Forget Me Never

reeling, but very slowly I began to accept that there was nothing left for me to do but try to get on with my life – without Dani.
    And maybe that’s the way things would have gone if, four months later, I hadn’t found the memory stick.
    Summer. Weeks and weeks off school. Sunshine, Cornettos and flip-flops. Holidays abroad for the lucky ones. Muggy days that feel endless, hanging out with friends in the park. Fun. That’s what summer should be, but this year it just wasn’t working for me.
    As well as coping with my grief I felt like I was at a crossroads, that everything was in flux. Everyone was waiting for their GCSE results. The exams had gone better than expected in the end, but I still couldn’t see myself doing that well – English in particular had been a nightmare.
    Half of my year at Broom Hill High were leaving to go to colleges rather than staying on for the sixth form, which didn’t have a great reputation. Lots of the teachers had gone on about how A levels and BTECs were a huge stepping stone and how the subjects we chose now could determine the rest of our lives. I wasn’t sure I bought the idea that we were taking control; everyone still treated us like kids. Especially me – as a foster-kid I wasn’t allowed to make my own decisions. I’d had to sit down with my social worker and come up with a ‘Pathway Plan’, supposedly to help me prepare for independent life when I turned eighteen and left care. Lorraine had strong opinions about what was best for me, and after a frustrated hour of trying to explain I had no idea where I wanted to be in two years, I gave up and let her take over. Biology, geography and law A levels would be as good as anything else.
    Apart from helping out in the Save the Animals charity shop, something I’d been doing on-off ever since I’d come to live with Julie almost a year and a half ago, I had very little to do. I’d seen my old classmates down the high street. They’d invited me to join them, but after a couple of long afternoons sunbathing in the park I got restless. I’d rather be doing something. Hanging out is kind of empty when the people aren’t really your friends; nothing gets said that you remember, and time seems to drag. It was easier for them if I wasn’t around, anyway; putting up with someone who’d had a family member die was a real downer. It would have been easier if Dani had been knocked down by a car or had some kind of accident. That it had been suicide seemed to reflect on me somehow – especially as I had a reputation for being a bit crazy myself. The girls were clearly trying to treat me sensitively, but that just smacked home how different I was from them. It made me feel I would never be a normal teenager again.
    I kept wondering how the summer break would have been different if Danielle was still here. Maybe we could have spent the summer in Bournemouth, just us – hanging out in town, clothes shopping, watching DVDs, the relaxed kind of stuff we didn’t always fit into the weekends and evenings we spent together. Dani could be very inconsistent, sometimes going into moods that meant I wouldn’t see her for weeks. But the absent patches had been worth it for the good ones, when she would be incredibly sweet, showering me with gifts and affection.
    Instead I had my classmates and lots of school gossip I didn’t want to hear. It just reminded me that I’d have to go back to Broom Hill, making me dread the end of the holidays even more than I was already. It was times like these that made me wish Reece hadn’t left halfway through Year 10. Paloma, a girl who’d been in my class, had asked after him when I’d joined her gang in the park recently. Everyone still remembered Reece. His run-ins with teachers were legendary. One particular highlight was the time he calmly walked out of a history lesson and returned with an Internet printout that disproved what the teacher had just said about the causes of World War One. Reece had been excluded for that little stunt.
    ‘So,’ Paloma said, ‘you still talk? You and Reece used to be totally buddy-buddy.’
    ‘Yeah, well, that was before he buggered off to posh school,’ I said. I knew I was being a little unfair – Reece had kicked up a huge fuss about being moved to Berkeley School for Boys, threatening his mother with a hunger strike and other ridiculous things. We’d stayed friends for a while, even arranging that Bournemouth trip so we could spend some proper