Chapter 3
Casey
“Why can’t I stay here?”
“You legally cannot stay here-”
“I’ll get emancipated! I won’t go…”
“Then until you are eighteen, you will be put into foster care-”
“This is bullshit!” I yelled, jumping to my feet. “I’ll be seventeen in November! Most kids my age are completely capable of living alone!”
“These are the laws according to our province, Miss Cooper.” The social worker met my heated glare straight on.
She had zero sympathy for my situation, and I could tell just by the hard way she looked at me.
How she spoke as if she was tired of dealing with difficult teens, and also how she kept glancing at her watch as though she had more important places to be than sitting here with me discussing my life.
“If you have living guardians that permit you to live alone, that would be different. But as you have no source of income and are under the age of eighteen, Ontario Children’s Services will not agree to you living independently. And your father-”
I burst into a fit of hysterical laughter at the mention of that man. “Please, my father? He may have donated his sperm to my mother, but that fucker is not my father!”
“He does have a record, several arrests for drunk driving, and multiple house calls for domestic disturbance, but no charges were made against him by your late mother,” she confirmed, checking her notes.
“Yeah, cuz she was too scared to try to convict him! He’d be locked up for twenty-four hours and then released!”
“To which she could have filed a restraining order-”
“And what? What could she have done with that? Wave it in his face if he tried to break in? Please.” I shook my head and started pacing back and forth before her.
We were in Nylah’s living room; her mom and dad had moved out into their backyard to give the social worker and me some privacy while she disappeared to her room.
I really wished Mr. Bryant was here right now.
He’d be able to talk some sense into this woman, I was sure of it.
“That is speculation, Miss Cooper. And as his record has been clean since he and your mother separated, has been working a steady job, and has expressed to us that he wishes to claim his custody rights, this is how it has to be. When you are seventeen, you may apply for emancipation if you still wish to.” She peered at me over her square, black-framed glasses and smirked, “Or, since you’re moving to Harley, most likely you’ll end up knock-”
“That is quite enough of that!”
I spun around and felt a weight lift off my chest at the sight of Phillip Bryant. He was dressed in his casual clothes today, as he was off-duty, in jeans and a blue polo shirt. His dislike for this woman was evident in how his almost black eyes were narrowed as he ambled into the room.
“Hi Phil,” she smirked at him, and I immediately wanted to scratch at this woman’s face.
One thing I knew for sure about Nylah’s dad was that he hated being called Phil.
Her addressing him like this, plus the way she talked to me, says so much about how miserable and mean this woman was. I decided that I officially hated her.
“Jackie.” He gave her the smallest of nods before looking at me. “Why don’t you go on upstairs and find Nylah, hon? Dinner will be ready in half an hour.”
I knew he was dismissing me, but I wanted to know what he was going to say to this bitch.
However, I respected Mr. Bryant too much to be a brat and refuse his request. I bowed my head and hurried out of the room, making sure my steps were silent and slow once I rounded the corner, hoping to eavesdrop just a little.
“Your job is to help these kids. You’re supposed to have their best interest at heart, but you make yourself the enemy. Why?” He rumbled in his low, deep voice, “It’s people like you that make these kids lose faith in the system.”
“Please,” she let out a nasal laugh. I could just picture her long, horse face all scrunched up as she did it.
“We both know once that girl goes to Harley, she’ll be pregnant before she hits eighteen, or, if she’s even lucky enough to graduate, she’ll be living off the government’s teat for most of her life… just like the rest of them.”
“The rest of them ?” Mr. Bryant’s voice, if possible, went even deeper, and I shivered in response. He. Was. Pissed. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, oh! Nothing like that , Phil.” She laughed nervously now, even as quickly as she tried to backstep. This woman seemed to have already earned herself a spot on his shitlist. “You know how people from Harley are… they are a burden on this city. Nothing good comes out of that place. Nothing-”
“I’m from Harley, Ms. MacDonald. So what you’re saying applies to me, too.”
There was a minute of silence following this statement, and I was pretty sure both he and that social worker were as still as I was, waiting for the pin to drop.
