Michael

 

The moment Carrie Wells stepped into my office five months, six days and four hours ago, I knew she was one beautiful package of trouble.

She dropped herself into the seat opposite, sitting just as she is right now, with the same world-hating scowl on her pretty face, the same hunch of her perfectly sloping shoulders, and the same nervous tap of her right foot. She told me back then, just as she will today, that she doesn’t give a fuck about anything.

She doesn’t give a fuck about claiming assistance and applying for college.

She doesn’t give a fuck about the fact she’s less than a week away from being homeless.

She doesn’t give a fuck about the latest foster family she’s run ragged these past few months.

Carrie Wells has a chip on her shoulder bigger than the file of case notes with her name on the cover. She has a wildness about her, and if those feral looks of hers could kill, I’d be a dead man right now, along with half of my colleagues in this building.

Her long black hair is glossy and thick, even though I’m sure it rarely sees a brush. The sprinkling of freckles over her nose give her a softness at odds with the rest of her appearance. Her teeth are surprisingly perfect given the generally dishevelled state of her.

They say she’s from Romany descent, although little is known about her actual lineage. She offered to read my palm once, then cackled when I handed it over.

I don’t know why she comes here. Half of me wishes she wouldn’t.

Half of me.

The other half is in the pits at the knowledge that this is our last official session. In four days’ time she will turn eighteen and her funding here will cease. I will refer her to other agencies, of course, but I doubt she’ll turn up.

For all my efforts over the past few months, I’ve failed her. My words have been for nothing, my time has been fruitless. Carrie Wells will leave my office today in a far worse position than she was when she first stepped foot in here. Eighteen and soon to be on the streets. A failure of the system.

Who knows where she’s going to end up.

I’ve got twenty minutes to make the last five months count, but she’s barely even looking at me.

“How was your week?” I ask, as though I think she’ll grace me with an answer.

A shrug. That’s all she gives.

“How are things with Rosie and Bill? Did you apologise for the carpet?”

“I tried.”

I take a breath. “You tried? Good. And what did they say?”

“Rosie gave me that prissy smile of hers. Bill said nothing.”

She’s wearing the same filthy boots she soiled their new cream carpet with. She tugs at the laces absentmindedly. There’s a trail of mud through my office showing just how well she learned her lesson, but I don’t care about that. Cleaning the floor isn’t my job.

Carrie Wells is.

I’m a community support assistant for a non-profit organisation handling disadvantaged youths, and this gem of a girl is my client. One of twenty I’ve currently got on my books, and the only one that makes my heart race.

She shouldn’t.

On paper she’s still technically a minor with a history of substance abuse and behavioural issues. On paper she’s a bad kid who doesn’t want help from anyone.

But that’s not true. If it was, she wouldn’t be here. At least that’s what I like to tell myself.

“They’re gonna throw me out on my birthday,” she says. “The minute I turn eighteen I’ll be out of there.”

“Maybe if you tried again… offered another apology…”

She sneers at me like I’m a total fucking imbecile. Like I have no idea how the world works.

She’s right. I have no idea how her world works. I have no idea how it would feel to grow up in a world where no one gives a shit about you. Without a family.

“They’re dicks,” she snaps. “I hate them.”

“You don’t hate them,” I begin.

“I do hate them,” she insists.

“Rosie and Bill are good people, Carrie. They care about you.”

“They don’t give a fuck about me.” She stares me right in the eye and I feel it in my gut. “They hate me. They’ve always hated me.”

She strikes like a snake, launching her skinny little body at my desk in a heartbeat. I have to fight to keep my composure as she learns right over, my stance easy and non-threatened even though my heart is pounding.

She tugs up the sleeve on her grubby bomber jacket and shoves her wrist in my face.

“They did this to me.”

They didn’t. I know they didn’t.

Someone was definitely responsible for the yellowing bruises on her pale skin, but it won’t have been Bill and Rosie. Those bruises on her wrist have been a constant throughout her file.

Rumour has it they’re self-inflicted, but I’m not so sure on that either.

“Bill and Rosie did this to you? Is that what you’re telling me?”

She sits back down. “Gonna call the cops?”

“Is that what you want?”

“They wouldn’t do shit if you did.”

She’s right about that. My agency called the police out ten times in a twelve-week period when she first landed on our books. Ten tall tales, ten instances of accusations with no substance to back them up. Her account of events changes every five minutes, just as they would today if I pushed her on them.

I fell into the sob-story trap myself on day one, even though my colleagues told me I was being played. I wasn’t the first, and I sure won’t be the last. The girl is difficult, but she’s compelling. Her wildness is addictive.

I breathe through the silence as she examines her grubby nails. I wait patiently until she speaks again.

“Bill wants me.”

“Wants you?”

“He looks at me.”

“Bill wants what’s best for you,” I insist.

