He recoils as if he’s been shot, shielding his face from the hysteria in my voice. ‘Maya, just try to calm down,’ he begs me, his voice shaking. ‘If anyone hears us, they’ll—’
‘They’ll what?’ I interrupt aggressively, whipping round to face him.
‘They’ll think—’
‘Think what?’
‘They might think I’m attacking—’
‘Oh, it’s all about you!’ I scream at him, sobs threatening to explode in my throat. ‘This whole thing – it’s always been about you! What will people think? How will I look? How might I be judged? Whatever feelings once existed between us clearly mean nothing to you compared to your pathetic fear of other people’s narrow-minded, bigoted, parochial prejudices that you once despised but now adopt as your own!’
‘No!’ he yells desperately, launching himself after me as I start striding off again. ‘It’s not like that – it’s got nothing to do with that! Maya, please listen to me. You don’t understand! I just said those things because I feel like I’m going crazy: seeing you every day but never being able to – to hold you, to touch you when anyone else is around. I just want to take your hand, kiss you, hug you, without having to hide it all the time. All those little things every other couple just takes for granted! I want to be free to do them without being terrified that someone will catch us and force us apart, call the police, take the kids away, destroy everything. I can’t bear it, don’t you understand? I want you to be my girlfriend, I want us to be free—’
‘Fine!’ I scream, tears springing from my eyes. ‘If it’s all so sick and twisted, if it’s causing you so much grief, then you’re right, we should just end it, right here, right now! That way at least you won’t have to walk around with some awful guilty conscience, thinking how disgusting we are for having these feelings for each other!’ Frantic now to get away, I break into a stumbling run.
‘For chrissakes!’ he yells after me. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? That’s the last thing I want!’
He tries to grab me again, tries to force me to slow down, but I can’t – I’m going to fall apart, break down in tears, and I refuse to have him or anyone else as my witness.
Spinning round, I slam my hands against his chest and push him as hard as I can. ‘Just get away from me!’ I scream. ‘Why can’t you just leave me alone for five minutes? Please go home! You’re right, we should never have started this! So get away from me! Just give me some space and time to think!’
His eyes are frantic, his expression stricken. ‘But I was wrong! Why won’t you listen to me? What I said was bullshit – I just lashed out in frustration, this is not what I want!’
‘Well, it’s what I want!’ I shriek. ‘God forbid you should stay with me out of pity! Everything you said is true: we’re sick, we’re twisted, we’re deranged, and we have to end this now! So what the hell are you still doing here? Go home to your normal, socially acceptable life and we’ll pretend nothing ever happened!’
I’ve completely lost it. Hammers pound against my skull and red lights zigzag in the darkness. But I’m afraid that if I don’t keep screaming at him in blind fury, I’m going to collapse in tears. And I don’t want him to see that: the last thing I want is for him to feel sorry for me, to feel he has to pretend to be in love with me, to realize I can’t live without him.
With a desperate cry, he moves towards me, reaching out for me again. I take a step back. ‘I mean it, Lochan! Go home! Don’t touch me or I’ll shout for help!’
He withdraws his outstretched arm and steps back in defeat. Tears fill his eyes. ‘Maya, what the hell d’you want me to do?’
I take an uneven breath. ‘Just go,’ I say softly.
‘But don’t you understand?’ he says in quiet despair. ‘I want to be with you, no matter what. I love you—’
‘But not enough.’
We stare at each other. His hair is ruffled by the wind, his green eyes luminous in the darkness, the zip of his black jacket broken, revealing his grey T-shirt beneath. He shakes his head, his eyes scanning the dark cemetery around us as if searching for help. He looks back at me and a harsh sob escapes him. ‘Maya, that’s not true!’
‘You just called our love sick and disgusting, Lochan,’ I remind him quietly.
He claws at the sides of his face. ‘But I didn’t mean it!’ His chin starts to tremble.
A sharp pain rises through me, filling my lungs, my throat, my head – so sharp I think I might collapse. ‘Then why would you say it? You meant it, and now so do I. You’re right, Lochan. You’ve made me see this whole sordid mess for what it is. Just a terrible mistake. We were both just bored, disturbed, lonely, frustrated – whatever. We were never in love—’
‘But we were!’ His voice cracks. He screws up his eyes and presses his fist against his mouth to muffle a sob. ‘We are!’
I look at him, numb. ‘Then how come it’s gone?’
He stares at me, aghast, tears wet on his cheeks. ‘W-what are you talking about?’
I take a steadying breath, bracing myself against an onslaught of tears. ‘I mean, Lochan, how come I don’t love you any more?’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lochan
Something inside me has broken. There are moments during the day when I just grind to a halt and simply cannot find the energy to draw another breath. I stand there, immobile, in front of the cooker, or in class, or listening to Willa read, and all the air exits my lungs and I cannot muster the strength to fill them again. If I keep breathing, then I have to keep living, and if I keep living, then I have to keep hurting, and I can’t – not like this. I try to divide the day up into sections, take it one hour at a time: get through first period, then second, then break, then third, then lunch . . . At home the hours are broken down into housework, homework supervision, dinner, bedtime, revision, bed. It’s the only time I’ve ever been grateful for the relentless routine. It keeps me going from one section to the next, and when I start to think too far ahead and feel myself crumble, I manage to reel myself in by telling myself, Just one more section, and then just one more after that. Get through today – you can fall apart tomorrow. Get through tomorrow, you can fall apart the day after . . .
When Maya told me she no longer loved me, I had no choice but to retreat, to retract. At first I told myself it was said in anger, a reaction to my own stupid words – my inane declaration that it had all been a sick mistake – but now I know differently. I play and replay that phrase in my head, wondering where on earth it came from when I never believed it for a single moment. It must have been the anger of the moment, my embarrassment and shame – shame at wanting more than I could ever have – that made me blurt out the most hurtful, hateful thing that came to mind. Instead of coping with my own misery and frustration, I’d turned on Maya, as if by blaming her I could absolve myself . . .
But now, through my own stupidity and selfish cruelty, I have lost everything, degraded everything, even our friendship. Despite the sadness in her eyes, Maya has been very good at going back to normal, pretending everything is fine, being friendly while keeping her distance. No awkwardness that might alarm the others – in fact she is almost cheerful. So cheerful that at times I even wonder whether she is not secretly relieved it’s all over, whether she actually does believe it was all a sick mistake, an aberration, born out of physical need. She has stopped loving me, Maya has stopped loving me . . . And this one thought is slowly eating away at my mind.