Selling the Drama (12 page)

He paused at the door, keeping his back to
her. "I'm going to get ready for school."

"I rang Mum and she said we could stay
home."

"You shouldn't have done that. There was no
reason for her to know about this. I'm not staying home, and
neither are you. Get ready so we can head back." His voice was
firm, authorative, and it gave her an uneasy feeling like no other.
It was as though between having a shower and then coming out into
the kitchen, he had erected a wall, a barrier that he had no
intention of letting her penetrate.

"Mum is really worried. She-"

"Will get over it." He turned then, staring
at her across the kitchen, a determined expression fixed upon his
face. "She will have a busy day at work, get home frazzled, mention
it at dinner, and then be satisfied when I assure her that I'm
fine. That you're fine. That we're all just fine." He paused for a
moment, as though weighing up his next words carefully before
delivery. "There are some things that I am not going to talk about.
Not with you, not with your parents, not with anyone. I've already
said too much to you."

He left the kitchen then, Charlotte
remaining by the sink, the contrast of his moods leaving her
reeling. The specifics of Toby's former family life were still
unknown to her. After finding out that his father had murdered his
mother after a long history of domestic abuse, she had not wanted
to know more. 'More', and all that it encompassed, seemed too big
for her to behold, coming from a household that was the very
definition of normal, where no one ever really lost their temper
and the most an argument would become is a parody of sarcastic
remarks with a possible slammed door if it was a really serious
fight. Charlotte could not help but wonder if her mother even knew
the real story of Toby's life. Certainly, she would know the
details of his parent's deaths. The police would have informed her
on that. But what came before? Who really knew any of those
details, except for Toby, and none of them had ever pressed him,
sensitivity to his situation winning out over gruesome curiosity.
Yet, when Charlotte pictured him vomiting on the street, the shock
of what he had done registering within him, the look of fear, that
very real look within his eyes as he stood in the shower, she knew
with certainty that Toby had witnessed more than the occasional
display of violence over the course of his life. There was terror
within him that was untouchable, and if his sudden switch from
distress to command was anything to go by, he intended on keeping
it that way. Charlotte didn't know much about the human mind, but
she was pretty sure that no matter how hard you tried to forget
something bad, no matter how hard you wanted to purge it from your
memory, burying it was probably not the way to go about it.

Toby reappeared in the kitchen doorway, a
fresh uniform in place. He looked at her with a raise of his
eyebrows. "Are you ready? You haven't even moved!" His tone was
vastly altered, lightly mocking, a smile playing about his
lips.

She stared at him, searching his face, yet
he was giving her nothing. "Yeah, I'm all good to go." She forced a
smile back at him as she pushed herself off the sink. She didn't
even bother to ask him if he was alright. He would only lie to her
and say that he was fine. She paused beside him in the doorway,
looking up into his face, her eyes connecting with his.

"You can trust me, you know?"

Toby stared back down at her, and there was
something in his gaze, a momentary shift that Charlotte caught, but
then lost. He leaned down, his lips brushing her ear. "You don't
want my nightmares. Believe me, I don't even want them. It's not
about trust, Charlotte. Just leave it alone." Threading his fingers
with hers, he tugged on her hand and pulled her out into the
hallway, grabbing both of their school bags on the way out the
front door.

Dear Charlotte,

Thanks so much for the little care package, it
brightened up my day. I really am okay now, I promise. I don't
think about it as much. Well, at least not all day every day. I can
keep it in now and I guess that's about all I can hope for at this
stage. I miss Dermott. He calls me from time to time, throws out
the suggestion that he might come over here to see me, to stay for
a while, but I haven't encouraged him. I'll wait and see if he
really does want to come or if it's just something he's saying
because he thinks it's what I want to hear from him.

I have a job. A real job, not just a tending bar
until all hours of the night type of job (although I do still have
one of those as well, but I figure being busy is a good thing for
me right now). I have taken on a job managing a craft store, a
little coffee shop type of arts and craft outfit. A friend of mine
has left for a year in Canada and wanted someone to take care of
the place for her. I was happy to oblige and it gives me a whole
new project to focus on. She's told me to put some of my jewellery
into the shop to sell, she seems to think it will do well. I have
enclosed a necklace I made especially for you. Let me know what you
think and if your friends comment on it or not.

So, tall dark and handsome came through for you in
the end? I have to say, I wasn't holding out much hope. He seemed
to be resisting you without fail for a very long time there. Ah
well, it's testimony to your devotion that you waited him out. I
may visit at Christmas and finally get to meet this young man you
can't seem to stop going on about. Your mum seems quite taken with
him also. I wish she had the confidence in me that she gives to
you, maybe then I could live my life without her breathing down my
neck and analysing my every move. Seriously, you would think that
Ma and Pa left me to her in their will as well as half of their
house.

My baby would have been born today if I had not
listened to Dermott. Nobody knows that but me, and now you. Maybe
I'm not as well as I would like to think I am. But I'll get there
in the end. You know me. Not much gets me down, just the occasional
blip.

Love and big sloppy kisses,

Jenna xoxox.

Charlotte folded the letter, tucking it into
her bra strap. She sat in silence, staring out of her open window,
a strange feeling of emptiness born out of deep sadness nestled
within her. A knock on her door startled her. Turning, she saw her
mother hovering in the doorway.

"Did you get a letter from Jenna?"

"You know I did. You saw it on the hall
table."

They stared at each other for a long moment.
Eventually, Iris asked, "Is she good?"

"She's great." Charlotte gave her mother an
easy smile along with the answer she knew Iris was wanting to hear.
The answer that gave absolution. Permission to ignore.

"Good. What's Toby up to?"

"Studying." Another answer that was
expected.

