Graffiti Heaven

Chapter Two

Tiana

Tiana wished she’d followed Ash out the window, because as soon as she saw her mother she knew she was in deep trouble.

        A slap landed across her face, the sting bringing tears to her eyes.

        “Do you think I’m stupid?” her mother said, throwing Ash’s boots at Tiana’s feet.

        Tiana placed a hand to her cheek and looked down at them. She’d tried to tell her mother that she didn’t know who they belonged to and that she’d only come home because she’d forgotten a school book, but she was never good at lying.

        “Tell me the truth? Did you bring a boy home?”

        “No, Mum.” When she first started high school her mother had told her that a good Tongan girl didn’t date until she was of a proper age—eighteen—and when it did happen the boy was to ask permission to see her. At thirteen she hadn’t minded the restrictions, the prospect of having a boyfriend not something she thought as real, but three years later she no longer felt the same way. Yet, apart from the waiting, she didn’t mind the rest, but only if it was Ash asking and her parents saying yes. He would court her the old fashioned way, and then after they left school they could get married.

        Sappy - check!

        Stupid - check!

        Naïve - check!

        And another giant check! for being a hopeless romantic, someone who’d seen Romeo + Juliet three times at the movies. Embarrassingly, she’d even imagined Ash as Romeo, and her brother would also be a giant pain in the arse like Juliet’s cousin Tybalt. She knew it was pathetic, but she couldn’t help making parallels between Juliet and herself—just with a happy ending.

        But, did Juliet ever give Romeo a blowjob?

        Another slap landed across her cheek.

        “You’re a liar,” her mother said. “You had a boy in here, disgracing my name, your family’s name. How am I supposed to hold my head up in church when my own daughter brings boys home to do goodness only knows what?”

        Tiana looked up at her mother’s furious face, a heavier version of herself. “I’m sorry.”

        “Do you expect me to accept an apology when you lower yourself to this?” Her mother waved a hand at Tiana’s bed. “I want to know who this boy is.”

        There was no way Tiana would answer that. It wasn’t Ash’s fault; he hadn’t a clue how strict her mother was, a woman who hadn’t been allowed to date until she was twenty-one.

        “Is he a Tongan boy?”

        Tiana shook her head.

        “What is his name? And don’t think you can lie to me again.” Her mother’s words started tumbling out in Tongan, accusations, punishments, and everything that was going to happen, occasionally reverting back to English. “Your brother will drive you to and from school, and don’t think you’ll get to see this New Zealand boy at lunchtime, because so help me God I will know. You won’t even be able to look at him without me finding out.” Her mother continued, flipping between languages, cutting Tiana off before she could respond. Tiana now realised that her mother wasn’t interested in knowing Ash’s name, because what did it matter when her cousin Monika would be grilled. But her mother failed to realise that her cousin was seeing a boy behind her parents’ backs too. So, at least she’d get lunchtime with Ash, otherwise she’d be telling her aunty exactly what Monika had been up to.