When the bus lurches to a halt, he and Sonia jump off onto the side of the motorway after me, though with much less enthusiasm. The wind grabs the loose fabric of my parachute trousers the moment I'm outside, flapping it violently around my shins. Sonia holds onto her glasses as if expecting they too might be strewn away. Tightening his jumper around his waist, Miles throws me an almost demanding glance.

All I do is grin and guide them across the road, through the trench currently moving along a languid stream that testifies to the lack of rain this week, and over the train tracks.

There's no path from this direction but it's doable. I stride into the shrubbery with nothing more than a warning of the steep downhill. Though June is already fading into July, the branches of growing trees maintain their spring elasticity and I take special care not to slap them back as I lead the way to the trough.

Miles shields his face as we shove through last year's birches that Sonia is short enough to be safe from. 'Grand. This the part where you turn out to be a serial murderer?'

I spin around and continue to walk backwards. My eyes find his without effort, the zeal between us interrupted only by the shadows sieved by the foliage above. 'Would you trust me?'

'Based on what?' he retorts.

I shove him only to root to the spot.

Due to the steepness of the hill, my palm is pressed to, rather than his shoulder as I intended, the left side of his abdomen, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him. His eyelashes are longer from this angle.

At the sight of him towering above me, some primal part of me is ready to drop to its knees and declare eternal loyalty, better to die in service than live without purpose, and there is no purpose in all the universes if he is to be dissatisfied with me. I'm yours forever, and if you won't have me I'll drag my feet along the Milky Way for the rest of my existence, building ghosts of you from stardust.

Thankfully, Sonia's voice asks why we've stopped moving and saves me a fraction of my dignity.

For the rest of the journey, I don't look back once, the burn under my cheeks refusing to soothe.

The sight of water distracts me from it and I sprint forward until I'm out of the woods. 'Welcome to Summer.' Arms wide, I turn to them. 'Bit lame but it's the best name eight-year-old me could come up with. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who knows about this so you lot better not tell anyone or I'll shave your eyebrows, innit.'

Sonia tugs several leaves from her afro puffs. 'I don't have any other friends.'

'Me neither, I s'pose.' The fact seems to crash onto him.

For a fraction of a second, Miles calcifies into a statue before he smiles like an Edenfield patient allowed in the garden after a week of restrictions. He's the first to stride to the wooden platform that covers the edge of the low cliff, and, dropping his bag and jumper, sits down.

I kick off my flip-flops in the middle of the path and dump my phone bag before I join him, cross-legged and leaning back on my palms. 'Question: where'd you get all that alcohol?'

Miles tilts his head. 'T'shops...'

'I thought you said your birthday's in July.'

'Aye, it is. My nineteenth birthday.' He laughs at my expression as I adjust to the fact that I'm younger than him. 'I got held back a year and that when my dad died.'

Sonia stares from the other side of him. 'Your dad's dead? I thought your parents were divorced.'

'No, they were happily married.'

'How'd he die?' She claps a hand to her mouth. 'Sorry. That's insensitive, isn't it? You don't have to answer.'

'It's fine.' And he smiles to reinforce that it really is. 'He had a congenital heart defect so it weren't unexpected or owt.'

Nodding slowly, Sonia faces the water with her palms symmetrically pressed to her thighs. 'My mum has diabetes.'

Silence settles around us, not tense but thick, something like syrup that's clear and doesn't impede movement but makes it a little more tiring. Nobody speaks for a minute or two until it has dripped entirely between the planks.

Then I screw up my face in exaggerated revulsion. 'You're an eighties kid. You were born in the eighties. That is is bare digustin.' I am not in love with an e–

Miles elbows me and I have to feign a laugh so he doesn't realise I'm torn somewhere in the middle of spontaneous combustion and melting.

It must be successful because he digs out a bag of Sweetzone Orange Slices without any hint of discomfort. He rips it open, offers some to Sonia, and holds it out to me. 'D'you want some? They're halal, I asked Mrs Azad.'

Forget combustion, my blood is replaced with electric current and it takes tightening all my muscles to stop my limbs from succumbing to spasms.

'You did?' The question is barely audible.

'Obviously. Be a bit of a git if I bought summat you couldn't eat, wouldn't I?'

Unaware of when I reached out my hand for him to pour some into it, I stare at the small orange segments in my cupped palm. "Obviously"... The sun combined with my body heat melts them into a clump, the sugar coat seeping into the dark lines of my skin to practice palmistry, but I don't move.

This is an "obviously" thing to him.

Miles notices my tears at the same time as I become aware of them. 'Fuck. Sorry. Are you–? I didn't mean to–'

I wave my empty hand urgently. 'I'm not sad.' I dry my cheeks on my forearm and shake my head. 'I cry at everythin. When I'm angry, or happy, confused, frustrated, or tired, or... I'm not sad.'

