Kage was the first boy I talked to, really talked to, said things to, asked and was asked questions by. I memorized the responses that shaped him in my mind. It was the first time I had impatiently waited for my parents to go to bed so that I could crawl under the covers with my phone. It felt like levitating, like taking driving lessons in a Lamborghini.

‘Hey. Can you talk for a minute?’

‘Sure, what’s up? You sound excited.’

‘I am!’ And he laughed.

I settled into my sheets, excitedly waiting to be the person he would expel his excitement to.

‘So you know that girl Sudeshna I told you I was in choir with? I just kissed her.’

The big smile in his beautiful voice crushed me a little. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Tara, man. I’ve liked her all these years—it’s crazy.’

I felt so young. Like I didn’t know anything at all.

‘Oh that’s so great, Kage!’ Too bright, tone it down, ask something. ‘Did you actually have the sense to ask her out properly or did you just float away after making out?’

He laughed. Don’t laugh. ‘Damn, you got me. I’ll ask her out tomorrow. What should I say?’

Anger surged. Not at him, only a little at myself. Mostly at a system where the sexes have virtually no avenue to mingle before they’re drunk on the cocktail of being teenagers. It makes us do stupid shit like this, leaves us unable to recognize things for what they are, lets us out with all the naiveté of a fresh heart into a world just waiting to bump it around like so much rubble.

So I sat there, settled into my sheets, clutching my new phone to my hot ear, working out the best strategy for him to ask Sudeshna out. And after it was over, in all the excess that is the giveaway bell of youth, I fell back on to the pillows like a bloody, trampled, desecrated mess.

I keep trying to remember how hot it was, but those days of school have a brushed tint of cold blue inextricable on them. This is odd, because I know that it was almost always very, very hot. Stewing, we would sit in class soaking our school uniforms into transparency and hues of ink, under fat old whirring fans that were as ineffective as they were noisy. Button and I carried hand towels in our pockets to mop at our sweating eyeballs, and often used them to cover our faces and fake coughing fits over parodies in the Bitching Book.

But why can’t I remember how hot it was? Why does the scene that I replicate in my mind fail me by insisting that the memory I know to be true is a lie?