No goodbyes

iii

    Brayden hid her away in the boy's quarters of his three-story mansion. At first, he took her upstairs, to that spotless white room with heavy bronze chandeliers, wide television screens, and colourful aquariums, but she told him she could not stay there. She had a fear of heights. Ever since her mother jumped off a building, she had been having reoccurring nightmares of falling off from things—skyscrapers, roller coasters, the bunk bed she shared with Aunty Mariam.

But on the low ground of the boy's quarters, she would not have such nightmares. If she ever did, it would be of the fat, intrepid rats that ran across her tattered mattress, and the spiders which crawled out of the cracks in the walls.

To pass the time, she read the novels Brayden dropped at her door before he went to school and watched Stranger Things. But sometimes, when she felt bored, she would step out of her small cubicle and press her ear against the Olatunji's front door, and soak in all the sounds — Brayden's brazen laughter, his mother's racket in the kitchen, his father's enraged commentaries on a football game—and imagine she was a part of their family.

Even though she had never met his parents, she adored them, coveted them, wished it was she and not Brayden who was their child. She could not imagine her mother planting kisses on her forehead like Brayden's mother did, or her father driving her down to basketball practice every Saturday. Her parents had been incapable of lavishing her with affection. Instead, they suffocated her with their fear, their constant nagging fear of the future.

Brayden visited her on the weekends. He would storm into her room with grocery bags full of junk—soda, pizza, fish pies. "It's my cheat day," he would say, his eyes as large and expectant as a child. It was as though he needed her approval to eat what he would otherwise consider off-limits. They mostly did nothing but eat, the air between them tense. But, as soon as they began to ease into each other's presence, Dara would chase him out. He had to go. It was late. His parents would be looking for him. Brayden would shoot her a blank stare that was full of words, then he would nod in understanding and leave. But one day, he refused to go.

"No," he said. "You need to stop doing that."

"Doing what?" Dara asked, as if she had no clue what she was doing

He took a sip of his Fanta. "Why are you so afraid of intimacy?"

"Afraid," Dara snorted, "I just want you to leave, Brayden. That's all."

Brayden set this Fanta down, burped, and took both her hands. "I'll leave—

"Good."

"—If you tell me something about yourself I didn't know before. I've known you for months, but I don't—I don't really know you."

Dara squeezed his index finger. "I know you."

"What about me?" His eyes shone with curiosity.

"I know you're an arrogant asshole who only cares about himself."

"Would an arrogant asshole allow you to live under his roof?"

"Technically...your parent's roo—"

Brayden put a finger on her lips. "Don't digress. Who are you, Dara? Really?"

"There's nothing much to me. My father's in jail. My mother was a coward who took her own life, and I'm their orphaned offspring. That's me. That's Dara Adebayo."

"That's nonsense," he said, a tinge of anger in his voice. "You talk about your parents all the time—and my sincere sympathies—but it gets annoying sometimes. You are not your parents. I think there's more to you, you know there's more to you, so stop being such a bloody coward and show me."

Left with no other choice, Dara showed him. She opened her sketchpad and showed him all the sketches she'd made of him. She told him all about her childhood—or lack thereof—how her father had burnt all her art supplies when she told him she wanted to be an artist in future. She told him about her crushes, enemies, and dirty, secret fantasies. She spilt out words until she lost the ability to hold them back. She found it almost orgasmic to bare herself to someone for the first time in years. Brayden nodded as she spoke, as if to say he understood. Dara felt a fondness for him blossom inside her. Nobody had ever understood her before.

"I guess I have to leave now." Brayden rose to his knees

The further he drew away from her, the more violent the tug at her heart was. Just as soon as the tips of his fingers grazed the doorknob, she spoke.

"Stay."

He slowly turned his head and grinned. "You mean it?"

Dara nodded, even though it was a lie. She didn't mean it. What she actually meant was, "don't ever leave."

****

Brayden and Dara liked to go on long, airy walks at midnight. It was the only time that they could enjoy each other's presence. There was no basketball practice for Brayden to get to and no mother to run errands for. Under the glimmer of the half-moon, there was only them.

Their conversations always teleported Dara into a world in which only they existed. They never ran out of things to say, the words tumbling out of their mouths and drifting into the darkness until the neon sky began to show the orange-yellow hints of day. Sometimes, though, they would get bored and decide to play silly games.

Once, Brayden dared her to press Mrs Foluso's doorbell. Dara had thought him wicked for that since Mrs Foluso was a lonely woman whose husband passed away not so long ago, not the kind of person who deserved to be the object of their pranks. But something about the way Brayden touched her, his hand sliding up along her arm and through the sleeve of her shirt, an almost imperceptible seduction, made her forget the difference between right and wrong. She pressed Mrs Foluso's doorbell multiple times until she heard the lock click open. Dara caught up with Brayden and together, they ran, their ragged breaths fanning each other's faces, their unbridled laughter upsetting the serenity of the night.

When they returned to her room, Brayden collapsed against her and laughed. "We're definitely going to do that again."

"It's not me and you." Dara said.

He turned on his stomach and pouted his lips at her. "Please."

"No way."

He batted his eyes. "Pretty please?"

"No"

"For me?"

She made the mistake of staring into the depths of his brown eyes. "Okay, but only once. I don't want to get caught."

****

One day, they got caught, but not by Mrs Foluso.

Brayden was standing in front of Mrs Foluso's door, and Dara was hiding behind the thrushes. But before Brayden could push the bell, someone had already opened the door. Dara did not wait to see who it was. She knew it could not be Mrs Foluso, whose senile manner jarred sharply with the forcefulness with which the door was opened. She also knew it could not be her because the person was running, and Mrs Foluso's arthritis had gone too far deep into her knees to allow that. It wasn't until the person yelled her name that Dara knew who it was.

Brayden's mother.

"Who is this?" she later asked her son in the living room. Dara could barely look into her face. It was too intimidating, her chin, the missing serrated edge of a star, her eyes, slanting and calculating, her nose ending in a sharp tip. Every part of her seemed to have the ability to slice and cut.

When Brayden gave no reply, she persisted. "Brayden Thomas Olatunji, who is this girl?"

"Nobody."

Dara abruptly looked up at Brayden, and, for a second, she could not recognize him. He became a stranger, so different from the nice, affectionate boy she'd come to regard as a friend. He could barely look at her. But when he finally did, she was thrown off balance by the cold disgust glinting in his eyes. He was ashamed to be seen with her. And Dara was ashamed too, for ever letting him into her heart.