A/N: Warning for mentions of underage prostitution.
"Wait! Tyler!" Jody called, sprinting down the stairs and almost knocking Archie into the bannister. "Sorry!"
"Jody!" Charlie exclaimed, looking shocked as Jody whizzed past her, narrowly avoiding a collision. Peering back at the older girl over her shoulder, Jody opened her mouth to apologise but decided against it when she remembered what she'd discovered just the day before. Charlotte Morris deserved no apology, especially not from Jody Gray.
"What's wrong, Jodes?" Tyler asked from in front of the office as he pulled on his blazer, regaining said girl's attention.
Looking away from Charlie, Jody ran over to him and grabbed his hand, receiving a questioning eyebrow from him. "Do something for me," she requested, squeezing his hand. Scanning the lobby and realising that they had an audience, as always, she tiptoed and whispered, "Ask the other reps if they know a Thomas and Ella," into his ear.
As she pulled away, he pressed his lips together, giving her a pointed look. "Are you scheming again?" he questioned quietly, sounding concerned. "Remember what happened last time?"
She didn't bother denying it; he knew her way too well to believe that. "I'm not doing it for us this time," she replied truthfully. "I'm not being selfish. I promise."
He nodded, smiling down at her. "Okay, I'll ask," he relented, his eyes flitting towards their joint hands.
"Err, thanks," she responded, dropping his hand like it was a hot brick and staring down at her feet. How embarrassing. Ever since Ella had forced her to acknowledge that Tyler liked her, she'd been growing more lax about touching him even though she knew that she couldn't allow their feelings to displace their friendship.
"They're not even trying to hide it anymore," Floss 'whispered' to Taz, openly gawking at Jody and Tyler as Mike exited the office, telling Tyler to go and get into the car. Despite her embarrassment, Jody managed to force herself to look at Tyler and wave him off.
"Jody, can I have a word please?" May-Li called, and said girl spun around to see her carer leaning out of the doorway of the office.
"What about?" she inquired warily, wondering what she'd done now. Well, other than 'expose' Ella as a prostitute, of course, but that was old news.
"Just come into the office."
Glaring at Floss and Taz who immediately made themselves scarce, Jody proceeded to follow May-Li into the office. "Yeah?" she prompted, feeling like she was in there for the millionth time that month.
"I've been watching you and Tyler these last few days," May-Li began, closing the door behind Jody, "and I've noticed some... changes. I should've told you this earlier but in-house relationships aren't allowed."
Oh. Now she chose to tell her, over a whole year after Jody had first developed a crush on a fellow housemate. What had she been waiting for? The opportunity to catch an 'in-house' couple going at it?
"Yeah, well, we're not in a relationship," she informed matter of factly, her eyes following May-Li as she sat down in her desk chair, "so you don't have to worry about moving one of us like Ella's carers moved her."
"Ella voluntarily moved here, Jody," May-Li said, leaning forward. "No one forced her."
"So she would've moved here if those rules didn't exist?" Jody countered, crossing her arms. May-Li merely sighed, proving Jody right. "Thought not. She misses her old care home, you know, and she broke up with her boyfriend. Can't she move back there?"
"I'm afraid she can't, not as long as her ex still lives still there."
"Why not?!" Jody demanded, her temper flaring. "They're over for good; they know it's never going to work out between them!" Well, at least Ella did.
"Two young people who've been in a relationship can't live under the same roof," May-Li stated calmly. "It's against the rules. No matter how sure they are that they'll never get back together, there's always the risk."
"But it's not fair!" Jody complained, her voice increasing in volume. "The stupid rules don't make any sense! What's the point of banning in-house relationships in the first place?!"
"Frankly?" She nodded, wanting to hear the adults' reasoning. "To prevent teen pregnancy."
Oh. She might've known. It still didn't make any sense, though. "What, so girls can't get pregnant if they don't live in the same house as their boyfriends? That's bollocks! It happens to girls who aren't in care all the time!"
"That's true but the chances are dramatically reduced. Two teens from different care homes have twice as many eyes on them. They'll be less likely to engage in sexual activity at all."
May-Li spoke as if contraception didn't exist. It was somewhat embarrassing. While Jody was uninterested in sex, at least at this point in her life, it seemed unfair that carers imposed rules on people who could lawfully have sex to prevent them from being able to do it. Mike and May-Li liked to go on about how they tried to treat care kids like any other but it was all talk and no action (literally).
"No offence but Ella managed to sneak her boyfriend in here at least once without you and Mike noticing!" she spat, recalling Ella's blatant lie about not inviting a boy over and how May-Li had fully believed it.
"I actually confronted Ella about that shortly after you mentioned it the first time and she admitted it. Since then, Mike and I have been keeping an eye out for that sort of thing. That's why I noticed the way you and Tyler have been behaving around each other lately."
