Chapter 2

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Their grandmum held open the door as Bernie half-dragged, half-carried Trixie into the house. Emma made her youngest granddaughter drink a mixture of tomato juice and Gatorade powder and eat a plate of scrambled eggs.

"That's a very nice shirt, but I don't think it cost as much as her dress," Grandmum Emma observed.

"I couldn't find her dress," Bernie explained, "Mary stole this out of a closet."

A thump had them both turning to see Trixie face down in her eggs. Emma lit a cigarette and shook her head with a scowl. "Clean her up and get her to bed, she smells like a dockside street walker during fleet week."

"Yes, Grandmum. Goodnight."

As Bernie showered Trixie and put her in bed, she worried about who would watch over her sister next year. She was going to college, while Mary would be in the College Advance Program on a separate campus. Trixie would be left alone with her group of un-friends, several girls and boys who only hung around Trixie because she was like a carnival act.

Bernie knew their grandmum wasn't in any shape to chase her grandchild, the way she once chased Jane all over the city. Their mother had been a late in life child, spawned from a

fling their grandmother had with a merchant marine after her fifth husband died of a heart attack and left her the cafe. Fiercely independent, Emma raised their mom alone, only to find that Jane held double the wild and free spirit of their highlander ancestry.

Grandmum Emma had been forced to close the Sunflower Teahouse and Café after thirty-seven years because she was developing C.O.P.D.. She needed to be on oxygen when she slept, but despite her failing health, Emma refused to quit smoking and having her nightly bourbon. Emma insisted she was not going to give up the quality of her life. Bernie wondered how long her grandmother had left.

As Bernie made a cup of calming tea for herself, she remembered the months after her mother died. Grandmum Emma stayed drunk for three months until social services threatened to take Bernadette and Beatrix away because they were left unsupervised when Mrs. Anderson wasn't there. It was only after a two-week stint in rehab that she stopped drinking as much. Beatrix began following in their mother's footsteps at thirteen, but social services didn't seem to care. The sisters were fed, clothed, housed, and not a burden on the foster care system, so they were left with Emma. It was good that they got to stay together and with someone who loved them, but, in later years, Bernadette often wondered if foster care would have been better because then they could have gotten therapy for what more than one of their mother's boyfriends had done to them.

Staring at the tawny, steaming liquid, Bernie tried not to remember how their mother would abandon them for months at a time rather than have them live with her and her many men. She tried not to think about how it could have been worse, so much worse. But she did, and she was, and now she

was worried her sister was growing up to be just like Jane and would die young because of her own bad choices. Bernie wondered if she would spend the rest of her life raising Trixie's children, the way Grandmum Emma ended up raising them. She needed to get through college as fast as possible because if Trixie had her children at twenty like Jane did, then Bernie only had two years or so before she became an aunt.

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By noon, Trixie still hadn't crawled out of bed, but she vomited repeatedly in the trashcan Bernie left by the night table. Bernie knew because the sound of her sister's hangover misery echoed through the old house. Grandmum Emma was gone to her usual Red Hatters' Sunday Mimosa Brunch, leaving Bernie to care for the hungover teen.

Bernie went in with a tray of dry toast and mint-chamomile tea. "Time to get up, Trix for boys." She malevolently ripped the covers off her sister.

Her sister groaned as she rolled over, "What boys?" As she straightened her legs from their fetal position, she moaned again. "Never mind, I don't remember but my body does... How many?"

"At least three, but there were probably more, you only have three condoms left from the twelve pack you bought for this weekend. Mary's got the video of one set away from them." Bernie opened the heavy curtains, allowing the full power of the noon sun into the south facing room.

"Video?" Trixie hissed like an angry cat and pulled the covers back over her head.

"Evidently, you were the crème filling for the Franco cousins' twelfth threesome."

"They must be counting by times, not girls." Trixie muttered almost too quietly for Bernie to hear. Her sister's arm reached out and groped around for her phone before retreating into the darkness, like a turtle into its shell. Her words were mumbled, "I don't remember so they must not have been very good last night. I'll have to see it. Are you sure they didn't post it somewhere so I could watch it?"

