I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 15

His ears are tinted pink. 'It's fine.'

We continue forward. Miles's footfalls are announced by a crunch of gravel whilst mine are an incessant drag through it.

I occupy myself with my braids, pulling them over one shoulder, then the other. 'So why do you only hang out with rich white boys?' I hope I sound like I'm just curious and don't actually care. 'Are you, like, into them?'

Miles jerks to a halt with the grouse of gravel. 'No! No, fuck, I'm not into fucking Lysander.' I raise my hands and he laughs, dropping his chin to his chest. 'Okay, maybe that were a bit of an overreaction. I probably would be into him if I weren't– I don't have the best taste, historically speaking...'

He must mean that twenty-five-year-old creep in Leeds. I want to say that that probably wasn't about his taste but don't dare bring it up.

'Anyway, I dunno.' He fidgets with his earring and stares at the gravel, digging an arch into it with the toe of his New Balance. 'They're the first people who spoke to me. And, like, Tristan is almost as dense as me — I thought they wouldn't mind. I didn't think I'd have many options. I've never been to an independent school before, I reckoned everyone is like you.'

'Meaning what?' I snap.

'Clever,' he says. 'You're dead clever.'

My cheeks burn. 'I don't have any friends.'

'We could be friends.'

I stare at him. His eyes dare to meet mine only for a fleeting moment.

'You'd do better in school if you studied a little,' I say as if it isn't entirely unhelpful and something his mum probably tells him plenty. But it's true; anyone would be clever if they spent as much time studying as I do. Then he'll have his choice of friends and he'll pick someone who isn't rude and paranoid.

'Not with my pea brain.'

Miles starts tapping the books against his open palm again, shifting his weight from foot to foot, filled with an urge to run. 'I can't, like, say no to people. You know that "if your friends jumped off a bridge" shit parents always go on about? I'd literally jump off a bridge if a stranger asked me to. I'm allergic to pineapple and you could offer me some right now and I'd be like "grand, ta" and then just... die, I guess.'

'I'd phone an ambulance,' I say. 'If you were dying.' My face slowly twists into a grimace as I speak. Is this flirting? 'I mean, I hate you and I wish I never had to find out about your existence, and every night I pray you'll have gone back to Leeds in the morning, but I wouldn't, like, watch you die.'

Only after I've got my tongue under control do I properly process what he said. 'You're allergic to pineapple?'

Miles hums, sees my horrified expression, and frowns. 'I'm sorry.'

'No.' I shake my head. What is he apologising for? 'It's one of my favourite fruits.'

'What's that got to do with me?'

'Nothin! I definitely haven't thought about feedin you fruit because I hate you and also that would be clinically insane, which I'm not. I'm very sane. I'm so sane, in fact, that when they write the diagnostic criteria for, like, psychosis, they use me as the control group. Cause I have never experienced that.'

He stares at me and a pit of horror grows in my stomach with each second.

I swivel around. 'Well, I'll go kill myself now. Don't ever talk to me again.'

'You're the one talking.'

I throw my hands up though I don't stop walking. 'Yeah, why can't you ever punch me in the face and tell me to shut up?'