Waywood

by Sarah Goodwin

  Chapter One

  “Michaela please sit down. . . ”

  “No, not until you stop treating me like. . . ”

  “Like what? Like you lied to us?” Dad says.

  “I didn’t lie, I just. . . ” I dig my nails into my hands. “. . . didn’t tell you.”

  “Michaela, you promised us that this would stop, no more drugs, remember?”

  “Mum it’s a bit of weed, it’s not. . .those pills aren’t even mine. ”

  “I don’t care what it is,” Dad shouts, “not in my house. You hear me? You do not bring this into my house.”

  “Fine,” Don’t cry, don’t cry. “Keep it.” I feel my eyes well up and dig my nails harder into my palms, I always cry when I get shouted at. I hate it. The surface of the kitchen table swims in front of me, the lines in the pine squiggling around like worms.

  Mum looks up at Dad, there’s a tissue balled up in the sleeve of her cardigan, and she takes it out to dab at her eyes. For about twelve seconds, no one says anything; I can feel my heart in my throat.

  “You have ten minutes, pack and get out.”

  It’s like everything slows down, from the microwave clock to the dripping of the tap. Mum looks at me, and then down at the table, at the plastic bag of weed and the couple of tabs of ecstasy. Dad is looking at me, eyes stone cold behind his glasses.

  “Dad, please. . . ”

  He doesn’t move. I can’t believe it, they’re actually. . . this is them, kicking me out. They haven’t even asked me for an explanation.

  “Just. . . fuck you.” I shout, or try to, because suddenly the urge to cry isn’t going away and I have to run, into the hall, up the stairs and into my room; my dark purple refuge from the sick-green carpet and boring cream walls.

  From behind me Dad shouts, “I mean it, ten minutes, then I’m coming up.”

  I look around at the band posters, books, and cuddly toys that litter my room. What could possibly be of use to me in ten minutes time? What do I have that will make me anything but a homeless teenager with no money and nowhere to go?

  At the back of my mind; they won’t kick me out, they won’t. They can’t.

  The panic in my chest says different, it’s clawing at my throat, making my breath come in these horrible gulpy sobs.

  There’s a pink holdall in the cupboard, one I usually use for sleepovers. I take it out and start opening drawers, grabbing underwear, clothes. . . it’s just like packing for a sleepover. Only I’m never coming home. My eyes well up again, I scrub away the tears with the back of my hand.

  I grab my toothbrush from the family mug in the bathroom and my So. . . kiss me? spray from the cupboard, knocking over the row of rubber ducks that appear in all my baby bath pictures. In a moment of tooth-grinding anger I unscrew the cap on the shaving gel I bought Dad for Christmas and flush it down the drain in a burst of cold water.

  Downstairs Dad shouts, ‘Five minutes’, I can hear Mum sobbing in the background.

  My hands shake as I go back and look around my room. There’s so much stuff I can’t physically take with me; my guitar and my shoe collection, all my books and soft toys. I grab my pink jewellery box (which has my spare cash and my silver christening stuff in it), the MP3 player on my nightstand and my journal, stuffing them into the bag with a shower of make-up and toiletries. It’s full now, and I pick it up, feeling sick to my stomach.

  They won’t. They won’t do this to me. They can’t.

  My knees feel like rubber as I go downstairs. All our family pictures are framed along the hallway, smiling faces and hugs from my birth right up until this year’s holiday. The newest one is of Me, Mum and Dad, sitting on the beach in Cornwall, eating Mr. Whippy ice-cream. I’ve got Dad’s hat on, and we’re all smiling like crazy. I want to rip it off the wall, smash all the frames on the hallway tiles, grab the fake Tiffany lamp and throw it through the glass in the door.

  In the kitchen Mum cries noisily, great big heaves and gasps for air, like when Nan died.

  Dad comes to the kitchen door.

  “Give me your key,” he demands.

  My legs are all shaky. “Dad. . . you can’t do this. . . ”

  “Key. Now.”

  “I’m sixteen!” My voice rips down the centre. I hate myself for sounding so helpless. “Where am I supposed to go?”

  He holds out his hand.

