I perched on Dad’s chair in the corner. As far away from Louise as it was possible to get without actually leaving the room. Trying not to show how antsy I was about her eating into my valuable suicide time. ‘So . . . how are you doing?’ It was a stupid question, but that’s what people do – ask each other stupid things they don’t even want to know the answer to.
She gave me a scathing look. The same look I gave Mum or Dad whenever they asked me that very question. ‘I can’t stay long. There’s something I have to give you.’ She waved the envelope. ‘I don’t want you freaking out about it or anything, OK?’
I nodded. Anything to get rid of her so I could get on with the business of getting dead.
Louise hauled herself up from the sofa, which seemed to take considerable effort. She came over and handed the envelope to me. I turned it over to see the front.
Oh God
.
She saw the look on my face and said, ‘You promised not to freak out, remember?’ A vague nod is hardly the same as promising, but I said nothing. I had lost the ability to speak. ‘It’s from him.’
I knew that, of course. The handwriting was
almost as familiar to me as my own (and a hell of a lot neater).
Louise’s words spilled out, answering all the questions swimming around my head. ‘He left me a note with strict instructions to give this to you today – exactly a month after . . . He said if I didn’t do it he’d come back and haunt me . . . I think that was supposed to be funny. Anyway, I don’t know what’s in it, so don’t even ask. And he didn’t want me to tell Mum and Dad about it. Or the police. So you probably shouldn’t either. Um . . . so . . . I’ve done what he wanted and that’s it.’ Her face crumpled like a scrunched-up piece of paper. ‘I have to . . .’ She practically ran from the room. I heard the front door slam.
I should maybe have followed her to check she was OK, but all I could think about was the envelope, which I was holding like it was the most precious, fragile thing in the world.
JEM
(in big purple letters, underlined three times. Purple was his favourite colour).
In much smaller letters underneath was:
If Lol hasn’t delivered this on 23rd November, you have my permission to tell everyone at school that she genuinely believes that one day her and Mr Franklin will get married and have babies. And that she’s started working on a top-secret scrapbook of wedding ideas for the occasion.
(Mr Franklin’s one of
the youngest teachers at Allander Park. He wears his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie’s always loose. That’s how you know he’s supposed to be cool. I could easily believe that Louise might fancy him or something, but the wedding stuff was clearly bollocks. Kai was always making up silly stories to make me smile.)
Then:
If there’s any sign that Lol’s opened this envelope and read the contents you have my permission to tell everyone at school that she once let Barney Jennings kiss her for five seconds as payment for copying his maths homework.
(Barney Jennings has horrible teeth, a greasy plate-face and a definite problem with personal hygiene. There was no way Louise would let him anywhere near her.) And then:
Laters, Kiddo. xxx
I traced the three kisses with my finger. My throat tightened.
Laters, Kiddo.
I sat cross-legged on my bed with the envelope in front of me. I fought against the instinct to ignore it and get on with taking the pills.
I
had
to see what was inside. I opened it up and tipped the contents onto the bed. There were lots of smaller white envelopes. Twelve in all. Each was marked with a month – the same fat purple pen he’d used on the bigger envelope. The one marked ‘November’ also said: ‘Open this one first . . . obviously!’
I checked inside the big envelope in case there was anything else, and sure enough there was something lodged in the crease at the bottom. A perfect origami bird made from lined notepaper. Written on it in tiny capital letters was: ‘
I AM THE TINY ORIGAMI BIRD OF JOY. I AM NOT, I REPEAT
NOT
, A TOY! I’M HERE TO MAKE YOU SMILE WHEN YOU ARE BLUE. SO CHEER THE FUCK UP, YOU SILLY MOO
’.
I couldn’t help but laugh. It was so typically Kai.
I brought the bird up to my nose and sniffed it. A silly thing to do, but I was hoping for a tiny reminder of Kai. He always wore this stupidly expensive citrussy aftershave that I adored, and I was suddenly desperate to smell it again. The thought that it had faded from my memory forever made me panic. Unsurprisingly, the origami bird smelled of paper.
I lay the bird on my pillow and picked up the November envelope. There was more writing on the back: ‘
Sealed with a big fat slobbery snog – with tongues and EVERYTHING.
’ I winced when I broke the envelope’s seal – ripping his words apart.
Inside were two sheets of creamy paper filled with Kai’s impossibly neat handwriting.
I closed my eyes to steady myself and then started to read.
My dearest Jemima,
Hey! Don’t look at me like that! It’s your real name and it’s about time you got used to it, missy. First things first: you’d better be reading this... because if you’re not. ther’s a
chance you might have done something stupid. If that’s the case, I’ll be so cross with you. I mean, really bloody cross. I’m pretty sure you WON’T have done that, but you never know, do you? And it’s not like you never talked about it before, Little Miss Morbid. Anyway... I’m here (well, not
here
exactly) to tell you that you CAN and WILL be perfectly fine without me. So you’d better not be dead, OK? I’ll feel pretty stupid for wasting my time with this little endeavour, and you wouldn’t want me to feel stupid AND cross, would you?
