ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ʙᴀᴅ ɢɪʀʟ // $ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇʙᴏʏ$

2

Clover

I kept my head down as I stomped away from my foster parents' home. They hated me.

They wanted a nice girl who would speak when she was spoken to and say thank you whenever they would throw a scrappy crumb of nothing.

They wanted a girl with big sad puppy dog eyes and a smile for everyone. Those were the ones that got good homes.

Someone like me, not so much.

But I wasn't a kid. In a couple of days I'd be kicked out of the latest home I was palmed off on. Kellie and Pavlos would be glad to see the back of me, and I didn't blame them. Not really.

They were good people. Kind.

I just... I couldn't stop myself shoving my shitty attitude in their faces until they broke.

It didn't matter who they were, they always broke in the end.

I'd been in fourteen homes since I was thirteen. Fourteen sets of new parents telling me to make myself one of the family. But I never did.

I didn't belong in anyone's family. I didn't belong in anyone's little Lego house or their neatly-mown backyard. I didn't belong in any grinning school photos. I didn't belong in this shit hole of a city.

My ancestors were travellers, roaming the wilds and making a living from the land. I felt it in my blood- the urge to dance through the countryside and make my own way in a little wagon somewhere. Maybe I'd find my own kind, just as soon as I could make my own way.

That's what I'd been telling myself- that this was destiny. That I wouldn't miss Kellie and Pavlos, not even a bit. That they meant nothing to me, just like none of the others meant anything to me. Not even Emma and Frank all those years ago who bought me the doll house and helped me set up all the pretty furniture Frank made me.

They thought it was me who hit their baby daughter, but I didn't. It was Alex, their eldest, but nobody believed a little liar like me. Problems- that's what they said. I had problems. Too many problems for Emma and Frank and their nice little family.

That's why I scratched his car to shit with one of his screwdrivers. Problems.

That's why I spat in Emma's face when she tried to say goodbye. Problems.

And that's why everyone ditched me when I got to be too much. So many problems.

I should have been nothing but a problem to Aristos Petrou, too. Hell, I was a problem enough for the parents of his before I met him. They lasted months before they felt intimidated and had to call him over to talk to me. But he was different.

I could shout in his face and he didn't turn me away. I could tell him what I thought and he didn't scowl and sigh and mutter about problems, problems, problems.

He could be angry, but he never yelled back at me.

He could have wanted to smack the attitude right out of me, but he didn't lose his cool.

I liked Aristos, and I wish I'd told him before now, before our last ever conversation. Who knows, maybe a man like him could have actually helped a problem like me. Maybe if I'd have listened to him and been his friend I wouldn't be kicked out of Pavlos and Kellie's.

Sometimes I even thought maybe he'd be the one I couldn't break, no matter what I said or what I did. No matter how far I pushed him, he was always there next week, on that stupid couch in the living room and his stupid dumb questions trying to help me.

Maybe he really would have helped me, if I'd have told him the truth. If I'd have told him who really hurt me.

But it was too late for all that now. At least I told him how I felt about him, just once.

I hated this shitty city with its shitty weather. It was always either really fucking hot, or a grey drizzle turned into full on rain. None of the shops wanted me in them, so I slipped into an alley down the side of the bank and waited for it to ease up, cursing the fact that my boots had holes in them and I threw the ones Kellie bought me back in her face a few months back.

I don't need your fucking boots. You can't fucking buy me, I'm not for fucking sale.

The memory made me cringe.

She didn't see how I ran to my room and cried harder than she did. She didn't see how sorry I was after, even though my stupid mouth wouldn't let me say a word.

I whistled as a guy in a scummy brown hoodie walked on by. I knew him. Eli something.

He stopped, squinted at me, then smiled. He knew me too, by reputation if not by introduction.

"Clover, right?" He asked, and stepped on in.

I didn't have time for stupid hellos. I hitched my boot up against the wall, playing it as disinterested as I possibly could. "Got a smoke?"

He nodded and pulled a pack from his pocket. Shitty menthols, but beggars can't be choosers. I took one and lit it off his lighter.

"Got somewhere to be?" He asked and I shook my head. "Wanna get a drink?"

"I'm underage," I told him. "Nowhere's gonna serve me. Not without ID."

He took a long drag. "I'll be buying," he said. "You look twenty-one."

His eyes were all over me, but that was nothing new.

"Few days and I will be twenty-one." I told him. "And then I'll be away from this shitty place and off on my own."

He laughed but there was no malice in it. "Sounds good to me, this place is a shit hole." He held out his arm but I shrugged it off. I really didn't want to be touching him. He looked the sleazy type, but a drink's a drink if he was the one paying.

"You're buying?" I clarified.

"Sure am." He pulled out his wallet, a battered thing on a chain. "Got paid today, did some overtime."

Just as well. I was in the mood for a few, just to drink this awful day with its crappy goodbyes away. "Fine." I told him. "Lead the way."

And he did.

I ignored my shitty phone buzzing in my pocket. I ignored the angry messages Kellie and Pavlos would be leaving me.

I ignored everything, because tonight Eli something was going to buy me drinks and look at me like he wanted me.

It was the best thing on offer to a problem girl like me.