My Brother's Shadow (7 page)

“Hey, daydreamer,” a voice says.

We rejoin the world and find Luzie standing in front of us. Luzie and Angelica.

“You wanna play a game?” Luzie asks. And I
do, I want to play a game. I want to play a game with other people. I want to play a game.

The game we play involves magnets, which, until someone convinces me otherwise, I believe are magic. Well, they are, aren't they? How do you get two things that are not sticky to stick to each other? Magic. How can you drag one piece of metal around by another piece of metal without attaching them in any way? Magic. How can you push something away without even touching it? Magic.

So the game involved magnets. Luzie's got all these magnets that look like little pebbles. You have to place them on the lines of a special felt board without letting any two magnets touch each other. That sounds entirely dull. It's not.

We played all break time. I played all break time. I played all break time with my friends.

My brother casts a long shadow; thawing is a
slow process.

Slowly, slowly, rays of warmth were breaking through and moments of happiness were cracking the ice.

My tears had frozen. My laughter had too. But last night was the first time I'd laughed since before. My laughter is beginning to thaw but my tears already have.

Tears are strange. Strange because we have sad tears and happy tears, but they're always when the world is too much to bear, an overflow of our emotions, our joy and our sorrow leaking out.

I'd love some happy tears.

It was Art today. Always Art on Friday afternoons. We were making models of fruit. I'm not sure why. We'd already made wire frames; we've been working on them for weeks. Now it was time to cover them.

Papier-mâché. Have you ever done papier-mâché? It's brilliant. Simple and brilliant. You turn soft, bendable, rippable paper into something hard. Some people had to go round school asking all the classes if they had any old newspapers. Some people had to mix up the glue with a bit of water to make a paste. The others, me included, read and waited.

The boy was in class today and in my group. Me, the boy, Luzie and Gemma. We had to have groups to share the pots of paste. School's strange like that. Groups and lines and classes and partners and teams. Does the rest of the world work like that? I guess it might. Can't we just be me and you and him and her, each ourselves, each one of us “me” and no one else?

I think the boy reads. I know he won't or can't talk. But he listens, he understands. He responds with a flash of his deep pools of magnificent gray. Does he read? I think so.

He stared intently at a book on forests and jungles. I thought for a moment, while he stared at the page, maybe that's where he's from, like Mowgli in
The Jungle Book
. But then I remembered his rags, not fur and vines, but ragged old clothes. He didn't get those in no jungle. And besides, there isn't a jungle near my school.

When the newspaper was gathered and the paste was mixed, we all got our frames. Mine's a banana; the boy's is a banana too. Poppy and Hanaiya handed out the newspaper. Dev snatched a whole stack from them and started quickly tearing little shreds, dipping them in the paste, then sticking them hurriedly to his … apple?… orange?… I'm not sure.

Poppy'd nearly reached my table when she stopped.

“Well, what's this then?” she said, holding up a sheet of old and crumpled news, the rest cascading to the floor, feathers drifting out of the sky.

Mr. Wills looked up from where he was working, helping someone who wasn't in on the day we made the frames. “What is it, Poppy?”

“ ‘Gang Member Found Dead,' ” she started to read.

I froze again. I froze. And I'm back, the cold air chilling me, frosted carpet crunching underfoot.

“ ‘Police are investigating the suspicious death of a teenage boy …,' ” Poppy intoned.

I step towards his room, Moses's room, listening to the silence.

“ ‘… found by family members yesterday afternoon.' ”

I reach out. My hand pushes the door. It slowly creaks open.

“ ‘The investigating officer' ”—a face flashes in my mind: mustached, wide-mouthed Inspector Runcorn; questions run through my head, questions
he asked in hours and hours of interview—“ ‘has stated that no possibilities are being ruled out at this stage of the inquiries.' ”

The door's wide open now and there he is lying as I found him, cap forwards, a mess of blood.

“ ‘MOSES WHITE'S FAMILY' ”—and she said this in capitals—“ ‘continues to be questioned as to the circumstances surrounding his death.' ”

A mess of blood and a shadow reaching out, casting itself over my life, my brother's shadow.

“POPPY!” Mr. Wills roared, halting the reading and breaking the spell. “Stop that this instant!”

I leapt up. I ran, pushing past Poppy, through the door, and once again threw up in the girls' toilets.

I didn't go back into class. No one tried to make me. I sat alone in a cubicle.

A hesitant knocking. A quiet voice.

“Kai.”

I stayed silent.

“Kai, it's all right—Poppy's an idiot,” Luzie said.

