BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

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TUESDAY
25.09.1990
ISAIAH

               Rain surges down the bus windows and nourishes the dread that grows with each metre we near Coeus Academy. What are the chances it'll ease up within the next three minutes? The cheap umbrella I bought this summer broke already, clearly not built for the winds of rural Suffolk, and the stop is a good five hundred metres from the school doors. I'll get soaked whether I run or not, and after the weekend, I definitely don't have the strength to run.

The bus veers into the cul-de-sac large enough to fit twenty cars at a time and my worries soothe only to explode twice as hot a second later, though for entirely different reasons. Dorian stands beside the stop signpost with an umbrella, holding a tupperware box in addition to his backpack.

He searches the vacant windows until he finds me. His eyes latch onto mine but neither of us smiles.

I keep my gaze on him as I walk down the length of the bus. When the doors open, I'm greeted by the musk of soggy grass and humidity that seeps through the seams of my blazer to cling to my bones.

I hesitate to step down to the asphalt as though there's an invisible tripwire waiting for me. Stumble, and I might ruin everything. Eleven years of friendship can easily be annihilated with one explosive when the fuse leads right to my heart.

I shouldn't have kissed him. I knew it the moment he pulled away. Dorian won't think of me like that. Maybe there's some part inside him that's curious or tantalised by the thought, the part that makes him stare when he doesn't think I notice — Of course, I notice. How could I not when it's all I've ever wanted?

But Dorian has always observed halakah; no matter how intrigued, he won't think of me like that.

I accepted it years ago, so why risk everything? I accepted years ago that the closest I'd get to kissing him was sharing an apple. To take a bite and, when I catch him looking, offer it to him, position it so he has to bite the same cheek, for his lips to touch the flesh my lips were on moments ago, then to return it to my own mouth and suckle his saliva along with the nectar.

I shouldn't have let him kiss me. It was a mistake. It was a dream. A mistake. A dream. A mistaken dream, maybe. Maybe I'm rotten to the core.

With jittering hands, I meet Dorian's eyes and take the plunge.

My left foot has hardly landed beside my right before the rain stops dotting my shoulders. Dorian holds his umbrella over my head — more over mine than his own and our proximity is much closer much quicker than I prepared for.

Normally, I'd live for him to be this near. Now, it's a threat of the distance to come; the way you squeeze someone's hand before you let go, or how doctors give a conciliatory pat on my shoulder after admitting there is nothing they can do for me. You could try praying.

I guess I could try praying.

The doors thwack shut behind me and the bus trudges around the cul-de-sac. The stench of the exhaust fume is heightened by the rain and Dorian coughs a little, burying his face into his arm until the bus has disappeared behind the cypress and aspens.

He faces me slowly, eyes oscillating back and forth and fingers tapping away against the tupperware box.

'I'm really sorry.' It's all he can get out before he chokes and stumbles over himself in incoherent messes. 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it— I'm so stupid— Say things without thinking and I hate that I hurt you and it's completely reasonable for you to hate me— You hate me— It's fine— But I just— My mum hates me— I can't— I'm so confused, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I baked you these.'