Under My Skin
Page 69
Andrej watched my reaction to him, and then he sighed. “Oh, man, not you too.”
Me too? I watched him warily.
He rolled his eyes. “You must be Bree's flavour of the month,” he said, explaining like he was doing me a favour. “She gets really obsessively into people and then completely ditches them when she finds someone better. Just ask her last best friend. Bree stopped talking to her about a month ago. Courtney was so upset, she really thought they were soul mates—”
“—that’s bullshit!” Bree interrupted him. “You stole her from me!”
He didn’t look at her. “It’s funny, Courtney tells quite a different version of that story,” he said. “One where Bree's completely forgotten about her and is spending all her time with cool rich person who has a luxury apartment. I guess that’s you this week.” He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry to break it to you, buddy, but she'll be done with you pretty soon. She's got a short attention span.”
Bree's jaw dropped. “You’re the one who has, like, a million girlfriends!” When he didn’t pay any attention to her she threw her hands up. “Oh my god, stop ignoring me, Andrej! This is so fucked up! I hate it when you do this!”
I must have looked extremely sceptical about what he'd just told me, because he sighed again. “Come on. You think you're the first person she's done this to?” he asked. “I bet she begged you to take her to that expensive restaurant, yeah? She always makes people take her there.”
I... closed my mouth. I didn't have a response to that.
“You like going there, too, Andrej!” Bree protested. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to eat there!”
He smiled wryly at me. “Except when you force other people to pay for you, am I right? I bet she’s done that a lot, hasn’t she? It’s kind of her MO. Bree likes spending other people’s money.”
I frowned at him. Bree had done that a lot, and she had dragged me there and forced me to pay. How did he know all about it, though? Was she really the kind of person who did this so often that her brother was saying things like, ‘yeah, that’s just what she does’?
He noticed my reaction and looked sympathetic. “So you did take her there, yeah? Did she do the whole, 'Oh, I can't get home, help me!' or the 'I have no food' thing, too? Come on,” he said. “She lives in Bellevue Hill. She goes to Cloverfield, and you don't actually think someone like Bree is there on a scholarship, do you?”
No, I definitely hadn't thought she was there on a scholarship, but I was too distracted by what else I'd just learnt to pay attention to it: she lived in Bellevue Hill? I hadn't been in Sydney that long, but even I knew Bellevue Hill was a really expensive area. She'd never told me, and the only reason I could think of about why she wouldn't say anything was exactly that: because it was an expensive area and she didn't want me to know. I felt uncomfortable.
“Oh my god, that’s such total bullshit, Andrej! We don't ever have food around!” Bree was saying desperately behind him. “We don't! And we haven't even paid my school fees yet this—”
Andrej didn't even wait until she was done as he started talking over her. “No food around? Yeah, right. Did you like that great cake she stole from our fridge? Our grandma spent ages making that for the whole family to celebrate her birthday, and she just took off with it. After all that effort, Grandma didn't even get to light the candles. Maybe that's part of the reason there's no food. If people steal it out of the fridge because they don't want to share it, it stops being there, doesn't it, Bree?”
He half-glanced over his shoulder at her. She didn't have a comeback for that. She had done it, and her exact words had been something like, ‘No, I don’t want to share it with them’. I'd felt a bit bad about that, myself, but I also did not like how Andrej was speaking over her right now.
“Look, the thing is,” he continued while I frowned at him, “Bree’s one of those girls who likes attention. She likes being this little pathetic victim people want to protect and take care of. So she comes up with all these stories and all these lies about who did what and why, but you only have to look at the hard evidence to know what's really true,” he told me, and then counted on his fingers. “One: at home, we all know what she's really like and she doesn't get the attention and pandering she thinks she deserves. So she’s all, ‘I’m so neglected, no one loves me’, to whoever she's obsessed with until they take her in. Courtney's parents even felt sorry for her and bought her a bed there a week before she just ditched them all.”
“That's so not true!” Bree said, coming up to me. “That's not true, Min!”
Andrej sighed and looked over his shoulder. “Are you going to lie about this now, too? Did Court's parents buy you a bed or not?”
Bree looked taken aback. “No, I mean, they did, but—”
“See?” Andrej said, turning back to me. “And now it's empty. Probably because she's sleeping in your bed, am I right?”
He was right, and that was very, very disconcerting. She had ended up there very quickly, too, which did kind of suggest that she might be quite practised at this ‘obsessive friendship’ thing, like he said.
He kept counting. “Two: she always has new clothes and new phones and all that, and she doesn't have a job because she fucks everything up and can't focus for more than five minutes. So either Mum and Dad bought them for her and she's not poor and destitute like she wants people to believe, or she's got a lot of people who she gets to buy her stuff, you know what I'm saying?”
He was about to move onto number three, whatever that was, when Bree piped up with, “No! That’s so fucking not true! It's not!” She gave up trying to argue with him and turned to me, taking a handful of my jacket. “He always twists everything! He’s so full of shit! I'm not going all over Sydney with a tonne of guys and I'm not lying to you, don’t listen to him! He's the one who's had heaps of girlfriends!”
