“Do you know where he got the drugs from?”
“Can we just drop this?” I kicked a stone, sending it careening off the wooden fence of the Recycling Works.
“Well, do you?” He asked more forcibly this time.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ryan! I wouldn’t have a clue. Didn’t even know he was taking them. None of us did. Now take a guess how that makes us feel?”
“You can’t blame yourself for his choices, Brandon.”
“He...” I didn’t want share what happened to my father again. Telling Sofia had been painful enough.
“Yes?”
The compassion in Ryan’s voice almost broke through my defences. I had to hold my breath to fight back tears that threatened to spill out. “He’s been having a hard time lately. We knew that but couldn’t really do anything.”
“Oh come on, I’m sure you tried. You don’t strike as the kind of guy who sits back and does nothing when someone’s suffering,” he said.
“Okay, maybe I did. Though not hard enough, obviously.”
“Have you visited him?”
“In prison?”
“Yes. It’s not too late to let him know you still care, that you understand what he was going through.”
“As much as I’d like to do that, I’m afraid that if I go to see him, my anger will get the better of me and I’ll end up tearing his head off. And that’s not gonna help, is it?”
“Probably not. Look, I’m here for you, you know, if you want to talk about it.”
“Thanks.”
We walked in silence for a bit, and I took comfort in his presence. There was something about him, his confident, calm demeanour, that made me want to know him more. I wished our friendship could last, that we could keep seeing each other as a couple of mates. Sadly, that was nothing but an empty pipe dream.
* * *
I got to the homeless shelter after a quick detour to the market. Sofia was slouching on a frayed single-seat sofa in the foyer, watching TV, and I almost went and put my foot in it by calling out to her. Luckily, I caught myself just in time and turned the wave to a scratch on the ear. I forgot I was impersonating Brandon, that he hadn’t met her yet.
Sofia noticed me standing there just inside the door. She stood tentatively and approached me. I kept my cap down and averted my eyes.
“Hello. Are looking for someone?” she asked.
Remembering how bashful my brother was around girls, I did my best to emulate him. “Oh, ah, yes. You, um, wouldn’t happen to know where the Thomas family is staying would you, Miss? A mother and two teenage girls. One’s my height.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be Chelsea’s brother, would you?” Her voice was tinged with hope. I so wished I could let her in on my secret. I felt like such a heel to be this close to her and yet deceive her.
“Ah, yes, that’s me, Miss. Do you know where they’re staying?” I glanced around, as though taking in the place for the first time.
“On the fifth floor, room 505. The elevator’s the best way to get there.” She pointed out the way.
“Um, great, thanks, Miss.” I bowed my head in appreciation and hurried for the elevator.
“Oh, Brandon? If Chelsea’s feeling better, can you tell her I’m down here?”
“What? Oh, of course.” Sofia must have gone up to see me today, and was told I was sick. In a town where a girl wasn’t allowed to go anywhere by herself, that was the only excuse available to my mother to explain my absence.
I took the elevator upstairs and hurried to our room. Mother was sitting on the chair I liberated from the passageway outside. The armrests were broken off and the foam inner perishing, but it beat sitting on the floor. I couldn’t see Karen, but I could hear her breathing coming from the ‘bedroom.’
“Any sign of your brother?” Mother asked when I put down my backpack and took out the food I bought at the market.
“No.”
“What is that boy doing!” she exclaimed with heartfelt frustration. She stood and came over to me. “What’s all this? Where did you get it from?”
“I got a bit of a bonus today, so I ducked by the market. Here, eat up. Karen, I’ve brought food from the market.”
The bed sheet suspended from the ceiling was swept aside and a very disgruntled Karen, her strawberry-blonde hair dishevelled and dress badly creased, came over to join us. When she came out, I noticed one of her worn but favourite dresses on her bed, as well as her sewing kit. She had been mending it. I handed them both chicken kebabs and had one myself. Then we tucked into a container of take-away roast vegies, and finished off with some dried fruits and nuts.
“Good?” I asked.
“Beats that slop they serve downstairs. Tell you what, if that’s all we get to eat day in, day out, I’m going to waste away to nothing,” Karen said. I noticed her eyes were red and puffy. She was still crying, poor thing. What fifteen-year-old girl wanted to go through a trial like this?
“Humph,” Mother added.
I put one kebab and a bit of everything else in a spare container. “For Sofia,” I said.
Mother frowned, but the expression left her face when I gave her seventy dollars. I kept the other hundred in my pocket to give Deacon the next time he showed his ugly face.
“Now quickly, get out of those clothes and wash your face before that pesky busybody comes back. She’s been up here twice today, wanting to see you,” Mother said.
“She’s not a busybody. She’s the kindest person I’ve met, and we owe her. If she hadn’t shown us this room and helped us move in, where would we be today?”
“She doesn’t have to keep knocking on our door, it’s annoying!” Karen said. “Hasn’t she got any other friends here? Someone’s she met during her three years?”
“You could have gone downstairs and watched TV with her or something.”
“Hello, newsflash. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to talk to Sofia, and I most definitely don’t want to sit in the foyer with a bunch of has-beens watching reruns on TV!”
