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“So now you’re moved out,” Jess continued. I couldn’t remember if I’d switched from topic to topic so easily when I was fourteen. “Basically. What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted. I thought that was going to scare her, but she shot me a careful grin I returned probably just as carefully. “I guess… I’m going to go back to school, and I’ll see what happens from there.” I looked away from her when I asked, for some reason. “Do you want to go back to school?”
Her sharp breath was an answer, but she gave me a different one. “I don’t think I want to have to go through explaining why to anyone.”
Maybe I was supposed to encourage her to talk to someone now. Get her feelings out.
I pictured her locked in a cramped office with the likes of Ms. Miller—I didn’t think I’d get anything out of that either. I kept my mouth shut.
Jess started babbling. “I know it’s hard, managing someone who’s homeschooling. Especially when you’ll probably have to—I guess I can’t really ask you to do it, but I promise I’ll do my work when I’m supposed to. Mum’s come up with most of the curriculum already, we can probably get her notes…”
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll work it out.” Suddenly, I had this responsibility I couldn’t just drop. Couldn’t bail on. And I wouldn’t have expected it, but that made me feel like I had no choice but to succeed.
Chapter Thirty: Tamara
When a bunch of guys I didn’t even know started yelling at me across the courtyard about needing a good bonking, I couldn’t even make sense of it at first. I was later than I’d wanted to be, held up trying to scramble all my stuff together without getting in Jess’s way. I was also worried about leaving her alone for the day. She had a laptop and she’d promised she would mostly stay in and work, but I didn’t entirely believe her. If it were me, I’d want to get out for a bit, breathe in that sweet freedom. It was what I’d done once I was in high school and Mum couldn’t hover quite as much as she used to.
When I remembered that horrible scene with Steven, at first I was too panicked to think straight, then I was angry. He hadn’t known then just how much of a hot button that was about to become for me, but how had it ever been okay for him to do that? Now there it was, something that stood in the way of my leaning on him when I needed all the support I could get.
I turned on them when they came after me. “Please, just leave me alone.”
That provoked a round of laughing and group elbowing, because my distress was funny to people like that. I tried to outwalk them, but of course they just ‘happened’ to be going in the same direction as me. They settled down as we passed some teachers in a hurry to get to the school entrance (for which I couldn’t blame them), and then started up again once it was just me and them and all our peers standing at a distance. Apparently nobody ever stood up for
anyone else any more.
Then Steven appeared out of nowhere. He didn’t have the usual crowd with him, because of course he’d actually managed to turn Lucas off.
“Get the fuck away from her,” he ordered the guy at the head of the group—Richard? Rick?—who laughed at him.
“Guess she’s not in need of anything any more.”
“Seriously, leave her alone. She doesn’t fucking need your shit right now.”
“Steven,” I warned, feeling him far too close to revealing something I couldn’t have the whole world knowing.
“Seems like you’ve got a lot of ideas about what she needs, huh Dillon?”
Steven clenched his fists. A plaster already crossing his knuckles popped.
I could see how things were going to go now: Steven would deck one or more of these assholes or get himself decked most likely, break his hand definitely, and he’d be done. Ms. Miller was out there just waiting for an excuse to crush him, wasn’t she?
He’d already taken one massive risk for me, a risk that was completely worth it. But that had been in the real world. At school, the balance of things was different.
I didn’t let myself think about it too hard. I just jumped in between the two of them and took a swing.
The arsehole—Richard or Rick or whatever—yelled in pain that drowned out my yelp. My hand was definitely throbbing, but the guy I’d hit was looking a lot worse.
Suddenly there were staff everywhere. Someone pulled me away from the guy I’d hit and led me away; some big male teachers were shouting down the guys. I tried to look back as I heard scuffling noises, but whoever had hold of me tugged harder on my wrist. “Tamara, let’s get out of here so we can talk.”
Of course it had to be Ms. Miller. The last thing I needed right now was to end up in a room with her being probed, but I went with her because I had a feeling she’d be able to make more trouble if I didn’t.
Seated behind her desk across from me with my file between us, she stared at me and waited. I wasn’t in the mood for being mindgamed into anything. “Well?”
Ms. Miller sighed. “Tamara, I don’t understand what’s going on with you. You never had this kind of character until something happened between you and Steven Dillon.”
What had happened was that I’d started to stand up for myself to everyone in my life, and nothing pissed off the people who supposedly cared about you more than that. I felt for Jess, who had yet to feel the full force of this. At least in her old life, she’d probably been able to hide most of the time.
Miller drummed her fingertips on her desk. “My prior offer still stands. If you think Steven is crossing the line…”
