“Hey,” he said, holding his free hand up. “I am on your side. I do, however, think there’s more to it than what you think.”
“Maybe. No point in obsessing over it now, he’s made his decision. Are you all ready for camping at the weekend?”
I felt his body tense beside mine. Kai had come to terms with losing Isaac, but Isaac’s birthday camping trip was coming up and he was fooling no one when he tried to show it wasn’t hurting him. I knew what that felt like, I didn’t want to tell Mum how much I still struggled after everything I’d put them through. I wanted them to believe everything was getting better and would be okay.
“I guess,” he said, not looking away from the TV. Gulping and gripping my hand, he added, “Will you come?”
My heart ached. Kai, usually always smiling and a bit cocky, was sullen and withdrawn. “Yeah, course I will.”
Cracking a smile, he squeezed my hand. “Thanks. You gonna hate it?”
I shook my head, even though the idea of sleeping out in the cold wasn’t on the top of my list, especially at the end of October. “It’ll be fine. I’m not peeing outside or eating anything you catch, though.”
“We take food and there’s a toilet and shower block a minute walk from where we camp.”
“What? You don’t actually camp at the proper site?”
“No, we camp a bit further in the forest, near a stream. Isaac loved it there. We used to tie rope to a tree and swing across the waster,” he said, smiling at the memory. “The amount of times I had to push him across that fucking thing…”
“My dad tried to get me to go camping once.”
“You didn’t do it?”
I shook my head against his shoulder. “Nah, attempted it but I got bitten within an hour and made him take me home. There was no way I was laying awake in the freezing cold all night while mosquitos feasted on my blood.”
Kai’s body rocked beneath mine as he laughed quietly. “I promise the only thing that’ll bite you next weekend is me.”
“Don’t think I won’t spray you with insect repellent because I’ll do it gladly.”
“Please, you’d love it. Hey, so when you went to car shows and races together did you make him book a hotel?”
“Hell yeah, I did. The ones that were over a couple hours away anyway.” I loved the ones that were far enough for us to stay over. He’d book a family room and we’d eat a ton of junk food in the living room area before starfishing in double beds across the hall. There was no better dad than him and I still found it hard to accept that he was really gone.
Kai, almost as if he sensed that my mind was pulling me into the dark void, kissed the top of my head and muttered, “Can I at least cop a feel over the top?” It was enough to bring me back, make me laugh and thump him on the arm.
***
My phone alarm went off at stupid o’clock for sixth form. I only had three days left before summer though, so I made myself get up and have a shower. I felt like I’d had no sleep at all. Last night I dreamt about the accident again. I couldn’t remember it all, just small parts, like the crunching of metal and the heat from flames that’d never been there.
During the day I could successfully block everything painful out but at night I had no way of locking it up. I didn’t want to go to school and be around people. I wanted to hide away and pretend that I couldn’t smell rubber from the tires and hear Dad pleading for help.
Mum and Ava kept away, sensing that I really just wanted to be a hermit for a while. After I’d snapped an ‘I’m fine’ they backed right off. When I left for sixth form I did it without saying goodbye. They had the photo albums on the arm of the chair again and I couldn’t even deal with that on a ‘good’ day.
I got halfway there when my stomach started churning up. The thought of spending the whole day smiling, laughing and pretending I was fine when I’d watched my dad die in my dreams last night made me feel sick. I turned around and headed to the one place I knew I was safe from endless questions and those look-how-fragile-poor-Tegan-is looks.
Arriving at Kai’s office, I stopped at the front desk. “Hello,” the receptionist said, brushing her perfect platinum hair out of her eyes. “Can I help?”
“Hi. Yeah, is Kai here?”
“I’ll just see if Mr Chambers is free. Can I take your name?”
Mr Chambers. I couldn’t imagine him in a working environment, being high enough up the chain that he was called Mr Chambers. “Tegan Pennells.”
She smiled and picked up her phone. “Hello, I have Miss Pennells in reception for you. Okay, thank you.” She hung up and smiled again, grabbing a folder. “He said to go through, I’ll show you to his office.”
“He has his own office?” I asked as we walked down a hallway of glass walls. Walls with some sort of magical blind system inside the glass. How the hell you closed the blinds in there I had no idea.