Jody rolled her eyes. May-Li had noticed her and Tyler's non-relationship but was still the none the wiser regarding the real in-house relationship going on right under her nose. Not for long.
"Well, Alex nearly got Charlie pregnant and you haven't kicked either of them out!" she blurted out, her eyes widening almost instantly after she finished. The words had just flown out of her mouth, much like the word vomit Cady Heron had described in Mean Girls. She had to stop watching Candi-Rose certified movies.
May-Li looked back at Jody in astonishment. "Did Charlie tell you that?"
"No!" Jody answered quickly, panicking. There she'd gone and opened her mouth again without confirming her claim first. While Charlie had to have been the one who'd taken the pregnancy test last week, a notion that May-Li had seemingly confirmed, there was no evidence whatsoever that Alex was involved. Had she learnt nothing from the Ella incident? "No, she didn't. I was just going off what Ella said that time you called the four of us in here." She sighed. She had to get Charlie and Alex off May-Li's mind ASAP. "Look, I know that it looks like me and Tyler are... yeah... but we're not. We're just best friends."
May-Li nodded, her face betraying no emotion. "Alright. You've assured me that there's nothing inappropriate going on between you and Tyler so I'm going to trust you and leave it at that."
Nodding numbly, Jody grimaced and exited the office without having to be asked to. Passing Charlie on the way to the lounge, she hoped against hope that May-Li wouldn't confront the sixteen-year-old naturalist about her unsubstantiated claim. Her hopes were dashed when she heard the office door open before May-Li called for Charlie much in the same manner she'd summoned Jody earlier. If her friendship with Charlie had somehow survived up until now, it was going to be over before the day was out. She considered going back into the lobby and saying something to get her soon-to-be former friend out of unnecessary questioning when her phone beeped. Giving up as Charlie went into the office, she sat down next to Finn on one of the sofas and wasted no time in opening the message from Tyler.
The Boland House rep says he lives with a Thomas and used to live with an Ella. The information cost me. He's like a male Floss.
Well, that was quick but impressive. She chuckled at the thought of a male Floss, momentarily stealing a glance at said girl who suddenly looked interested in her fingernails. Typical. Some things would never change around here, Floss' Jyler shipping and watching being chief among them.
Thnx. I'll pay u back x
By the time she realised that she'd added a girly kiss on the end of the message, it was already too late to do anything about it.
.:. QK .:.
Mere hours later, Jody found herself peering up at a huge detached house which strongly resembled Elm Tree House, her former children's home, with its cheesecake coloured walls and dark brown window panes, wondering if the interior of the house also bore similarities to said house. The uncanny likeness made her feel like a newly minted nearly nine-year-old care kid all over again, right down to the butterflies rearranging her insides, and if she didn't know any better, she would've thought she'd travelled back in time. The voices coming from the garden, maybe belonging to a couple of teenagers, snapped her out of her reverie, and she finally rang the doorbell.
The door opened not seconds later to reveal a clearly bored-to-death teenager. "Yeah?" he asked, chewing on some gum just like Ella often did. Huh. Maybe it was a Boland House tradition.
"Is Thomas in?" she questioned, peering into the hallway to see that the resemblance to her former children's home ended there. If anything, the hallway looked more like the lobby in Ashdene Ridge.
"Ross!" the teenager barked, making Jody's eyes widen. "Get down 'ere!" Ella missed this? The girl was crazier than she looked. Jody had learnt the hard way that Mike and May-Li disapproved of shouting, especially when there was no cause for it, even though she still shouted on a regular basis for no good reason.
"What is it?" came a much younger voice just before a boy around Floss' age appeared in Jody's line of sight, behind the teenager. She blinked; he looked vaguely familiar but she couldn't put her finger on it.
"Where's Tommy?" the older boy drawled in an accent that was rarely heard in Pottiswood. Not that she'd ever been anywhere that wasn't Pottiswood - barring council-funded day trips - ever since she'd moved from Birmingham. "I ain't seen 'im since lunch but this girl's lookin' for 'im."
Ross shrugged, stepping closer to the doorway and craning his neck as he squinted at Jody. "Aren't you the girl Tyler brought to the dinner last year?"
"Who's Tyler?" the teenager asked, rubbing his eyes. "Wait- I don't care." Jody watched on in bewilderment as he just walked off down the hallway and Ross took his place.
"Yeah, that's me," she answered, picking their conversation right back up as if the stroppy teenager had never been there at all.
"So you're the reason Tyler asked me about Thomas and Ella," he deduced, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "If you want to know where Thomas is, it'll cost you."
"No way!" she exclaimed, closing the zip on her bag. This guy was definitely male Floss; their names even rhymed. "I still have to pay Tyler back."
