All I Have Left of You Read online

  Jodie’s eyes brightened with something, and I couldn’t be sure what it was. ‘Yeah, we have about fifteen minutes before we have to be at choir practice.’

  ‘Now?’ I asked, a little taken aback. I wasn’t sure I wanted them to do this. I didn’t want to look like an idiot, but at the same time, it would have been nice to make some girlfriends and perhaps this was the way to do it.

  ‘Yeah.’ Amie nodded eagerly. ‘Don’t you want Michael to notice you at last? To see you as more than one of the boys?’

  ‘Michael and I are just friends.’ I laughed nervously and then thought for a moment. ‘But I suppose it would be nice to be seen as one of the girls for a change.’

  Jodie grinned. ‘Yeah! You’d look so nice; you’re too pretty to always look so plain!’

  ‘I look plain?’ I exclaimed, leaning closer into the mirror to examine my face. I did look a bit plain now that I looked. My skin was pale, my blue eyes looked small, and my honey blonde hair seemed dull. Maybe a pinch of pink to my cheeks wouldn’t hurt too much.

  Amie sighed impatiently. ‘Well? Are you going to let us do it or not?’

  Ten minutes later, I stared at myself in the mirror.

  I frowned, and what I saw looking back at me made me panic a bit. ‘Are you sure this looks good? Your cheeks aren’t as pink as mine, and the blue eyeshadow is really bright!’

  Amie scoffed. ‘Are you saying it’s not good enough for you?’ she snapped, folding her arms across her chest, eyes

  glaring at me like two black holes.

  ‘No,’ I spluttered. ‘It’s not that, I-’

  Jodie’s laughter interrupted me. ‘Don’t be so silly, Elina. What looks good on us wouldn’t look good on you. Different makeup looks good on different people. You look gorgeous.’

  Her words didn’t make me feel any better. And neither did the snicker that followed them. ‘I think I’d better wash this off-’

  ‘Come on,’ Jodie grabbed my arm and led me to the door, Amie following close behind. Her hand was on my back, pushing me a little.

  ‘We don’t want to be late to choir! Let’s show off your new look!’ Amie said, nudging me out of the door and into the crowded Year Eight corridor.

  My heart started to thump hard against my chest, and my palms began to moisten with sweat. I suddenly felt sick and nervous. I ducked my head and tried to cover my face with my hair.

  ‘Oh my god!’ a voice cried from across the room. ‘Look at Elina Lawrence!’

  I snapped up my head, and everyone was looking at me. Or, at least, it felt like they were. It might have only been a handful of people. But at that moment, it felt like the eyes of every kid in the corridor were burning into me. I looked at their faces. Smirks tugged at their lips, laughter burst from them, and fingers pointed in my direction.

  I turned, and suddenly Jodie and Amie were a few metres away, covering their mouths with their hands, eyes alight with cruel laughter.

  ‘She’s trying to be a girl all of a sudden!’ one boy laughed.

  It was then I realised.

  Michael was right.

  Jodie and Amie were horrible.

  Tears stung my eyes, and as they started to fall, powdery eyeshadow slipped between my lids, burning, making it hard to open them.

  I felt stupid. Humiliated. How could I have been such a fool?

  Sick to my stomach with shame, I turned and tried to fight my way through the crowd of kids back to the toilets. Laughter rang loud in my ears, my lips trembled, and my whole body went hot and cold at the same time. It felt like I was wading through a sea of hot waves; like I was drowning in their mocking cruelty.

  I felt like I was drowning forever, and when I finally reached the door, when solace was finally within my reach, Amie stuck her foot out in front of me.

  I went flying through the door of the toilets, landing face

  first on the cold tiled floor. It was damp against my cheek and smelled horrible.

  The tears started to fall more freely. And once they’d started, I couldn’t stop them. I pulled myself from the toilet floor and dashed into a cubicle, slamming the door shut and locking it.

  Jodie and Amie didn’t come back in, and I was glad. I couldn’t bear to hear another chorus of their witch-like cackles.

