DON'T PUSH ME UNLESS YOU'RE READY FOR ME TO FALL APART

            I hesitate outside the common room. For the third time since my arrival five minutes ago, I reach for the door handle only to retreat to the other side of the corridor. We've got progression module and maths later in the day, but since Richards is the teacher for both, I'd rather not attempt talking to Sonia then. Though in the past two years, I've only stepped into the common room once and talking to her in there isn't exactly appealing either.

I can see her through the sidelight, seated alone, engrossed in another manga. Why did she have to pick a table at the back wall? Now I'll have to pass everyone else to get to her.

Stop being dramatic, it's easy. Just open the door and walk quickly.

My plan fails two steps inside. Miles is hunched over on one of the cheap blue armchairs near the centre of the room and my gaze instantly fixates on him.

He's mid-conversation, face taut. 'Well, I weren't dead chuffed up about it or owt.'

Lysander stares at him. 'In English?'

Rather than repeat himself, Miles just scowls.

He digs out a small jar of coconut lip butter to apply to his lower lip, accidentally scoops too much and daubs it to his inner wrist. An ancient friendship bracelet adorns it, woven into what must have been intended to be a floral pattern. The tails are torn, the yarn tapering out into nothingness, and the colours faded. He had three of them when he moved here but the other two must have broken off, judging by the state of the final one.

Light bruising blooms on his knuckles. There's a scab on the side of his thumb as if he's pulled off a hangnail that took the cuticle with it and he kept picking at the wound. I swear, there's a patch of silver nail varnish on the corner of the nail.

Fingers and wrists crooked, they belong in a baroque oil painting of rough angles and harsh contour. As I was unable at seven years old to leave the gift shop of the Natural History Museum without having held each type of stone and bead at least once, I itch to familiarise myself with every bone of his hands — angelite or unpolished garnet? Are the globes of his ulna symmetrical on each wrist?

My distraction costs me. Miles is blocked from view when Tristan steps up to me. 'No, Leech, the common room is for pupils who pay tuition.'

I blink rapidly to wake my brain, still preoccupied with the contours of Miles's hands. 'I wasn't gonna hang out. I just need to talk to S—'

'Don't care.'

Much of the chatter has cut off by now and several pairs of eyes adhere to my skin. I glance at the sliver of Miles visible to find his gaze drilled into the cap of his lip butter, then at Sonia, who has stopped reading to observe the situation.

The last thing I need is for them to slash my tyres again the second I get my bike back. So, hands raised in mock surrender, I leave.

I've hardly wondered what I should do now, wait here for the end of break or try to catch her at lunch, before the door opens and Sonia steps out. She greets me with a curt hello, the manga clutched in her hand, index shoved between the covers to keep track of her page.

I fumble with my tie. 'Um... If you still want help with maths, I guess I can try my best.'

Her face lights up. 'Really? Thank you.'

What's she thanking me now for? I might be absolute rubbish at this.

'I'm not stepping foot in the library, though, cause cool kids don't go into there.' My eyes bounce around the corridor. 'Also, I'm banned.'

'You're banned from the school library?' Less than criticising me, the surprise in her voice is directed at the fact that such things are even possible, laced with an undertone of amazement.

'And the public one. Apparently, you're not allowed to write on the books.' Or cut pages up into magnet poetry sets to rearrange just in case God is trying to tell you something or you craft your magnum opus, another of the many stupid things I've done whilst manic. 'Their loss, my thoughts are bare comedy.'

Sonia hesitates to respond, most likely trying to figure out the degree of humour versus realism in my statement.

'Anyway, I've not got a lot of independent study cause I'm doing five A-levels, but I'm free after school. Not after nine cause that's my curfew. Also, I'm grounded at the moment, so we have to go to mine today— if you're free today, that is.'

Sonia nods. 'I can't on Tuesdays or Thursdays because I have violin practice.'

My eyebrows knit. 'You know you don't have to do extracurriculars anymore. Applications are done.'

'But... but I enjoy it.'

