𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐨𝐲 | robin buckley

(3) scoops ahoy!

SOMETIME IN 1973, SAM'S DAD HAD AN AFFAIR. It was all very hushed up and her mom pretended that she didn't care so she could keep him but everyone knew and they'd call her desperate behind her back. Sam would hear them and guess that her mom hadn't heard simply because of the way she didn't react but in reality, she definitely heard everything they said.

It was stupid really that Sam's mom was the one to get ridiculed even though she'd been completely faithful and it had been her husband to go behind her back and fuck another woman. Sam often felt protective over her own mother even after she'd been thrown out. She'd loved her mom more than her dad and she still remembered being the favourite before she'd been so determined to screw it all up.

The woman that her dad had fucked was called Maisie and she was actually very nice. They lived in Hawkins (they being her family) and were religious folk who made cookies for every bake sale and donated to charity, only when they knew people would hear about it.

Before the affair they'd had two kids, twin boys. Really they're irrelevant. The outcome of the affair however was not irrelevant and was technically Sam's half sister. Her name was Peony, like the flower. She had brown hair, very long and rather thin. She had blue eyes and a sweet smile, a gap between her teeth.

For a while, Sam hadn't known Peony at all. She'd known of her existence but not much else. Sam hadn't really wanted anything to do with the family that she knew absolutely nothing about and she could tell everything about them was a charade. Under closed doors, Sam had seen her parents marriage fall apart so no matter how many fake smiles she'd seen, Sam knew they weren't as happy as they pretended to be.

However in the year after Sam had graduated (1984) they were in need of a babysitter and Sam (already working two jobs) said no. That could have very easily been the end of that story however two weeks after her denial, Maisie contacted her again.

Sam found it very strange and at first she wondered whether her dad had set her up. However Maisie didn't have any weird intentions she just stated that she believed Sam should be given the chance to know her half sister. Anyway, they could pay Sam less knowing it wasn't necessarily a babysitting gig.

So even though Sam was working in smaller tattoo parlours trying to get her own and making pizzas pretty much every night, she found herself forced to look after this short and sweet girl with a gapped smile once every week.

It wasn't too hard to entertain a kid in the summer. Sam never took Peony to her apartment because it stunk like weed, sweat and takeaway food. But they went to the slot machines and the arcades. Sam pushed her on swings and dramatically pretended to fall off the roundabouts or played dead when she went down the slides. She found she was pretty damn good with kids.

They'd go on walks and Sam would lift Peony on her back when her legs got tired and she'd let the young girl colour in her tattoos with markers while they sat in cafes. Sam found it amusing even when the colour didn't wash off for days. She ended up seeing the girl more and telling Maisie she didn't need paying. Maybe this had been the moms plan all along.

Peony was pretty much a dream to be around. She told stories and drew Sam pictures when she came to collect her. She was picky about what she ate but so was Sam so she couldn't talk. Sam had been worried that Maisie would believe her a bad influence because of her hair and her inked skin, her language (that she hid from Peony) and her attitude but on the contrary, Maisie seemed to like her.

So it was an overall weird situation but one that Sam found herself needing. It pulled normality back into her life after graduation and made her feel as though her future didn't have to be completely void. Kids were never something Sam had considered but she thought even if she was on her own, adoption was an option. Then she didn't need to be lonely, Sam liked that.