Undone(18)

Kai.

I slammed the lid of my laptop down, legged it down the stairs and out the front door. Made it to Kai’s in far less than four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Louise answered the door, looking a lot better than the last time I’d seen her. She didn’t even bother saying hi, which was fine with me. I rushed past her and up the stairs to Kai’s room.

The room was dark and at first I thought he wasn’t there. But then I saw his bare feet poking out from under the desk. He was tucked up under there like a hibernating animal. ‘Kai? It’s only me. Are you going to come out?’ I said gently, as if he was a small animal I was trying to coax out of its hiding place.

No response.

I sat down on the floor in front of him. ‘Kai? Talk to me. Please?’

Still nothing.

‘You’re kind of scaring me. Please say something.’

He cleared his throat. His voice sounded rusty. ‘You watched it then?’

‘Yeah, I watched it. But it’s OK, Kai. It’s nothing to be . . . ashamed of.’

‘You think? Why don’t you take a look at my inbox?’

His laptop was on the bed. I opened the lid and listened to it whirr to life. The screen was filled with unopened emails. I clicked on one at random and immediately wished I hadn’t. Words jumped out at me from the screen: i hope you die of AIDS you f*ckin homo.

I didn’t recognize any of the email addresses – they were clearly fakes. People had gone out of their way to set up new accounts so they could do this without getting caught. God, how many people has that link been sent to? I clicked on another message: Always thought you loookd queer as f*ck. Looked lik you was enjoying that, u little bitch.

‘How many are there now? There were seventeen the last time I looked.’

Twenty-nine. There were twenty-nine messages. ‘Oh, Kai, I’m sorry! Who would do something like this? I mean, why would anyone do something like this?’

Kai laughed. ‘You don’t need an excuse to out a fag, do you? They probably thought they were doing a public service or something.’

‘When . . . when did you get the email?’

‘The video was in my inbox by the time I got home from school. Whoever this Captain Outrage is, he sent it to me first.’

I scrolled back and found the original email. The subject line read: READY FOR SOME FUN AND GAMES?

‘OK, let’s think about this rationally. Kai, are you going to come out from there?’

‘I . . . I can’t.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t?’

‘I don’t want you to see me.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Kai. This is me . . . Can I at least put the light on?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ His voice sounded so hopeless, so small and pathetic, so not Kai.

I felt helpless. ‘Do you want to talk about this? I really think we should.’

‘There’s nothing to say, is there? Everyone knows. Everyone knows.’

‘Who cares? You’re gay. So what? Lots of people are gay. It’s normal.’

‘Yeah? Tell that to all the people who’ve emailed calling me shirtlifter or fudge packer or paedophile. That’s my favourite. Paedophile. Like I’m some kind of deviant just because I want to have sex with men . . .’

‘No one thinks that. I mean, no one who matters anyway. Your parents are cool with it, aren’t they? There are always going to be idiots in the world, but they don’t matter. Come on, you know this. They’re ignorant, that’s all.’ I knew the words were woefully inadequate, but they were the best I could do.

‘I wasn’t ready, Jem. I wasn’t ready to come out. I wanted to do it on my own terms, you know? And that’s not even the point . . . That video is . . .’

‘Yes, it’s embarrassing . . .’

‘Embarrassing? Are you serious? It’s f*cking mortifying! Are you trying to tell me you’d be completely OK with a video of you doing something like . . . that plastered all over the Internet? God, Jem, I’m asking for some support here!’ He started to sob.

I crawled under the desk to sit next to Kai. There really wasn’t enough room for two people. I leaned my head against him. ‘I’m here for you. Whatever you need. We’ll get through this, OK? Tomorrow you’ll walk into school with your head held high. You’ve done nothing wrong. Fuck the lot of them, yeah? They can only make you feel ashamed if you let them . . . And anyway, in two years’ time we’ll be out of this place and they’ll still be here, working in McDonalds or something. Remember the plan – Kai and Jem take on London and WIN! Two measly years, that’s all.’

He reached out and squeezed my hand, then let out a long juddery breath. ‘OK.’

‘Really? Is that a real OK? Or a please-stop-talking-before-I-punch-you-in-the-face OK?’

He laughed softly. That was progress, I thought. ‘It’s a real OK – honest.’

‘That’s more like it. Now . . . I’m going to delete all those emails, OK? You’re banned from looking at your inbox until all the fuss has died down. And it will die down, I promise you.

‘You’re a good friend, you know that, don’t you?’

I patted his knee. ‘The best. And you’re not so bad yourself.’