"Yes, Mary put the fear of Mary into them and deleted the video from their phone with the threat to reveal them as having incestuous homosexual tendencies." Bernie laughed as Trixie's head popped out, her eyes wide in surprise before she squinted in the light.

"Why would she do that?"

Shrugging, Bernie answered, "From what we saw, they were screwing you, but they were touching each other more."

"They usually do." Trixie gulped the tea and made a face before she revealed, "It wouldn't be incest, they are only cousins by adoption. Phillip isn't really related to the Franco family; his mom married into it when he was a little kid." She gulped the rest and burped. "Someday they will come out as a couple or join a cult so they can share a wife."

Bernie looked at her in surprise. "How do you know that?"

"Because they love each other but are trying to fit into their uptight catholic family." Giving a smug smirk at her sister's shock, Trixie explained, "I may come off as the brainless school slut, but I listen. I know everything about everyone at Emerald Hills, and I mean ev-er-ry-thing." Looking around the room, Trixie suddenly scowled, "Where's my mermaid dress?"

"Who knows? Maybe somewhere under the sea, Ariel," Bernie taunted.

"Screw you," Trixie complained.

"No thanks, you got screwed enough last night."

Trixie gave Bernie and evil grin. "Enough for both of us. I did everything you wouldn't."

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Monday was the start of senior skip week, so Bernie didn't have to go to school, and she was grateful. Instead, she went to Grandmum Emma's old café and dusted. She checked all the equipment and washed the surfaces. Someday, the Sunflower would be hers. Her grandmother owned it outright and since paying for real estate was the biggest startup cost, Bernie was already three steps ahead on her dream Tea and French pastry shop. Upstairs there was a giant loft, just waiting for her to move in after college. Her grandmum had been married five times, and each time she kept the house until the last, when she got the cafe.

Putting her hand on the brick wall, she could imagine a bustling pastry shop downstairs, while her books and the 1900-1930's antiques from grandfather number three's house waited to welcome her home at the end of each day. Lifting the dust cover, she settled on to a 1920′s chase lounge and stared out the window at the high rises only a mile away.

Bernie could hear the sounds from the Anderson's Garage next door through the thick wall and she wondered when Theo was going to retire and take Shirley travelling like she always wanted. Jared was going to take over the garage someday, it was his dream to restore antique cars and build custom ones. He was grinding through automotive trade school as fast as he could. The sounds of the city lulled her to sleep.

The sound of her text messages woke Bernadette followed by Trixie's ring tone, Girls know how to fight.

She answered on speaker as she scrolled through the messages, she had several from Mary. The first was about an hour earlier. Evidently, Trixie was photographed having sex with three different boys in the back of a limo before arriving at the party so two of their girlfriends cornered her in the bathroom and a fight ensued. There were several pictures on social media from the house party including one of her drinking with another boy, the captain of the basketball team.

Trixie sounded pissed, "Come get me, I'm being expelled over some stupid pictures."

"I'm on my way. Mary said there were other kids in them, drinking," Bernie said as she rushed downstairs and locked the back door before running to her car.

"Well, Principal Nazi isn't expelling anyone but me, not even those two biyatches who jumped me in the bathroom," Trixie hissed. "Oh, lookie lookie, the police are here. Talk to you later." Her sister hung up.

When Bernadette arrived at the school five minutes later, her sister was being dragged out to a patrol car and shouting to the crowd. Bernie hurried to see what was going on and was shocked by her sister's revelations.

"And Principal Nazi is screwing both Miss Horn in the library and Mrs. Collingwood from the English department. Plus, those visiting interns are call girls! Every one of them!"

The car door slamming muffled her shouts as she struggled, wild-eyed, to escape.

"Why are you arresting my sister?" Bernadette demanded. Mary pushed through the crowd to stand beside her.

The cop looked at her coldly, "Underaged drinking and creating a disturbance."

