YOU TOO CAN BE A WASTE OF TIME | ✓

▬ 01: DOGS EAT DOGS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIT

               A feral dog, I'm fluent in the trade of bones. An adult human skeleton is composed of 206 but one can never have too many, especially when your own are hollow. And mine? It'd be lenient to call them pericarp.

Already on stolen time, I know I've no future so I might as well make the present entertaining. I've nowt to lose, and more to the point, nowt to gain. Temporary amusement is all I'm good for and I curb no impulses.

It's for this reason that, when Mr Apostolou prods me awake in the middle of maths class, I don't jolt nor flush. With no urgency, I peel a page from my cheek where it's stuck and sit up to smile innocently at him.

Apostolou stares me down over his thinly framed spectacles. 'Mix Velez, why are you not doing your test?'

'My... test — uh.' I glance at the workbook of circular functions I'm supposed to solve, wrinkled from my using it as a pillow. 'It won't affect my grade. Why bother? Waste of time, really.'

I do nowt but waste time, but I like to waste it on my terms. From the repetitive string of TOO HIGH 5 SCHOOL sharpied onto the rubber around my Vans to the top of my makeshift mohawk, achieved by braiding three cornrows to either side of my head and propping the middle strip up with gel and salt spray, I can't find a vacuole that cares about my maths grade.

I don't bother to lower my voice and several of my classmates have already abandoned their own tests to latch onto the situation, hyenas waiting for the kill so they can eat out the carcass.

Apostolou retains his harsh whisper, feigning ignorance to the audience. 'You're going to need a better work ethic to survive university, Mix Velez.'

'I ain't going to uni so...'

His dark moustache twitches, the first warning of his waning patience. I have to press into the bruises on my outer thigh to keep my expression neutral.

I strangle laughter out of my voice. 'Only reason I'm here is cause I have to live with my dictator brother and he wants me to "stay in school".' I draw quotations into the air. 

Nicolás is nowt but nonsense rules. All he does is complain about everything I do. Don't stay out so late. Don't get provoked so easily. Don't lie in bed with your outdoor clothes — we live in England, I'm assimilating. He dropped that particular one when he realised the only chance of me doing any homework is if I get to do it in bed, though not without avowing that if I start wearing shoes inside I'll have to find somewhere else to live.

Perse blotches swelter to Apostolou's cheeks and his forehead gains a glaze. He always sweats when angry. It makes riling him up that much funnier. 'If you don't want to work here, you can do it in isolation.'

Suddenly, I don't need to fight the smirk off my face.

I clench my jaw. My hands slip into the pouch of my hoodie and I flatten my thumb against the text engraved into my zippo, read it like braille: BURN IT ALL.

Saadia uses her hijab to hide her AirPods —which she keeps showing off to the rest of us who make do with hand-me-downs that only work at certain angles, though I'm still steadfast they look like she's got toothbrush heads in her ears— and Adio is blatantly cheating. Jeremy whirls his fidget spinner so aggressively it sounds like an attack helicopter is about to land on the roof. But I'm the one who's going to isolation?

Even the rain, the furious kind that hurts the Earth more than it heals it, is more distracting than owt I've done.

As blood simmers in my neck, I become acutely aware of the grills snug around my teeth, of all of my earrings and nose piercings, the cheap nickel irate in my skin. Though the horseshoe barbells are perfectly good quality stainless steel, even my snakebites feel raw. My scalp becomes itchy as though the salt spray has transformed into ant eggs now hatching in my cornrows. Sensations that feed the embers.