FRIDAY
21 SEPTEMBER, 1990
DORIAN

               Though I know it's a bad habit, I always do my homework in bed. The chair and desk in my dorm are so uncomfortable it becomes distracting and I can never properly focus when my legs aren't crossed. Ideally, I'd sit on a pillow on the floor but this room hardly has empty space. Hence, the bed.

I lean against the wall as I finish the chapter summary we were assigned in history today. Because our beds don't have headboards (one would think with the price of on-campus accommodation, we could have bedframes), I've thumbtacked an old floral kitchen curtain onto the wall so I don't have to touch it. The thought of all the past pupils who've leaned against it makes me squirm.

Someone knocks. A wave of premature exhaustion crashes over me.

Isaiah doesn't knock; it's someone else. If only our doors had peepholes so I could check, it would make the unavoidable social interaction easier. (I can't explain why. Knowing what lies in store doesn't make it not happen. All I know is I avoid reading post because the task feels impossible until I force myself three weeks later and find something entirely unthreatening. If we must use envelopes, I wish they could have descriptions of the content beside the address). With the bed right beside the door, I don't have to stand to open it.

Michael smiles politely. 'Phone for you, Dorian.'

My stomach drops. (Sometimes, my catastrophizing isn't a distortion.) There are only two people in the world who ever call me and I doubt Isaiah is phoning from the shower.

Praying that my terror isn't obvious, I thank Michael. It takes nearly a minute for me to slip my shoes back on and leave my room. The hall extends to an endless tunnel. As though it's filled with water or some sort of gelatine, an invisible pressure resists my path. It takes aeons to reach the phone shared by the twelve of us who live on this floor.

My pulse throbs in my ears. The handset hovers a foot from the ground, rotating in slow circles at the end of its cord.

With my throat dry, I pick it up. 'Hello?'

'Dorian. What took so long?' Ima's tone is a harpoon through my chest. 'I don't have all day to sit around waiting for you.'

I mutter an inaudible apology though I know she hates them. If Ima was here in person, I'd already have earned two strikes: speak up, stand straight, I don't know what I did wrong for you to lack basic manners, your brothers were never this difficult. I'm the worst of her sons.

By a miracle, Ima moves on. 'School is going well, yes?'

This is how the question is always framed; never "how are your grades?" or "how are you doing in school?" The phrasing is built to cause more shame if I have to contradict the presupposed yes.

'Everything is well.'

'I wanted to remind you of the fundraiser on Sunday. Make sure you pack enough for the whole weekend.'

My fingers go numb in their nooses on the phone cord. 

'I know. You told me last Saturday.'

'It didn't seem like you were listening.' Her voice is cordial but my stomach churns. She's most angry when she doesn't show it, like a snake that plays dead, not to defend itself, but to trick unwitting prey. 'Also, Elijah is home for Shabbat.'

The script I've unconsciously written for the weekend shreds in my hands. Whether Elijah's presence will defract the spotlight on me or make it twice as hot, his unplanned presence is agitating. I don't have a script for him — my own brother though he may be, I don't know him well enough to write one.

'Gordon is on his way to pick you up. We'll meet you at synagogue.'

I nod only to flinch: conditioned response. A hot flush chases shivers up my spine (speak up) and my hold grows clammy around the handset (speak up). The harder I try (speak up), the less my voice cooperates (speak up) until I finally wrestle a single word from my throat. 'Okay.'

I drop the phone onto its hook and lunge back as if I expect it to explode. It doesn't. Nothing happens. The cord swings left and right for a minute before it stills and nothing moves.

Other than my heart which still pounds against my ribs.

I run back to my room where I lower myself on the bed and stare at my shoes.

Most Jewish people look forward to Shabbat all week but I dread it. It's intended to be a day to rejoice G-d but who is G-d in the presence of a mother?

