“Let me go, Steven.” When I spoke up, finally, he opened his arms and let me stagger back. I didn’t let myself stick around, not for one word or look. I ran, tripping over steps and bumping into people I didn’t stop to apologise to, who would probably become a part of my club of haters.
I wanted to go and hide in the library for the day, pretend I had an endless string of free periods rather than classes scheduled, but that was exactly the sort of thing that would set Ms. Miller on me eventually. She’d want to know what had happened, and I had nothing to tell her that I wanted to tell her. Nothing that would make my life less complicated.
I went to class after class, the only thing I could do, and tried to ignore the eyes and whispers of everyone else who I bet had only come along to laugh at me.
At lunch time, I was able to catch Callie before she joined Lucas’s group, attracting a minimal amount of staring and jeers in the process, and patched things up with her so that she would be willing to go out with me to get that contraception medication.
Actually, she came up with a better plan than my headlong dash before meeting up with Ryan at the end of the day. She had a couple of her work outfits in her car. We would both leave school in the period just after lunch, change out of our school uniforms in the shopping centre toilets, and visit the pharmacy in that less eye-catching gear. Maybe with a little camouflage, I would even escape letting the entire world know my embarrassing business.
We weren’t exactly subtle in our mission. We weren’t alone in the toilet stalls, but we giggled the whole time we were changing next to one another. An elderly lady who was washing her hands as we emerged shouldering our thankfully relatively nondescript schoolbags shot us a superior look as we exited, like she was so senile she couldn’t remember being young and having fun once in a while.
“This is a lot easier to laugh about than I thought it would be,” I admitted. The pharmacy we were headed for was at the far end of the shopping stretch we were walking down.
“You’ve got to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in,” Callie said. There was something about it that was very un-Callie-like in some way, but I couldn’t put it in words.
“Well, I guess what I mean most is that I’m glad I haven’t lost you in this whole mess yet.” I shot a peek at her and added, “Not entirely, at least?”
Callie heaved a big sigh. “It’s going to be very difficult if you keep having this level of conflict with Steven, though.”
“You think I want it? Did you hear what he did to me this morning?”
I felt my throat lock up as I remembered the way he’d held onto me, our little battle of wills. I didn’t want to think about what had been going on during that, let alone get myself into talking about it.
Fortunately, when Callie said, “Oh, yes, he made sure we knew all the details of that little stunt,” I could tell from her disgusted face she was talking about the condoms. “How did you two even get to this point? Steven is so chill most of the time, sure he’ll fire up if you get too much in his face, but he’s the sort of guy who seems to just want to hang out and stay low-drama.”
I remembered the time we’d spent playing that stupid video game at Ashleigh’s house: hanging out, no drama. I didn’t want to remember. It had seemed like no big deal when it was happening, just a regular nice time, but now the memory had a mist cast over it that made me ache when I looked back on it.
“Tamara? That you?”
I winced at a diversion from a direction I didn’t want. Mum’s friend Anita was hurrying over, waving at me.
“I’m surprised to see you out and about so early,” said Anita, even though she knew I was skipping school, of course.
Callie edged in front of me while I was still moving spit around in my throat. “Oh, Tamara was just helping me out this afternoon. I work at the phone store behind us. You should come and visit us the next time you need to replace your phone!”
Anita muttered a few bewildered things and made her escape.
“What?” said Callie. I was staring at her. “One thing I’ve realised lately is that if you talk enough, even if what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense, people will just let you get away with whatever you’re trying to do. You just have to talk.”
This was not the Callie I used to know, who would put her head down and not say much of anything. “That disturbs me somehow,” I said. And then I noticed something that disturbed me even more: Steven standing outside a shop across the way from us, staring.
I elbowed Callie compulsively until she saw what I was indicating, and she put her hand over her forehead. “Oh, I did not need to get caught in the middle of this.”
I shot Steven a scowl. “It’s okay, he’s probably just here to make sure I do… well, what we’re about to go and do.” I mouthed stalker at him and led the way off.
Callie glanced at me once we were several strides away. “You were pretty weird about the idea of actually getting that problem sorted out yesterday. I mean, I wouldn’t blame him for being a little antsy about a girl going off like that. If I thought she might be… you know.”
“Are you seriously defending this behaviour?”
She looked outraged, which was strange because defending Steven was exactly what she had been doing. “I’m just saying there’s a lot more going on with some people than meets the eye.”
“That has nothing to do with what you were saying.”
She seemed surprised to hear that. “Maybe I didn’t express myself well enough.”
“Maybe.”
I was tongue-tied at the pharmacy trying to explain what I wanted to a woman not much older th