MONDAY
24 SEPTEMBER, 1990
DORIAN

               You're biting your lip, grinning at some joke I've not processed. Isaiah is lying on the grass, holding his torso up with his elbows and laughing into his coursework. As much as I tell myself not to, I stare at the indents his teeth leave on the plump skin. I want to bite your lip. I want you to bite mine. I want to see the indents replicated on my skin, your gap visible in the markings.

I have to turn away to shove my thoughts back on the right track. 'Does it bother you?'

'Does what bother me?' Isaiah asks without looking up from his reading log.

'That I'm always daydreaming?'

'No.'

'Does it bother you when I ramble on about things you don't care about?'

'I reckon I'd've told you by now if it did.' When I don't reciprocate his amusement, Isaiah softens to sincerity. 'It doesn't bother me.'

I squint at the horizon. September has remained uncharacteristically dry and though only a streak of clouds pales the sky, there's a peripheral chill in the air that promises a cold October. From next week, we'll spend our breaks and free periods in the library instead of the school grounds. I pluck a yellowed aspen leaf from the grass and try to half it perfectly along its stem. It tears in an asymmetric quarter instead.

'Is it weird I don't make eye contact when we talk?'

'Yeah.' The scrape of his pen doesn't pause as he speaks. 'Ain't nun wrong with it, though.'

I pick my headphone cord from my chest and loop it around my fingers to tie a knot, then another within it and another within that. The plastic headband digs into my neck. 'Do you think anyone would marry me?' I tug the cord and it unravels.

'I'd marry you.'

I turn to him. His hand has frozen mid-sentence though his head remains bowed over his notebook, shielding his expression from me. Did his shoulders cinch or am I imagining it?

'I'm serious.'

'Me too.'

'Well, do you think anyone else would marry me?'

He finally looks up. Lying on the grass while I sit, he has to crane his neck to do so. There's a glimmer in his eyes, an intensity he has diluted until today that makes my cheeks burn (do you want to bite my lip?). It's shrouded by something different and he shrugs. 'Yeah, I think people would marry you... What's with the questions?'

I return to the horizon. 'Elijah says I'm weird and that girls won't like it.'

'Who cares?' Isaiah still clings to his joking manner but there's a splinter in his tone.

I knot my headphone cord until there's none left and I get to undo the loops again. 'Well, it's that I'm eighteen soon and my mum will want me to get married. Elijah says if I don't find someone on my own, she'll choose for me.'

Isaiah's laugh rattles in his throat. 'That's mental.'

'It's not that uncommon.'

In a strange rotation, my embarrassment of my own family, which should have me concurring his position with thrice the fervour, turns instead to a prickling frustration that masks him the villain.

I jab at the ground, digging a hole in the grass. 'What's it matter to you, anyway?'

'Cause you're my best friend and I ain't want you to be miserable for the rest of your life.'

Isaiah intends this to be his complete answer but can't stop himself from continuing, the way you scratch a scab or mosquito bite at the very same time the voice in your head tells you to stop, only for regret to surge in when you bleed.

'Cause once you marry someone as rich as you, there'll be no space for me in your world. Cause I thought once we turn eighteen, we'll get outta here and never think bout our parents again like we've always said. And cause I hate the idea of you being married.'

'Why?'

'Why? Take a wild fucking guess, Dorian.'

The confession scalds me. Somehow, obscured, it carries more weight than all the times he has spoken it bluntly. What might once have been a sweet drop of honey is now a boiling clump of syrup that blisters down my throat. It's too much to stomach; I swallow it only to cough it back up.

I don't want it, my silence says. Keep it to yourself.

Isaiah's lips contort into a smirk. To make it easier to say, he spat out his admission like venom and now he fills with masochistic delight as I react exactly as he knew I would: with cowardice. (You know me too well. How do you manage to make me euphoric and so afraid at once?)

Fully aware of how pathetic it makes me (and aware of how pathetic you think it makes me), I backpedal. 'It wouldn't mean I'll be miserable.'

'Cause arranged marriages have always gone so well.'

In another nauseating rotation, the cloak is torn off him and the sticky shame intended for my family trickles into me instead. How can I claim he has no authority to criticize my world because he doesn't understand it when it's precisely he who does understand?

I tie a new noose with my headphone cord. 'I wouldn't have an affair.' The promise is insipid; I can't blame him for scoffing.

'And how'd you know she wouldn't?' Isaiah snatches The Great Gatsby from the grass and shuts it without a bookmark. He shoves it into his bag, then gathers the rest of his things. 'Cause if you don't love her, she'll get it somewhere else — can't blame her, either. And maybe she'll get pregnant and get cast out by her family, flee the country, and have a mamzer for a son. But what do I know?'

Sharply zipping up his backpack, Isaiah struggles to his feet.

Time slows down and fasts forward simultaneously as blood gushes in my ears and sentence fragments collide into each other in my head. This is all going wrong but, like a pilot who after a decade of flying, panics during abrupt turbulence and forgets the function of every light and switch, I have no idea how to stop or soften the crash.

'Where are you going?'

'English.'

'It starts in twenty minutes.'

'Never know how long it'll take me to get up them those damn stairs.' Isaiah throws his backpack over one shoulder and turns away.

'Wait!' I lunge to my feet. 'I didn't mean it like that–'

He snaps around so close to me that I can see the tears form in his lashline.

'You kissed me. Not twenty-four hours ago. And now you're ready to get married to please your parents.' All I hear is the sharpening of a knife. It pierces right through my stomach when he puts on a heavy RP accent; this isn't the tender mockery I'm used to but intended to hurt: 'Pardon me if I'm a tad confused.'

He's right, though. Along with the blood that rises to my tongue, comes an apology, but before I can speak it, Isaiah covers his face with his arms.

'It's my fault. I'm being selfish.' The words are muttered enough for the possibility that he speaks them to himself. At least, when he uncovers his eyes again, there's a busyness behind them that testaments internal castigation. 'I know this won't ever happen.'

'Why not?'

'Cause you ain't never gonna have the spine to stand up to your muma.'

The words shoot through my chest but if I thought the bullet would be the worst pain, I couldn't have been more wrong. Shrapnel expels through my lungs and thorn in the cracks between my ribs. They scrape against my insides with every breath.

It takes only two shuddered inhales for tears to well in my eyes. Isaiah's features blur, though not enough to camouflage the regret that strains them.

'Sorry.' His hand twitches like he intends to reach for mine but thinks better of it and instead, hooks his thumb around his backpack strap. 'That were a mean thing to say. I'm being a prick. I'm sorry... But I ain't wanna talk to you right now.' With a stumble, he steps back. (Or did I imagine the slip, concoct your hesitation because I want you to not want to leave?) 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow?' I croak. 'Not after school?'

'Not after school.'

'Can't I at least help you up the stairs?'

Isaiah drags his feet several more half-steps backwards, turning a quarter away from me. (You can't wait to leave.) 'I gotta learn to cope without you eventually. You won't be round to help me up stairs for the rest of my life.'

But I want to be. I tell myself to shout after him, "I want to be!" but I can't muster up the courage before he's too far away.

How did I manage to spoil it so fast? I shouldn't have spit my shame into his mouth.

Frowning, I turn around and stare at the flattened grass where Isaiah lay. My history lesson won't start for another twenty minutes but staying in our spot without him feels wrong so I pick up my French coursework (which I barely started in the half hour I sat with it open in front of me) and stuff it into my backpack.

My frown doesn't budge as I drag my feet toward the humanities wing. If I walk slow enough, perhaps I can make it last twenty minutes, though it's unlikely because my skin crawls with the need to go faster. I feel like I'm always wasting time.