Kite Spirit (2 page)

A tall woman teacher I’ve never seen before – probably supply – walks into the back of the hall along the rows of tables and whispers something in Miss Choulty’s ear. I
can tell by the way Miss Choulty’s mouth clamps tight shut that she’s trying to hold herself together. She’s got one of those faces where you can read every emotion. The blood
drains from her cheeks as the woman places a note in front of her. She reads it several times and looks up at me, a deep frown furrowing her forehead. She opens her mouth and seems to gulp the
air.

The sirens are quiet now. My gut twists, my stomach tenses. I can’t sit here for a moment longer. I push my chair back. I hear it squeak on the wooden floor. I see Miss Choulty raise her
hand towards me. I run as fast as I can out of the exam hall, heads turning as I pass like dominoes toppling, the weight of each one felling the next. I feel as if I have stepped out of myself and
I’m watching as I run along the corridor across the school bridge. Miss Choulty’s calling my name.

I turn to face her and shout at the top of my voice, ‘Where’s Dawn?’

Miss Choulty runs towards me, reaching out her hands as if she thinks that I might fall. My question echoes back at me along the corridor as she guides me towards Mr Scott’s office.
Through his half-open door I see a police officer; she has her hand on Mr Scott’s shoulder as he sits hunched over his desk. I think how odd it looks for our giant, broad-shouldered head
teacher to be comforted by a tiny woman police officer who looks younger than some of the girls in our Sixth Form.

‘One moment.’ Miss Choulty squeezes my arm and shuts me out of the room. Miss Hopkins on reception, who’s usually so cheery and chatty, looks up at me and then quickly away, as
if she doesn’t dare meet my eye. On her desk is a yellow Post-it note with ‘Dawn Jenkins, 22 Fairview Heights’ and Dawn’s telephone number written on it. Miss Hopkins sees
me looking and quickly slips the note in a drawer under her desk.

‘
A perfectly logical explanation . . .
’ I hear Miss Choulty saying.

‘Why have they closed the door on me?’ I whisper. I don’t even recognize my own voice. Miss Hopkins’s eyes are trained on her desk, she doesn’t look up at me even
for a second, but she has her hand over her mouth as if she’s trying to hold something in.

I feel like I did the day I jumped off a rope swing at too high an angle, and I knew that it was only a count of seconds before I’d hear the break of bone against hard earth. Right now I
can hear Dawn crying out to me just as she did in those . . . one . . . two . . . three . . . flying seconds.

I’m spiralling down.

Miss Hopkins is offering me tiny sips of water. My legs are splayed out on the floor and one of my black school pumps has fallen off. I should have worn tights today because an icy cold is
creeping into me. Miss Hopkins is trying to lift me off the floor. I’m like Dawn’s Raggedy Ann doll that’s lost her stuffing, as if the insides have been shaken out of me and all
my muscles and bones have melted to nothing.

I
know.
Don’t ask me how, but at this moment I know that Dawn is gone.

The door opens and Mr Scott is staring down at me. I’m being placed on the comfy sofa. Dawn’s been here loads of times with her migraines and her stomach cramps, but I’ve never
sat here before. I sink into the cushions, wishing that I could disappear, but Mr Scott has pulled up a chair and is leaning in close. Miss Choulty perches on the arm of the sofa and holds my hand.
Everything inside me says, ‘Run! Kite! Run away now before they can tell you anything.’ I try to move my legs but they’re useless.

‘She’s always early so she comes up to knock for me, but not today, so I called for her. I knocked and knocked but there was no answer.’ I hear myself talking . . . burbling on
and on.

Mr Scott nods and pats my shoulder awkwardly. ‘Have you called Kite’s parents?’ he asks Miss Hopkins.

‘On their way,’ she replies, finally meeting my eye. She’s been crying.

The young police officer, her hair pulled neatly into a tight bun, is speaking quietly into a recording device. She has a tiny oval-shaped birthmark on her neck, just below her ear.

