After grassing Bailey in, I take Stella and George's distraction as an opportunity to escape. Instead of waiting around to witness the aftermath, I go up to my room and leave Bailey to the wolves.
Does that make me a coward? Absolutely.
Should I have been more tactful? Absolutely.
Do I regret pulling the pin and running for cover? Absolutely not.
From the safety of my room, I flop down onto my bed and roll to face the ceiling, listening to the fight that breaks out in the kitchen below. I can hear lots of shouting â from both Stella and George this time â as they scold Bailey.
I listen as they tell her how disappointed they are in her for lying, some of their words muffled through the ceiling but most still audible. They tell her how reckless it was, lying about her whereabouts â especially after everything that's just happened with Oscar.
And, I'll admit it: their words resonate with me, too. It doesn't matter that they're aimed at Bailey because the guilt hits me just as hard. If Stella and George knew just how much I've lied to them, too, they would be just as mad at me.
Actually, they'd probably be madder, because I'm supposed to be the responsible one.
The guilt eats at me worse when they then bring me into the argument. They tell Bailey how unfair it was for her to put me in that position, dragging me into her lie and expecting me to cover for her. And that makes me tense up, hitting a little too close for comfort, as I wait for Bailey's response.
Because I'm fully expecting her to grass on me, too.
It would be so easy for her to do â "Well, it's not like it'd be the first time she's done it. Jade lies too, you know." I can hear the words in my mind, so clear it's like she's actually spoken them out loud. I am waiting for those words to be spoken out loud.
But they're not.
At a guess, her silence has far less to do with protecting me than it does her own selfish agenda. She probably doesn't want to dig herself into an even deeper hole, because telling on me would only raise questions about what I'd lied about.
Bailey won't risk them finding out about her friendship with the Coleman's, just for the short-lived victory of pulling me under the bus with her. In her eyes, the sacrifice wouldn't be worth it.
And so, instead, Bailey lies some more in order to keep the other lies safely contained.
I listen as she skilfully moves the argument away from me completely, returning the attention back to herself as she tries to patch over the damage I've created for her.
"I was just at Katie's house, alright? It's not even a big deal!"
But Stella's not stupid, and she proves it when she asks,
"So why did you feel the need to lie to us, Bailey? You could've told us that without making up some story. What were you actually doing?"
"I told you already!" Bailey snaps angrily. "I was just at Katie's house!"
"Doing what?" Stella demands.
"Oh, you know..." Bailey replies, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Just a bit of Ketamine. Maybe a small spliff or two. Nothing class A, though, Stel. No biggie."
As I'm sure you can imagine, Stella doesn't find the joke very funny. Neither do I, to be honest.
"Bailey..." I hear George mutter in warning, his voice so low I have to strain to catch the word.
"We were just watching a movie, alright?" Bailey snaps. "It was this new eighteen that's just come out and I know you're a stickler for the age ratings, Stel. I knew you wouldn't let me go watch it if you knew."
Then, yet another argument breaks out in the kitchen. This one's about Bailey's dismissal of age ratings on movies, as well as her disregard for rules in general. Funnily enough, this new argument has absolutely nothing to do with Bailey lying, or me, or Bailey trying to get me to lie for her.
It's like some strange kind of magic trick, the way she manages to manipulate arguments to be about what she wants to argue about. I've not really noticed it before, but Bailey does that a lot.
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Here we go..."
Those words belong to Owen, his voice seeping through the joining wall of our bedrooms. I can hear him and Oscar discussing the fight as they â like me â eavesdrop on every word.
I can understand Owen's exasperation, because this new argument isn't really all that new, at all. Bailey and Stella have fought about 18-rated movies a lot.
The roaring of voices gets louder downstairs but I'm not really listening anymore. I'm not overly bothered by Bailey's taste in scary movies. I mean, I did let her run off to watch Nightmare on Elmstreet, after all.
Truthfully, it's sort of hard to be worried about things like scary movies when you've already experienced true horror â off-screen and in the flesh.
I don't say this often, but I'm actually with Bailey on this one â not that I'd ever admit it to Stella.
Who cares about a little gore, so long as it's not real blood you're seeing? And those tortured screams in movies like Saw and Hostel don't even come close to the real thing, anyway. So, really, what's the issue?
I try not to think too hard about the sound of those real screams, forcing myself to focus back on the angry ones downstairs.
The argument hits its finale as the sound of the kitchen door slamming echoes through the house, shortly followed by the heavy stomp of feet ascending the stairs.
