Chapter 8
Stef's eyes bulged upwards to Lena as she placed her plate of food on the table hard, not caring how loud the sound was.
"Callie?" Lena repeated when she hadn't gotten a direct answer right away. She watched as Stef immediately made her way over toward her. "Callie, honey. Is that you?"
Callie grabbed hold of the metal wire that connected the payphone to the receiver. She knew she'd probably have to speak to them, but it didn't make it hurt any less. "…Hi, Lena. Can I talk to Jude?"
Lena put the phone on speaker so that both her and her wife could hear. "Um, sure," Lena said awkwardly. "Can we talk for a second first, please?" she tried.
Callie closed her eyes.
This was exactly what she didn't want.
She didn't need them to explain.
Knowing that they left her there was enough.
She figured that finding out the reasons why would hurt her even more.
She didn't need more of their words screaming in her mind.
She'd had enough.
"I just want to talk to Jude, Lena. Please? I promise I won't call you again," Callie assured them. "Just two minutes. I swear."
"Honey, I'm going to let you talk to him. But we need to explain something to you first. We–"
"You guys don't owe me an explanation," Callie was quick with her response.
The teen wasn't sure how much her foster mothers knew… if they even knew about the kiss… if they only thought that she ran away for no reason; but she didn't think any of that mattered now. "Look, I know I messed up. Just please, l need to talk to my brother–"
"Callie, sweets, how are you?" Stef interjected quickly. The blonde knew that her daughter had no desire to let them speak. The cop in her was just worried that they wouldn't get any valuable information out of her if they didn't ask any real questions. She was also trying to stall, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get a trace of her location if she had been calling from a burner cell. And in order to do that, the conversation had to last at least two minutes.
Callie stayed silent. But it didn't seem as if she hung up, which was good.
"Did something happen at Girls United?" the blonde asked her.
"No," Callie answered.
"What about Amanda? Is she still with you?" Stef tried to speak slowly and pause longer between questions.
Lena couldn't tell what her wife was doing. She was beginning to feel impatient and wanted to tell her that she was asking all the wrong questions.
Stef eyed her wife in a way that told her that she knew what she was doing and she needed to trust her.
"Yes?" Callie replied with obvious confusion.
"Okay, good. Are you two safe? Are you staying with someone?"
"None of that matters," Callie muttered softly before she removed the phone from her ear.
"Of course it matters. It matters to us," Stef voiced genuinely.
Callie shook her head, not wanting to be lied to by this woman anymore.
"Hey, we still care about you. We need you to know that. Please, Callie. Tell me where you are so that–"
Callie tightened her lips and shook her head. "I'm not disposable?" Callie interrupted sarcastically. "I'm not worthless?" she continued. "Isn't that what you said?" the teen asked in softened tone. She was trying not to cry but her emotions came off clearly in her voice.
Stef froze for half a second when she realized exactly what Callie meant by it. "…C-Callie," she tried to explain but was cut off when Callie slammed the phone on the receiver, immediately ending the conversation between the two of them.
"I'm not disposable," she repeated to herself.
And that felt like the biggest lie she was ever told.
What the hell did it say about her since she was the one stupid enough to believe it? she wondered.
"How'd it go?" Amanda asked her when Callie came out of the booth.
"They weren't going to let me talk to him," she concluded.
"You were on the phone for a while," Amanda pointed out. "What'd they want?"
"Nothing," Callie answered in a casual tone. "They just wanted me to give up where I was, so they could send the police to lock me up again... What else would they want?"
Callie continued to walk as far away from the phone as she could, with Amanda walking right beside her.
"If you ask me, your better off on your own anyway. People like that are only there for you when you're doing good. The second you mess up… they realize they want nothing to do with you."
"I know," Callie answered honestly. "That's why I wanted to talk with my brother. Just in case something happened, he knew how to find me… I'm going to have to find some other way to do that now." The girl let out an exaggerated sigh.
"We need to find jobs," Amanda said out of nowhere. Callie was trying to get used to her constantly and randomly changing the subject every time they talked.
"We already tried that. No one's going to hire us. We have no address, no degree, no adult to sign the forms. It's pointless," the brunette said matter-of-factly.
Amanda sighed. "Well, begging isn't getting us anywhere. Is it? …Practically every single person ignores us like we don't even exist and we barely get enough to buy a bagel sometimes."
"You're right," Callie mumbled but then she got an idea. "Maybe we can go to the grocery store and help people put their groceries in their cars. I've seen people do that before. Sometimes they get tips…"
"Like 50 cents!" Amanda blurted out. "What the hell are we going to do with that? Pay for the bus to get us to and back from the store? No," the redhead shook her head. "We need to do something else. Because what we're doing isn't working. We have nowhere to go!" the teen felt the need to remind her.
Callie knew that she was right. They were sleeping on the roofs of corner stores since they couldn't even risk going to a homeless shelter from fear of the police picking them up. Juvie seemed like a godsend right about now.
Why did I ever leave Girl's United? Callie tried to remember.
"Something like what?" the brunette asked as she furrowed her eyebrows at Amanda. "Something like…" she paused when she realized what the girl probably meant. "Prostitution?" she asked in a low voice so that no one else could hear.
"I don't know," Amanda said. "Maybe?"
"No," Callie answered sternly. "I can't do that," she shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. She'd rather go to juvie. That she was sure of.
"I'm sorry, I forgot you were sitting on that high horse of yours," Amanda voiced sarcastically. "My bad."
"No, you don't understand," Callie felt panicked all of a sudden at the thought. "I really can't do that."
"You can't or you won't?" Amanda wanted her to clarify. "You hardly want to beg. I feel like it's me doing all the work and you're just here along for the ride. That's not fair either."
Callie stared at Amanda angrily. She couldn't believe what the girl was asking her to do.
But she also couldn't help the fact that she was being made feel guilty and a lot of what Amanda was saying was true. She hated begging and it showed. She never liked the idea of getting something for nothing.
"Look, all I'm saying is that we can make a lot of money real quick. We can get out of here. Get on a bus and go to a different state, get decent jobs… We can SURVIVE. That's really what all of this is about, Callie. Survival. Don't you want to try and make it on your own?"
Callie tried to think of something else.
Anything else that could help them do just that, without losing the tiny bit of dignity she had left.
But their options were obviously limited.
"Callie?" Amanda pressured.
"I… don't know," Callie mumbled in response.