“I’m going to give you a chance to go back and start again,” he said to her. “Though God knows you don’t deserve it. You’ve gotten away with a lot till now, and honestly, you should have been fired years ago, but I guess fucking your boss has its perks, eh?”
“I-I… I mean, how did you… how dare you-”
“So here’s what’s going to happen. Since I can’t legally take Casey from her father, if she is willing, I want to be listed as her emergency contact.
If that son of a bitch touches her or so much as looks at her the wrong way, she has every right to leave and come here.
I’ll fill out the fucking paperwork. If she even complains to you about him, I want documentation and a phone call within that minute.
I know you and your fuck-buddy boss have some underlying scheme going on-”
“Casey!”
I spun around from where I was standing at the bottom of the curved stairwell to see Nylah lounging against the upstairs bannister, her brow furrowed as she stared down at me. “Shhhh!” I whispered, hurrying up the steps before her dad heard us.
“What are you doing there?” she asked, her brows pulled together as I made my way toward her. She’d gone into caring friend mode, and I could see the concern on her face. “You okay? Anything I can do?” She peered over the railing to where her dad and that bitch were still duking it out.
“I’m fine. Quick, let’s go paint our nails or something.
” I hurried past her, heading into her bedroom.
We’d been sharing her bed for the past two weeks, but it had been so easy living together.
I knew how Nylah liked her room organized, so I was mindful of how I cleaned up after myself or what space I took.
I hopped up onto her large, white, canopied bed, only to have her crawl across to me as she laid her hand on my forehead.
“What are you doing?” I laughed, pulling away.
“‘Let’s go paint our nails,’' she repeated, her brows raised incredulously before she burst into happy laughter. “My God! You’ve officially lost it. But I’m going to take full advantage of this.”
“I’ll compromise; you can paint them this one,” I said, holding up a dark purple shade called ‘wine’.
I saw how her sparkling, grey eyes flickered to a frosty pink colour, and I immediately swatted it away. “No, Ny! No!” I scolded her.
She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at me. “Fine! Dark and broody it is, my dear!” She laughed and grabbed some kleenex from her bedside table. “Now no squirming this time, or you are gonna owe me a new comforter.”
I left the graveyard, and my mind whirled from everything, shivering as the bite of fall in the breeze was cutting through me.
I had to walk down the hill to make it to my bus, then transfer at The Station, which was a mini-mall center where there were a dozen fast food places and small but expensive shops selling clothes, jewelry, and antiques (the sort of stuff people who lived on The Hill liked to shop for).
It encircled The Hill’s main bus station, where I’d catch another back to Nylah’s house.
I could have accepted the ride she offered me, but I just wanted to be alone whenever I visited Mom and Matthew.
By next week, Mid-October, I’d be back in Harley with my father, and everything I’d been suppressing for six years was going need to quickly resurface if I was going to survive.
The social worker’s words have been echoing in my mind the past week.
I don’t know what else Mr. Bryant said to her, but before Nylah could finish painting my nails, we heard her storm out, slamming the front door behind herself so hard the crystals on the chandelier hanging in the foyer clinked against each other.
I desperately wanted to know how the conversation ended, but all that happened was that he came up to Nylah’s room and found us on her bed, then told me basically everything I’d already overheard.
I would have to go to my father’s, but if I needed out, I was to call him, and he’d see what he could do.
I’m so glad he gave me that lifeline.
I saw my father at Matthew and Mom’s funeral.
He was a fucking embarrassment. He was drunk, slobbering, and wailing loudly, as she was lowered into the ground, going on and on about how she was the only woman he ever loved.
Eventually, Nylah’s dad stepped in and escorted him away so I could say goodbye to Mom and my real father in peace.
Matthew had been everything Keith Cooper was lacking.
He was sweet to my mother, and when I met him, he was incredibly kind and accepting of me, despite the snotty ten-year-old attitude that I gave him at first. He was patient, and almost annoyingly kind.
The fact that he was a doctor, the same doctor Mom saw after break-in, in fact, meant that he was smart with a steady, comfortable income and wanted Mom and me out of Harley as soon as possible.
So on the first of November that year, twenty-three days before my eleventh birthday, he’d moved us out of there and into his home on The Hill.