  I root in my coat pocket for the house key, throwing it at him. Dad catches it, and puts it into his pocket.

  “Now get out.”

  I shake my head.

  “Right now Michaela,” he raises his voice. “Get out, and don’t come back.”

  “Dad. . . ”

  He strides up the hallway and hauls me towards the front door, throwing it open and pushing me out onto the doorstep. I can’t help it, I start to blubber, ugly crying like a baby.

  Dad slams the door in my face, and though I stand there, crying for a long time, begging Mum to let me in - the door doesn’t open again. In the end I pick up the plastic recycling box and throw it at the glass pane in the door, but it just bounces off and clatters on the path. I hammer on the door with my fists and shout, swear, but they don’t come into the hallway, not even to tell me to go away.

  The streetlights glow poisonous orange and everywhere shadows leer away from walls and cars, merging on the ground. It’s a cold and wet November night, and right now I should be inside doing my English homework for tomorrow. I should be eating sausage casserole and watching Eastenders.

  Not knowing what else to do, I walk down the street, the bag already cutting into my shoulder. I’m glad I already had my coat on when the fight started, or else I might have forgotten it; it’s almost too cold even with it on. I push one hand into my pocket and touch the small bundle of notes there; thirty pounds gleaned from the bags and pockets of various people at school. It would have been enough to keep me in weed and Bacardi for ages, especially once I got at Mum’s cash card, but now it’s all the money I have, aside from the couple of fivers in my jewellery box.

  I end up walking to the end of the street and over the road, heading for the roundabout and the street that led to Tasha’s house, I feel my anger shift into something else. Why had I let this happen? Dad never would have found out if I’d been a little more careful.

  He never would have found you out if you’d stopped buying weed. Like you said you would. A traitorous voice murmurs at the back of my mind.

  They’d been waiting for me when I’d gotten home. Mum and Dad, in the kitchen with the bag of weed on the table. There was quite a lot in there, but it was only because I’d just bought it. Christ, I’m not that bad.

  They’d caught me before though, when Dad arrested a local dealer and he’d given up my name in questioning. That was when Dad had laid down the law.

  “Once more, and you are out of this house. You understand?”

  It was only because he didn’t want to look bad at work, or worse, get thrown off the force. He didn’t care about why I’d done it, or how it started. He’d just wanted it to stop.

  I readjust the bag as I turn onto Tasha’s street. Tasha’s parents are nice (and hardly ever there). I’d be able to stay with her for a while, at least until my parents calmed down and let me come home.

  When I knock on the door, Tasha answers in her dressing gown, blond hair spiked up at odd angles. My heart sinks. She has company.

  “Micky?” Tasha rubs a hand over her eyes, smudging her eyeliner further than it already is. “What’s up?”

  “My Dad kicked me out, they found my stuff.” I lift my foot up a little, my canvas dolly shoes are soaking already. “Can I stay with you for a few days?”

  “Awww. . . you know you totally could, if my Mum wasn’t already on my back about Joe staying here.” She leans in the
doorway, sympathetic but distant. Joe isn’t from school, he’s a dropout with half a BTEC and I’ve never really liked him.

  “Oh. . . ” I glance back at the dark street. “Are you sure I can’t just. . . I could sleep in the conservatory.”

  “Sorry,” Tasha shrugs. “besides. . . ” she looks a little awkward. “Last time you were here. . . Mum made a big deal about how some stuff went missing.” She widens her kohl rimmed eyes. “I’m not saying it was you but. . . ”

  “Yeah. . . OK.” I back away a little.

  “Try Chloe,” Tasha advises brightly.

  “I will.”

  “See you at school then.”

  “See-” But the door is already closed

  Chapter Two

  Alone in the dark again, I fish my phone out of my pocket, already walking away from Tasha’s. Chloe’s the better friend anyway, Tasha’s always been unreliable; hooking up with guys that Chloe and I like, never buying her own stuff when we get together for a smoke and always ready to talk about herself in the middle of one of our crises.

  Chloe’s number is the first in my phone, I call it and listen to it ring as I walk down the street, aimless aside from the desire to keep moving. Four failed calls later I stop trying. I remember then that Chloe is on the school ski trip, she won’t be back home for two weeks.

