'YOU CONFUSE ME', OR CONVENTIONALLY: I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU

            It takes everything in me not to pick at the bite mark when I sit on Dr Colas's red sofa on Wednesday. It's healed enough to no longer require gauze, nor is there any necessity for me to hide it here, but the scabs on the deepest tooth marks are horridly alluring.

I settle for spinning around the hyena canine on my necklace instead and refuse to meet her stare.

'Have you been self-harming again?' she asks from her embroidered armchair. Like Dal, Dr Colas has mastered a voice of utter neutrality that manages to retain warmth. When I do nothing but root deeper into the sofa, she continues. 'It's nothing for you to be ashamed of, Ziri.'

Of course, it is. I'm supposed to know safer alternatives, and, by now, I'm supposed to not need them in the first place.

I shake my head.

'Have your symptoms gotten worse, to your notice?' It's the same question, only more shrouded.

'No.' I scratch the side of my neck as I speak. 'I got blindsided by a trigger once and the other grounding techniques you taught me weren't workin. My mum's overreactin, per usual.'

Miles would probably never speak to me again if he knew where I am. Do I care? It's almost painful to attempt to figure out what to think. I've had to rewrite so many aspects of him in a handful of days that it's dizzying.

Do I care? Does your opinion matter? Should it?

On one hand, I can't deny that him being gay changes things, or at the very least, I can't help the empathy that forces me to care about him, if for nothing else, as a fellow queer teen. On the other, I'm not going to pretend like being some neutral bystander is okay, even if he does have personal stakes.

But Miles has never done anything, thinks one voice.

Yeah, exactly, thinks another. He never does anything. He turns a blind eye to everything and how is anyone supposed to excuse that? What, he plays the dead dad card I forgive and forget?

I want to. That's the worst part. I want to forgive and forget even if I'll continue to condemn the same in others. You make ad hominem so tempting.

Does any of it matter? Now that tutoring is over and graduation is around the corner, are we ever going to speak again? Do I care if we don't?

'You seem distracted.' This is Dr Colas's quintessential psychiatrist move — what seems like a casual statement but is actually a question. Only half of my mind listens to her as the other remains tangling itself around Miles. A part of me is always going to be tangled in you.

My eyes don't focus when I respond. 'I'm thinkin about how, surprisingly, me and the royal family actually have a lot in common because we both leech off the layman's taxes. Sure, I use it for basic healthcare and education and they use it to furnish their palaces, but still.'

'I thought we agreed you'd work on your urge to turn everything into a joke to distract others and change the subject.'

'No. You said I should. I didn't say I was gonna.'

She's unamused.

Dr Colas is the only Black NHS psychiatrist in Sufadale and I never forget to thank God for her presence after a session — I can tell her things without needing to explain them or skirt around her feelings. She lets me speak French when it comes more naturally and even Darija though she doesn't understand and, like a paleotempestologist, I have to dig around for overwash deposits to translate into English once the storm settles. She isn't even a therapist — I'm fully aware she goes well out of her job description to counsel me because I'm difficult and selfish and refuse everyone else who actually signed up for this.

...But sometimes she reminds me a little too much of Iya.

'You're one of the cleverest patients I've ever had–'

'Is that a euphemism for annoyin?'

'Why do you think that?'

'Because I am. And people always speak in euphemisms to be "polite" and "professional". It's all made up, you know? "Professional", what's that even mean? It's just another one of those completely nonsensical societal constructs that we all somehow agreed to even though we all hate it. Not to mention, it's racist and classist, and probably all the other –ists too.'

She adjusts herself in her embroidered armchair. 'So you think everyone hates you but are simply too polite to tell so to your face?'

I shake my head. 'Some do tell me to my face.'

Dr Colas refuses to take the bait. I fall back into the red sofa with a groan and glare at the Haitian flag now inverted above me. I know it's her job to be clever enough to stop me from intentionally steering from the topic at hand but it's still aggravating.

'You can't expect me to stop makin jokes. My quick wit is a cornerstone of my personality. If I can't be funny, what's left?'

'You can still be funny without using humour as a crutch.' Her voice is bland but it makes me smile anyway. 'We don't have to talk about it today if you don't want to, but please don't dismiss this as "not a big deal", because self-harm is a big deal, even if it's only once.'

We stare at each other.

I nod.

Dr Colas relaxes into her armchair as if deciding to no longer be my psychiatrist but rather a friendly mentor. 'Tell me about something else. We've got forty minutes left and I'd rather not waste it.'