He refused to acknowledge anything she’d said. “She takes things, too, did you notice?” When Bree began to contradict that, he just kept talking and ploughed through her. “The neighbours' mail goes missing and then mysteriously shows up in her room, opened and empty.”
I had sprung her opening something addressed to me before, hadn’t I…?
He saw my expression. “Yeah, see?” he said. “And did things go missing from your house, too? Because Bree's always pinching things. And if you catch her, she'll be all, 'Oh, my brother did it! He magically showed up here and took it! My brother is so awful!'” he imitated her voice for a moment.
“He did show up last night, Min!” Bree was pleading with me. “He did! Ask reception! Ask anyone! I know it sounds really, really bad, but he did come! I promise! Please!” She turned around to him and yelled, “Andrej, this is so fucked up! Stop! Stop it! Why the fuck are you doing this!”
I wanted to believe Bree because I had feelings for her, but… fuck, she’d had plenty of time to pack up all her stuff last night before she left, and there was no sign of a struggle or anything…
He paid absolutely zero attention to the fact Bree was yelling at him. “And, get this: she's absent-minded, yeah?”
Yeah, I thought. She definitely is.
He nodded. “Mm-hmm. And because of that she’s always losing things. Jewellery, her phone, everything, and then the second she can't find it, she's like, 'Oh, my brother must have stolen it because he's such a bad human being who always steals everything', it's fucked up.” He gestured to himself. “And, hey, I’m a big boy now, I can deal with it. But it’s kind of fucked up that my own sister wants to spread lies about me, yeah? And it’s so weird at home now, because Courtney’s parents told Mum and Dad all the awful shit Bree says about us, and Mum and Dad are naturally pretty angry with her.”
“Shut up!” Bree shouted at him. “Shut up! You're the reason it sucks at home now, you fucking asshole! It's awful at home since you took all the money! Mum and Dad just work all the time and everyone is angry!” She turned to me. “Please, please, don't listen to him, Min! Please!”
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He rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, and turned to address her like he was addressing a child. “We don't have money problems, Bree,” he said, enunciating each syllable as if he didn't think she'd understand otherwise. “Mum and Dad work because, unlike you, they're not layabouts who just leach off other people. I know money's a difficult concept for you to understand because you are only good at spending other people's, but we don't have money problems.”
Bree looked so angry and so frustrated that she was on the verge of tears. It was a stark contrast to how calm Andrej was. Bree was so angry she was shaking. “How can you fucking say all of this with such a straight fucking face? What fucking planet are you—”
He turned back to me before she'd even finished her sentence. “If we had money problems,” he said, talking over her again, “it would be because Bree goes to a really expensive school. Which she hardly ever shows up at, mind you, even though she knows how much Mum and Dad are spending on it.”
It did bother me how little she seemed to care about her education. If her parents were paying for her schooling and she happily told me she’d hardly passed a test, that did kind of suggest that she didn’t appreciate all the money they were spending on her to go there. Which made me wonder about all that other money stuff she’d said.
Fuck. Fuck. Had Bree been using me for my money? Even just in the beginning? Had that been why she’d been so hell-bent on anchoring herself in my life?
He patted my arm. “So, anyway, like I said. Sorry to be the one to break this all to you, but at least there are plenty of other cute and actually sane chicks in Sydney, am I right? Come sit down and have a drink with me, I'll tell you some of the other stuff she's done, it's crazy. There's another race starting soon, too. Maybe I’ll have another big win.”
For a second I just stood there staring at him, piecing together what he was saying and matching it up against what Bree had told me. What he was saying made sense, it made chilling sense, more sense than what Bree had said. I couldn't explain why she wouldn't tell me where she lived. I couldn't explain her expensive school or the fact she had nice clothes and allegedly no money. And if Andrej had shown up at my apartment, she'd packed her things before apparently willingly going home with him. She could have called security, but for some reason she didn't. It seemed much more likely that she'd taken my stuff. And three hundred thousand dollars did seem a bit far-fetched...
Fuck, after that whole Sean thing I just didn’t know what to think about anyone anymore.
I squinted, trying run through what Andrej had said. And that's when I noticed I could see through the carbon paper he was holding.
Printed on it in bold font was $1500.00. On one race. I ran my eyes over it several times, thinking maybe I'd misread it backwards through the paper. He was spending $1500 on one race? Who even put down that kind of money on horse racing, except people like Sasha Burov who were worth millions of dollars? That didn't seem right. That didn't seem right at all, especially when Bree literally didn't have five cents in her pocket.
Other things he was saying about her didn't make sense, either, when I really thought about them. Bree hadn’t taken off with any of the money I’d given her, not ever. She could easily have spent the residual from all those taxi rides on things for herself, but instead she’d spent it on things for me or things for us. And when I’d given her money for food she’d spend it on actual food—and lots of it—with all these elaborate explanations about how she knew where to get very cheap, good quality produce. People weren't just born knowing the tricks to getting cheap food, that stuff was learnt through extensive experience. And rich families didn't generally spend hours going from shop to shop for the chance to get a few cents off the price of their apples. No, Andrej hadn't been telling the truth: money was a problem for the Dejanovics.