  I stayed in the toilets for the remainder of lunchtime, crying my eyes out, scrubbing that horrible makeup off my face with scratchy green paper towels and lukewarm soapy water. I scrubbed until my cheeks were sore and red, and until my eyelids were swollen.

  I went straight over to Michael’s after school. I hadn’t seen him since the incident with Jodie and Amie in the Year Eight toilets, and he hadn’t waited for me by the gate like he usually did. I had a feeling he might be annoyed at me for ditching him and Max.

  ‘Hi,’ I said when he came to the door.

  ‘Lina, are you okay?’ He was instantly worried the moment he saw me. He knew something was wrong and I hadn’t even said a word. My heart warmed at once.

  I nodded, but my lip trembled and my eyes clouded with

  tears again. ‘Yes,’ I lied.

  ‘Come here, Lina,’ he said softly, wrapping his arms tightly around me.

  I burst into tears the second my head touched his shoulder. His light blue hoodie was soft against my cheek, and he smelled so comforting and familiar, like the Fairy washing tablets his mum used to wash his clothes. ‘I’m so sorry, Michael. You were right about those two.’ I sniffed and shifted my head a little so that I didn’t get my tears or snot on his hoodie.

  Michael stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head. He was such a gentleman for his age, nothing like the other boys in the year. I felt so lucky to have him as a friend. My best friend. Once I’d stopped crying, he took me inside, and we sat in his kitchen, dunking cookies in hot chocolate as I told him all about what had happened. I told him how sorry I was that I hadn’t believed him, and he apologised too for being annoyed at me.

  ‘Can I still come over on Saturday night?’ I asked through a sniffy nose once I’d relayed the entirety of my mortifying tale.

  Michael laughed. ‘You’d better be coming over on Saturday night! We’ll do something special.’

  The next couple of days at school would have been hell if

  not for Michael and Max. People were still laughing and talking about what had happened, but those two had my back. And as long as I had them, the laughs and mean remarks were just background noise. The lessons I had without them were hard, but I kept my head down and got on with my work. In English, I focussed on Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, and in Maths I did my best to conquer the wide world of Pythagoras’ theorem.

  But whenever I heard someone sniggering behind me, or felt eyes staring and fingers pointing, I remembered how lucky I was. My boys had given me strength. Especially Michael. He’d given me a strength I didn’t even know I’d had, and when I turned up at his house on Saturday night, I felt like the most fortunate girl in the world.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I asked, my mouth agape as I stared at Michael’s room. He’d covered his bed with girly magazines and DVDs, and a basket of nail varnish and face masks sat upon his desk next to his TV and PlayStation.

  ‘We know you wanted to do something girly,’ Max said, grinning up at me from the red beanbag he sat on. In his hands, he held a copy of Bliss magazine. ‘So we thought tonight we’d do something a bit different.’

  Michael smiled and ushered me into his room. ‘We’ll paint your nails, and you can paint ours if you want. But only our toes because my mum nor my sister have any remover.’

  I laughed. ‘But why have you done this?’

  ‘We love you, Lina, and we thought you might like to do something like this. We always do boy things.’ Michael started to look a bit worried like he’d done something wrong.

  ‘Thank you, both of you,’ I said, so utterly and unbelievably grateful to my boys.

  Max got to his feet, and I reached out to hug them, but the sharp slam of a door ma
de me jump.

  ‘FINE!’ a female voice screamed from downstairs. ‘I’ll get the money from Jake!’

  ‘Genevieve, if you get on that motorbike with that boy, you’ll be grounded!’ a tired, exhausted voice shouted back. It was Michael’s mum, Lydia.

  Michael groaned, and Max rolled his eyes.

  I grimaced.

  Michael’s older sister, Genevieve, had been going slightly off the rails since the Mills family had moved to Wilmslow last year. The move had forced her away from her friends and her boyfriend, leaving her furious and full of hate for her parents who had ‘ruined her life’. Things had been getting worse recently, and just after summer, she’d started seeing a seventeen-year-old who rode a motorbike and smoked cigarettes. She was only fifteen, and so naturally, her parents were concerned about her.

  Genevieve laughed. It was a horrible, mocking sound, and reminded me a bit of Jodie and Amie. I couldn’t believe then that she and Michael were related. ‘You think you can stop me! You’re pathetic!’

