2.

Jared didn't see me tomorrow though. He didn't show up to school the next day.

The day after that I didn't see him in English either. As I was putting my books in my locker before lunch I sensed someone big lean up against the lockers next to me. I slowly closed my locker door to reveal Paul Lahote leaning against the lockers looking at me.

"Hey Kimmy", he smiled.

"It's just Kim" I replied, frowning.

"Just Kim" he repeated laughing, "whatever you say".

"What do you want Paul?" I asked. Paul's mum worked with my mum at the health centre. They were both nurses, and so as kids we'd spent a fair bit of time together after school when we had to sit in the back room of the health centre while our mum's worked - before we were old enough to be home alone.

We hadn't spent time together in years though. Paul had a bit of a temper and he often got into fights at school, but he was also very popular and seemed to have a never ending list of friends. Or at least he used to.

Paul was Jared's best friend, and like Jared he had also been off school sick recently. He was out for 2 and a half weeks, and came back looking like he'd just spent those two weeks training in the gym with The Rock. Jared went off school about a week after Paul was back. When Paul came back he seemed to stop hanging out with all of his old friends. I'd heard rumours that he'd been seen hanging out with Sam Uley now, and I'd also heard rumours that Jared had been seen with them a couple of times at the beach while he was meant to be sick, but who knows.

"Well, you're going to eat lunch with me today" Paul announced in response. My face must have been a picture because he laughed and turned me around to face the direction of the cafeteria.

"Paul, seriously, I'm good" I protested. Recently I always go for a walk at lunch (as long as it's not raining - if it's raining I go to the library). Since I started to get depressed again I had stopped hanging out with my friends - one of the many things that worries my mother. I recognised I was becoming a major downer around them, and to be honest, I just don't always have the energy to hang out with people. Anyway, now it's become to awkward to go back and speak to them again, I don't want to explain myself and I'd just rather not deal with any of it. Subsequently, I don't really have any friends anymore, and therefore I tend to go for walks at lunch.

"No, no, no." Paul said. "Honest to god Kim, Jared has not shut up about you for the last two days, and since he hasn't been able to come into school himself I thought I'd find out what all the fuss is about".

He looked at me and smiled but I must have looked shocked. Why was Jared talking about me?! To Paul Lahote?! This was like some weird dream. "Uhh.." I didn't know what to say.

"Come on, I am super hungry Kim. I don't have time for this", he put his arm around my shoulders and guided me towards the cafeteria.


"So how's you mum?" Paul asked me with his mouth full of half a muffin - crumbs going everywhere.

I stared at him with my mouth slightly open while I watched him shove the rest of the muffin in his mouth. He'd already eaten two sandwiches, an apple and a cookie.

"Yeah she's good. Same as normal" I said. Paul was only being polite, if there had been any interesting news about my mother he would already know from his mum. He nodded and had a drink of water.

"Where's Jared today?" I asked.

He looked up from his tray and grinned at me. "Wouldn't you like to know!" He laughed and wiggled his eyebrows up and down and I blushed. Paul cleared his throat, "He's urm, he's… dealing with something."

"Dealing with what?" I replied. Paul seemed to feel a bit awkward about my questions, but Jared was on my mind today. He'd been so weird the other day and made a point of asking to see me yesterday and then he just seems to have disappeared again.

"He's… we both work with Sam. Sam Uley, you know him right?" He looked at me and I nodded, encouraging him to go on. "Okay, well we both work with him, helping around the Res, stuff like that. Anyway, erm… we've taken on a new.. worker", Paul frowned, "so he's just helping them get up to speed" he finished.

"And he's allowed out of school for that?" I wondered.

"Well yeah, it's important so the council gave it the okay with the school and stuff" He replied, "anyway, hopefully he'll be back tomorrow". He then opened a banana and started to eat that.

"Did you not have breakfast?" I laughed.

Paul grinned back at me, "oh Kimmy, you have so much to learn!"


That night I couldn't sleep at all. It was 1:40am and I was tossing and turning.

I tried reading, I tried listening to music, I'd tried just lying there and trying to think of nothing.

My brain just wouldn't shut up at all. I was also super hot and bothered.

I got up and opened my window fully to get a breeze in and then got back into bed.

I had therapy the next day and it was stressing me out. I'd been working on the skills she was trying to give me but they just all were seeming kind of pointless.

To me things always seem to come back to this one point: there is absolutely no point in anything.

If I start to think about my life, it just feels utterly pointless. As if I am just going to live day after day doing the same old things and then I'll eventually be older and one day I'll die. That's it. That's life. And I just feel like what is the actual point in my existence. Why should I really work hard in school? Why should I make an effort to make friends again? Because at the end of the day, literally none of this matters.

The really frustrating thing about my depression is that there is literally no reason for it at all. There's nothing really wrong with my life at all, it's pretty standard. I have loving parents. Okay, they don't love each other anymore but I mean that's not really the end of the world the way I thought it had been when I was 13. They were definitely both a lot happier apart than they had been together during those last couple of years. We live in an okay house, we have enough money. There's no reason for me to be depressed.

My therapist tells me that ultimately there doesn't have to be anything wrong in my life, she says it literally is just an imbalance in my brain, and that sometimes I feel this more than other times - hence why I had been feeling it more this year. But this did just frustrate me - to not know what the reason behind this was. Did it mean that it was likely just going to come and go in waves throughout my life?

We had had a bit of a back and forth on this in our last session and it had annoyed me. I wondered if this came back to me thinking everything was pointless, but then I wondered if I only thought everything was pointless because I was depressed.

I lay there in the dark and closed my eyes again. I tried to practice some mindfulness. Okay, Kim. Listen to what you can hear right now. Name 5 things you can hear.

I focussed on listening, and I could hear my mum snoring in her bedroom. I could also hear the sound of the sea outside. I could hear the wind in the trees as well.

Suddenly a loud howl ripped through the night and I jumped and sat up. It sounded like it literally could have come from the woods at the end of my garden.

I jumped out of bed and stared out of the window. Of course, I couldn't see anything at all because it was 1:40am.

Another howl sounded at that point, it sounded a bit further away but still super close and I shut my window. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to sleep tonight now.