a term Jimmy Buffett used in a song to describe girls of wealth and privilege. They’d sooner die than be caught with less than perfect teeth, or less than perfect anything, for that matter. Delk loved her friends, and she would miss them, but she also needed to get away from them for a while—completely away.

At the very last minute, Julie and Rebecca, Delk’s two best friends, had stopped by the house to say one last good-bye. “We promise to e-mail with all the Forest Hills dirt,” said Rebecca. “Yep,” Julie chimed in, “we’ll make you feel like you’re being presented right along with us!” They had the best intentions, Delk knew, but the Forest Hills Country Club presentation was precisely the reason Delk wanted to go to Ireland.

Every year the club held a lavish ceremony for girls Delk’s age. The presentation candidates wore white dresses and...