  ‘Get back here, young lady!’ a louder male voice bellowed. Michael’s dad, Dave.

  But the response was the slam of the front door followed moments later by the screech of a motorcycle speeding away.

  ‘She hasn’t got any better then?’ I said delicately, as I took off my coat and sat on the bed. The moment for a group hug had been well and truly squished.

  Michael shook his head. ‘Nope. If anything, she’s getting worse. I can’t wait for her to move out, to be honest.’

  ‘I can’t believe she speaks to your parents like that,’ Max commented with a shake of his head. ‘Have the singing lessons stopped appeasing her then?’ Genevieve dreamed of being a singer, and to cheer her up her parents had bought her a block of ten lessons a few weeks ago.

  Michael shook his head in disgust. ‘She stopped after three lessons when she decided she’d rather spend time with her boyfriend. She’s horrible.’

  ‘Well, at least your parents have you,’ I said to Michael

  with a smile.

  He forced a grin. ‘Right. What colour are you thinking for your toes?’

  Michael and Max did a good job of my nails.

  Well, their attempt was good at least.

  The edges were smudged, and there were indentations of fingerprints from where they’d touched them when they weren’t quite dry. My fingernails were a dark purple, and my toes were silver. Although, I hoped my mum had some nail varnish remover because I didn’t think we were allowed dark colours at school. But as bad as it looked, I didn’t want to take it off.

  I’d painted Michael’s toenails blue, and Max’s green, and to be honest, my handiwork wasn’t that good either. I’d rarely painted my own nails, and I’d been laughing so much that the brush had kept shaking.

  I hadn’t laughed so much in ages. My tummy ached, my cheeks hurt, and my eyes were stinging from the tears of laughter that streamed down my face, and that was before I’d done a flow chart on Michael and Max from Bliss magazine to determine which Hollywood hunk was right for them.

  It turned out Orlando Bloom was more Michael’s cup of tea while Max’s answers depicted Chad Michael Murray was the one for him. It was the most fun I’d had in a very long time.

  And when Max’s mum picked him up just after ten, leaving Michael and me alone, something happened that made me realise something.

  Michael had gone downstairs for snacks and he’d returned with a tray of hot chocolate and two of his mum’s amazing chocolate buns. Once we’d finished them, he handed me a rectangular box that was wrapped in Harry Potter wrapping paper.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, gently taking the box from his hands.

  He ran a hand through his hair, and I could have sworn he seemed a little nervous. I’d never seen Michael nervous before. It sort of made me nervous too. ‘I know it’s not your birthday until next week, but I wanted to give you your present now,’ he said, smiling. His voice shook just a touch, but not so much that you’d notice unless you knew him as well as I did. ‘I thought it might be a nice way to…erm… end the night.’

  I couldn’t keep the grin off my face. My first thirteenth birthday present. ‘Are you sure you want me to open it now?’ I asked, biting my lip.

  Michael nodded eagerly. ‘I’ve been dying to give it to you since I bought it on holiday this year.’

  Michael’s family had spent a lot of the summer in America. His grandparents lived in Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas, and when he’d come back, he hadn’t been able to shut up about it for three weeks. His only complaint had been that he hadn’t been able to ride the roller coaster that sat atop the Stratosphere Hotel. It had been too windy the day he and his dad had tried to ride it. I’d have been relieved. The thought of being so high up made me feel sick and dizzy.

  I’d missed Michael loads. He’d been gone a month but had sent me three postcards, and it warmed my heart to know my birthday had been on his mind while he’d been away.

  I smiled. ‘Thank you so much, Michael.’ I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Go on, open it, you muppet!’ he laughed.

  I laughed too, and then without further ado, I ripped into the paper and tossed it to the floor. Inside was a smooth black box, and I held it delicately in my hands before opening it. I lifted the lid slowly, and when it clicked open, my jaw dropped as I saw what sat sparkling up at me.

  ‘Michael, it’s gorgeous!’ I gasped.

  ‘You like it?’ he said, relief evident in his face. He beamed at me.

