by Tiffany Sala
“Well, Tamara,” said Steven. “I got her.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t even know what I was feeling at first, and then I finally pinned it down as fear—but what a strange fear, when I felt like it might have the ability to lift me up and take me somewhere I’d never even been before.
“It’s okay if you want to, you know, do something.”
Jess’s voice felt like an intrusion. I knew I was rounding on her with a full-on glare, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
“It’s fine,” she insisted, determined to miss the point. “Like, it’s weird that my best friend and my sister seem to have something going on, and I’m aware it’s complicated, but I’ll roll with that, like whatever.”
Now I was glaring at Steven. Best friend? She was a baby practically, it was too weird.
And since he was the one who’d rescued her and brought her to me, it wasn’t the most pressing issue right now. “Is… um, is she supposed to stay here? Because I…” I didn’t want to say my mum wouldn’t want her, but it was pretty obvious Brad’s unlucky second daughter was not something she would be okay with in her home.
“Nah,” Steven said. “She’s had too rough of a time to deal with that. I… here.” His fingers seemed to work only with difficulty as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and slipped out a credit card to hand over to me. “This should have enough on it to get you into a decent hotel for a few days. You need some time to get to know one another without… without anyone trying to get in the way. And I need to know your bank details, so I can get the rest of your blood money from Daddy dearest to you to keep you going until you can get on your feet with a job of your own.”
I had just said I needed to get out of here, but I wasn’t really prepared for things to start happening that quickly. “I… don’t know my bank details,” I admitted.
Steven turned his head a little when he rolled his eyes, as if that would keep me from noticing. “Well are we going or not? I’ll go with you, get you paid for and settled in, and then…” He shrugged.
“I’ve already said it,” Jess spoke up, “I don’t really care if you want to get up to stuff, I can deal with that.”
“It’s okay kid,” said Steven. “I don’t think Tamara wants to get involved with someone like me actually.”
It was Jess’s turn to look away, but I didn’t miss the look on her face either. It was like she’d just found out her parents were getting divorced, for goodness sake—and considering what her parents were like, the disappointment here might be even greater.
Mum and Ryan and Mike had all come out of the house now: my fucked-up little family was as complete as I ever wanted to see it. Ryan kept glancing at Jess, which made me realise something: the two of them actually looked a bit similar, when they were unhappy.
It was all too much and Steven was right: I needed to take Jess away now. For both our sakes.
“Um, this is Jess.” I felt awkward with everyone staring at me, waiting for me to set the scene. “She’s my sister—Ryan’s sister too, you guys just haven’t met yet. I’m going to go stay with her for a few days, make sure she’s looked after. She doesn’t have anywhere else at the moment.”
“Tamara,” Mum spoke up, “you can’t leave right now. You’ve got school to focus on, Anita already let me know she caught you skipping the other day, I thought you were going to stay away from drama for the moment to try to get back on—”
“Mum, she’s my sister, not some drama. I need to help her out.” I hated Steven and Jess seeing me like this: petulant, pleading. I knew how Mum was going to be already. There was only one way things went once she decided she wasn’t in support and she had the jump on me.
Then Steven was standing between us. He didn’t give her time to start her work, he just said, “Tamara is coming with me and Jess now. I hope you’re going to let her at least take a moment to pack some things, because it’s not going to help her focus on school if she doesn’t have clean panties.”
I’d been on the bad side of Steven’s forcefulness, now I was happy to be standing behind him as he barrelled straight through Mum’s bluster.
“Whoa,” muttered Jess. “Get yourself a guy who will say ‘panties’ to your mother’s face.”
“And who do you think you are to go dictating—”
Steven spoke over Mum. “You can let her go without this fuss and maybe she’ll even keep you updated on her life, or you can fuck right off. Those are the only two options.”
Mum turned to the other men on the scene. “Ryan… Mike… you can’t just stand there and—”
“Might be best to let Tamara go do what she needs to do right now, sweetheart,” said Mike.
“You would say that, wouldn’t you? You’ve never liked my children. Couldn’t bring yourself to see them as part of your family, even though they’ve been with you for years. Is this just an opportunity for you to get one of them out of your sight for good?”
I flinched on Mike’s behalf at that, but he wasn’t going to take it laying down either. “I would give the shirt off my back for your kids, Sue, you know it’s always been that way. I’ve gone without plenty of things so they could have a nice place to live, go to a decent school…”
Ryan poked me in the arm. “Tamara, you get on inside. I’ll keep an eye on things out here.”
It was so weird to have him getting involved instead of running for his bedroom, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that or to worry about leaving him unsupervised with Steven. I bolted for my bedroom and stuffed everything I could think of in my schoolbag and a big floppy shoulder bag I didn’t seem to find much use for normally.
With the two bags bulging, I looked at the doll currently sitting on my bed, then shook my head at her. I didn’t have time to cuddle toys right now. Sorry, Charlotte.
