It took about a month before the school called me into the office.
“It’s come to our attention that you might be having some trouble at home,” the principal said, her expression soft and empathetic. I raced through my recent conversations with friends and interactions with their parents. Someone turned me in. “I want you to know that we’re here for you if you need to talk. We can help.”
I sat with my arms folded across my chest, not trusting myself to speak. I’d either cry, or blab about everything. And then I’d be in shit. The way I saw it, if my parents had gone to that much effort to get rid of me, having me returned to them by social services would just make my life with them even worse. And I didn’t think I could trust myself to fall in line anymore. I was too hurt. Too furious and angry at everyone and everything around me. Someone turned me in. Even my friends couldn’t be trusted.
“I’ve been trying to contact your parents, Paige. I heard a rumour they moved and you aren’t living with them anymore. Is that true?”
Angry tears burned like fire behind my eyes.
“I’m staying with my aunt,” I forced out.
“OK. I was worried you didn’t have anywhere because you’ve been having a lot of sleepovers.”
“My aunt lets me.”
“That’s great.” She smiled. “I just need her number so we can get some details from her. Do you know it?”
“Not by heart,” I said, my chest getting tight because I knew she wasn’t buying it. “But I can bring it to you tomorrow.”
She gave me a nod. “I’d really appreciate that. Especially if you can get her to contact me. I’ll be in the office until five.”
“OK.” I sat forward in my chair. “Can I go?”
“Yes. But if you need to talk, Paige—about anything—we’re here to help, OK?”
“Sure.” I forced a smile. Then I walked out of her office and never went back to the school again. In fact, I left the area entirely. There was nothing left for me there.
The first night I slept outside, was the worst night of my life. Winter was just around the corner and while Sydney isn’t the coldest place in the world, night time without a blanket is fucking freezing. I ended up sleeping in the tunnel section of children's play equipment in a park in Jamisontown.
Every sound I heard sent my heart racing. I felt that any moment, the wrong kind of person would come along, and do unspeakable things to me. I cursed myself for heading out west. Everyone knew Western Sydney was a dangerous place. But I had travelled there, hoping to, somehow, make my own way—something I wasn’t able to do in the Sutherland Shire.
When I woke from what little sleep I had managed to get, I thanked my lucky stars. But I was hungry. A feeling that was becoming all too familiar to me. The two hundred dollars my family left me, was practically gone. All I could afford were instant noodles, and maybe a can of baked beans. I visited shopping centres and used their parents rooms for hot water and microwave facilities. I even took a nap in their breastfeeding areas occasionally. But then my money ran out and security started moving me along. I needed another plan.
With no money in my pocket, I resorted to taking what I needed. Although sometimes, I could order food during a busy period and claim I’d lost my wallet. If I became visibly upset, sometimes someone would either pay for me, or the clerk would tell me not to worry.
I bathed in cold water from sinks in public bathrooms, and I reduced my clothing to what would fit into a small backpack, so I didn’t look quite so conspicuous walking around with a large sports bag.
I was getting by. I was surviving. I stole an old sleeping bag from an overflowing charity bin and used it to keep warm at night, my favourite spot that tunnel in the park. There I slept, undisturbed, until one night a group turned up, noisy and possibly intoxicated.
At first, I was petrified. I held my breath as I listened to them talking and laughing. They sounded like any group of teens hanging out, but with no idea how they’d react to finding a homeless girl, I prayed they wouldn’t find me.
“Come in the tunnel with me,” a guy said to a giggling girl.
No. No. No. The sound of a shoe hitting the metal step nearest me set off my alarm bells. I yelped.
“What the hell?” I could hear the shifting of his feet as he crouched down to peer inside my tunnel.
“Is someone in there?” the giggling girl asked.
“I think so. It’s dark though. Chuck us your phone.”
The phone made a slapping sound as it landed in his hands, and I scrunched my body up tighter, squeezing my eyes shut, wishing it would make me disappear.
“Hello?” he called out.
“What if it’s an axe murderer?” the girl asked in a hushed tone.
“Why would an axe murderer be hiding in a playground? It might be a lost kid or something,” another voice responded.
I felt trapped and started to make my way out the other side, hoping I could make a run for it. The only way I could go was towards an area that was a makeshift lookout point with one of those pretend telescopes and metal steering wheels. It led to a yellow plastic side, which would be my sole route of escape.
Moving as quietly as I could, I crab walked toward the slide and placed my hands on the safety bars beside it. Feeling slightly panicked, I leapt off the side with the plan to run until my legs gave out.
My plans were short lived however because my first step led into the chest of another person. Arms grabbed hold of me. I screamed, thrashing my body to try to make them let me go.
A hand clamped over my mouth, my eyes opened wide, suddenly terrified that all my worst nightmares were about to come true.
“Calm down. We’re not going to hurt you,” he told me. It was too dark to properly make out his features, but his voice was calm and kind. I relaxed… slightly.
As my eyes darted from side to side, the others gathered around to see what was going on.
“Were you sleeping in there?” the girl asked.
