A Perfect Subject
A PERFECT SUBJECT
Then
Shirin was one of the few things that kept Kian afloat. Even if he never quite acknowledged it, each day when he woke up he looked forward to seeing her in school, even if it was only in passing, even if they didn’t have a chance to speak. And if they had planned to skip class together, he would think of all the things he wanted to say to her. Like had she listened to The xx before? Yes, she loved them. Did she like Kings of Leon? No, “Sex on Fire” was a song that made her cringe (they then had a ten-minute debate in which he tried to convince her that she was wrong). Or sometimes they could tell that the other had something on their mind. Like when his brother got into a fight in prison and his parents said he might not be let out after a year, which made Kian feel physically sick for days. Or when, later, they agreed just to give him a warning, because it wasn’t that severe. Back then, the world didn’t openly talk about anxiety. So Kian didn’t know the sick feeling he had was anxiety. That his thinking sometimes, over and over and over, I wish I didn’t exist was an intrusive thought. It wasn’t true, because he had no intention of acting on the wish, but the sentence still pervaded his thoughts.
He had never had a friend like Shirin. He had friends he saw after school and weekends, but talking about their feelings wasn’t something they did. With Shirin he discovered that it was something he needed to do, and she was there for him. Without her he felt he would drown completely.
Decisions needed to be made. While his brother’s life was paused, his was moving on. His parents made passing comments about university, about their friend Tahereh’s son and how he was studying engineering at Oxford, or about Pouran’s daughter, who was doing law at UCL. In the air was expectation, though Kian preferred it to the perpetual stench of disappointment and anguish.
On a dry spring day Shirin asked, “What subjects are you going to study in sixth form?”
She had brought a polka-dot fleece blanket with her, which they sat on, looking ahead of them at the Humber Bridge, which had become a regular spot they met at. He often wondered who she told her parents she was seeing. Her mum had even dropped her off today, though Shirin had told Kian to pretend he didn’t know her until her mum had driven off. On the blanket between them now was a half-eaten Dairy Milk Easter egg that they had got on clearance. They broke off pieces to eat.
He was wearing a hoodie, shorts, and Converse. It wasn’t really hot enough to justify the shorts, but between the traveling clouds the sun would shine down on them, warming his legs up. Shirin wore dark jeans and a black jumper, her eyes smoky. Everything with Rob had died down, and Shirin said she was over it, but Kian knew she wasn’t completely.
He paused as though he had not thought about what he was planning to study, though he had. “History, politics, English, and geography.”
Shirin’s hand landed on Kian’s shoulder. “Hold up. Not art?” He shrugged, though he didn’t mind her hand there. She removed it and clasped both her hands behind her back, like she was stretching. “I want to do politics at uni, so it doesn’t make sense to do art,” he said.
“But you only need three A-levels to get into a good uni—can’t art be your fun fourth one? That’s what I’m doing with drama.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. My parents are having a hard time right now. I don’t want to cause any arguments or anything. And I get where they’re coming from—they just want to make sure I can get into a good university.” Kian felt weak saying these words aloud. It wasn’t him, he didn’t think, to be like this. But his mum was always sad now, his dad always quiet, though snappy when he needed to be.
“I mean, do you even want to do politics at uni? I thought you were really into art.” She took a bite out of an uneven piece of Easter egg.
He gulped, though his throat was dry and, rather than look ahead, as he had been doing, he turned to glance at Shirin. He could feel the almost helpless look on his face as he said, “I dunno.”
Her face softened and she looked down for a moment before looking back up at him, this time her expression more confident, less sympathetic. “I think you know what that means.”
“You don’t get it,” he said. “Your parents are quite relaxed with you.” She gave him a look. “Obviously not with boys and stuff, but you can tell them you’re doing drama and they will accept it. Mine are so stressed about my brother, and me turning out like him, they won’t let me do anything that strays from the path they want for me.”
“It’s your life though,” she said slowly, as though testing out his reaction to this hard truth.
He shrugged. “I mean, what job prospects would I have if I did art at uni? I’m not gonna be an artist or anything. How many artists from Hull do you know?”
“Doesn’t David Hockney live in Bridlington?”
“I said Hull.”