I am my mother's masterpiece. Rueben and Elijah are exquisite but as her third creation, I have to be flawless — what's the point of practice if it still doesn't produce perfection? And what will become of me when I fail to deliver? Like any artist, she finishes her final stroke and is overwhelmed by the desire to knife the canvas to shreds.

The door knocks into my shoe and Isaiah pokes his head in. 'Shit. Sorry, cuz.'

I cast him an attempted smile as I shift my feet out of the way. Isaiah slips inside, a towel draped around his waist and a sky blue durag hiding his braids. His steps are counted by the flip-flop of my shower slippers which he borrowed without asking (I love it when you use my things without asking).

He unscrews my tub of cocoa butter and scoops a dollop which he lathers between his palms. 'You know what I were thinking bout?' he says as he massages the lotion onto his knees and elbows. 'Remember after Chornobyl, how people said not to go out in the rain cause it were radioactive? Has that ended? Cause no one said it weren't dangerous no more, everyone just forgot. I mean, fuck, we got caught in the rain for fifteen minutes last week.'

I stare at him without response.

'Maybe that's why I'm ill, and maybe...' he pounces on me, 'you gonna wake up with a third eye tomorrow.'

Laughter pours out of me as Isaiah tickles my sides. I try to squirm away from him but don't dare to shove him off: I'm afraid of what touching his damp skin will do to me.

When he finally stops tickling me, I'm collapsed on the mattress and out of breath. My gaze follows the happy trail of vitiligo from his belly button to the edge of his towel before I snap it to a patch of missing paint on the wall where one of the boys who lived here before me must have taped up a poster. Did his best friend make his body burn this hot?

'That's what you think about in the shower?'

'Yeah.' Hands brushing across my chest, he steps back. 'What else would I think about?'

I don't answer. Any coherent thought has evaporated from my head. My mouth is dry (I could drink the water on your skin). I dare to move only when he returns to the mirror to lotion his face. Easing off my shoes to pull my legs onto the bed, I watch him.

Isaiah has the kind of lanky body that looks like he would be a good foot taller if he'd had enough food growing up. He should be abnormally tall — taller than me, at least, and not five inches shorter. There's hardly any muscle on him despite the physical labour he's worked for petty cash for as long as I've known him. His shoulder blades protrude when he moves and his ribs are still too prominent, but at least now he gets a proper lunch every day.

Since his scholarship doesn't include residence, he isn't allowed at other meals. I sneak him breakfast whenever I can.

From the bed, I watch him inspect his elbows where the patches of vitiligo have burnt to a slight rouge that makes them stand out even brighter against his summer tan. T-shirt tan lines circle his arms (let me trace them). His thighs are dotted with bruises from bumping into things and more pepper across his body in various shades of healing (let me trace them).

With a cool undertone, his skin is the tone of wet sand, always in the caress of the sea, the kind of sand I love to mould, press my feet and hands into, and not the dry and itchy sort further up the beach. Waves shape ridges into the seabed that remain intact under fierce pressure yet crumble into soft grains when the tension is pierced. 

Despite it being mere hours away, I've only seen the sea four times. I don't miss it: Isaiah is the sea brought to me.

He turns around to dig out his change of clothes from his backpack. A cold wave crashes into me at the sight of a fresh bruise smearing his right shoulder.

'What happened?'

Uncertain what I'm talking about, he glances at me, sees my expression, and returns to his clothes. Isaiah stopped lying three years ago but he never surrenders the truth without resistance; like splinters burrowed deep in his skin, it must be yanked out with pincers.

'Nuttin interesting. Muma's got a new "boyfriend".'

He pulls his jeans on, turning back to me so I see the apples embroidered on each knee where the fabric has torn. If there's one thing about Isaiah that drives me to indescribable anger it's that he gets dressed without drying off. I grimace when he pulls a t-shirt over his head and it adheres to his chest.

Isaiah always changes clothes at school. He tells me it's to keep his uniform clean but at some point, I realised it's because the other boys in Lower Halsett use it to bully him. Scholarship or not, he's posh for going to this school.