Still my mouth stayed shut.

Rustling and the sound of hands slapping down on the cold floor; then Luzie's face appeared at the bottom of the door. She was lying down. She stared at me. I stared.

“Kai, do you wanna talk to me?”

A single tear appeared.

“Or Harry's waiting outside.”

No one made me go back to class. And no one could make me talk.

Thawing is a slow process, especially if someone sticks you back in the freezer. No one could break the ice now. No one but me.

Floating in through my window, he came again
. It's funny that he floats; he has wings but he doesn't use them.

The wounds in his arms had broken open. Thick, dark blood dripped down, dousing my duvet in a flow of red. I didn't mind; it was warm, it was Moses.

I just stared for a long time. Rivulets of blood crept under the duvet, washing against my skin, soaking into my too-short pajamas.

“Tiny?” he said after long minutes, hours, days, weeks of staring.

I nodded. A small nod, my head left hanging on my chest, too heavy to rise again.

“My tiny girl.”

I nodded the same nod, shaking warm salty tears I didn't know were there from the end of my nose. Tears and blood mingled in a familial sea of sorrow, washing across my bed.

It's too much
, I thought.

“It's too much,” I said.

Quiet again, I watched the blood swirl as I shifted my legs.

“Tiny,” Moses the angel said, drawing my eyes away from the bloody bed and up to his face. Smiling eyes pierced. “It
is
too much.”

I continued to stare.

“That's why you've got to let me go.”

“Let you go?”

“Let me go. You're ready.” Moses whispered the last two words.

“I'm ready,” I said.

Before Moses was an angel, Mum woke me up every morning, a cup of tea in hand. Every morning,
mind you. She hasn't made me a tea in bed since that day.

And then, this morning, Saturday, tea. Its steam rose from the windowsill like snakes disappearing into undergrowth. And my mum sat at the end of the bed in the same place, exactly the same place where Moses had sat the night before.

“Morning, my sweet,” Mum said.

She smiled at me. I smiled back. She handed me my tea. I took a sip. She'd forgotten that I like sugar. I didn't tell her.

I hadn't told her about the day before either, about Poppy and the old newspaper. I didn't tell her now. I didn't tell her about Moses.

“I've got some good news, Kai,” she said.

I nodded, taking another sip.

“They've got me a job interview, the job center.”

I nodded again.

“Nothing big, I might not get it, but … but I wanted you to know I'm trying, petal.”

“Thanks, Mum,” I said.

She smiled. I smiled. She got up, smoothing down the duvet covering my legs, took several paces towards the door, then stopped as if she'd just remembered something.

“Have you got any homework?” she asked. That's another thing she hasn't done since before.

She really is trying.

“Let her keep it up,” I whispered as she left.

Write a review of your favorite book. Make sure you include:

I will do this homework. I will do this homework because I already have a favorite book. I already have a favorite book and I want to talk about it. It's time to talk about it. It's time to let go. I'm ready.

But what if people laugh? What if everything goes backwards? What if Shadid and Luzie and even the boy think I'm mad? Because I am mad.

No, the boy won't think I'm mad. And everyone else …

I'll give them all a chance. I'll be involved. I'll be me. For the first time in forever and forever I'll just be me and I'll say what's inside. Everything that's inside.

I read my review in class. I read it fast. I read it without looking up from the page, crinkled and creased in front of me, my hands shaking.

It was hard at first. My voice was high and faltering. A tear, just one, escaped my eye. But then I steeled myself.

That's brilliant, isn't it? I steeled myself. I made myself into steel. Nothing could hurt me. I was cold and hard like metal.

Of course, I wasn't. Inside I shook and fluttered. I saw in my mind my class, friends and ex-friends alike, laughing and laughing. I saw Mr. Wills ripping up my report. I saw myself crumbling to dust.

But I held my voice steady. I stopped my hands shaking. I read word after word after word until they all flowed out, until everyone heard what I had not said before, what I'd never said, what had made me
the freak
.

And when I stopped no one laughed, no one spoke, no one even breathed.

I still did not look up from my page.

A sniff broke the silence, then a voice. “Thank you, Kaia,” Mr. Wills said. “Thank you.”

There was silence for a moment more and then
something I didn't expect—clapping. Not the riotous clapping of a class of eleven-year-olds, but a soft, gentle clapping. And it felt in that moment that they'd reserved this clap just for me.

I looked up.

I looked at Mr. Wills. He was dabbing his eye with a tissue.

I looked at the class, who looked at me, looked at me like I was something new, not something old and forgotten.