My mind overheats as it attempts to figure out how anyone can enjoy structured and supervised hobbies but I shrug it off with a to-each-their-own nod. 'So I'll meet you outside after school, then? We can take the bus.'

            Sonia is immune to my discomfort. The whole bus ride home, she sits across from me, sketching on a pad propped on the backpack in her lap, so at ease that, occasionally, she hums to herself.

Sonia isn't rich enough to live in South Stratson but she does live in Eastwich, the neighbourhood that reflects East Trough on the axis of the train tracks, which is still rich if I'm the baseline. My palms become clammier at an exponential rate as we approach the stop on Alkanet Road and the scenery grows rickety.

She doesn't come off as a judgemental person but considering that I don't know her, adding in my limited social experience, how should I know if she is? Maybe she'll laugh all week.

This was definitely one of my lesser ideas.

I get some relief when she takes her shoes off without me having to ask. Since primary school, I've not brought anyone over and my hosting skills are rusty, but Baba has always been clear not to bring anyone to your home without offering them tea, so I do, and when Sonia says yes, I guide her through the living room and into the kitchen.

When I tell her to make herself at home, she doesn't take it to mean an invitation to sit and instead studies the frames on the console dresser. She won't notice that the pictures stop at sixteen, will she? Loads of teenagers hate photographs, that's not unusual. There's no reason for her to think more of it.

I shake the train off its tracks before it can accelerate and shackle my attention to each step of making tea. It's only when I'm shoving washed mint into the pot that she speaks. 'Is this Jesus?'

I glance to where she peers at the painting and confirm.

'I thought you're Muslim because you have that room to pray during lunch.'

Shoulders sagging, I wiggle the lid onto the pot for the tea to brew. So busy worrying over money and Edenfield, I've not slightly prepared for this. 'Yeah, I am.' I do my best to strain the exasparation out of my voice. 'But also Christian.'

'How can you have two religions?'

My mouth stretches to an uncomfortable grin. 'Three. Islam, Christianity, and Vodun.'

Her confusion only becomes more pronounced and I sigh, not at her, because I can tell in her case it truly is genuine curiosity, as much as at everyone who precedes her in demand of a justification.

Plainly put, it's how I was raised. Both Baba and Iya are intimately religious and taught me their own practices. I was six when I first learnt that I supposedly had to pick one, which discredits a significant proportion of the African diaspora who practice more than one religion or a syncretic one like Santería or Folk Islam.

I pray twice as much as the average person. How could that possibly be a bad thing?

I thumb the handle of the teapot lid. 'People always focus on the wrong things: which came first, the chicken or the egg? The answer is language. Neither of those things exist until humans come along to name them. A chicken is only a chicken because it's not a turkey, or a pigeon, or an eagle, so, chickens don't exist unless we have the word to distinguish them. Our understanding of reality is entirely constrained by whatever languages we speak.

'So God and Gods and all deities can only be understood to the human mind insofar as we can conceptualise Them through language. But God is only God because They're not some man in the sky, and if They're not man, They can't be understood in the terms that we use for people. By Their very nature, God can't be understood by any person because They are outside our language, so also our abilities to fathom.

'People say I can't believe in multiple gods at the same time, to which I pose the question: why not? They're the same God, just different human attempts to understand Them. Even science is just another attempt at understanding Them. But those attempts aren't mutually exclusive. As much as we try and as many holy scripts and epic stories we might write, not ever will we get anywhere near to accurately understanding God, and if all our conceptualisations are equally wrong then they are also all equally right.'

Considering I've been practising this response for years and fantasising about giving it all those times I've been mocked without any defence for myself, I'd expect not to be embarrassed now that I've been given the opportunity to actually use it.

'The point is, I'm mixed...'

She hums in noncommittal thought. 'My parents are atheists.' Just like that, she simultaneously pulls the rug from under my feet as she offers a hand to keep me steady.

I return to the tea. 'Do you want sugar?'