Sighing, I settle against the sofa cushions and do my best to isolate a single comprehensive sentence from the whirlpool in my head. It's like fishing, except whenever I'm close to catching one, a bigger fish eats it, and a worm on a hook is hardly going to lure in a shark.

Finally, I manage to snatch something. 'I got an offer from Oxford.'

I tell this to the certificates behind her and pause to give her the chance to react. But she doesn't congratulate me. The fact that she doesn't assume I want to be congratulated eases the tension in my shoulders and words flow out of my mouth before I can properly shape and prune them for effective and direct communication.

'I rejected it. I didn't tell my parents. I didn't even tell them I applied. They would've told the whole continent of Africa if I did. And I never really wanted to go, I just wanted to see if I could.

'When I went there for the interview, I didn't like it. I understand the social prestige but I... don't care. I don't want to go somewhere I'll have to police everythin I do even more than here and academic white men are never gonna respect me anyway, Oxford graduate or not, so would there even be a point?

'But maybe I'm supposed to suck it up, cause how can I complain about people hatin immigrants if I don't even take the opportunities I get to prove em wrong? Plus, my parents came here so that I could succeed and I'm choosing not to.

'I don't want to live so far away from my parents. I know I'm eighteen and I'm too old but I need my parents. And I've always lived here. Maybe I do hate it a bit, but I can only hate it because I know it and I definitely don't know Oxford, nor do I really want to.'

Clearing my throat, I conclude: 'So I don't regret it. But I feel like I should.'

Dr Colas takes illegible notes on her pad before she looks up. 'You don't owe anyone anything. It's entirely possible for you to be grateful for the opportunities you're given and, at the same time, choose not to take them. You don't have to do things that don't make you happy for other people.'

'But what if I do?'

'But you don't.' She smiles. 'It's your life, and if you don't go to Oxford because you "just don't want to", that's completely justified.'

Now all I can think about is Miles. Does he only do things his dad would do with him? Or things that won't bother his mum or sister? So maybe it's not about justifying his passivity but accepting his grief. Maybe this is what we have in common: we both carry the self-imposed responsibility to prove others wrong. It doesn't matter what generation of immigrant he is for that and I've misidentified the string.

When we argue whether a passing car is green or blue, are we arguing over the word or the colour? Do we see it differently or merely have asynchronous categories for identical scenes and at which stage is truth determined? If a car is green and I call it blue, is it blue or is it green? Is there such a thing as a genuine objective state of existence? Is Miles green or is he blue and when did my perception become reality?

Maybe he's been red all along. Does red exist?

My decision to no longer be confused is a colossal wreck. I've never been more confused in my life.

Dr Colas's voice beckons me back to her office. 'What's on your mind?'

I grab one of the decorative cushions from my left, a pictorial of a man tending to his garden by the sea, and hug it so beads and tuffs of the embroidery irritate the skin of my throat. It still smells of Razac body lotion even though it hasn't been in Haiti for at least a decade — the date on Dr Colas's PhD from Cambridge is June thirteen, 1998.

'Just my dickhead of a neighbour.' My speech is muffled by the pressure of the cushion against my vocal cords but I don't move it. 'I've been helpin him with maths for A-levels and, at first, I only put up with him cause of the money, but now it's all I think about. But what if he doesn't? Think about it, I mean. And what if he's only spendin time with me so that he can find my weaknesses and tell all his friends so that they can bully me more than they already do?'

Silence.

'Does that sound like a realistic scenario to you?' When her voice lacks condescension, my mind fills it in. She thinks I'm stupid.

I shrug. I can't tell these days when something I say is hyperbole for comedic effect and when I actually believe it true.

'To me it sounds like you're coming up with conspiracies to justify running away because you're afraid, maybe a little paranoid too.'

'I'm not paranoid!'

Unoffended by my glare, she smiles. 'It's nothing to be ashamed about, Ziri. You have PTSD and bipolar, it comes with the territory. You just have to learn to navigate it.'

My chin itches from the impressions of the linen cushion but I curl back into it nonetheless. 'I'm so confused. I don't get confused. All I do every day is think about him and I still can't figure him out. When I'm around him, it's... so nice, but then five minutes later, he'll pretend like we don't even know each other, and I can't solve it. And I shouldn't care anyway. He plays football and goes to parties and eats liquorice. We have nothin in common. I don't like him.'

Dr Colas takes a moment to respond. 'Have you considered that instead of "figuring him out", you could let him explain himself?'

I peel my face from the cushion to stare at her, eyebrows knitted.

'Your brain is wired to come up with every possible outcome of every possible situation and then prepare the survival kit for each of them, but when you're busy doing that, you can't listen.'

