Games Boys Play: A Dark High School Romance (Troubled Playthings 2)

“Depressingly low,” said Aileen.

Chapter Twelve: Tamara

Mum wasn’t at all happy to have me crawling in home the following morning. Apparently she’d waited up until three. I had a key.

Mike made the stupid mistake of telling her she should ‘chill out’ and let me live a little. She launched into an epic rant about how he needed to stay out of things when it came to her children, which at least gave Ryan and me cover to slip off to our bedrooms.

I sat on my bed, and instead of giving in to a sudden urge to hug a whole bunch of my dolls at once, I pulled Callie’s dress out of my bag and clung to that instead. I would have fun sneaking that out to wash without my mother noticing.

I pulled my phone out of my bag and stared at it, at the recent stream of messages from Callie and Aileen. Steven and I had never even exchanged numbers so we could flirt by text or calls like other couples probably did. Not that we were a couple… or that I wanted us to be a couple. I wasn’t sure about my feelings or his. Maybe we were alrea

dy finished now, or Steven had a certain number of encounters in mind and then he would cut me off.

Well, if Steven wanted to get in touch with me I was pretty sure he’d be able to get Lucas to get Callie to give him my number or something. But for some reason I didn’t think he’d do that.

It was just so weird. There was no romance whatsoever here, and I was entirely okay with it. Shouldn’t I be exactly the sort of girl who wanted that romance in her love life? I slept in a bedroom that looked like it belonged to a ten-year-old Sleeping Beauty, for goodness sake.

I was quite happy with how things were going. Very happy. And maybe I should feel guilty about that, but I didn’t.

I was glad Ryan dropped me off a short distance from school, because I knew that day was going to be a real mess. That week.

I’d arranged to meet Callie and Aileen at the front of the building so we could all go into class together, but I’d already had two people yell questions about that night at the party by the time I reached them.

Callie’s cheek was twitching. “This is going to be a real clusterfuck of a day. Tamara, I have to tell you…”

“Who’s a dirty girl, Tamara?” bellowed some meathead. I had even less of an idea who he was than I’d had about Steven before our initial confrontation.

“I guess you’d know one when you see one,” Aileen bellowed after him, “because all you have to do to remember is look at a picture of your mum.”

“Aileen, leave it.” I turned on Callie. “You clearly know something about what’s happening here.”

“It’s Ashleigh,” said Callie, which was probably the start of a lot of bad stories. “She’s been telling everyone how you and Steven left the bungalow at the back of her family house in a total mess when you were in there. You know… fluids.”

I felt like I was going to throw up. Ashleigh was fucking lying: we had made extra sure we tidied up after ourselves and didn’t leave any fluids. But the whole thing was so embarrassing I didn’t want to get into arguing that point, not even with my friends.

Callie and Aileen were completely on my side anyway, as expected if the other side was Ashleigh’s.

“The least she could have done is come to you if she had a problem,” said Aileen. “Just spreading this all over the place is such a dick move. Um, excuse the…”

I stopped walking. I was actually moaning a little, very low, and I couldn’t manage to stop it. “I can’t do this. I can’t go in and face them all thinking…”

“So go home,” Callie told me. “Tell your mum you got a really bad period or something.”

I shuddered at the thought of how clingy that would make her. Then I remembered the other problem I had to tackle after school, and my sick feelings intensified. If you got pregnant, could you experience morning sickness that early? I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked… but I couldn’t quite convince my terrified mind.

“I’ve got to just get through this day,” I said. “There’s no way around it. I have to face it if I ever want this to die down.”

“Right.” Callie led the way into first period social science. I was really appreciating her new confident attitude… until I remembered that it was her making a gigantic fuss that had drawn everyone’s attention to Steven and I going off together in the first place.

“Really wish you’d just kept your mouth shut that night,” I muttered.

Callie’s back went visibly stiff. “Sorry for caring about you.”

That first period was an overwhelming horror. I almost didn’t notice all the whispering and laughing, what with the furious energy Callie was radiating.

In my second period, I wasn’t with either of them and I missed the distraction. I went alone to my locker at recess and hung around, hoping Callie would come to forgive me (even if it was her fault again) or Steven, who I hadn’t seen all day, but there was no such luck. I decided I was going to head straight to the library at lunch time.

Both Callie and Aileen were in maths with me before lunch, but they were sitting together away from me, and for once I was actually happy about that.