Less than ten minutes later, a black Acura swerves into the opposite curb with the stench of burnt rubber. He's too early: the drive is supposed to take fifteen minutes. How much did he speed?

The thought of him caring that much doesn't warm up my insides, but rather fills them with corrosive self-loathing. He could've gotten into an accident and it would be my fault. He could've been arrested and it would be my fault.

Unless he was already in the neighbourhood. Doing what? Working? Does he work here?

Dal slams the door shut, doesn't lock it, and storms across the road without checking for traffic. An oncoming Toyota honks after it barely misses him. He doesn't glance at it.

He's staring at me. The look in his eyes is so scathing, even at a distance, that I hunch over and stare at the blood dotting my trainers.

'Fuck is wrong with you? When are you gonna learn to answer your fuckin cell? You press one button, Ziri. What the fuck are you doin here?'

I wrap my arms around my knees. 'It's calm. It doesn't even hurt.'

'That's not what I'm talkin about.' The shiver in his voice compels me to look up. His eyes dart from one rectangle of vellum paper to another with the natural expertise of a sixth sense I don't have. 'C'mon, I'll drive you home–'

'No. I don't want to go home. My mum's gonna overreact and–' I smack his helping hand away and root myself to the pavement. 'No. I don't want to.'

'Fine. I won't take you home. But we're leaving from here.'

'Why?'

'Cause there's three different people watchin and at least one of them is gonna phone the police.' Despite my resistance, he pulls me to my feet as though I weigh one kilogramme. 'Get in the car,' he seethes, and adds, 'You too.'

I've entirely forgotten Miles until Dal looks at him.

I don't dare to, so I drag my feet across the road with my stare fixated on the handle of the driver's seat. The clicking of zipper pull-tabs follows.

Dal himself remains outside the car, on alert like a guard dog, until both of us have our seatbelts fastened, me in the passenger seat and Miles in the middle at the back. Then he gets in and drives off, gaze glued to the rear-view mirror.

We reach a roundabout and he passes all three exits.

I lunge at the steering wheel to stop him from going back the way we came. The car swerves. We all collapse within it. 'I don't wanna go home!'

'Fuck's sake!' Dal shoves me back to my seat and manages to stabilise us into another cycle of the roundabout. 'Where d'you wanna go then?'

I slam myself into the headrest. The cold air from the AC scalpels my skin.

'I don't know. I can't– Nothing.'

Miles speaks for the first time since he handed me back my cell after his call with Dal. 'Our game was the last today. The Sports Centre will be empty by now.'

When I don't protest, Dal takes the third exit. The Centre is near and we reach it in under two minutes. Just as Miles promised, the car park is deserted. The windows in the swimming hall are empty and fog hovers over the football field, solidifying the air under our headlights until Dal turns the car off.

He pulls the key out of the ignition to reach over my knees and unlock the glove compartment. Why does he keep his glove compartment locked?

I try to peer into it but, reading my mind, he snatches a handful of medical towels and an instant cold pack, then slams it shut.

I allow him to tend to my wounds, which he does almost as skillfully as Iya despite having no medical training. Once my face is clean of blood, he cracks the cold pack, buries it in a towel, and hands it over for me to press to my temple.

'I phoned your parents to let em know I was pickin you up.' He sits back, hand flat on his durag, and watches me as I seethe with fury at his betrayal. He's not supposed to be like other adults who always conspire against me. 'What're you thinkin not answerin your cell all day? You know you're supposed to text your mum every four hours.'

Four hours? How am I supposed to do that when time doesn't exist anymore?

'I didn't. I can't think.'

'Your meds ain't workin?'

I hadn't even thought of that.

Did I take them in the morning? Last night? I can't remember, though that doesn't mean 'no', because after years of doing it, taking medication isn't a significant enough event to impress into long-term memory. That doesn't mean 'yes' either. Maybe they don't work.

Or maybe it's not the fault of the medication. They don't cure me, they don't guarantee complete sanctuary from bad days.

But this isn't mania. At least, it doesn't feel the same as it has before — this I haven't felt before. I've unlocked a new room in the funhouse, reverse rubber hand illusion: the body is mine but my brain has been replaced with a plastic chew toy. Maybe I've taken some sort of psychedelic and simply forgotten about it.

My anger turns to despair with the flip of a switch. 'I'm sorry. Everybody hates me.'

