CECE, DISRESPECTFULLY | ✓

48: TROGLODYTE

            Just when I got rid of the bandages, my hands are yet again wrapped up. At least this time, the acute wounds were only on the heels of my palms and Nicolás left my fingers unbound.

Diwa keeps glancing at me as we sit in the canteen, waiting for me to undo the gauze, but for once, the urge to rip the scabs open hasn't reared. Not even Beewolf is scouring for pain.

Not that I need it to seethe.

We made the mistake of sitting at a table near Jordan Uwais and instead of enjoying my lunch, my spaghetti gets cold on my tray as I glare at the swarm buzzing around him.

A boy I've seen around Noah is draped to Jordan's side. Even in the shit lighting of the school canteen, his highlighter is blinding while his beret is so lopsided that I swear it's about to fall off.

He bats his eyelashes at Jordan. 'I love an artist. Thinking about you risking everything just to express yourself—it's so... heroic.'

Jordan nods along while his mates, the ones that I fought last week, roll their eyes. They don't seem too happy about Jordan's fifteen minutes of fame.

Jordan himself is far too high to realise what's going on. 'Aye, mate. Proper.'

'That one you posted last night were well cool,' a girl who might be called Amanda says from the other side of the table, crammed between Jordan's sulking friends. 'All those figures staring at you. It were proper spooky. And then all the insects.' She shivers. 'Why do you always include insects?'

'Well, you know,' Jordan shrugs, 'insects are just living life. Eating and fucking. They're not paying any taxes.'

His audience sighs in collective awe. I think I'll stab myself with this fork.

No. I'll stab him with it.

Noah's friend somehow finds space to move even closer. 'On the topic of fucking–'

'Alright?' Noah says in greeting as he sits beside Diwa. No tray, so he must've already eaten. 'Mind if I sit here a bit? Just waiting for Oscar while he's–' he gestures at his friend, half-sitting in Jordan's lap by now. 'It's funny, I've known Jordan since we were six and all I've ever seen him draw is a cock.'

I grit my teeth. 'Hilarious.'

I stab my spaghetti. I imagine I'm twisting my fork in Jordan's brain, the squelch of the tomato sauce a flawless imitation of what his frontal lobe would sound like.

Diwa has an abrupt coughing fit to cover up her amusement.

Noah is none the wiser, still watching Jordan the way you watch a nature documentary that comes up on YouTube auto-play but you're too lazy to turn off. 'No clue why he'd be so loud about it when we're half a year from graduation. Didn't Cobham say he'd expel whoever it was? Imagine not graduating cause of summat like that.'

Diwa dulls her voice into one appropriate for hypothetical chit-chat. 'Cobham probably don't have any proof about it being Jordan. He can't expel someone on word of mouth.'

Noah glances at Diwa. 'Right you are.'

'What about Death to Beewolf?' something-with-an-A asks at Jordan's table. 'What does that mean?'

'It's, you know, wolves are sick. Bees too.' Jordan stacks his spine. 'Did you know bees are actually essential to the survival of our ecosystem?'

Everyone coos again.

I let Diwa ask Noah about his D&D campaign which Noah is more than eager to ramble about until Oscar slumps onto the chair beside me.

'He's celibate,' Oscar announces, beret wobbling from the jut of his jaw. 'He's waiting till marriage. After I listened to him spout some absolute rubbish about wolves. What've I got to do to get a shag around here?'

'My heart goes out to you,' Noah says and I've no idea if he's sarcastic. Has to be. But I've never imagined that even a grain of sarcasm could inhabit Noah.

The pair gets to their feet. 'See you two in maths practice.' Noah waves us goodbye before locking arms with Oscar. For a beat, they flicker into Nicolás and Caleb in my mind.

Could Diwa and I ever be that way, so quick to affection? The spaghetti coils in my stomach like tapeworms. I don't think I'll ever be able to give her that.

Immune to my guilt and melancholy, Diwa can't contain her amusement anymore when summat-with-an-A asks Jordan about the choice of cobalt and crimson and he says it's a reference to the Matrix.

She stuffs her laughter back into her mouth as she turns to me. 'You doing okay?'

'I couldn't care less,' I say, every letter a pulled tooth. 'Why would I care? My art can perfectly well be about fucking and eating and not having to pay taxes. Sure. Why not? It's not like art is the only thing that I've never lost, that's never been taken, that's never left. Art is always around. All you need is a pen and then you're not alone.

'It's the one place where I have control. I can draw things and they're real and I don't have to worry about them becoming real anymore. I choose what's real, I have the upper hand. Why would I give a fuck if Jordan wants to bastardise it?'

I prop my elbow on the table between us to scatter the beam of her attention.

Don't help much. Diwa stubbornly keeps watching until she shrugs. 'That's what you could write in your motivational letter.'

I'm so taken aback by this reaction that I drop my arm to stare at her. 'No, I'm supposed to write about how I've volunteered to teach dogs art therapy since I were four.'

'Sure, if you weren't dead brassic–'

'Oi. Watch it.'

Diwa raises her hands but a smile tugs at her mouth. 'It's true. But since you've never had the opportunity to gain formal experience, your best bet is to appeal to emotion. If it's gripping enough, they won't even notice you've never volunteered to teach dogs art therapy.' With that, she stabs the last carrot sticks on her plate and shoves them into her mouth.

After my episode yesterday morning, I'd've reckoned she'd be too traumatised and terrified to ever mention Stellatus again. And yet here she is, like I didn't force her to spend our maths lesson outside on the ground while I waited for the pain to dull.

'Sorry,' Diwa says. 'My mum says I'm neurotic. I'm not tryna be. It's your choice. I just want you to know that you have a chance if you want it.'

I scoff but as I finish the rest of my lunch, sentence fragments accelerate at the back of my mind. Conclusions and topic sentences link together somewhere a little too far for me to make out the exact words until they emerge from the fog, fully formed.

'What does it mean?' Diwa asks when we leave the canteen some minutes later. 'Death to Beewolf?'

A lie pieces itself together on my tongue but it transforms once I've already started and it's too late to yank it back in. 'It's the evil in me, Beewolf. Art is how I how I kill it.'

I don't elaborate and she don't ask.

'I like that you're so neurotic,' I say instead. 'Reckon we balance each other out.'

Notes

Brassic: Broke, poor.