Nicolás don't say a word as he stalks through the school forecourt. I slink behind him, unable to look higher than the worn rubber heels of his trainers. Dozens of eyes aim darts at me through the windows.

I'd've expected to be proud to leave a legacy behind at Isaac Evans Community Academy. They'll remember the crazy lunatic who got locked in a cage for violence. Years later when our cohort has graduated, younger siblings will keep the story alive until it warps to summat entirely unrecognisable.

If there ever was any pride, the maggots have devoured it. Even the embarrassment of my episode in front of Sakda drowns in shame.

Blur of pink. Diwa leaps at me from whenever she's been waiting. Her cheeks glisten, eyes puffy.

She's supposed to be in physics. Has she skived off just to wait for me?

See? Bad influence. Am I not satisfied until I corrupt everyone?

'Cece, I'm well sorry! I promise I'll–'

'Don't talk to me.'

Diwa staggers to a halt. I can't look at her either, so I speak to the dried mud she missed on the side of her right boot. That day in Wigan feels so, so far away.

Did you think you could be safe with her?

'I thought we were mates,' I say. 'Clearly, romance comes first. That's what I get, right? Just leave it.'

You'll never be safe. I told you: they're out to get you. All of them. They all want to see you dead.

She'll tell them about us and they'll all know you're evil. They'll lock you in forever and ever and ever and ever–

She can tell whoever she wants. They already know.

Without another word, I trail after Nicolás. Diwa's stare adheres to my back but the vulture is hardly distinguishable from the rest of the carrion feeders waiting for me to finally die.

Nicolás unlocks the car doors. The click is a gunshot in our silence. I flinch. In the passenger seat, I curl my shoulders to minimise the space I take up but the pressure only grows. Silence pours in like cement. Someone in a millennium will dig us up as fossils.

'Lo siento–'

'Please don't.' Nicolás wrings his fingers until they threaten to pop out of their sockets. 'I need to process before we talk about it.'

I know he's thinking of my best, but, fuck, I'd prefer he yelled. Fire breeds fire and I'm used to burning but I have no defence against the pestilence of his disappointment.

At Your Best (You Are Love) by Aaliyah automatically plays from his bluetooth when he starts the car. Neither of us reaches to turn it off. Rather than ease the pressure, it builds it up, and though it's just after morning traffic, we're caught in every red light so that halfway home, there's no oxygen left at all.

I stare at my hands where bruises bloom on my knuckles. I still can't feel it, can't feel anything, now that the evil has claimed even the last hair follicle in my scalp. My rings will cut off circulation from my swelling fingers at any moment. I don't remove them.

Beewolf buzzes in the backseat, beyond thrilled. Are you tough yet?

Am I tough yet? How do I manage to be both monstrous and so weak?

Neither of us unbuckles our seatbelts when we park on the curb in front of our house– his house.

I don't belong here. I'll never have a home.

Nicolás don't stop the engine, don't pull the handbrake, don't change gear to neutral. When I manage to shove through the silence and turn to him, I find him staring ahead, hands clamped to the steering wheel.

'It's alright.'

He sounds like his voice has been torn from his throat and poorly stitched back in. Not all that convincing.

He realises this and repeats himself, with more warmth this time. 'It's alright.'

It's an electric heat: artificial.

Turning away, I curl against the passenger door and decay.

'No. It isn't.'

Salt spreads across my tongue. I'm crying.

My throat swells and I have to wrestle through the ache to speak. 'You don't know what it's like—you only ever had one placement; you don't know what it's like to live under the constant threat of being thrown out.

'And I know it's been my fault the last few years—I intentionally wind them up or I run away. But it weren't at first. I tried so hard to be wanted and it never made any difference. People see me and they've already decided that I'm difficult, a problem. So... after a while, I reckoned, whatever, if everyone's gonna think it anyway, I might as well be a problem.'

I shouldn't tell him all this. It's a pathetic defence but I can't help myself. I need him not to hate me, I need him to know that I tried to fight the evil. I'm just too weak.

Nicolás finally twists the key out of the ignition. The silence that swarms in from the absence of the engine's hum and Suavecito is virulent. He drops his head back, blunted stare rising to the airbag safety sticker on the visor.

'But you can't go through the world like that, Cece. There are real consequences. D'you know how lucky you are the police've never been involved? That's not a joke.'

Unconsciously, his fingers find his left wrist, to ease the ache of bruises that have long since faded out of sight.

Bile rises up my throat. I swallow, cram it down to my churning stomach. 'When?'

'When what?'

'When'd you get arrested?'

