Chapter Text
In Rey’s new foster home, she has a sister—an older sister. She’s Rey’s first sibling.
Her name is Bazine and she’s nineteen, which is almost eight years older than Rey. She works at the Mobil in town and does a lot of overtime, so she isn’t home a lot. Rey still waits up for the first few days hoping to glimpse her when she comes in, but she doesn’t have any luck.
Almost a week goes by before Rey sees Bazine. It’s after school, and Rey is sitting on the old blue couch in the living room watching cartoons when the front door opens behind her. It’s too fast to be her foster dad—Unkar is kind of slow and he’s always out—and Rey’s heart skips a beat when she turns and sees a strange girl with short black hair.
She’s pretty: tall and thin and pale. She’s wearing a blue and red polo and skinny jeans. Rey stares as she shuts the door behind her, and she looks at Rey.
“What are you looking at?” she snaps.
Rey shrugs, sinking down into the couch. Bazine rolls her eyes and storms upstairs.
| | |
Unkar says that Bazine still lives in the house because she can’t afford to move out. She pays part of the mortgage and goes to community college part time, which is part of why she’s never home.
Rey thinks it’s a ripoff to pay to live in the house: it’s small and old and the air conditioners don’t work well, so it’s miserable trying to sleep at night. There isn’t ever any food in the house, and only one of the burners works on the stove. Plus, the bedrooms are like closets.
Bazine’s bedroom is at the end of the hall near the stairs and Rey hears her come in late a couple times. She wants to be friends—hopes to be friends. Making friends isn’t going so great at school. She waits up and listens, trying to drum up the courage to go talk to her, but every time she decides it isn’t worth it. She might make her mad again.
Rey is watching TV on the couch one Friday night when Bazine comes in. She peers over her shoulder and quickly scoots aside when Bazine stomps over.
She’s dressed up: her dress is slinky and black and really short and she’s wearing lots of dark makeup. It’s streaming down her face like she’s been crying, and Rey thinks that’s too bad. She collapses beside Rey, arms crossed, and glares at the TV. She smells like the sickly-sweet perfume Rey’s last foster mom wore.
Bazine sniffles. “What are you watching?”
“Um… Fairly OddParents.”
“Ugh.”
They sit in silence for a long time. Rey glances at Bazine a couple times: she smiles at some of the jokes, sometimes wiping her eyes on the narrow edge of her wrist. It’s nice. They don’t have to talk. It’s nice just sitting together.
“Where are you from, Rey?”
Rey blinks. Bazine isn’t looking at her, but she definitely spoke.
“Concord,” Rey replies.
“They moved you all the way up here?”
“Yeah.”
Bazine raises her eyebrows. “Weird. I’m from Manchester.”
“Oh, that’s cool.”
“Yeah.” Bazine sniffles and glances at her. “There are a lot of rich Dartmouth kids around here. Lots of snobby rich people.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It sucks.”
It’s quiet again. Bazine doesn’t say anything else, and after a few minutes she gets up and goes upstairs without a word. Rey watches her disappear before turning back to the TV. Well—at least they talked. That was nice.
| | |
Rey is lying in bed one Friday night watching TikToks when she hears the front door open. It’s late—three AM—so her heart skips a beat. She slowly sits up and listens in and is relieved when she hears Bazine’s laugh float up the stairs. Unkar is out so there isn’t anyone to stop a break-in. Rey has already decided she’ll climb out the window and risk the fifteen-foot fall to the ground.
It seems like Bazine is in a good mood, so Rey hops out of bed and opens her door. Maybe they can watch TV again.
“Ben—stop!”
Bazine laughs again. Rey shuts her door and blinks at it, then hurries back to the bed. Oh. Bazine must have a guy with her.
Their footsteps come upstairs with more giggling. Bazine’s shoes click across the floor and Rey tries not to listen as her bedroom door opens and closes. Rey sandwiches her head between two pillows, blushing furiously when she hears a loud moan. Thin walls. That’s awkward. She doesn’t want to hear this.
She opens TikTok to drown out the sounds. It’s mostly Bazine moaning, but Rey hears the bed rhythmically creak, and that’s somehow much worse. She squeezes her eyes shut and curls into a ball and tries to pretend it’s something else—anything else. Her belly is tight and hot and she isn’t happy with that and wishes it would go away. It’s so awkward. Don’t they know she’s home and right next to them?
It goes on like that for a while. Rey considers going for a walk, even though it’s not a good neighborhood and it’s three AM, but then she hears a different sound. It’s low and deep and breathless—it’s the guy. She hasn’t heard him the entire time.
Rey opens her eyes. She furtively lets the pillow fall back from her ear, curious about the way he sounds. It’s different. It makes her skin tingle.
But he doesn’t make a lot of sounds after that. The bed stops moving and Rey is a little embarrassed. She covers her ear again and shudders and closes her eyes. Gross. Hopefully this isn’t going to happen a lot.
| | |
It happens a lot.
The guy—Ben—comes over again Saturday and Sunday and Rey spends an hour glaring at her ceiling while Bazine makes her loud cat noises and the bed creaks. Her heart beats a little faster when she hears Ben, but she does her best not to actually listen to him, and just pretends she’s trying to figure out when they’ll be done. They do it more than once sometimes.
When Rey closes her eyes, she still hears the echo of Ben’s low, breathless groans, and it makes her uncomfortable. She ignores it until Monday night, when she decides to get up and have a glass of water. Then they’ll realize she can hear them.
She makes sure she shuts her bedroom door with some force. They’ve been done for a while, so it’s not like she’s interrupting. She waits by her door for a minute before heading downstairs for her drink. That’ll show them. It’s awkward listening to… that. She knows about it—she’s not some dumb kid—but it’s icky hearing it.
It’s still and quiet and dark downstairs. Rey trips over a big black sneaker at the bottom of the stairs, and she turns and kicks it away with a huff. She pads out to the kitchen with her arms crossed, still glowering over her shoulder.
She bumps into a big, warm body.
Rey stumbles back a step. She blinks, then looks up as the body slowly turns to face her in the darkness.
There’s a red glow high above her and she smells the cigarette a second or two later. It’s a man—a big man, very tall, with big shoulders—and he isn’t wearing a shirt. He has a phone in one hand and plucks the cigarette from his lips with the other, and he exhales as he looks down at Rey. She stares up at him, head tilted back. His hair is black and his eyes are dark and he’s very tall.
He flicks his ashes in the sink and raises his eyebrows. He has a black tattoo on his forearm.
“CatDog,” he says.
Rey stares. She thinks of the way he sounds when she hears him through the wall, and she’s so embarrassed that she can’t move or speak.
Ben takes another drag of his cigarette, just kind of watching her. He exhales the smoke away from her and absentmindedly flicks his ashes into the sink, and he nods, eyes on her shirt. Rey can see all his bare skin in the edges of her eyes. It’s embarrassing. She’s trying not to look, but it’s right there, and it’s shiny.
“Your shirt is from a show called CatDog,” Ben says, slow, like she’s dumb. “Did you ever watch it?”
Rey can’t move. No, she hasn’t watched it.
Ben smiles when he pulls from his cigarette again, still watching her. This time he turns and puts the cigarette out in the sink, and he tosses it in the trash from where he’s standing. He pats the top of Rey’s head as he passes her, and she smells the smoke he breathes out. His hand is warm.
“Good talk,” he says.
Rey doesn’t move until she hears Bazine’s door open and close upstairs. She shivers, peeking over her shoulder to make sure he’s really gone. Her skin tingles from her head to her toes.