  With the last barricade between me and panic destroyed, I feel very alone. I stop walking and stand by someone’s front gate, just as the lights inside go off. Everyone’s going to bed, and then there’s me, outside, nowhere to go. Like all the wet, sagging rubbish bags stacked by the kerb, I’ve been chucked. My shoes are soaked through and the pavement is covered in mud tracked out of someone’s unfished driveway. There’s not even a dry patch of wall to sit down on.

  I’d been relying on Chloe and Tasha to take me in, they always said they would. We’d lain on the floor of Chloe’s bedroom and promised that we’d always be there to help if something bad happened, like the time Tasha got pregnant. We were supposed to support each other.

  I can’t think what to do, so I retrace my steps back to my parents’ house and look up at the dark windows. No one answers when I knock, or even when I shout up at their bedroom window. I realise that I’m running out of options, fast.

  I take my phone out and scroll through the contacts. Chloe’s gone, Tasha won’t have me. . . there are a few other names, mostly random people from school, guys I’d bought weed from once or twice. No one I can really go to tonight. My Aunt Stephanie’s number is at the bottom of the list, but if there’s anyone less tolerant than Dad, it’s his sister Stephanie.

  The creeping loneliness of being out so late starts to wear on me. Each blotchy tree shadow waving into my path makes me jump, and the scuffling of the wind through litter and leaves puts my heart in my throat. I’d left the house after dark plenty of times before, but somehow it was different now that I had nowhere to go. If I get approached by some creep, or hurt, my parents will see how horrible it was to kick me out. Maybe I could even sue them, and get enough money to buy my own house. The brief fantasy of my own place insulates me against the dark for a while, but soon the anxiousness comes back, and I decide I need a proper plan.

  It’s when I reach the railway bridge at the end of my street that an idea occurs to me. The railway station; its close, well lit and it has an all night cafe. If I have to I can stay there until morning, then go home and try to catch Mum once Dad’s gone to work. I can reason with her, at least she doesn’t love her job more than her own kid.

  I haul my bag up onto my shoulder and walk under the railway bridge, it’s only a short walk from there to the station; past car dealerships, their enormous displays still lit up, then the Sainsbury’s petrol station, until finally I reach the town centre. This late, there are very few people still around; a few groups of students in the distance, clearly having fun, loud and staggering on high heels. There are one or two huddled shapes in doorways and against shop walls. Even a day ago, I would have seen more of myself in the drunk twenty-somethings than in the homeless druggies of the city. Now I’m not so sure.

  The ‘All-Nite’ café by the train station is a blocky building with a green and white awning, lit inside with fluorescents. I can smell the coffee and frying grease from the end of the street. As it’s a Saturday night there’s already a puddle of half digested kebab vomit near the café, and I sidestep it on my way inside.

  The café smells like Dettol and old cooking, and I fumble some coins from my jeans pocket for a hot drink. The dead eyed student who serves me barely looks up from her magazine as the machine fills a paper cup with hot water. In the crumply foil stuck to the kitchen window, I can see myself; my hair’s all fucked up, pink and black straggling all the way down to the collar of my coat. My nose is running, and my eyes are all red and puffy. The black velvet of my coat is all dusty from where my old holdall has rubbed off on it.

  Another sixty pence gets me a stale donut, and I pick up a copy of the free Metro newspaper to read at one of the window booths. I sit and pull pieces off of the donut, eating out of sheer exhaustion. My fingers are all red and cold, and the pink polish Chloe put on my nails is almost all gone.

  Really I should have been asleep hours ago, now I’ve bypassing tired and am moving straight into ‘walking dead’ mode. I barely even notice the door opening, admitting another late night customer.

  As I chew fragments of sugary dough I look down at the newspaper. There’s nothing much that interests me, I don’t think I’ve ever read a newspaper before now. Behind me I can hear the sizzle of fresh frying and another paper cup being filled with water. After a short while the till beeps and money chinks into its plastic compartments.

