Baba still watches me take my medicine. He attempts to hide in the periphery of the kitchen, camouflage into strenuously stuffing the washing machine, and thinks I'm none the wiser to his surveillance but his doubt I'll take them without prodding makes the pills even harder to swallow.

I wish I could chew them but have to settle for leaning forward as advised by the chemist and chewing the water I wash them down with. After two years, I still chew water.

'Another week ahead.' Baba says this every Monday, just as every Friday, he'll announce another week over. When the only response it elicits is a disinterested hum, he prods. 'How do you feel about it?'

I shrug and turn to Iya's painting of Jesus on the wall. It's the only thing given to her by her parents that she brought from Benin.

I've met them once, so she tells me, though have no memory of it. Whenever we can afford travel, we go to Fez, which I expected to bother her, maybe even evoke jealousy, but if anything, she beams brighter than Baba at the sight of Henna when she meets us at the airport.

Iya hardly speaks of her parents but over the years I've pieced together the issues root in her choice of husband. And consequently, me, because if inter-ethnic marriages are doomed then what abomination are the kids?

The rest of our ancestors don't seem to mind. At least, they allow her to worship them daily.

When Jesus provides me with no strike of brilliance, I return to my abandoned bowl of soggy Asda Wheat Bisks. 'I dunno. It's just another week.'

'It doesn't have to be.' Baba's optimism is oppressive. 'You know, inshallah, it's not too late for you to make some friends. At your age, I made some of my best ones the day before graduation.'

I drag my fingers along my palm under the table, then stretch them out. With my lips clamped to stop myself from sucking my teeth, I glance at the glaring green of his Asda uniform vest. 'I'd prefer it to be just another week.'

This is a lecture I suffer at least once a month: I don't socialise enough, this is the age for me to have innocent fun with friends, not to spend all my time with my head six feet under or hidden behind books Dal buys me.

But after lengthy contemplation, I've come to the conclusion that other people are a terror best agonised from a distance. This is how it would go: I'd make a friend, then they'd find out I'm insane and leave. Or I'd manage to lie to them until disinterest grew between us. Either way, it's destined for doom. All things end eventually, I know, but that doesn't mean I want to willingly suffer more than I must.

And what if I uncovered something about them? What if I got bored? Where am I supposed to find the time to upkeep the relationship? I'll have to sacrifice something. Am I ready to sacrifice my time alone, my time thinking? Can I be myself if I don't spend hours wound in internal spirals? How am I supposed to know other people when I hardly know myself, much less understand? And what if they understood me better than I do? How do I cope with someone understanding me better than I do?

I'd rather insert myself into scenes I've seen in movies. That way, a future doesn't exist, nor does a past: carpe diem is easy when I'm not me. In reality, I can't love anyone into loving me.

In reality, I'm still half-ghost and other people exist on a plane I can't quite reach anymore, nothing but vague silhouettes in whatever limbo I've cursed myself into, and I can't grip onto any of them, much less look them in the eye.

Not to mention that in my isolation, I've teemed so full of love I wouldn't know how to ease it out at a drip easily swallowed. A burst waterballoon, it would all surge out and scare them off or drown them, and if it wouldn't drown them, the cement blocks chained to my feet certainly would.

If I was a machine, I'd have no desire for connection other than the plug that hooks me to the socket, and if I was an animal, it'd be much easier to make them, simple necessity and happenstance of being born to the same ecosystem. Would I rather...?

'It wouldn't hurt if you tried a little.' Baba is a virtuoso in making his chides sound like well-natured suggestions.

I want to argue that I already have friends, like Naz, who lives a street away... though I've not spoken to her in over a year, or Dal, but he's twenty-five and much more a grudging brother than a friend.

It wouldn't hurt if I tried... How much trying is required for an innate kinship? Where do I draw the line between laziness and bullheaded refusal to let things go when they're not meant to be? I don't want to waste my time with shallow acquaintances, I want the kind of connection people have in movies, but how will I know if it arrives? How much trying is required to make someone my soulmate?

'Couldn't you be friends with Miles? He's right next door and he's in your year: it's effortless.'

I dart my attention from my final spoon of fake-Weetabix wheat mush to glare at him. 'Thanks, but I'd rather break all twenty-seven bones in each hand one at a time.'

Sighing, Baba lifts his hands in surrender. Apparently, my complaining about Miles isn't interesting dinner conversation so I've reduced it to only when prompted, but it bores him nonetheless.

As he digs out his jumble of keys, he casts me an apprehensive glance and unlocks the padlock to the cabinet above the washing machine he installed after June 2006 to retrieve laundry detergent. I blackmail myself into finishing my breakfast and drop the spoon into the empty bowl with a clangour before I stand, rinsing it in the sink and dumping my pill box onto its shelf.

Baba returns the laundry detergent to the cupboard and clicks the padlock shut. 'Are you sure you don't want me to drive you?'

'It's calm.'

Unable to stop himself, he adjusts the knot of my violet tie until I swat his hands away with another "Baba, it's calm" and he pulls away with a laugh.

'Well...' He grabs a clip-lock food container from the fridge. 'Here's your lunch.'

My parents have always ensured I know what love is, that it's woven into mundane details of daily life. When they've both had a long day at work, they'll lie on the sofa together to watch the evening news and Baba will massage Iya's swollen feet or she'll rub his balding head until they're on the brink of sleep and neither holds a grudge when the other retreats for their respective prayers. He'll do the cooking and the laundry in return for the glass of bissap juice she makes him on Wednesdays. At dinner, on the occasion when I speak Darija to intentionally exclude Iya's stricter opinions, he'll give a knowing smile and respond in French or English.

Iya picks off the white albedo from the tangerines she peels for me and Baba always minces yellow onion into powder because he knows I can't stand it in chunks. In my childhood, even though they both worked almost as much as they do now, Baba would find time to help me read the Qur'an every morning and Iya the Bible before bed.

Most of all, love is practised in the near-accidental touches of habit. How Iya fixes my hair in passing, how Baba thumbs her knuckles each time he sits beside her and how she kisses his arm to reciprocate, how he squeezes my shoulder after he has effortlessly rolled up his prayer rug whilst I take at least three attempts to get it neat.

It's not that I don't believe in love, it's that I believe in love too much. What if I never find what they have? Have I doomed myself for eternity by having too high expectations? Are people right when they say I watch Before Sunset too often?

Besides, time won't let me live the life I want.

Throat cinched with regret over my morning cynicism, I'm sure to fill my goodbye "thalla" with pep.

The moment I'm outside, my eyes, summoned by movement, find Miles's silhouette behind his kitchen window. I snap them away to unlock my bike from the chain link fence that severs my house from his. The back of my neck burns.

He better not be watching me.

Notes

Inshalla: (Arabic) God willing/if God wills it

Thalla: Informal goodbye