FRIDAY
21 NOVEMBER, 1996
DORIAN

               Toying with the drawstring of my joggers, I check the time, then glance at my door again. I've been waiting to eat for six hours and the hunger has built up to the point where I'm lightheaded, but the noise down the hall deters me from getting up.

My flatmates have guests over. At first, I thought they'd only be around for an hour (it is Thursday — well, Friday now, it's past midnight) and I could wait them out, (I'm far too exhausted to look presentable or meet new people or smile or do small talk or act human in any way) but they didn't leave and if I go now, they'll all think I'm weird for waiting six hours.

The phone rings. My pulse skyrockets.

It's past midnight; it can't be a telemarketer or formal call. What if my parents found my number? (They've probably had it all along!) Or Elijah? What more do they want from me? What if they've changed their minds about leaving me on my own? What if they've found another conversion programme they want to ship me to? I've heard about parents arranging for their kids to be abducted from their beds and the fact that I'm legally an adult will make no difference: I'll always be their child.

My knees nearly give in when I climb off the bed. I drag myself to the phone but still don't answer.

No. Logically speaking, nobody in my family would call me. They haven't tried doing so once in the past six years. If my parents decide to abduct me, they won't give me a warning first. It could be a wrong number. It could be a prank call. It could be something important.

On the last ring, I snatch up the receiver but I'm slow to raise it to my ear. 'Hello?'

'Dorian?' Isaiah's voice is confused. It's not a question of my identity but of my well-being. What he says is: what's wrong? When I don't respond, he curses under his breath. 'Were you asleep? I'm sorry. It's the middle of the night, I shouldn't've phoned–'

'No!' Just as my heartbeat begins to calm, it spikes again (don't leave don't leave don't leave). 'I'm not asleep. I wasn't sleeping. Don't hang up!' When I still hear the quiet folk rock in the background, I sigh and my panic settles. 'I'm waiting to get dinner.'

'Dinner? It's one in the morning.'

'There are people in the kitchen.'

I grimace the moment I've said it (what kind of twenty-three-year-old can't eat because there are other people in the shared kitchen? I'm too old for this, I'm way too old to be like this) but all Isaiah responds with is an "okay" as though it's perfectly normal.

Both of us wait for the other to speak until he bites the bullet. 'I'm... outside.' His inflexion turns it into a question. 'Um... Now I think about it, I really should've waited for the morning–'

'I'm on my way.' I go to hang up but jerk the microphone back to my mouth for a rushed, 'See you in a minute.'

Sliding my trainers on, I grab my keys and leave my room only to halt at the door. Conversation booms from the kitchen. Do I say hello? Should I wave and smile as I pass? Is that weird? Or is weird not to?

I don't end up getting a choice because the door opens as I pass and someone calls my name. I have to turn. In addition to Sam and Justin, several others are gathered around the round table. They're all holding playing cards with several beverages in front of them. They're all staring at me through the indoor window.

Lindsay, who opened the door and I assume is on her way to the toilet, smiles at me. 'You wanna join us?'

My legs jitter with their impatience to get outside. How do I respond without coming off as rude?

'I'm meeting a friend.'

Justin smirks. 'Is this a friend or a friend?'

There's an inflexion in his voice that I don't understand and because I don't want to ask for clarification I merely repeat, 'A fr– A friend.'

They continue to watch me with expressions I'm sure mean something (though I can't tell what) until I indicate the door, mumble something about needing to go, and leave.

Sam's voice carries out before I shut the door. 'That bloke's fucking retarded, I swear.'

'Don't say that,' Lindsay chides. 'I think he's autistic so that's like... a slur.'

'It's not a slur. It's an adjective.'

'There's nothing wrong with being a little strange. I think he's sweet.'

I close the door, slow enough that it doesn't click and they don't find out I'm eavesdropping. Thankfully, worries about my flatmates are buried under much more important ones when I spot Isaiah's car. His head rests against the window with his eyes shut and he snaps awake when I knock on the passenger side.

