I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 04

YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY, DON'T YOU? UNDOING MY SKELETON?

            My heart skips the moment I open my eyes. Sterile white slaps sleep out of me. Antiseptic wrings my lungs inside out. I've flown up in bed, the papery sheet slid to the floor, as the dozen unsynchronized beeps accumulate into an avalanche that'll bury me under boulders. It'll kill me. It'll kill me. Or am I already dead?

'Réveille-toi!' Iya's voice calls beyond it. She yells at me to turn off my alarm. It's been ringing for three minutes. My alarm...

With a blink, white is gone. The walls are lavender, along with the floor and ceiling, exactly as I painted them two years ago — the antithesis of pus-yellow latex. The vital signs monitors are nothing but the combination of my alarm and the hammering rain.

I turn it off before collapsing back into bed, cell phone loose in nimble fingers, heartbeat still reverberating behind my Adam's apple.

'Désolé!' I yell into the house. 'I'm awake!'

Though the adrenaline kicked any remnant of sleep out of me, I rub my eyes as I allow my gaze to float over the pages torn from hospital magazines taped to my violet walls. In addition to serrated edges, they're spiderwebbed with creases and divided into uneven sections by folds from my attempts to smuggle them out of waiting rooms even if there's not a single nurse left at Westview who hasn't caught me red-handed as I anticipate my turn to be prodded and drained of blood and asked if my brain is working. None say anything, either out of pity for me or respect for Iya.

My room is too small for a desk, hence my school books teeter in a pile atop my dresser that leans threateningly to the left: my test of God's mercy. I promise to align it to a robust stock every morning, yet always ease my requirements from their position like a game of Jenga and throw them back on top at the end of the day.

In contrast, the two and a half pillars of books Dal has given me are tucked neatly under the window, conveniently providing a sill in the absence of one, onto which I've propped up a collection of meaningless trinkets: a dried branch of an apricot tree, an empty can of blueberry ice tea, two marble rocks and a weathered shard of green glass, along with crescent moon clip-on earrings I've forgotten there and a Fon tribal mask carved from ebony that always falls over when I slam my door.

Iya's shout rises from the stairs to spur me out of bed and into the shower. Even with my morning short, I add several duas for peace and strength to my Fajr, so that by the time I'm downstairs, I can't arrange my meds into a row of any kind before Iya shoves me out the door.

Since Baba has the car, I'll have to take the bus. I run through the spring monsoon toward Alkanet Road, the rain so vicious I can barely see a metre ahead. East Trough is the lowest part of Sufadale and water runs down from Kingston and Eastwich to pool along our curbs from the faintest drizzle; when it's been pouring all night, it's impossible to avoid my socks getting wet even if I jump over the deepest puddles on instinct.

I screech to a halt in the archway of the bus stop shelter.

Through the veil of rain, I didn't make out as much as a silhouette behind the glass, and Miles's presence pounces on me like a jump scare I should've seen coming. He always takes the bus. Why should today be an exception?

Why can't Lysander drive him? Even in my thoughts, the question makes me laugh. As if he's told Lysander he lives here. The sound announces my presence and Miles snaps his head up, eyes broad as if he finds my arrival equally horror film-worthy.

I dart my eyes to the end of the road under the pretence of peering through the rain for the bus though it won't be here for several minutes. I could wait outside. Then I'll be soaked all day...