And if money was a problem for them and Andrej cared so much more about them than Bree did, why was he spending fifteen hundred dollars on a single horse race?
All his other arguments unravelled, too. Bree hadn't 'ditched' Courtney. If I remembered correctly, she had been really upset and hurt when Andrej had moved in on her best friend. And all these alleged people Bree had gone around Sydney with, there was absolutely no sign of them. Not on her Facebook. Not on Courtney's Facebook, she hadn't been texting anyone at all at my house. The only other people I'd heard Bree talk about were her cousins. Bree wasn't abandoning her family to come stay with me, either, not at all. They never called.
And, most importantly, she wasn't 'spreading lies' about her brother to make herself look like a pathetic victim. She had fought so hard to not tell me what was going on and not have me think of her like that.
She was a bit tragic, and she was a bit of a fuck-up and, yes, she did lie occasionally and I did buy a lot of things for her, but he was twisting that. He was taking little pieces of the truth and twisting them beyond fucking recognition and it was sick, and I felt a bit sick for even considering that Bree might be using me.
Jesus fucking Christ, Andrej was full of it. We'd sprung this bastard in a casino betting $1500 on the horses, how the fuck did this become about Bree?
“I'm not like that, Min, please,” Bree was desperately begging me through her tears, “please, please, please don't listen to him! Please, I couldn't deal with it if you believed him. He always says all this stuff about me, he always says it and everyone believes him and everyone always ends up thinking that I'm some crazy liar. No one believes me, it's why I never tell anyone ever, because no one believes me—”
I put an arm around her and looked back up at him. He was standing there defiantly in front of us with his ticket, looking a bit restless as he waited for me to give him an answer about drinks. Before I did, he glanced a bit impatiently over at one of the TAB machines and then at his ticket.
No fucking way. He was thinking about his money despite the fact his sister was hanging off my arm and crying, and despite the fact we were right in the middle of a very serious conversation.
I had to say it. “You put fifteen hundred dollars on a single race.”
He looked back at me and shrugged nonchalantly. “So? I had a win before.”
“Fifteen hundred dollars...?” Bree said, distracted from how upset she was by the large number. “Fifteen hundred? Where the hell did you get all that money? That's enough for a whole mortgage repayment!” He ignored her. “So, what do you drink?” he asked me. “Light? Dark? Or maybe—”
I wasn't playing. “Your sister asked you a question,” I prompted him.
He scoffed. “Yes, but if she'd actually been listening to anything other than her own voice, she'd have heard me say, 'I had a win before'.”
“But you had to have money to start with!” Bree interjected, even though he still wasn't looking at her. “Is that from what I think it is, Andrej? Did you take that from—”
“—Come on, buddy,” he told me. “Come take a seat. I'm pretty good at this stuff, I'll help you pick horses if you've never—”
She didn't give up. “—is that from hocking Min's stuff? Or Mum's rings? Or did you—”
“—put money down on the field before. There are some really strong long shots today and they're all bolting the field and making me a mint. Have you done much punting in the—”
“—or did you forge another credit card application and Dad owes another ten grand to one of the major—”
“—past, yourself? Because once you get into it—”
I could hardly follow the conversation with them both talking, and I threw my hands up. “Stop!” I said to Andrej very firmly. “Stop! Bree is trying to say something to you. Are you going to actually listen to her?”
He looked annoyed. “With the way she's been carrying on and accusing me of shit? What would you do if someone was talking to you like that?”
I stared him down. “What would I do? Well, I wouldn't treat my sister the way you do in the first place, that's for sure. Especially when she's not the actual reason we're—”
“Bree isn't in question here! As she's trying to point out, you have a ticket for fifteen hundred—”
He talked over me, just like he had been doing to her. “She's not the angel you think she is, buddy, believe me! If you had to live with her for—”
“Jesus Christ, Andrej!” I had to yell, because there seemed to be no other way to get him to listen. Over at the bar in the centre of the room, we'd got the attention of the staff who then surreptitiously watched us. I lowered my voice a bit. “Listen, this is not about Bree! You're the one putting fifteen hundred dollars on the horses like it's nothing! This is about you!”
“Only because you actually believe that shit she spins about me for some reason!” he fired back at me. “Maybe you think you're in love with her, I don't know. If you are, that's really fucking sad. But the fact of the matter is that we don't have money problems, so yeah, I put a couple of bucks on the horses and I won big, and now I've got some credits to play with. It's not evidence that I'm anything except good at the fucking horses so how about you tell your girlfriend to stop accusing her own brother of things she's got no proof of?”
I stood back, at a loss as to what to say next. I didn't even know where to start. There seemed to just be no fucking way to penetrate his thick skull, and I finally understood exactly what Bree meant when she said her parents had given up arguing with him.
While we were standing there, there was a muted gunshot from the TV behind us. Andrej glanced up, and then dramatically groaned. “Fuck! And now Bree's sucked me into her stupid shit again and I've missed the start of a race,” he said, perfectly illustrating his priorities. “Look, if you want to tell yourself that Bree can do no wrong and I'm the evil bad guy for pointing out she's not perfect, whatever. Just stop hassling me.”