It was cool…kind of… if you wanted to live in a drafty warehouse gallery with super creepy sculptures staring you down.
I followed Seth upstairs to his room where nearly every inch of wall space was covered in band posters or artwork. I assumed the art was Seth’s, mostly abstract sketches that looked somewhat chaotic, the charcoal lines drawn with a heavy hand, tearing across the paper and careening right off the edge. It was more a question of what was outside the paper than what was contained within it. I didn’t make that observation to Seth though. He’d invited me into his personal sanctuary, and I wasn’t about to give him my Art Theory 101 critique.
Seth collapsed into his unmade bed and held his comforter up for me to join him underneath. I unloaded my two-ton backpack on the floor and took off my shoes. The pho was sitting on the edge of his messy desk, unopened. He must not be hungry.
“Seth, what’s going on?” I asked when we were both entirely under the blanket and staring at each other with our noses just inches apart.
“I’m suffering from a bout of melancholy,” Seth said. If I hadn’t seen his face and his surroundings, I’d wonder if he was being funny or overly dramatic, but it actually seemed pretty serious.
“You’re depressed?” It seemed strange that it could come on so quickly. Four days ago he seemed on top of the world.
“Pretty much. I’m bipolar. Recently diagnosed.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never known anyone who was depressed or bipolar. I didn’t really know much about it. Perhaps stupidly I asked, “Is this what it’s like?”
Seth nodded with a heavy sigh and blinked slowly. Every gesture, every word seemed to take so much effort for him. It was as though he was moving underwater. I felt bad for making him put forth the effort.
“You don’t have to talk about it.” I searched for his hand under the blanket, found it and squeezed.
“It’s not usually this bad. I have medication I’m supposed to take, but the pills make me numb to everything, and they really kill my libido.” He looked up as if to see if I was going to make some judgment about that, but I didn’t know what to say, so I only stared back at him. “What’s the point of living if you can’t feel anything, you know?” he asked.
I nodded. I sensed this was something he didn’t share with many people and that I was being let in on a very intimate and personal thing. Any judgment or harsh word from me might crush him. I’d never seen Seth so vulnerable before. He placed my hand over his heart. “I’m glad you came by. Will you stay?”
“Of course.” I scooted closer to him on the bed and put my arms around him, hugged him close to my chest. He nestled against me like a puppy and gripped my back. He might have cried for a spell too, but even that was without his usual passion.
We stayed like that for a while, neither of us saying much, doing nothing more than holding each other. I watched the sun set through a crack in his drawn curtains. I texted my parents to say I was going to miss dinner because I was working on a project at a friend’s house, due tomorrow. So many projects.
When night came, Seth began to talk about his family life growing up. How his mother had an affair with a married man who wanted nothing to do with her or Seth once he was born; how they’d lived like nomads when he was little, couch surfing at whatever boyfriend or friend his mother could convince to keep them; how he didn’t really have a home until his grandmother died and left them this house. Only then did his mother start spending her monthly allowance on things like food and electricity. Seth was waiting until he turned eighteen and gained access to his own trust fund, and then he was out of there.
“She has really shitty taste in men,” he said.
I listened while he poured out his life story to me with his cheek pressed against my beating heart and his voice scratchy and thick. I made him some tea, and we drank it, cross-legged, in his bed. Then I heated up the soup and we ate that as well. I didn’t hear his mother once, which meant she must not have been home. That made me doubly sad for Seth, because if it was me, my mother would be checking on me nonstop.
“I can’t believe you brought me soup,” Seth marveled as he ate.
“That’s what you do when someone’s sick,” I told him.
Seth smiled. The color was back in his cheeks, and he looked a little brighter than when I’d arrived on his doorstep hours ago.
“No one’s ever done that before,” he said.
“Not even Mitchell?”
Seth shook his head. “Not even Mitchell.”
When we finished, I put the bowls in the sink downstairs. When I came back up, Seth seemed to want something from me. “You want me to go?” It was getting pretty late. I should probably head home anyway. Even if my parents believed I was working this long on a project, Mai wouldn’t.
“I want you to stay with me, right here in my bed, forever.” He had a dreamy look in his eyes, but I didn’t think he was kidding. I sat down across from him and grabbed his hand again.
“I can come back tomorrow.”
He nodded. “I’d like that.”
The next day Seth wasn’t at school, so I went over to his house again. This time I had a package of chocolate panda bear-shaped cookies we got in my grandmother’s last care package. We ate them up in Seth’s bedroom. He had his guitar out and was noodling around on it a little bit. He’d meant it when he said the band was going in a different direction. His new songs had melodies that rose and fell and better reflected his vocal range. His guitar playing shifted from soft, plinking notes to fast, angry chords. Even without words, it felt like there was a complete story within the song.
“I really like your new sound,” I told him. “It suits you.”
“Thanks. I need my music. It keeps me sane.”