“He wants to fuck me. You do, too.” Her eyes bore right through me, and I don’t move. I don’t look away, not because she’s right – which she is – but because playing her game is the last thing she needs from me.

I’ve wanted to fuck her ever since our first session when her pouty little mouth sneered at me and told me I was just another useless cog in the useless fucking system.

I’ve wanted to bend her over my desk and fuck some manners into the snarky little bitch ever since she spread her legs in that very same seat and asked if I was hard for her. Asked if I wanted a go.

Asked if I knew she was wet for me.

Carrie Wells is a beautiful package of trouble, just like I said.

We have CCTV in this room. One false move and I’d be out of the job I’ve dedicated the last fifteen years to.

And I wouldn’t make one false move. Of course I wouldn’t.

Couldn’t.

I’m waiting for it – the stream of obscenities as she loses her shit and tells me I’m disgusting. That I want to smell her. Want to taste her. Want her to rub her tight little pussy in my face.

I wait for her to tell me I’m an asshole and she never wants to see me again, that my help isn’t worth shit.

But today she doesn’t.

It’s the breath she takes. The shaky little rasp of air that sets my nerves on fire.

It’s the way she looks at her boots and not at me.

“They really are gonna throw me out this time,” she whispers. “I said sorry, too. I mean, I’ll be alright, I can take care of myself, find myself someone to bunk with, I just… I like my room there. I feel safe.”

“Apologise again,” I tell her, but she shakes her head. “Tell them how you really feel.”

“No point.”

One false move and she’ll storm away and I know it. One stupid comment and she’ll be out and away from here long before our remaining fifteen minutes is up.

I should ask her the standard questions. Tick the right boxes. I should be professional, just as I have been every other session up until now.

But I can taste it. The tiny little crack in her beautifully plated armour.

“Who really hurts you, Carrie?” I ask her, and those green eyes crash right into mine.

“Who do you think?”

“Tell me,” I insist, willing that just this one time she’ll finally be honest.

She fiddles with her grubby fingernails. “You think I do it to myself. Everyone thinks that.”

My skin prickles. “Do you?”

She shrugs. “I trampled mud across Rosie and Bill’s posh carpet. And I put that hair dye in with Rosie’s washing. I did it on purpose, all of it. Maybe I hurt myself too.”

“Why did you do those things?”

“I wanted them to be angry. I wanted to hurt them.”

“And what about now? Do you still want to hurt them? Do you want to hurt yourself?”

“Maybe.” Another shrug. “No.”

Make or break. I take an audible breath. “This is it, Carrie, last chance saloon. Five months you’ve been coming here, and for what? Tell me how I can help you. Let me help you. Why come here every week if you aren’t going to let me do anything to help?” I sigh. She says nothing. “Just tell me this, what do you want?”

“I want you,” she says, and this time there’s a guarded honesty in her eyes, a burn that matches the one I feel in my gut whenever I look at the wild creature across from me.

There’s no snide smile on her mouth. No arrogant cock of the head. No fidgeting. Nothing.

My mouth is dry as a bone, and my cock is a fucking traitor to everything I stand for. Everything I believe in.

“You’re why I come here and you know it,” she says. “I wanted you since you saw my bruises and called the cops even though everyone said you were a jerk for believing me. I wanted you since you got angry they’d hurt me. You were angry, I saw it. And then you were angry with me, and I liked that too. Not angry like Bill and Rosie, not angry like that cop who came here and took my stupid statement. Angry like real angry. Angry like you wanted to hit me worse than any stupid bruises on my arms. But you didn’t give up.” She pauses. Breathes. “That’s what I’m doing here.” She uncrosses her legs and lands her muddy boots right back on the carpet. “And that’s the only thing I wanted to say. That and thanks for trying. See you around, Mr Warren.”

She’s up and out of her seat before I’ve collected my words.

“Wait…” I say, but she holds up a hand. “Carrie…”

But there are only a trail of muddy boot prints in her wake.

My office door swings on its hinges behind her and there’s already a pair of nervous eyes waiting on the other side.

I welcome in my next appointment and try to brush Carrie Wells from my mind.

We’re done. Finished. I did everything I could. More than I should have.

Session closed.

She’s not my problem anymore.

If only I could believe that were true.

* * *

Carrie

 

I keep my head down as I stomp away from Michael Warren’s office. They all hate me in here, all the pen-pushers and the snotty bitches behind the crappy reception desk. All their smiley rainbow welcome signs mean nothing in this place, not if your face doesn’t fit.

They want the nice kids who speak when they’re spoken to and say thank you whenever anyone throws them a scrappy crumb of nothing.

They want nice kids like the one outside Michael’s office, with big sad puppy dog eyes and a smile for everyone. Those are the kids that get good homes.

Kids like me, not so much.

