CHAPTER NINETEEN
"At least it's got Dora on it!" Alex grinned teasingly at Kalila.
She rolled her eyes and laughed, pulling the sleeves of her grey butterfly cardigan down to cover the small Dora the Explorer bandage on her wrist. It was Boxing Day and they had met up at Alex's flat to continue with their art project, Kalila getting a rather large paper-cut in the process.
Alex scrutinised all the paintings they had completed so far which were spread out on the wooden floor of his living room. Although they were all pretty good â there was no way they couldn't be with her talent â they seemed a little random.
From the very beginning they were intended to represent different reasons for him not to kill himself the day they met. However, nobody else would know that by seeing them and therefore they wouldn't be able to see the beauty of the artwork or how much they had come to mean to him.
Kalila listened carefully as Alex told her of his thoughts. Trying to refrain from shuddering at the word suicide, she nodded her head.
"You're right, we need to make it known that these are meant to be reasons not to die but I dunno how we can do that...?" she trailed off deep in thought as he smiled slightly in agreement.
He sat up suddenly, grinning, an idea in mind. It was so simple that he couldn't understand why they hadn't thought of it before. "How about just having a title at the top and labelling each picture? That way it won't be so obvious it's about me," he asked, a little unsure.
Kalila's eyebrows furrowed a little as she tried to imagine it, her smile widening as more ideas began to come to mind. "Photo frames!" she burst out in excitement.
Alex just blinked. "You've lost me," he said, head tilted to the side in confusion. She laughed and ripped out an empty page from a random maths notebook that was sticking out from under Alex's sofa. Grabbing hold of that infamous lime pen, she began to illustrate her idea, carefully choosing the positioning of the paintings in order of their importance.
Alex jumped up while she was doing that and went towards his bedroom, his heart racing slightly in anticipation of what he was about to do but knowing it should be done anyway. He closed the door gently with the back of his heel as he reached for a huge cardboard box under the very back of his bed.
He had heard of some mothers not being able to step foot into their children's room after their deaths, not even to clean it. Almost as though the presence of the ghosts of their child would be there. He didn't have a bedroom of his sisters he couldn't make himself enter since he now lived alone but he did have this box.
Gingerly peeling off the sparkly purple tape, he pulled the flaps open. Layers and layers of small items and objects that had meant a lot to Alice â and subsequently him also â were piled in there. Tiny stocking sized gifts to her from the last Christmas they had with their parents, the silver infinity sign necklace she had worn everyday wrapped carefully in her favourite scarf, birthday cards to and from her, the cake stand she had make with antique plates and teacups as well as loads of photos of everyone that meant a lot to the two of them. At the very bottom was what he was looking for though; the large, different sized, vintage styled photo frames she had brought for a craft project.
The one she never had a chance to start.
About a month ago he wouldn't have dared to go near that box, never mind open it to take something out for himself to use. 'What's changed now though?' he thought to himself as he taped the box back up â this time with white tape covered in cartoon ice-creams that he had found inside it.
He almost laughed out loud at that stupid thought, it had been Kalila of course. Slowly, she had begun to show him that it was okay to think of Alice without feeling depressed, to remember all the good times and the things he knew his sister would have wanted. Like using these frames for something useful instead of preserving her things for years and years as though they were sacred.
Maybe someday he'd be okay again. Maybe.
"Slightly more to the left I think," Kalila called out. She was standing in the hallway while Alex was positioning each canvas in the frames they had spray painted black. "That's it, perfect!"
They had finished most of the work for today, all that was left was deciding on a title for each painting. Alex had carved a floral pattern he copied from Kalila's bag onto a large spare eraser and they had stamped the background of small rectangles of paper. These labels would be stuck on each frame under the original photograph, the title carefully written on them to show their meaning.
"You're gonna have to do the writing, mine looks like chicken scratch compared to yours," he called out, beckoning at her to come back into the living room. Before she could reply there was a thud at the door followed by a loud 'ow!'
Kalila raised her eyebrow and opened the door to reveal Tyler holding food containers, clutching his left knee while Cameron was standing there stifling laughter. "What the...?" Alex asked bemused at the scrunched up facial expression of Ty.
Once he had stopped swearing at the door he had banged his leg on, the four of them walked back inside â Tyler hobbling in his usual dramatic fashion â to place the plastic containers on Alex's pathetic excuse for coffee table before trying to figure out what was what.
"I think the ones with the blue lids are stuff for you to freeze, that one is for the fridge and another box is meant to be a casserole for you to eat tonight. I dunno man, you know how excited my mum gets to feed you, she never gives me this much!" Tyler complained.
Kalila picked up one of the boxes and lightly hit him on the head with it. "If it's for the freezer, why are you casually leaving it on the table? Boys!" she rolled her eyes, turning to walk towards the kitchen in order to put everything away properly.
"Girls!" Alex muttered, jokingly impersonating her.
Cameron ruffled Kalila's hair and laughed. "Jheeze, calm down woman. Damn, am I glad I don't own a vagina!"
There was a moment of silence before all three boys burst out laughing at her outraged expression as she smacked him with the box, much harder this time. Trying to repress his grin as she grumbled under her breath, Alex grabbed the other containers and helped her put them away.
"Whoa! This is amazing, is it for that art project you were talking about?" They heard Cameron call out from the living room, where all their paintings and art material were spread out on the floor.
"Yeah wow... It's well cool how obvious it is from these photos that you love photography Alex. And Kalila, same to you with painting. You obviously put so much feeling into it, that scholarship must mean a lot to you," Tyler commented as he compared each painting with its original photograph.
Alex smiled at that. He knew how important her art was to her and how badly she wanted one of the few scholarships offered to them from her dream university. She had told him how Natalie was the only one who believed she could do it when she first started drawing and painting. Now that she was gone, Kalila wanted to be accepted to know that her cousin would have been proud of her.
As they walked back towards them, she began to explain the purpose of the entire project and what each painting was for. 'Thank God she generalised it and didn't make it obvious it's because of me and my habit of trying to jump in front of trains,' Alex thought to himself with a grateful smile as he watched Kalila describe the very first one.
The canvas was medium sized and vertical; the two teenagers in the middle doubled over with laughter, their eyes shining. They were covered with red pulp from the cranberries they had been picking, random leaves on their clothes and their hair was stuck to their foreheads because of the warm weather.
"Laughing!" Tyler burst out. "That one should be about laughing because well, it's important. Like how even if you have nothing left, you should live for the moments where you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts and your cheeks ache. The way you both look there," he said, gesturing to the painting.
And so it was decided. 'Laughter'.
The four of them continued on like that, talking and laughing as they decided on simple titles for each work of art. The painting of their silhouettes against the glow of the sunset was labelled as 'Beautiful Moments,' the snowball fight at the park 'Revisiting Childhood.' The one of them covered in paint along with Lacey, Tyler and Emma was unanimously decided as 'Friendship' and a painting Kalila had completed of her baby brother wrapped up in tinsel was labelled as 'Family.'
And as they thought of titles for each painting, they were unknowingly listing all the reasons why Alex should live.