Undone (10 page)

The woman did most of the talking. She was very brisk and businesslike, as if talking to me was just a formality. Which it was. They clearly hadn’t checked his emails, because they had no idea about the video. I was relieved; the thought of Kai’s private life being raked over by the police (and leaked to the papers, no doubt) was unbearable. And if the papers did manage to get hold of the story, it’d surely only be a matter of time before the video found its way onto the Internet. That’s all anyone would think about when they remembered Kai, and God knows what it would do to his parents. Louise must have kept her mouth shut, and I followed her lead. It helped that the police seemed to be going through the motions, as if they’d done this a thousand times before and it wasn’t getting any more interesting. They mentioned that Kai had left a suicide note, saying he was sorry and not a lot else. I guessed the McBrides must have given them permission to tell me that. Maybe they thought it would be comforting.

I answered most of the questions with one-word answers, and they didn’t exactly try to grill me. The McBrides must have told them he was gay, because they asked me about his sexuality. I just shrugged and told
them we never talked about stuff like that. The female officer raised an eyebrow at that but she didn’t accuse me of lying or anything. Mum didn’t bat an eyelid, which made me wonder if Mrs McBride had told
her
too. The whole ordeal lasted no more than twenty minutes, but it was exhausting. Part of me
wanted
to tell them, because then they’d be forced to do a proper investigation and find out who was responsible. But I knew that Kai would have wanted me to keep quiet, and what Kai wanted was the most important thing of all.

The police left, saying that they’d be in touch if they had any more questions. Mum showed them out, then came back up to my room and perched on the edge of my bed, in the exact same place she’d sat three days ago. I relived it over and over again – the moment when she shattered my whole world.

She wasn’t crying when she came into my room, but I could tell that tears were lurking just below the surface. She was wringing her hands together and fiddling with the cuffs of her jumper – a gesture I recognized as one of my own. I don’t remember ever seeing her do that before. I wonder if I picked it up from her or she picked it up from me.

She perched on the edge of my bed and I pulled
out my headphones, only realizing how loud the music was when I could still decipher every word. ‘What’s up? Mum . . . are you OK?’

She tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear and nodded. She didn’t say anything though, which is when I really started to worry. ‘Mum? You look . . . is it . . . is there something wrong with Grandad?’ He’d been battling colon cancer for the past few years and no one had expected him to survive this long.

Mum shook her head and put her hand on my knee. The gesture did nothing to comfort me; it only ramped up the panic. ‘No, darling, your grandad’s doing fine. The latest round of chemo was pretty rough, but he sounded cheerful enough when I spoke to him yesterday. Well, as cheerful as you can expect, anyway.’

Then she started talking about how we’d go up to visit him in a few weeks and how much he enjoyed seeing me and Noah. ‘He says you two are better than anything the doctors could ever give him.’

‘Mum?’ I was wondering why the hell she was going on about Grandad when she’d just said he was fine.

She looked at me and her eyes were filled with something that scared me. She’d never looked at me like that before. I’d seen it before though – albeit in a
smaller, more measured way. When she watched some tragedy unfolding on the news. When my aunt came to stay after her husband left her. When Noah’s guinea pig died.

It was pity.

‘Oh sweetie, I’m so sorry. It’s Kai.’

And I
knew
. She didn’t even have to tell me. I knew.

But she told me anyway.

I screamed. A raw, animal sound that I would never have imagined could come out of my body.

Then I blacked out.

When I woke up he was still dead.

I nearly chickened out of going back to school the day after Fernando worked his magic on me. Mum was extra nice to me at breakfast; she made me a cup of tea and poured cornflakes into my favourite bowl. I sipped the tea and watched the cornflakes turn into a soggy milky mush.

By some unspoken agreement Mum gave me a lift to school. She chattered the whole way, trying to keep my mind off the ordeal ahead. I couldn’t stop staring at my reflection in the wing mirror. I was looking at a complete stranger – a blonde stranger who went to school with her mum. What had happened to the blackhaired girl with her satchel slung over her shoulder, meandering down the street arm in arm with her favourite boy?

We arrived just as the bell was going for register, so there was hardly anyone milling around outside. I
think Mum must have planned it that way.

She hugged me and told me everything was going to be OK. I didn’t believe her.

It was brutal. If I thought it was bad showing my face the day after people saw the video, it was a hundred times worse now. Everyone looked at me when I walked into my classroom. Mr Donovan’s sad eyes looked extra sad and his droopy moustache looked extra droopy. He squeezed my shoulder so hard it actually hurt.

