MY EGO IS HARD TO SWALLOW

            Would it be impossible for Miles to get through one day in proper uniform? Both a classist and hypocritical thought to have, yet I scowl at the sleeves shoved to his elbows, the white fabric creased and scrunched like a crisp packet and we've not had lunch yet.

Maybe it's nothing to do with his uniform and all to do with him because everything he does is annoying by virtue of him being the one that does it. You make ad hominem so tempting.

As I glare, he loosens his tie, then undoes the button behind it. He tugs the collar from his neck as if the fabric is an incessant chafe on his skin that distracts him lesson after lesson. Is he doing it on purpose? He's teasing me.

I snap my focus away. 'We've not got any independent study together, so we have to meet up after school because I don't have time to tutor you both separately.'

Rustling distracts me back to Miles. Can't you just stay still for one conversation? (Hypocrite!) He pulls out an opened bag of Haribo gummy worms and offers it out. 'You want some?'

Sonia digs out a small handful. With a smile, she stretches them until they snap in half and eats each flavour in turn.

I shake my head. 'I can't eat those.' Hopefully, my voice has recovered from its impatient bite.

His eyes flicker from the bag to me and back. 'Why?'

'They're made with pork gelatine. It's not halal.'

Miles frowns and shoves it into the side pocket of his bag. He thinks I'm difficult now. I've burdened him with my dietary restrictions and he thinks I'm moralising his choice of sweets or forcing Islam onto him, though it's not what I'm doing at all, I'm just not going to eat them.

Adjusting my braids, I run my tongue against the back of my teeth. 'Anyway, we can't go to the library cause like I said, I've been banned. So...?'

Miles changes in the blink of an eye. Leaning sideways against the wall, he hunches over so his face is hidden and digs out his cell phone to feign preoccupation with texting. It's almost impressive how he camouflages himself in plain sight; there's no doubt that it has taken practice.

His behaviour distracts me so that I don't notice the threat until it's too late. Tristan doesn't even look as he shoves me into the wall — it's an automatic response to my proximity, in the way it's impossible to pick up a pair of tongs without clicking them together.

He doesn't notice Miles. I clench my jaw. Good for him.

Sonia helps me up. 'We could go to Hannah's.'

A mocking laugh seethes out of me. Hannah's Pantry is a café in town, the one most popular with our age group. At least two-thirds of the guests at any given time are North Chapel pupils.

'Miles doesn't want to be seen with us in public, Sonia.' It's not fair of me to use her as the mirror to bounce my jibes from but I can't stop myself.

Miles, cell returned to his bag, licks his lips and swallows. 'It's fine.' He agrees out of guilt. A bad motivation. He'll regret it later.

And though, in honesty, I don't want to go out in public with them (or myself) either, my discomfort is worth it for him to deal with his own. So I nod. 'Okay, brill.' That's definitely not a thing anyone says. I grimace. 'See you there after school then.'

Pettiness, an even worse motive. I'm definitely going to regret it.

            I regret it the moment I chain my bike to the rack outside of Hannah's Pantry and have my first glance through the window. It's crowded with uniforms. My regret grows tenfold when I straighten up, spot Miles crossing the street, and our eyes meet. I'll have to walk in with him unless I find some excuse to delay my entrance.

I give him a forced, fleeting smile, the kind I extend after accidental eye contact with strangers as we walk in opposite directions on the same pavement, and turn to open the door at the earliest opportunity where I can still uphold some semblance of propriety.

It's obvious from the moment I step in why Hannah's Pantry is so beloved. With its mismatched tables of warm woods and American diner relics, it manages somehow to be cosy and cool at once. Like Dal. Not that I could ever imagine Dal coming here.

Sonia has occupied a table pressed into the back wall. 'Um...' This is all I manage to nudge Miles, who's staring in the opposite direction, before I start toward her.

My beeline is interrupted only three steps in. Lysander halts on his path from the till to his table with his coffee and baguette in hand when he spots us. He raises an eyebrow, looking me over as if he's never seen me before, then turns at Miles.

'What's this?'

Does "this" refer to our walking in together or me?

Maybe Miles is preoccupied with the same question because he doesn't answer. A sheen daubs his forehead as he stares without blinking.

I roll my eyes. 'He's tutoring me. In maths. I haven't been doing fantastic in the revision classes.'

'You've got a scholarship and you can't even get through your own lessons? Unbelievable.' Lysander sneers but thankfully leaves.

Before I can resume walking, Miles snaps his head to me. 'What the fuck've done that for?' His voice is barely audible in the clamour and chatter of the café but it's not difficult to identify the anger. So much for thank you.

'I was just makin sure besties don't ditch you.'

'I ain't ask you to lie.'

'You didn't exactly jump at the opportunity to be honest.'

Miles bites the inside of his cheek, slouches, and nods, but says nothing.

