I’m walking back from the spyzozo place on Sunday evening, passing this empty plot down the road from my place. I see Dlani, ducking down to crouch behind a tangle of tall weeds. He must think he’s hidden from sight, but I can see his head.

I look up and down the street. There’s no one else around. My half-brother is hiding from me. He must have seen me coming. He doesn’t know I’ve seen him.

I walk on, my head full of crazy thoughts about whatever Dlani thought or felt when he saw me. The same fear I used to feel around Pa?

The same things Nkokone felt?

I’ve lost my appetite for the food I’ve bought so I leave it on the table when I reach home. I go to my room and start drawing. When I look at what I’ve done, it’s a mass of dark lines, but somewhere in there is a boy. Hanging. His face is like a scream.

Dlani or Nkokone, I don’t know.

I can’t sleep. At school in the morning my eyes feel like they have sand in them, and there’s a white-out in my head.

I wait until break. This time, when Rhandzu turns and walks away, I follow.

“I know I can’t take it back, Rhandzu,” I say, my voice all uneven. “But, please, you have to accept that I’m sorry and that … I’ll try to change.”

She stops. Slowly she turns. Her face is like a stone.

“Do you really think it’s that simple, Zwelo?”

“What do you want from me?” I ask.

“Nothing. Nothing from you, Zwelo.”

Her words make me feel so small, so disgusting. My face burns.

“I want to tell you … You said you’d make us pay!” It comes pouring out of me. “You said you’d put us through the same hell we … we gave your brother.”

“Nkokone. Give him his name.”

I can’t look at her any more. “You have your revenge,” I say. “I’m in hell.”

Silence. I look up, expecting to see her walking away.

She’s still standing there. I catch the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

“I don’t want revenge any more.” She sounds strained. “Zwelo, you say you want to change, but do you really? Will you get help? I bet there are free help programmes right here in Kabokweni.”

“I don’t need anyone’s help. I can change on my own.”

I’ve lost her. She’s turning from me.

I remember the tears in her eyes. Tears for her brother, her parents’ grief, her own.

I did it to them. Admitting that to myself is no help, because now I can’t stop thinking about what I did, how one life was ended and others changed forever.

I get through school. I go home. I draw. The person in the pictures looks like me. A monster, alone, destroying things.

The sore place in my chest is like this great hole. It’s nearly morning when exhaustion pulls me down into sleep, but it’s more like fainting or drunkenness. I feel flat and thin when I wake, all the life kicked out of me.

At school, I look for Rhandzu. She’s with Claudia, outside the hall. A plane leaving the airport passes overhead. I don’t want to be on it, getting away. I have things to fix here. No, not fix. I can never do that. Just things to do, right things.

“Rhandzu?” I say, and see how stiff she goes.

“Piss off, Zwelo,” Claudia says.

“Rhandzu,” I say again, “I have a problem. I’m a bully. I need help.”

Slowly she turns. I can’t breathe. Her eyes circle round my face, searching for something. I see her pulled-in smile starting, the smallest ever, as she puts out a hand towards me.

That’s all. There can’t be anything more. I’ve done too much harm. This isn’t a happy ending.

It could be a beginning, but it’s hard, even with the counselling. There are days when I get angry and want to hurt someone, others when I just want to give up.

I’m drawing more than I’ve ever done, dark, angry images; sometimes a few lighter, more hopeful ones. It helps me on bad days, and on the good ones it’s a celebration.

Rhandzu is usually with Claudia when I see her. Sometimes, she’ll stop and ask me how the programme is going.

“It’s difficult,” I usually say, because I don’t want to lie to her. “But good in a weird way.”

Then she’ll give me her little pulled-in smile. It helps me carry on.

One weekend I see her at the local shops with her parents. They look like they did at Nkokone’s memorial service, the light missing from their faces.

With their son missing from their lives.

Rhandzu sees me, and does this thing with her head, a tiny movement, all the greeting she can give me in the presence of her parents.

This is how it will always be. It’s a bad weekend for me.

It’s as if Rhandzu knows, because at school on Monday she comes to find me at break, and she doesn’t have Claudia with her.

“You understand, don’t you, Zwelo?” She’s at her most serious. “About Saturday?”

“Understand that you can never introduce me to your parents?” I answer her. “Yes, I do.”

“Yes,” she says too. “Because I could keep quiet, not give them any info, and sort of be all right with that, but if some day they asked me a direct question … I couldn’t lie to them.”

“I know,” I say.

There really isn’t going to be any happy ending, ever. I take responsibility for that. My only hope is that there might be some good moments along the way.

Rhandzu cares, she supports what I’m trying to do, who I’m trying to be, and maybe a day will come when I’ve earned her respect.

It’s my responsibility to earn it.

***

Tell us what you think: Does Zwelo deserve a happier ending, or is Rhandzu’s respect the most he can hope for?