“That’s not fair, Younger Sister!” I snapped. “Everyone here has fallen on hard times, just like we have.”
“Eldest Daughter – get changed!” Mother said.
I hurried to my ‘bedroom’ to change.
* * *
Dressed in a long, plain brown dress, with my face washed and my hair put up, I was about to pop out to find Sofia, when the door was violently kicked in.
Alarmed, I fell back to stand beside my mother as Wells came barging into the room with Deacon at his heals.
“Like what you’ve done with the place,” Deacon said. A broad smile adorned his spiteful features. He was enjoying our misfortune. Specifically that he caused it.
Mother rose unsteadily to her feet. “This them?” she asked.
Eyes wide with fright, I nodded.
“Mrs. Thomas, I presume? Honoured to make your acquaintance” Deacon reached out to shake her hand.
My mother kept her arms stiffly by her side. “You have no business here. Kindly leave or I will ask the supervisor to have you thrown out.”
Deacon let his arm fall to his side. “Who do you think told us which room you were in? As to business, that’s why we’re here. Where’s Brandon?”
“He’s not here,” I said.
Deacon sighed and looked to his brutish companion. “Wells?”
The larger man nodded and ripped down the sheets I’d so laboriously erected, leaving the entire room exposed. Karen, who’d been sitting on her bed repairing her dress, cried out and scooted back. She hugged her knees to her chest. I couldn’t miss the shameless expressions the thugs wore as their eyes ran over every inch of her. Disgusting pigs, she was only fifteen!
“Check the bathroom,” Deacon said.
Wells strode across the room, kicking our bags out of the way as he went. We heard him search the bathroom, opening the cupboards and throwing everything about. He returned a moment later, shaking his head.
“
Where’s your brother, Chelsea?” Deacon took a step closer, scowling menacingly.
“We don’t know where he is.” Mother eyed the two men fearfully.
“Of course you do.” He took another step closer.
“We really don’t,” I said, backing away. I was afraid they might hit me again and the memory of being unable to breathe while doubled over in agony was still fresh in my mind.
Anger flashed across Deacon’s lined face. “Wells, turn the room inside out, they’ve got to have money stashed here somewhere.”
Karen scampered over to us as Wells grabbed each of our bags, turned out their contents, and rifled through them with his meaty hands. He also went through Brandon’s clothes, including the ones I wore today and dumped on his mattress.
He found the hundred dollars I left in the jeans’ pocket and brought it over to Deacon. The older man snatched the money, stomped over to us, and held it in our faces. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Hands shaking, Mother offered him the seventy dollars I gave her earlier.
“That’s all?” Deacon looked at us with a condescending sneer.
“Please don’t take it all,” I pleaded. “We need to eat.”
“You need to pay back your father’s loan!” he shrieked, face reddening with rage.
We reeled backwards from his naked display of fury, only coming to a stop when our backs collided with the wall, Karen clinging to Mother.
“You said we could keep some the other day,” I said.
“That was the other day!”
The hoodlum ran his hand through his thinning gray hair and stared at each one of us in turn. Finally, he pointed to my sister. “Come here, Karen. I want you to give a message to Brandon for me.”
Glancing uncertainly at Mother, Karen took a hesitant step forward, thinking Deacon was going to ask her to memorise a message for our brother.
But when I saw the lustful, predatory smile on Deacon’s face and the nod he gave to Wells, I leaped in front of her. “Don’t you touch her!” I hissed, looking up into his smug face.
“Okay, you give it to him then,” Deacon replied.
I barely had time to register his words when Wells drove his meaty fist into the side of my ribs. Agony lanced through my torso as the air was expelled from my lungs in a rush.
Karen threw her hands to her face and screamed.
“Stop it!” Mother shouted.
I tried to remain standing as I fought to regain my breath and ride out the pain, but Wells kicked my feet out from beneath me. I landed painfully on the scuffed linoleum floor, still desperately trying to draw a breath, when he stomped on my thigh with a massive boot. A shrill scream escaped unbidden from my lips and I rolled to one side to nurse the injured leg. Before I could do so, he brought his foot down on the other one.
I screamed again and curled into a ball, trying to shield myself with my arms. My legs hurt so bad I was sure they were both broken. My will to resist collapsed and I sobbed uncontrollably.
Suddenly my mother was there, kneeling over me. “Leave her alone!”
I felt rather than heard Deacon squat beside me. “Tell your brother to come see me in the staffroom at the back of the Derby Snooker Hall, after eight tonight.”
With that, they were gone, striding out the door as though on a stroll through the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
I don’t know how long I lay on the floor, crying as I rocked side to side and hugged my legs. The pain was like a living thing that pulsed with each heartbeat and spread towards my feet and up into my torso.
“We have to tell the Custodians!” Karen said. She hadn’t moved from where she stood against the wall.
“We can’t!” Mother said. She slapped a hand on the floor in exasperation. “If we do, they’ll do a lot worse things to us than this! I could just kill your stupid father. If only he could see us now. Maybe then he’d realise the folly of his depravity and vices!”
“We have to get her to hospital – should we call an ambulance?” Karen asked.
