NO! I don’t want to. Not if he’s leaving.
“The hell I won’t,” I growl back.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the thought makes me feel sick.”
I try picturing an image of Jake kissing another girl, but my mind pushes it away before it fully forms like some kind of self-protection mechanism.
“I think …”
“You think?” he prompts when I trail off.
“I think I might feel the same.” Goddammit. Because where does that leave us?
Jake exhales deeply as if my response gives him some kind of relief.
“But what does it even matter?” I ask. “You’re leaving.”
“We can keep in touch.”
He doesn’t mean it because the smile forming on his lips doesn’t reach his eyes. Jake is my partner in crime. He’s the boy that makes me feel like I can do anything, and I’m losing him.
“Sure we can,” I reply, but my voice is flat, and he knows I don’t mean it either.
JAKE
Six months later…
It’s three p.m. and my lips flatten as I leave the school gates. I’m not in a hurry to get home. There’s no food there, and I’m starving. We’ve been without power for two days now and what little food we did have has begun to spoil. My foster carers are late paying the electric bill. Again. A cold, dark, hungry night stretches ahead of me. It’s about as exciting as my history class this afternoon on the impact of migrants on Australian society.
The topic had been a waste of time. What does the impact matter? These people are human beings who need somewhere to live, and our country has the space. The end.
Besides, I know how they feel. Not having a home or a sense of belonging to someone or something is like being adrift at sea with no safe harbour to set down anchor. For a small moment in time, Mackenzie Valentine had been my safe harbour. I had belonged to her.
But like all good things, my time there came to an end. Jenna found me a foster home here in Melbourne. It’s a nine-hour drive from Sydney, but there are few people willing to take in a fifteen-year-old boy. I had little choice but to move.
Mac wanted me to stay, and I wanted it too. More than anything. The Valentines are the definition of real family. They have a deep, underlying bond of love, loyalty, and protection. They don’t believe family is important, they believe it’s everything. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
But I didn’t ask them if I could stay. My father had taught me respect and living under their roof while my hands and mouth were all over their daughter wouldn’t have been right. Though now I’m wishing I stayed. Screw respect. Living here fucking sucks.
“Wait up, Romero!”
I half turn as I dawdle down the path outside the gates of school. Luke Fox is jogging to catch up, so I pause. He’s in the same grade as me. We struck up a friendship based on a mutual love of cars, but he and his older brother, Leander, are in a local gang. I’m not one to get caught up in gossip mongering, but if the rumours are true, the Fox brothers are into the kind of shit I don’t need to get caught up in. I barely have a roof over my head as it is.
“Hey, Fox.”
He grins as he catches up, his eyes bright and blond hair mussed and sweaty from our afternoon practice of school football. Luke is a big guy for his age, but I’m bigger, and in football size is just about everything. That afternoon we’d played a scrimmage on opposing teams. Mine won. Mostly because whenever I had the ball, he was the only one willing to tackle me for it, and I had the ball a lot.
“Wanna go do something cool with me?”
“What, right now?” My stomach growls, reminding me that a body this size needs more fuel than it’s getting. I begin to walk again and he follows alongside me.
“Yes, now. It’s my birthday. Lee’s taking me to get my first tattoo and then we’re going out for burgers.”
Goddamn. Burgers? I want to weep. “I didn’t know it was your birthday. Sweet sixteen, huh?”
He shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Come with us.”
I swallow the bitter taste of envy. “I can’t today.”
A car rumbles to the kerb beside us and blares its horn. We stop and watch as the window comes down, revealing Leander. His hair is a shade darker than Luke’s and hangs in his eyes. Black RayBans cover his eyes, and he’s wearing a flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped off. He looks like he’s stepped straight from the set of The Outsiders.
“Lee!” Luke hollers, his excitement barely restrained as he steps toward the car. Leander grabs a packet of cigarettes from the dashboard and taps one out before sticking it between his lips. He lights it and draws deeply.
I begin walking backward, my eyes shifting to Luke. “Happy birthday, mate.”
