by Cat Clarke
I took my note – my suicide note – out of the bedside drawer. What had seemed so reasonable an hour before now looked pathetic. I tore it into tiny, unreadable pieces just in case Mum decided to go rummaging through my bin.
I couldn’t bloody well do it now, could I? I wanted to. So badly. The thought of going to sleep forever was delicious. I was so very tired.
But I couldn’t do it to him. Not now. I couldn’t ignore what Kai had done for me. I wouldn’t let him down like that; I let him down more than enough when he was alive.
I couldn’t get over the timing of it all. As if he knew me so well – every single thing, to the very core of me – that he’d somehow known that today was supposed to be the day. He’d known, even though I’d had no idea. Of course, the rational part of my brain knew that this was stupid, just one of those crazy coincidences that life is filled with. This one just happened to be a lot spookier than most.
I was going to have to wait. Somehow I would have to find a way to get through each day without him. I would be patient and read his letters when he wanted me to, even though the waiting would be complete torture. Maybe the letters would help (and maybe they wouldn’t).
Twelve months. One year. I could survive one measly year, for him. But once that year was up . . . The Valium might be gone, but there would always be another way.
First things first: I had to get my hands on some hair dye.
I blinked against the overly bright sunshine. I was like a hedgehog coming out of hibernation. It was a bit of a shock to see that everything looked the same as it had before. The world had been going about its business while I’d been cooped up in my bedroom. I was on my way to the chemist’s to get the blonde version of my usual black dye when a girl stopped me on the street. She was about my age and rather orange.
‘Excuse me? Can I just ask, do you dye your hair?’
I’d been stopped by them before – the trainee hairdressers prowling the streets for new clients. I’d always ignored them – why spend thirty quid when you don’t have to? But this girl’s hair was gorgeous. It looked natural but you could tell it wasn’t, if that makes sense. I’d thought only people in California had hair like that.
She pointed me in the direction of the salon. They were doing half-price cut and highlights for students, and when I checked my wallet I had just enough cash. It seemed like fate. It seemed like Kai had arranged for this girl (Kayleigh . . . her name even began with a K, for Christ’s sake!) to cross my path.
The hairdresser barely suppressed a grimace when he looked at the state of my hair. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll have you looking spick and span in no time, little one. Fernando will work his magic, I can promise you that.’ I wanted to run screaming from the salon. People who talk about themselves in the third person are at the very top of my shit list, but I gritted my teeth and thought of Kai (and tried to ignore Fernando’s terrifyingly over-tweaked eyebrows). I looked through a book of sample colours, but in the end I said I wanted something like Kayleigh’s. He smiled knowingly. ‘Ooh, our Kayleigh’s the best advertising we’ve got!’ He looked over his shoulder furtively and then leaned in close to me. ‘Shame about the “tan” though, yes?’
I laughed along with him and thought maybe this wouldn’t be complete torture after all. It felt strange to laugh again after so long, but the muscles in my face seemed to remember how to do it. And it felt good. I’d only asked for a half-head of highlights, since that was all I could afford, but Fernando winked at me and said, ‘Don’t you worry, my love, I’ll do whatever it takes to get rid of this, how you say, funeral black, and then –’ he paused to ruffle my lank locks – ‘then I will work my magic!’ I kept on smiling despite the funeral reference. It was out of the question for me to cry in a place called Kool Kutz.
Two hours later I slumped down in front of the mirror, exhausted from Fernando’s incessant chatter. My hair was still wet, but that didn’t lessen the shock. I had been dying it black (much to Mum’s horror) since I was thirteen. My natural hair colour is a nothingy sort of shade – like baked mud. There was nothing remotely mud-like about this – I was properly blonde.
My eyes looked blue. They’ve always been blueish, I suppose, but now they were BLUE. Seriously, piercingly blue. My whole face looked different somehow – less pale, less like someone who’d only left the house once in the last four weeks.