To prove it, I twist a segment free of the clump and place it on my tongue. I'm afraid to chew, lest it ends too soon, so I leave it to dissolve instead. The remnants of the sugar coat slip off easily.

Tears continue to seep from the beds of my eyes as I slowly eat the rest. "Obviously". What a thing to say with such affectionate frustration, like it's insulting to think he would do anything differently.

My palm is sticky from the sugar. I'll never wash it.

Neither Miles nor Sonia fills up the silence and we're left in the ambience of the distant road and giggling leaves. The warm evening surrounds us as the sun continues to set until it pierces the scene from the edge of the railway bridge and I squint because I don't want to turn away.

It hasn't hit me yet, nor do I think it has fallen onto them, that we'll never have school again. No more classrooms and antagonising teachers who threaten detention or isolation at the slightest of misdemeanours, no more unless assemblies to stay awake through. At least two-thirds of us will move to different cities, different countries even. How many of them will I even remember in ten years?

Sure, there's uni, but it won't be the same. For better or for worse, the whole concept is impersonal to me. Lectures will have a hundred attendees whose names I can't possibly remember and whose faces the professors won't recognise in the corridors.

It's not a sad realisation, but a loss nonetheless. Like going to a shop to find some sweet you weren't planning on buying out of stock — if it were there, you wouldn't look twice, but the fact that it's now impossible has a sense of melancholy to it.

A low hum breaks the moment and I snap my head up. 'Train's comin.'

'Okay...' Though I don't look at Miles, his confusion is more than evident in his voice.

'You have to scream the whole time it's on the bridge.'

'Why?'

'Cause it's the rules, and if you don't like it, you can leave.'

He goes to respond but doesn't have the chance before everything mutes under the ruckus of the railway bridge. I scream without sound and they gawk at me for a second before they join, and even when three people scream at the top of their lungs into the open space of the lake's surface, it's indistinguishable from the rest of the noise. The vibrations of their voices and the sparks in my chest are the only proof of our presence.

Our screams echo on the opposite shore for a minute after the train has passed.

Once it's certain they've faded, Miles turns to me. 'What were that about?'

'Your business, innit.' That's the point: nobody has to know.

A slight furrow creases his brow until he shrugs and eats another orange sweet. Are his fingers sticky too? If I took hold of his hand now, would we glue together from melted sugar? I'd hope so.

Sonia interrupts the thought. 'I've got a violin recital tomorrow. It's at the church at nine. Would you come?'

'Of course,' I say. 'Promise.'

Miles nods too.

I turn to the water, reflected orange from the sunset. 'Anyone wanna swim?'

Sonia shakes her head vehemently. 'I hate swimming.'

'How d'you live here and hate swimmin? There's literally nothin else to do.'

'It's the sensation of it, it's so... slimy.' Her nose crinkles with disgust. 'And the sea is the worst, because the salt makes it prickly, like being pinched a million times a second all over your body. Especially when my hair gets wet. I hate the feeling of wet hair. I used to have a meltdown every washday as a kid.'

'Okay, fair. But how did you have a fixation on mermaids for all of year seven if you hate swimmin?'

She bursts into laughter that screws up her face and makes her bend over. 'I don't know.' When her phone rings, she's still laughing as she presses it to her ear and greets her dad. It lingers on when she turns to me, holding the speaker against her shoulder. 'My dad's on the way from London so he'll pick me up in half an hour. Where should he come?'

'D'you know how to explain where I live?'

When she shakes her head, I reach over Miles for the cell so that I can give the directions it directly to her dad. He can drive up to the Thatcher billboard. Though it's a running path, every parent from East Trough (well, every parent except mine) has taken their teenagers to practice driving there and nobody will care if the rule is trespassed.

The thirty minutes pass in two. I swear, I've barely handed the cell back before it rings again and her dad's waiting. I stand up to escort her to the start of the path. 'D'you want me to walk with you?'

'I think I can manage a straight line without getting lost.'

A gentle heat rushes to my cheeks. 'See you tomorrow then.'

With a wave, Sonia steps onto the overgrown path. I watch her until the last of her butterfly hair clips has disappeared into the leafage. Along with the back of my neck, my right palm tickles, and I stretch out the time it's natural for me to keep staring after her until I slowly turn around.

Miles stood up when she left too and our eyes meet. I snap my gaze down. My heart hammers in my throat.

Should I leave too? But it's nine-thirty and my curfew won't be till eleven so I'd be lying if I said I have to go home, and though I've done it a hundred times before, the task is impossible now. Yet I'd rather face an army than him, here, alone.

How can I trust myself with him, here, alone? One look and I'll beg for him to ruin me.

Notes

Halal: (Arabic) Directly translates to "lawful", often used to talk about food that is permitted to someone who observes a halal diet