“Wait,” he orders and looks to his brother. “Romero is coming with us.” I begin to protest, still moving away from them when he adds the words, “Lee can pay.”
“Yeah, no worries,” Leander replies and rests his arm across the open car window. “Get in.”
Shit. I can’t expect Luke’s brother to buy me food. I’m not a charity case. I jab a thumb behind me. “You know, I should get going. I—”
Leander exhales a plume of smoke out the window and growls, “Get in, you fuckers. I got shit to do before we go get this tatt, and I’m running late as it is.”
Luke holds the back passenger door open and raises his brows at me, his voice taking on a whiney tone. “Come on, Romero.”
“Yeah, come on, Romero.” Leander grins. The lit cigarette dangles from his lips. “Little Fox needs a big strong man to hold his hand while he gets the needle.”
Luke scowls. “Get stuffed, Lee.”
Lee laughs. So do I. And then I realise I’m being stupid. The Fox brothers aren’t so bad and I’m hungry as fuck. What can going to get a burger with a friend from school hurt? With a careless shrug, I walk toward the car. “I didn’t realise you were such a baby, Fox. Maybe I should show you how it’s done.”
Luke’s dark brown eyes light up. “You could get a tattoo with me.”
My heart gives a pang of longing. I’ve always wanted one. When I get a job, my first paycheque is going on ink. “Maybe next time,” I tell him, shifting across the seat to make room. “Besides, you have to be eighteen for that, don’t you?”
“Pffft,” he says as I slide inside the car. “Lee is my official guardian. He can sign something that says I’m allowed. He can sign you one too.”
Luke jumps in the back beside me. He shuts the car door and climbs through the middle to sit in the front passenger seat.
“But he’s not my guardian,” I point out.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Leander says. “I know the owner.” He accelerates wildly, pulling out on to the street. “And it’s Little Fox’s birthday. If he wants you to get a tattoo with him, then I’ll pay for it.”
Disappointment flattens my lips. “I won’t have the cash to pay you back anytime soon.”
“It’s cool.” Leander lifts the sunglasses from his eyes and meets my gaze through the rear vision mirror. “You can owe me one.”
After peeling off my shirt, I take my seat on the chair. The owner of Ink My Life tattoo studio hands me the red folder I was looking through earlier.
“Point the image out for me, mate.”
I’ve already told him the number of the image. One six eight. Those three digits identify the first tattoo of my life. My heart pounds as I flip through the plastic-sleeved pages. When I reach the tiara halfway through the book, I tap my finger against it. The artwork isn’t girly in the least. It’s dark and filled with shadows of grey. The tips aren’t edged with jewels but instead bear sharp points, some of them dripping with blood. “This one.”
His expression is dubious. “You sure?”
Nothing represents Mackenzie Valentine better than this. It’s perfect. A faint smile edges the corners of my mouth. “Sure as fuck.”
“Righteo,”
he mutters, standing from the wheeled stool he was sitting on. “It doesn’t get any surer than that.”
Luke shuffles over when the ink technician begins his work, placing the tiara on my left pec, just above the nipple. Luke has just finished getting a fox placed on his right bicep. It’s not finished yet. The tattoo has been bandaged for him to return another day.
I wait for the smart comment about my chosen tattoo as he watches. He doesn’t disappoint. “Dude. You’re getting a crown?”
“It’s a tiara,” I correct.
“Same thing.”
“No it’s not.”
Laughter lights his eyes. “Is this part of your gender reassignment?”
“Bite me,” I mutter, ignoring the irritating little jabs of the needle.
Luke studies the image for a long moment before looking at me. “What happened? Some princess break your heart?”
I snort. “Nope.”
“Then what?”
There’s no explaining Mac in one simple sentence. I don’t even try. But I do correct his assumption. “She didn’t break my heart. She stole it. It belongs to her now.”
