Never Ever Tell

by Kirsty Ferguson

  ‘Get out, Wren. Be normal, for fuck’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you?’ Justin demanded.

  ‘What’s wrong with me? What do you think?’ He slammed his door and stormed off, away from Justin and Wade.

  He went looking for her straight away. He just had to. There wasn’t a particle in his body that didn’t need to see her, but she was nowhere to be found. He asked around. That’s what concerned boyfriends do. He called her. That’s what loving boyfriends do.

  After first period, he continued his search for Olivia. Wren heard footsteps behind him. A hand on his shoulder. ‘If you tell, you’ll be in just as much trouble as we will be,’ Justin whispered into his ear. Wren spun around and pushed Justin backward, hands on his chest. Justin stumbled into Wade.

  ‘You’re fucking sick. You know that?’ People were watching.

  ‘Just being real. You were there too, and you let it happen. Just as guilty as us, man.’ Justin and Wade left him alone after that. He sat through the day once he knew that she wasn’t there. She wouldn’t have wanted to see him anyway. He left school and caught the bus home, something he hadn’t done in a while. His mom was home already.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ she said, calling out from the kitchen. He walked in. She was facing away from him, taking muffins out of the oven. ‘You’re home early.’

  ‘Caught the bus.’

  She turned around, putting the tray on the side to cool. She came over to him, looked at his black eye and made a small noise in the back of her throat. ‘You OK, sweetheart? You’ve seemed… different these past couple of days or so. Distant, sad maybe. Did you and Olivia have a fight or something?’

  Even her name brought up bad memories.

  ‘Nah,’ he choked out, ‘I’m OK.’ He leaned in and wrapped his arms around his much shorter mother. He kissed the top of her head before breaking the hug. He headed for his bedroom, knowing that she would be watching him go, worrying about him. He couldn’t deal with that right now. He loved her, she loved him, but he had bigger things to worry about.

  That night he couldn’t sleep. Worry shot through him every time he closed his eyes. It woke him up, heart pounding like a freight train was running through his body. Finally, around two in the morning, he fell into a shallow sleep dreaming of what happened if she told.

  The next day Wren caught the early bus to school, avoiding Justin and Wade completely. It was recess before he saw them both striding toward him. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered. He pushed past people, people who said hello to him, people he ignored. He just wanted to get away. Three days and he was feeling… different about, well, everything. Something like this forced a person to re-evaluate things.

  He needed to speak to Olivia, but he knew he couldn’t. Not now, maybe not ever. He just needed some fucking space. He heard them calling for him, but he ignored them. He needed to decide what to do.

  He caught the bus home during the middle of the school day, not even feeling guilty about it. Then he rode his bike down to his special spot at the river.

  It was a hot day, the sweat glistening on his brow and upper lip, the birds cawing and wheeling overhead. He glanced up at them, the sun, high in the sky, blinding him. He dropped his bag onto the bank and lay down, using it as a pillow. He stared at the sky through the dappled light that filtered through the tree branches. It was beautiful, but he couldn’t enjoy the tranquility today. He realized almost as soon as he lay down that he shouldn’t have come here. He’d brought Olivia here not that long ago. They’d swum, traded secrets and kissed until the night cooled.

  Wren closed his eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping well since the party. He was weary and carrying a burden; a secret like this was exhausting.

  He had no idea how long he slept for, but he was jolted awake, aware that something wasn’t right. He wasn’t alone. He looked around him, the sun beginning its descent over the horizon. He’d be riding home in the dark. Wren hefted his bag onto his back, picked up his bike and wheeled it to the parking lot. Then he saw it. A midnight black car waiting for him, engine off. How long had they been there? Was Justin’s engine the thing that woke him?

  He walked up to the car and Justin rolled down the driver’s window. ‘You left school,’ he said evenly.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Your mom – she called me. Apparently, you’re out past curfew.’ He laughed, Wade laughing along with him.

  ‘Fuck you, Justin.’

  ‘Get in, you big pussy and I’ll take you home to Mommy.’