Second things second: I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I can’t begin to explain it. People say sorry all the time for the silliest little things. But you have to know this: I’m sorry in the biggest, hugest way it’s possible to be sorry. I hope you can find a way to
forgive me one day. I know you’ll be angry and I can’t blame you for that. If things were the other way around, I would be so furious with you for leaving me behind. So I guess what I’m saying is, I think I understand how you feel right now, but I don’t think you’ll always feel this way. You’re just going to have to trust me on that. And if my words aren’t enough to convince you, might I suggest conjuring up an image of my rakishly charming simle? I think that might help. Or just look at that photo on your phone. You know the one – don’t pretend you don’t. ‘Devilishly handsome’ were your exact words, I believe. (If this was a text message and I was not so vehemently opposed to such nonsense, I would probably be going for a winky-face emoticon right now...)
Don’t worry, this isn’t a suicide note. I’m not going to be all ‘Woe is me!’ or anything. You know why I’m doing this. There’s nothing to be gained from going on about it. What’s done is done. At least, it will be by the time you’re reading this. Unless I chickened out and couldn’t go through with it. In which case, you won’t be reading this, because I’ll probably have put it through the shredder in Dad’s office. But I really don’t think I’m going to chicken out. I’m sorry. I’ll stop apologizing in a minute, but God, Jem, I’m going to miss you so much.
You are my favourite person in the world. You KNOW that, don’t you? I love you more than I love the History Channel. I love you more than I love my sunglasses
(and you know how much I love those aviators). I love you more than I love Tim Riggins. I love you more than all of these things combined. That’s a whole lot of love. Infinite in fact. Please forgive me for being a tad sentimental, but I think the circumstances warrant it, don’t you?
Jem (That’s a serious Jem-listen-to-me-very-carefully sort of Jem, in case you were wondering.) You have to get over this. Move forward with your life and go Kick the world in the balls, just like we always planned.
Right, let’s cut to the chase. I hadn’ intended to be quite so long-winded, but you know me - I’m not exactly known for succinctness. You’ll notice that there are eleven more envelopes - one a month.
Today’s the 23rd, so I think it makes sense if you open the next one on 23rd December (just in time for Christmas!) and the following one on 23rd Jan, etc. etc. You get the picture. Please, please, PLEASE don’t open them early. That’s cheating, and nobody likes a cheat. (Confession time: I cheated at Monopoly every single time we played. You really shouldn’t have let me be the banker ... all that power went to my head. So you only have yourself to blame, really.)
That’s about all I’ve got for November... except for a couple of favours. Please could you look out for Lol for me. I know she’s not exactly your favourite person, but she’s my sister. She needs someone to keep an eye on her. That should be my job,
but I’ve failed. I’ve well and truly failed at being a brother, Jem, and it breaks my heart. I’m not quite sure what I’m asking you to do exactly. I suppose maybe you could just BE there. Just in case.
The other thing I need you to do is not obsess about what happened. It’s done. It was unfortunate and I wish to God it hadn’t happened, but it did. You need to forget about it, ok? I don’t want you playing girl detective or anything. It doesn’t matter now. None of it matters. The only thing that matters now is you. You need to look after You. You’re going to do good things in this world, I just know it. Speak to you next month, my little pickle.
Kai
xxx
p.s. I think you’d look ravishing with blonde hair. Always have. Why don’t you give it a go ... for me? I believe the technical term for this is ‘emotional blackmail’, but that doesn’t sound very nice. Maybe a dare would be better? I
DARE
you to dye your hair blonde - just for a little while. (Yes, I’m fully aware that this is an incredibly immature thing to do. Oh well.)
Every word was a needle pricking at my heart. I read the letter five times, crying harder and harder so that it got really difficult to see the words.
Then I lay curled up in a little ball, my thoughts tumbling round my head. Monopoly. Kai’s face in
that
photo. Kai didn’t know (obviously), but I used to look at it every night before I went to sleep. There was something about it that made me think that even though life seemed bleak, maybe it could all turn out OK. With Kai in the world, it was a brighter, friendlier place. I hadn’t looked at the photo since he died.
I couldn’t believe Kai had gone to all this trouble, but at the same time it was such a Kai thing to do. Even at his lowest, his life in tatters, he was thinking of me. He didn’t have a selfish gene in his body. I know people think suicide is selfish, and maybe sometimes it really is. But what happened to Kai was beyond what
anyone should have to cope with. I didn’t blame him, not really. It just broke my heart that I wasn’t enough to keep him here. That he couldn’t hold on a couple more years until we could get out of this godforsaken place and go seek our fortunes in London. That was the plan. That had
always
been the plan.
Kai was right. I
had
been angry with him, but not right away. The first week or so was pure grief – raw and ugly and dark. But then that morphed into something else. The sadness was still there and still huge, but suddenly I felt abandoned. I kept on having this ridiculous thought that Kai was the only person who could possibly comfort me. I needed him to hug me and hold me and tell me that everything was going to be OK without him; how dare he not be here for me? He’d always been that person for me. That one person I could go to and
know
that he would make me feel better. And now I needed him more than ever and he was gone. For good. I wanted to punch him and shake him and shout, ‘HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?’
I was angry, and confused about the fact that I was angry with someone who was dead. But that stage didn’t last long either. That was when I knew I was going to kill myself, and I felt better as soon as I’d made up my mind. It gave me something to focus on
and, weirdly, something to look forward to. But the letters changed everything.
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.