He sits on the edge of my bed. He inspects my expression while I'm slack against the wall and stare ahead, a reluctant patient who thinks not looking at the needle will make me not feel it.

Not that Isaiah is a needle. (You're the opposite, you're the plaster placed on top of an injection, the sweets handed as a reward after a vaccination).

He takes my hand from my lap and interlocks our fingers. A spasm races to my heart. I barely manage to stifle a convulsion.

This is new. We hold hands all the time; the light-headedness that follows is still unfamiliar.

'What's wrong?'

I edge my attention to him. Isaiah's eyes are so large nearly his entire iris is visible whilst mine hardly have the space for a sliver of white at the corners. Though his skin is lighter, his eyes are just as dark as mine. (How did I ever think my eyes could be ugly — worse: stale? They're the most beautiful in the world.)

'I only wish the weekend was over already.'

Pushing off the wall, I fall into him instead. Fresh out of the shower, there's no scent on him but his essence and it gathers a cloud-like cocoon around me as I breathe it in.

'Elijah's here apparently. And my mum's forcing me to go to a fundraiser on Sunday. I'm exhausted thinking about it. Normal weekends are bad enough.'

It all sounds silly in comparison to what weekends must be like for him, but Isaiah only wraps his free arm around me and squeezes my hand with the one holding mine. (Can't we just stay here forever?) He doesn't retract even when my tears roll down the slope of his neck.

'It ain't gon be that bad. You'll write your music, compose a new piece about how you's obsessed with your best friend and the weekend will be over quicker than you think.'

I shove him and because he still holds me, we both sway. I smile against his collarbone. I love it when he mocks me.

With a final breath, I pull away. At the sight of my tears, he saturates with such compassion, more brim in my eyes — and more still when he cups my face to thumb them away.

'I wish I could talk to you.'

His teeth find his lip. Isaiah won't let me know his phone number or his address and made me promise ten years ago I'd never look them up. He says he'll ring me if he's available, which he rarely is — his mum will see it on the phone bill. "She hates me, as is."

I hate it when he says that. If his mother can hate him, mine can hate me. Does she?

(I don't want to go.)

'But think about how much better it'll be when you get to talk to me on Monday.' The humour is a balm on his voice but the undertone gives him away. Still, a grin blooms on his lips to reveal his tooth gap. 'It's supposed to be sunny so we can stay out during study and make out.'

'Sorry?'

'Or not.' He widens his eyes in exaggerated alarm and adopts a standard American accent to add, 'I'm just spitballing.'

His bottom lip flattens between his teeth again as he peels broken skin from it. His gaze wanders around until it lands on our interlocked hands. He does so as subtly as he can but I catch him checking my watch.

I pull my hand away. 'You should go or you'll miss the coach.'

Coeus, after all, is a boarding school and most non-resident pupils have their own drivers. Thus, the school pays for the commuter coach to the nearest city to make a detour and stop here for the few teachers and pupils who use it only thrice a day: morning, noon, and evening. I can't make him miss it. If it was up to me, I'd ask Gordon to drive him but my parents would find out and possibly burn the car.

He rests his forehead on mine. Continuing to caress my cheekbones, Isaiah holds me there for three breath cycles. I sink into his hands, his scent, his affection.

'I'll see you Monday,' he says and stands.

I'm empty as soon as you're not touching me.

He collects the last of his things from around my room and shrugs an orange plaid over his t-shirt. Paired with his light blue jeans and durag, the colours are a perfect match for our bracelets. He jams his feet into his non-brand trainers without undoing the laces and finally throws his backpack over his shoulder.

At the door, he turns to me with some blend of emotion I can't quite name. 'I love you, cuz.'

'I love you.' I hope you know how ardently. Loving you will get me to Monday. It's my beacon through everything else. Ima can't take Isaiah from me and as long as I have him, I have myself.