I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 38: will the past ever leave me alone?

               When I get into the house, his coconut lip butter still lingers on my tongue. It's one minute past eleven but the house is quiet and the threat of being grounded dissolves. Iya and Baba must be asleep, which I assume must have taken plenty of convincing from Baba.

My stomach rumbles as I toe my sandals under the shoe rack; I redirect my path into the kitchen, where I ease open the fridge. A reused margarine box filled with harira leftovers from dinner is the first thing my eyes land on. I pour it into a bowl since the plastic is thin enough to melt under heat, and chuck it into the microwave.

I watch it rotate for the whole minute and a half and turn the program off when two seconds remain on the timer. But even if the microwave doesn't beep, my cell does, and I grimace. It's a text from Miles.

"Just thought I'd let you know I never believed that juvie stuff. You rub your neck when you lie."

Subconsciously, I caress the side of my neck. That can't be true. I've never noticed.

I text back one word. "Dickhead."

Leaving my cell on the counter, I open the microwave only to turn around without taking the bowl out. I should wash my hands first.

Mistake: the paper cut on my thumb flares up as soap slips into it and I hiss, instinctively lifting it to my mouth.

The second it infiltrates my tongue, Miles's shirt adheres to me with cold sweat. Shivers rack my skeleton violently enough for my knees to falter and I clutch the stainless steel edge of the sink. It already ripples in my vision.

It's soap. Just soap.

But my body has already decided that it isn't, and the further the bitterness colonises my taste buds, the more difficult it becomes to disagree. Because it burns in a way soap doesn't. Kills ninety-nine point ninety-nine per cent of me.

I pinch the webbing of my left thumb. Look for purple things. Why is there nothing purple in this kitchen? Idiot. Pick another colour. Another colour. Another colour? There are no colours. Everything is white.

I stumble through the blank hospital corridor to the fridge. Clasp a carton of almond milk. Something burns the back of my throat.

Stomach acid? Or Domestos Original Bleach? Or is it already the tube for them to empty my stomach of itself?

No time for a glass; safety hazard too.

I tear off the cap and pour the milk into my throat much faster than I can swallow it. Brooks run down my chin to my neck and join the sweat that seeps into my clothing.

But the taste refuses to get off my tongue. It only spreads. Burns at the back of my throat, down my oesophagus. My stomach. They try to get it out. Too late. Ninety-nine point ninety-nine per cent of me is ready dead. And the agony is unbearable.

The almond milk slips from my hand as I double over. It surges across the floor. Between my toes and the tiles. My insides are melting away. My organs are at war with each other and there'll be no survivors. The ache of my knees against stone barely registers under the agony of my lungs crawling up my throat.

My fingernails dig into the mortar, forehead pressed to the cool stone wet with milk. It's not real. It's not real. The pain isn't there. It was just soap.

But as it flares up again, I can't withhold my scream. The way the cry rips my throat open should be proof that there's no tube in it but we're far past logic and reason. I scream. Until it's so bad I can't even breathe.

I'm going to die.

Better get a knife and carve everything out than suffer this. I'm going to die anyway. It doesn't matter if it's not real now because most of me died when it was. Won't they let me kill the last 0.01 per cent? Everything is too much. Such a small fraction isn't worth all this struggle.