Leander rolls his eyes from where he sits on the counter behind us sucking on another cigarette. That shit he’d had to do earlier? A drug delivery. The heavy pounding of my pulse belonged to fear. I can be arrested for association. Not to mention being involved with drugs, or people who use them, isn’t my scene. I justify it by telling myself that I’m not involved; tagging along doesn’t make me a part of their world. Besides, I want that burger, and I want this tattoo more than anything.
“You’re what, fifteen?” Leander huffs. “You don’t even know love yet.”
“Get stuffed,” Luke tells him for the second time that afternoon. “Romero is almost sixteen, right?” He looks at me and I shrug in return. Sixteen is another five months away, but we can call that almost sixteen if he wants to. “You act like you’re all that, Lee, but being eighteen doesn’t make you the king of everything.”
“I never said I was,” Leander replies coolly, stubbing his cigarette out in the glass ashtray beside him, “but I do know that the girl Romero is getting crowned in ink for will be with someone else by the time he reaches his eighteenth birthday. Mark my words.”
Mac and I made no promises, but Leander’s cynical comment and the image it forms in my head has my fingers curling into fists. “You want to bet on that?”
His eyes spark with interest. “Sure.”
“A thousand bucks.” My self-assurance has just been rocked and now I have to fake it, but I’ve overshot the mark into reckless territory. I don’t even have a dollar to piss on.
“Hardly!” Leander pushes off from the counter and walks over. “Ten thousand.”
Luke folds his arms. “For fuck’s sake, Lee. Romero doesn’t have that kind of cash to throw around.” He looks at me. “Do you?”
Leander cocks his head. “Relax, Little Fox. If I can have that kind of cash, so can he. If he wants to.”
My nails dig into the foamy armrests of the chair. “You’re saying that like I’m destined to lose.”
“If I want you to lose, then you’ll lose.” Leander’s eyes take a dark turn. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Well, he’s not eighteen yet,” Luke advises, waving his arms like he’s trying to disperse the crackling tension his older brother created. “He’s got two years to win.”
Leander’s brow arches with cynicism. “Or two years to lose.”
Or two years to get the hell out of dodge. Mac will have my balls if she ever finds out I’m betting hard cash on her affections.
Leander and Luke Fox deliver me home hours later. We pause for a collective beat of silence as they take in the worn timber cladding and sagging porch. The house is like a battered old work boot. The interior remains dark and as welcoming as a dip in the Arctic with a pod of killer whales. It’s no surprise to see my foster carers left the electric bill unpaid today. Assholes.
I open the back passenger door and step out.
“I’ll walk you in,” Luke says quickly and jumps out of the car alongside me.
“Hey!” Leander calls from his open window as we walk across the front yard. “Don’t forget you owe me one now, Romero.”
That sounds ominous. Owing Leander Fox isn’t one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, but I have a belly full of burgers and beer and I’m feeling magnanimous so I don’t have the heart to care. I wave him off. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you need.”
Luke stands on my left as I put the key in the lock of the front door. I don’t want him to see how I live, but he’s clearly curious. His eyes are focused on the darkened interior through the window. I pause. “You know, it’s not a prom date. You don’t have to walk me inside.”
His gaze shifts to me and he grins. “And here I was hoping you’d put out.”
“Pfft. In your dreams.”
With a faint laugh, Luke looks back through the window. “It’s dark inside. Folks not home?”
“Not my folks,” I mutter.
“Oh.” He nods as though he understands all about those three little words. “Fosters?”
“Yeah.”
Knowing I can’t stand here all night with the key in the lock, I twist it clockwise and shove the door open. Luke doesn’t waste time. He pushes his way past me and inside. His hand goes straight for the light switch in the entry. The sound of a click renders the air but nothing happens. He flicks it a few more times. “Power’s out.”
“Yeah,” I say a second time. “Must be an outage in the area.”
He’s nice enough not to mention the blinding lights coming from every other house in the street. “Well, I better go before Lee gets the shits and takes off without me.”
The tension in my shoulders loosens a fraction. “Good idea. Thanks for the invite today.”
