That made me feel even more self-conscious, and I hated that feeling. I thought I was past it, honestly. I shifted in my seat. The last thing I wanted was to draw any sort of attention at all to my crotch, or my hips, or my—
“Min,” Bree said, laughing, and completely abandoned the window to lean across the car and give me an awkward hug. “Oh my god, chill, it’s going to be fine.”
“What if it’s not, though?” I asked her. “Even aside from the fact I’m trans, what if she’s really angry that I’m visiting when I’m not supposed to, or she’s angry about Andrej and the police stuff, or something else, what happens then? I’m not sure I could handle being yelled at by your mother.”
Bree was still wrapped around my middle across the handbrake. “Nah, she wouldn’t yell at you. She wouldn’t say anything. She’d just tell Dad later when he got home from night shift. Nothing will happen to you, I promise.”
I didn’t miss the deliberate way she’d phrased that. “What will happen to you, though?”
Her eyes glazed as she sat back up and shrugged dismissively. “Nothing, because it’s totally going to be fine. Do you actually think I’d, like, intentionally put us in a situation that’s likely to fuck up and backfire and make everything worse for us?”
“Well, not intentionally.”
She poked me. “Hey!” she said. “Like, seriously, I understand why you’re so worried, but Mum’s not scary or anything like your mum. Like, she’s nothing like your mum, and she will assume you’re a guy. Just wait and see.”
The worst four words in the English language, I decided, watching the kids bounce around with each other in the playground while I scrutinised their parents. Some of the fathers had bigger boobs than I did, and all the men were different shapes. No one was questioning if they were guys or not.
Bree’s right, I thought, taking a few slow breaths. I needed to calm the fuck down. I was going to meet Bree’s mum for literally a minute, if that, and short of Bree accidentally using the wrong pronouns for me, her mum wasn’t going to guess I was female. Come on, I’d sold multimillion-dollar contracts to people in broad daylight who’d never suspected I wasn’t male. The fact I felt wrong didn’t mean I looked wrong.
Probably the biggest hurdle for us wasn’t even my gender at all—at least, not on this first meeting— it was Bree’s blanket ban on inviting people over. That was why Bree had engineered a legitimate situation for me to need to be dropping her off: she’d borrowed half the school library and piled it all into her bag. It seemed reasonable enough. All I had to do was apologise to her mum, shake hands, and leave. I could do this, I decided. I could definitely do this. I’d taken a lot bigger risks in my life.
So, now all we needed to do was wait for Bree’s mum to drive past. I checked the clock on the dash; she’d be past any minute. My pulse leapt.
While I had been idly wondering what kind of person Bree’s mum was and whether she’d like me, Bree had been quietly watching the kids outside again. She turned back to me. “I kind of don’t want to ask,” she said a bit hesitantly. “But are you ever going to be able to introduce me to your mum?”
I made a face. I could imagine how that would go. “As a friend, maybe.”
“Would it help if I learnt some Korean?” she asked. “You know, to be polite?”
“The only thing that would help is if you were Korean,” I told her, and leant over to kiss the top of her head. “Mum’s English is fine, but she thinks white people are basically sin incarnate.”
“Oh,” she said, and then peered down at her ample cleavage and the pearl nested in it. Looking a bit sheepish, she did a couple of buttons up and brushed her skirt smooth to cover more of her thighs. Unfortunately, with her strained buttons, she still couldn’t help looking like sin incarnate. “Well, maybe one day you can introduce me, anyway.”
“Maybe,” I said, not really liking the chances but also not wanting to hurt her feelings. Mum wouldn’t approve of her, and she probably wouldn’t try and hide her disapproval which would hurt Bree’s feelings. While I was trying to figure out how I would go about it, something caught Bree’s attention.
She looked up in the rearview mirror and then spun around in her seat. A beaten up old grey commodore rattled past. “That’s Mum!” she said, pointing. “That’s her car!”
My heart pounded. Here we go, I thought, my hands shaking as I twisted the ignition.