She shakes her head so I prepare one mug with sugar and one without which I carry to the table and invite her to sit in Iya's chair whilst I squirm in my own. I've not even got friends to casually help and definitely haven't ever tutored anyone who's paying me, yet she stares at me expectantly, her maths books ready in front of her.

Toying with my tie, I clear my throat. 'So what d'you not understand?'

'Most of it. Last year was fine and I did well on the mock, but since September, it all became awful, and thinking back, I'm not sure I actually understood anything in the first place and only did well on the mock because of luck.'

For a moment, I stare before I realise what I'm doing and busy myself with undoing the cuff buttons of my shirt. Very blunt. So other people think like that too. Not that I get "impostor syndrome", as Dr Colas calls it, about school so much as everything else.

I snap my attention back to Sonia to find her waiting. The back of my neck burns. For someone who doesn't make eye contact, she's very pushy. Or am I just easily pushed and experience it everywhere regardless if any force exists?

'Okay, well, did you get what we did in class today?' When she shakes her head, I latch to the opportunity to preoccupy myself with finding the sub-unit on de Moivre's theorem in the textbook, shoving my sleeves out of the way. 'We can start there then.'

But her attention is caught elsewhere: my forearms.

I yank the sleeves back over the scars. Her mouth has already parted to ask before she clamps it shut.

Bad idea. This is a bad idea. Is it too late for me to call it off? She'll find out I'm a freak.

'I've got a rare form of skin cancer.'

Sonia's face cinches for a moment, though she quickly realises my dishonesty. 'You should try baobab oil. It helps loads with my eczema. Acne scars too.'

Instinctively, I flatten my fingers to my left cheekbone. Are they that noticeable? 'Thanks.'

'Oh! and rooibos tea. My mum says that a mug of rooibos a day is the only reason she still looks so young.'

Nodding, I uncover my cheeks as I realise these aren't passive-aggressive comments but genuine advice. 'Yeah, I'll ask my mum.'

The banal conversation about skincare eases tension from my shoulders. My lips even tug into a smile as I resume my explanation of de Moivre's theorem. I can't say it's something I've ever longed for, but I've never had anyone to give me advice for acne before and it spreads a foreign warmth in my chest, one that lasts for the entire two hours we spend at the kitchen table.

Since this is Sonia's first time in East Trough, I offer to walk her to the bus. But we turn out of Cleavers Grove and I root to the asphalt.

Accompanied by the click of the zipper pull-tabs on his Astros bag, Miles walks toward us, still dressed in shorts and calf socks. He's texting, looking quite frazzled. Please don't look up. Walk past. Don't look up.

But, of course, he does. The stress fades from his face. 

Sonia tilts her head. There's enough distance for her to speak without him hearing. 'Miles lives here?'

I don't shift my scowl from him as I hum to confirm. Unfortunately, I hope it says.

Miles walks far too quickly and soon, is only a meter away. 'Hey.' His smile is far too wide. Stop smiling at me. 'Sonia, hi, what're you doing here?'

She stops walking even though I continue right past him and ignores my mimes to leave him. 'Ziri's tutoring me in maths. Since he's grounded, I had to come here.'

'Yeah, brill, let's go or you'll miss the bus.'

Without waiting, I turn and continue toward the stop. Miles's in a bit goodbye echoes behind me and I'm not sure whether it's targeted at Sonia alone or me too. The prior, I hope. Nonetheless, I stalk on and don't respond, stopping to wait only once he's turned around the bend.

When Sonia catches up with me, my voice comes out harsher than intended. 'What'd you say that for?'

'Because he asked and I answered his question.'

'You could've lied.'

Her eyebrows cinch. 'Why?'

Because I don't want him to know. Because I don't want him to think I'm a nerd or wonder why I'm grounded. Because having Kilometres as a neighbour is the most unfortunate thing to happen to me, the irritation from which alone will make me arthritic in my twenties and exhaust all my bones, and if I must live with it, I'll make sure he knows nothing real about me.

None of these suffices as justification so I don't answer.