BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 26

TUESDAY
24 OCTOBER, 1990
DORIAN

               I'm copying the phrases Mr Henriques wants us to translate when a balled-up note lands on my desk. I check that Mr Henriques is occupied with someone else before I unfurl the note. Unsurprisingly, Isaiah's elegant handwriting greets me.

"Deus me salvet?" it says, the translation for the first of Mr Henriques's phrases: may God save me. "He's mocking me."

I glance to find him waiting. The flutters in my chest birth a summer tempest and, rather than be forced to suppress it, finally, I can let the rain soak me. The tingling in my fingers and the soles of my feet that I've had a deep aversion to for years turns out quite pleasant once I surrender to it.

I'm learning to surrender to it.

It's been twenty-three days since our kiss. We've kissed only a handful of times since then (there's no rush, you keep reminding me, we have all the time in the world), but now we know all we need to do is ask, and that makes all the difference. Now, I can sigh at the perfect loop in his y's and g's or how he never accidentally combines letters despite writing in cursive. Now, I don't have to disguise the yearning it wakes in me. Won't you tattoo them into my skin?

I scrawl my response under his. "Me servavis. Me servavis. Me servavis."

Reading it immediately, Isaiah bites down the smile that pulls at his lips (let me bite it). He looks up with a star in his gaze that says: I remember. He remembers. I won't ever forget.

'What have I told you two about passing notes?' Neither of us notices Mr Henriques until he plucks the slip from Isaiah. 'Surely, whatever it is, it can wait till after the lesson.'

He has to read it a second time, then a third. It must be nonsense to him — to anyone but Isaiah and I. We've perfected semi-telepathic communication nobody else can decipher because they're missing eleven years of context.

'Just working on our conjugation, sir,' Isaiah says.

It takes only five minutes for the bell to ring.

As always, we allow everyone else to leave before we do. Bumping shoulders with anyone in a race to the door is repelling to me and his unrelenting risk of dizzy spells or muscle spasms doesn't beckon Isaiah into crowds either. 

On our way out, Mr Henriques hands back our assignments from the previous week.

Isaiah beams and shows me his perfect score. He slips it into his backpack and retrieves an apple-flavoured Chupa Chup as a treat. He's so eager to tear off the wrapper, I swallow my comment about eating sweets on our way to lunch.

Perhaps I only want to puncture his joy so he sinks to my level. (Selfish!) I frown at my assignment. There are several red markings across the page. My mood is quick to sour.

'What are you thinking about?'

'Something my brother said.'

Isaiah tenses and I realise he must be thinking it's more about my future marriage options. I hurry to explain.

'About how I use different pronouns to talk about God. He says I should only use male ones. But it says in Bereshit that "Elohim created humankind in the divine image, creating it in the image of Elohim — creating them male and female". And. That means HaShem is both male and female, so doesn't it make sense that you would use all pronouns for Them interchangeably? I mean, surely, God, the creator of everything, transcends gender–'