But I’m not a kid anymore. In a couple of days I’ll be kicked out of the latest home I was palmed off on. Rosie and Bill will be glad to see the back of me, and I don’t blame them. Not really.

They’re good people. Kind.

I just… I can’t stop myself shoving my shitty attitude in their faces until they break.

It doesn’t matter who they are, they always break in the end.

I’ve been in fourteen homes since I turned ten. Fourteen sets of new parents telling me to make myself one of the family. But I never do.

I don’t belong in anyone’s family. I don’t belong in anyone’s little Lego house or their neatly-mown back garden. I don’t belong on any grinning school photos or in the county netball team.

I don’t belong in this little shit hole of a town, with its backwater villages where everyone is in everyone else’s business.

My ancestors were travellers, roaming the wilds and making a living from the land. I feel it in my blood – the urge to dance through the countryside and make my own way in a little wagon somewhere. Maybe I’ll find my own kind, just as soon as I’m old enough to make my own way.

That’s what I’ve been telling myself – that this is destiny. That I won’t miss Rosie and Bill, not even a bit. That they mean nothing to me, just like none of the others meant anything to me. Not even Emma and Frank all those years ago who bought me the doll house and helped me set up all the pretty furniture Frank made me.

They thought it was me who hit their baby daughter, but I didn’t. It was Eli, their eldest, but nobody believed a little liar like me. Problems – that’s what they said. I had problems. Too many problems for Emma and Frank and their nice little family.

That’s why I scratched his car to shit with one of his screwdrivers. Problems.

That’s why I spat in Emma’s face when she tried to say goodbye. Problems.

And that’s why everyone ditches me when I get too much. So many problems.

I should have been nothing but a problem to Michael Warren too. Hell, I was a problem enough for the two colleagues of his I saw before him. They lasted weeks before they felt intimidated. But he was different.

I could shout in his face and he didn’t turn me away. I could tell him what I thought and he didn’t scowl and sigh and mutter about problems, problems, problems.

He could be angry, but he never kicked me out.

He could want to smack the attitude right out of me, but he didn’t lose his cool.

I like Michael Warren, and I wish I’d told him before now, before our last ever session. Who knows, maybe a man like him could have actually helped a problem like me. Maybe if I’d have listened to him I wouldn’t be kicked out of Rosie and Bill’s.

Sometimes I even thought maybe he’d be the one I couldn’t break, no matter what I said or what I did. No matter how far I pushed him, he was always there next week, at our scheduled time with my stupid dumb file on his desk and his stupid dumb questions trying to help me.

Maybe he really would have helped me, if I’d have told him the truth. If I’d have told him who really hurts me.

But it’s too late for all that now. At least I told him how I felt about him, just once.

I hate this shitty little town with its shitty weather. Grey drizzle turns to full on rain and none of the shops want me in them, so I slip into an alley down the side of the bank and wait for it to ease up, cursing the fact these boots have holes in them and I threw the ones Rosie bought me back in her face a few months back.

I don’t need your fucking boots. You can’t fucking buy me, I’m not for fucking sale.

The memory makes me cringe.

She didn’t see how I ran to my room and cried harder than she did. She didn’t see how sorry I was after, even though my stupid mouth wouldn’t let me say a word.

I whistle as a guy in a scummy brown hoodie walks on by. I know him. Eddie something.

He stops, squints at me, then smiles. He knows me too, by reputation if not by introduction.

“Carrie, right?” he asks and steps on in.

I don’t have time for stupid hellos. I hitch my boot up against the wall, playing it as disinterested as I possibly can. “Got a smoke?”

He nods and pulls a pack from his pocket. Shitty menthols, but beggars can’t be choosers. I take one and light it off his lighter.

“Got somewhere to be?” he asks and I shake my head. “Want to come for a drink?”

“I’m underage,” I tell him. “Nowhere’s gonna serve me. Not without ID.”

He takes a long drag. “I’ll be buying. You look eighteen.”

His eyes are all over me, but that’s nothing new.

“Few days and I will be eighteen,” I tell him. “And then I’ll be away from his shitty place and off on my own.”

He laughs but there’s no malice in it. “Sounds good to me, this place is a shit hole.” He holds out his arm but I shrug it off. I really don’t want to be touching him. He looks the sleazy type, but a drink’s a drink if he’s the one paying.

“You’re buying?” I clarify.

“Sure am.” He pulls out his wallet, a battered thing on a chain. “Got paid today, did some overtime.”

Just as well. I’m in the mood for a few, just to drink this awful day with its crappy goodbyes away. “Alright,” I tell him, “lead the way.”

And he does.

I ignore my shitty phone buzzing in my pocket. I ignore the angry messages Rosie and Bill will be leaving me.

I ignore everything, because tonight Eddie something is going to buy me drinks and look at me like he wants me.

It’s the best thing on offer to a problem girl like me.