The shock was even greater by the time Fernando had finished snipping away and done his stuff with the hairdryer and the straighteners. He stepped back to admire his handiwork, a look of supreme smugness on his face. ‘Madre de Dios, I am goooooood.’
He wasn’t wrong; he had worked a small miracle. I didn’t look anything like me. To be perfectly honest, it scared me a little. You get so used to seeing the same thing in the mirror every day you stop thinking about what you look like – or at least I did anyway. To suddenly see someone else – someone blonde, for Christ’s sake – is disconcerting to say the least.
‘Ah, Fernando thinks the boys will be knocking at your door before you know it,’ he said as he brushed the hairs from my neck.
‘What makes you think they weren’t already?’
‘Ha! You’re funny. I like you. You can come back anytime!’
How rude.
Everyone was back by the time I got home. Mum was unpacking the shopping, Dad was chopping onions and Noah was stretched out on the sofa. The scene was so perfectly normal that it stopped me in my tracks. I’d been so wrapped up in my own world that I hadn’t given them a second thought. Even when I’d been thinking about them – imagining them finding my body, reading the note – I hadn’t really been thinking about them. I’d been thinking about me.
Noah didn’t even look up when I passed right in front of him; he was in full-on slack-jawed-zombie TV mode. Dad had his back to me. His shirt was looking especially rumpled that day. Mum froze in the middle of whatever she was saying. She had a pack of bacon in one hand and a head of broccoli in the other.
‘Oh!’ Her eyes were wide and the corners or her mouth twitched, as if they couldn’t quite make up their mind what to do next.
Dad whirled round with a huge knife in his hand. ‘Oh my!’
I said nothing. Just tugged nervously at the ends of my hair.
Mum put down the shopping, rushed over and cupped my face in her hands. ‘Oh, Jem! We were so worried when you weren’t here when we got home. Didn’t you get my messages?’ She didn’t pause to let me answer. ‘But now I see why! My beautiful, beautiful girl. What brought this on, eh? Feeling a bit brighter, are you?’ She smoothed my hair down (not that it needed any smoothing . . . Fernando really was some kind of magical hair-transforming wizard).
The truth is, Mum’s comments deserved some kind of snarky response, but I couldn’t even think of one. And I didn’t want to. I settled for blushing instead.
Dad nudged Mum and said, ‘Eh, Cath, doesn’t she look like you when you were that age?!’ Which was just massively creepy.
Mum giggled and bumped him with her hip. ‘I wish I’d looked half as good! No, she gets that bone structure from you.’
I wanted to escape before they started snogging (or worse). ‘I’m going to . . . yeah . . . tidy my room or something.’
Mum tried to hide her delight at this little announcement. ‘Would you like a hand, sweetie?’
I shook my head. ‘No. Thank you. And . . . er . . . I might go back to school tomorrow.’ I hadn’t planned to say those words. I hadn’t even thought about going back to school until the words tumbled out.
Mum and Dad shared a look, then Mum squeezed my arm. There were tears in her eyes, but we both pretended not to notice. ‘Good girl.’ I nodded and left the kitchen before I started bawling too.
Noah did look up on the return journey. His reaction? ‘YEEEEEEEEEUUURGH! What have you done?! You look all fake and . . . weird.’ That made me smile. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from the little smart-arse.
The sight of my bedroom was almos
t as big a shock as my new hair, but not in a good way. It was disgusting. I couldn’t remember the last time the sheets had been changed. There were clothes all over the carpet, four mugs, three plates and seven crisp packets. And the smell was something else.
Every time Mum had come in to try and sort it out I’d shouted at her to leave me alone. And every time, instead of telling me what a snotty little bitch I was, she nodded and left without a word. Thinking about it made me cringe with shame. Things were going to change. I had a year left. I could be a better daughter for that long, at least.