I wait for the slam of Bailey's bedroom door, the tension in my shoulders making my neck ache even as my head rests back against the pillows. There isn't a single part of me that feels relaxed right now, my entire body rigid from an unwelcome combination of stress and apprehension.
The loud thump against my closed door makes me flinch, the sudden sound much closer than I'd been expecting as my whole room seems to shake under the force of Bailey's foot.
The message is loud and clear: Bailey is pissed.
I don't say anything as I sit up, staring at my door to see if she's going to open it. But she doesn't.
The sound of Bailey's door finally slamming shut makes me flinch again.
I can still hear the murmured voices of Stella and George downstairs, too low to make out anything specific, and the voices of the boys in their room, also much quieter now that Bailey is upstairs and within earshot. Eventually, as time ticks on, all four of them fall silent as the night slips into the early hours of the morning.
The house becomes eerily quiet as everyone goes to sleep. Everyone except me, at least.
I can't sleep.
I spend my night sitting up in bed, still staring at my closed bedroom door without actually seeing it. My mind is too busy focussing on the door beyond my own, and the girl sleeping beyond that one.
What a mess...
I let my mind wander over the events of the evening: work, Mike and the tickets, the text from Stella, my conversation with Lucas, my conversation with Bailey...
How did everything go so horribly wrong, so horribly fast? Why do I never see the shit-storm coming until I'm already knee-deep in the blizzard? Why can't anything ever just be simple?
Call me crazy, but I'm starting to understand Lucas Coleman's attempt to drink away his frustration. Call me even crazier, but I sort of wish I'd taken him up on the offer to have one, too â foul taste, be damned.
"Because they make me feel safe."
I ponder over those words for what feels like hours â analysing them, dissecting them â to absolutely no avail. I have no idea what they mean. And my pondering only manages to bring about more questions than answers. Questions like:
What could be scarier than a gun?
It's a question I keep coming back to, one that plagues me still, even as the inky black sky outside my window starts to take on the pinkish-purple hue of early dawn.
I told Bailey that I saw a gun in Lucas's car and she didn't even bat an eyelid. The news didn't seem to scare her, at all (as it would any sane person), and the only conclusion I can draw from that is this one:
Whatever reason Bailey has for feeling unsafe, it has to be scarier than that gun. It has to scare her more than that gun.
So, what the hell would Bailey find scarier than a gun?
Scratch that.
What would Bailey find scary, at all?
Bailey, who could sleep sound as a baby (without a light on) after watching horror movies that would make even grown adults piss their pants.
Bailey, who has lived through real horror, who knows what real fear is.
Because nothing that most people find scary is ever really that scary, is it? Not to someone like me; not to someone like Bailey.
So if Bailey is scared of something, that something has to be bad.
The realisation is enough to turn my heart to lead as I sit on my bed. I hug my knees to my chest and watch the first rays of sunlight peak up over the horizon, my mind barely registering that I haven't slept a wink all night.
***
Later in the day, I stand in the kitchen, watching the water bubble up in the kettle as it begins to boil. My eyelids feel heavy, struggling to stay open with every blink, and my eyes feel dry and itchy.
I need caffeine.
It takes me a few seconds longer than normal to realise the kettle has clicked, my gaze transfixed on the water inside until the bubbles still into a cloud of steam. Then, with a shake of my head to clear some of the cobwebs I have clouding my brain, I pick up the kettle and pour the water into my awaiting mug of coffee.
"There is no friend called Katie, is there?"
The voice makes me jump, some of the water spilling over the countertop as I squirm to avoid being scalded.
"Jesus, Owen!" I snap, spinning to face him with the kettle still in my hand, heart thundering in my chest.
At half past one on a Tuesday afternoon, I hadn't expected anyone to be home until gone four. George is at work, Stella is out for a meeting and then a late lunch with Brianna, and Bailey and the boys are supposed to be at school.
The kid almost gave me a heart attack.
Owen stands in the doorway, his arms folded and shoulder leant against the frame. The expression on his face changes from accusatory to guilty in about three seconds flat, around the moment he realises I almost poured boiling hot water down my front.
"I thought you'd heard the front door go," he explains, somewhat sheepishly, with a small shrug. "My bad."
"You look like shit," I tell him â because it's true.
With bloodshot eyes and hair that looks uncharacteristically unstyled, it appears I'm not the only one who had a crap night's sleep. Owen looks exhausted.
