"What happened?" Isaac whispered worriedly as I sat down next to him.

I lost my baby brother who I didn't give a fuck about.

I leaned to his ear. "Nothing big of a deal. My mother just had a miscarriage."

"Oh shit, what? How is she . . . And where is she? Is she okay?"

"Jesus, you're reacting like I was supposed to when I heard the news," I said with a nervous laugh. Even in the dark, I could figure out that he was gaping incredulously at me. I waved my hand dismissively. "She's fine." There was an awkwardness that drifted between us the next couple of minutes so I spoke, "What's going on in the movie? Why is she slitting her wrists?"

"Erm . . . She's trying to kill her and the baby inside her."

Her feelings died with the dead baby inside her.

I scrambled up. "Yeah okay, I can't."

"Where do you want to go?" he asked as we both squeezed past the people seated, irking the hell out of nearly all the people in the cinema.

"Fucking losers!" That particular someone behind us yelled.

"You are!" I furiously yelled back, flashing my middle finger and exiting the cinema with Isaac trailing after me. "I have never been such a nuisance before. It's refreshing and oddly powerful to be a total dick in public."

"Let's not make it a habit," he said humorously as we stepped out under the ebony sky. "Do you want to eat something?"

"Yeah, there's a kebab guy around the corner. Do you like kebabs? Wait, do you still cry when you eat spicy food?" I teased and he gently pushed me sideways with his shoulder. "I knew it, white boy."

"In my defence---" he began, then abashedly shook his head with his curls bouncing. He said in a small voice, "I don't have any defence."

"You can prove it to me by not shedding a single tear while eating. If you win, I'll mop the floor at Bailey's Nuts for a week," I challenged as we neared the brightly lit kebab corner. "If you lose, you'll have to do the floors for a week."

"I know I'm going to lose," he muttered in defeat, looking at the fiery, red kebabs cooking on the grill.

I ordered them anyway, conspicuously delighted at a week of not cleaning the sticky floor. We took takeaways and both of us strolled together to the park, leisurely swinging our plastic bags containing the food all the way. Often, I felt like a carefree child in his company and we even matched our footsteps with the squares of the concrete sidewalk. My loose, silky hair was swaying with my movements and I was seven again, loving how my high ponytail smartly swung whenever I strutted around.

I started skipping on alternate squares. "You know my mum used to braid my hair every night, then do my hairstyle every morning."

She wouldn't be able to do her dead baby's hair.

"I remember she used to make a lot of fuss about our hair," he said with an easy smile.

"Remember the summer when your mum shaved your head because your curls made you feel hot and my mum got in an argument with her for doing that." I reminisced and he nodded fondly. "But you did look like a little criminal with your shaved head."

"I was thinking more like a military man . . . "

I snorted. "You looked like a child drug dealer."

"I don't think there's anything called a child drug dealer, Ana."

"I don't know. Might be. A toddler smoking a joint does look very funny in my head."

He indulged in my nonsense. "They wouldn't need code language. They could smuggle easily with their gibberish."

"You can figure out their gibberish. Didn't you speak to that baby in a shrill voice at Ally's party?" I jibed at him and his cheeks turned the slightest crimson. The word 'baby' made a weird lump appear in my dry throat."We did lose a baby today . . . A perfectly, innocent baby . . . Am I horrible to not feel bad?" I halted skipping the squares, sighing and hugging the packed food to my chest. "Do you believe in an ill wish? I don't honestly, it's a load of bullshit. But I never wanted this baby to be born, you know? I didn't want it to die either, I simply didn't want it to ever exist."

"That's okay . . . It must have been hard on you with your mum's wedding and her child." He opened the bi-folding gate of the deserted, unguarded park which squeaked in protest at being disturbed during its closed hours. The night air was cool and pleasant. "I think you never believed the child to be real."

"I still don't. How can I love someone that I have never seen? From a woman who left me?" I could feel the familiar anger and indignation crawl over me slowly, possessing every part of me. We sat on the small seats of the swings, carefully unpacking the food on our laps. "I wanted to scream at her for involving me in her mess. For making a mess out of me in the first place. I felt no remorse hearing the horrible news, maybe even a tinge of relief to not have to deal with a sibling that I didn't want to deal with. Family is such a totalitarian concept, isn't it? We're forced to love and pretend just because of the common blood that flows in us. Every child learns deception to survive in front of their parents. It's the family that makes hypocrites of us all. We're all mistakes of our parents and we're supposed to feel undying gratitude and devotion for these mistakes."

"I haven't given this much thought like you, but no one's perfect . . . I don't think there's any other way to raise kids but under a family's care," said the pure boy who wasn't tarnished with deception as he bit into the kebab. He chewed with a faint grin, knowing that I was keenly observing him. All was fine for the first few minutes when suddenly, his face turned red and crumpled like paper, tears spilling out of his squeezed eyes. He swore, "Fuck, fuck, Mariana. Is there a water bottle in your bag?"

I smugly tossed the bottle to him from which he drank quickly and desperately, then poured the water over his head. "Should I give you a mop to clean up?"

He laughed in spite of the burn of spices that left his skin tingling. "I told you I was going to lose."

*

We sauntered towards my apartment, on the empty streets where malnourished rats stole garbage and disappeared into the cracks and crevices of graffitied walls. The streetlights twinkled occasionally like the few lonely stars adorning the wide expanse of the sky. The crescent moon shone dimly on us. Isaac's damp curls limply clung to his forehead and I could notice some beads of water on his hair glistening like tiny pearls. His pale grey eyes were liquidy and red-rimmed from the earlier assault of spices, yet there was a contented, genial smile on his face. As if from all the wonderfully extravagant places in the world, he would choose to be right here, among rat-infested streets and gutters.

"What do you want to do?" I asked curiously, surprising myself. "Like in the future, your dreams?"

His smile wavered a little. "I don't know really . . . In college, I have these mixed-up subjects and I like all of them. I don't think I'm good at any, at least good enough to make a career out of it. Sometimes, it dawns on me, to find something to be proud of. I never found anything." He let out an exasperated breath as if calming himself. "But I'm happy where I'm now to not feel the need to dream of greater happiness."

"That must be an odd feeling. Like the feeling of childhood," I said, an image of a small Isaac and I digging the mud floated in my mind. "I knew that feeling once." 

"It never lasts long." We arrived at my grubby apartment and he stopped. "Today was fun. Good night, Ana."

"Uh-yeah . . . You go home safe, try not to get robbed or murdered and also, there's this crazy, homeless woman next street who chases people in the night."

"Jesus, you're scaring me," he said mockingly, then his wrinkly smile came back again. He repeated as if those two words meant more than what they apparently stood for, "Good night."

"You too." I strode briskly to the stairwell, an inquisitive feeling nudging me to see if he was still there. I turned slightly and his gleaming eyes caught mine. He did a little wave.

I hurried upstairs with my heart beating fast in my chest and I idiotically fumbled with the keys. Before I could twist the key in the lock, the door of my apartment opened. My father who wasn't supposed to be home till midnight stood blankly in front of me.