Bree’s mum’s car wasn’t difficult to follow; it stood out amongst the expensive four wheel drives and prestige cars parked along the side of the road. It was loud, too—it obviously hadn’t had a service in a while and the exhaust pipe was spluttering. The biggest challenge wasn’t keeping sight of it, it was keeping enough distance between us so it wasn’t clear I was following her.
Bree looked a bit embarrassed as we passed yet another family piled into their new Merc. “We used to have nice cars,” she told me. “Before everything. I mean, not Mercs. But nice ones.”
“I’m not judging you,” I told her. “I can’t afford this one. I’ll need to get rid of it soon and replace it with something like your mum drives.”
“Oh…” Bree said, and then absent-mindedly stroked the butter-soft leather seat beside her legs.
We lost Bree’s mum in some side streets close to her house, and then Bree just directed me back home herself, figuring she’d get there before us anyway. Concerningly, though, when we pulled into Christmas Court, the grey Commodore wasn’t outside the front of her house.
Bree only looked a bit annoyed. “Well, she can’t be that far away. Just pull up near the front and we’ll wait and pretend we just arrived.”
I did as she instructed, and we sat there and waited for a couple minutes. The sun had well and truly set, and all the streetlights were starting to come on. Another car pulled into the court—it was too dark to see what type—but it parked up near the mouth of the court anyway.
“Maybe she went to the shops first?” I suggested, when after more waiting she didn’t come.
“There are no shops around here,” Bree told me, making a face. “And she wouldn’t be visiting anyone, not after work.” She twisted around in her seat and looked out the back window. “I wonder where she went?”
We were sitting there wondering what to do, when the car that had parked up the mouth of the court suddenly turned its headlights on high beam, flooding the interior of my car with light. Then, it accelerated really loudly and really quickly directly towards us—I instinctively grabbed Bree and yelled, trying to shield her from the impact—but it stopped in a screech before it hit us, leaning heavily on the horn for a good three seconds right next to my door. In the rearview mirror, I could see the roof of the car lit by the streetlights: it was grey.
Bree noticed at the same time I did. “What’s she doing?” she asked me in a frightened shriek, “Why is she doing this?”
I couldn’t answer. As the car reversed, I was terrified it was going to accelerate forwards and plough into us—at least it would be me who got hit and not Bree—but it just swung around and parked very close behind us and honked at length again.
When we didn’t move, a tiny and plump woman with frizzy blonde hair and a very distressed expression surged out of the drivers’ side of the Commodore, coming right up to my window and thumping on it.
“Stop bothering my family!” she shouted through my tinted windows. She had quite a strong accent. “Do you hear me? Go! Get away from here! Stop bothering us!” She wasn’t looking at either Bree or me; clearly she couldn’t see through the dark glass.
I sat there, frozen solid, my heart hammering my ribcage, with one hand protectively on Bree and the other on the ignition. I had no idea what was going on. How did she know this was my car…?
Bree looked absolutely horrified for a few seconds while her mum thumped and shouted at us, her mouth wide open like she had no idea what was going on, and then, suddenly, something occurred to her. “Oh my god!” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Oh
my god! Of course, you’re driving a black sedan: she thinks you’re a debt collector!”
Without waiting for me to say anything, she undid her seat belt and opened the door before I could grab her.
“Mum!” she called, rounding the car. “Mum, it’s okay! It’s me! It’s just me! Min was dropping me off because I have a really heavy bag today!”
Her mum stopped drumming on my car and took a step back, looking from Bree to my window, confused. She didn’t say anything straight away, but when she did, it wasn’t in English. Bree didn’t reply in English, either, which sent my eyebrows way up; I had no idea she could speak any other languages. Maybe I should have guessed; she was Serbian, after all, and her parents migrated here just like mine did.
While I was watching them, Bree turned and made an enthusiastic gesture to me to get out of the car. Her mum didn’t look so happy. My legs felt weak, but somehow I managed to push the car door open and step out shakily onto the road beside them.