He snorts a laugh and pushes off from the doorframe with a sarcastic, "Look who's talking."
Tugging his backpack off his shoulder, he walks over to the table and drops it down onto an empty chair with a loud thunk. Then, he pulls out the chair next to it and sits down, his knee bouncing irritably as he raises a knowing eyebrow at me.
"Guilty conscience keeping you up at night, is it?" he asks.
I turn my back on him as I set the kettle down and add some milk to my coffee, unsure of what to say as his initial comment finally breaks through the shock.
He knows.
"I did some digging at school," Owen continues, undeterred by my silence. "And, as it turns out, there's only one Katie in Bailey's year that she could be hanging out with."
Uh-oh...
"You remember Katie Chapman, right?" Owen asks, his voice smug. "Bailey broke her nose in year seven for being such a monumental bitch."
Actually, Bailey kicking a football into that girl's face had supposedly been an accident. Or, at least that's what Bailey told George and Stella when they got called into the head teacher's office that day.
Truth be told, I think it might have had something to do with the fact that Katie Chapman had been spouting head lice and herpes rumours about my sister all year, and Bailey had finally reached her limit.
There's even a chance that I might have offered Bailey a sly fist-bump under the dinner table that evening, back in a time when the two of us got on much better than we do now.
That Katie sort of had it coming, anyway. She only started on Bailey after finding out that she was a care kid because, according to her, all care kids are riddled with one kind of disease or another. And we're unclean.
Fucking bitch.
"So, I'm thinking Bailey's probably not on track to becoming Katie's new bezzie mate," Owen concludes.
I turn around with a sigh, leaning back against the counter to look at Owen with my mug of coffee clutched between my hands. Looking for an excuse not to say anything for as long as I possibly can, I gently blow on the steaming liquid, creating ripples across the surface.
"Bailey's still hanging out with Alex Coleman," Owen states, appearing quite content to continue this one-sided conversation all by himself. "And you're still covering for her."
"It's... complicated," I tell him.
"Yeah, no kidding," Owen says in a deadpan voice. He purses his lips and raises his eyebrows, his expression one I can't quite figure out.
He doesn't seem mad, exactly. Worried, maybe? Triumphant, definitely. Owen likes being right; it can get kind of irritating, actually.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing, Jade?" he asks, his voice a little apprehensive.
Not at all. "It's fine, Owen. Don't stress."
He doesn't seem convinced as he runs a hand through his hair and frowns, appraising me in a way that reminds me of George just a bit. It's quite unnerving.
"I thought we were supposed to have an agreement," he says eventually, although his voice sounds more curious than annoyed. "I thought we were supposed to be playing by the book until social fucks off."
I roll my eyes but don't pull him up on his language. I'm not exactly in the best position to tell him off, anyway. If anything, it feels more like the other way around.
Or it would, if Owen wasn't so obviously breaking our agreement, too.
"Right... and you're not in school why, exactly?" I ask pointedly, taking a sip of my coffee.
Owen pulls a face, leaning back in his chair with folded arms. "Because I have Geography after lunch and I really can't be fucked with Mrs. Jenkins today. She's too happy all the time."
It's a strange comment coming from Owen. The kid is renowned for relying on humour, a real class-clown if ever there was one. He sort of thrives on making the people around him laugh, it's what he does. Even if that humour sometimes gets him into trouble.
I open my mouth to tell him that his teacher being too happy isn't a legitimate reason to skip school, or even a remotely good one, but he interrupts me.
"Look," he sighs, rolling his eyes. His expression seems a little too casual suddenly, especially as he can't seem to look me in the eye anymore. He stares at the collection of magnets on the fridge as he says, "It's... today's my mum's anniversary."
I blink, surprised, and all thoughts of Mrs. Jenkins' Geography class fly from my mind. Owen never really talks about his mum â like, ever.
He once told me his dad was a deadbeat alcoholic, a bit like my mother in that sense. But he's never mentioned his mum to me before.
Owen looks back at me and shrugs. It's an action that seems too nonchalant to be anything but forced. "You know... the anniversary of her death day, or whatever."
"Oh," I say, somewhat awkwardly.
I try my best to keep the surprise, the sympathy, or whatever else might be showing on my face hidden â because I know from experience that Owen won't want to see it. It'll only make him feel worse.
"...Do you want to talk about it?"
I put the offer out there even though I know he won't take me up on it.
"Nope," he replies immediately, as predicted.
