Chapter 9
NINE
EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO
Camilla
This has been the crappiest year of my life.
It was supposed to be fabulous, easy. One of my best friends said I could live with her.
She said it would be fun being together all the time, that it would be a blast. I was supposed to be living with Reese in a nice apartment and topping every single course I’m taking.
When Reese told me the rent she wanted, I had to control myself to keep still because I wanted to jump for joy.
It was such a nominal amount that I was able to cut down my hours at the crappy shoe store to just the weekends, meaning I had lots more time to study.
As I moved my stuff into the beautiful large bedroom in her apartment with new carpet on the floor and fresh white paint on the walls, I kept thinking, this is going to be my year.
Instead, I am up at 9 a.m. on a Thursday morning, packing my shit into garbage bags and the one suitcase I own.
I thought it would all be roses and sunshine but Reese failed to mention she’s an uptight control freak.
I have lived with her for the past ten months and I feel like I have been nagged nearly to death about my cleaning habits, my noise level, the men I bring home, the friends I have over and the money I don’t manage to pay. She doesn’t even fucking need it.
Last Sunday, five days ago, she knocked on my bedroom door at 8 a.m. and when I ignored her because I was hungover and exhausted, she opened the door and said, ‘You haven’t paid rent for two months and last night you dropped red wine on the sofa and that vase you broke was a precious heirloom and I’m sorry, Camilla, but this is not working for me. You need to leave.’
I heard her voice tremble when she finished her speech and I just knew she had spent an hour psyching herself up in the mirror so she could say what she wanted to say. I wanted to congratulate her on getting the words out but then she said, ‘I mean it, Camilla,’ and I thought, ‘Screw you.’
I kept my head under the covers until she left, slamming the door behind her.
It was a shitty way to wake a person and a shitty thing to do.
I’ve seen a not very nice side to bouncy, happy Reese since I’ve been living with her.
And Ben, our other room-mate, agrees with me.
She acts like she’s five hundred years old, always cleaning and tidying.
She has this obsession with knowing when I’ll be back and who I’m bringing over.
She’s absolutely out of control and I’m glad to be leaving.
I don’t know if Ben will stay or not but I really don’t care. I think she has a major crush on him but then, so do I. He’s nice looking with shaggy blond surfer-boy hair and blue eyes and I can see Reese mooning over him whenever they’re in a room together.
Now I have to figure out somewhere else to live. I contacted my mother and asked if I could stay at home for a few days and she said, ‘Oh, well, let me check,’ which I knew was code for ‘No’ so I just hung up without even waiting for her answer.
They don’t have room for me anyway.
When they told me they had decided to become foster parents, I thought it would be months before anything happened.
But they had obviously started the process a long time before they mentioned it to me because the very next week, a couple of sisters named Sophie and Lia arrived. They are thirteen and eleven.
‘Their mother died in a car accident and their father is nowhere to be found. They have a grandmother but she can’t care for them.
Bert and I agreed to take both of them because they’re sisters so they can’t be separated and they’re just the sweetest girls,’ my mother babbled, speaking quickly so that I didn’t interrupt her to tell her that I didn’t care or want to know.
I only answered her call because I thought she was calling to apologise for letting Coach kick me out of her house the week before.
Within a few weeks of those girls arriving, they were firmly ensconced in my bedroom and the spare bedroom and it looks like they’ll be there forever in their pretty pink and purple spaces.
I’ve been over there a few times and have met them. Both have blonde hair and blue eyes and a disconcerting habit of staring.
‘You never let me redecorate,’ I said when my mother showed me their rooms because I remembered begging to be allowed to paint the walls when I was fifteen.
‘Oh well,’ my mother said. ‘You were… it’s just… you know, the girls have been through a lot,’ and then she simply walked away.
And now, after only ten months of knowing these kids, my mother and Coach have decided to adopt them.
From what I gather, Sophie and Lia are compliant and sweet, willing to follow rules and grateful for everything my mother and Coach do for them. They are perfect children.
Coach and my mum just started over. Boom.
So I actually have nowhere to go tonight and only two hundred dollars in my bank account because I lost my job at the shoe store after I yelled at some woman who insisted her feet were a size smaller than they were.
‘They won’t fit, you’re just too big,’ are the words I snapped and I was fired about seventeen seconds later.
In my defence, I was only rude because I was so stressed over all Reese’s rules. No job and now, nowhere to live. Life just keeps handing me crap.
‘Screw this,’ I mutter as I shove the last of my things into a garbage bag. I get down on my knees to check under the bed and locate a lost sock and a dirty plate with mould growing on it but this dirty plate is officially no longer my problem.
There’s a knock at the door and I don’t reply. It’s not like she won’t just come in.
It’s hot outside and today she’s dressed in a sleeveless jumpsuit, her hair tied back and her skin free of make-up. I’ve never seen Reese look less than perfect. It’s like she rolls out of bed that way.
‘Hey,’ she says, looking around the room, her gaze landing on the plate by the bed and her nose wrinkling.
‘I’ll be gone in a few minutes,’ I say.
‘Look,’ she replies, sitting down on the bare mattress. ‘I want to say that I’m sorry this didn’t work out. I really hoped it would and I know I’m kind of… I know I can be hard to live with but I just… I don’t want to be angry at you anymore.’
I snort. ‘So you thought kicking me out was the best way to achieve that?’
‘No, I… Victoria said—’
‘Please don’t quote Victoria at me. She’s in the UK living her best life and we’re here. We could have sorted this out, Reese, if you’d just been a little more open to compromise. You’re too tightly wound and you drive people mad and I’m only telling you that because I’m being honest with you.’
Reese stands and smooths back her hair where artful little curls have popped out of her ponytail.
‘I think it’s best if we don’t talk about this now.
I’m sorry about this and I wanted to’– she reaches into her pocket and pulls out an envelope – ‘just give you this to help because I know rent is hard and…’ She holds it out to me.
I want to tell her to shove it, I really do, but I don’t have that luxury, so I grab it from her and then I push past her with my garbage bag in my hand.
It only takes a few minutes for me to get everything out of the apartment and when I have closed the door behind me after dropping my keys on the coffee table, I look in the envelope.
She’s given me a thousand dollars and I hate her generosity with every fibre of my being.
But I have no choice. My whole life feels like I have no choices, no control, no agency.
I decide that I will stay at a cheap motel tonight and then figure stuff out tomorrow.
I have too much stuff to lug on the bus so I catch a cab and end up at some place near the airport which is only eighty dollars a night if I stay for seven nights which I immediately sign up for.
Once I’ve settled in, I check my phone credit and then lie on the bed. I need to figure out how I’m going to get to university because I’ve just begun my final year, how I’m going to find accommodation and exactly how I can piss Reese off the most.
I can’t believe that a three-year friendship has ended just like that. I blame Victoria. She’s been meddling from afar, probably telling Reese that she needs to tell me exactly how to behave in her apartment.
Screw both of them. I was trying really hard to be a good person too. I even held off making a move on Ben because I know how much Reese likes him and I shouldn’t have. I should have jumped into bed with him the first time he smiled at me. That will teach me for trying to do the decent thing.
My friendship with Reese may be over and by extension my friendship with Victoria as well, but tonight I’m not going to think about that. I get off the bed and open one of the bags, grabbing a little black dress and my make-up. I’ll go to a bar tonight, pick up a nice boy and have some fun.
Tomorrow I will start picking up the pieces of my life and I’ll make sure that I get everything I’ve ever wanted. Screw both those bitches.