I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 03

WHEN WILL I LEARN TO NOT TAKE THE BAIT?

            A moaned chorus of no's spates off my tongue when I'm halfway to the bike shelter, the laments growing louder with each step until the year-tens three metres away from me are staring with unmasked judgement. Though the sunken state of my bike is evident, some optimistic corner of my mind manages to clutch onto the hope that the sight is a hallucination right up to the point I squeeze the back wheel to find it flat.

I graze my thumb along it and find the slit, sharp and even, two centimetres along the centre. I kick the spokes, but the space it clears in my anger fills with shame a split-second later. Astaghfirullah.

'Nice wheels, Leech.'

The jeer rings in my head like a clash of hollow steel rods. Don't look. Don't.

I do. Lysander's eyes nail mine into place, glinting with malice. Or maybe that's the gleam from the keys to his Audi, jangling from his index finger.

He turned eighteen two weeks ago. Of course, he already has a car. Whilst my birthday was in February and Iya won't even let me get a learner's permit. Cars are too dangerous for people like me.

Without further taunting, he turns to Tristan and lets me go. I gasp to fill my lungs as if he's had me in a chokehold, only for them to deflate as miserably as balloons when my eyes lock instead with Miles'.

Though his gaze is only as sharp as a piece of glass weathered by storms of regret, it adheres to me as effectively as Lysander's thumbtacks and pours something into me that's entirely unprecedented. All the fire wanes. My insides swell with smoke that tongues the soggy charcoal of my bones. Tears well in the beds of my eyes, no doubt visible across the paved forecourt, yet he still refuses mercy and forces me to pay witness to his selfish apologies which far proceed the guilt of association.

So it was Miles.

Why am I so hurt? If anything, this gives me a reason to hate him, which is good for me.

He reads my eyelashes clogged with tears and lips pressed flat to stop them from quivering as though it's his native tongue, his comprehension of my hurt clearer than my own. The audacity you have to understand me better than I do myself.

One day, I won't have my emotions tattooed on my sleeve. One day, I'll be passive-aggressive. People will walk past me with a strike of confusion so powerful it'll accelerate to a tempest in no time. I'll get to tell them: grow up, man up, put up. Shut up, nobody cares.

With a half-groan half-sigh, I check the front wheel of my bike. It suffered the same treatment. I screw my eyes shut. I'm gonna be late to work again. The bus has already left and the next won't arrive for twenty minutes. I could ring Dal to give me a lift, but he must have better things to use his petrol on. I'm definitely not ringing Baba... No option but to run.

So I hook my thumbs into the straps of my Slowpoke backpack and sprint down the forecourt, leaving my bike in the shelter for pick up later. I've barely gone a hundred metres before each breath spears my throat, and by the time I crash into Video Bliss, my lungs have wrung themselves inside out.

Bethany is waiting for me with a frown, shaking her head when our eyes meet. 'No, I'm sorry. You're late more often than you are on time–'

My heart compresses in the middle of hammering at the force of a ground drill and I have to force words through my wheezing. 'That's not my fault.'

Her hazel eyes brim with genuine remorse, and for a second, I think she's changed her mind. But her lips flatten into a frown. 'We can't afford to employ someone this unreliable. I understand that you're still in school but if you can't balance both, you have to stop trying.'