“She’ll appreciate it later.” Of course it sounded nuts with him mocking everything I said like that. I didn’t know why I was even trying to defend myself to him. As if I was obliged to.
Steven rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right… what’s your fucking name, anyway?”
“Tamara. Tamara Hills.” I had no illusions about how much I mattered in the hierarchy at school, but I hated that he’d actually asked. It just made me feel even lower at that moment when I least wanted to feel low.
“Well, Tamara Hills, I suggest you stay the fuck away from us if you don’t want to make trouble for yourself.” It pissed me off even more that he was apparently including Callie in the group. I didn’t believe for a second that any of them saw her as more than someone Lucas was messing around with they’d better be nice to so long as he said so. “If Callie wanted anything to do with you right now, you’d be over there hanging out with us, and you know it. So don’t be some bitch who causes drama.”
I’d never been someone who caused drama in my entire life. I really did not understand how Steven was turning the situation around like this, but it made me certain I couldn’t just leave Callie alone to these people. No matter how little she seemed to care about me now.
“Just you watch yourselves,” I said. I started to edge sideways along the wall, to put some distance between myself and him. “If you do anything to hurt her, I am going to make sure you get what’s coming to you.”
I couldn’t move any more. Steven had my wrist in a crushing grip, and I didn’t even remember him doing it.
“And what’s that, huh?” He was looking down at me, but somehow I didn’t feel like he was actually seeing me. It was like I wasn’t important enough for him to see me as an actual person. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking you could do anything to me…” I had a horrible feeling he was reaching for my name and had already forgotten it. He shook his head. “I’ve got better things to do with my life than have trouble with some mouthy little bitch… so, if you’re smart enough to back off and stop making a nuisance of yourself, I’ll forget you even exist soon enough. Like Callie has.”
He was trying to get rid of me and he still couldn’t resist having a jab at me. I wanted to say something more back to him, but all I could do was stare at his hand that felt like it was holding me like a steel cuff, and remember the way Callie had been looking when she’d found a chance to talk to me lately. I actually felt like I might be in danger if I pushed things too hard with this guy. That ought to be insane. He was just another student at my school, for goodness sake, and the worst he had on me was that he’d caught me watching the girl I thought had been my friend.
Surely even Callie couldn’t fault me for that.
I still hadn’t decided whether I dared speak when Steven let go of me, pushing me away as he did it so I staggered and fell hard on my knees on the concrete. He must have heard my cry of pain, but he didn’t even look back as he sauntered back over to the rest of his group.
Which, I supposed, really did include Callie after all.
I pulled myself back to my feet with the aid of the wall next to me. My knees throbbed. What kind of arsehole hurt a woman, anyway?
I probably owed Aileen an apology now, because one way or the other she’d been right. But after what had just happened, I didn’t think I could face anyone just yet. I couldn’t hide that something had happened to me, and it felt like something that shouldn’t be talked about
. Something shameful.
So I made my way to the school library via the most secluded route I could think of and tucked myself up the back with the fiction books, the old word processing/research computers, and anyone else who had a need to avoid their classmates. I was already thinking over the rest of the day. I doubted anyone would find a reason to talk to me in my final three classes, unless they wanted to bug me about Callie—and I felt pretty good about just ignoring anyone who did that. I could hide out in the library again at lunch.
It would be a drag of a day, but I would be home soon enough… and then I could make sense of what had just happened to me.
Chapter Two: Tamara
My stepdad Mike was the only one home when I got in, and he rarely did more than grunt at me when I came in unless I initiated conversation—which I never bothered with unless Mum was watching, because I figured she liked it when she thought we got along. I mean, he doesn’t hit me, so I suppose we did get along well enough.
I went straight upstairs and grabbed a doll off my bed and squeezed it until the stuffing nearly popped while I sat on my rug and rocked back and forth lightly, trying to calm myself.
Maybe that was why I was so worked up about this whole thing: repressed memories. But I’d never really thought I had any. I had been no more than three years old when my biological father hit me—the event that provoked my mother to pack up me and my brother and leave him for good. Ryan remembered him, and all he ever said to me was that I was better off without those memories. I didn’t remember him hitting me, or anything else either. Mum said it hadn’t been hard or anything, just a really solid slap, but he’d hit Ryan a lot before, and it had brought home to her that this was going to be the future for us if she stayed.
Mum had taught me that the reason abusers got away with what they did was that they made it hard for you to believe it was happening at all. Gaslighting was practically the first three-syllable word I learned. I’d always been confident in my ability to figure out if I was in the company of an abuser. But now I was feeling like Mum hadn’t given me everything she knew after all. This whole situation had spiralled out of my control before I realised there was a situation.
I’d thought the situation between my best friend Callie and chronic school legend Lucas Starling was cute at first, the same as I’d thought it was cute when he was flirting with her back when they were kids. Then suddenly she was in the midst of his social group and had no time for me, and I couldn’t work out what I’d done. I guess we’d been drifting apart for some time, and I’d wondered now and then if we would even still see one another once we graduated, but this still felt a bit sinister in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.
I sighed as I stared at my old teddy bear clock hanging up on my wall, struggling to focus on the time amidst a crowd of framed kitten posters and some of my own studio photos from when I was a kid, before I started resisting sitting for photos. Not even five o’clock yet. I’d been relieved at first when I quit my after-school job, because I didn’t have to deal with Mum having a go at me every time I came home, worrying I was going to be too tired for homework, but I was really regretting not having something else to do that day while my mind raced.
By the time Mum got home from work I had gotten into such a state that when she opened my door to look in on me, she marched straight in, shut the door, and sat on the bed next to me.
“We don’t have to talk about this now,” I told her. “I’m pretty sure you were really coming in to ask me to help with dinner.”
“Mike can wait,” Mum said. “Has something happened?”
“I don’t think I’ve gotten around to telling you this yet,” I said, covering for the fact that I hadn’t felt like telling her. “Callie and Lucas started going out.”
“Oh, really. He was always keen on her when you were all kids, wasn’t he?”
She sounded about as bored as anyone could who remembered a trivial detail from her daughter’s best friend’s ancient history. Mum had never liked Callie much and I had never worked out why. It wasn’t open hostility or anything, she’d just never been as friendly towards her as she was whenever Aileen or some other girl visited, which wasn’t often. She probably only remembered because I’d been obsessed with the whole situation at the time—obsessed and jealous, to be completely honest. I could never work out why Lucas had been all over her and not me… not that I had the slightest interest in Lucas for myself, but when a guy picked someone you were that close to, you were going to wonder why it hadn’t been you.