With no verbal rebuttal coming to mind, I shake my head. Not true. Nothing just explains itself, nor am I busy preparing survival kits. What's that even supposed to mean?

Clearly having some inkling of my thoughts, she clicks her pen and places it and the notepad onto her lap, then leans forward — she's about to say something she knows I don't want to hear.

'I'm going to be harsh for a minute. You come to therapy so that we can work on overcoming your trauma responses, not so that you can allow them to keep governing your life. I'm not expecting you to get over anything overnight, but it's been two years, and every time something you can't control comes up, you run away. Forget Oxford, these are the opportunities you need to take.

'It's okay to live in a bubble when it's best for you, but after a while, all that bubble does is impede you from healing. You can't prepare for everything. You can't figure everything out in advance. Learning to deal with a little bit of discomfort is vital for your recovery.

'And you need friends. Because friends add to your support system and that's what's really going to get you through the hard days. And you don't get friends by treating them like a maths equation or the zombie apocalypse.'

She picks up her pad and pen and leans back whilst I scowl into the cushion.

'So next time you see this neighbour, maybe try to be with him instead of in your head, even if it makes you a little uncomfortable at first.'

            Dal raises an eyebrow at me as soon as I appear from the stairwell. 'You're grounded, blud.'

The warning doesn't make me slow or stumble on my path to his open apartment door, but I do narrow my eyes. 'Do you and my mum often talk about me behind my back?'

'Yes,' he answers, unfazed. 'The one thing we have in common is not wantin you to die.'

I wedge past him and kick off my trainers, ensuring they end up as far from each other as possible. 'Well, can you like not tell her I came here?' I exaggerate my annunciation so he knows I know he's grassed on me. Unbelievable that Dal grassed on me to my mum, and probably has been for years. I thought he was anti-authority or something.

He kisses his teeth at my attempt to berate him. 'I ain't your therapist. We ain't got no confidentiality. I'm allowed to tell your mum whatever I like.'

'What if I phoned your mum and told her what you're doin here?'

He's unimpressed. 'First, you ain't gon be phonin nobody cause you're a kid and you're stupid. Second, you ain't know her name. Good luck findin her number.'

I scowl but admit defeat. Striding into the flat, I open the fridge and pour myself a glass of orange juice. Dal nudges one of my trainers with his foot until it's aligned with the other.

'Ain't you supposed to be studyin anyway?'

I shake my head. 'I could recite all my textbooks from cover to cover if you asked.'

With a sigh, he sits at his table where he has his laptop open. He slides on a pair of reading glasses to peer at the screen and I gawk. Never in the seven years I've known him have I seen him wear glasses. Honestly, I can't blame people who supposedly can't recognise Clark Kent; if Dal passed me in the street like this, I wouldn't look twice.

'How was therapy?'

So he knows about that too. I glance at the wound on my left wrist.

'Terrible.'

It's been two days and I'm still recovering. I always get exhausted but somehow it's especially bad now; I've barely slept since. My brain is a hive of nocturnal bees with hundreds of workers ready to set flight the moment I close my eyes. How am I supposed to just be okay with not understanding things? Is that something people do, just don't care?

'She told me I don't need to feel bad about rejecting Oxford.'

'You don't,' Dal confirms. 'What we definitely don't need is you stressing yourself out so much that you try again.' His eyes leave the laptop screen to affix onto me. 'When you gon tell your parents though?'

'When are you?' I bite back.

'I ain't tellin them that. It ain't got nuttin to do with your safety.'

Wishing I could retreat into my shoulders like a turtle, I take a sip of juice. I shouldn't be so harsh on him. I hate that they compare notes about me, their unified surveillance waterproof, but I can only blame myself. 'Later,' I answer his question.

'You're runnin outta time.'

'I know. But I... I'll tell them later.'

Still standing in his kitchen, I turn to the window and drink my juice slowly. The flow of people below lulls my eyes out of focus until I jerk awake. Miles has his hands buried into the pockets of his hoodie, his head bowed like he's trying to avoid being recognised. Well, too bad — apparently I've developed a sixth sense for his presence.

I watch him walk past Under the Dryer, Sainsbury Local, and a bakery until he jogs up the stairs to the library. What is he doing in the library? Whirling around, I leave my glass, still half-full, on Dal's table. 'See you.'

I'm out of the flat before I even have my shoes properly wedged on and the bent heel of one of them blisters my skin as I bound down the stairs. I hop forward on one foot as I fix it.

