Tuesday, 24 May

School is getting in the way of me and Jidé. We can’t find any time just to be alone together, without all the rest of them gawping at us. At the end of school he runs after me, slipping his hand into mine, and we stroll along the walkway together.

“Do you want to come back to mine?”

“I’d love to, but I’ve got to see Nana.” I smile at him.

“Sorry I haven’t called you…I just can’t seem to think of what to say to you now, on the phone.”

“Nor me!”

“If we could find somewhere on our own, I could show you how I feel,” he says, winking at me.

I giggle and elbow him in the side.

“That hurt!” He doubles over in mock pain, looking up at me pleadingly.

“Get up, Jidé!” I laugh.

“All right! I’ll walk you back home,” he says as if accepting defeat, taking my hand in his as a consolation prize.

When we get level with my door, he makes his move to kiss me, but just as our lips are about to touch I catch sight of Mum in our front window. She smiles and moves away.

I am crimson red when I get in, so I run straight up to my room.

“Get ready to go and see Nana,” Mum calls up the stairs.

As soon as I see Nana, I show her the sketch I’ve drawn of my dream of Question Mark Angel.

“Do you believe in angels, Nana?”

“Guardian angels maybe…people who look out for us, but if you really believe in angels, then you have to believe in devils. I’ve never really gone in for all that…but I think maybe there is something otherworldly about Mark.”

Her voice is so weak and cracked now you can only just make out the words.

She points for me to pin my drawing on the wall right above her bed.

Later, when Question Mark comes to sit with Nana, she points to my sketch of him. He looks up and studies it. When he peers back down at me, I have the strangest feeling that he’s looking down from a very high mountain.

“Do you think there are angels?” he asks.

I shrug.

“What do you think?” I ask him.

“I don’t have any answers, I’m afraid,” he sighs.

Krish is driving me crazy. He has snuck into my bed, and now he’s insisting on keeping the light on because he says he’s got to finish his Aboriginal drawing tonight.

“Why can’t you do it in your own room?”

“I don’t want to be on my own,” he shrugs, trying not to make a big deal of it. Sometimes I forget that Krish is younger than me. Suddenly, it feels like there’s much more of a gap between us than two years.

I must have fallen asleep at some point during the night, but when I wake up the light is still on and Krish is still working on his picture. Dark rings circle his eyes. I peer over the duvet. It’s amazing what he’s done. Billions and billions of tiny pinhead-sized dots, starting with dark colors on the outside and getting brighter, spiraling into the middle. The dots in the center are oranges, yellows, and reds like fire, or the sun. When you look at Krish’s picture, it feels as if all the energy he’s put into it is leaping off the page at you, like swirling sparklers in the dark on bonfire night. It makes you breathless. I tell Krish that I think it’s the best thing he’s ever done. I ask him if he didn’t get bored doing all those millions of dots, but he just shakes his head. I ask him if he was thinking about Nana when he was drawing it, but he says no; he wasn’t thinking of anything at all except the colors.