Winter break came, and we spent almost all of our time together. The seven of us—Seth, Sabrina, Mitchell, Jeannie and I, along with Caleb and Sasha whenever they were able—hung out together in Seth’s garage. Because we were out of school, my parents let up a little on my curfew, and I was able to stay out until the late-night hour of 11 p.m., partly because they thought I was with Sabrina, which I was. Only they didn’t know we weren’t at her house. It also didn’t hurt that I told them I was working on a legitimate school project, a photo essay on an up-and-coming Austin rock band.
All of a sudden it seemed Seth, Mitchell, and Sabrina were no longer just messing around; they were becoming a real band. Seth would croon into the microphone while staring and gesturing at me, pretending that I, their audience of one, was his crowd of adoring fans. Seth’s style ranged from an I’m-coming-to-get-you growl to an ethereal and vulnerable alto. If there weren’t other people around, I could get off just on watching him perform. As it was, I often offered to get food or run errands to give myself a break from the constant sexual tension.
Everyone contributed to their new musical sound, but Seth was the star.
Seth had to set up more lawn chairs to fit all of us, and we took turns buying food and drinks. The band found their lead guitarist by putting an ad on Craigslist: an older guy named Dean who worked on cars for a living and knew Mitchell and Caleb through their misadventures at Sunoco.
Dean was like air to Seth’s fire and they fed off each other's talent and energy like Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. They both liked experimental, free-floating space rock and would sometimes jam out on sound to the point that Mitchell would start vaping and Sabrina would come in with the drums to get them back on track, which usually spawned an argument. She was an excellent equalizer for Seth. She was disciplined, structured, and orderly where Seth was mercurial and chaotic. She kept him in line and firmly rooted to the rest of the band. And in their creative disputes, Sabrina held her ground. I was sometimes tempted to take sides, but I refrained, deciding not to get involved in fights between siblings, especially because they both outclassed me in the arena of musical theory.
But the band needed a name, and nothing we’d come up with so far had stuck. We were all sitting around the garage one evening in the settling dusk, band practice having finished for the night—Seth’s neighbors kept him on a strict schedule of no noise after dark. The older kids, with the exception of Dean who was a recovering alcoholic, were leisurely getting drunk while Sabrina and I sipped on our juice boxes. Seth thought it would be funny to buy us Capri Suns. The joke was on him, though, because Capri Suns were my favorite, and my mom never bought them.
“All right,” Seth said. “Everybody just spitball now. No judgment. No hating. Anything goes.” He was using his phone to dictate their ideas.
Sasha piped up with The Splints, a variation of The Shins, which Caleb countered with The Shin Splints and then The Broken Ankles to tease her a bit. She stuck her tongue at him in response, and I caught the flash of a metal stud—that piercing was new. Mitchell took it even farther with Internal Bleeding, which Seth really liked. From that spun all sorts of medical conditions, both real and imagined. Everyone agreed that any form of cancer was too depressing, even though some of the names sounded cool. Sabrina really liked Death by Laughter, which was one of the ten strangest ways to die, according to Google. Who knew you could die laughing? Seth thought that had to be one of the best ways to go, right after his preferred cause of death and what he hoped to accomplish one day far into the future: suffering a heart attack during sex. Then he looked at me and said, “I’m counting on you, Hiroku.”
I took off my shoe and threw it at him. He sniffed it like a total weirdo so that I had to wrestle him to get it back. He’d go to any length to embarrass me—even better if he could do it while putting his hands on me.
“How about Melancholy Dreams?” I said, trying to get us back on track. Their music had a saddish sound but was also quite lovely. Seth liked that, but Mitchell thought it sounded too gloomy.
“We’re not writing songs to slit your wrists to,” Mitchell insisted, but if Seth had his way, they probably would.
“Capital Offense,” Dean contributed, which I rather liked, but Seth thought it sounded too prisony and if not that, then too rapey.
That launched us into names centered around crime and punishment. Sabrina suggested Petty Theft, which inspired me to contribute Petty Crime. Everyone liked that, especially Seth who went back and forth as to whether it should be Petty Crime or Petty Crimes or Misdemeanor, which Caleb ruined by saying it reminded him of a gothic stripper’s stage name. This brought on a conversation about what exactly was a gothic stripper, and Caleb said, “You know, like a vampire stripper? She gets naked and then sucks your blood.”