‘Dawn has a birthmark,’ I say, ‘in the shape of a crescent moon. It’s funny because that’s the same shape she has to make to scrape a perfect reed for her oboe. She
spends hours and hours on them, sealing the reed, tying the end so tight to make sure all her breath goes down into the instrument. If a single wisp of air escapes it’s terrible because then
she can’t get the oboe to speak . . . see that’s what they call it if you blow and blow and no sound comes. She’s shown me how it works loads of times. There’s a whole
orchestra and you’re waiting to come in at exactly the right second but really smooth, no squeaks or splutters.’ I hold my fingers to my mouth just as Dawn does whenever she speaks
about playing.

I feel Miss Choulty’s collarbone stick into me as she wraps her arm around my shoulder.

‘You should see how she makes those reeds, Miss Choulty, the look of concentration on her face. I bought her a little box for her birthday. It holds three, but she’s only kept one;
she calls it her “golden” reed. When she holds it up to the light you can see inside its little bamboo body: it’s got a spine and a heart and everything; that’s what they
call all the parts – weird, isn’t it? – as if it’s human!’

I hear my own heart thudding hard against my chest and my voice splinter. I watch the police officer’s mouth moving. She’s saying my name. ‘Yes! Kite – as in what you fly
on a windy day.’ She’s talking to someone at the other end of the phone. Her purple birthmark stretches as the sinews of her neck tense.

‘Kite is Dawn’s best friend,’ Mr Scott explains in his crisp Glaswegian accent. He always chooses his words carefully, he has a way of making opinions sound like facts, but in
this case it’s true: whatever’s happened to Dawn, I
am
her best friend.

The police officer nods sympathetically and walks out of the office and into the corridor.

‘Kite Solomon,’ I hear her say. ‘No! We can’t interview her yet. We’ll have to wait a few hours – she’s still in shock.’

‘Can you tell me when you last spoke to her?

Kite focused on the police officer’s birthmark.

‘Take your time,’ she soothed, patting Kite on the arm and switching on her recorder.

‘We Facebooked each other last night. It didn’t seem like anything, just chat about the exams and what we’d been doing at the weekend. The only “out of the
ordinary” thing, now I think of it, is that she didn’t play her oboe.’

‘Can you talk me through what happened this morning?’ the police officer asked gently.

‘I woke up at about seven thirty in a bit of a panic about the exam. Ruby and Seth were already out.’

‘Ruby and Seth?’

‘My mum and dad. I call them by their first names,’ Kite explained as she read the police officer’s name badge. ‘PC Alison Forster.’

‘OK. So you were on your own . . .’

‘Yes. I got myself breakfast and switched on the radio. It was Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’. I love that song, Dawn does too, so I cranked it up really loud thinking
she might hear it through the ceiling. We do that sometimes, especially if no one’s around! I was singing along at the top of my voice and then I played a bit of dance music on my iPod and
got really into it and the next thing I knew it was eight thirty. I always think I’ve got ages and then I’m late. Anyway, I thought something was up because if it wasn’t for Dawn
I would never be on time for school; she’s normally around just before eight thirty. I unplugged my iPod – I thought maybe she’d been knocking and I had the music up so loud I
didn’t hear. So I grabbed my bag, locked up and ran down the steps between our floor and Dawn’s flat. Hazel, Dawn’s mum, she’s grown sweet peas all along her balcony and I
remember thinking it smelt like perfume.’ Kite took a deep breath.

‘You’re doing really well, Kite, carry on.’

‘Well, I knocked a few times and called her name. Then Jess, Dawn’s cat, came springing out of the flap and got under my feet. I picked her up and she miaowed and miaowed. Her coming
out made me think that Dawn must have left because Jess never leaves Dawn’s side if she’s in the flat. So when I texted her and there was no reply, I thought she must have got fed up
waiting for me and gone on ahead. She would have been stressed about the exam so I thought I’d better head in to school. Anyway, I waited by the railings near the zebra crossing and I kept
remembering how Jess wouldn’t stop wrapping herself around my ankles as if she didn’t want me to leave . . . and that’s when I got this sick feeling in my belly that something
wasn’t right.’

‘Why was that? Do you think there might have been any warning signs?’

Kite shook her head in answer, but the question kept echoing through her mind. If anyone should have known, surely it was her.

Every night before she laid her head on her pillow, as she did now, Kite took herself back to the day of her exam. She dredged through every detail to see if she had missed
something, anything that might have been a ‘warning sign’. Sometimes she imagined the story that she’d told the police officer veering off in another direction.

‘Take your time.’