I’d take one day at a time. There were thirty days to get through before Kai’s next letter.
chapter five
My life had started to come undone at the start of the school year, and I didn’t even know it. There was no big flashing neon sign, saying: THIS IS THE YEAR THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING. Nothing seemed different after the summer; the popular kids were still popular (and somehow more tanned and healthy-looking than the rest of us), the unpopular kids were still unpopular. The Ignored were still well and truly ignored. This was my category. I wasn’t geeky enough to be a target. Sure, I got the occasional ‘goth’ or ‘emo loser’, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle.
There was only one new boy. Max. Whenever anyone new arrives you check them out and you try to figure out where they’re going to fit in. Are they someone you might want to talk to? Do you fancy them? Are they one of Them? I had Max pegged from the start. Artfully messy black hair, lazy smile, tall and lean. Good-looking in a generic sort of way. He was one of Them, for sure. As predicted, Max was sucked into the popular crowd with Dyson-like speed.
Team Popular was the name I’d (unimaginatively) given to our year’s so-called in-crowd. There were six of them, seven including Max. I was always watching them, talking about them, analysing them. Kai joined in for the most part, but he drew the line at me talking about Louise; hard as it was to believe, she was well and truly part of the in-crowd.
At the end of Year 10 I’d come up with a new theory: Allander Park was a zoo and everyone in it corresponded to a member of the animal kingdom. I’d taken great care in categorizing each member of Team Popular. (Kai said I had way too much time on my hands, but he still chipped in with his own opinions on the matter.)
Lucas Mahoney was the easiest to categorize. He was obviously a lion. He even had the mane to prove it – possibly with slightly more hair product than the average lion would go for. Blond and chiselled, strutting about the place like the king of the fucking jungle. It was a well-known fact that every girl had to have a crush on Lucas at one time or another. Except me. And any secret lesbians among the student body.
Kai reckoned that Sasha Evans had to be a lioness – she was Lucas’s girlfriend, after all. But it was my game, so I had the deciding vote. To me, she was more like a leopard – all slinky and sexy. Chestnut-coloured hair, perfect body. I hated her.
Stu Hicks was Allander Park’s officially designated joker. He liked to play with his food. Yes, he was that boy – the one who put chips up his nose to make the girls laugh. And they did laugh like they found him genuinely hilarious. He was shorter than the other boys, but wiry and strong with it – majorly into martial arts apparently. I went for a chimpanzee in the end – harmless enough on the outside, but just wait till he bares his teeth. I’ve never quite trusted chimpanzees . . . there’s something sinister about them.
Bugs was the odd man out in Team Popular. Huge and ginger, he was a big slab of meat with orange mould on top. Apparently he was some kind of big deal on the rugby team, but that wasn’t usually enough to make you popular. Perhaps he was the exception that proved the rule? You’d often see the girls cuddling up to him, and the other lads never seemed to mind. They knew he was no competition – not really. I had Bugs pegged as some kind of bear. A pretty useless bear who was long overdue for extinction.
Amber Sheldon – dyed red hair, massive boobs and an idiotic high-pitched laugh that made me think violent thoughts. A brightly plumed, noisy parrot. One that would start pulling out its own feathers if it didn’t get enough attention.
I’d secretly decided that Louise was a snake, but I didn’t say anything to Kai. I had no good reason for my choice, other than the fact that I really, really don’t like snakes. And it would at least go some way to explain how she’d managed to slither her way into the Year 11 in-crowd despite being in the year below.
So that was Team Popular. As far as I was concerned, they were an alien race intent on taking over the world with their shiny hair and in-jokes.
Within a couple of weeks Max and Louise were going out. This was something new; Louise had never had a proper boyfriend before, unless you counted that brief dalliance with Stu last year. Why bother having a boyfriend when you could have someone new every day of the week? Why choose one flavour of ice cream when you can alternate between vanilla, coffee and chocolate (or even go for a couple of different flavours in the same bowl . . . Gross, I know, but if the rumours about Louise were true then she’d been there, done that). Kai hated the fact that everyone thought his sister was a slag, but there was nothing he could do about it because it happened to be true.