'Nobody hates you. You always makin shit deep when it ain't–'

Ringing interrupts him. Dal opens the compartment on the ceiling where people normally keep their sunglasses but he has three cells and takes out a silver flip phone. In the blue light of the screen, his face is haunted.

'I've gotta take this.'

He climbs out and slams the door. He only answers once he's five metres from the car.

Miles, who has unbuckled his seat belt, squashes his bag against the door to get closer to the window. 'Who the fuck's he?'

I don't answer.

Sinking in my seat, I drop the cold pack into my lap and open the compartment in front of the gear lever filled with CDs, of which I take out a stack at random to look through. Smiley Culture, Peter King, Fergie – the thought of Dal listening to London Bridge makes me smile for a split second – Rodney L, Tricky, Roots Manuva.

I shove them back in and move on to the glove compartment. My eyes widen.

I don't feel the cold pack when I return it to my temple, just as I don't feel the bruising.

Maybe I'm an android and all my memories have been installed into me. There's a glitch in the hard drive or one of the wires has disconnected and now I can't recall any of them.

I feel the back of my head but don't find a USB drive or SD card slot anywhere. Doesn't prove anything. Would you rather be an animal or a machine?

Would I rather be an animal or a machine?

'Are you gonna get that?'

I don't know the answer. A machine can be fixed but animals have agency whilst also blissfully ignorant of the grand scheme of things. Which do I value more?

At a glacial pace, I turn to look at Miles, who's watching me with pinched eyebrows. He nods at my pocket. 'Your cell's ringing...'

At his words, Kathy McCarthy's voice grates through the ruckus of my internal locomotives. I ease the phone from my pocket and stare at it. It's Iya.

'No.'

'But your parents are dead worried.'

'Course, they are. They're always fucking worried.' I throw my cell onto the dashboard as it stops ringing. Thirteen missed calls are reflected on the windscreen. 'The only thing I've ever done with my life is worry people.'

Miles shifts in the backseat. Bag zippers click once.

'That's not... true.'

My glare finds him through the rearview mirror. If it wasn't dulled in reflections, he would bleed. 'Yes, it is. You don't know. Cause I haven't told you. Cause I don't want you to know because then you'll know and I won't be able to take it back and you'll think I'm mental.'

Jaw clenched, I turn to the window and stare at the empty car park. It all becomes obscene the more I think about it until a laugh rises up my throat like bile.

'You wouldn't believe me anyway. I tried to tell Sonia and she didn't believe me. Of course, she didn't. Why would she? Now she hates me, and you hate me. So... whatever. What difference does it make if you know I tried to kill myself and that's why I went to juvie? Except it wasn't juvie, it was suicide watch in a private psych hospital that cost insanely much and now my parents have no money cause of me.

'And now I'm ten times more messed up than I was before. Imagine giving yourself PTSD.

'And you wanna know the most disgusting part? I didn't even have a reason. There's nothing wrong with my life. The doctor prescribed me SSRIs but turns out I'm bipolar so they just made me all manic and depressed at the same time, and then I thought "hey, wouldn't it be brilliant if you drank this bleach?"

'And I did. I mean, I only got two gulps before I threw up, then cried on the floor until my mum came home but I tried. For no reason. What kind of entitled dickhead does that?'

Now that I'm saying it out loud, it's all very funny. How did I manage to trick myself into thinking I had a chance of normal teenage things like friends and fancying the boy next door? What a joke.

Miles says nothing. What should he say? "Good for you, thanks for sharing"? It's not your fault"?

My breaths fog up the window and I draw a star into it, unbothered by the tension Miles is sweating into the car.

'Why'd you help me?'

'What?' It's not clarification he's asking for. He's expressing genuine confusion at the nature of the question.

'Now they know you're gay.'

'I weren't gonna watch... Don't mean they know. They call everyone they don't like bent and all.'

Is he trying to convince me or himself? Of course, they do. It's my fault. Might as well have announced it to the whole year at graduation as a prank, except instead of a harmless laugh, I ruin his life.

I throw the cold pack aside. It smacks into the driver's window. I've undone my seatbelt and shoved the door open by the time it splats onto the seat. I'm flames again. The car is suffocating. I storm from it without shutting the door behind me, toward the woods that line the west side of the lot.