WEDNESDAY
06 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               A trail of smoke steadily fills my head. I can't tell what's burning and rather than rush to evacuate, I try to find the source by process of elimination — Heart? No. Lungs? No. Kidneys? No. The voice rings in my ears, whoever it was whose job it is to inform emergency contacts when their mother has been found dead. Pneumonia. Passed away at home. Might have been several days ago. You're the only listed emergency contact. Any other family?

Dorian stares at me. His blood is still flooded with adrenaline and the abrupt swivel in the conversation stupors him.

'My muma's dead,' I repeat. The words taste like a confirmation of the weather, like it's early November, it's overcast, it's nine in the morning, different than it's December, or it's pouring, or it's midnight.

Something flickers in his gaze. He's wondering whether to offer congratulations or condolences. But when he steps closer to me, he doesn't bother with either. Instead, he pulls me into a hug and all he says is my name.

That's all it takes for my chest to constrict.

I tremble in his arms. 'I'll have to go... there. I have to arrange the funeral and... I can't go back, Dorian. I said I'd never go back. I can't–' A choked sob cuts me off.

I haven't gone to Halsett since I fled nine days after I graduated and with the distance I've built between us, it has festered into a horror scene. The same way you avoid washing up because stains have already dried onto the dishes, but the longer you wait, the more the dirt grows and now you can't approach the kitchen sink without protective wear.

Dorian doesn't bother to soothe me with fake pleasantries about how it'll be okay — he knows better than I do what it means to run away and never look back. He mouths silent sentence fragments, abandoning each after only a handful of syllables, until he finally speaks.

'Do you want me to come with you?'

My eyes dart to his. There's nothing but sincere kindness in them.

After all my cruelty, he's still willing to come with me? I want to say no. Say no because I have to learn to survive these things without needing him, because I don't want to put him through all that just for my comfort when I have nothing to offer in return, because he swore he'd never return to Halsett and the last thing I'll do in my life is be the reason he does.

But I nod. 'Please.'

'Okay.'

With a hand on my back, Dorian helps me into a kitchen chair, pulls my knitted socks higher up my feet as they've slid down, and makes me tea — the chamomille hidden at the back of my cupboard. I hold the mug in my hands without taking a sip.

It's as if I'm living in several times simultaneously. Dorian disappears into my bedroom at the same time as he emerges with a packed bag at the same time as he's cupping the mug of tea in my hands, all at the same time as he tells me he has to leave, to go pack his own things and to contact both our tutors about what's happened, he needs to borrow my car, he needs to know who my tutor is, he needs to know the number to my job to inform I need some time off — My jobs, several? Yes, four. Well, he needs all of them, and I nod and tell him though I can't remember opening my mouth.

This is my fault. I should've made sure someone fixed the heating. I shouldn't have left.

I'm not ready for this. I still buy apple Chupa Chups as a substitute for a mother's love. Before she got so bad and she still came with me to the doctors, she'd buy me the cheapest lollipop in the kiosk across the road — always apple Chupa Chups. I still buy them whenever I want to reward myself. I'm not ready for life without the possibility of a mother.

It has always been my job to ensure her salvation, she named me for that task alone. What do I do now that the time has come? How do I go about it? I always thought I would die before her. How do I contact God after six years of living a coma — because it can't be called a life — dedicated to spite Them?

Dedicated to spite God and my mother. My fate was declared within seconds of existence. I thought I could escape it if I refused but the reality is that when a mother names you, your life is never yours.

I've always wrestled with the name my mother chose to give me. Isaiah from the Hebrew phrase yesha'yahu meaning "God saves", also translated to "God is my salvation". Not Noah for "peace", not Jonah for "dove", nor Chasdiel for "my God is gracious", but Isaiah: God is my salvation.

During childhood, I often wondered whether it was me God was supposed to save or her. At some point, which I can't pin down more specifically than between the ages of three and ten, I understood it to be exclusively the latter — she never believed I could be saved. From the day I was removed from her and she refused to look at me, my mother never believed I could be saved, yet had the audacity to crush a newborn under the weight of her salvation by making it my responsibility to hand-deliver her to God.

