‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ she mutters, but I can tell that her heart isn’t in it because I can barely hear her.
‘So why were you writing letters to ME!’ I yell at her. ‘And why haven’t you told Mum? You have to tell her, Alex, or I will!’
Alex sits up straighter in the chair.
‘No, Izzy! I’m totally serious about this. You cannot tell her. I’ll never forgive you if you do, not for the rest of my life! And keep your voice down for goodness’ sake – Mum could walk in at any minute.’
I gulp in a deep breath and look at Alex in amazement. She has never spoken like that to me before, not ever.
‘Think about the sister code, Izzy. This is exactly the time that I need you to remember what we promised.’ Alex is looking at me pleadingly and I feel my anger start to disappear.
Alex introduced the sister code when I was about ten and she was fifteen. It started with not telling Mum when the other one had done something wrong – like the time that her favourite mug got broken. I was washing up and Alex was drying and I thought it’d be funny to splash her with the soapsuds. Unfortunately I was a little too enthusiastic with my splashing and I managed to break the handle on the mug. Alex told me about the sister code and hid the broken mug in with the rubbish. When Mum couldn’t find it, Alex didn’t say a word, but on Mum’s birthday she helped me choose a new mug for Mum. The sister code stopped me getting told off and helped me to make something wrong right again.
Since then we’ve used it for loads of things. I cover for Alex when she’s sneaking out to the pub or going clubbing – Mum seems more likely to believe her if I say that I’ve heard her making plans for studying with Sara. As Alex says, it helps her to get some much-needed relaxation so that she can work even harder at school and that Mum is already stressed with her own job and worrying about Grandpa – she doesn’t need to be worrying about Alex. In return, Alex lets me stay up late when Mum goes out and she always tells Mum that I was in bed on time.
The sister code means putting your sister first and keeping her safe, even if it makes you feel a bit uncomfortable at the time. It means trusting your sister to do the right thing, even if you’ve lost almost all faith in her. The sister code means that if your sister asks you to do something then you do it because your sister is the only person who can know you almost as much as you know yourself.
Alex has invoked the sister code and I need to show her that I’m worthy. The sister code doesn’t recognize big sisters or little sisters: it only knows that we are sisters and always will be. I need to be brave for Alex and trust her.
‘I won’t tell her. I promise,’ I whisper to Alex and her face crumples in relief. ‘But I think she needs to know.’
‘She does and I promise I’ll tell her,’ says Alex, getting up and walking across to me. ‘But I need to wait until the time is right, Izzy, or it’ll just make it worse.’
I’m not sure that this is true but, as Alex hugs me, I decide to go with what she says. She knows far more about this than I do after all, and maybe she’s right. Maybe there will be a good time for her to tell Mum. But, as I feel her rounded tummy pressing against me, I wonder how long she thinks she can wait until even Mum can’t ignore the evidence in front of her.
‘You’ve just got to keep it a secret for a little while longer, just until I get everything sorted,’ says Alex, giving me a final squeeze.
‘Keep what a secret?’ says a voice and we spring apart, both looking totally guilty and red-faced.
Finn is standing at our back door, leaning against the door frame. I have no idea how long he’s been standing there, but by the look on his face it was long enough.
Alex strolls over to the kettle and switches it back on.
‘Perfect timing, I’m just making a cup of tea. Want one? Come in and close the back door.’ She doesn’t look at Finn, but he can’t tear his eyes away from her. I feel awkward, but there’s no way I’m leaving Alex now so I sit down quietly on the stool by the fridge and hope they’ll forget I’m here.
Alex busies herself with the kettle, pouring boiling water into two cups. I reach across and open the fridge door, bending down to pull out the milk and passing it to her when she walks over to me.
‘You didn’t come to band practice,’ says Finn. It’s a statement, not a question, and Alex doesn’t reply. ‘What’s going on, Alex?’
‘Nothing,’ she says, pouring the milk into the cups and putting one on the table for Finn. ‘Drink your tea.’ I see her looking anxiously out of the window and I follow her gaze, but it’s OK. Mum is moving around near the shed and doesn’t seem to have any idea of the clouds that are gathering over our house.