At the library door, I wait for someone else, who turns out to be a trio of middle-aged women, to enter so that I can slip in behind them and hopefully not be noticed, but the front desk turns out to be empty anyway. I speed walk past it before a receptionist reappears and kicks me out.

The Sufsdale library isn't particularly big; it doesn't take me long to find Miles in the children and teenage section. He's reading the blurb of a novel with a purple cover. There's no one else in sight.

Before I have any chance to consider a hiding place, he looks up. I go to duck only to stop myself and end up lurching like I've been electrocuted. He's looking right at me — it's too late and running will only make this more obvious. 'Don't talk to me,' I snap before he can get a word out. 'I watched Pride and Prejudice three times yesterday.'

His brow knits, struggling to make the connection. 'Okay...'

'So I'd like to be left to yearn in peace.'

A grin flashes on his face. 'You're the one that's following me.'

I flush. 'I'm not following you,' I scoff and immediately grimace. If I want to go unnoticed, I probably shouldn't be talking so loud in a library. The burning under my cheeks deepens.

'Sure.' Miles has the common sense to speak quietly. His voice is just above a whisper, scraping an unsteady bass from his vocal cords. It must vibrate in his throat. Would I feel it through his skin? 'But you never leave your house. So I'm s'posed to believe you happened to go on a stroll today... to the library... that you've been banned from... because you cut up the books?'

'How d'you know that? Are you stalkin me?'

'I thought we'd established that you're stalking me.'

He pushes the book back into the shelf, browses for a moment, and takes out Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman. I edge closer to him as he reads the back cover.

'What're you doin here anyway? I didn't think you could read.'

Miles shrugs. 'Can't really. I think my six-year-old cousin has better reading comprehension than me. But Iris refuses to sleep if I don't read to her, so...'

I am not charmed by him reading his eleven-year-old sister bedtime stories though that's probably an age most parents would deem too old. I am not charmed by that at all, even if he must have things he'd rather spend his evenings doing. I wonder if he does different voices — he must be a good reader if Iris still insists he reads to her.

Keeping Northern Lights in his grip, he turns back to the shelf. I lean against it, watch his eyes glide over the spines. I wish he would read to me... For research purposes!

'You read a lot.'

My eyes narrow. 'What is that supposed to mean?'

'Nowt... Just that you read a lot. Whenever I see you, you're reading. That, or staring into space.'

I flush again. Tearing my eyes from his, I jab the books on the shelf nearest to me, trying to align their spines so they're all half a centimetre from the edge. His gaze leaves a syrupy residue on me: sticky, but sweet.

'I guess. Dal buys me books,' I say without any explanation of who he is. 'I think he's tryin to indoctrinate me into Pan-Africanism.'

'You ain't that already? I mean–' Miles clears his throat, all the near-whispering snagging phonemes into it '–I should be clear, I'm too dense to know what is, but it sounds like summat you'd be.'

I part my lips but words melt on my tongue. He's watching me so intensely. And he's listening. Why is he listening to me? Whatever the reason, I don't like it.

I talk so much Dr Colas is the only person who listens and that's because it's her job. Dal, Iya, and Baba all zone out of my rambles sometimes, which has rusted my own filter and seduced me into a false sense of security about being able to say whatever my mind cooks up with no consequences. I don't even know how a sentence will end when I start it. Sometimes I talk just for the sake of talking. Sometimes I talk just so my head won't explode. But even I get bored by it sometimes.

To Miles, it's still interesting. It'll get exhausting eventually.

'It's, um, a movement for solidarity between all people of African descent. Like, against colonialism.'

'Sounds good to me.'

We share a smile.

'Anyway, he buys me books so I guess I read a lot. Can't use the library anymore so...'

Miles nods as he slides out another novel. I watch his eyes stumble over the lines of the blurb. Is he reading it trying to gouge what Iris's reaction would be, placing aside his own thoughts to see through the eyes of another person? Tears well in my waterlines and I bow my head. He loves her, not out of obligation but choice.

Miles's gaze is tacky on my skin even if I refuse to meet it. 'Why would you cut up library books?'

'Because I'm a criminal. Mind your own business,' I bite, ignoring the friendly curiosity he asked with. 'How do you even know about that?'

'I work here.'

My artillery slides off my body. 'Since when?' I speak so loud that Miles hushes me. Grimacing, he glances around but this section is still vacant. We're the only people here. We're the only people in the world.

He turns back to me. 'Since like eight months ago.'

My jaw falls to the floor. There is no way he has worked here for eight months. I would know! Though I refused to talk to him until three weeks ago and I'm not allowed in the library so maybe I wouldn't. Maybe all the times I thought he was at parties and doing whatever rich nonsense Lysander and Tristan do, he was actually just at work... in the library, of all places.

