Kelly Waititi and Lincoln

Kelly Waititi and Lincoln’s sibling relationship is marked by a persistent tension between Lincoln’s protective authority and Kelly’s refusal to be managed by him. Their disagreements are not evidence of distance so much as a familiar intimacy: they challenge one another directly, establish rules between themselves, and remain bound together even when grief makes that bond difficult to acknowledge.

Background and Sibling Dynamic

Lincoln is Kelly’s older brother, and his age gives him a position he sometimes treats as authority. In Ava Spirini’s memory, he was the cool older brother who fixed bikes, played loud music, or drank in the garage with his mates. Ava Spirini had spent weekends and family holidays with the family since she was about four, but she and Lincoln were never friends. The distinction matters: she knew his place in Kelly’s family life well, while the sibling relationship itself was not hers to define.

When Kelly and Lincoln were younger, Kelly and Ava Spirini spied on the boys from the backyard, hoping to learn what boys discussed when girls were absent. Later, as they began attending the same parties in Year 9, Lincoln’s concern about Kelly hooking up with his friends became more visible. He reacted protectively and argued that, as the older sibling, he knew better. Kelly would not accept that claim simply because he was her brother. The two could fight over his interference, but their arguments also show how closely their social lives had begun to overlap.

A Rule That Runs Both Ways

Kelly answered Lincoln’s attempts to control her dating life by making their own agreement: Lincoln would not hook up with anyone in Kelly’s grade, and Kelly would not hook up with anyone in his. The rule was reciprocal, and both kept to it until the party at Stuart Gillespie’s eighteenth birthday. It turned a familiar sibling disagreement into a negotiated boundary: neither sibling was given unilateral permission to police the other.

At the party, Lincoln wanted to hook up with Amanda Higgins and tried to brush aside the agreement. He stood in Kelly’s way as she attempted to get past him, pressing his case with the claim, “Fuck the deal, Kel, Amanda’s so up for it, ay?” Kelly called him a pig. When he asked to make an exception just this once, she threatened to kiss Tom Greig instead. Lincoln dismissed Tom as “a dick”; Kelly snapped back, “You’re a dick.” Their exchange is comic in its bluntness, but its stakes are real to them: each knows precisely how to provoke the other, and Kelly uses the same defiant language Lincoln uses rather than yielding to his seniority.

Lincoln eventually gave up on the proposed exception. Before walking away, however, he turned to Ava Spirini and asked who she was going to hook up with. When she answered that she would hook up with no one, he made a cutting remark suggesting that few boys at the party would want her. Kelly immediately turned back to Ava Spirini, insisted that Lincoln had meant to upset Kelly rather than express a real judgment, and reassured her that the boys would be lucky to kiss her. Kelly leaned her forehead against Ava Spirini’s and called her the most beautiful of them all. The moment shows how quickly Kelly could turn from fighting her brother to caring for her friend; the siblings’ conflict did not displace the other loyalties she was protecting.

Silence, Accusation, and Shared Grief

After Kelly’s death, the ease of their old arguments gives way to an inability to speak about her. During a private encounter with Lincoln, Ava Spirini asks whether he thinks Kelly would be mad at them. She explains that they rarely talk about Kelly, but she wants to know whether his grief is churning too. Lincoln does not look at her and says that he does not care what Kelly thinks; Ava Spirini tells him that he does. His refusal to face the question contrasts with the directness of their earlier disputes: the subject they once might have fought over is now difficult even to name.

The confrontation becomes more painful when Lincoln accuses Ava Spirini of having let Kelly die, saying, “She trusted you. She loved you,” and then, under his breath, “But you let her die.” Ava Spirini hears the accusation as a blow and challenges him over whether he thinks Kelly’s death was her fault. Lincoln’s words place blame between the people left behind, turning bereavement into conflict rather than shared consolation. The novel does not present that accusation as a considered account of what happened; it is part of an escalating quarrel between two people struggling with loss.

When Ava Spirini breaks down and says that she misses Kelly, Lincoln holds her tightly around the waist. She first tries to push him away, then sobs into his shoulder. In that moment, he admits, “I miss her too. She would hate me right now. Hate this. Us.” The admission shifts the scene from accusation toward recognition. Lincoln is not only angry or protective: he misses his sister and believes their present hostility would have upset her. His brief openness does not erase the harm of what he said, but it lets the siblings’ shared loss surface beneath the quarrel.

Kelly’s Continuing Place in Their Lives

Kelly remains present in the novel through memory as well as through the fact of her death. Ava Spirini recalls an ordinary afternoon when Kelly drew and erased things on a mirror, replacing a drawing with a love heart. At the time, the gestures seemed routine; afterward, Ava Spirini wonders whether Kelly had wanted her to understand that she loved her and would never forget her. This memory is Ava Spirini’s interpretation, not proof of what Kelly intended. Its importance lies in how an everyday shared moment acquires new weight after loss—a change that also frames the family’s continuing bond with Kelly.

The news of Kelly’s death arrives through the connection between the two families: Kelly and Lincoln’s father calls Ava Spirini’s father at 5:37 a.m., and seven minutes later Ava Spirini’s father comes into her room with tears in his eyes. Ava Spirini remembers the moment she hears that Kelly has died as a rupture in everything that had come before. She later counts thirty-one Sundays since the death, making the passing of time a repeated measure of grief rather than evidence that the siblings, or those around them, have simply left Kelly behind.

Lincoln’s statement that Kelly would hate “this. Us” also reveals how her memory acts as a standard against which he measures the siblings’ estrangement and their treatment of one another. He and Kelly had argued over limits and authority while she was alive; after her death, the struggle shifts to whether they can speak honestly about missing her without turning pain into blame. Their bond is therefore shown not as a settled portrait of uncomplicated sibling affection, but as a relationship whose closeness is visible in its history of negotiation, its capacity for sharp conflict, and the grief both siblings share.