Ava Spirini and Kelly Waititi

Ava Spirini and Kelly Waititi are best friends whose closeness reaches beyond school into family life, shared memories, and imagined futures. Kelly’s death transforms that friendship from an everyday source of belonging into the central relationship through which Ava experiences grief. The bond remains loving but not simple: Ava misses Kelly, feels anger at being left behind, and revisits what she might have understood differently. Her eventual movement forward does not mean leaving Kelly behind; it means accepting that love and loss continue together.

A Friendship Rooted in Family Life

Ava’s friendship with Kelly is established through years of ordinary proximity. Ava has been part of Kelly’s family life since she was about four, spending weekends at the house and joining many of the family’s holidays. Kelly’s older brother, Lincoln, was a familiar presence, but Ava and he were not close friends when they were younger. Kelly, by contrast, was the person at the heart of Ava’s long-standing connection to the household.

That closeness made Kelly’s home a place of familiarity even after her death. Ava describes knowing where things were kept in the kitchen and how to cross the floor without making it creak. The house’s familiar smells and routines offered a sense of steadiness, although Kelly’s family life there had become painfully altered. Ava could visit only when Kelly’s mother, Tina, was away. Tina had once felt almost like another mother to Ava, but after the funeral Ava sensed that Tina could not bear to have her around, perhaps because Ava reminded her of Kelly. Ava understood that possibility while still longing for the life they had shared.

Kelly also gave Ava a clear, direct form of affirmation. When Lincoln tried to provoke his sister by belittling Ava, Kelly immediately reassured her, insisting through her words and closeness that Ava was beautiful. Ava recalls laughing with Kelly and accepting that reassurance. The episode captures a larger feature of their friendship: Kelly could respond to Ava’s vulnerability without making it feel like a problem to be explained. Ava remembers her as someone who knew what to say, and whose confidence in her mattered.

Shared Histories and Imagined Futures

Their friendship included private jokes and the ease of being together without treating every moment as significant. Ava later recalls an ordinary afternoon when Kelly looked back at an old photograph, altered a drawing on Ava’s mirror, and shared an affectionate moment. At the time, Ava understood the scene as part of their familiar routine. In retrospect, she wonders whether Kelly was trying to leave a particular message of love and remembrance. That uncertainty makes the memory both precious and difficult: its ordinary quality is part of what Ava misses, while its possible significance invites questions she cannot settle.

Kelly also spoke with confidence about a future she expected to share, or at least to imagine alongside Ava. She planned to save for ten months, leave in October on her birthday, travel through Europe for years, fall in love with an Englishman, and return to travel across Australia in a van. Her forecast extended to marriage and children, with the prospect of the two friends becoming mothers treated as part of their shared joke. Ava’s own uncertainty about what to do after school stands in contrast to Kelly’s detailed itinerary. Remembering Kelly’s plans therefore preserves not only her personality and ambition but also the future Ava expected her friend to inhabit.

Death and the Disruption of the Bond

Ava learns of Kelly’s death at home after Kelly’s parents call at 5:37 in the morning. Seven minutes later, Ava’s father enters her room and tells her. At first, Ava expects that something has happened to her grandparents; the news that Kelly has died instead brings the familiar world of her childhood to a sudden stop. The notification becomes a defining point in her memory, one she counts not only by the moment itself but by its recurrence in the weeks that follow.

The funeral gives Ava a place within Kelly’s family’s mourning while also confronting her with the reality of the loss. Kelly’s family arranged a traditional Maori funeral as fully as they could away from New Zealand. They created a marae in their lounge, kept the coffin open for two days, and held the service on the third day in a large church hall because so many people were expected. Ava was the only school student who went to the family home. Afraid of seeing Kelly and unsure whether she could cope, she went with her father; Kelly’s mother then invited her to sit beside her. The shared grief of the adults around the coffin made Ava’s place in Kelly’s family visible, even as the experience confirmed that the friend she knew was gone.

In the months afterward, Ava experiences grief as a changed relationship with time and with other people. She feels that life has slowed, and resents those who expect her to recover quickly or compare the death to their own losses. Six months seems to her no time at all, while the thirty-one Sundays she counts since Kelly died turn the calendar into a repeated measure of absence. When Ava tells Gideon about Kelly, she identifies her simply as her best friend, a bond that does not need qualification. Yet the clarity of that identity coexists with less manageable feelings: Ava admits that she hates what Kelly did and hates being left alone. Love does not cancel anger, and anger does not erase the friendship.

Memory, Ambivalence, and Grief

Ava’s memories of Kelly’s last days do not give her a settled explanation. Looking back at the mirror and photograph, she wonders whether Kelly already knew what she was going to do and whether those affectionate gestures were intended to reassure Ava. She also tries to imagine the pain that could have led Kelly to feel that death was her only option. These are Ava’s attempts to interpret what happened, not answers the story confirms. Their uncertainty shows how the friendship continues to occupy her attention: she searches old moments for meaning because the loss has left questions that memory cannot resolve.

The aftermath also complicates Ava’s connection to Lincoln, who is grieving his sister too. After Kelly’s death, Ava and Lincoln begin texting and spending time together, and their relationship becomes physical even though Ava cannot say clearly whether she loves him in that way. Being with him temporarily makes the rest of life feel less overwhelming, but it also feels strange to Ava because the closeness would not have developed while Kelly was alive. Her father advises caution, recognizing that both Ava and Lincoln are navigating an abnormal period of grief. This connection does not replace Ava’s friendship with Kelly; instead, it illustrates how the loss alters the family relationships and emotional boundaries that friendship had once made familiar.

Continuing Love and Moving Forward

Ava’s later understanding of grief allows her feelings about Kelly to coexist without requiring one to defeat the others. In therapy with Nola every fortnight, she returns to the image of a box as a way of thinking about difficult emotions. Ava does not claim that sadness, anger, confusion, and love have disappeared. At times, she feels calm while knowing those feelings remain. The change is not the end of grief but a different relationship to its presence.

At the anniversary gathering beneath the park rotunda, Kelly’s family and Ava tell stories, laugh about Kelly’s wild behavior, and cry. The gathering marks the loss while also celebrating Kelly’s life. Ava’s later walk past the same place recalls that day as one in which sadness and happiness were both possible. Remembering Kelly is therefore not restricted to the shock of the death or the painful questions that followed; it also includes shared laughter and the continuing life of stories about her.

Ava rejects the idea that she must move on from Kelly, whom she understands as a soul sister whose love does not simply end. At the same time, she concludes that Kelly’s death need not leave her permanently motionless. She believes Kelly wanted to end her pain, not to make Ava’s life end with hers, and resolves to live for both of them. The distinction is decisive: moving forward does not undo the friendship or make the loss smaller. It lets Ava carry Kelly as part of her life while beginning to make choices about what comes next.