  ‘Fuck no. I’ll ride.’

  ‘Just get in the car Wren,’ demanded Justin, ‘we need to talk,’ but Wren had already begun riding away. Pissed off, Justin roared past him, kicking up dust and small stones that plinked off Wren’s bike, coating him in dust.

  19

  It was completely dark now. Vanessa must have peered out the window beside the front door a hundred times. And when she wasn’t doing it, Ty was. He was wondering where Wren was too. Billy was doing his best to keep her calm, but she had a feeling that something bad was coming. Billy said she was seeing shadows where there were none. But something had shifted. Something with Wren.

  He was shutting her out, they’d always been able to confide in each other but these past few days were hard for her to handle. He was… alone. She figured out on her own that he was either fighting with or not talking to Justin and Wade.

  She was just about to look out of the window for the 101st time when she saw a small bright headlight off in the distance. ‘He’s home!’ she yelled to Billy as she saw Wren throw his bike to the ground.

  ‘I told you he’d be fine,’ she heard Billy yell from the kitchen. She heard his low rumble again; he must be talking to Ty.

  She loved that kid so much, but right now she felt that it was Wren who needed her most.

  Vanessa yanked open the door before Wren even had time to get his key out. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, hands on hips, brows lowered. She didn’t mean to be angry with him, but he’d scared her. Especially with the way he was acting. Distant, moody.

  ‘Down at the river.’

  Vanessa took a deep, centering breath. ‘What were you doing at the river? And why did I get a call from school to say you’d missed afternoon classes?’

  She heard Billy and Ty talking in the kitchen and caught the sound of a giggle from Ty.

  ‘I was thinking. I left ’cos I needed to think. Can we drop it? I’m home now.’ He walked away, not giving her a chance to answer. Calling him back and forcing him to talk to her wasn’t going to win her any prizes. She went into the kitchen where her other boys sat eating dinner.

  ‘Wren not hungry?’ asked Billy around a mouthful of food.

  ‘Yeah, Wren not hungry?’ copied Ty.

  She rubbed his head affectionally. ‘I guess not. I’ll go and see if he wants something later on.’ She sat down with the rest of her family, laughed and talked with them, but the frown lines between her eyes didn’t fully disappear and Wren was firmly on her mind.

  Once the dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, Vanessa decided that enough time had passed for her try to speak to Wren again. Unfortunately, he had other plans; she could hear the music, the bass thumping from the hallway. Clearly he didn’t want to be disturbed. She left him to it and went to put Ty to bed. She tucked him in and gave him a good-night kiss. ‘You know Mommy loves you, right?’

  She tickled him and he giggled. Ty was so easy to understand, not unlike how Wren used to be.

  Vanessa crawled into bed beside Billy, their bedroom at the other end of the house to the boys’. Vanessa loved her little three-bedroom house, it had become their home

  ‘I think there’s something wrong with him, Billy.’

  Billy sighed deeply. ‘Love, you need to take it down a notch. Is he acting out? Sure. Is he fighting with his friends? Yup. But that’s a normal part of being a teenager, don’t you think? You have to give him some growing room to work through these issues on his own. He’s not always going
to have his parents around.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ she laughed. Billy smiled and gently started stroking her long hair. He kissed her on the forehead, her cheeks, down her neck and then finally, her lips. It felt so good to be touched by him. She hadn’t known that their relationship could be like this, otherwise, she joked to him, she would have married him much sooner.

  They made love that night, slow, in-sync lovemaking. Billy awoke in her something that she’d never experienced before. He knew her inside and out, light and dark, and accepted every part of her.

  ‘I love you, Ness. Always have.’

  ‘Love you too. Besides my boys, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, to us. Before we became a family, I never thought I’d find this. I came with two children and a fucked-up ex-husband. Who’d want to take on that?’

  ‘I did, still do. Besides, neither of the kids has given us any trouble and Mark is in the distant past.’

  At the mention of Mark, a shadow dropped over her. She rolled away onto her back.

