Читать книгу The Kid Who Came From Space - Ross Welford - Страница 13

‘I hate you!’

It is the last thing I said to Tammy. It bounces around in my head and it is the opposite of the truth.

My twin sister. My ‘other half’, Mam used to say, and she was right.

Tamara ‘Tammy’ Tait. Cool name, I think, mainly because of the alliteration. Tammy Tait. And since she went missing, seldom has an hour has passed when I haven’t thought about those three syllables.

An hour? Try five minutes. Try five seconds. It’s exhausting.

Then there will be times when I realise that I haven’t thought of Tammy for a few minutes, and that’s almost worse, so I force myself to replay her in my head, to listen to her again. The way she says ‘Oh, E-thaaaan!’ when she is annoyed with me for something (which is quite often); or how she farted in the bath once when we were little and laughed so hard that she banged her head on the tap, which made her laugh even more even though her head was bleeding.

Then I’ll end up thinking of the last few months, when we moved to Kielder, and started secondary school. We are now in different classes. She has friends who I don’t even know (and at least one who doesn’t even like me. It’s OK, Nadia Kowalski, the feeling’s mutual).

Then thinking of all that makes me sad again, which – weirdly – makes me feel better because it sort of makes up for forgetting to think about her all the time.

And when I am sad, I remember the last words I said to her: I hate you.

I haven’t told Mam that. It would upset her, and Mam and Dad are upset enough. The fact is, Tammy and I said we hated each other far more than we ever said we loved each other.

Which is not hard, because we never said we loved each other. Why would we? It would be like telling yourself.

Still, I wish I hate you hadn’t been the last thing I’d said to her.