“No – they’ll just ask questions we can’t answer,” I said, managing to find my voice again.
“But if your legs are broken–”
I stretched them out tentatively. They hurt like blazes, but weren’t broken. “Just bruised, I think.”
“Cold water, then. Come on, Daughter, to your feet.” Mother reached around my shoulders and helped me up. Karen stayed at the wall and watched, still shaking. I wondered if she realised just how close she came to receiving this beating instead of me.
Moments later I was undressed and sitting on a towel on the shower floor with my legs outstretched. Mother started the water warm and slowly turned down the heat until only cold flowed. It hurt so much at first I could barely breathe, but my legs grew became numb as they adjusted to the cold. I was lucky it was a relatively warm summer evening.
As I sat there, staring at Well’s boot prints on my thighs already turning an ugly shade of black, all the happenings of the past week piled on top of each other. I started crying, deep, heart wrenching sobs from the depths of my being that hurt more than they healed.
Mother reached out uncertainly, and then awkwardly patted the back of my hand. “Come on, no need for that.”
I realised with a start that this was the first sign of tenderness she had shown me since I was twelve and had sided with my father against her.
They had been quarrelling like never before. It started with my father criticising my mother for relentlessly indoctrinating little Karen with the Founders’ teachings, ruthlessly suppressing her questions and doubts. It had quickly descended into a shouting match where Mother brought up slights from the past. With tears in my eyes because of the horrid things she was saying to Father, I told her off good and proper, defending his point of view. That not only ended the argument, but also my relationship with my mother. She didn’t speak to me for days, and then only when she had to. We had never been close to start with, but ever since then she treated me with disdain. As though I was an outsider, not her daughter.
Chapter Twenty-One
The cold shower helped reduce the swelling, though I was still in a great deal of pain. By sundown, I decided I couldn’t spend another moment lying still, cooped up in our room. I rolled off the bed and used the wall to regain my feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mother asked when I opened the door. She was sitting on the chair, using her sewing kit to repair the hem of an old dress.
“Downstairs to look for Sofia.”
“Out of the question! What if those two hoodlums are still in the building?”
“I’m sure they’ve got better things to do than watch us all day and night.”
“Elder Daughter–” She laid the dress aside and stood.
“I’ll be fine, Mother!” I spoke much more strongly than intended and shuffled out the door.
I hobbled for the elevator, clenching my jaw with each step because it felt like someone was hammering nails into my thighs every time I put my foot down. I hoped I could walk tomorrow, otherwise I would not go to work, and if I didn’t, that would compound the situation. No work, no money, and more ‘messages’ from Deacon.
My thoughts strayed back to last Thursday and my aborted escape attempt. If I’d gone through with it, I wouldn’t be in this situation now, battered, bruised, and afraid of what tomorrow could bring. I was tempted yet again to make another escape attempt, but angrily thrust it aside. I would not abandon my mother and sister.
A dozen people were in the foyer, watching an old movie from a few decades ago. As with most films made here, it was corny, second rate, and contained a poorly disguised attempt to indoctrinate us in the Founders’ ways. I hoped Sofia was here. I needed a kindred soul to share my woes with, but alas, there was no sign of her.
Having no desire to watch the movie, I cracked open the front door and sat on the front steps. I noticed the shelter’s gates were locked. It was night now, punctuated by the chirp of crickets and
screech of fruit bats. I found it somewhat refreshing.
A furtive movement to my left caught my attention. Straining my eyes in that direction, my mouth dropped open in shock when I recognised the outline of the person squatting beside the man-high rubbish hopper outside. A person wearing baggy clothes and a sports cap.
Brandon!
As I hobbled across the front yard to meet him, I waged an internal war to whether I should hug him or shoot him.
“Where the blazes have you been!” I whispered angrily when I reached the bin. Looked like I was going for the shoot him option.
He came closer, clearly concerned by the sight of me limping towards him. He looked terrible – gaunt, filthy, and pale. Like he hadn’t eaten or slept for a week.
“What’s going on, Chelz? Why are you limping? What are you even doing here? I popped home tonight to see you, but the flat’s empty and a sign on the door told me to come here. How did this happen? Where’s all our stuff? What’s Father done now?” he whispered. Thanks to our enhanced hearing, we might be the only two people in town who could hold a conversation below everyone else’s hearing range.
“I asked where you’ve been, Brandy!”
“Sorry, Sis, I needed time alone. Got some things I have to work through.” Looking at Brandon was like looking in a mirror. Similar face, same colour hair, similar mannerisms and expressions.
“Whatever you’re dealing with, snap out of it and pull yourself together! We need you!”
“I would if I could, Sis, but I can’t face anyone. Not Younger Sister, not Father, and most definitely not Mother.”
“Can’t you at least go back to work?”
“Can’t face them either,” he said, looking down.
“Is this something to do with Dan Smith?” I asked.
His head shot up. “What do you know about that?”
“Just that he was killed in an accident the day you went all mysterious on us and disappeared.”
He looked away again. The wind whistled through the evergreen trees that lined the edge of the property.
Impersonator (Forager Impersonator - A Post Apocalyptic Trilogy Book 1) Page 14
