Diwa sticks to my parameters for the next few weeks. We acknowledge each other only in maths olympiad where she has discovered a new level of getting on my nerves. Currently, she gets her fix by complaining about my handwriting because apparently I rush and my fours look like nines. To which I say: she's actually brain dead.

I sit two rows behind her on the bus we take to Churchill Way High School in Salford. It's well unfair that we always have to go to other schools for the competitions but I wager Apostolou does everything in his power to make sure he don't have to host.

My eyes glide from the back of Diwa's head to the window and finally to my lap. I poke the spikes around the cuffs of my jacket. Maybe if I'd've worn summat else, Diwa wouldn't currently be plotting my murder that'll look like a suicide.

But I don't own another jacket that's warm enough for December. And I'm wearing a fucking shirt and tie! Nicolás did have a black button-up at the back of his closet for me to borrow. That's me already exceeding expectations.

We've not even got dressing requirements; I read the rules. For the first time in my life.

The bus route leaves us a few minutes away. I drag my feet a safe distance behind the others, smoking a cigarette. Maybe I can manage to get cancer in the next three hundred metres so I won't have to go in.

But no. Doesn't happen.

We get our visitor badges before heading to the school hall. Apostolou magically vanishes again, probably to drink burnt bean water in the staff lounge.

The Churchill Way maths olympiad group glances at us as we enter, casting compulsory jeers for anyone in a college competition. Fionn Deegan looks Diwa over and scoffs. He has already turned back to Imani when his focus ricochets. It drills into me.

'No. Way. Cecilio? Did you walk through the wrong door? This is maths olympiad, not detention.'

I make sure every letter of the F-U-C-K on my teeth is legible as I laugh. 'Qué funny.'

'You must be really desperate to let them on your team,' Fionn says to Diwa who has led Meira and Noah to our group table. 'So your plan is to shock us by not having a single competent member. Are you going for the record of the worst Isaac Evans has given us yet?'

The school hall darkens to spotlight him in the glow of the fire.

'Insult them again,' I dare.

Fionn's smile tightens with each scrape of my Vans on the linoleum. My palms blister. Flames lick my arms. They only have one desire, one command, one–

'Cece!'

I'm one step from mauling him when I'm jerked back.

Fionn's laugh skins me. His eyes slash to Diwa. 'Keep your dog on a leash. I hear they've got rabies.'

He looks me up and down before he turns to his two teammates.

I sink back to our desk where Diwa's glare stakes me. 'You're gonna get us disqualified!'

'I were tryna help–!'

'Well don't!'

Her cheeks flush. Diwa says nowt else but she don't have to; it's a familiar script: You only make things worse.

'Whatever. I'm gonna have a smoke.'

'Cece!'

I've already turned around when Diwa hisses my name but her voice is joined by a second, one that succeeds in bolting me to the spot. Elliot enters just as I go to exit and we're stuck a breath apart. He looks up at me, skin even more pallid than it normally is beneath his freckles. The blue of his stare covers me in frost.

Joy ventures a single flap of its wings before it's shredded by guilt.

I tear myself from the linoleum where the soles of my Vans have glued themselves and step around Elliot. Now I definitely need a smoke.

The temperature is just below what a normal person would put up with for a bit of nicotine but fortunately, I'm better than normal people and I sit on a cement barrier on the border of the car park. My hands are unsteady as I roll and the fag comes out uglier than my ego would normally allow but looking like a black-and-white Tumblr gif of Effie from Skins is not the priority right now.

Seriously, what are the chances that Elliot joined maths olympiad too? Is this poetic justice?

I can only hope that since he's a year 11 maths teacher, Cossa won't attend the college maths olympiad competition but there's no point—of course he fucking will.

Ahmed Cossa were probably the last teacher who had faith in me. Far too much. He tried so hard to encourage me and all that did was start rumours. It could've ruined his career and he still defended me. And I got myself expelled anyway.

So I'd rather avoid that reunion.

I should've joined another extracurricular, one that don't involve competing. Did I not stop to think for one second that as someone who has probably attended every school in this city that we would inevitably interact with people who know me? Once again exhibiting slug levels of intelligence–

'So.' Too trapped in thoughts, I don't notice Diwa approach until she speaks beside me. 'How'd you get expelled from this one?'