I kept fiddling with my hair, running my fingers through it, tucking it behind my ears. I wanted to know if people were staring because of Kai or staring because of the stupid new look. Probably a bit of both. I kept my head down, not wanting to catch anyone’s eye. Not wanting to see the sympathy or curiosity or disdain plastered across their faces.

Time crawled by. I went to the canteen at lunchtime because it seemed sensible to get the hard stuff out of the way first. My hands were shaking as I paid for a packet of prawn-cocktail crisps. No one was sitting at the table –
our
table. I sat in my usual chair and focused every last bit of my attention on the crisps. I forced myself to eat slowly, determined to brave it out for as long as possible. I kept my gaze away from his empty
chair. Then I folded the packet into a tiny little square and stood up to leave.

I could feel them watching the whole time. All of them watching, judging. But I refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing they were getting to me.

The route to the bin took me past Team Popular’s table. They were quieter than normal too, or maybe that was just my imagination. Max and Louise were nowhere to be seen, so the ranks were depleted.

Lessons were just about bearable because I didn’t have an empty chair next to me, reminding me of what was missing. Kai had been in the top set for everything, so we hadn’t shared any of the same classes. Somehow I managed to focus on equations and past participles and neutrons, taking notes and trying to keep my handwriting as neat as possible. Two teachers kept me back after class to tell me that they were ‘here for me’, like I was supposed to find that reassuring. A couple of girls came up to me to say they were ‘sorry’, which was nice of them, I guess.

History was the last lesson of the day. I’ve sat next to Jasmine James in history for two years and I’ve known her ever since primary school. She’s a nice girl, but we’ve never really been what you’d call ‘friends’, not exactly. More ‘people who talk to each other in a friendly manner but would never dream of seeing each
other outside of school’. Mum had long since given up on nagging me about being friends with her.

When I sat down next to Jasmine she said a timid ‘hi’, followed by, ‘It’s good to see you,’ then finished off with, ‘I’m really, really sorry about Kai.’ It was the first time I’d heard his name all day and it very nearly broke me. I thanked her and stared straight ahead, hoping she’d get the hint without thinking I was a hideous bitch.

At the end of the lesson she rummaged in her bag (the type of rucksack you might take on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition) and handed me an envelope. For a bizarre, heart-stopping moment I thought it might be from Kai, but then she said, ‘I . . . er . . . wrote this a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been carrying it around because I wasn’t sure when you’d be back. Um. OK, see you tomorrow, bye.’ Then she scarpered.

The envelope was dog-eared and the blue ink that my name was written in was a little smudged. It was a card with white flowers on the front. The words ‘With sympathy’ were embossed in gold flouncy lettering. Inside Jasmine had written, ‘Jem, I know we’re not exactly best friends or anything, but I just wanted you to know that if you ever need to talk to someone, or just sit beside someone and not say anything, or copy someone’s homework, I’m available for any of these
things. And if you don’t want any of these things, that’s OK too. I’m sorry about Kai. He was a good person.’ She’d written her mobile number at the bottom of the card.

The classroom was empty by the time I scrunched up the card and envelope and put them in the bin.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the sentiment, and the effort she’d gone to; I just couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t deal with this girl who I’d never really made an effort with, other than to talk vaguely about the TV we’d watched at the weekend. I couldn’t bear the thought of her being nice to me.

The first day back was the hardest, but every day after that was awful in its own way. Being at Allander Park without Kai was suffocating. I sank into some kind of altered, robotic state where I didn’t let myself
feel
. I went from lesson to lesson to lunchtime to lesson with one thought in my mind: the letters. I just had to get through each day until I could open his next letter. That was all that mattered.

I saw Louise a few times, but she was always with Max – never the rest of Team Popular. If I’d been a better person I would have stopped her and asked how she was doing. But I didn’t. And it would have been pointless because anyone with eyes could see she
wasn’t doing well. She didn’t look good. She’d lost weight, her roots were really bad and she just looked washed-out and exhausted. She didn’t swan down the corridor like she used to; she just walked like a regular person. I felt bad for her, but there was nothing I could do to help her, just like there was nothing she could do to help me. We had to bear our grief alone. At least she had Max. All I had was Kai’s letters, but I clung to the thought of them so tightly there was no room to think of anything or anyone else.

Mum and Dad gradually stopped treating me like I was going to break and by mid-December they’d even started nagging me about chores and homework. Noah stopped watching me carefully and being so quiet and polite. And he never missed an opportunity to tell me he hated my new hair (‘
You don’t look real!
’), but it was oddly reassuring that he’d resumed his role as annoying little brother.

Everyone thought that things were getting back to normal. They had no idea that normal didn’t exist for me any more.
Normal
had been smashed on the rocks beneath the bridge.

I opened the second letter two days before Christmas.