Read Kite Spirit for Free Online

red ship climbing frame; a girl is underneath on the grass. She’s looking down at the ground so I can’t see her face, but
she’s got a long neat plait and she’s wearing shiny shoes. They’re brand-new navy blue, no scuffs on them at all. I look down at my new trainers, already caked in mud.
    ‘Will you be my thithter?’ the girl lisps.
    It’s cold and I can see her breath forming in the air, like ghost whispers. Her voice is high and sweet and it floats straight up to me. She sort of smiles. I haven’t got a sister or
a brother so I say, ‘OK! Climb up then!’
    She takes ages, crawling on her hands and knees over the wooden bars. She’s clinging on so tight that her knuckles turn white. I give her my hand and she takes it and stands up. It’s
funny because she didn’t look very tall from down there.
    It was difficult to know now as Kite looked back through time whether she was doing what everyone else was, reinventing Dawn, reading into things that had never been there;
back then Kite would probably have described those soft hazel eyes as shy, but maybe there had been a sadness lurking there too. Kite squeezed her own eyes tight shut and tried to imagine herself
flying on the cloud swing. It was what all her training on the trapeze was for, so that one day she would be strong enough to fly between great oak trees performing at some open air-festival
floodlit beneath the stars. But it felt like a childish dream now. Everything was spoilt, even her dreams. For the first time all this seemed nothing more than a fantasy. Now when she thought of it
she felt no wings fluttering in her belly, no kite spirit rising.
    Her stomach burned with a bitter, angry feeling that she couldn’t make sense of. She wished she could find a way of delving inside herself, grabbing hold of it and tearing it out. I only
need to understand why she did it, Kite told herself. Maybe then she would be able to cry, to sleep . . . to feel something like her old self again.

 
The Valley of Death
    Ruby had said the funeral would help, give everyone a proper opportunity to say goodbye to Dawn, for Kite to finally cry . . . and after that . . . to sleep.
    Kite was standing a few rows back from the simple wooden coffin. Hazel and Jimmy stood alone in the small pew closest to Dawn, Jimmy’s arm enveloping Hazel’s slumped shoulders. A
handful of people Kite had never seen before gathered in the pews surrounding Jimmy and Hazel. Behind her the little chapel was filling up; some friends of Jimmy and Hazel from work were wearing
their hospital uniforms. The whole thing felt clinical. There were no flowers. Everyone had been asked to make donations to a charity of their choice instead. Ruby had donated money to ChildLine
because she’d volunteered for them in the past. She’d tried to involve Kite in a discussion about why it was so important to see the bereavement counsellor their GP has offered.
    ‘Sometimes, my darlin’, it’s easier to talk about your feelings to someone with no connection to you,’ she’d explained. Kite had remained silent. There was no way
that she could tell a total stranger all the thoughts that were passing through her head right now.
    The ‘no flowers’ request felt sensible but it seemed so cold to leave the coffin bare, as if no one cared. Ruby stood to one side of her and Seth to the other, like bodyguards, Kite
thought. There was a heavy silence full of questions and misery. The only person who could answer the insistent cry of ‘Why? Why? Why?’ that echoed through this silence was lying in
that coffin.
    Kite glanced around and found Miss Choulty’s compassionate smile. To one side of her were three students in school uniform. She recognized them from Dawn’s music class. Jamila had
swapped her green headscarf for a white one. She too smiled at Kite sadly. To Miss Choulty’s other side sat two women, whispering loudly.
    ‘Had high hopes for her . . . So proud with her music grades and