Kitabı oku: «A Heartstopper novella»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Victoria Annabel Spring, Age 16

Tori

Charlie Francis Spring, Age 15

Charlie

Oliver Jonathan Spring, Age 7

Oliver

Further Resources

Read an extract from Alice’s debut novel … Solitaire

Keep Reading …

About Alice Oseman

Books by Alice Oseman

About the Publisher

Tori

I wake up two hours after I fall asleep. The amount of sleep I get on Christmas Eve seems to be decreasing each year, probably because my average falling-asleep time gets steadily later due to my rather worrying Internet addiction. Maybe, eventually, I’ll just stop sleeping altogether and become a vampire. I’d be good at that.

Not gonna bother complaining about my sleeping pattern right now though, because it’s Christmas and this is the one day of the year when I should at least try not to complain about anything. This is hard when your seven-year-old brother is hitting you in the face with a pillow at six o’clock in the morning.

I say something along the lines of ‘nooooo’ and retreat under my duvet, but this doesn’t stop Oliver from following, tearing back the covers and crawling on to my bed.

‘Tori,’ he whispers. ‘It’s Christmas.’

‘Mm.’

‘Are you awake?’

‘No.’

‘You are!’

‘No.’

‘Tori.’

‘Oliver … go wake Charlie up.’

‘Mum said I wasn’t allowed.’ He starts ruffling my hair. ‘Toriiiiiiii—’

‘Ugh.’ I roll over and open my eyes. Oliver is completely under the covers, looking at me, wriggling with excitement, his hair sticking up on end like a dandelion. Charlie and I have discussed at length how it’s possible for Oliver to be related to us, since he’s the literal embodiment of joy and we’re both miserable fucks. We concluded that he must have got all the happy genes.

Oliver has a Christmas card in his hands.

‘Why do you have a—’

He opens the card and a disgustingly cheerful version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ begins to play right into my ear.

I groan and shove Oliver off the bed with one hand. He rolls on to the floor and bursts into giggles.

‘So annoying,’ I mutter, before sitting up and turning on my bedside lamp, resulting in a shriek of ‘YAY!’ from Oliver. He begins to wander around my room, opening and closing the card so it repeats the first two notes over and over again.

Christmas is okay at our house. It’s chilled. Quiet. Dad calls it a Spring Christmas, which he thinks is hilarious. We open presents when we wake up, then family come over for Christmas dinner and stay until late, and that’s it. I play video games with my brothers and cousins, Dad always gets drunk, my Spanish grandfather (Dad’s dad) has an argument with my English grandfather (Mum’s dad) – truly wonderful stuff.

But it’s not exactly a normal Christmas Day this year.

My fifteen-year-old brother, Charlie, has an eating disorder. Anorexia. He’s had it for a long time, but it’s been particularly bad these past few months, and the stress of it caused him to have a self-harm relapse too back in October. He lived away from home for a few weeks at a psychiatric ward that specifically cares for teenagers who have eating disorders and it definitely helped, but it’s still been rough. Obviously.

I don’t really think there was a reason he got so ill. That stuff just happens, like diseases or cancer. So it’s not his fault. Actually, I think it was probably my fault it got so bad. When I noticed that something was off with him, I didn’t tell my parents and I didn’t ask him what was wrong. I didn’t talk to him enough. I didn’t do enough.

But it’s not about how I feel. It’s not even about my parents. Christmas is a stressful time for people with eating disorders, since food is such a big part of the day, and I know Charlie’s been feeling anxious about it. He’s been stressed all week, arguing with Mum pretty much every day and shutting himself in his room.