He attempts to smile as he reaches to open the door though it doesn't reveal even a hairline fracture of his tooth gap. He twists the temperature from twenty-eight degrees to twenty-two and turns off the radio so, when I pull the door shut, we're slammed into silence.

Isaiah watches me, suckling on his tongue as he contemplates what to say. I hate that he's uncertain — he never used to be uncertain around me. Or maybe he was and I simply couldn't see it thanks to the altar I put him on.

'How are you doing?' is what he finally settles on and it crushes me. Normally he would drop the "are". Correct grammar and standard pronunciation are his most obvious tells of discomfort.

'Okay, I suppose.'

He runs his hands down the steering wheel. 'I mean...' And back up. 'How was it with your parents?'

'It... it was so much worse than I expected.'

I can't do anything before my throat cinches. My ribs splinter to puncture my lungs. Air leaks out in shaky exhales I try in vain to withhold. Though I turn to the window and try to hold back tears, Isaiah places a hand on my headrest (because he knows not to place it on my shoulder) and my act breaks.

'I shouldn't have gone in the first place,' I sobs. 'I thought they wouldn't be so bad anymore, or-or maybe they weren't ever that bad and my memories just-just exaggerated everything. But the moment I stepped into that house... I'm s-so stupid.'

'You ain't stupid.' Though he whispers, his tone is robust. 'Whatever they said, it ain't true. I know you better than they do — you ain't nun of what they call you.'

I turn to him and he pulls me into a hug the best he can in the car. Though I know it exhausts him to lean over the centre console without any support, he tucks my head under his chin and rubs my back. He holds me until I stop shaking. Until I stop crying enough for guilt to set in.

I pull back. Immediately, he collapses into his seat. As subtle as he attempts to be, I identify the fatigue that flits behind his eyes with no hindrance.

'They disowned me,' I say. 'Officially.'

'I'm sorry.'

I shrug. Over the past week, I've waited for sorrow to arrive the way I wait for a delivery: flinch at every passing car, soak with sweat as I rehearse how I'll say hello and how I'll sign my name, and wonder what's too quick and what's too slow to open the door, all the while I'm unable to do anything I enjoy to distract myself.

There's no sign of it. Sorrow seems to have other places to be. I almost feel free.

Free of their expectations, their reputations, and their shame. I no longer have to worry about being the masterpiece my mother wants to paint. She can't jab me with her brushes, tear up the canvas, or soak it in thinner when she sees it turn ugly — the family portrait is not my problem.

Still, so many of my thoughts are my mother's that it'll take a decade for me to untangle them, to sort out her ambitions, values, and opinions from my own. The realisation alone overwhelms me. I wish I could sleep through it but avoidance rarely works — if there's anything I've learnt in adulthood, it's that avoidance rarely works. I'll have to shove my hands into the pestilence that infects my mind, as appetising as the greasy stew in the sink after washing dishes that haven't been rinsed properly.

At least, I have the opportunity now. With the source cut off, there won't be more pouring in when I've just finished cleaning up. That is my consolation: I can go at my own pace.

'So...' I clear my throat the way I've observed people do when they want to mark a silence as significant. 'You're back.'

'Yeah.' 

Laughter weaves into his exhale. I suppose in a situation like this, all you can do is embrace the absurdity of it. Still, he shifts around incessantly, trying to find comfort that refuses to come.

'I've done a lot of thinking and... um... you're right. I do pick at my scars.' He pulls on his fingers, each in turn. 'That's exactly what I thought I was doing by being around you: punishing myself.'

It's a fisher's knife that guts me down the middle to pull out my ribcage. My heart quivers, left vulnerable to every gust of wind.

'But actually, it's the other way round: I'm punishing myself by not letting myself love you and not letting you love me cause you saved my life in every way that matters and this grudge ain't doing nun for me.'

He drags in a deep breath and turns to me. 

'I forgive you.'

The pain doesn't smooth over. He's crying and I know there's a "but" coming; it's so thick in the air that he doesn't need to say it when he continues.

