Undone(3)

Kai quickly closed the browser window, blushing like he’d been caught doing something seedy and shameful. I was baffled. ‘What?’ I asked her.

She flicked her hair (an annoying habit she’d acquired since starting secondary school) and said a sullen ‘nothing’.

‘It didn’t sound like nothing.’ Kai put his hand on my wrist and told me to leave it. I shook him off. ‘Louise? Is there something you’d like to share with the group?’ This was my new favourite catchphrase; I’d picked it up from my English teacher.

Louise sighed and twirled some hair between her fingers, acting as if checking for split ends was more interesting than talking to me and Kai. ‘It’s, like, gross.’ This was something else Louise had picked up in the last few months – a completely new way of speaking that drove her parents crazy.

I asked her what was gross, because I genuinely had no idea what she was on about.

She sighed again, even louder this time. ‘Boys liking boys. Becky’s dad says it’s sinful.’

I’d never heard Louise mention Becky before, let alone Becky’s dad. I laughed. ‘Are you for real?’ The looks between Kai and Louise answered my question. This ground had clearly been covered before. ‘What does Becky’s dad know about anything anyway?’

Louise narrowed her eyes at me. ‘He’s, like, a really important businessman. He drives a BMW.’

‘Good for him.’

The sarcasm was lost on her. ‘I know, right? Anyway, he said it’s probably just a phase.’ Louise looked shifty all of a sudden.

I felt Kai’s grip tighten around my wrist but he still said nothing. So it was left to me. ‘What’s probably just a phase?’

‘Kai being . . . you know . . . bent.’

My temper flared. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘You take that back. Right now.’

Louise stuck out her bottom lip. ‘Will not, and you can’t make me.’

I pushed my chair back fast and Louise backed away, but Kai’s hand was still clamped to my wrist. ‘Jem, leave it. Please. She doesn’t understand. It’s OK. Really.’

She was smirking, knowing full well that her brother would protect her even though she was the one who was attacking him. The gap-toothed, cute-as-a-button, only-slightly-annoying little sister had turned into someone else – almost overnight, it seemed. And I wasn’t sure I liked this someone else. At all.

Kai said it didn’t bother him. He said she was young and would come around to the idea eventually. My argument that she was only a year younger than we were and that she shouldn’t give a toss if he was gay because HE WAS HER BROTHER fell on deaf ears.

She did come around to the idea eventually. She stopped saying stupid things in front of me, at least. But that might have had something to do with the fact that Louise and I started studiously ignoring each other – as if by some unspoken arrangement. I couldn’t forgive her for being horrible to Kai, and she . . . well, I was never quite sure why she began ignoring me. Maybe because I started dying my hair and wearing black and listening to decent music and she turned into a plastic, popular person. It was as if some kind of mystical divergence had occurred, leaving Kai in the middle, loving us both, wishing everybody could just get along. He never did get his wish. He never got a lot of his wishes.

And now he won’t ever get his driving licence. Or buy alcohol in a pub. Or vote. Or fall in love.

Kai will do none of these things. All because of what they did to him.





chapter two


The idea of life without Kai was unthinkable. My brain couldn’t accept it. The thought of going to school every day. Alone. Evenings and weekends. Alone. My whole life stretching out in front of me – without him. It was unacceptable.

For the first couple of weeks I couldn’t even get out of bed. Mum was frantic, begging me to talk about it. Pleading with me to get up and get on with my life. I couldn’t even hear her. I became a master at tuning everything and everyone out of my mind. Everyone except him. Kai was all I wanted to think about. Thinking about anything else felt like a betrayal and I felt like he’d know.

Mum and Dad were on suicide watch. They’d spoken to a counsellor about it and apparently there was a ‘significant risk’ that I would top myself.

I can’t really blame them for thinking like that.

After all, I was spending a considerable amount of time working out the best way to do it.

After much deliberation, I settled on pills. I was going to polish off Mum’s Valium. There were thirty-one pills left in the bottle. I figured that was more than enough. A quiet, peaceful way to die. Not too traumatic for my parents either. I mean, obviously I knew it would still be traumatic, but it would be way worse if I hung myself in the garage or slit my wrists in the bath. Or jumped off Boreham Bridge.

I’d talked about suicide since I was fourteen or so. Some people were sporty or musical or collected model animals . . . I was into death. It was kind of my thing. People didn’t necessarily know that about me, but the black hair and the black clothes identified me as emo or goth or whatever other bullshit label they wanted to pin on me. I hated them for it. No one knew me. No one except Kai. He was the only one who bothered to look beyond the facade. Kai was the one who would listen to me moan about the world and how unfair everything was and how I was never going to be happy and how I hated my parents and how no one understood. He never acted bored or tried to change the subject. He listened. I didn’t know how lucky I was to have someone who really listened. Someone who understood me on every level. Who seemed to love me despite me being a whining, miserable bitch. I mean, I wasn’t like that all the time or anything. We had fun together too. We made each other laugh. Best friends for life, that’s what he said. (He lied.) And despite the fact that I liked to talk about death and suicide, I think we both believed we’d end up growing old together (if not together together). But Kai will never grow old.