'I haven't–' Nicolás cuts himself off, considers his options. '2008,' he states. 'October fourth. Some thirteen minutes past four pm.'

2008. That's eight years ago. He was sixteen... my age.

'Why didn't you tell me?'

The laugh that hacks through his chest is so unlike him that it severs my skin into thin strips, stings like citrus squeezed into the wounds.

But the mistake's already been made; I have to let him lash out. It's only fair.

You're hurting him.

And you're enjoying it, aren't you?

'Because you were nine.' His voice begrays the earthquake cracking open his chest. 'How d'you want me to explain that to a nine-year-old? I didn't fucking understand it. For years, I thought that maybe I did do summat wrong. I didn't cooperate enough, or I stood aggressively, or maybe I just shouldn't've been outside. So really, it's all on me.'

Though his glare is stapled to the safety sticker, he smoulders like an iron poker shoved into a grate. His jaw is clenched so tight it threatens to dislocate.

Nicolás never bares his teeth at me and I've gotten comfortable thinking he doesn't have any. I couldn't have been more wrong. They're sharp and red with his own blood.

He's been afraid for eight years. And all I do is make it worse, insist on breaking the law at every opportunity. Everything bad in his life is your fault, Beewolf reminds.

'But yeah, why didn't I tell you?'

I shake my head. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it about me, I...'

You're enjoying it, aren't you?

'That's alright.'

I loathe how believable he sounds. How is he never bitter, never angry? How is he not weighed down by grudges?

Nicolás is as close as a human being can get to perfect. No fire, the only thing he spreads is warmth.

He defied all the statistics: lived with the same foster family for his whole time in care, graduated college with top grades, got a scholarship to his first-choice university, achieved a first-class degree which he completed in an accelerated programme whilst working two jobs, has a house, has a loving and sturdy support network. Never broke curfew, never got detention, never struggled with substances, never got into a fight, never as much as hurt anyone's feelings. So polite, so amendable. His tolerance is infinite.

The antithesis of me. My risk assessment starts with "history of aggression" and ends with "can't stop cutting open own skin" six pages later. Selfish, erratic, trigger-happy. Insane. Evil.

Everything bad in his life is your fault.

And I never apologised. Have I ever apologised properly? Our parents left because of me.

'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's all my fault. It's my fault they're gone and I'm sorry. I really am, I–'

Sorry? You can't feel remorse. You're evil.

But my gut. It's full of maggots.

That's joy.

'Did I kill them?'

Nicolás jolts in the driver's seat as though electrocuted. His stare rakes across my features like he hopes to find an explanation in the blood crusting my cheekbone.

He doesn't and has to ask. 'What?' Shock whittles his voice to a spear.

'Did I kill them and forget about it? Did you cover it up? You would lie for me.'

Nicolás seizes me. The seatbelt nearly slits my throat.

He grasps my hand with such intense desperation that his pulse drums into my bloodstream, his other hand twisting my jaw so that I'm forced to look at him. The black of his eyes is solid now, like the armour of a stag beetle.

'No. Of course, not. They left. They didn't like being parents and they didn't like this country, so they left. You had nowt to do with it. Why would you...? Why would you even think that?'

'Because I'm evil. I'm not normal– not human.'

My tears have stopped. The gushing of blood in my ears has silenced. A calm settles over me, the damp and uneven blanket of resignation to a truth I've tried to burn for eleven years.

My agony has transferred to him. Ache is a blue halo around him. The maggots writhe.

Joy. Is it... really joy?

'You're not evil. Cece–'

He loses his voice, words too tangled to get out of his throat. Nicolás gathers my body to his chest so that I slump over the centre console of the car, then unbuckles my seatbelt so that he can pull me even closer. His sobs rattle against my sternum.

And I'm full of maggots. They're behind my kneecaps and inside my eyeballs. Is it really joy?

'You're the farthest thing anyone has ever been from evil.' The earthquake reigns in his voice. 'You were the sweetest kid. You were happy and gentle and kind. Cece, if you were the problem, they would've sent you to Colombia. They wouldn't've abandoned me too, I never did owt wrong.'

He laughs, albeit weakly.

'You're not evil. I'm so sorry that I let you feel like that. I'm so sorry that I let you feel like you had to build so much armour.'

I'm slack against him. I don't move, I don't speak. When he pushes me upright, my eyes have lost the ability to focus. He wipes my cheeks though it's his own that need it.

My face is dry. I can't feel emotions. Because I'm evil. He's just too blinded by his own goodness.

'Cecilio, please.' Nicolás shakes me. My head lolls. 'Just listen to me. Please.'

Beewolf settles onto my shoulder, finally victorious.