Max and Louise specialized in public displays of affection that even put Lucas and Sasha to shame. It was vomit-inducing. I accidentally saw them in an empty classroom one day, and all I’m going to say about that little scene is it would definitely not have made it into a PG movie. And I probably watched for a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary. Not because I’m a perv or anything. It’s like when you’re driving down the motorway and there’s been an accident and there’s police and ambulances everywhere. You know you shouldn’t look at the person on the stretcher. Nothing good is going to come of it, but you’re curious. What kind of person wouldn’t be curious?
Anyway, I didn’t tell Kai about the little performance I’d witnessed. There are some things a brother doesn’t need to know about his baby sister, and this was definitely one of them. Besides, he heard that kind of talk from everyone else. According to Kai, Louise was really falling for Max. She talked about him non-stop at home. Kai seemed happy about it; he thought Max was good for Louise. I translated this as: ‘Thank God she’s not shagging everything that moves any more.’
So that was how things stood. The ranks of the chosen ones had swollen by one, Kai’s sister was no longer the school bike, and the rest of us were just going about our boring little lives as normal. And yes, I’m well aware that it sounds like I was more than a little bit obsessed with the lives of people I never even talked to. I was kind of obsessed. But what else was there to do? School was boring; Kai was my only friend. It was like my hobby or something. A very weird, very sad sort of hobby that was made so much easier by the new addition of a Year 11 common room to Allander Park. The common room’s a crucial part of the head’s strategy to try to make us act like grownups. I mean, he didn’t use those exact words at the grand opening ceremony at the start of the year, but that was pretty much the gist of it.
There was one tiny change I haven’t mentioned, but in the interests of full disclosure I probably should. There had been a subtle shift in my friendship with Kai. We still talked on the phone almost every night after school, just in case we might have missed something crucial in each other’s lives in the few hours we hadn’t spent together that day, but for the first time in our friendship there were times when I couldn’t get hold of him. Sometimes he didn’t answer his phone, and sometimes it took him an hour or more to reply to my texts. This might sound normal (healthy, even), but it wasn’t the way things worked between Kai and me.
I didn’t say anything at first because I didn’t want to look needy. I was needy, but I liked to pretend otherwise. And it wasn’t that big a deal. He always called or texted eventually, but it bothered me because it was different, and I have never ever been good with change. Change makes me anxious, which is kind of funny when you think of it now, all things considered.
I was never a
ble to hide my feelings from Kai – he could wheedle his way through my defences with consummate ease. All it took was him to say something like, What’s up, pickle? and I would be spilling my guts in no time. (If anyone else on this planet ever called me pickle I would break their face. Kai had special dispensation to use bizarre terms of endearment.)
We were hanging out in my room one day when he asked what was wrong. And I told him (mumbling and blushing) and he was great about it, of course. He reassured me that there was nothing to worry about – that I was still his very bestest friend in the whole wide world – and then he distracted me so perfectly I didn’t even realize it was happening. ‘Oh, I have news! Very interesting news too. Except you might not find it all that appealing. Hear me out though, OK?’
Kai always prefaced announcements like that – building things up to be bigger than they were. He couldn’t help himself. I nodded. We were lying on my bed, side by side, staring at the ceiling. We used to do that a lot.
‘So . . . there’s this party. At Max’s place. And we’re invited.’
‘What?’ I understood all the words Kai was saying, but there was a crucial one missing, surely. A ‘not’ between ‘we’re’ and ‘invited’.
‘I know! So anyway, it’s this Saturday and everyone’s going and his parents are away and his house is massive . . . according to Lol anyway.’ He was speaking super-fast, which was something he only ever did when he was excited.
I hauled myself up into a sitting position and prodded his stomach with my finger, harder than was strictly necessary. ‘Define “everyone”.’
‘Ow! Look, I know my washboard stomach is pretty hard to resist, but please be gentle!’ He sat up rubbing his stomach. He lifted up his shirt and inspected his belly as if I’d poked him hard enough to leave a mark. The sight of his stomach made my stomach flip and I was relieved when he covered it up again.
‘Everyone . . . is everyone. You know, the usual.’