I paused outside Mum and Mike’s room, and then pushed the door open and stepped inside. My birth certificate, conspicuous in its pattern of crumpling, was sitting on top of a stack of books on Mum’s bedside table. I stuffed it in my backpack. ‘Damaged’ in this case seemed like an either/or state.
Everything started feeling a bit unreal when I walked back out to join Steven and Jess. It didn’t seem like this could really be happening to me, that there was any universe in which I could be such a big part of the action. Tamara Hills was a troubled personality on the side, not the main character.
Jess had already gotten back in Steven’s car. Ryan kept glancing in her direction and wincing like he thought maybe he’d had something to do with it.
Mum kicked into high gear again when she saw me. “Tamara, you don’t need to take so many things, you’re not going to be gone that long…”
What I had hanging off my back and my shoulder was just a tiny part of what was left behind in my room, and now I was out of there I actually couldn’t think of one thing I hadn’t been able to bring I wanted. All the trinkets and gifts Mum was constantly buying me seemed like a wall of stuff that was being built around me, keeping me from digging my way out.
“Mum.” I tried to follow Steven’s example in dealing with her. “I might be busy with this situation a while. But I promise I’m going to be really diligent with my schoolwork still and I’ll keep you updated.”
She moved to hug me, but fortunately couldn’t get much of a grip on me while I was weighted down with bags.
Steven was leaning against his car, in a de facto standoff with my family. He was big and handsome and it seemed completely impossible to me that he was the direction I was supposed to turn in now. I didn’t really understand what he’d done to Brad to make him give up Jess that none of us could have done. I didn’t even know what Brad had done to me; surely I couldn’t take his mysteries too.
But there I was, walking towards him.
Jess and her gear were spread across the whole of the back seat like I would expect from a proper teenager, so I had no choice but to move towards Steven at the front.
He held his arms out. It took me a few se
conds to realise he wasn’t trying to take hold of me.
I handed over my shoulder bag, and he waited while I wriggled out of my backpack. Something about the way he was looking at me made me feel like he could just as easily be watching me peeling my clothes off. It was making my heart pound with fear… and a little bit of something else that I really couldn’t deal with right now in this situation or any other.
The expression was gone when he took the backpack from me too. Maybe I’d imagined it out of my own anxiety. “Jump in. I’ll put these in the boot.”
“Your mum reminds me of mine,” Jess spoke up after I’d closed the passenger door behind me. “Just in the way she reacts to things. I wonder if he has a type.”
“I don’t want to think about what his type might be,” I said, harder than I meant to.
Jess ducked her head. “Sorry.”
“No… you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” I could see I hadn’t patched things over at all, and I wanted to just put my hands over my face, but that would probably only make Jess feel worse. Everyone who thought I wasn’t up to this was right: I hadn’t even been able to help my mum in all the years I’d tried to act as her support, what would possibly have made me think I could help a teenage girl work through something I couldn’t even begin to figure out how I would work through myself?
I needed to get out of here. Out of the car—
Both of us flinched when Steven slid into the car.
“Bye,” Ryan called as the door was closing. That was it, none of us were getting out.
“Sorry you have to leave your home because of me,” Jess muttered as I was turning around to see my family before the moving car yanked them out of sight entirely.
Steven got in before I could figure out how to explain it was just the strangeness of it all making me want one last look. “Nothing is because of you. You hear me? Don’t ever fucking think someone else being a fucking horrible human to you is your fault.”
“Sure thing.” Jess’s voice was small and surprised. She was probably finding out a lot about Steven she hadn’t known from her previous encounters with him, too.
Steven got us booked into a clean-smelling hotel with an air of not giving a fuck about the suspicious looks of the woman at the front desk. I probably looked about as underage as Jess, and Steven’s size and unsmiling persona made him seem a lot older. But once he’d walked us to the door of our room, Steven glanced at a fire escape door and announced, “I’m off.”
“No,” Jess protested, reaching towards him and only stopping herself just short. I kept forgetting, I was the only stranger to her here.
He shook her off pre-emptively. “Sorry kid, it’s better if I go back to my own bed for the moment. Less chances of getting us all into more trouble.”
Jess scowled after him as he stalked off. I had a feeling she would be more understanding if she knew about Julia, but it was my job to protect Steven’s secrets now, just as he was protecting Jess’s.
And it was also my job to focus on my relationship with Jess, not mine with Steven or hers with Steven. For this evening at least, men were a distraction that should be completely avoided.
I got the door open for us after a few false starts with the keycard, and we unpacked into what was more of a compressed house than a room, like Ashleigh’s bloody bungalow but cheaper. There was a little kitchen area with a microwave, a huge bathroom, and a sitting area with a TV.
Jess peered into the fridge. “You’re not supposed to touch the drinks and stuff in here, right?”
“I think I’ve heard something like that,” I said. “Better just leave them alone.”
We were fine while we were bouncing around getting excited about the room, but then things became uneasy. We drifted towards the couch, taking an end each, and Jess switched on the TV more easily than I would have been able to, navigating a series of menus more complicated than the average computer program.
