Something You Are by Hanna Jameson

respond. ‘Thanks.’
    â€˜Come join us.’ The girl rolled on to her back.
    â€˜No thanks, I’ve got to find someone.’
    I backed away from the door and the redhead raised herface from the mattress again. I reckoned that they had a combined age of about thirty.
    â€˜Kyle?’ she said.
    I came back to the doorway. ‘Yeah, do you know where he is?’
    Behind her the blonde rolled on to her side, one hand playing with her bra strap and the other between her legs.
    â€˜Yeah… in the other room. Probably tripping out.’
    â€˜Thanks.’
    The blonde gave me a coquettish wave as I went across the hall to the other door.
    I kicked it open.
    â€˜What the fuck?’
    A young lad with chiselled features and long hair was doing up the zip of his jeans.
    One of the naked girls sitting on the bed screamed and pulled the duvet up around her chest. The other one stared at me, a needle sticking out of her forearm and a belt between her teeth, either too shocked or too stoned to react.
    â€˜Kyle?’
    I saw the guy’s eyes dart left and right at the sound of his name.
    He glared. ‘Who the… who the fuck are you?’
    â€˜I’m here about Emma Dyer.’
    I clocked the more responsive girl swiping something off the bedside table that looked like a clear packet of pills. But in the moment I took my eyes off Kyle—
    I dodged the fist heading for my face and aimed a kick at his shins. I went to kick him again when someone grabbed me from behind. The screaming so close to my ear and the sharp pain across my neck made the room blur. Whoever it was, they were surprisingly light as I whirled them around. It wasonly when I threw them off my back and turned to land a blow that I realized it was one of the girls.
    She was all ribs and backcombed hair.
    I averted my eyes but the room was empty, save for the other girl slumped against the headboard. The belt dropped from her mouth and she leant her head sideways against her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine with an expression that said: Like I give a fuck. She had a tattoo of a heart on her pelvis, where the bones jutted out. I’d walked in on Harriet shooting up once, and her face had been the same.
    A door slammed downstairs.
    I looked back at the girl on the floor, livid.
    â€˜Are you a policeman?’ she said, shaking, an arm across her chest. ‘Because the drugs aren’t his, I swear.’
    â€˜I’m not the police, fortunately for you.’
    â€˜Oh…’
    She shifted backwards a little and glanced at the door. It occurred to me that she thought I was going to rape her, and my lip curled at the assumption. She was pretty, but in the most tasteless of ways, like you might catch something. The insides of her arms were yellow with bruising.
    â€˜Fuck’s sake.’ I raised a hand to block the sight of her body and left the room. ‘I hope he’s fucking worth it.’
    On my way downstairs I came across the boy who had let me in, meandering around the hallway sipping tea from a chipped white mug.
    â€˜Oh, hi!’ he said. ‘You find Kyle?’
    I resisted the urge to tip the tea over his head and sat down at the foot of the stairs, my hangover catching up with me again.
    â€˜No… he left.’
    â€˜Oh, bugger.’ The boy nodded.
    I didn’t attempt to hide my annoyance. ‘Yeah,
bugger
.’
    â€˜You want some tea, man? You look wiped.’
    I wanted to reply scathingly, but my irritation dissipated a little in the face of the boy’s demeanour.
    â€˜Sure, all right.’
    The boy smiled and walked unsteadily into the kitchen.
    â€˜What’s yer name then, man?’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen you round here before.’
    â€˜Nic.’
    â€˜Cool. I’m Joe.’ He poured water into another broken mug and swirled the tea bag around, squinting in the weak light from the window. ‘You work with Kyle? You look kinda older than