Maybe I really am judgemental and jump to conclusions. Maybe I really do just need to spend more time with him and then I won't be so confused. Maybe he and Dr Colas are right and I really don't know anything about him...

If he has a job, he must be here at least a couple times a week. And he reads his sister bedtime stories every night. And apparently often cooks and washes their car and everything.

'When exactly do you study?'

'See, the thing about that...'

'You're gonna fail all your A-levels.'

Miles nods. 'Probably.'

My gut twists. He wasn't supposed to agree. 'No, sorry. That was a joke.'

'But I probably will. And my grandparents will make me pay them back the tuition I never wanted, my mum will disown me, and my dad might come back as a ghost just to haunt me for the rest of my life. It'll be grand.' His face curls like his saliva has turned bitter. He pins up a smile before I can process it. 'I were just born in the wrong generation. Should've been a caveman or summat.'

I force a laugh.

I've been perfectly happy to call him stupid in every possible way but somehow it punches my chest when he does it himself. Has he always done that? Because if he has, I have not been listening. I called him arrogant and self-obsessed on Monday, but he doesn't seem self-obsessed at all now. I think I'm the one who's self-obsessed...

At some point, I realise Miles has stopped looking for books and is instead returning those that have been left out or misplaced by others. 'You're not working right now are you?' I ask and he shakes his head. 'So you're giving them your labour for free? You know that's wage theft, right?'

'Or it's me being nice.'

In the name of being nice, I Indicate to the two novels he seems to have decided to borrow, Northern Lights and Black Unicorn. 'I can hold those.' With his hand free, he can squeeze books back into their places easier.

'I've been reading some manga Sonia recommended to me,' Miles says, squatting to organise the shelf at floor level. Sonia? Do the two of them hang out, like, outside of tutoring? When I say nothing, he asks, 'So you read non-fiction?'

'Mostly. Fiction makes me anxious — too many jump scares.'

I have to root myself to the floor when he looks up at me so I don't collapse. He's quite... pretty. Which is bizarre because he has always been ugly before. He shaved his hair again and something about the curve of his skull enchants me. Have his lashes always been this dark? They're short but so full that it almost looks like he's wearing eyeliner, even on the bottom.

The hyperpigmentation at the corners of his mouth emphasises its curve as it stretches into a grin. 'Jump scares? There ain't gonna be jump scares if you read romance or summat.'

'Yes, there will. Because I don't know the characters or what they'll do or the plot–' I cut myself off at his poorly-contained laugh. 'It's stressful! I need someone to hold my hand or I'll start panickin.'

'So that's why you watched Pride and Prejudice three times yesterday, no jump scares?'

Warmth blooms in my chest until terror tears it up. 'Exactly,' I squeak. I never gave him permission to start inferring things. I thought he was too stupid to do that.

'I do that too.'

He offers me a gentle smile. There isn't a single bit of cracked skin on his lips; he puts on lip balm every time he's bored which seems to be often. They must be soft. They would be soft to kiss, I imagine. Mine wouldn't — they'd probably feel like sandpaper. The cracked skin finds its way between my teeth even now. Not that I know how kissing works anyway.

I could feed him fruit. I may not know how to kiss, but I know how to cut a pineapple without wasting a bit of flesh, I know how to pick the sweetest oranges at the shop. I could peel one for him, cut each segment into little triangles, and feed them one by one past his lips.

His phone vibrates and I flinch. How long did I stare at his mouth for?

Miles stands up to get his cell out of his pocket and his face instantly sags. 'Sorry, I have to...' His voice tapers with each step he puts between us until he presses the cell to his ear. 'Má?'

Miles retreats to the wall, a good ten meters away from me, but this is the library; his words carry over unobstructed. 'It'll be okay, Má. You won't lose your job, you moved all the way from Leeds for it.'

I look away and try to think really loud. Just block it out. I don't want to eavesdrop on this. Block it out.

But it's impossible. No matter how much I try to scream inside my head, my brain insists on picking up his words even when they're uttered below a whisper. 'I promise you'll be fine. No, you're upset, you shouldn't drive. I'll be there in fifteen. We can buy some ice cream or summat — you'll feel better. I promise it'll be fine.' After a few more placations, he pockets his phone. He doesn't even stop as he walks past me. 'I gotta go.'

'But–' I watch him disappear between the shelves, feeling oddly empty. I kind of like talking to him. Wait, no I don't. But yes I do.

I look down at the books in my hand. I wish I could borrow them for him, do something "nice"...