“Well, there probably are, but I’m not the one into art, so I dunno.” Her tone was joking, and his lips curved up into a small smile.
“It stresses me out sometimes, always having to be the good child,” he confessed.
“I bet,” she said. “But you need to live your own life. Your brother will be out of prison soon, and it’s not fair for you to do things you don’t want to do—which can affect your whole life—just so they’ll feel a bit less bad about the situation. They’ll get over it if you do art, trust me on this.”
“Maybe,” he said, not believing it.
She paused for a moment before saying, “I can’t wait till I can move out of here and start again.”
“Where would you want to go?”
“Maybe London or Manchester—somewhere big and different.”
“Is that because you want to get away from Rob and that lot?” It came out of his mouth before he’d processed what he was asking.
Shirin visibly gulped and looked away. “No, it’s not only that, or them.” In the past, she had told him about her parents. How they argued and she was often caught in the middle. Once she’d told him that she thought she was an inconvenience in their lives, and Kian had told her that couldn’t be true. She’d replied that he didn’t know them like she did. He had noticed, though, that her parents hadn’t come to parents’ evening. When he’d asked her about it, she’d said they hadn’t wanted to go, and that the only family member who really cared about her was her grandmother, who lived in Iran.
“I just want to start afresh, reinvent myself, and work at one of the big publishing houses as an editor and read books all day. That’s the goal,” she continued.
He didn’t think he had seen Shirin with such a dreamy expression on her face before.
“Well, I like you as you are, so I don’t think you need to reinvent yourself,” he eventually said.
Her eyes were soft as they locked with his, until hers moved toward his open backpack, to the sketchbook that was barely visible. Then he felt himself go still, all funny, like he had been doing something wrong—or maybe that was a reflex from hiding his drawings from his parents for so long. Sometimes he’d sit here alone with his sketchbook before Shirin arrived, and he would attempt to draw the bridge, or the greenery, with mixed results. He was getting better, but his shading needed work. It was embarrassing doing it when there were people his age there, so he’d only really do it if he could be bothered to come early in the morning. He had done some light sketching before he’d met Shirin. He was venturing into drawing portraits of people. It had begun as cartoons that he would doodle at the back of his workbook, and he’d moved on to more realist sketches. He found he preferred drawing people, and it made him look at the individuals around him more closely.
“Can I look at it?” she asked.
He hesitated, wasn’t sure if he could say no, so he said, “Er, okay.” He handed the sketchbook to her slowly, wondering if somehow he could not show it to her, but she took it from him readily and began flicking through. The majority of the drawings were of the Humber Bridge or greenery, a few of Mehdi that he thought were a bit shit, and he told her this.
He had attempted to draw Mehdi just after he’d been sent away, but it was hard to imagine him exactly as he was. Kian had found the most recent school picture of him and had copied that, but it was missing something. The smile was stilted, fake. It was so alien from what he knew his brother looked like smiling. The way his eyes crinkled, his lopsided, broad smile; not this close-lipped, barely there, can this be over smile. Though even this version of Mehdi was long gone now.
“They’re really good—what you on about?” Shirin had the most recent sketch of Mehdi open, and her fingers lightly traced over it. “So beautiful,” she whispered.
He felt his face getting hot, began to give a step-by-step critique of his work and what could be better about it.
“You need to learn how to take a compliment, mate,” she said. The mate made him laugh, and then she began to laugh too. “You know, if you ever want to draw me, I’d very happily be a model.”
“Seriously?” he said.
“Hell yes.”
“Right now?”
“Why not?” She smiled, adjusted herself so that she was sitting cross-legged in front of him, and raised her chin dramatically high. “Go on then.”
He took the sketchbook from her and retrieved a pencil from his backpack. He sat so that his knees were raised to support the sketchbook as he began. They sat there for the next two hours. They spoke about little, though their silence—and their ability to be comfortable in it—communicated what words couldn’t. She asked if she could keep the drawing when he was done, and he said she could. He thought it’d be weird if he said he’d like to keep it, which he would have. In the end, though, she forgot to ask him for it, and he didn’t remind her. It was the best sketch he had done, though he wasn’t sure if the sole reason for that was because Shirin Bayat was his subject.