The officer seemed surprised when Mary stepped aggressively toward him and tapped him on the badge with her cellphone. "Then yo rent-a-po-po ass better be arresting those two that jumped her, an' arresting tha other fourteen kids that was drinking at that party. I got their pictures right here," Mary snapped, sounding as ghetto as some of the racist students claimed her skin tone was.

Bernie and Trixie hated them for Mary who said the haters weren't worth her time, but it didn't stop her from using her cousins' slang to scare more than a few of the spoiled elitist barbies of Emerald Hills High School into giving her a wide berth.

"Miss Anderson, Miss Austen, this is a school matter. I'm sorry, Bernadette, but Beatrix is a troubled young woman, I have no choice," Principle Nazimski interrupted.

The officer looked through the photos on Mary's phone. "How did you get these?"

Mary smirked slightly before she answered in a most professional demeanor. "I copied them from the school hangouts chat rooms, as you can see. Trixie wasn't the only minor drinking at the after-prom party. And here is the video of the two girls jumping Trixie in the bathroom as posted by one of their friends before Trixie kicked their butts." Mary glared at Principle Nazimski. "They should be punished too. It isn't Trixie's fault they can't keep their boyfriends on a leash. You can't just protect the rich and popular kids, and only punish the poor, orphaned ones like Beatrix Austen."

The police officer looked at the crowd of angry teens, many holding phones to record the event, then he said to the principal, "Sir, I need you to bring me all the students shown in the photos participating in underaged drinking. She isn't the only one who broke the law."

"I... I can't do that, their parents..." His stammering was interrupted by breaking glass.

The heel of Trixie's biker boot put out the rear window in the patrol car, she screamed out to the crowd. "That's not all, Principal Nazi, I screwed Coach Melbourne in his office and so did half the girls' swim team to keep their spots. I did it so he'd let my sister be on the team. I was fourteen the first time."

Three girls suddenly stepped out of the crowd, and one said, "We did too."

The officers both turned to stare at the principal, who had gone white in the face.

"Just what kind of a high school are you running here?!" One of the officers demanded.

When he didn't answer, the other announced, "We still need those other students, and you and this Coach Melbourne are coming to the station to answer questions."

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Bernadette waited with her grandmother to bail Beatrix out of jail. Finally, they were allowed to see Trixie who seemed exhausted.As they sat in an interrogation room, Bernadette clung to her sister while the lawyer explained that the new district attorney was going to make an example out of the Emerald Hills students. They were all getting the maximum sentence of two months in juvenile detention, and one-year probation to extend past their eighteenth birthdays, if they turned eighteen before the time was up. It was to start immediately. But Trixie would be in juvie for six months because of the fight, attacking Principle Nazimski, and breaking out the police car's window.

She had also been permanently expelled from Emerald Hills High School and had a choice, attend the Charter High School for troubled teens or take her G.E.D. exam and leave school. Bernie was horrified at how unfair it was, but there was nothing they could do; Trixie was going to jail.

"Can... can she at least come to my graduation?" Bernie begged.

Mr. Thornton looked at her with sympathy, "I'll try, honey, but the bail was denied because she damaged a police car."

"What do we need to bring her for her stay?" Emma asked in a quietly defeated way. She and he had taken items to jails many times after Jane had hit puberty.

"I will get you a list, Emma," Mr. Thornton promised. "Come, Ja.. I mean Trixie, it's time to go."

Bernie hugged her little sister, "It's gonna be okay, I'll see ya soon."

Trixie squeezed her back. "I love you, take care of Grandmum. Go to college and rock their world with your talent."

"I'm not going, I'll wait until you're out, then I'll go." Bernie insisted.

Trixie grabbed her face and pressed their foreheads together. "No! You have to go. I'm a colossal screw-up, Mom all over again, but you... you could be someone, sis. Go to college for both of us. I love you."

"I love you too." Bernie wept as Trixie hugged their grandmum, she didn't hear what they whispered to each other. She could only hear the beating of her worried heart as her sister was taken away.