Like I said.
I’m not a nice girl.
CHAPTERTWO
EM
Current Day—Em 18; Caylon 17
There’s a teenage girl, blonde hair streaked with blue, staring at me as I flip open the petrol cap on my car. She’s my age, maybe a bit older, but I don’t recognise her. I don’t know why she’s staring.
“What’re you looking at, freak?” I call across the lane and she blushes and grabs the squeegee from the nearby pail, quickly washing her window.
She’s beautiful. Thin as a board. Hips barely wider than her waist. I jam the nozzle into my tank and press the handle, eyes flicking to the readout. There’s fifteen dollars and sixty cents in my wallet and no prospect of adding to it anytime soon.
There had been more, but Ratty was frantic this morning over his son’s visit, so I gave him forty bucks. The kid hasn’t seen him for months and the least he needs to do to impress upon his ex that he deserves more visitation is shout his son a meal. Maybe take him to the pictures.
Calm down. You don’t even like me.
I jerk back as my ex-boyfriend’s parting words jump into my head. I see Zach’s mouth move, the calm expression on his face as he breaks up with me. He seemed more confused at my objection than anything else. Like it never occurred to him I might want to stay together.
You can’t rewrite this as some big affair.
My fingers grasp the handle tighter as the scene plays over in my head, like the words are stuck on a loop. An ear worm I can’t just play another catchy tune to get rid of. It’s jammed in there deep. So deep, even a screwdriver in the ear mightn’t get it out.
A screwdriver in Zach’s ear might do the trick. Just the thought is enough to coax a smile, and it’s been a long time since one of those came naturally. It’s only six weeks since he broke up with me and already the rest of my life has gone careening off the rails.
I forgot how hard it is. The real world.
We were together for just long enough for me to adjust to his reality. Without the buffer of a rich boyfriend to cushion the multitude of blows that come my way, everything is suddenly a problem. A problem with a single workable solution. Money.
And as always, I don’t have enough of it. Not to make a difference.
My eyes skitter back to the display.Damn it.Twenty-two dollars and counting. I jerk out the nozzle so quickly that a few drops spray across the back of my hand.
See. There goes another inanimate object, proving my point. If I had money, I’d just laugh at the fact I kept my fingers clenched longer than I should have. Without it, I don’t even know what I’m meant to do. Syphon the difference out of my tank? Get in my car and try to speed away, knowing they’ll have images of my licence plate on their cameras and it’s only a matter of time before the police come knocking? Confess how poor I am so the petrol jockey can laugh at me and hopefully get so much enjoyment he waves away the seven-dollar difference?
I haul out my phone and then stop, frowning at the screen. Who am I meant to call? Dee’s my best friend, but she’ll be even less help than I am in this situation. Her parents both work all the hours under the sun, and they currently survive paycheque to paycheque.
Or almost. They’re more like three paycheques behind. Just long enough that every second bill sent to their address is typed in pretty red ink.
There are other girls that we club around with, fewer with every passing day, it seems like, but they’ll be no good. They only hang around because they think I can take care of myself. If I present them with a vulnerability, they’ll exploit it until my name is mud and my senior year is trashed.
I can’t lose school. I love it there.
Seeing the teachers wandering around, snapping out corrections or softly doling out praise. Acting like grownups should act. Like responsible people who care about the societal rules and work within their parameters.
Everything is set and expected and conforms to the specifications it should. Even the other pupils fall within a clearly defined structure. From the jocks fooling around on the rugby field before class to the girls crowding around the bathroom mirrors to apply the last touches to their makeup and hiking up their skirts.
I know who I am at school.
It’s the only place in the world where I feel that way.
A man one pump over frowns at the phone in my hand and I bare my teeth at him. Sure, there’s a sign with an x over a picture of a mobile hanging right by me, but it’s not like I’m holding a lit cigarette.
With no answers to be found on it either, I head into the office. Perhaps I can sweet-talk the cashier into giving me credit. Just for a few hours.
Except the man—no, theboy—seated behind the Perspex isn’t a nice stranger in the mood for flattery. It’s Ben Allinese, the fat slob whose life I made a misery back in year ten. Judging from the sour expression on his face right now, he remembers me. Vividly.