Bree’s mum was tiny, even shorter than Bree was, and she looked like an older, plumper version of Bree. The most obvious thing about her was how tired she looked, though, especially next to her energetic daughter. Tired and withdrawn, and she had big, deep bags under her eyes.
“Mum, this is Min, my boyfriend,” Bree said in English, presenting me to her mum. I nodded politely at her. “Min, this is my mum.”
She didn’t make any sort of move to shake my hand, so I had no idea if I was supposed to do that or not. For a second she just stared up at me, and I realised she was looking at the new scar along my cheekbone. The scar her son had given to me. “Erm,” I managed, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs Dejanovic.”
“Vera,” she corrected me, as if there was any fucking chance in hell I’d ever call her by her first name.
I wasn’t sure if I should mention what just happened, but it seemed ridiculous to pretend everything was fine. “I’m sorry we scared you.”
She didn’t say anything to me except giving me the shallowest, most suspicious nod, and then turned and said something to Bree in Serbian. For my benefit, Bree replied in English. “No,” she said. “No way! Min just thought it would be rude if he dropped me off and there was no one home, especially since he hasn’t met you.”
Mrs Dejanovic looked back up at me, her eyes travelling from my face to my shirt to my shoes. All the colour drained from my face as she inspected me. Any second, I thought, any second she was going to find evidence of what I was hiding from her. She didn’t out me as an imposter, though. After she’d given my Lexus the same scrutiny, she just nodded, and there was something really guarded about her. “Okay,” she said, and waved her hand at the house. “Help Briana.” Then, she slumped a little and headed back towards the Commodore to get her own belongings out.
When she turned away, I felt like an enormous weight had been lifted from me, and I practically sighed with relief. God. I was shaking, I had no idea how I was going to carry Bree’s heavy bag in for her. I somehow managed to hoist it up and sling it over my shoulder, scaling the five stairs up to the front door as Mrs Dejanovic let us in.
Bree’s house was unremarkable inside; through the door to the living room I could see unwashed mugs and dirty plates by the armchairs—Mrs Dejanovic moved ahead to quickly close that door as I went past—and I think I spied a sink full of dishes in the kitchen too, but that door was also quickly closed.
“I’m sorry I can’t invite you to stay,” Mrs Dejanovic told me shortly, standing in front of the closed door. “I have errands to run. I hope you understand.”
I smiled politely and nodded at her, and then let Bree lead me past many doily-laced side tables covered in glass bowls and porcelain knick-knacks, up a narrow flight of wooden stairs to the second storey. The carpet was short-weave and old with roses on it, and the whole house had mismatched antique furniture with pretty, ornate decorations. There was something fiercely European about that.
Compared to the rest of her home, Bree’s room was very different: when she ushered me in, it was bright and cheerful with colourful printouts Blu-tacked all over the wall. She closed the door behind her, turned around, and let loose a muted squeal. “We did it!”
I dumped her bag on the floor and sank down onto her bed, still shell-shocked. Her reaction made no sense to me, I was still shaking like a leaf. “You’re cheering about that?”
She presented her room. “You’re here, aren’t you? It worked! I didn’t think she’d actually let you inside!”
I could hear my pulse in my ears. I shook my head incredulously at her. “I thought you said your dad is the scary one?”
Bree bounced over to me. “Don’t worry about Mum,” she told me. “If she hated you, she wouldn’t have let you in. Obviously, despite that whole car-thing, she’s okay with you. You should probably go pretty soon, though. She’ll get nervous if you hang around too long.”
I was already too nervous and I’d been in here for thirty seconds. There was no way I could relax here, this house felt tense. The hallways were like long display cases full of delicate, fragile items, and everything felt dark and quiet like a museum. Bree’s room was the only exception; the only thing missing was a lock on the door.
“So, what do you think?” she said, doing a spin.
I cast my eyes around her room; it was big and airy with a single bed, a bookcase full of books, and a double-mirrored wardrobe that was covered with hundreds of stickers. Most of the activity was around her bed, though, which was pushed up against the window. Her three plush animals were tucked into an old hand-made patchwork quilt, and the wall behind the foot of her bed was covered in art printouts. Some of them were magazine cut-outs, there were a few that looked like someone had drawn Bree as an anime character, and the others… “I recognise these,” I said with a grin. The rest were all mine. It was the first time I’d seen many of them printed out.
