I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 53: would you run? would you turn away?

               I've stopped being real again. Did I ever stop not being real? I don't want to be unreal anymore. I want to know what direction is up and what's down, I want to know my feet are still there. I want to know what time it is.

I've hardly opened my jaw before something cold is thrust in my face.

'Bite this.'

It's the bag of soggy peas that he has shaken out of the tea towel. I glance at Miles, but, too tired to so much phrase a response in my head, I do as I'm told.

The plastic tears in my teeth and stretches under my fingers. The cold and odd texture are more effective than I expected, especially when combined with the chemical flavour of the packaging. It doesn't take long for it to bring me back to myself.

And when I've returned to reality, I realise the silence. They've stopped arguing. Enough time has passed for Iya to sit down and Dal to return to his wall, though both remain rigid. Baba hasn't moved.

Miles's presence glows beside me like a portable radiator.

Neck burning, I unclench my jaw and the bag slaps to the floor. Water from the melting peas has run down my throat, leaving brooks behind.

I barely dare to sit up, expecting all their eyes on me, but none seem to be aware of my presence, or each other's, as though we all exist in separate dimensions of reality, ignorant to the people in alternative universes who inhabit the same kitchen, in the same house, and the same town in East Sussex.

My heart squeezes. Tears spill from my eyes. Am I dead?

Maybe I died at some point in the last twenty-four hours and that's why I'm not real. Maybe Tristan beat me with Lysander's football cleats, maybe Dal crashed the car, maybe I did shoot myself.

Or maybe, the bleach killed me in 2006, and all I've experienced since has been the final concoction of my brain to show me all the things I'll miss out on because I decided to kill myself, all the laughter and sunrises I'll never experience and the fruit I won't eat, an illusion that feels like two years but is barely a minute in actuality. And now my time has run out.

Except Miles is staring right at me. He hasn't moved from the floor. Maybe he's dead too. Have I killed him too?

In either case, the way he looks at me is alive. Between my incoherent confessions and the night's arguments, he has pieced together enough to understand the important parts, and yet he looks at me, not with pity or patronisation, but with tenderness.

Even as I feel it, I know it's ridiculous because I'm only eighteen, but age doesn't change the fact that I know my life, as much as it is about tangerines and sunrises, is inevitably tied into his, the strings so tangled there'll be no getting rid of him without the excruciating pain of having to rip him free. He ruined me entirely, yet I don't mind.

I don't mind you under my skin, Miles.

He's grown me or maybe I've grown on him, my veins the vines that drape the branches of apricot trees. Don't scythe me off. I promise I won't leech any of your nourishment.

But I bleed all over him. He must be disgusted. There's nowhere for me to hide, no leaves left to cover myself with now that knowledge has brought shame. He knows all my nakedness. I choose defiance in the way children, when caught doing something wrong, pretend to have planned it incorrectly all along.

I have given you all of my bones. Rebuild my skeleton or bury it!

Yet I speak in a whisper. 'You're allowed to leave.'

'I... I don't want to. If that's okay.' He adjusts the hem of his football t-shirt and his shorts which pool at his bent knees. 'I texted my mum that I'm celebrating the match and might crash somewhere, so she's not gonna worry or owt.'

Is he mocking me? "I texted my mum so she's not worried, you should try it".

Looking away, I plant my palms on the edge of the table to pull myself onto my chair. Even the movement fails to rouse anyone's attention. My voice succeeds: three heads snap up the moment I speak.

'I'm sorry.' I pause instinctively, expecting someone to interrupt but aside from Baba, who presses his hands to his lips and mutters prayers into them, nobody speaks. 'I didn't mean to disappear again. I promise I'm trying. And I know I still haven't paid you back. I will. I promise.'

Lowering his hands, Baba stares at me. 'For what?'

'Edenfield.'

'Habibi, we're your parents, you...' At a loss for words, he glances at Iya to find his confusion reflected in her. 'You don't have to pay us back for anything.'

I tug at the hyena tooth around my neck, partly apologising to them and mostly to my entire ancestry, no longer referring to money, but everything else it cost and everything else I need to repay.

'But it was so expensive. I never meant to burden anyone.'

'You're not a burden–'

'Course, he is.'

When Iya's glare lands on Dal this time, she looks ready to murder him.

But he's unaffected. 'That's what people are. Relationships are you pickin which ones you wanna deal with.'

Moving to the kitchen, he turns his back to us with such bullheaded arrogance that my lips twitch into a smile. "I've said my piece, deal with it or don't, but I won't change my mind". When he returns with a glass of water, the brashness has melted to make way for love to radiate from his skin, and when he hands it to me, his touch guides the rest of me to my body.

Dal crouches in front of me to watch me drink, ready to catch the glass if it slips from my hold. Once I've lowered it onto the table in one piece, he whispers to me. 'We're so blessed to deal with you. I thank God for you every day.'

In the best attempt at a hug I manage, I sink forward to bury my face in the crook of his neck while my arms hang limply at my sides. He understands and reciprocates.

I won't survive without him. Maybe I just don't want to, and what's the real difference? He's my family as much as anyone I'm related to by blood.

Iya understands now. At least, when I crane my neck to meet her eye over his shoulder and plead silently to not make him leave, she nods. A nod that gives me the strength to drop the last of my crutches and submerge into my exhaustion.

My vision begins to fade again, not with the static screen of an off-frequency television but a comforting cradle of unconsciousness. I sink further into Dal despite the awkward position of our hug. 'I'm gonna sleep.'

Notes

Owt: Anything

Habibi: (Arabic) My love, very common term of endearment used in all kinds of relationships