For a while we watched some drama show I didn’t recognise. Mum usually controlled the TV back home, and she always insisted on educational programs. I didn’t know why I was insisting on thinking ‘back home’ though, since I didn’t really see how I could go back now.
I should talk to her. That was the thought that kept going through my mind, but I couldn’t get past the idea to figure out what I would say.
“Look,” Jess spoke up abruptly, “I get along with him too… there has to be something in that.”
“Steven?” So much for not focusing on men that night. “He… Jess, he’s not who you think he is.”
She screwed her face up at me. “I know he’s got issues. He doesn’t hide as much as he thinks he does. Yeah, he’s not a super-good guy… but I’ve been around bad guys my whole life. It doesn’t bother me.”
I was lucky, compared to her. Mike had always been a good guy. Even if he had terrible taste in women.
“I just don’t want to come out of this losing even more, you know?” She stared at the TV with such intensity I had a feeling she was taking in as little as I was.
I felt terrible. What could I say that would make any of this better for her?
“So now you’re moved out,” Jess continued. I couldn’t remember if I’d switched from topic to topic so easily when I was fourteen. “Basically. What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. I thought that was going to scare her, but she shot me a careful grin I returned probably just as carefully. “I guess… I’m going to go back to school, and I’ll see what happens from there.” I looked away from her when I asked, for some reason. “Do you want to go back to school?”
Her sharp breath was an answer, but she gave me a different one. “I don’t think I want to have to go through explaining why to anyone.”
Maybe I was supposed to encourage her to talk to someone now. Get her feelings out.
I pictured her locked in a cramped office with the likes of Ms. Miller—I didn’t think I’d get anything out of that either. I kept my mouth shut.
Jess started babbling. “I know it’s hard, managing someone who’s homeschooling. Especially when you’ll probably have to—I guess I can’t really ask you to do it, but I promise I’ll do my work when I’m supposed to. Mum’s come up with most of the curriculum already, we can probably get her notes…”
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll work it out.” Suddenly, I had this responsibility I couldn’t just drop. Couldn’t bail on. And I wouldn’t have expected it, but that made me feel like I had no choice but to succeed.
Chapter Thirty: Tamara
When a bunch of guys I didn’t even know started yelling at me across the courtyard about needing a good bonking, I couldn’t even make sense of it at first. I was later than I’d wanted to be, held up trying to scramble all my stuff together without getting in Jess’s way. I was also worried about leaving her alone for the day. She had a laptop and she’d promised she would mostly stay in and work, but I didn’t entirely believe her. If it were me, I’d want to get out for a bit, breathe in that sweet freedom. It was what I’d done once I was in high school and Mum couldn’t hover quite as much as she used to.
When I remembered that horrible scene with Steven, at first I was too panicked to think straight, then I was angry. He hadn’t known then just how much of a hot button that was about to become for me, but how had it ever been okay for him to do that? Now there it was, something that stood in the way of my leaning on him when I needed all the support I could get.
I turned on them when they came after me. “Please, just leave me alone.”
That provoked a round of laughing and group elbowing, because my distress was funny to people like that. I tried to outwalk them, but of course they just ‘happened’ to be going in the same direction as me. They settled down as we passed some teachers in a hurry to get to the school entrance (for which I couldn’t blame them), and then started up again once it was just me and them and all our peers standing at a distance. Apparently nobody ever stood up for
anyone else any more.
Then Steven appeared out of nowhere. He didn’t have the usual crowd with him, because of course he’d actually managed to turn Lucas off.
“Get the fuck away from her,” he ordered the guy at the head of the group—Richard? Rick?—who laughed at him.
“Guess she’s not in need of anything any more.”
“Seriously, leave her alone. She doesn’t fucking need your shit right now.”
“Steven,” I warned, feeling him far too close to revealing something I couldn’t have the whole world knowing.
“Seems like you’ve got a lot of ideas about what she needs, huh Dillon?”
Steven clenched his fists. A plaster already crossing his knuckles popped.
I could see how things were going to go now: Steven would deck one or more of these assholes or get himself decked most likely, break his hand definitely, and he’d be done. Ms. Miller was out there just waiting for an excuse to crush him, wasn’t she?
He’d already taken one massive risk for me, a risk that was completely worth it. But that had been in the real world. At school, the balance of things was different.
I didn’t let myself think about it too hard. I just jumped in between the two of them and took a swing.
The arsehole—Richard or Rick or whatever—yelled in pain that drowned out my yelp. My hand was definitely throbbing, but the guy I’d hit was looking a lot worse.
Suddenly there were staff everywhere. Someone pulled me away from the guy I’d hit and led me away; some big male teachers were shouting down the guys. I tried to look back as I heard scuffling noises, but whoever had hold of me tugged harder on my wrist. “Tamara, let’s get out of here so we can talk.”
Of course it had to be Ms. Miller. The last thing I needed right now was to end up in a room with her being probed, but I went with her because I had a feeling she’d be able to make more trouble if I didn’t.
Seated behind her desk across from me with my file between us, she stared at me and waited. I wasn’t in the mood for being mindgamed into anything. “Well?”