Kite stared at the birthmark on the police officer’s neck.

‘I texted her and she texted me back: “I need help”. I hurled myself down the steps and kicked at the door to her flat. It took three hard shoves and then the latch gave
and I let myself in. Jess miaowed from Dawn’s bedroom and I ran through to her. Dawn was just lying there looking pale and ill; there was sick everywhere – the room stank of
it.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her as I propped her head up.

‘I’ve taken some sleeping pills, a lot of pills,’ she told me.

That’s when I called the police, and the ambulance came.

The worst thing was that nobody could answer the question that was haunting her day and night. ‘What if Dawn
wanted
me to find her?’ Kite stood up and walked over to her
desk and clicked on the message she wished she could delete from both her Facebook page and her memory forever. Like a moth to a flame, she had read it a thousand tortured times, turning the
questions over, searching for a warning sign hidden among those final lines.

Then she scrolled down to read the endless ‘Rest in Peace’ messages, commemorative photos and shared memories people had posted on the memorial page she’d created. The
contributions just kept flooding in.

Part of her regretted setting up the page. Why had she felt the need to do it in the first place? It had taken her ages to find the right words and photos. It had been something to do, she
supposed. But she had not been ready for the response. None of these people had really known Dawn at all and yet here they were, claiming that they’d been great friends. It made Kite sick,
like watching vultures in a feeding frenzy. At least the messages from Dawn’s old orchestra friends felt genuine.

‘She played like an angel. I’ll miss her. XX Esme’

Kite vaguely remembered this girl from a concert she’d been to. She was the one who had sat next to Dawn in orchestra and also played the oboe.

Kite could hardly stand to look as new messages of sorrow appeared before her. Seth was right. She should shut herself off from all of this, at least for a while. There was enough going on in
her head without it. That’s what she
should
do, but once again she found herself reading the last words that had passed between her and Dawn. Words that she now knew off by
heart.

Dawn: Where’ve you been all weekend?

Kite: On my trapeze! Done no revising though! You?

Dawn: A bit!

Kite: Worked all weekend then!?

Dawn: You know me so well!

Kite: Stop worrying! You’ll fly like you always do.

Dawn: You’re the flyer!

Kite: Working on it!

Dawn: You’ll fly like a bird on that cloud swing one day.

Kite: If I’m ever strong enough!

Dawn: You will be. I don’t know anyone stronger than you.

Kite: That’s cos you hardly know anyone!

Dawn: Funny!

Kite: Gotta go. Ruby’s on my case about getting an early night! See you tomorrow. Don’t stay up all night. You can’t get higher than an A*.

Dawn: You’re an A* friend.

Kite: Don’t get all emo on me! You too, ‘Sister!’

Dawn’s messages never failed to make her smile. That’s how it was when you’d known someone all your life and you would always be best friends, no matter what.
There was none of the ‘If I say this, will it be taken this way or that?’ that Kite worried about with other people. The strange thing was that this last exchange had made her smile
even more than usual. She imagined it was because when it came down to it, no matter how different they became, they would still be there to wish each other well for the big moments in life. It had
always been like this between them, ever since the day in nursery when Dawn had asked Kite, with her four-year-old’s lisp, if she would be her ‘thithter’.

Now every word of Dawn’s last message seemed weighted with a double meaning . . . Why hadn’t Kite seen it before? She winced at her jokey attempts to get Dawn to lighten up. If only
Ruby hadn’t interrupted them when she had . . . if they’d carried on chatting and she’d taken more time to find out what was really going on in Dawn’s head, maybe something
might have been said that would have changed everything. Kite placed her hands on the keyboard and bashed out the words ‘WHY? WHY? WHY?’. The bizarre thing was that she could sense Dawn
sitting at her computer downstairs reading her message. Her hands paused over the keyboard. She half expected a reply to come flying back at her like a boomerang, but her urgent question was
greeted only with silence.

Kite could not bring herself to name what Dawn had done. In her head, she had come to call it simply the ‘S’ word. She typed an ‘S’ on her page and a ‘u’.
Then deleted the ‘u’. She could not think it, or say it, or type it, but what was the alternative? She could not even accept that her friend had ‘died’, as Jamila, who had
known Dawn a bit from music lessons, had written in her kind message.