BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 16

WEDNESDAY
06 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               A trail of smoke steadily fills my head. I can't tell what's burning and rather than rush to evacuate, I try to find the source by process of elimination — Heart? No. Lungs? No. Kidneys? No. The voice rings in my ears, whoever it was whose job it is to inform emergency contacts when their mother has been found dead. Pneumonia. Passed away at home. Might have been several days ago. You're the only listed emergency contact. Any other family?

Dorian stares at me. His blood is still flooded with adrenaline and the abrupt swivel in the conversation stupors him.

'My muma's dead,' I repeat. The words taste like a confirmation of the weather, like it's early November, it's overcast, it's nine in the morning, different than it's December, or it's pouring, or it's midnight.

Something flickers in his gaze. He's wondering whether to offer congratulations or condolences. But when he steps closer to me, he doesn't bother with either. Instead, he pulls me into a hug and all he says is my name.

That's all it takes for my chest to constrict.

I tremble in his arms. 'I'll have to go... there. I have to arrange the funeral and... I can't go back, Dorian. I said I'd never go back. I can't–' A choked sob cuts me off.

I haven't gone to Halsett since I fled nine days after I graduated and with the distance I've built between us, it has festered into a horror scene. The same way you avoid washing up because stains have already dried onto the dishes, but the longer you wait, the more the dirt grows and now you can't approach the kitchen sink without protective wear.

Dorian doesn't bother to soothe me with fake pleasantries about how it'll be okay — he knows better than I do what it means to run away and never look back. He mouths silent sentence fragments, abandoning each after only a handful of syllables, until he finally speaks.

'Do you want me to come with you?'

My eyes dart to his. There's nothing but sincere kindness in them.

After all my cruelty, he's still willing to come with me? I want to say no. Say no because I have to learn to survive these things without needing him, because I don't want to put him through all that just for my comfort when I have nothing to offer in return, because he swore he'd never return to Halsett and the last thing I'll do in my life is be the reason he does.

But I nod. 'Please.'

'Okay.'

With a hand on my back, Dorian helps me into a kitchen chair, pulls my knitted socks higher up my feet as they've slid down, and makes me tea — the chamomille hidden at the back of my cupboard. I hold the mug in my hands without taking a sip.

It's as if I'm living in several times simultaneously. Dorian disappears into my bedroom at the same time as he emerges with a packed bag at the same time as he's cupping the mug of tea in my hands, all at the same time as he tells me he has to leave, to go pack his own things and to contact both our tutors about what's happened, he needs to borrow my car, he needs to know who my tutor is, he needs to know the number to my job to inform I need some time off — My jobs, several? Yes, four. Well, he needs all of them, and I nod and tell him though I can't remember opening my mouth.

This is my fault. I should've made sure someone fixed the heating. I shouldn't have left.

I'm not ready for this. I still buy apple Chupa Chups as a substitute for a mother's love. Before she got so bad and she still came with me to the doctors, she'd buy me the cheapest lollipop in the kiosk across the road — always apple Chupa Chups. I still buy them whenever I want to reward myself. I'm not ready for life without the possibility of a mother.