I glance at her, prepared to be met with a sardonic glare but her eyes have settled back to russet. In the winter sun, they're the brown of Lailah Paracha's kitchen cabinets and centipedes. I could imagine her irises on the wings of a moth.

Turning away, I watch cars pass on the other side of the school fence before I pull the fag from my mouth. 'I bit someone.'

'What?'

I snap my jaws and Diwa flinches.

Then, she scowls and shoves me, releasing a chuckle from my chest. It tapers into silence and I turn back to the cars.

'I didn't mean to... erm, lose my patience with you. I know you were tryna defend us.'

Is she apologising? I sure hope not cause I get my annoying human emotions metre filled by Nicolás.

'Summat happen with you and the ginger?'

I inhale, imagine the smoke slaughtering dozens of cells that line the alveoli in my lungs. Human lungs contain around five hundred million alveoli, separated from each other by a membrane that is one cell thick. As the membranes are broken down, the surface area of the lungs lessens and therefore makes them less effective in transferring oxygen to our bloodstream.

'I guess we've got history,' I say. 'And no, not the sexual kind. We used to be mates– Well... he tried to be my mate.'

'What happened?'

If each inhale kills a dozen cells, I've got 41,666,667 inhales before my lungs are composed of two single humongous alveoli.

'I planted spliff on him and sent him somewhere I knew they had dogs. He got off with a warning. Stopped tryna spend time with me after that, though.'

Diwa's stare prods but I refuse to look. 'Why would you do that?'

'I were told he were gonna kill me.'

And he still might. Now he has motive.

'Kill you? Who said that?'

'Don't matter. The point is that I'm a bad person.'

Diwa sits onto the cement barrier beside me, though not without scrunching her nose. I move the cigarette to my other hand and angle it away from her. She tightens her jacket, hunching into her own body heat.

Nesh, I've said.

'By your own logic, teenagers aren't people. That's what you said about Sakda.'

My focus cuts to her. 'How'd you remember that? You were well slaughtered.' My irritation and amusement dissolve before I can decide which to feel. 'Sides, it's different. I were born evil—can't be no other way.'

'I don't think that's true.'

'Fortunately, you don't know me that well.'

'Well, I think–'

'That's gonna give you cancer, kid.'

Diwa jolts, snapping her head to the voice, but I groan. Fuck me to tears, I swear. Just what I fucking needed.

I force my attention to Nicolás and Caleb just as they reach us. 'What're you doing here?'

Caleb twists his face with incredulity. 'We're here to support you, you genius. I thought you were meant to be clever–'

Nicolás clamps a hand over Caleb's mouth. 'We wanna watch your competition. And if you're wondering how I even knew about it since you didn't tell me, I asked Cobham.'

Somehow this day keeps finding ways to get worse.

'There's nowt to watch. It's just a bunch of people scribbling numbers on paper. What's interesting about that?'

'You're one of the people.'

Nicolás releases Caleb and wipes saliva from his hand on his trousers. Caleb snaps to never try to dominate him again and Nicolás laughs though I'm not sure his blush can be blamed on the cold. Still, he moves fluidly, joints unbothered by an arthritis of ice and termite corpses.

His waist-length locs are split into two pigtails and there's a dusting of gold glitter on his eyelids. It matches the corduroy of his trousers. His raincoat is open enough to show the cream of his turtleneck and layered gold necklaces. We really couldn't look less alike...

Caleb sneers as I return the waning cigarette to my mouth. 'You shouldn't abuse substances. They're bad for you.' He smacks Nicolás in the side, right in the tender bit above his hip. 'Tell em they shouldn't abuse substances, baby girl.'

My eyes slit. 'Right, cause you've never.'

'We've never,' Nicolás says. 'Us? We've never. I mean, this is us we're talking about. We–'

'–have never touched, smelled, witnessed, or otherwise perceived a substance. Smoker? I hardly know her!'

Diwa laughs. I glare at her.

Then I glare at Nicolás. 'Give over! You work in a nightclub.'

'But we also work in an office–'

'The difference,' Nicolás says, cutting over Caleb, 'is that we're adults and you're sixteen.'

Caleb hums and nods as though that's what he were saying the whole time too. 'And when I were sixteen, the only substance I had touched were testosterone.'

I twist the cigarette against the cement to put it out and stand. 'Only five minutes left. We should get in.'

Notes

Nesh: Someone who gets cold easily

Give over: Expression of disbelief