Chapter 6

The usual sight of Nik’s dorm room greeted me. Take away cartons littered the desk, a piece of congealed pizza stuck to a paper plate and unwashed mugs lay haphazardly about. His unmade bed lay in a jumble with dirty socks and other various paraphernalia. It was no surprise that he had told my parents that his laptop’s camera was broken. If they had seen the pigsty my older brother lived in, my mother would have certainly flown over there just to clean it up. My room was nothing in comparison and she constantly moaned at me to clean it up.

There was a shuffling sound as he moved about his room, no doubt kicking various items of garbage out of his way. As my brother moved into view I felt myself fall backwards off the chair in shock.

“What the hell did you do?” I was too horrified to say anything else.

Nik’s once glorious hair had been shaved until it was barely a centimetre long and along his temples were patterns of flames which had been shaved to reveal his scalp. He looked more like an escaped convict or a murderer than the ladies man I was used to seeing.

“Do you like it?” he asked sincerely, grinning like the village idiot. “I had a choice between my name, zigzags or flames. I do think I made the right choice though, don’t you?”

I couldn’t help myself. I burst into a fit of laughter until tears streamed down my cheeks and I struggled to pull myself and the fallen chair back to its standing position.

“Bro, have you looked in the mirror at all? You look as if you’re meant to be wearing orange and stuck behind bars.”

“That was the point Cal. I look badass now.”

He sounded so proud of his new look that I couldn’t burst his bubble anymore than I already had. Luckily I was saved from commenting further by the doorbell.

“Don’t open if it’s an axe murderer or one of my ex-girlfriends!” Nik called after me.

Following my brother’s advice, because you can never be too careful when it came to my brother’s ex-girlfriends, I peeped through the peephole. I could barely make out Kayla as she paced back and forth on the doorstep. It was rare that she ever came over without calling to make sure we were home first, so I knew something was wrong.

“Heya Kay, come in. Niklos is on skype and needs some advice on his new hairstyle.” I said as I opened the door.

Kayla smiled a watery smile at me as she entered, her eyes red from a clearly sleepless night. She wore no makeup at all, tears stained her pale cheeks and her clothing was creased and didn’t match; all signs that there was something seriously wrong. I sent her to go and chat with Nik while I went to make her some hot chocolate, hoping to get her to cheer up a bit before we tackled the topic of what was bothering her.

“Niklos! What on earth have you done?”

Her words echoed through the house as she scolded him on his poor fashion sense. My intuitive brother took it all with a pinch of salt and within moments he had her laughing about something he had done.

By the time I returned Kayla looked much more like her old self. We said goodbye to Nik and took our hot chocolate to my bedroom so that I could change out of my pyjamas. Kay climbed onto my unmade bed and sipped her hot chocolate in silence until I joined her.

“Alright, spill.”

She looked at me, tears welling up in her eyes once more as she clutched my pillow to her chest.

“I’m in so much trouble, Callie. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad, nothing ever really is as bad as it seems.”

I couldn’t think of anything that could place her in any trouble so I automatically assumed that she was being overdramatic.

“No Cal, this can get me expelled for sure! You know that I went to Los Angeles for my cousin’s twenty-first in the summer, right? Well I met Daniel at my cousin’s party. He was so sweet and charming, and we ended up spending most of the week together. But then he started changing, demanding things that I refused to give him. He got angry with me and stormed out and I never saw him again until the first English class. He hadn’t even told me that he was a teacher!”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Mr Peterson? You had a fling with Mr Peterson?”

I wasn’t surprised that she had hooked up with a guy in his late twenties. Kayla always went for the older guys claiming that they were more sophisticated than our age group.

“Then yesterday afternoon my mother sent me home and he was sitting on my doorstep, waiting for me to get back. I told him to go away and that I wasn’t interested in starting anything up with him again but he pushed me up against the door. I punched him, like how Nik taught us to punch, and he got angry again. He said that unless I reconsidered my views, he would be forced to tell the school board that I had offered him stuff in return for good grades. Then he got in his car and drove off.”

I stared at her in silence, too stunned to speak. Instead I gave her a hug while my brain struggled for a solution.

“I’m so proud of you. You stood your ground and held onto your morals, but you can’t be afraid of this jerk! He’s blackmailing a school girl! That alone shows you what type of man he is. I think we need to call in for more help though, I’m utterly useless in these situations. Violet will know what to do.”

Kayla nodded in defeated agreement, knowing as well as I did that Violet was the perfect person for the job.

“We’ll ask her tomorrow at school, but for now I think we’d better clean you up and go to the restaurant. I’m meant to be working and I think you’ve held out on Mikael for long enough, he’s pestered me non-stop for your pasta recipe.”