Temptation [A Young Writer's Prize Submission]

Trying again

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.

Titus 3:10

That evening, I decided I was going to play truant until the bruises faded: be it two weeks, a month... whatever. Debra would buy it if I threw up a few times.

I was slightly surprised that my foster mother actually endeavoured to speak to me while we were in the car.

"How was school?" she asked, in a clipped tone.

"Fine," I replied civilly; "Didn't get too much homework."

"Did people ask about your injuries?" she enquired. She probably meant to say it noninvasively, but her eyes had a different story.

I shrugged, but was spared from answering when Susana joined us. Thus, the conversation was sharply altered the second she got into the car.

"Hi mum," Susana smiled. "Mademoiselle Loélle just told me she wants me to consider a French university."

"That's really good sweetheart," Debra replied, a little too enthusiastically. "Did she like your essay?"

"She gave me an A/B grade," Susana smiled. "I was two marks off an A, so she wants me to redo it." And off the conversation went. Now normally, it irritated me to have Susana talk so much on the journey home, but tonight it gave me a strange peace. I didn't want to be on the receiving end of another interrogation.

Debra stopped off for some supplies at the local shops, leaving Susana and I in the car. At first, I'd hoped there would be silence, but who was I kidding? My foster sister was determined to make me as miserable as possible.

"Some of the girls are saying Cain beat you up." Did she have to sound so smug about it?

"Well, they're wrong," I retorted.

She appeared not to have heard me. "I never liked him that much."

"That's a blessing," I spoke sarcastically. "He never liked you either." Most of the boys Susana liked ended up the same way - discarded after a few weeks.  For some reason nobody had yet been able to fathom - though her friends never got tired of philosophising about it - Susana got bored with her relationships extremely quickly. Actually, relationships might have been a bit of a stretch - I preferred to call them 'hook-ups'.

"How long have you been friends with him?" she seemed truly curious.

I conceded, with a roll of my eyes: "Since I was nine."

"Now, that's what I thought was strange," Susana mused. "If you've been friends with him almost eight years... and this is the first time you've ever come home looking like that... that's interesting."

I didn't like the calculating way she said it, but I chose to say nothing.

"So either Cain rebelled against eight years of his normal behaviour and beat you up... or someone else did," Susana surmised. My silence was my doom. I should have spoken earlier.

"Drop it, Susana," I said defensively.

"No, this is really, really interesting." Though I couldn't see her face, I could hear the smirk in her voice. "You went out to have dinner - supposedly - and you came back beaten up. How could that happen if you went to a nice, romantic restaurant?"

Damn her advanced studies.

"I think Cain took you somewhere else," Susana suggested. She leaned forward in the seat until her face came between the seats in front. "I think you got yourself into trouble; that's why you got beaten up."