CRAIG
CRAIG
I feel kind of like I’m sitting a test I haven’t prepared for, and it’s as unnerving as it is unprecedented.
For the past four days, I’ve been nowhere but college and spent time with no one but Christopher. Yet, as much as I’ve come to understand my punishment, no word of it has actually been spoken.
I am not explicitly grounded.
I haven’t been expressly restricted.
I can’t quite grasp how much of my freedom I owe or for how long.
So, today, I’ve decided I’m done. At least for a short while.
The farmhouse’s door opens on me to reveal a stout black woman wrapped in a red satin dressing gown, a thicket of unruly braids hanging loose around her shoulders. I know who she is — most of the town knows who she is — but I startle when she greets me by name. “Good afternoon, Craig.”
And I don’t hide it well. “Um…”
“Oh, now, don’t you be worrying yourself,” she chuckles. “We’ve never met. I’m Judy.” Her voice is mellow, soothing like a lullaby, and when she holds out a long-fingered hand toward me, I don’t even think before taking it. She clasps tight, stroking her thumb across my knuckles. “Momma bear. And, please, pay no mind to my attire. It’s my day off, and I’m under strict orders to relax. Come on in, why don’t you.”
I feel like I need to retreat a little (or all the way home) and give my head a firm shake, but as she takes a step back into the dim hall, I find myself obediently moving in past her.
“Don’t want to be losing all the warm air, now, do we?” She smiles, shutting us in, and my eyes drop to her bare feet and gold-painted toenails peeking out beneath her gown. Slipping off my shoes, I line them neatly to the side of the welcome mat. “So, which of my fine young cubs is it you’re here to see?”
Before I can formulate an answer, a call comes from a room several paces further down the hall on my right: “Who’s—?” And I look up as a towel-turbaned head pokes out. “Craig!” Then Ashleigh’s bounding over to join us, as excitable as a puppy dog. “Finally! Thought for sure you’d show your pretty face back here way before now. How have you even coped so long without your social lifeline?”
With her lithe body covered in nothing but her YCS track shorts, a black sports bra, and the towel, I’m mighty abrupt in lurching away from her threatening embrace. Finding nowhere comfortable to settle my gaze, I stupidly fix on the orange school logo embroidered at the hip of her blue shorts. Once upon a happier time, I was in the Athletics Club with her, dominating the hundred metres. “I’m not staying.”
Judy tsks admonishingly, and my head whips up, but it’s not me she’s eyeballing.
“What?” Ashleigh grins, seeming completely unfazed. “There’s nothing private on display.”
“Girl!”
“Okay, okay!” As she leans forward, I arch back, but she’s only reaching past me to unhook a thick blue duffel from the coat rack. “There.” The thing drowns her, so I can only assume it’s Sebastian’s. “Better?”
“Very much.”
There’s no disagreement from me. “So, um…?”
“So, yes.” Grin holding firm, Ashleigh immediately returns it to me. She makes a show of fastening up the coat all the way to her chin, which she then lifts haughtily. “If we’re all good here, I’ll take him now, Jude. Thanking you kindly.”
Judy huffs out a soft sigh of feigned exasperation, complete with an eye roll. “Very good, Miss. Then I shall take my leave.” Touching my elbow while skirting her way past, she murmurs close, “You’re more than welcome to stay awhile, honey.”
My skin prickles. It’s an innocuous offer, I realise, but I’ve heard enough about this woman to make it sound less so. I don’t like not knowing how much she’s been told about me; I’m not Momma bear ’s freshest charity case. “Thanks.”
“Hey,” Ashleigh snaps me back to her as Judy disappears around a corner at the far end of the long hallway, and she looks thrilled when I startle. “Wild, huh?”
During my brief distraction, the towel was removed, exposing a head of still-damp but insanely bright pink locks. “That’s definitely one word,” I offer delicately. It shouldn’t be any kind of surprise, really—this girl has had more hair colours than most have socks.
“Come on,” she says, seeming to take my comment as a compliment. She seizes my hand before I can evade her. “You can stay long enough to share your wrath over the whole gig thing with me, right? Some major venting needs to be done, and I’m at serious risk of exploding.”
“Gig thing?” I resist her tug. “The Desperate For Aces gig? I wasn’t there.”
The light dims from her face, just a flicker. “You’ve seen Alex since, though, haven’t you?”
“Sure. And he didn’t seem to consider it all that vent-worthy.”
“Oh.” She lets me go. “Huh.”
My brow sinks. “So, what exactly is there we have to discuss about it, Ashleigh?”
Her grimace makes quick work of tightening all my newly formed knots.
“Ash?” I push, even as I recognise the strong probability of good reason behind Alex’s secrecy. “What happened at the gig?”
“Follow me to the snug. It’s where Bas left your stuff.”
The sprawling warren of passageways she then guides me through is disorientating. A busy maze of corners and cubbyholes and doors, so far removed from the airy, open-plan home I live in that my mind boggles.
