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 out. 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?”
He was the man who could do anything. At the age of four I spent a year refusing to go anywhere without my Superman cape. I was the hero sent from the planet Krypton and Dad was my Jonathan Kent. Between us, we were going to save the world. But everyone has to grow up sometime and as I got older, I realised he was just a man like any other. At least he was the good kind. The kind that raised me alone after my mother died giving birth. She didn’t survive the emergency caesarean.
I know her only through photographs and stories from Dad. I have her laugh, and I have the same dimple that deepens my left cheek when I smile. I also have her eyes. Dad would look at me sometimes and flinch. Then he’d turn away, as if my image burned him. Some days I heard him talking to her. He would ask her what to do or tell her how I’d fallen off my bike that day and scraped my knee.
Dad never had a girlfriend after she died. He’s only thirty-five now, and he never will. He’s an empty shell of his former self, and I’m stuck here in this shithole without him. It’s not a happy ending. Life has a way of ripping those out from underneath you and handing them to someone else.
“They’re letting him leave the hospital.”
“But … Does that mean he’s getting better?”
Jenna’s tone turns sad. “No, honey. That’s not going to happen. I’m sorry.”
My teeth clamp together as I fight the tears. I know that. I know. But accepting it is another thing altogether. “So where is he going to go? They can’t just kick him out!”
“I’m afraid there aren’t many options. I’m trying to find a government-funded care facility that will take him,” she advises, her voice taking on a soothing tone in deference to my obvious panic. “We’ll work it out, okay?”
“What kind of care facility?”
There’s a long pause. Jenna is hesitating. It makes me fear the answer, but I need to know. “Please. Tell me.”
“Jake, honey, there might be an aged care facility available, but I just don’t know. I think it’s only partly subsidised. I have to look into it a bit more.”
“Aged care?” I bend over on myself, my chest tight as hot tears roll down my cheeks. “But he’s only thirty-five!”
“I’m so sorry. The government won’t fund a private nurse and this might be all they have available. We tried to—”
I can’t hear anymore. It’s too painful. I stand and jam the handset back in its socket ending the call.
Moving down the unlit hallway, I find my way to the bathroom. I peel off my shirt in the dim light of the moon and face the mirror. My hair is mussed and my eyes red. Wet tracks mark my cheeks from the tears.
I wipe them away and drop my gaze to the square white patch across my chest. With shaky fingers, I snag the corner edge and peel it back slowly. My tattoo reveals itself. Angry. Red. Perfect. I stare at it until my harsh breathing calms.
“Do you miss her?”
Mac asked me about my mother. We were on the sun lounger by the pool and her eyes were on Jenna as she watched her own mother weed the garden bed in the back corner.
“You can’t miss what you never had,” I replied.
Green eyes of confusion shot my way. “But you do have her.”
“Do I?” I waved a hand around. Sarcasm made my movements jerky. “Where? I don’t see her, Mac.”
Her expression was one of utter disgust, as if I’d just admitted to throwing little puppies off tall buildings. “You don’t need to see her. She’s in your heart, asshead.”