I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 09: you think this is funny, don't you?

               'You have a nice weekend?'

What kind of question is that? It's Tuesday, he's a day late. Besides, it was the same as every other weekend. Friday I spent with Baba, Saturday I had therapy where Dr Colas told me to stop making jokes whenever I'm anxious, Sunday I went to church alone because Iya was at work, and I studied the rest of the time.

Since none of these things is cool in comparison to whatever parties I'm sure he's still recovering from, I don't answer. 'I'm sure yours was eventful. How many girls d'you shag?'

A laugh bubbles in his chest and he glances at the woman reading a newspaper in the seat beside him as if to share the joke with someone. The things I would do to be told such cruel things and find them entertaining instead of bone-crushing.

'Zero... You make a lot of assumptions.'

'You slashed my tyres.'

Miles thumbs his earring. 'I'm sorry...' Unlike me, he doesn't blurt out his first reaction but rehearses everything in his head before he speaks. 'But I still don't see how you figure the rest follows, like. You refuse to know owt about me.'

I grip the zipper tab of my backpack so that its shape debosses into my skin. 'I know Lysander, and I know Tristan.'

'Sure. But you were like this before I even met em.'

My denial is already on my tongue when I swallow it. Swallow it because he's right.

I speed through the memories of our first interactions for my reasoning, for whatever he did to incite the tension that testaments my "assumptions" as a comeback.

The first facts I ever learnt about him — Leeds, Vietnam, his dad, that he was transferring to North Chapel and the A-levels he was doing — were at a dinner his mum invited us to when they still had three unpacked boxes crumpling in one corner of the dining room.

He had attempted genuine conversation whilst I came with knives because I had no shield at hand, having misplaced it somewhere over the summer when I didn't need to lug it to school every day.

It was two days before when, bumping into us at Barua's Market, that I spoke to him for the first time. He was the one to interrupt me from collecting dates into a reused produce bag that had begun to fray at the hem.

How northern of him to start conversations with strangers; that would've given it away without the accent. "You live next door? I recognise you." That he could possibly recognise someone he's never spoken to offended and flattered me simultaneously.

I gave an unenthusiastic confirmation and refused to meet his eye, keeping my attention on the dates. In hindsight, there's little difference between the two.

"I'm Miles."

I stifled my desired response that I didn't remember asking but the tone of it bled through when I answered. "Ziri. Yes, it's a real name, and no, it ain't short for anythin."

Upon finding us in what they seemed to judge as the first interaction between soon-to-be life-long friends, our mums dived into elevator introductions, until Miles's mum requested we come to dinner soon, "your husband too, of course". In French, I told Iya to say no, but she conveniently forgot the entire language.

He's right: I scowled the very moment I spotted him from my window the morning their car parked in the front garden for the first time. Maybe I was the one to start it. Maybe he hadn't done anything before I made my judgement that there wasn't a chance we'd get along. Because he's a bloke my age who wears running shorts and a sleeveless tee, or because I preferred the privacy of a vacant house next door, or simply because he disrupted my comfort of knowing everything there is in Sufsdale.