To tell Iris the truth was impossible. To
open her mouth up and say that Jenna was depressed and falling
apart at the seams, that Toby was brooding in a silence so thick he
wouldn't even unlock his door for her. To stand up and say those
things; it was an impossibility. Because Iris did not want to hear
such things. She wanted a smile and a nod, a lie delivered
smoothly, so she could walk away satisfied that she had done her
parental duty for the night. Charlotte knew this, better than
anyone else, because she had tried in the past to give Iris more,
but Iris didn't want more. She wanted less, so little that
Charlotte now deliberately gave her nothing at all.

After thirteen years of practicing
gymnastics almost every day, Charlotte had made the significant
decision to scale back on account of an increasing commitment to
her final year of school. The one discipline she simply couldn't
part with though, was acrobatics. She loved it. Thrived on it,
particularly the ribbons; the twirling artistry of it. It required
a lot of total body strength, more than most people would realise,
and there were times after a particularly lengthy session, when she
had continued long past the time she should have, that she wore the
pain of going overboard for days after. This never bothered her
overmuch, the pleasure she drew from the sport far outweighing the
pain of endurance. When she had first started up with acro, vanity
had been her main motivation. She stuck with it though for reasons
beyond this, and while she had no particular designs on running
away with a circus, she still nursed a secret ambition of having a
greater audience. One day. Maybe. Unlikely, but there was no harm
in secret dreams.

Charlotte had joked to Toby not long ago
that perhaps she could pay her way through uni by working as pole
dancer in a strip club. He had been quick to reply that she had
better be making good money at it because she would need it to
cover his bail for all the times he was bound to be arrested for
punching the shit out of any guy who so much as glanced at her tits
on display. That Toby could joke about this was quite profound as
far as Charlotte was concerned. After exposing all of the broken
pieces of himself to her, he had promptly reeled them all back in,
locking that vulnerability away until Charlotte gave up on trying
to get him to talk about anything other than what was happening in
the here and now.

Iris had spent about half an hour of her
precious time talking to Toby about the importance of facing your
demons and learning to control your anger, insisting that he go and
see a counsellor of some sort in order to help him live his life to
its full potential. Charlotte could pin point the very moment he
tuned Iris out; it was about thirty seconds after he shot Charlotte
a look that spoke volumes about how grateful he was she had outed
him to her mother. The thing with Iris though, was that she was
essentially a starter but not a finisher, so when she insisted Toby
see a counsellor, she left it to him to organise it all,
considering her work with him as done, and neglected to follow
through on ensuring he actually did go and see someone. Given
Toby's reluctance to talk about anything deep whatsoever, Charlotte
was surprised to find out that he did indeed go and see someone,
but only once. He pronounced the entire concept of therapy as
bullshit and shut down any further comments about the topic. Iris
never asked him about it at all. Royce seemed completely absent
from the entire event, leading Charlotte to believe that her mother
had decided on handling it herself, which of course meant not at
all.

While there were definite perks to having
parents that pretty much treated you like an adult and left you to
your own devices, there were times when Charlotte thought a little
meddling might not go astray. Perhaps Toby may have gotten a
greater reaction if he had actually killed Damian as opposed to
just beating the shit out of him. Hard to tell though, with Iris
and Royce. It had taken her mother nearly an entire week to
approach the topic with Toby in the first place.

There did however, as the months slipped by,
appear to be a change taking place within Toby. He did not get into
any more fights, although if truth be told, Charlotte was pretty
sure that had more to do with fear amongst the general populace at
school rather than any efforts at control on Toby's part. That
aside, he was a lot less moody, and appeared happier in general. To
a certain degree, Charlotte put that down to their own
relationship, and this was not out of conceit. He made her happy,
and she was completely without doubt that she did the same for him.
Maybe, in the end, his way of dealing with things was best for
him.

For someone who liked to hide his inner self
away, he was surprisingly expressive about his feelings towards
her. Charlotte found it hard to articulate the same back to him,
not because she did not feel the same way, but because he always
seemed to beat her to it, and it seemed to her incredibly lame to
just say something back to someone all the time. She loved him with
a fierceness that had taken some getting used to and there were
times when telling him she loved him seemed not entirely enough, so
instead, she said nothing at all. She figured he got the message
pretty clearly anyway. She had always been more of an action girl,
preferring to demonstrate her feelings in preference to declaring
them, and so far, he had made no protestations about her frequent
demonstrations.

Charlotte towelled off her workout sweat and
pulled on a t-shirt and shorts over her gym suit. Toby loved to
come and watch her workouts but they tended to clash with his many
trainings for the three different football teams he played for.
They had also quickly realised that it was a waste of time for
Charlotte to train after his practices just so he could watch her
spinning in the air with very little clothes on, so Charlotte now
coincided her training with his own, always finishing earlier so
she could get in a good ten minutes of watching him on the field,
which never failed to put her in a good mood at the end of each
day. Her father had bought an old car - emphasis on the old, which
translated to no air-conditioning - for them to share. After almost
an hour parked in the sun, it was a furnace that could not even be
cooled by driving with all of the windows down. Charlotte was glad
to be able to park under a tree at the oval where Toby was
training.

She was the only spectator today, which was
not all that unusual. Parents rolled up for the games each week,
but they were all a bit too old at seventeen and eighteen for
parental audiences at training as well. There were often other
girlfriends or younger players who liked to watch the older guys
practice, but never a real crowd of any sort, more like a half a
dozen people on a busy afternoon, tops. Charlotte sat on the bottom
seat of the spectator stand, flinching as she stretched her legs
out in front of her, rolling her shoulders as the familiar ache
began to set in. She might need to take tomorrow off, the pain in
her shoulder feeling just that small step beyond stretched, more
akin to injury. Toby spotted her and gave her a quick wave which
she returned with a smile.