My eyes moved from her to the guy covering my mouth, and I nodded. “Are you going to scream if I take my hand away?”
I shook my head ‘no’. I was starting to calm down. They all seemed to be around the same age as me, and I didn’t feel as though I was in danger anymore.
Slowly, he took his hand away. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he repeated. “We were just here to hang out for a bit.”
Nodding, I scanned the faces of the group huddled around me. One guy took a drag from what smelled like a joint, and passed it to the person next to him. As he blew out the smoke, he asked, “Did you take a bad trip or something?”
“No. I just don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Well that sucks,” he commented.
I was still a little concerned by them. But, they were more inquisitive than anything. We sat around the play equipment, passing the joint, while they asked me a lot of questions about who I was, and what I was doing curled up in a tunnel.
With nothing to lose, I told them about my situation. The girl, Tahlia ended up offering me the couch in her garage.
“You can crash there as long as you like. My parents won't give a shit,” she said, her voice muted as she held in a drag. I don’t know if it was the wisest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I found myself nodding and thanking her.
So, that’s where I‘ve been for the past month, living in a garage that smells like oil and car fumes, sleeping on an old couch with scratchy material and broken springs. But I have a comfortable pillow and a blanket to keep me warm, access to a bathroom with hot water and three meals a day. So, I can’t really complain. It’s better than the park. Anything is better than the park.
Eight
Tahlia is probably the most outlandish person I’ve ever met. She’s a little older than me at seventeen, with long straight blonde hair that ends in the middle of her back. She’s taller than me, has blue eyes and is as curvaceous as a cartoon character.
She has this great confidence about her
that I can’t imagine I’ll ever have. Her hips sway from side to side when she walks, and everything she says seems bold and untethered.
Her dad used to be a biker and still wanders around looking like he’s in a gang—black leather jacket, old band shirt and a bandana covering his long and slightly greying hair that is always secured into a pony tail by a rubber band. Not the hair ties; those thick rubber ones they wrap your newspaper in.
He fascinates me when I watch him talk as he constantly has a cigarette hanging from his lips that bounces around while he speaks in his gravelly voice. Somehow, it never falls and never seems to burn out.
Her mum looks like a hippy. She always wears long flowing dresses with no shoes. She has long dark, dead straight hair and speaks delicately, like she’s always in a state of bliss. Which she probably is because hidden in their laundry is a row of well-tended cannabis plants.
No one seems to care that I’m staying in the garage, or else they haven’t even realised I’m in there. So, whatever this arrangement we have going on is working. I’ve kind of just merged with their world like the rest of the people who hang around their house. No questions asked.
“Why don’t you go to school?” I ask Tahlia once while we’re passing a bong between us and watching daytime television. I’ve never been into drugs but getting baked on the regular has become our thing. It helps take the edge off the shittiness of my life, and I think I would quite literally do anything to forget the family who left me.
“Quit in year ten,” she says, holding the lighter to the bowl. “I hated that place. Couldn’t wait to get out.”
“What are you gonna do instead?”
She sucks on the mouthpiece as the water bubbles, holding it in for a beat before she speaks in a billow of smoke. “I’m doin’ it.” She cackles then hands the bong to me while she flops on the couch, still laughing.
Staying here isn’t a completely free ride. We have to help her parents dry, cut and bag up the pot for those who visit with the intent to purchase. It seems to be a very lucrative business, as they have every mod-con you can imagine. No one wants for anything here. Even me.
“I was thinking, Paige,” Tahlia says while we’re in her bedroom, flicking through fashion magazines and styling our hair to match the models. “You’re almost sixteen. I should take you to get your learner’s permit.”
“Why? Who’s going to teach me to drive?”
“Me. I can drive.”
“Yeah, but you’re still on your provisional license. You can’t teach me until you’re on a full license.”
“So?” She laughs, focusing on her image in the mirror as she twists up her hair and pulls at strands around her face. “We’ll drive somewhere quiet. And if we get pulled over, I’ll offer to suck dick to get us out of it.”
I giggle. “What if it’s a woman?”
She shrugs. “I’ll give her a good clit rub. We’ll all end up happy.”
I laugh at her craziness and end up agreeing because it’s hard to argue with Tahlia’s logic. She has an answer for everything.
“I’ll need to get my birth certificate first, though,” I say.
She stands up and grabs her bag. “All right. Let’s go.”
“What? Now?”
“Sure. What the fuck else are we gonna do?”
Catching a train, we head to the city to find the building that houses the office for Births, Deaths and Marriages.
As with every government office, the line is huge, and we wait for nearly an hour. When I get to the front of the line, I hand over my form, and empty out all the cards I have with my name and old address on them to prove who I am.
“Don’t you have a copy of your parent’s ID? It’s a lot easier with that,” the lady behind the counter says as I offer her the entire contents of my wallet.
“I don’t have any parents to ask,” I tell her flatly. Her expression softens immediately, and she apologises to me like I just told her they were dead, and I'm an orphan.
Thinking over what I said, I guess it kind of sounded that way. I don’t bother correcting her. I actually prefer her thinking that.