I suddenly feel guilty for giving him shit about skipping school, even though I know it's not my fault that I didn't know the reason â because 'anniversary of mother's death' is very much a legitimate excuse to not want to sit through an hour of Geography. And his 'too happy' comment now makes a lot more sense.
"Yeah. It's whatever," Owen says, still striving to appear unaffected.
The only thing letting his attempt down is the way his eyes drop to the table in front of him every so often, unable to maintain proper eye contact.
"Stella and George normally let me have today off, but..." he shrugs again, still staring at the table. "With everything else going on â with Oscar and social and Bailey, and all that â I guess they kind of just... forgot."
He lifts his eyes to meet mine again, forcing a smile that looks all kinds of broken. He runs a hand through his hair again, a clear sign that this unexpected heart-to-heart is making him uncomfortable.
Sadly, I'm aware that there's nothing much that I can say or do to make this day any less painful for him, so I voice the only question I can think to ask.
"You want a brew?"
The offer turns his smile a fraction more genuine, his relief apparent when he realises I'm not going to pry any further. If he wants to talk, he knows he can â but I won't force him.
"Sure. Thanks."
I place my coffee down and turn back to the kettle, not bothering to ask what drink he wants as I fish out a teabag from the holder.
Owen has made it perfectly clear (on more than one occasion) that he thinks coffee tastes like Satan's piss.
When the tea's ready, I place it down on the table in front of him and settle into the chair on the opposite side of the table, my coffee back in my hand. Neither of us speaks as we sip our drinks, although Owen doesn't seem overly bothered by the silence.
If anything, I think he just appreciates the company, which is partially why I make no move to leave the table when I finish my drink first. I stay because I don't want to leave Owen alone with his thoughts, not on a day like today. And, truthfully, I don't want to be left alone with mine, either.
Owen drains the last of his tea and places his mug down on the table. Then, after a few more minutes, he sighs and reaches for the backpack next to him, unzipping the front pocket.
I purse my lips but refrain from saying anything when I see the carton of cigarettes and pink lighter, but inside my skull my brain is on overdrive.
You've got to be shitting me... since when does Owen smoke? Where does he even get those from? Why would he pull that shit out in front of me?
I'm honestly not sure if, in our silence, Owen had genuinely forgotten my existence. Or, maybe, because he knows I keep secrets for Bailey, he now thinks it's okay to parade his around in front of me, too â because I'm obviously such a locked vault. Or, possibly, his head's just not in the right place today and he simply wasn't thinking when he reached for his bag.
From the way he suddenly winces and looks up at me, eyes wide as golf balls, my money's on that last one.
"Er..." he mutters dumbly, but makes no move to hide the evidence as he taps a cigarette from the pack with the effortlessness of someone who's been smoking for a while. "Let's just pretend you didn't see this, yeah?"
Playing by the book, my ass.
After a tense pause, I sigh and roll my eyes at him. "Just take that shit outside, dickhead. And you'd better hope Stella and George never smell it on you."
"Has anyone ever told you you're the best?" Owen asks, smirking as he tucks the cigarette behind his ear and stands from the chair. "Because you really are, you know."
"Flattery will get you nowhere," I warn him with a scowl. "I still think you're a fucking idiot, and I'm completely judging your life choices right now."
"You always think I'm a fucking idiot," he shrugs, grinning.
And I hate to admit it, because I really hate that he smokes, but that grin manages to disarm my defences â just a little. Because today is not the right day to lecture him on unhealthy habits.
I can be mad about his nicotine addiction tomorrow.
"Love you, sis," Owen says, leaning down to kiss the top of my head on his way towards the patio door. "Thanks for the tea."
"Love you too, idiot," I grumble affectionately, shaking my head to myself as I hear the door slide shut behind him.
Now alone in the kitchen, I let out an incredulous bark of laughter. Then, the laugh becomes a groan, which soon dissolves into a tired sigh.
My siblings are going to be the death of me, I swear.
*********
Hey guys! Apologies again for yet another late update (that double upload week didn't exactly go to plan, huh? Whoops). Life's just been a little crazy recently but I'm hoping to get back into regular updates again soon!
I hope you liked this chapter and, as always, I would love to hear your thoughts so don't be shy! This one wasn't quite so difficult for me to write, probably because Owen is one of my secret faves so I always enjoy writing scenes that involve him, haha!
Anyways, you know the drill: vote, comment, add, etc. yada yada, and all that jazz!
Until next time, happy reading!