“Here,” she said, pushing me down on the bed and squishing in beside me on the tiny mattress so we were lying facing the wall. “See? When I lie here at night, the streetlight hits them and I can look at them as I go to sleep, especially the forest one.” She pointed at it. “That one’s my favourite. There’s something really peaceful about it. When I look at it, I can feel the quiet and the solitude of it. It’s really relaxing.”
I remembered painting that one; it had been an exercise in filter-down light, I hadn’t thought much of it. That someone had printed it out and gazed at it every night was… well, it was beautiful. It gave the painting new life, somehow. It gave it spirit. “I did that years ago,” I realised.
Bree smiled. “Yeah. I was too shy to talk to you back then.”
I turned my head towards her. “You?” I asked. “Too shy?”
She giggled and was about to say something about that, when suddenly her smile fell and her body stiffened. She turned her head towards the rest of the house—I didn’t realise what was happening until I heard footsteps on the stairs. They paused at the top of the staircase near Bree’s door, and for a second, all I could hear was the sound of my pulse as Bree held her breath.
Any moment, I expected the door to swing open and Bree’s mum to catch us lying together in Bree’s bed. What would happen if she did, I didn’t know. She certainly knew how to shout; I’d discovered that in my car. She’d been hammering on the window, too. I didn’t doubt that her arms, however short, were strong enough to grab me and drag me out of her daughter’s bed.
After a tense few seconds, the footsteps continued up the hall, presumably to another bedroom.
Bree let out her breath. “You should probably go,” she said. “I think Mum really meant it when she told you to be quick.”
I exhaled. My heart was still going. “How can you live here?” I asked her as we both sat up. “I think I’d literally have a heart attack.”
She shrugged and didn’t explain. She just carefully tucked her haggard old plush toys back under the quilt after we’d disturbed them. When she was done, she stood and looked hopefully
at me. “Before you go, can I get a photo of you on my bed?”
I gave her a strange look. “Um?”
She went and grabbed her phone out of her bag. “Please?” she said, holding it and watching me. “It’s surreal, you being here. I spent so long lying in that bed imagining you were there with me.”
Well, there seemed to be no real reason to say no to that, so I hesitantly lay back down again. At least she was asking this time. “Erm. What do you want me to do? Just lie here?”
That cheeky grin returned to her face. “Do I have options?” she asked innocently. I gave her a tired look, but I must have been grinning a bit as well, because she said, “Stop! Yeah! I like it when you do that!” and snapped a couple of pics.
When she showed them to me, I figured it was my kind of sly half-grin she liked, but it was difficult for me to focus on that because with my legs crossed at the ankles, the packer was pushed upwards in my pants. “Fuck,” I said, and immediately reached down and pulled at the fabric of my jeans. “I look like I have a semi.”
“Only in the photo,” she said with a smirk as she gazed indulgently at it. “I know you have mixed feelings about that thing, but it really gets you over the line. There was no way Mum was going to guess. She won’t know about you until we tell her.”
God. After today, I was not looking forward to that conversation. Not at all. Especially if her dad was worse than her mum.
At her bedroom door, I took her hands. “Are you sure you don’t want to come home with me tonight?”
She shook her head. “How weird would that look? You drop me over and then we leave again? Nah, it’s fine. And she won’t tell Dad that she yelled at you and made a fool of herself because then he’ll get angry with her, so…”
I winced. “I don’t like you staying here, Bree. Honestly, you could move into my room at Sarah’s. She wouldn’t mind.”
She shrugged. “I’m not here that often anymore, anyway,” she pointed out. “Plus, all I have to do tonight is some homework and watch a movie for English. Andrej won’t be home until way later, and Dad won’t be home until after midnight, and he’ll probably go straight to bed. I’ll be fine.”
Flesh & Blood Page 17