The worst part is that I would. After everything, I would shove a knife to God's throat until They agreed to spare her even from a second in Gehinnom, regardless of what it meant for me because I suppose I've always known she's right: I can't be saved. Not me, who was born from sin, from the crimes of bodies, and who lives in sin, in the crimes of bodies.

Just to do something with my hands, I roll a cigarette and light it without taking a drag. Standing by the open window, I watch it burn between my fingers, leaving a stack of ash that collapses into the apple marmalade jar I use as an ashtray. Or do I just imagine doing it? Because when Dorian returns, I'm still sitting at the two-person kitchen table, holding a mug of cold tea in my hands.

Warm fingers peel it from my grip. 'You should eat something.'

I shake my head.

'Do you need to take your supplements? Or any meds?' Dorian asks this as if there's a chance my health has gotten better since he left.

'My iron...' My voice is hoarse from the smoke trapped in my throat. It grows blacker by the second, my chest beginning to char, yet I still can't figure out where it's coming from. 'And B12 too.'

He brings them to me along with a fresh glass of water. 'Drink all of it if you can, Shay.'

The first time he called me Shay, we were eight. That was the first summer his parents allowed him out on his own — or so I thought, at the time, though it turned out his parents only found out about his rendezvous when his violin, French, and Italian tutors all complained about his attendance. For the first time since our meeting, we weren't confined to playing in the temple car park whenever I managed to go. For weeks, we were free to explore Halsett's plains and orchards in their August glory.

It was that summer we found our alcove in the bend of the river, far enough from town to grant us undisturbed privacy. It was where we ran away to when we had no understanding of the world beyond plains, and when we got older, it was where we went to talk about running away.

I didn't expect Dorian to love water as much as he does — or did? — but as soon as he learnt to swim enough to float, he wouldn't climb out until he got a cramp or touched a fish. That was when I first thought of him as my best friend. Nobody had ever loved swimming as much as I did.

Nobody had ever given me a nickname. Until Dorian emerged breathless from the river and said, as though the words were not from his brain but his heart, 'Can I call you Shay?'

Shay, Hebrew for "gift".

I loved that it divorced my mother from me. I loved that he wanted to give me a name only he'd ever use. But what I loved most is how it united us — we already shared so much and now we shared our name too and what could promise love better than that?

Dorian is a Greek name but it came into Greek from the Hebrew word doron meaning "gift". At least your mother knew what to name you — if there's anyone I hate more than my mother, it's your mother, but I'll give her that. She knew what to name you.

He was my gift. And every time he calls me Shay, I'm his gift too.

But I don't know if I believe he means it like that anymore...

When my glass is half-empty, I wrestle my eyes to Dorian who sits on the second chair, writing something in a notebook he must have brought with him after returning to his accommodation.

'Do you even have a license?'

He looks up and takes a moment to orient himself before he answers. 'Yes.'

'You know we drive on the normal side of the road here.' Though I have no intention of doing so, I feel my face contort into a scowl, but Dorian only nods.

'I know. I got my license here. I thought it would make me less afraid of traffic but I think it only made it worse.'

Jutting both elbows on the table, I bury my face in their crook so I can claw my fingers into the base of my skull. I barely feel the crescent moons I dig into my skin.

'That car is the only thing I own. I put every pound I had into it. You better not crash it. Less you can crash it skilful enough that I die and you don't. Then neither of us has to go back like we always said.'

Dorian's stare shoves at me. But he decides to pretend he didn't hear my addition and says only, 'I won't crash.'

I peel my head up enough to find his eyes, waiting for me like they so rarely are. My voice doesn't manage to a volume above a whisper. 'You don't have to do this. I can't ask you to. I ain't got nuttin to give back.'

But Dorian isn't cruel enough to come back years later to cash in favours. 'I know... I love you. I want to help.'