“No worries.” Luke starts for the door and pauses, half-turning to look at me. His forehead creases with apparent anxiety. “See you at school, yeah?”
Air leaves my lungs in a whoosh and my eyes find my feet. “About that …”
An excruciatingly tense moment of silence fills the room.
“Christ!” he mutters. “Seriously?” Luke knows what I’m going to say before I say it. The words are either written on my face or he’s heard it all before. “Get off your high horse, Romero. It pays the fucking bills, don’t it?”
Luke flings the flyscreen door open and kicks it backward on his way out. It slaps angrily against the worn timber framework as he stalks outside.
“Fox! Wait!” I call, following him out.
“No, fuck it,” he calls back without turning around. He’s already jogging down the porch steps. His feet kick up dirt as he motors toward the car where Leander’s fingers tap an impatient rhythm against the steering wheel. “No one wants to be friends with the brother of the local drug dealer, do they?”
His retort is sharp but the underlying hurt in his tone twists me in a knot for judging him. “It’s not—”
Luke turns around, cutting me off. “I don’t blame you.” He takes a step forward until he’s in my face. “But at least I have a roof over my head. And food. And decent fucking clothes,” he says, sneering at the ratty school uniform I’m still wearing. After a quick flick of his eyes at the dark house behind me, he adds, “And at least I still got fucking family who gives a shit.”
His words are an uppercut to the jaw. Swift and painful, they almost knock me backward. My hands fist. The short nails dig into the flesh of my palms, bracing me as I take the hit.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Leander calls to Luke through the open car window. Then he looks at me. “You ever need money, Romero, you come see me.”
“Not sure he’d lower himself,” Luke says to his brother while looking at me.
My jaw ticks. “I don’t need money.”
“Sure you don’t.” Luke walks around the front of the car, his hand going for the passenger door.
“Wait!” I call o
ut. His hand lifts the handle before he pauses. “I’ll see you at school.”
I don’t wait for a response. Instead, I turn, jog up the porch steps, and make my way back inside my own private hell. My plan is to fall facedown on my old, shitty mattress and revel in the feeling of a full belly, but I need to relieve myself first. My underage body has consumed enough beer to sink a battleship, and now it wants out.
The phone rings, the shrill sound diverting me from my path toward the bathroom. It startles me for a moment before I realise that the landline doesn’t need electricity to work. The phone sits mounted against the wall beside the kitchen counter. I answer it with a tired “Hello?”
“Jake! Honey.”
It’s Jenna Valentine. Her voice is so familiar and so similar to Mac’s that it hits me like a ton of bricks. My back slowly slides down the wall, the phone pressed hard to my ear.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”
Her lack of success is no surprise. I avoid being home. My afternoons are spent at the library. My grades are the only thing I can control. They’re my ticket to better things. My ticket back to Mac. I can save some cash. Attend university in Sydney. Maybe Mac and I can go to the same one. Even move in together. If she hasn’t forgotten me.
“Hey, Mrs. Valentine.” I swallow the ache so she doesn’t hear it in my voice. “How you doin’?”
“I’m good, thank you, Jake.”
“How’s Mac doin’? Does she—” It’s an effort to halt the question. The last thing I should be asking Jenna is whether Mac ever mentions me. Of course she doesn’t. “Does she still get into scraps like she did when I was there?”
“You know our Mac, honey.” My fingers tighten on the phone. I did. And I want to know more. So much more. But it’s not our time. Not right now. Perhaps I should accept the fact that maybe it was never but when you have nothing else except hope, letting go of it is like prying your fingers from the edge of a cliff.
“Actually, I was calling about your father.”
“Oh?” I prompt.
I haven’t contacted him since I left. Being here means being unable to visit him at the hospital every fortnight like I used to. I miss him, though mostly I miss who he used to be. There’s no talking to my dad on the phone. Words are difficult for his mind to find and when he does, understanding them through the stuttering speech is just as hard. What is there to say anyway? “Dad, you were the best, but I don’t know how to communicate with you anymore?”