I leave him, manoeuvring a path through the populated tables to Sonia. The smile I use to greet her is forced too, which twists my gut because she's never done anything to harm me and the least she deserves is authentic kindness. But the spider at the back of my head has weaved a web of titanium I can't get through to fling it out. It gnaws the writing onto the wall of my skull: this whole thing is a mistake. If I had never been so stupid, I'd never have gone to Edenfield and Iya and Baba would never have had to pay for it, so I wouldn't owe them anything and I wouldn't have to do any of this now. Idiot.

Idiot, idiot, idiot.

I slip into a chair that doesn't match either of the other two around the unpolished wood table. The backrest is uncomfortably straight.

Miles hooks his bag onto the final vacant spot, a hickory chair with a cracked leather seat, but doesn't sit. 'I'm gonna get a coffee.' He looks at me expectantly.

'I'm not allowed to drink caffeine.' I scratch my neck. 'It's a drug, so since juvie, I'm not allowed to drink any or they'll put me back in.'

'I'm sure they've owt without caffeine.'

With my Slowpoke backpack in my lap, I pull out my maths coursebooks and notepad. 'It's too expensive, anyway. I'm savin up to pay back my parents.'

He opens his mouth and closes it, instead giving a half-shrug before he weaves his way to the counter.

I turn to Sonia, an authentic, albeit small, smile on my face, but her focus has redirected to her sketch and it goes unnoticed. I look at it too. The café, with its paned windows, jukebox, and crawling ivy tangled into string lights, is reflected on the page in photorealistic detail. This must be her usual table cause there's no way she's drawn that in the half-hour since school ended. 'This is really good.'

She looks up, smiling widely with the tip of her tongue between her teeth. 'I know. Thank you.'

'I had no idea you're so skilled.'

Part of her smile fades as her brow furrows. 'I take art as an A-level.' I think she's calling me stupid.

I gesture at the sketchpad. 'Can I look?'

She hands it over and I browse through. The latest six drawings are of various streets and buildings, which makes sense considering her ambition for architecture, then several of Winnie, her basset hound named after Madikizela-Mandela, a fact which at first discovery was entirely bizarre but now feels obvious. What else should you name a beloved dog?

I freeze at the portrait on the next page. A portrait of me.

It looks exactly as I would in a mirror but somehow, it's also clear that it, unlike a reflection, has been produced by a person with their own thoughts. A maudlin sense glimmers over it, like film photographs whose subjects are easily recognisable but in which reality is dreamlike. There's an allure even in the fading acne scars on my cheeks as if they're intentional details added for artistic effect rather than unfortunate symptoms of hormones.

I glance at her at a loss for words. Turning the page, I find another, this one a profile.

'I'm not obsessed with you or anything. It's only that you have a nice face.' Her voice is as statement-like as it always is but I grin.

'I do have a nice face.' Though I think her opinion of it is higher than mine. At least, my opinion of her drawing is higher than my opinion of any reflective surface.

'That looks exactly like you.' Miles returns with his coffee and glances at the pad in front of me.

Sonia's face screws up. 'That's the point of a portrait.'

'Right... Sorry.' He apologises though I don't think she's offended or angry more than she is confused.

Miles slides his mug to his section of the table much too slowly and I turn from Sonia to him. His gaze remains on the drawing throughout his actions — he crams his receipt and change into his trouser pocket without looking away once.

It's not a rough or unblinking kind of stare like he's searching for easter eggs in the background of an action film or trying to identify microscopic cell bodies in the last five minutes of an exam, but the tender gaze of Jaddi watching the sunset every evening as though it's a blessing despite an identical one the night before and the knowledge that an identical one will bloom tomorrow.

My stare on him is the opposite.

I snap the pad shut and hand it back to Sonia to crack open the maths book beneath it. 'Let's start then. What's the parts you're struggling with?'

Miles sinks into his chair with a blank stare. 'The whole book really.'

Sonia hums in agreement.

I suck my teeth. 'Why the frick do you both take further maths if you don't understand any of it?'

'It looks good for uni applications and I didn't think it would be that hard.' She shrugs. 'Year twelve was easy enough.'

'My mum said,' Miles says.

'And she decides your life, does she?'

'Um... yes?' He fidgets with the friendship bracelet around his right wrist before he drags in breath and smiles. 'Also I don't get shit Mr Richards says.'

I thumb the corner of the table of contents. His smile is manufactured.

'Fair. Richards's bare a fascist.'

Contrary to the relief I expected, Miles's expression tenses. He pauses in the middle of retrieving his own coursebooks. 'That's... a bit of an exaggeration... Sure, he's not the nicest person I know but that don't make him a fascist.'

'It was a joke, Kilometres.'

He massages his collarbone but presses on. 'Pretty serious thing to joke about.' Never before has anyone torn through my flesh with such ease, ripped out my skeleton, and forced introductions between us as if we've been strangers all these years of living in the same body.

Sweat puddles to my palms. 'Why don't you say that to besties next time?' My voice betrays me by raising in pitch and I occupy myself with the content list. 'Let's start with vectors then and work from there.'