'I'm moving back to Halsett. I'm gonna be an English teacher.'

I open my mouth but he cuts over me.

'I know what you gonna say: that I'm overqualified or sum. But I never had no career plans, I ain't giving up on nuttin, and this is what I want to do.' Maybe he notices the way I twist away (I wasn't going to say that, but after seeing you there for a week, how am I supposed to believe moving back is a good idea?) and his tone cushions. 'I never would've made it here if it wasn't for Mrs Carter and Mr Kitner. Aside from you, they're the only people who ever had faith in me. If I can be that person for just one kid, I'll die fulfilled.'

Though I'm sure he isn't asking for my approval, I nod. (Of course. You'd be a perfect teacher. How did I never think of it before?) His eyes adhere to the dim brake light of the car parked in front of us.

'You spent your whole life dreaming about great cities and all the concert halls you want to hear your music played in.' He's whispering now. Proper grammar is a poison dart from his mouth. 'I can't make you move to some ghost town in the middle of nowhere for me — losing you was bad enough, I wouldn't survive you hating me... We're both too broke to work over distance.'

I stifle a laugh he thankfully doesn't catch. It falls onto me that, with me being exiled from my family and having no scholarship meaning I'll have to pay my final term's tuition myself, I might actually be poorer than he is. The turning of tables is so cruel and poorly timed, I have to appreciate the humour in it.

Until Isaiah, no longer hindered by a ribcage, tears my heart out. 'You were right. Our worlds don't fit, we don't make sense out here. You have to pursue your music and I have to do what feels right for me.'

The silence that follows rings through my spine as if I'm constructed from hollow steel and yet, there's something satisfying about it — the same way the shattering of glass slices through the ears to bring a moment of ethereal peace. I'd take pleasure in inspecting the shards as I pick them up with my bare hands. I'd try to piece them back together, not because I'm naïve enough to think the glass can be fixed, but because I enjoy reminders of how something whole can be destroyed in a second.

'So we can't be together?' I ask.

'So we can't be together,' he echoes.

I repeat, 'So we can't be together.'

Though my body aches and every part of me is constructing protests, scouring for loopholes or options Isaiah hasn't thought about, I stay silent. I promised to respect his decision.

I turn to him. Still gripping the steering wheel, he stares at his knuckles as tears flow steadily into his beard.

'Can I still have my best friend back?'

His mind visibly returns to his body.

Wiping my palms on my trousers, I try my best to keep my voice steady. 'I-I know it won't be the same and we won't be able to t-talk as much as I'd like because phones cost money and I hate emails, but I'd really love to be friends again.'

Isaiah stares at me. Every fragment of a second stretches into hours to wreak agony in my body, red alarm sirens blare behind my eyes, every cell screams out to move, to run from a non-existent threat I know will kill me. Until he nods and anxiety is released as a surge from a broken dam.

'Yeah.'

Before I can process it, Isaiah has caught me in another hug. He crushes my skeleton, unlocks my bones in a way only he's capable of, and releases the tension that has built up for six years. It pours out with my tears.

'I love you, cuz.'

To avoid the urge to squeeze him as tight as I can, I screw my hands into fists against his back. My fingers curl into his jumper. 'I love you.'

Isaiah peels back. His gaze falls to my lips before he shuts his eyes, squeezes them with a pained frown, and opens them again to meet mine. The mantra is visible as it cycles like a film reel behind his irises: don't look down, don't look down, you no longer have the right to look down... Or maybe that's my mantra. (I have never wanted to stare at your mouth more than now.)

'I've missed you so much.'

He kisses my temple before sinking back into me. For the first time in six years, the incessant noise in my head falls silent as Liszt's third liebestraume flutters through me.

'I'm sorry about your family, Dorian.'

'It's okay. They weren't family.' Burying my face into his jumper, I breathe him in. Though cigarettes are still noticeable, the stench retreats to make room for the frozen earth of Halsett and his natural musk which buffers around each of my nerve endings. 'That's you.'