Soul Splitters

Pensive

Pippa stacked the bowls, scooped the pile off the table and brought them across the open plan flat to the kitchenette. Grabbing a knife she scraped the uneaten leftovers into the bin, she watched the a small piece of broccoli fall into the black plastic darkness. She placed the bowls delicately into the hungry dishwasher, an expensive luxury she wasn't sure her family could actually afford. Her blond hair fell across her face and she flicked it back. The clunky, old laptop on the countertop behind her flickered to life with a tinny electronic beep. She had a new message from Rachel. Who had slowly been trying to fill the Autumn shaped hole at school. Pippa thought about how Rahel hadn't bargained on how big those boots would be to fill. Autumn had been an expert at always saying the right thing to the right person. She had been liked by almost everyone, and when she had died the whole school had felt it. Pippa didn't like Rachel trying to replace her. They had manged to be amicable and civil in the past but truthfully they were only friends because of Autumn. Pippa because she was fond of Autumn and Rachel because she wanted to be her. Without Autumn there wasn't much left. Studying the dark blue box on the screen she decided she definitely did not want to read the message anytime soon after the comments she made at school and she swiped her finger across the trackpad, accidentally opening the message. She sighed, watching the computer freeze and slug it's way through opening her e-mails. Eventually, after an age, the window opened revealing Rachels message. Pippa clicked away and saw that there was an unread message from Ian. She brushed a little money spider away as it attempted to scuttle onto the keyboard. She opened the e-mail and read the contents.

Ian was replying to an old message, she realised this had been sitting in her Inbox for a few days. He wrote about missing Autumn which made her happier knowing she wasn't alone, his loneliness and lack of friends, his distaste at way Rachel had been treating him - the names she called him. She had felt sorry for Ian because Autumn had always disregarded his affections for her while she was alive. She had called him creepy and pervy. before she had died. Pippa had never been very fond of Ian either, she understood his way of expressing himself was far too forward, but she had always put it down to him being misunderstood. She had noticed him become even more of a recluse since Autumns death so she decided to reach out to him and give him somebody to talk to. They had exchanged e-mails for the last couple of weeks. Recently she had stopped replying though, the things Ian said were too much for her to read.

In addition, her parents had been behaving odd lately. She was sure it wasn't just because of Autumn. It was something else. She had noticed them becoming increasingly more stressed and spending less time at home, when they were home they didn't sit down in front of the TV to watch the news like normal. They were on the phone or leaning out the kitchen window restarting their smoking habits. The fridge was bare, it was always bare now. Dinners had gotten smaller too, and now Pippa came to think of it she realised a lot had changed that she hadn't thought ot take note of. She had been asked to downgrade her phone, temporarily they said, from the state of the art model on the expensive contract to the old clunky brick she was stuck with at present. She had to buy her clothes from catalogues and charity shops, she couldn't go for the designer brands like her friends. What had they called it? Economising. No longer blinded by the fog of grief she realised home life had changed as much as school life.

*

Josh stacked the plates in the sink, he quietly whistled a foreign tune. Autumn heard the muffled tone overpowered by the percussion of cutlery as she ventured up the stairs to her room. She couldn't remember what this room looked like, it used to belong to Kyla - Sallice's sister. Although when Autumn had inherited the room it had been bare, she wondered what had happened to all Kylas belongings. It was relatively taboo to talk about Kyla, all Autumn knew was that she had managed to get on the train and she had left Sallice behind.