Just as the knife plunges into my skin and I can feel the blood release from my wrist, I hear something stirring at the entrance of the cave. I'm half expecting, hoping really, that it's Rick…

"Kier, is that you?"

"Christ mum, nearly gave me a heart attack." I try to cover my wrist before she sees the blood trickling from it. The cut was just started, not very deep, but the blood noticeably seeps through my jumper. If she's noticed it or the knife sitting beside me, she's ignoring it for the time being.

"What are you doing here, Kieren?" I stutter trying to find an answer, an acceptable answer as to why I'm here alone in the dark, bleeding. Before I can speak she breaks the silence, "I'm so sorry about what happened to him love. Jem told me everything after you ran off, said you might be here."

I could feel the tears rolling down my face, she knows, she knows everything. She reaches for my hand and its then she notices the blood. She hesitantly and silently lifts the sleeve I had hoped would cover it. "It's not bad mum I swear it, I wasn't going to…" I let the sentence trail off because we both know it's a lie.

She pulls a tissue from her pocket and presses it gently to the wound, trying to assess the damage. Without looking up begins to speak, "I know how it feels, to lose someone. I was going out with this very handsome RAF pilot." She looks up at me now with this slightest hint of a smile, "I know, I never told you. I was so amazed by this man. I had it in my head that we were going to get married, have kids, the whole shebang. Trouble was he had other plans. Namely dumping me and going out with my best friend who he deemed more socially acceptable. I was devastated, inconsolable. I thought that was it, the end. I'd never find anyone who got me so completely again. I quit college and came home. One night, I decided I was going to end it all. I snuck out the house and went to the late night chemist. But the fella on the counter point blank refused to serve me. So I burst into tears right there in the shop. He was so kind this fella, even though he wouldn't serve me, he took me in the back, made me a cup a tea and he listened. And I talked, all through his shift. I talked and he listened. And he made me laugh too. That's something you don't know about your Dad, he's very funny when he wants to be."

She's still smiling, even through the tears running down her face. "Let's get you some help Kier. And then we'll talk, me, Jem, your Dad, we'll all listen." She pulls me into a hug and I don't resist it. Maybe our pain isn't quite the same, but she knows exactly what I was planning on doing there in the cave. I was planning on leaving her, and Jem, and Dad. Not even thinking of their feelings.

She grabs the torch and leads me out of the cave her arm around mine, guiding my way. We walk out to the edge of the woods to the road where the car is waiting.

"Where's dad?"

"He's at home worried sick, he wanted to come but I told him not to. He doesn't know how much Rick meant to you, but you can tell him for yourself after we're home. Jem will be glad to see too you Kier."

She drives me to the Emergency where I get stitched up. Mum lies for me and says it was an accident, knows I'd end up in the Psych ward if we told the truth. "Filleting a fish he was, just slipped the knife is all." I nod in agreement, but keep my head down. Truth be told the nurse says I'm lucky, had the cut been any deeper or longer I could have bled out. Mum and I share a glance knowing that that was my exact intention. She kisses my forehead lovingly, "we're all lucky." The nurse smiles sweetly and hands me by discharge orders: keep the wound bandaged, change the bandage every day, and be more careful with Swiss army knives. I feign a smile, but I can't wait to be out of there.

When we pull in the carport I know what's waiting. The lights are still on, I'm not sure I'm ready for this.

"I didn't tell him Kieren. When I called to tell him I found you, I didn't tell him about, you know." My mum is lying for me. She's hidden the whole incident from my dad and I don't know whether to be relieved or ashamed. "It wasn't my place. If you want to tell him together we can. Tell Jem tomorrow though, she should be in bed by now." Jem, I didn't think about Jem. Telling my dad seemed like it would be easy in light of the confession mum made in the cave. They had met when she herself was about to do that same thing. But Jem—how do you tell your 14 year old sister that you were going to leave her behind. I feel sick all over again, how did I not think of Jem?

I shuffle into the living room, where only dad is awake waiting for us. He hugs me straight away, only noticing the bandage as we part. "What happened son?" He grabs my wrist and hugs me again. I notice now that my dad is more perceptive than he seems. He can see that I'm tired, that I don't have to words. "We can talk about it in the morning, yeah?" I can hear it in his voice, that he's fighting back tears. Tears that he didn't see what was happening in his son until now, tears that he hadn't noticed the pain in his son's face these past months. I can't blame him though, and he can't blame himself. I didn't want anyone to notice.

As I climb the stairs ready for bed, the one person who notices everything is there waiting at the top of the steps for me. She looks small now, half asleep tucked against the top railing, "Hey Kier", she mumbles in a drowsy tone.

"Hey Jem." I reply, sitting next to her there. There is silence between us until I can gather the courage, "Thanks Jem. Thanks for telling mum about Rick. Thanks for telling her where to find me."

"Sorry Kier, I know that was your special place with Rick but I was scared. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." She's slightly more awake now, sitting up some. I can hear what sounds like regret in her voice, like she thinks I might have been annoyed with her.

"Don't be sorry Jem, don't ever be sorry. You saved my life tonight." I raise my sleeve to show her the bandage, with dried blood at its edges. She delicately smooths the bandage as if to make sure it's real.

"Why Kier?" The tears well up in her eyes instantly as the pain is written all over her face.

"I'm sorry Jem." I reach for her and hug her tightly, wishing I hadn't been the cause of this pain for her. We stay like this at the top of the stairs for a while longer, not breaking the embrace until our eyes blood shot and we're both out of tear to cry.

I spend the remainder of the fall and the following winter seeing a therapist. Talking about Rick and how we loved each other, how we couldn't be together, not properly. Talking about him leaving without a word, about his death I had to read about in the paper. Talking about how I almost left too, also without a word. I talk and they listen. The therapist even brings in my family so we can talk together, share the things we'd never even hinted at before. Mum's previous depression and suicidal thoughts and actions. Dad's feelings of inadequacy and always being in fear that mum would always love that RAF pilot more than him, or that she might try to hurt herself again one day. Jem being scared to tell about Rick and I and thinking she would, and still could, lose me forever. We talk about the good things too though, about how I can put my emotion into my art, express myself in a healthy way. Talk about how mum and dad never would have found each other without that past pain, and how they're happier now than ever. Even talk about Jem's school girl crushes; turns out she has a little boyfriend of her own, Henry.

We're finally getting on not just as a family, but as something closer, as friends. That's why it's hard when I know I have to go off to college in the fall. After endless therapy sessions, we had gone away on a spring break holiday, as a reward for as well as we'd done. It was when we came back to Roarton in that early summer heat that I knew. I knew I couldn't stay here, continuing to live where I knew everything by heart, where Rick was around every corner. The trail we would take home from school where I'd try to sneak kisses, the grocery he'd spent his weekends behind the counter with me staring at him from an aisle over, the bedroom I had adorned with his photos and the portraits I drew while he posed trying not to laugh, the pathway that lead to the cave where I last saw him, touched him, said goodbye to him, where I had tried to end my own life. I couldn't be here. So when the fall came round I left. Mum and Dad knew it was best. Jem made me promise to let her visit soon and to send letters.

So I went to art school like he had hoped I would, knowing that he would still be right there next to me.