“That sounds hot,” Sabrina said while staring at Jeannie, who had been mostly silent during our brainstorm. I’d noticed Sabrina’s attention often drifted toward Jeannie. Like when she’d complete a really rocking drum solo, Sabrina would look toward Jeannie to see if she was paying attention. As far as I could tell, Mitchell hadn’t picked up on it. Jeannie was straight, I thought, so I was more concerned about Sabrina getting her feelings hurt than an inner-band tryst.
After that, we went through the names of thought experiments, thanks to Sasha’s Intro to Philosophy class at Austin Community College: Schrodinger’s Cat and Pavlov’s Dog, The Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Experience Machine, which brought about a much larger debate about theMatrixand whether you would choose to plug into a virtual reality designed to maximize your pleasure rather than experience the ups and downs of real life to which Seth said, “absolutely”and then added, “but only if Hiroku could come with me.” I rolled my eyes but was secretly flattered. Sasha argued that it wouldn’t be me in the machine with him, but a simulation of me, to which Seth said, “good enough,” which cooled my warm feelings just a bit.
We threw out a few more suggestions, but our creativity was waning, and we were sliding into kitsch. In a truly democratic fashion, Seth narrowed the choices down to three, and then we took a vote—all eight of us, not just those who were in the band. The winner, almost unanimously, was Petty Crime, singular, which Seth said implied the plural and covered a host of misdemeanors including theft, prostitution, trespassing, and vandalism. “We can do a lot with that,” Seth said astutely, “both thematically and with marketing.”
I was sincerely impressed with Seth’s long-term thinking. He was turning into a real Future Business Leader of America. I also glowed a little on the inside to think I’d contributed creatively to the naming of the band. We glanced around at one another, recognizing that this venture of ours had just gotten real. For the first time ever, I truly believed the newly minted Petty Crime had a shot at making it.
As Seth was fond of saying, we were making musical history.
Winter break came to an end, and we all reluctantly went back to our lives—school and jobs and schedules and for me, a maddeningly early curfew. All of us except Seth. Mitchell still picked me up in the mornings before school, but Seth was no longer with us.
When I mentioned that I missed him at school, Seth told me he’d been caught up in composing music for the band. He was in one of his manic episodes, where his mind spun faster than he could communicate. A lot of times he’d use his phone to record his thoughts and ramblings to be unraveled and made sense of at a later date. The only way I could connect with him during that time was by working alongside him on lyrics to his music. I also flexed my graphic design chops by creating a few logos for Petty Crime, which prompted Seth to put me in charge of merch. I thought he was joking, but he then gave me a list of demands as to who should be the T-shirt vendor and told me to research local businesses online.
Other times Seth would play the melody on his guitar, and I’d tell him what it reminded me of—riding in a car at night with the windows down or that feeling you get at a party when everyone is having fun, but it’s like you’re looking in through the window at yourself, like Ebenezer Scrooge watching his younger version have fun with his old friends without him. No idea was too abstract or ridiculous, which was so encouraging for me as an artist. I’d had my father my whole life telling me to be practical, have more common sense, and not waste my time with drawing or video games or comic books. With Seth, there were no limits to our self-expression.
Still, I worried for Seth’s future and what might happen if all of this went belly-up. Perhaps that was my father in me, but I couldn’t help but wish Seth had a backup plan.
And then there was the whole other matter of the drugs.
On the way to school one morning, I asked Mitchell about Seth’s mounting school absences. He kind of shrugged and said, “You know Seth.”
It bothered me that Mitchell hadn’t said anything to him or pressured him to keep coming to school. Sabrina would have reamed me out relentlessly if I even considered dropping out of high school, especially when they were so close to graduation.
“Aren’t you worried about him?” I asked.
“I’ve known Seth for a long time,” Mitchell said casually. “He’s like a cat. He always lands on his feet.”
With a bit more probing, Mitchell revealed how the two of them met. When Seth was nine, his mother took a trip to California and left Seth behind. Her friends, where they were living at the time, tried to contact her but couldn’t, so they turned Seth over to the Department of Family and Protective Services. His grandmother used to be the one to pick up his mother’s slack in the parenting department, but her health was in decline, so Seth was put into foster care. Mitchell and Caleb’s parents were Seth’s second set of foster parents where he lived for about nine months until his mother returned and was able to convince the courts she was fit to be a guardian again.
I disagreed with the state’s assessment.
“After that his mom got this boyfriend who was bad news. He hit Seth and his mom for a while…” Mitchell drifted off for a moment before continuing. “My parents wanted Seth to come live with us, but Seth was worried for his mom. Then his grandmother died, and they moved into her house without the asshole boyfriend. Seth kept coming around though,” Mitchell said. “Like a stray. Seth’s never had much stability in his life.”
