CHAPTER ONE
'Told you I'd die without you,' Alex Bates thought to himself as he looked down at the platform beneath the roof he was standing on. He had climbed to the top of the ice skating rink he'd often gone to as a child and was now looking down at all the people rushing around below him.
He imagined what their expressions would be if he were to jump in front of the next departing train. He imagined the fall, those few moments of elation before the impact. He imagined his blood splattering on the windows, the crimson a vivid contrast against the bright white of the train.
It was almost funny how a place that held so many happy memories would also be the place he'd contemplate his death; the self-hatred in his mind complete juxtaposing the warmth his reminiscing would bring. He wasn't even entirely sure how he had ended up standing on the edge of the old building that overlooked one of the busiest train stations in London but couldn't find it in himself to leave.
The day had looked so warm in the morning, the sky clear and the sun shining. It was almost like a photograph of a magazine cut-out; a perfect day. Ha. Just as Alex's seemingly warm exterior was a facade for the ice within his heart, the air around him was freezing. The wind blew softly, whipping chocolate hair in and out of his eyes â the eyes that haunted him every time he looked in the mirror. Dark cobalt irises with almost-golden flecks in them, framed with dark lashes. Eyes he had shared with his twin sister Alice.
Eyes she would never open again.
It had been two months since the car accident that had taken her life, two agonising months of hiding the guilt that he felt. Of course everyone expected him to be sad, anyone would be after losing the only family member they had left. But what nobody realised was the downward spiral Alex had been in ever since. If only he hadn't been too stubborn to stop for directions, he wouldn't have had to ask her to look for the map they always kept in the backseat. And she wouldn't have taken off her seatbelt to reach for it.
If only.
The last thing he had said to her, just moments before the impact, had been a dramatized exclamation laced with sarcasm. 'Thanks, Alice. You know I'd just die without you, right?'
He couldn't even remember what they'd been talking about before that, but that simple phrase had haunted him ever since. Because it was true.
If they had just been regular siblings in a normal family maybe it wouldn't hurt so much, but they'd been twins. They did everything together, especially since their parents had passed away many years ago. That one had been a small local plane failure; it had gotten out of control and landed in the Atlantic Ocean on the way back from their parents' first holiday without the kids. Whilst the siblings were lucky enough to have an amazing aunt and uncle who stepped in and raised them, they had always thought of it as the two of them against the world. But now, Alice was gone and he was broken.
As Alex watched a guy in a business suit â obviously heading home from work â running on the platform to get to his train, he couldn't help thinking of transport. It was transport that had caused the death of the rest of his family members, so why not let a train be the cause of his?
He hadn't felt as empty after his parents' death, not like the way he felt now without Alice. They'd been twins, and had shared every experience and feeling together. As children, whenever they had complained about sharing their toys, their mother would say, "If you two could share a womb, then you can share everything else." Closer than best friends, Alice had always been there for every moment. Wasn't it only fair that he should be with her in death too?
He closed his eyes, letting the sound of the busy streets of London envelope him. It was at times like this that he finally felt at peace. The noise around him was loud enough to block out the screams of his dying twin sister that he still heard in his mind, over and over again.
He took a step forward. Only one more would be needed before he would plummet onto the tracks underneath.
One more step.
"Don't!" he heard a soft voice whisper from behind him.
The unexpected sound cleared Alex's mind, bringing him back to reality. His eyes flickered open, his head spinning back quickly to see who had spoken. It was a girl his age. He recognised her from school; he had never spoken to her before but she was in a few of his classes and he knew her name was Kalila.
Pretty name for such an ordinary girl.
The first thing he noticed was the bright red name tag around her neck, telling him that she worked at the cafe of the ice skating rink. Her left hand was raised slightly, as though she was about to comfort him, although that wasn't necessary. The other was clutching a packet of Skittles and a Costa coffee cup. A snack on the rooftop before leaving work perhaps?
He just smiled at her, as though standing at the edge of a roof above one of the busiest train stations in London was a perfectly normal activity to do on a late Sunday afternoon in the middle of November. Although he barely knew her he knew she was a nice person, the kind who would try to talk him out of it. The thought almost made him laugh, something he hadn't done since the accident. This little mouse of a girl couldn't stop him.
But she didn't.
No pleading or begging or crying; no words about how it was going to be okay and how he should step away from the edge. No bullshit about being strong and it getting better eventually. None of the crap he had heard a million times over â nothing he expected.
All she did was throw the packet of Skittles at him. His eyebrows rose in confusion.
"What? What are you doing?" he asked, completely thrown by her.
She didn't answer straight away, she just stared at him as though she had never seen before. That wasn't true, Alex was one of the most popular guys in her school. He always had been the life of the party but seeing him so vulnerable made him look like a completely new person than the one she was used to seeing strutting around school with his football.
"There are no words I could possibly say to make you change your mind. Even if I could stop you for now, there's nothing to say you won't jump off later. So I figured if you're gonna die, you may as well die having eaten the greatest sweets known to mankind first."
And with that she turned and walked away, leaving behind a very confused Alex.
---
Although all he wanted was to take that one last step into oblivion to end the screams in his head, all Alex could think about was the strange girl who had just walked away from him. That was certainly not something he'd expected and, somehow, he couldn't help but be intrigued by her calmness in such a life-or-death moment. The train momentarily forgotten, he internally debated with himself about what to do now.
'Sod this,' he thought to himself, ripping open the packet of skittles with his teeth. After all, he hadn't eaten anything for lunch and it was almost six in the evening. He turned round and walked back towards the steps he'd climbed up from â the steps Kalila had just gone down. 'Neither the trains nor the roof is going anywhere. I can get my answers and then come back, right?'
Satisfied with his decision, he ran towards the cafe where she worked hoping for an explanation on what the hell just happened but it was empty. In fact the whole place seemed to be empty. There was nobody in sight and if not for the quiet music he could hear from around the corner, he would have thought that they'd completely closed for the night.
Taking soft steps to avoid alerting anyone to his presence, Alex slowly walked to the direction of the low lighting. He already knew it was the ice rink but what would anyone be doing ice skating alone at closing time with only one of the many lights on?
It was Kalila. Although he'd expected that since had followed her, he was still surprised. There had never been anything remarkable about her; her skin was slightly tanned and she had wavy dark hair with muddy brown eyes. Slender but not skinny. Smart but not clever. Neither tall nor short. She was average in every sense of the word.
Kalila was the kind of girl you borrowed a pen from when you needed one but never returned, the girl you smiled at in the hallways but didn't stop to talk to, the girl you said hi to in classes before turning back to talk to your friends. But as he stood there, hidden in the shadows, Alex realised something â Kalila Woods had a spark to her.
It wasn't anything obvious â not in her face, the way she spoke or the clothes she wore. Rather, it was in the way she moved, the pointing of her arms as she steadied herself, the arch of her back as she spun around, the stretch of her legs as she glided across the ice. She had a spark to her of poise and grace and passion. Of happiness.
Thinking back to his first impression of her being like a mouse, he couldn't help shaking his head slightly. As he watched her now, he knew she was more like a panther slinking along the ground, leaping in the air. There was something so feline about the way she twisted and turned, oblivious to all that was around her. She moved like there was nothing but her and the ice.
And for the first time since his sister had died, Alex felt something other than the numb feeling he was accustomed to. He felt awe. He knew he wanted to talk to her, to get to know this girl that had completely fascinated him.
And maybe, just maybe, he wasn't quite ready to die yet.