On the last day of my second year at uni, I wake early, partly because the sun rises around 6 a.m. in November, and partly because I’m excited about the summer ahead. It’ll be my first summer in Auckland, my first summer with the person I love most in the world, the same person who loves me.
I’ll always remember when I’d first realised Alex was interested in me as more than just a friend. I guess the police read all of those messages.
Do you know what a catalyst is?
Something that precipitates an event. Or if you want the strict scientific definition, it’s any substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed.
Something … or someone. Guess who my catalyst is?
Who?
You.
But Alex was wrong: the catalyst can be consumed. Witnessing the tragic death of two young people does that to you. Not just that, but my brother’s schizophrenia is something I’ll always feel at least partly responsible for.
Detective Constable Chambers asked me, more than once, if I’d ever taken drugs. Each time I’d said, no, not since high school, and I’d only smoked weed twice — once at a party and the second time with Toby. It’s the single biggest regret of my life. It was me who took it home, me who told him I had something fun to do when he said he was bored one rainy Saturday night.
‘I don’t know,’ Toby had said. ‘What if Mum and Dad find out?’
‘They won’t find out,’ I’d said. ‘We’ll go to bed before they get home, sleep it off and tomorrow morning they’ll never be the wiser.’ Mum and Dad were at a fiftieth birthday party on the other side of town. ‘Come on, you have to try it at least once. You’ll like it, I promise.’
Toby had liked it. We’d giggled all evening, and had wandered down to the fish’n’chip shop in the pouring rain when we got the munchies. He never tried it again, and neither did I, but six months later there he was, pushing his fingers into that glass of Coke and talking about entering a new dimension.
I’ve done my research. While it’s true that people with schizophrenia are more likely to use cannabis, it’s also clear that cannabis can affect the adolescent brain. It’s been shown to cause earlier onset of schizophrenia, and, in some cases, it’s likely that it was the sole initiating factor.
If it weren’t for me, Toby might never have got schizophrenia. If it weren’t for me, he might never have died. But how was I to know? How does anyone know how susceptible people are to certain things, what their triggers are?
I guess we found out what Ashleigh’s triggers were. The aversion therapy worked better than I’d hoped. That should have been all that was needed to free Alex from her clutches. Except several days after Ashleigh had broken up with him, I nipped into her room to return the scissors I’d taken after cutting up her jeans and saw the positive pregnancy test on her desk. She’d started to regret she didn’t have Alex waiting on her every need, and I knew this would be enough to drive her back to him — and that Alex would stand by her if he found out she was pregnant. That’s one of the things I love about him, and why I needed to save him. Earlier I’d sown the seeds for a Plan B, just in case the aversion therapy didn’t work out. All I had to do was give those seeds a little watering.
Oh yes … water. It was very convenient that Nisha had explained that LSD dissolved so completely in it. I already knew that LSD can induce a psychotic episode, especially when someone is already in a distressed state of mind, more colloquially known as a ‘bad trip’.
A very, very bad trip.
And I guess she would have died anyway. The arm I wrapped around her neck as she lay in my embrace, bleeding, just sped things up a little. A choke, not a strangle. Xander always said I was a fast learner.
Someone once told me I had the brain of a researcher. They never told me how addictive it is, seeing the results of one’s experiment come to fruition. I can’t wait to see how my next one turns out.
I roll over, stroke his cheek.
‘Morning,’ Alex murmurs. ‘Been awake long?’
‘No.’ I bend to kiss him, my first and only love.