:: chapter three ::

After discovering I was adopted, I thought things couldn’t get worse.

I was wrong. They could, and they did.

“Okay Cass, I got your back.”

Matthew flashed Cassie a thumbs up, and Cassie nodded. She scaled the wall, pausing at the top to allow me to take a photo with her camera, then climbed back down again. Matthew went next, then it was my turn.

I clipped my harness to the rope and nodded to Matthew. He got into position and I started to move up the wall. Having made it to the top of the wall, I signalled to Cassie; she took a photo with her camera and I started to make my way back down.

“Tay, you’re going too fast!” Matthew yelled up to me. “Slow it down some!”

Maybe I should have listened. I guess I was going a little too fast…

Without any prior warning, the rope went slack. My foot slipped off the wall. And I started falling, hurtling the fifteen metres towards the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Matthew pulling frantically on the rope, trying to slow my descent.

“Someone help!” Cassie screamed. “Please!”

I let out a scream of my own when I realised what was about to happen. “Shit!” I screamed.

Matthew dropped the rope. “Cassie, for Christ’s sake, get moving!” he yelled as he bolted to Taylor’s side and dropped down beside him. “Call an ambulance!”

Cassie did as Matthew told her to; after calling 000, she took her own initiative and called Taylor’s parents. His younger sister Emma picked up.

“Hello?”

“Emma, it’s Cassie; can you put your mum on please?”

“Yeah, sure; hang on.”

Moments later, Francesca Kennedy’s lightly accented voice came on the line.

“Cassandra?”

“Mrs. Kennedy, there’s been an accident; we’re at Hangdog, in Wollongong.” Cassie leaned against the wall and anchored the payphone handset between her ear and shoulder. “Taylor was climbing down the wall, and…he fell off.”

“Oh my God,” Francesca said. “Is…is he all right?”

Cassie cast a glance over at where Matthew was. “I…I don’t know,” she said softly. “I really don’t. I hope he is, but…I don’t know. It doesn’t look good.” She looked around. “I don’t know what hospital they’ll take him to, but I’m guessing it’ll be Wollongong Hospital to begin with.”

“All right Cassandra; thank you for letting me know.”

Cassie resisted the very strong impulse to tell Francesca ‘Only my grandmother calls me Cassandra and gets away with it’; she hung up and went back over to Matthew. “Is he okay?” she asked softly as she knelt beside Matthew.

“He’s unconscious; a bad knock to the head will do that to you,” Matthew replied. “But he’s breathing.”

Cassie gave a sigh of relief. “Thank heavens for that.” She rubbed her forehead. “Anything else?”

Matthew shrugged. “I think his ankle’s broken; maybe his arm too. Aside from that I have absolutely no idea. I guess we’ll find out at the hospital.”

The shrill, grating sound of an ambulance’s siren sounded outside the building; Cassie and Matthew moved back, watching helplessly as their friend and band mate was loaded onto a stretcher and wheeled out of sight.

They followed the ambulance in Matthew’s late model Holden Barina, winding through the streets of Wollongong and parking in a street near the hospital; walking up to the hospital, they spotted Francesca and Mark Kennedy, Taylor’s parents, coming up a side street, Francesca clutching rosary beads in her hands. Bloody Italians, Cassie groused mentally, thinking automatically of Looking For Alibrandi. But she didn’t dare voice this around any of the Kennedys, or even any of the Silvestris for that matter; instead she and Matthew kept a respectful distance, even as they entered the hospital and moved towards the emergency department.

“Is he okay?” Cassie asked as soon as the Kennedys had spoken with one of the doctors on duty that afternoon. Francesca looked in no condition to speak, so Mark answered the question.

“It’s hard to say, really,” Mark replied with a sigh. “They’ll be moving him to Intensive Care just as soon as they can get him stable enough. He has a broken arm and ankle; he took quite a fall I’m guessing.” He looked at Cassie and Matthew. “Am I right?”

Matthew nodded. “Yeah. He was about halfway down the wall when he fell.”

Mark nodded. “I thought so.” He sighed again. “Francesca and I would prefer it if you waited a few days before going to see him; it’s not that we don’t want you to visit, because we do. You’re his friends, and it would be wrong of us to prevent you from doing so. All right?”

Cassie and Matthew nodded in unison. “Yeah, that’s fine,” Matthew said.

“God, I hope he’s all right,” Cassie said quietly.

Cassie sat silently at her friend’s bedside, hands in her lap and just staring at his still form. He’d been unconscious for a week now, showing no real sign of awakening anytime soon.

“Tay, I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but in case you can…you gotta wake up. We’re all so worried. This is…it’s hell for us all. Your mum’s taking it the hardest of us all; Emma’s been telling me that your mum goes to the Catholic church here in town pretty much every day and lights a candle or two. I think she believes that this is her punishment for keeping the truth about your true identity from you, and that if she doesn’t make up for it by going to church every day, she’ll lose you. You honestly have no idea how much she loves you; you might not believe it, but I know that if she lost you in this way, it would destroy her. I’m not kidding. I’ve known you my entire life, been hanging around your family ever since I can remember, and it’s obvious just how much your parents love you. I’ve even been around when your cousins have come over for whatever reason, and they would lay into you so harshly, calling you the most awful names. And you’d stand up to them, reciting that age-old children’s rhyme about sticks and stones and other shit like that. But I knew how much their words hurt you, as much as you said that you didn’t care. You did care. All you ever wanted in life was to be accepted. It’s taken getting a band started to make that happen; I mean, now when your cousins rock up to your place, they don’t taunt you anymore. They treat you with the respect you deserve.