Framed photographs decorate every wall. Not professional shots aesthetically displayed, but an excessive montage of random moments too erratic for study. Too many faces to count.
“What the hell?” I mumble as we pass down a short flight of four stairs, ducking just in time to avoid smacking my head off a low wooden lintel.
“Yeah,” Ashleigh responds, darting me an amused glance over her shoulder. “It’s not called the Rabbit Hole for nothing,”
“And just how many rabbits live in this hole?”
“Oh-so-many, once upon a time. But now —” she trails off as she finally draws to a halt, pushing open a door and stepping through.
I slip in after her…
…And immediately crash my socked foot into something that topples. I bite hard against a curse, staggering back a step, and blink down to see Jenga blocks scattered over a rucked-up rug.
“There’s only us three. Judy, Bastian, and me.”
My gaze lifts slowly from the floor. And I can’t decide whether to be fascinated or disturbed.
Three live here? Only three?
‘The lounge is the heart of a home,’ Mum says, ‘and should always reflect the best of the family who makes it theirs.’ A lot of time, energy, and money is invested into ours, and she keeps it immaculate. There’s fine art on the walls, the furnishings complement, and from the books on their shelves to the crystal figurines in the display cabinet, everything has a precise place and order.
If I were to use only one word to describe what this lounge I’m standing in now best reflects, it would be ‘madness.’
A low fire crackling in a brick hearth toasts the room, and a fat-cushioned green sofa dominates the space. Two mismatched lamps, set to each side of the couch on spindly-legged tables, bleed a soft light over the chaos.
On a small desk in the corner, a sewing machine has fallen victim to a haberdashery explosion and standing tall beside the mess, a dressmaker’s dummy — shoulders draped in measuring tape, chest riddled with pins — scares the ever-living crap out of me.
Lengths of fabric folded over the television block the entirety of its screen, as though entertainment is not its primary function in this household. And a chunky sideboard juts out awkwardly from a misshapen alcove, its wooden doors plastered in a collage of newspaper clippings, certificates, pressed flowers, and greeting cards, its top showcasing an odd assortment of timepieces and teapots.
Yet more framed faces dot the deep plum walls, a silent audience to my spiralling unease.
From an over-laden coffee table, Ashleigh collects a short stack of clothes, neatly folded, and presents them to me, “Yours.”
“Thanks.” I set them down on an arm of the sofa with little attention spared beyond a fond pat to my jacket.
She then hands me my phone, its tiny alert light flashing insistently. “Also yours.”
The thing disappears straight into the back pocket of my jeans. “Thanks. Now, what don’t I know?”
“Oh, so very many things, Craig!” She earns my withering look.
Her expression takes a strange turn as she watches me start on a circuit of the wonky rug, but I don’t get a sense of anxiety from her. It’s more like she’s challenging me to dare express any negativity toward her home. And then, “I’m not all that sure I want to be the messenger of this if I’m honest. You’re not going to like it.”
An oil painting displayed between the two thickly draped windows pulls at my attention, the idyllic countryside scene like an oasis of calm amid the crazy. I don’t register the small, glass-fronted unit tucked unobtrusively underneath until I’ve practically collided with it.
My gaze drops as my knee hits, and there, as if called into being by a premonition of my imminent need, standing proud amongst the knick-knacks shelved inside, a beautiful, amber-filled Drink Me bottle beckons.
“Tinwell, right?” I guess. And my stomach twists because, of course, this is about Gary. Of course, he was at the gig. I suspected as much when his parents arrived at the house without him that night last week. Never one to miss an opportunity to taunt me, turning up at the place I should have been and knowing full well why I wasn’t must have given him a real kick.
The influence he has over me is loathsome.
That Alex didn’t want me there makes sudden and complete sense.
I swear, it’s nothing beyond curiosity that has me sliding the glass door smoothly open and reaching in. My sole intention is to take a closer look at the unfamiliar label. “I sincerely doubt there’s anything he can do that’ll shock me at this point.”
Her voice carries a wince as she proves me wrong. “He assaulted Lyndsay.”
“ What?! ”
But in the exact moment I straighten and whirl, Ashleigh’s yelling out, “Bas, hey!”
The next thing I’m aware of is a rough hand clamping my arm and a glower that feels all too nightmarish piercing me through a tangle of copper-brown hair. “I don’t think so.”
My heart slams against my ribcage. His touch is like that of a live wire, and I’m quick to wrench myself free, staggering backwards over my own feet. The bottle’s snatched from my grip before I can recover.
Expression suggesting he’s eaten something vile and there’s nowhere to spit it, the jerk’s raking scrutiny has every little hair on my skin bristling.
I bite down on the impulse to apologise. Instead, I nail him with a snarl of my own. “Simmer down, Sebastian. I wasn’t about to thieve it.”
His jaw ticks, drawing my attention to the faint auburn stubble shading it. He smells a whole lot like a pigsty and looks a fair bit like he’s been rolling around in one, too. “Just pilfer a mouthful or two, huh?”