  I nodded. ‘I love it! Please, can you help me put it on?’

  He grinned and took the necklace out of the case. It was a black cord necklace with an opal stone hanging from it. ‘October has two birthstones, but I thought you’d prefer this one.’

  ‘You made the right choice,’ I said happily, as I lifted my hair up and turned my back to Michael so he could fasten it around my neck. ‘But how did you afford this? We’re twelve!’

  Michael chuckled. ‘My grandparents gave me some spending money, and there wasn’t much I wanted. Well, there was a really cool lightsaber, but I chose to get you this instead.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked as I turned to face him again.

  His smile was so warm and kind I felt myself melting just a little. ‘Because you’re my best friend, and you deserve it.’

  I hugged him again, tighter this time, feeling so loved and light.

  I realised that night that I never wanted Michael to leave my side.

  We would be best friends forever. I’d make sure of it.

  Until we were old and grey.

  I didn’t want to live without him.

  I loved him so much.

  Chapter Four

  30th June 2019

  Time without Michael: 1 Year, 6 Months, 12 Days

  I had a spring in my step for the first time in forever the weekend after I’d found Michael’s letter and bucket list. And as I headed to meet my friends, Kit and Roanna, for brunch on Sunday, I couldn’t help but smile at those I passed in the streets.

  ‘Hey guys,’ I beamed as I spotted them sat at an outside table beneath a lemon canopy at the front of our usual restaurant. We’d been coming here for Sunday brunch for years.

  ‘Hi,’ Kit said, fighting back a sob and running a hand through her red locks. I saw then that my friend’s eyes were red and puffy, and mascara was smudged beneath them.

  ‘Hey,’ Roanna said quietly, passing me a look of pity as she handed Kit a tissue from the tin in the middle of the table.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, concerned, as I sat down on one of the wooden chairs and put my handbag on the seat next to me.

  Kit began to cry more freely, and I was certain she was

  saying words, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what they were. It didn’t help that her Irish accent seemed to thicken somewhat whenever she was upset.

  I looked to Roanna who shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Kit, sweetheart
, we can’t tell what you’re saying,’ I said softly, as I reached across to stroke her arm. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘It, it…’ she blubbered. ‘It’s Pete. He’s been-’. And then the next few words were rather inaudible. But it sounded like she’d either said ‘cheating on me’ or ‘sheeping on bee’ and I didn’t think it was the latter.

  ‘Oh my god! Pete?’ Roanna exclaimed. ‘Boring Pete!’

  I kicked Roanna under the table and shot her a glaring look.

  ‘How boring must that make me?’ wailed Kit.

  ‘Roanna, why don’t you go and order our food while I have a chat with Kit?’ I suggested. Roanna wasn’t the best at keeping her thoughts to herself, and I didn’t think Kit needed those thoughts at the moment.

  Roanna got the message and stood. ‘Three full English breakfasts, right?’

  I nodded, and she headed inside to place our order.

  ‘Take some deep breaths, darling,’ I kindly said to Kit.

  She did as I said, and then blew her nose into the tissue. ‘Oh, what am I gonna do, Lina? I can’t believe that this is

  happening.’

  ‘Now, what exactly happened Kit? Are you sure about this?’ I asked delicately.

  She nodded, and her bottom lip started to tremble again. ‘Ross had his phone while Pete was in the shower, and he’d been pressing loads of buttons so I took it from him and when I looked at it there was a message from some woman called Stacey telling him how much she’d enjoyed their night last week and how she wanted to do it again! There was a photo of her boobs with it!’

  I grimaced. Their eighteen-month-old son had seen it? ‘Oh, god. That’s awful. Did you confront him?’

  Kit nodded her head. ‘Yeah,’ she said through a sniffle. ‘He said it had just happened the once, but how can I believe him? I can’t trust him now!’

  ‘Oh, Kit, you don’t deserve this,’ I said. My heart broke for her. All she’d ever shown her husband was love and adoration. ‘When did you find out?’

  ‘Just before I came here,’ she replied sadly.

  My eyes widened a bit. ‘Oh. So, have you had a chance to properly talk about it?’