He smirked, leaning in the doorway. "Not my problem. Guess you don't want to know where Thomas is."
She rolled her eyes. If this kid thought she was going to pay up like some desperate loser, he was wrong. She could easily ask one of the carers about Thomas' whereabouts. But where were the care workers? On her way up the drive, she'd seen that the blinds of what she assumed to be the office were open but that there seemed to be no one in there.
"Ross?" someone spoke from behind and Jody turned around to see an older, dark-haired boy she instantly recognised as Thomas standing there, holding a bunch of 'lifelong' shopping bags. "What's going on?"
Ross groaned. "You couldn't have waited five minutes? I was this close to getting some serious money out of her!"
"Are you Thomas?" she implored, although she already knew what the answer was. Even though she'd only seen him once, and a couple of weeks ago at that, she remembered him as though it'd only been yesterday.
"Err, yeah," he replied hesitantly, his eyes darting between her and Ross. "I've seen you before somewhere... Am I in some sort of trouble?"
"No," she responded, letting out a laugh. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Ella. I live in the same care home as her."
Thomas tightened his grip on the shopping bags, looking as if he'd been about to drop them, and nodded, motioning for her to go inside. "Ross, take these bags to the kitchen and ask Eddy to help you put everything away."
Ross glared at Jody as they walked past each other - she on her way inside and he on his way out - but she ignored him, stepping into the hallway to see that there was indeed no one inside the office. Thomas followed her in, gesturing towards a small sitting room.
.:. QK .:.
"Is she okay?" Thomas asked quietly, sitting down on the sofa across from the one Jody was sitting on. He didn't have to clarify who he was talking about.
"Yeah," she responded, looking around the room. It was subtly reminiscent of the quiet room at home but it didn't carry that same feeling of being under the watchful eyes of Mike and May-Li - in fact, there seemed to be no adults present at all. She wondered if Boland House were attempting something akin to the home alone stint she and Tyler had experienced in Elm Tree House. "She doesn't know I'm here."
"Oh," he let out, appearing to be disappointed. "Well, why are you here then?"
"I came here to ask you to do something," she informed tentatively, knowing he wouldn't like what she was about to request of him and rightly so; it was a tough ask. "Is there any way you could move out so that Ella can move back here?"
To her surprise, he didn't come out with an immediate refusal or look angry or anything like that. "Does- does she want to come back?"
Oh. Ella hadn't actually told her she wanted to move back to Boland House per se but what she had said was as good as, right? "She wishes she could," she answered carefully, licking her lip. "She told me this was home."
"Yeah, we both got dumped here when we were nine," he said, smiling to himself. "Then we were both fostered for a while before being put back here. You know how it is - people don't really want to foster teenagers."
She nodded sadly at the bitter truth. The last Ashdene Ridge residents to have been fostered were Billie and Toni, both ten at the time, and Archie, who was currently nine, looked like he was going to be on his way out soon.
"We've been here ever since, well, until she moved out," he continued, sighing. "The thing is, this is home for me too."
"Yeah, I get that," she told him understandingly. "But she really needs to move back here. The kids at my care home, they... bully her."
"What?!" he hissed, suddenly looking angry. "Why don't your care workers stop them?"
"The others only make their comments when our carers aren't around," she stated, feeling a little intimidated by his abrupt change of demeanour. If he found out that she was the root cause of Ella's pain, he'd probably go berserk. She wasn't scared of him - she could take him in a fight - but brawling with another care kid after going to his children's home was a one way ticket to an eternity of grounding and revoked pocket money.
"What comments?" he interrogated, leaning forward. "She never usually lets people walk all over her. In fact, she's sometimes the one doing the walking." She raised an eyebrow. She'd only seen that side of Ella once, back when May-Li had questioned them about the pregnancy test but other than that isolated incident, she didn't even try to stand up for herself let alone dob others in it.
"They all think she's a prostitute," she admitted quietly, unable to meet his eyes.
"What!" he spat in barely concealed disgust. "Why?"
"Because some guy gives her money, down in the local park."
Thomas scoffed, running his hands through his hair. "Wait," he began, his eyes lighting up. "Middle-aged, bald, sunglasses?"
Jody blinked rapidly, surprised by his accurate description. "Err, yeah."
"He's not her client!" he protested, rising to his feet. "And she's not a prostitute! He's her dad's lawyer!"
She just stared up at him. "Lawyer?"
"Yeah," he replied, sounding frustrated. "He pays her to keep her mouth shut about who she is."
"And who is she?"
He sighed, holding his hands up. "It's not my place to say. You should ask her."
She nearly shivered. Just who was Ella Mansfield that she was paid regular cash sums for her silence?
A/N: Thanks to CharlieSMarts12 for the review.