  Footsteps scuff on the vinyl floor tiles, coming towards me. I expect the other customer to take one of the unoccupied booths, but the newcomer, a boy with thick, dark hair, appears in front of me, holding a steaming cup of tea and a chipped plate with a bacon sandwich on it.

  “Can I sit here?”

  I nod without thinking, scuffling the newspaper to one side.

  “Cray,” he says as he holds out his hand. It takes me a moment to recognise the gesture as an introduction, it’s so old fashioned.

  “Michaela,” I say, shaking his hand.

  “And what brings you to this greasy corner of Bath tonight Michaela?” Cray asks, peeling back the top of his sandwich and dousing the insides with brown sauce.

  “I don’t really have anywhere else to be.” I glance up at Cray and find him watching me closely. I wonder if maybe I should have lied and told him that I was going somewhere, or waiting for someone. He’s maybe Korean, like one of the English teachers I had ages ago. There’s nothing scary about him, in fact he’s kind of cute, with his nose stud and scruffy black hair. I’m the weirdo sitting with my dishevelled pink hair and my eyeliner all smudged, my lipstick faded to nothing. Still, Cray smiles at me.

  “Tell me about it.” He pulls the teabag out of his cup. “When I ran away from home, I spent like. . . seven hours at the bus station, trying to work out where to go.”

  I study him with interest; taking in his long black coat and fingerless grey gloves. He looks perfectly clean and normal. Despite that, he’s weirdly posh, and the way he speaks isn’t local, he sounds like he’s from the South-East.

  “You’re a runaway?”

  “You’re not?”

  “My parents sort of kicked me out.” Just like that it’s true, and the pathetic tears are back.

  “Hey,” he says, leaning over the table, his hand touching mine while I sob over the crumpled pages of The Metro. “Hey, it’s OK. . . they’re your parents, they have to let you come home.”

  “But they hate me, I. . . ”

  “What did you do?” he asks quietly.

  “Nothing. . . I did absolutely nothing.” I tell him, feeling again the viciousness of that fight. I hadn’t done anything that a good father wouldn’t forgive.

  Cray looks at me for a second, then puts
half of his bacon sandwich on my plate.

  “Thanks.”

  “Eh, it’s OK. . . I know what parents can be like. They’re fucking impossible sometimes.” he says, and we eat in silence for a while.

  He coughs as I stir my coffee distractedly and says, “If you need a place to stay. . . a load of us have a house.”

  “Us, who?”

  “The runaways,” Cray says, making a face as he hams up the mystery. “There are quite a few of us, and the house was just standing empty so. . . ” he looks at me, and I think for a second that he looks worried for me. “If you need somewhere safe, better there than on the street, you know?”

  “You’re squatting?” I’ve never met a squatter before, though to be fair I’ve never met a runaway before either.

  “Sure. Though most of us prefer to call it ‘occupying’.” He sucks sauce off of his thumb. “I know that ‘stranger danger’ is a pretty big issue, but you can trust me. And yes, I do realise that’s exactly what a psycho axe murderer would say, but it’s true. I’m heading back there as soon as I’ve finished my tea.”

  I waver, feeling my head pound from all the crying I’ve done in the past few hours. Cray’s been so nice to me, and I really don’t want to stay in the sleazy café all night. Maybe I could stay the night with him and his friends, then call Mum in the morning. I look at him, finding his big brown eyes on me. He seems OK, not crazy or scary. Still I’m not sure, and more than anything I wish I was back in my bedroom. Back home, where the thought of going off with a stranger would seem stupid, like one of those stories from school, where the drunk girl gets kidnapped by a fake minicab. The stories where you’re glad that it’s not you, where you think it never could be.

  Cray looks at me anxiously. “Look. . . I can’t go home and just leave you here,” he says softly. “I can stick around, OK? At least until you find a friend you can stay with.”

  “I can’t stay with them,” I mutter, “I’ve got nowhere to go. . . I don’t know what to do.”

  He takes my hand again, and I stifle another flood of tears. I can’t believe how pathetic I’m being. I should have thrown a brick through the window of Dad’s car or shouted on the doorstep all night long, but instead I’m crying like a little kid. Still, Cray’s hand on mine makes me feel a little better, like I’m not alone after all.