This has to be a joke.
I pull out my phone and spin through the dizzying display of wealth that forms the backbone of Em’s social media accounts.
They aren’t faked. She’s leaning against actual walls, posing as her reflection is thrown back and forth forever by a pair of opposing mirrors.
“Do you know where this house is?” I ask, bringing up one image of Em pushing her hip out in an expansive lobby. The painting behind her is a Goldie. Worth upward of a million.
Cheryl takes the phone from my hand and frowns over the image. “Where’d you get this?” Her thumb swipes to the next one, and the next. When she looks back to me, her face is pale. The red of her lush bottom lip looks completely out of place. Like dramatic lipstick, except it’s her natural colouring.
“You know the place?” I don’t need to ask; the words are just a prompt for her to tell me. Recognition is alight in every inch of her body. “Can you tell me—”
“Get out.” She shoves the phone at me with such haste that I fumble it for a second before gaining control and tucking it into my pocket. “I don’t know you. I don’t even know if you’re friends with my daughter.”
She reaches behind me, plucking the note from the pillow and reading the scrawl. “Ratty?”
The man wanders inside, the nickname perfectly suited to his appearance. “You need a hand finding the door?”
I could take him. Easily. Even if he got his hands on the aluminium bat that his eyes skate over to, the one resting against the far wall.
“You’ll give her the message?” I ask but Cheryl’s lost in thought, frowning at floor as though I’ve already gone.
Outside, I take a deep breath. I don’t know how many other people live there but judging from the mattresses, it’s a minimum of three. Maybe more if some of them are doubling up.
My stride lengthens as I retrace my steps, eager to get out of the place.
Not that leaving can stop all the rotten thoughts spilling out of my brain like the rankest, wettest garbage.
I’m used to being the one without money. Compared to Trent and Zach, I’m poor. My dad only worth in the tens of millions rather than the hundreds. Our wealth only extends back to his father on our stunted family tree.
On my mother’s side is an army of free-thinkers, free-livers, free-doers. A quarter of them with their skulls cracked open by schizophrenia, spilling out their fantastic brains until there’s nothing left but a shell.
I thought I had no real money.
This is fucking terrible.
Em was meant to be insulated from what I did to her at school. The images dripping with wealth should have acted as a buffer.
That’s what I thought. That’s why I hadn’t bothered to sympathise or draw back once she showed signs of crumbling.
My teeth draw blood biting into my bottom lip as I picture her earlier today. Her face bare of makeup. Her ragged hair.
She cut her glorious mane off rather than try to comb out the mess and I just thought she was flipping her middle finger at me. Not that she didn’t have another option.
She’s more vulnerable than you think.
Thanks, Zach. My stride lengthens until I’m almost running as I head back for my car. Didn’t occur to him to add a little more context.
This isn’t vulnerability. This is already beaten.
Panic grips me but I sit in the driver’s seat, not moving. Not yet.
My system, already overrunning with guilt over Em’s breakdown, ladles another spoonful into the surging tide, and another. Another.
Now I’m getting another view into her life, into who she is, how she lives, the sensation builds up, piling behind the dam, close to overflowing.
My feelings have been numb for so long, I struggle to process the growing rush of emotion. My heart oscillates between beating too fast and too slow. A tight band crushes the top of my head while wires tug inside my chest.
Behind the wheel, I stare at the cracked street, potholes spreading their jaws to catch unwary victims.