  ‘I’ve upset you.’ Billy knew her so well.

  ‘No, I just don’t like talking about Mark, you know. Talk about him too much and he’ll appear, bothering us again. I can’t handle going through all that bullshit.’

  ‘Has Maggie heard from him?’ he asked, still continuing to dwell on the subject.

  It felt like it had been months since she had last seen Maggie, but it had only been a week. ‘No, and she doesn’t want to. Her and Charlotte are really happy living with Dad and its given Dad’s life meaning again. He loves my boys and Charlotte is just another of his grandkids and Maggie a best friend. I’m really happy it worked out for them both.’

  ‘Yeah, your dad deserves some happiness. I’m glad he has them too. Must be nice having a young kid around the house, to play with.’ He sighed wistfully.

  ‘Billy! Are you suggesting that we have a child?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, testing the waters.

  ‘But we’ve talked about this. We decided on this before we were even married. I was pretty clear that I didn’t want any more kids and you said—’

  ‘I know what I said, but things, people, change.’

  ‘So you’re not all right with just us now? You want your own flesh and blood? Is that it?’

  Vanessa was out of the bed, flipping on the lamp and glaring at him with her hands on her naked hips. ‘You always said no to that, Billy. You agreed. I told you that you could find someone who wanted kids, I gave you an out right up to the wedding, but you didn’t take it. Now you’re lying there saying you want another child?’

  ‘Can I talk now?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Ness, I know I said that thing about the kids, but I guess in the back of my mind, I was kind of hoping I could get you to change your mind. Especially since I’m so good with your kids.’

  ‘Our kids,’ she interrupted, thunder coloring her face.

  ‘OK, clearly that was the wrong way to phrase that. I didn’t marry you with the intention of changing your mind. I just hoped, you know?’

  She shook her head, pulled on a nightie, grabbed her pillow and declared, ‘I’m sleeping on the couch.’ She was so angry. How dare he spring that on her? She felt like she wasn’t doing the boys justice as it was. The café was more than a part-time job; she had slowly been increasing her hours there or doing paperwork at home. She didn’t like bringing work home but sometimes it was unavoidable. Billy stepped up on those nights, listening to Ty do his reading or cooking dinner. He only knew how to make a handful of meals, but she so appreciated his help. Then there was her baby Wren. Only seventeen, with the weight of the world on his shoulders. She couldn’t get out of him what was wrong, and she would have called Justin if he and Wren were still speaking. Maybe that was half the problem; if she knew what it was, she might be able to help. Wren wouldn’t want her to call. She instinctively knew that would drive him in the opposite direction.

  The following morning, Vanessa was up and had put away any evidence that she had slept on the couch before anyone else was awake. Billy tried to apologize as soon as he saw her, but it wasn’t an easy fix of an apology. In Vanessa’s eyes he had basically said that her boys weren’t enough, and she wouldn’t stand for that. He all but groveled, and eventually she accepted his apology, right before he walked out the door. He looked contrite, and Vanessa didn’t think he’d be bringing having a baby up any time soon.

  20

  Olivia had no real understanding of how time passed. It was almost as if she was in a bubble that no one else could penetrate. She knew her dad went to work and when he was home, he would hover around her asking her what was wrong. She would whisper that it was nothing then she would walk back into her room and crawl under her comforter, the only place that didn’t feel so aggressive. Olivia had completely stripped her room of everything save the bed. One day she just couldn’t stand the thought of looking at all that stuff anymore. It belonged to someone else, someone that she wasn’t anymore. She put it all in the hallway and it was gone that very night. Her dad never said a word about it. Maybe he recognized that she just couldn’t think, let alone talk right now. She spent most of the days asleep, her nights reserved for staring up at the expanse of ceiling above her.

  Olivia knew deep within her that something was terribly wrong. She showered six times a day, trying to remove the stain, scrub the scent from her body. As the minutes bled into hours and the hours into days, Olivia had more flashes of what had happened. It was as if her mind was sending out a trickle of water from the dam, but not trying to cause a flood. It was protecting her, but also wanted her to remember what happened.

