BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 10

SATURDAY
22 SEPTEMBER, 1990
DORIAN

               From my nest on the recliner, I glance at the stack of notecards on the desk. It must be the fourth time within the last ten minutes and my plan to soothe my fitful fingers with a look alone continues to prove unsuccessful.

A melody has been forming in the cracks of my palms since Isaiah left yesterday and I've had to fight the need to write it down since. It'll be beautiful, I can't allow myself to forget it, but the clock moves slower the more I look at it. I turn to the window, instead. It's almost sunset. Shabbat will have passed within the hour. Surely HaShem won't be offended if I write down one line of music on the day or rest.

Checking the door, I dart for the desk, snatch a pen and notecard without sitting down, and scrawl the melody onto it as quick as my hand allows, as if G-d won't know if nobody else does.

Punishment is immediate. Not only does G-d find out but so does my brother.

'Arts are forbidden on Shabbat, Dorian.'

Elijah stands in the doorframe and cold trickles down my neck.

'I-i-it was just a few bars so I don't f-forget.'

Elijah smiles as I spin desperate excuses, happy to torture me for several seconds before he steps over the threshold and raises his hands. 'It was a joke.'

It wasn't. It's a warning: I won't tell anyone this time but don't let me catch you doing so again.

He ambles into the office and looks around with the sort of expression people often wear to review things they've forgotten and have no intention of imprinting into memory. His black suit is perfect as if he has just put it on (I've taken off my jacket and rolled up my sleeves though I know it's improper).

'Have you been hiding in here all day?' Elijah asks.

Save for meals and rituals, I have been here all day. The lights in my bedroom are turned off and as much as Shabbat is intended to be spent with family, I'll be trapped in prison sooner than in the sitting room. Hiding is exactly what I'm doing, hiding is what I always do on Shabbat.

I've never been a good liar and my denial sounds like a question: 'No?'

Elijah doesn't listen either way. Once settled on the recliner I just vacated, he studies me with the same indifference as he did the room. 'How are you?'

'What?'

'I haven't seen you in months. Am I not allowed to ask about my brother's well-being?'

I spiral the pen in my hand. 'I just... go to school. Not much... else.'

Elijah exhales a laugh. 'You expect me to believe you spend all day studying? There's nothing you think about but school?' He looks at me with raised eyebrows and a suppressed leer I can't read. 'I was eighteen once, you know.'

I have no idea what he wants to hear. Though he's my brother, he's nine years older and, like all the men in my family since they came to this country and Coeus was founded, went to boarding school, then to Oxford. I never was close to Elijah or Rueben — I know virtually nothing about either aside from basic biographical facts. (Even less, when it comes to their families. Though both are married and have children, they never bring them to Halsett.)

I have no signposts to navigate body language the way I do with our parents. Does he smile out of anger, disappointment, or mockery? Or something else entirely?

Dread builds up in the pit of my stomach, identical to the kind that wakes me up from nightmares where I arrive at a lesson only to be thrown into an exam everyone but I knew about. Why am I never informed?