Maybe Ms Heller has actually managed to unleash something in me, something primal, something itching for release; or maybe recent events have obliterated any instinct for self-preservation.
I march over to the thermostat on the kitchen wall and flick on the central heating. It roars to life, like some monstrous beast in the ceiling has awakened.
The angry typing in the next room stops. A moment later footsteps barrel towards the kitchen, and then my brother appears, in all his frazzled glory.
He does a double take. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snaps.
‘I’m skipping school. What are you doing here?’
Toby strides over and flicks off the heating. ‘I’m working. Or trying to. And what do you mean, you’re “skipping school”? Since when do you wag?’
I glare at him. Like my hands are operating independently of my brain, I reach out, slowly, and turn the heater back on.
Toby narrows his eyes. He paws at the controls again. The heater stops with a groan.
I hold my brother’s eye and, very deliberately, I reach for the wall. ‘I. Am. Cold. I’m sick of being cold. Viljami is an idiot. If you think freezing your balls off is necessary, then go stick them in an ice bath. Other people live here too.’
Toby’s whole face puckers, his oh-so-familiar sour-lemon look. He tries to grab for the controls again.
I shriek, a foreign sound like an insane banshee, and slap his hand away.
Toby squeals. He holds his hand to his chest, eyes wide and wounded behind his glasses. I reach for the heating again. He yelps, and slaps my hand back.
And then, like we’re two toddlers fighting over the last Lego, my brother and I are slapping each other’s hands in a frenzied, and frankly ineffectual, skirmish. Toby, five years older than me, glasses askew, hair flopping out of his side-part, looks exactly like he did at his last primary-school sports carnival – face averted, eyes closed, hands floundering wildly in the vain hope of pitching a shotput anywhere but onto his teammates or his own foot.
‘Toby! Stop it!’ I yell as his watch connects with my wrist bone. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’
Toby physically recoils. It’s such a definite movement that his glasses tilt even more precariously, hands frozen mid-strike. It would almost be comical, if it weren’t for the fact that this is my brother, reeling from his aversion to me.
‘I don’t … I never said … you hit me first!’ he splutters.
I stomp to the other side of the kitchen and drop heavily into a chair. ‘Yeah, well,’ I say sullenly as I rub my stinging hands. And then, because my brief Fight Club foray seems to have reduced my intellectual capacity to that of a moron, I finish, ‘you started it.’
I bury my head in my hands and massage my temples, expecting him to be gone when I open my eyes again. But then I hear the scraping of a dining chair. I look up. Toby flops down across the table from me, breathing heavily.
‘I never said I hated you,’ he says slowly. ‘I might not have an eidetic memory, but I’d remember if I’d ever used those words. And I haven’t.’
‘Maybe you never said it out loud. I don’t have to be a genius to draw some inferences.’
Toby fidgets with the seams of his sweatshirt. ‘Why do you even care?’ he says suddenly. ‘It’s not like anything other people do bothers you. You don’t yell. You don’t cry,’ he adds, as if this is some sort of revelation. ‘You never cried, not even when you were little. You don’t even really laugh.’
I gape at him. ‘Say something funny, dipshit, and I might.’ Toby blinks. ‘Did you just call me a dipshit?’
I glare. ‘Yes, I did. You obviously put a tonne of weight into the fact that I don’t throw my emotions around like Blanche DuBois –’
‘Blanche who?’
‘Oh, so not the point! But, if you’re weighing up what you think of as evidence and drawing bogus conclusions, you are, quantifiably, a dipshit.’
I don’t know if it’s the dusty, disused heating, but something tickles at my nose. I sneeze, feeling suddenly feverish. It’d be just my luck to come down with some exotic plague, on top of everything.
I rummage in my pockets for a tissue. ‘And to answer your question, yes, Toby. It bothers me.’
Toby just stares. Suffice to say, I can’t read his face. I think it’s sort of appalled, and maybe sort of fascinated, too.
‘You don’t ever say that, though, do you? You’re just always jammed inside your head. You don’t behave like anyone around you matters.’
I rest my forehead on the table, still sniffling. ‘I don’t do a lot of things, apparently. I don’t fight with my best friend, and I don’t go to parties with nice people who I’m a total zero in front of, and I don’t kiss boys. I definitely do not do that.’
I raise my head a fraction. Toby’s eyes widen. ‘Is that what this is about? A … a guy?’ His jaw tightens. ‘What guy? Sophia, did he do something? Did he –’
I sneeze again. ‘Settle down, Captain Jack. He didn’t do anything. It’s all me. And this is not about a guy. It’s about you, and me, and the fact that my presence seems to be as appealing to you as a uranium enema.’
Toby seems to unclench a little. Sweat is darkening the hair around his temples, plastering strands to his face. He takes off his glasses and clears his throat. ‘Right. Well then.’
For a moment I think he’s going to stand, and mumble one of his customary curt dismissals. But then he digs in his pockets and holds a dry handkerchief out across the table. Of course. Toby is the only person on the planet under ninety who still uses hankies. I take it and blow my nose, then look up at my big brother through slightly clearer eyes.
‘Better?’
‘No. Not really. But thanks.’
Toby’s jaw twitches. ‘I’m not as smart as you,’ he says, as if the words are being pulled from some distasteful corner of his brain. ‘I’m supposed to be smarter.’
‘Because you’re a boy?’
‘Psh, no! Because I’m older, and, and I’ve worked my arse off, and I should not be tanking fricking Business Taxation –’ I sit up straighter as my brother sinks, defeated, in his seat. ‘Wait, what? You’re failing? How?’ I think back over one of the rare moments when Toby actually talked about his life. ‘Last time Mum asked, Viljami said you guys were “killing it”. Unless, you know, that means something else in Finnish –’
Toby slumps even further. ‘Yeah, well, turns out Viljami might actually be full of paska. I don’t think he’s handed in one assignment this semester …’ Toby sighs, his chin finally hitting the edge of the table. Brown eyes peer at me through cockeyed glasses. ‘What do you want me to say? I’m just about managing to keep my head above water, but I almost don’t care because I’m so bored studying superannuation, I sometimes fantasise about running up to the podium and pantsing my lecturer, just to break the monotony.’