She goes through all of my cards and counts up the point value of each one. I need a hundred points of ID to obtain my birth certificate, and I’m lucky to have just enough. God only knows how I’d get my birth certificate without it.
Tahlia pays for the printout, and I’m handed my birth certificate, folded up in an envelope.
Tahlia takes it out of my hands and looks over it.
“Let’s find out about Paige Larsen,” she says as she reads over the document. “Why does your dad have a different surname to your mum?”
“What are you talking about? They’re both Larsen.”
“No,” she says, pointing at the paper and showing it to me. “Your mother has Larsen as her surname and Collins as her maiden name, but your dad’s surname is Ashdown.”
“What?” I snatch the paper from her hands to look at it myself. “Who the hell is Daniel Ashdown?” I ask, more to myself than anyone else.
“He’s your dad. It says right there,” Tahlia says, pointing to the paper again.
“No. My dad is Oliver Larsen. This guy doesn’t even live in Australia. Look. His address is in the UK.” I jab at the page, indicating his address at the time of my birth. “There’s some sort of a mistake. I’m lining up again,” I tell her, heading back to join the queue
She grabs my arm to stop me. “Paige. They don’t make those kinds of mistakes. Has your mum ever been to the UK?”
I think back to a time when my mother was being unusually talkative towards me. There were these rare moments when we were alone when she forgot to hate me. She told me how she learned she was pregnant with me. She’d gone to London for work and her morning sickness was at its worst on her on the flight back to Australia. Not trusting the conversation, I thought she was going to tell me she should have taken it as a sign that I was going to be trouble. But she didn’t do that. She smiled, her eyes lost in some distant memory as she said, “It was the worst 24 hours of my life. I should have stayed in London. Had you over there.” Then she touched my hair, sighed and walked away.
I remember feeling so confused as to what it was about.
“Yeah, she has,” I tell Tahlia. “She was there for a couple of months or something, and she was pregnant with me while she was there.”
“She was already pregnant? Or did she get pregnant while she was there?”
I frown, trying to recall the details about the conversation. “I don’t know. I think she said she didn’t realise she was pregnant before she went. She was suffering from morning sickness on the flight home.”
“Huh. Explains why she was always such a cunt to you. Mumsy was guilty ‘cause she bumped uglies with this Daniel dude and got herself knocked up.”
“I don’t know why she didn’t just abort me then,” I mumble.
“I dunno. Maybe she thought she could keep you like a souvenir. Pass you off as your dad’s—well, your fake dad’s—kid.”
“I don’t know how. They’re all blonde like you and I’m…” I gesture to my face. “Not.”
“People lie about stupid shit and they get real angry when they get found out. I mean, who is stupid enough to put the secret baby daddy’s name on the paperwork?” She pokes at the paper again.
“My mum, obviously.”
“I reckon you were born and this blond dad realised you weren’t his straight away.”
“So why pretend to be my real dad all my life?”
She shrugs. “I don’t fucken know.”
I mull over this information as we make our way to the train station. Suddenly, it all makes sense. I have a different father. No wonder I don’t look like them. I must look like this Daniel guy.
“Oh my god,” I exclaim, slapping myself on the forehead and stopping where we are on the footpath.
“What’s wrong?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“What are you going on ab
out?”
“The reason they kicked me out. It had nothing to do with me. It never mattered what I did, they would never be able to love me because I didn’t fit. I’m another man’s daughter. I wasn’t the problem. They were.”
“I could’ve told you that. Nice people don’t kick their daughters out of home. Simple as that.”
Nine
Eight months after the note
I’m sitting at the kitchen table, looking at my new learner’s permit and scrutinising the odd expression on my face in the picture printed on it.
“Happy 16th Birthday!” Tahlia sings as she walks over to the table with a chocolate cake she’s made.
It’s a little lopsided, and the icing is dripping down the sides. I love it. I’ve never had someone make me a cake. It’s always just been a dried-out sponge cake brought on clearance from the grocery store. A real, freshly-baked cake is a gift all of its own.
I can't keep the grin from my face as she places the cake in front of me. A few months ago, I thought I’d be spending this birthday on the streets. Wondering how I was going to eat, and what I was going to do if I needed to pee in the middle of the night. The fact I have a roof over my head, and someone who cares enough to make me a cake is phenomenal.
“All right. Make your wish,” she says.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, wishing to always have a place to stay. When I blow out the candles, she claps her hands before presenting me with a small black jewellery box.
“You got me a present?” I squeal, opening it slowly to see what’s inside. Surprised, when I see it contains a small white pill with red lips printed on it. “What’s this?”
“Molly,” she tells me, grinning.
“As in ecstasy?” I roll the box around and watch the tiny pill tumble about inside. Nerves bubble the contents of my stomach as I think about whether or not I want to go down this road. I mean, people die from taking these kinds of drugs.
“You’ll love it, Paige. I promise. I thought it was a great gift to celebrate you being legal and all.”
Forever: Beautiful Series, book two Page 28