  The sound of flesh striking flesh, the dirt caked under her fingernails. She remembered that. She remembered losing her shoes somewhere and cutting her feet stumbling back to the car. Where were her shoes and what was she doing out in the middle of that field, alone? She may never get answers; her mind remembered reading an old article once about how the brain will build a barrier around itself and its memories to protect you and may release them in time when you could handle it.

  The hand that choked her around her neck surprised her, cutting off any air she tried to breathe in. She panicked, but her arms were pinned down by steel bands. Steel bands that left finger marks. Olivia looked down at both of her arms; the marks almost matched the ones on her thighs perfectly. Another piece of the puzzle. But who would have hurt her?

  Her dad hadn’t pushed her on going back to school; after what happened last time, he had been very careful not to exert any parental authority over her, besides, how could he know if she didn’t fully understand what had happened herself? She went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, studiously ignoring the mirror just in case she caught sight of her reflection. She didn’t want to be seen, but when she rinsed her mouth, her eyes connected with the mirror.

  She saw Wren, beaten, bloodied, punched, kicked. His eye black and swollen, his lip split and bleeding.

  Why? Quickly, she turned away from the mirror and went back to her bedroom. She heard the front door close quietly and assumed that her dad was leaving for work, but she didn’t much care, she was beyond caring what he did now.

  Then she remembered.

  She hadn’t checked her phone in days. It sat, uncharged, in her bag. She pulled it out and plugged it in. A little trickle of life booted it up just enough for her to check her messages. Wren. She traced his name with her finger.

  Her underwear ripped from her body, shoved deep in her mouth so she couldn’t scream again, so as not to be heard by a crowd of her classmates close enough that she could hear the high-pitched laughter of the girls over the music. Would they hear her?

  No one will hear you scream. He seemed to get off on it.

  Olivia’s breath started coming in ragged gasps and she leaned her hands on the end of her bed. She tried to breathe in deeply, but her lungs felt squashed, as they had that night. Shaking, she stood up and felt
the immediate head rush. She wondered when she had last eaten or drank anything. It felt like days. Wren. His name slammed into her with force. He had been trying to help her. Pieces were slotting into place and with each piece, she became more frightened.

  Justin.

  She saw him, his image blurry in the low light, but she’d recognize that voice anywhere. You little fucker! I’m gonna fuck you up, then I’m gonna fuck your girl!

  Wren. The black eye, the cut lip. He’d tried to help. He’d failed.

  Olivia shed her clothes in her bedroom, not looking at herself in the full-length mirror, not wanting to be confronted by the haunted look in her eyes that she knew was there, before returning to the bathroom. Pillar and tea-light candles decorated the room, their fragrance perfuming the air. She pulled the matches out of the bottom shelf of the cupboard, lighting one candle at a time, the little flames flickering to life, beginning to melt the wax. She watched the growing swirls, the smell of roses and vanilla rising up to meet her. Soon they would all be ablaze, glowing heartily in the small bathroom. She had spent many hours in here since they arrived, just relaxing in the bath, sometimes reading, sometimes just marveling at how the world had seemed to turn right-side up here: changing towns, schools and meeting Wren.

  Wren.

  Olivia loved him, didn’t she? She wrote it in her diary often enough to believe that it was true. The water gushed from the tap, hot; the large gold-gilded mirror steamed up, finally obscuring the animalistic, feral look in her eyes. When the bath was almost full, she reached her hand into the very back of the cupboard, pulling something out. Something supposed to be hidden, something she had forgotten about but then found in the move.

  Her hand tightened around a bottle of sleeping tablets. Olivia reached back in and grabbed a second bottle – the anti-anxiety medication that her previous doctor had given her to cope with the bullying at her old school. She’d never taken any, so thirty little white tablets rolled around when she shook her hand. Her dad probably didn’t know where the originally prescribed supply was kept, let alone know that there was more medication at her disposal.