“Your friend Bryony from the States called a couple of days ago; I think she rang your house first before she rang your mum’s mobile. She’s coming over here, according to your parents, just as soon as she can scrape together the money for a plane ticket. She’s pretty worried about you as well; she’s coming here alone, ‘cause I don’t think either of her parents are able to get the time off work, and her older brother is going to be working at a camp in Maine for the whole summer. Your dad will probably go pick her up at the airport in Sydney when and if she gets here, bring her here to see you.”

Cassie sighed and reached out a slightly shaking hand, covering his closest hand with her own. “Please Tay, please wake up…don’t leave us.”

Bryony Hanson was short for her eighteen years of age, and was almost lost in the milling crowd that filled the Arrivals lounge of Sydney International Airport. She eventually caught up with Mark, dragging behind her a beat up green suitcase on wheels.

“Thanks for having me, Mr. Kennedy,” she said in her soft Southern drawl.

“It’s our pleasure, Bryony,” Mark assured her.

“So, um…how is he?” Bryony asked as Mark put the car into gear and drove carefully out into the street; it had been a struggle to load Bryony’s gear into the back of the old four wheel drive, but it had been managed with a minimum of fuss and bother.

“It’s hard to say, really,” Mark replied. “His condition hasn’t gotten any worse, but he hasn’t woken up yet either. All we can really do is wait.”

The rest of the drive down to Wollongong was silent, the tense quiet broken only by the soft hum of music on the car radio. And as Wollongong Hospital came into sight, only one thought came to Bryony’s mind.

Something is about to happen.

“That’s it Tay; come on, open your eyes…”

It was that voice alone that convinced me that somehow I was still unconscious; I mean, how could Bryony Hanson be there with me? I’d only ever heard her voice over the phone, only ever seen her face in photographs. She wasn’t there; she couldn’t be.

But she was. And her face was the first one I saw when I opened my eyes.

“Hey there,” Bryony said.

“Hi,” I said quietly. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you to wake up, that’s what.” She smiled. “I’m going to go find your mom and tell her that you’re awake. You stay right there.”

And she did just that. She disappeared from my bedside, only to return minutes later with my mother in tow. I unconsciously winced as Mum rushed to my side, tears streaming down her face. “Mum, please don’t,” I said as she tried to pull me close to her.

She relented, settling instead for the seat that Bryony had discarded. “Thank God you’re all right,” she said softly, reaching out and hand and gently laying it against my cheek. I automatically raised my left hand and covered her hand with my own, closing my eyes.

“Y’know, I’ve been wondering something.”

Bryony looked up from her magazine. “Hmm?”

“Okay, you said in one of your letters that your mum gave a baby up for adoption, before she met your dad. Remember?”

“I do, yeah.”

“And I told you what my real full name was. I said it was ‘Jordan Taylor Lawyer’. And I said that there might be a connection there of some sort.”

Bryony bit her bottom lip. “How old were you when you were adopted?”

“Four months.”

“You know, I think you may be onto something there. Hang on, just lemme grab something outta my bag.” She bent down, rummaging around in the backpack that sat between her feet on the floor, unearthing a mirror; she scooted closer to me so that we could both look into it. “Look at that; that’s something I never noticed before now.”

Nor, it seemed, had I – to my surprise, the two of us looked eerily alike. The same long, blonde hair (except mine was a slightly darker blonde, and her hair was longer and curlier), the same blue eyes. She smiled, and I followed suit – even our smiles were identical. After all these years of friendship, it had finally clicked.

Bryony Hanson was my half sister.

And it seemed that Bryony had realised the same thing, because her next words were, “I…Tay, you know what this means, right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

She dropped her mirror back into her bag. “You’re my brother. You’re the kid my- no, sorry, our mom had adopted.”

“Well, it sure seems that way, doesn’t it.”

Bryony was silent for a little while. Then she said, “Wait until my mom finds out that my penpal is my brother…”

“Bryony, no. I don’t want this to get out just yet. I’d rather wait at least until I’m out of hospital; a few months even. I…I’m just not ready yet.” Then I frowned. “And you’re making the idea of us two being siblings and penpals sound like a bad thing.”

Bryony laughed. “I’m sorry, Tay, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. You know I didn’t.”

“Yeah, I know.” I twirled a lock of my hair around a finger. “Bryony, tell me honestly. My friend Cassie says I need a haircut. What do you think?”

Bryony frowned. “I think she’s right.”

“What?”

“But I don’t mean you should get it cut short. Here, turn around so I can see how long your hair is.”

I shifted around so that I had my back to Bryony; she carefully pulled my hair out of the elastic band I’d tied it up into and ran her fingers through it. I felt her fingertips press into my back about halfway down. “Jesus Taylor, your hair’s nearly as long as my mom’s,” she commented. “I can definitely see what Cassie means; I think it’d look nicer and neater if you had it cut to your shoulders.” A slight pause. “When was the last time you had your hair cut, anyway?”

“Five years ago,” I said quietly.

“Christ, would you speak up?”

“Five years ago,” I repeated, raising the volume of my voice slightly.

“Jeez, no wonder it’s so long…”

“Oh shut up. I like having long hair.”

“Even if it does make you look like a chick.”

“Hey!” I protested. “I do not look like a girl!”

Bryony snickered. “Um, yeah, you do. Sorry.”

I smacked Bryony playfully with my good hand (my left one; I’d broken my right wrist). “I don’t like you,” I kidded.

“No you don’t; you love me.”

“Do not.”

Bryony laughed. “I think I better go before I get kicked out. You get back on your feet soon, okay?”

“I will. I’ll see you soon.”