Finn looks at the tea, but doesn’t move. He likes his tea as strong as possible, so strong that ‘you could stand a spoon up in it’ Mum always says. It’s something that he and Alex have in common, and they moan on and on if anyone ever makes either of them a weak cup of pale tea. The cup of tea that Alex has made looks more like warm milk than tea; there’s no way that Finn will drink it and I don’t blame him. The storm that’s brewing in our kitchen is stronger than Finn’s cup of tea.
‘Alex.’ His voice is firm, like he’s not leaving here without answers, and I feel cold inside when I see what’s about to happen.
‘Finn.’ She’s trying to make a joke of it, distract him by being silly, but as she still won’t look at him it’s not going to work.
‘What’s wrong, Al? What’s the big secret?’
Alex shakes her head and starts opening and closing cupboard doors.
‘Where’s the sugar? It’s got to be here somewhere.’
I want to remind her that she doesn’t have sugar in her tea, but then I think better of it. This is definitely between Finn and Alex and I don’t think she’s really looking for the sugar anyway, not when I can see it in the sugar bowl, right in front of her on the kitchen counter.
‘Is it true?’ asks Finn in a quiet voice.
Alex stills, one hand reaching into the cupboard and closing round a tin of baked beans.
‘Is what true?’ she whispers.
‘Is it true that you’re –’ Finn doesn’t seem able to say the word and Alex turns round slowly, looking down at the floor. Finn tries again. ‘Is it true that you and Charlie are –’ But he doesn’t need to say any more because Alex has raised her head and is looking at him, and he can see the answer written all over her face. It’s like she wants him to know – that or she just can’t hide the truth from Finn like she could hide it from me and Mum.
‘Oh God,’ groans Finn, running his hand through his floppy hair. I think how ridiculous this all looks: Finn with tufts of hair sticking up at weird angles and Alex clutching a tin of baked beans like it’s going to save her. It’s not how these things happen on the TV anyway. There’s absolutely nothing glamorous or exciting about this moment. It all just seems a bit scary, and a bit messy, and a huge mistake – like we’ve stumbled into somebody else’s story for a while.
‘Finn –’ starts Alex, but he puts his hand up, like he doesn’t want to hear her. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she finishes, ignoring his hand and slumping against the kitchen counter.
There’s silence for a few seconds and then Finn looks at Alex.
‘What did your mum say?’ he asks her. Alex doesn’t answer and, for the first time since he walked into the room, Finn looks over at me.
‘That’s the big secret, isn’t it?’ he says and I nod, not looking at Alex in case she’s mad with me. Finn sighs really loudly and turns back to Alex. ‘You’ve got to tell her, Alex. Now.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can. You have to. What if she finds out from someone else?’
‘She won’t, will she?’ Alex’s voice has a warning in it that I can hear all the way over here by the fridge.
Finn slams his hand against the door frame and I jump in surprise.
‘So what are you going to do? Wait until she notices? Or have you got other p
lans?’ He’s angry, but I don’t know why. It’s not his baby after all, so it doesn’t really affect him.
‘Charlie’s sorting something out. I’m just waiting for him to tell me what we’re doing.’ Alex doesn’t sound like her normal self – her voice is wavering and quiet, like she’s unsure about what she’s saying. ‘He doesn’t want me to tell Mum until we’ve got all the details sorted.’
‘Is that what he’s doing now, while you’re sitting here on your own?’ Finn asks her, his voice getting louder with each word.
I feel a bit hurt by this. Alex isn’t exactly on her own, is she? She’s got me and I’m working quite hard to deal with all of this, which isn’t being made any easier by her and Finn having an argument in the middle of our kitchen.
‘Yes, it is,’ Alex tells him. ‘He’s getting everything sorted.’ She sounds trusting, like she truly believes that Charlie is going to save the day, and it’s too much for Finn.
