Work Text:
“Fuck off, Siobhan,” is what Sarah says the day her foster mother tells her they’ll be moving to Toronto at the end of the month. She grabs her school bag right after that, and walks out of the house without another word, slamming the door so hard the entire neighborhood’s crockery rattles.
She doesn’t come home for four days.
She spends the first night at Sue Li’s, in Peckham; her dad is usually out of it by 7pm and Sue’s baby sister sleeps on a couch big enough to fit another person. In the morning she meets up with Tyler and Brandon, and they help her get a few bottles of booze from a the shop near Fuller street where the clerk is always smoking behind the counter.
She doesn’t call Tom - he was a useless wanker when they were sleeping together and he’s a useless wanker now. Siobhan thinks Tom was a bad influence, with his drugs and his shoplifting, but she’s never bothered to meet him. On a good day Tom couldn’t be bothered to get off the sofa, nevermind orchestrate a theft from a proper shop. Sarah was always the one who had to get him up and going. He wasn’t rubbish in bed, though. It was the only interest he was willing to pursue consistently.
Sarah spends her second night sleeping on a park bench, wrapped up with Mel and a bunch of blankets, the boys keeping themselves company nearby. She feels like shit the next morning, and shows up at school just long enough to use the showers. She hasn’t got any toothpaste but the whiskey will take care of her breath well enough.
It dawns on her, on the third day, what she’s waiting for. Siobhan’s obviously not trying to find her - if she were at least half of Sarah’s friends would be ringing her asking to get her bitch step mum off their backs. Maybe Siobhan’s busy with Felix, or maybe she’s finally given up. Maybe she’ll just fuck off to Canada and let Sarah stay here. That would be brilliant. Sarah could get a job, officially stop pretending that she gives a fuck about school, live with Tyler or Marly.
She lets herself think about it, imagine the details of how it would work, as she’s lying on the asphalt of the parking lot, straining to see the stars through the noise of the street lights. Her head spins. She should get up, but she can’t. Which is hilarious, for some reason. There are coppers standing over her, by the time she’s done laughing. She spits out “filthy scum,” at them as they try to raise her up. They mumble a few insults back and she can hear the crackle of the radio as they call for back up or a car or whatever.
An ambulance wails nearby, and then there’s a medic shining his torch right at her eyeballs. Somehow, it doesn’t end with them dragging her to a hospital. Which, thank fuck for that because she’s so fucking tired of those places. Doctors are worse than coppers, at least the coppers are honest about fucking you up.
She spends the night in a cell, with a bunch of other bitches that got picked up off the street. She uses the phone call they let her make to call Tom. “Where the fuck are you?” he says, sounding like he’s actually worried. “Fucking Canada, Tommy boy,” she says, and hangs up, laughing.
They give her another phone call. This time they get the number from Social Services and do the dialing for her.
She cries, in the stupid fucking cell, as she sobers up. Her eyes hurt, her feet hurt, there’s a weird taste in her mouth and she doesn’t remember when or what she ate the last time she did. She’s so fucking stupid. Everyone she knows has at least one parent or guardian or caretaker they’re actually related to. Useless or not, their flesh and blood didn’t reject them like Sarah’s did. Her real mum must have known Sarah was defective somehow, even back in the womb.
She can’t go to Toronto. Siobhan’s fucking insane if she thinks that’s going to help anything. If she hates the trouble Sarah gets in now, a week in Toronto and Sarah will probably turn up dead in someone’s back garden. Which will probably be the best solution for everyone involved.
“Well, then,” Siobhan’s voice says, making Sarah look up. Her step mother is standing by the entrance to the cell, waiting for the copper next to her to unlock the door. Sarah hates this most of all. Siobhan’s tired, bloodshot eyes, the way her stupidly perfect hair is in slight disarray, the slouch in her posture, like she hasn’t slept in two days. Sarah hates this more than the shouting matches. She doesn’t want to feel guilty, but she does. The only thing worse than this is Felix, when he hugs her with all the strength in his scrawny arms and looks up at her like she’s broken a promise.
“I’m not going to Canada,” Sarah says, as the copper unlocks the door and beckons her to come out.
“We’ll talk about this at home,” Siobhan says, with disturbingly little steel in her voice.
Sarah comes.
*
Drawing of Sarah by this artist on Tumblr.