It felt, and I felt, wonderful.

We hung there for a moment, kissing, Nassim’s pelvis shifting, and then he said, ‘Wait,’ and he breathed hard for a moment, his eyes scrunched up. The teacher on yard duty rounded the corner of the science block, glanced in our direction, stopped, and frowned. Nassim pulled back, toppling me to the grass.

I sat up and looked around, having literally just tumbled back to earth. Nassim shifted his body further away from me, leaving only his hand lingering on my hip until the teacher shook his head and moved on.

Nassim smiled at me and smoothed my hair back from my face.

‘We don’t want to get expelled,’ Nassim said. ‘You’d never forgive me, and Anna-not-forgiving-me is not in my five-year plan.’

I did a quick teacher check and then leaned right into him, burying my face into his chest, and then I turned over so I could still keep a lookout while resting against him, leaning right back into him – feeling that I was in the sweetest, safest, sexiest place I had ever been.

An early autumn haze hung across the oval, the leaves just beginning to turn but the air still summer-hot.

‘And also,’ he said, reaching around the front of me to pick up my kibbeh from the grass. ‘It’s not polite to waste good food.’

He brought the kibbeh slowly and seductively to my mouth, and then, at the last moment, as I leaned forward to take a bite, he rushed the last distance to mash it against my chin and nose.

5

‘Well,’ I said over my grandmother’s snowy head, becoming uncomfortable with the duration of her hug and trying not to pat her. ‘I’m sorry I’m here so late, Grandma. And I’m sorry I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean to.’

‘No.’ The old woman shook her head awkwardly against my collarbone. ‘I’m happy. I’m so happy. So happy you came to see your Grandma Bette.’

Finally, I managed to step back and I offered my hand. ‘Me too. It’s nice to finally meet you.’

My grandmother took my hand like she didn’t know what to do with it. She looked over my shoulder, into the darkness beyond the porch. Peering, searching.

‘I don’t want to keep you outside, Grandma. It’s cold. Can I come in?’

Grandma Bette stepped back and into the house, leaving a way clear for me. And as I stepped inside, the fear of nothing and the fear of something merged into a vacant kind of panic.

There were piles of paper stacked on the kitchen floor, haphazard boxes, and old curtains bundled up under one corner of the bench seat on the other side of the table. Cans spilled over onto the floor from where they were stored on an old bookshelf, and drifts of paper collected under the chairs. And on every surface, there was a generous layer of tiny black specks. These specks confused my eyes at first: it took my eyes a moment to decipher what they were seeing. And then, with prickling horror, they figured it out. My stomach pressed upwards towards my throat: I was looking at a generously distributed dark-speckled confetti of mouse shit.