‘Right, so that wasn’t Charlie I just saw in the pub with the rest of his football team?’ he explodes. Alex’s face goes red, but she stays silent.
‘That was Charlie “getting everything sorted”, was it? Because it looked to me like he was bragging about scoring a goal and laughing at some stupid joke made by an equally stupid girl.’
Tears bubble up in Alex’s eyes, but she grips her tin of baked beans even harder and stares at Finn.
‘Come on, Alex! Wake up! Lover boy is NOT going to do the right thing. You know it. Time to deal with that and start figuring out what YOU are going to do. If you wait for him, you’ll be waiting forever!’
‘Maybe he’s worth waiting for – forever,’ Alex says quietly, looking at Finn until he looks away, shaking his head in disgust.
I think this is probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard anybody say. It’s the sort of thing I expect Juliet said about Romeo when the Montagues and Capulets were fighting and yelling at them, and forcing them to stay away from each other. It just seems a bit sad that Alex has said it about Charlie though because I’m sure he’s an OK kind of person really, but I’m not at all convinced that he’s Alex’s ‘forever’ person.
‘Then you don’t need me then, do you?’ Finn asks Alex. This time it really does sound like a question, hovering in the air above the kitchen table. They look at each other for a moment, but then Alex is the first to look away, not answering.
‘You know where I am,’ Finn tells her. ‘Where I’ll always be.’ And then he turns and leaves, and it feels like he’s walking out of much more than our kitchen, and Alex leans her head on the kitchen cupboard and cries and cries and cries until I think that she must have no tears left inside her.
Red Sky in the Morning, Shepherd’s Warning
If I thought not knowing a secret was hard then I had absolutely no idea how difficult it is to keep one. Since that awful night in the kitchen two weeks ago, I’ve barely spoken to Mum because I’m so terrified that it’ll all come pouring out of me in one long, guilty flow of words. Fortunately it’s a really busy time for her at school so she’s working extra hard, and then at suppertimes, if everyone’s quiet, Mum thinks it’s because we’re tired.
Alex has gone back to school. She’s not going to get away with not telling Mum for very long and I’ve told her that, but she doesn’t seem particularly bothered. She’s started sitting on her own in the library at lunchtimes. Well, she was alone to start with, but one day I saw Finn in the school canteen and he asked me where she was. He laughed a bit when I told him and muttered something about how he’d never have looked for her there in a month of sunny days. Now they sit there, heads together and talking quietly. She’s not doing any revision even though her exams are about to start any minute now. I suppose she’s got more important things to think about other than school. Like growing a baby, for starters.
I snuck into the IT room at lunchtime last week and looked up babies on the Internet. I could have done it at home, but Mum checks our search history every now and again and I don’t want to make her suspicious. I know that the baby was thirteen weeks old when I talked to Alex that night because I read it on one of her texts from Sara – Charlie told her. So right now her baby is about fifteen weeks old and the size of an orange. It can hiccup and it’s starting to hear sounds. That seems extremely weird, like a mini alien has made its home inside Alex.
Apparently, she should be ‘glowing’ now too, whatever that’s supposed to mean. When I read that, it made me think about Alex all lit up, a neon green light radiating out from her body, but I know it doesn’t mean that really and it’s a good job too because that would be an instant giveaway that she’s pregnant. There’s no way she could hide from Mum looking like a human glow stick.
I haven’t been hanging around with Hannah much recently. I’m finding it quite hard to think about anything other than Alex and everything else seems so unimportant and childish.
We’re sitting in citizenship again. Our topic today is dilemmas and Mrs Wallis is running through a list of different scenarios that apparently we might encounter in our daily lives. I’m not really listening, but then Hannah nudges my arm.
‘What do you think?’ she asks me. I have no idea what the question was so I just look at her blankly and she grins. ‘Where were you, Izzy? Somewhere better than this rubbish lesson, I hope?’ I smile back at her and she repeats the question.
‘What is a dilemma?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask her.
‘What’s the definition of a dilemma? Mrs Wallis has given us two minutes to work it out.’
