Stake You

Chapter Thirteen

“Wanna talk about anything?” Base asked hesitantly after a few minutes of silence.

“No, thanks,” I said, turning up the volume of the car radio. The song was annoying, but it was better than talking.

He switched to a CD, and a familiar song assaulted my ears. It felt angry, and that was exactly what I needed.

“Didn’t take you for a Metallica fan,” I said a few minutes later.

“You get a lot of things wrong,” he said, and then he laughed. “But please, don’t kill me. Safety first.”

I glanced at him. “Do you always have to be a smartarse?”

“Trust me when I say that you can’t handle anything else,” he said softly. “So. You seem tense. What was going on back there?”

“Remember I told you how I liked privacy,” I warned.

“Hey, you caught a glimpse of my family life,” he said, grinning. “Fair’s fair.”

“Fine,” I said, realising I wanted to talk about it. “That idiot is my mother’s ex. The most recent one anyway. He’s married, and every time the guilt gets too much, he ditches my mam. She gets all depressed and goes through this big ritual of crap that you’ve witnessed a little of. Then she gets better. I mean, eventually she gets better.”

I clenched my fingers into fists. “Or she would if it wasn’t for him. He keeps popping back up as soon as she starts getting her act together. He leads her down this path, and it takes her ages to find her way back once he ditches her. But he shows up just to drive her away again, and she falls for it every time.”

He grunted. “Sounds familiar. Frankie’s dad isn’t exactly the right person to be a parent, you know? But he calls, and my mam goes running to make sure he’s okay. But maybe it’s hard having kids. Maybe he makes her happy.”

“Does my mother look happy to you?”

“About as happy as you,” he said, deftly avoiding my half-hearted slap.

“Do you know what the sick part is? He’s one of the better ones. That is the best she can do. How sad is that?”

“Seriously?” He raised his eyebrows. “What were the other ones like?”

I cleared my throat, staring out of the window. “When we moved here, there was one who was actually nice. Normal. I thought he might be the one to change everything. Get Mam back to her old self.  Before… before she became this way. But he couldn’t hack her anymore, so he left. Of course, I give him a hard time at every opportunity.”

I tried to smile at Base, but it must not have looked believable because he had pity in his eyes. “The rest aren’t worth talking about. She’s entertained a long line of extreme losers, starting with the one who got her pregnant with me when she was still in school.” I didn’t want to talk anymore.

Base turned off the radio. “I need to talk to you about what you said at school earlier. About… about you and me. I didn’t mean to—”

“Let’s not,” I said, feeling myself blush again. “I don’t want to talk about anything like that.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Sully,” I said, gritting my teeth. “He wasn’t at school today. At least, not after… earlier. Aoife, too. What do you think they’re doing?”

“Just mitching, hopefully,” he said, but his eyes were worried.

“You really think…”

He glanced at me, his mouth tight. “I really think,” he said. “You should have seen your face this morning, Dev. That wasn’t… He can’t get away with stuff like that, and stuff like that isn’t normal.”