‘That’s easy,’ I tell her. ‘Something where there’s no right answer. Where you absolutely, totally and utterly will never get it right for everyone.’
‘Fantastic, Izzy!’ says Mrs Wallis from behind me. I didn’t realize she was prowling the room, listening in to the discussions, and I feel my face go red. ‘Everyone listen to Izzy’s definition of a dilemma.’
I look at her in disbelief – I don’t DO speaking in citizenship – but she nods encouragingly at me and somehow I manage to stutter my way through my definition again, Hannah looking at me in amazement.
Then Mrs Wallis returns to the front and I sink as far down in my chair as is humanly possible.
‘Bad luck,’ murmurs Hannah to me and I grimace in her direction, determined to keep my mouth closed for the rest of the lesson.
The next task is based on choosing how we would deal with a dilemma. There are four choices. We can choose to consider the point of view of everyone involved; go with our gut instinct; ask someone for advice; or toss a coin. I sit quietly, listening while the people on the front row get all enthusiastic about which is the best option. I bet none of them have ever had a proper, genuine, grown-up dilemma to deal with in their entire lives.
Mrs Wallis shows a picture of three people tied to a train track – like one of those old black-and-white silent movie clips where everyone runs about flapping and has a huge moustache. She tells us that a madman has tied them down and a train is coming. She asks us to imagine that we’re the first person to discover the scene. Luckily for the three people there’s a handy switch that we can flip that will divert the train to another track and miss squishing them. But it’s like everything: just when you think there’s a bit of good news, you get slapped in the face with disappointment. On the other track there is one person, tied down by the same madman.
So what should we do? Should we flip the switch and save three lives but allow one person to die? Or should we do nothing and let the train continue on its regular track? Will we save three lives or one life? Are we responsible because we can DO something? Just because we CAN do something, does that mean that we SHOULD? Or should we just leave it to chance or fate or whatever you believe in?
The questions are coming thick and fast and I sit in the middle of the classroom while all around me people excitedly discuss the problem. It’s like they get a kick out of having so much power, even when it’s pretend. I think about the options and I
think about my dilemma.
Something is going wrong with Alex. Even more than it already was. She won’t talk to me and I heard her whispering on the phone in the hall yesterday. She shooed me away when she saw me, but I know that something’s up. She still hasn’t told Mum and I’m starting to think that she isn’t going to. This morning at breakfast she was totally different – all chattery and bubbly – and when Mum left for work Alex actually got up and gave her a hug. It wasn’t a very big hug, probably because she didn’t want Mum to feel the ever-growing bump pressed against her, but it was more than she’s done for ages and I could tell that Mum was pleased.
I look at my mood ring and it’s turned blue. Blue is for truth and trust, confidence and loyalty. I feel totally confused about what I should be doing for the best. Should I be loyal to Alex and not tell her secret? Or is it better for everyone if I tell the truth? Just because I CAN, does that mean I SHOULD? Alex isn’t just Alex any more, she’s two people, and the baby inside her can’t make its own choices.
I looked it up online and found a website that said that women should have choices when they get pregnant – that some people don’t even think it’s a proper baby until it’s actually born, so it doesn’t really matter what happens to it because it’s not like it can cry or eat or even think anything properly. I hate what this baby is doing to Alex, but I still think someone should be thinking about what it might want to happen. And I can’t be sure WHAT is going through Alex’s head at the moment. It’s just like when I didn’t get a chance to play with Dad when he used to visit: nobody thinks about what babies want.
Alex told me that it’d hurt Mum really badly if she found out about the baby. But I think that Mum is stronger than Alex realizes and I’m starting to wonder if Alex and her baby need Mum to help them. Surely it’s better to save two lives and risk upsetting one?
Matthew is yelling that he’d just toss a coin so that who got hurt wasn’t his responsibility. One of the girls tells him that he’s totally irresponsible and pathetic – that the only fair thing to do would be to get the opinion of all four people tied to the train track. That makes all the boys howl with laughter.
Violet Ink Page 11