I was quiet after that, imagining Seth’s shiftless childhood with only one parent who was unreliable at best. And the abuse. Seth had never told me about any of it, but then again, maybe he did in his own way. I was thankful Seth ended up with Mitchell and Caleb’s family. Their relationship made more sense to me now. Seth was more careful with Mitchell’s feelings than he was with most people, and even when they argued, they still had each other’s back, like family.
“Listen, though, don’t say anything to Seth about what I told you.” Mitchell glanced over at me with a worried look. “Seth likes to, as he says, control the narrative.”
I nodded, although I hoped one day Seth would trust me enough to share those painful experiences with me.
Even with what Mitchell had told me, I felt compelled to at least bring up the fact that Seth was failing out of school, since I knew Mitchell wasn’t going to say anything, and I doubted Seth’s mother would either.
I usually saved these difficult conversations for after sex. That was Seth’s most agreeable time, when he was blissed out and open to suggestion. The last thing I wanted to do was crush his dreams of being a professional musician, especially when it seemed he was making his passion concrete.
Seth was reclined with his back against my stomach, using my legs as armrests as he rolled a joint on a shoebox lid. I almost always had a contact high when I was around him. I’d smoked a little weed over winter break, but it was too risky now that school was back on, and I’d have to go home and face Mai for family dinner. She’d sniff me out in a second, especially because my eyes got super red and swollen when I smoked.
“I’ve missed you on our car rides to school,” I said as an opener. “Mitchell’s been on a real Neil Young kick.”
Seth shook his head. “I’ll talk to him about it. You don’t have to pretend to like Neil Young for Mitchell’s sake.”
Seth was missing my point entirely. I wondered if it was on purpose.
I trailed a fingertip along his neck and down his shoulder where he wore his tattooed heart on his sleeve. I tried again.
“So… are you coming back? To school, I mean?”
“Welcome to the machine,” Seth said, licking along the edge of the rolling paper and then sealing the seam with his tongue in an incredibly arousing gesture.
Pink Floyd was Seth’s go-to when it came to discussing school or careers or the future in general. He was so counter-culture that he bought all of his clothes at thrift stores and most of his food at local restaurants and markets to avoid “feeding our corporate overlords.” His only weakness was the bulk deals at Sam’s Club, which he justified as being the only way to afford feeding all of us. Then he’d burn the boxes out back and make us pray to the gods of consumerism. I didn’t point out that Seth’s livelihood depended on the oil industry in the form of monthly checks, which he’d begin receiving when he turned eighteen in August. Seth was so full of contradictions, it was difficult to know where to begin.
“Are you withdrawing then?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Would you think less of me if I did?”
That was a trap. They were becoming easier to spot, though not always as easy to avoid.
“No, but I do worry about what you’ll do if Petty Crime doesn’t pan out.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” His eyebrows dipped with suspicion. Seth always thought people were out to get him. Knowing more about his childhood helped me to understand his paranoia a little better, but I wished he wouldn’t assume the same from me.
There were a million reasons why their music career might not take off—bad luck, the band breaking up, lack of work ethic to make music and get gigs, mismanagement, and the most obvious to me, Seth’s escalating drug use.
“Being in a band is a risk. It might be nice to have something to fall back on.” I winced because I sounded so much like my father.
“A high school diploma doesn’t get you too far this day and age.” Seth said it like an old timer and pretended to hock a loogie. He was trying to turn our discussion into a joke, another one of his defense mechanisms.
“No, but it looks a little better on job applications than not having one. You could get your GED if you don’t want to go back to Hilliard.”
Seth lit his joint, rolled over onto his stomach, and propped himself up on his elbows. He took a long hit and blew out a plume of smoke aimed at my crotch. The breeze tickled a little, stirring the beast.
“Is this what it’s like having a dad?” Seth asked, looking up at me from under his luscious eyelashes and pouting suggestively with his spit-shiny pink lips. Seduction, another of Seth’s modes of distraction. I told myself to resist.
“I know your music is important to you, but you’re also very smart. And when you get into something, you give it one hundred percent. You could do anything you wanted if you tried.”
“Oh my God, Hiroku,” Seth crowed dramatically. “Now you sound like Mr. Graf.”
Mr. Graf was a guidance counselor at our school. Everyone with the last name of A-H had him, so he belonged to both Seth and me. Seth took another hit, then handed the joint to me, just to have me refuse it. It was his personal pleasure to try and get me to do things I shouldn’t. He leaned across my lap, brushing up against my junk in the process, in order to ash his joint in a bowl on the bedside table. Not an accident.
“So that’s it?” I felt like a failure. I didn’t necessarily expect Seth to do a 180 and come back to school, but I did hope to find that he had a long-term vision in place, which included some form of education. He was interested in carpentry, so maybe trade school? Or graphic design? Perhaps because excelling in academics had been drilled into me my entire life, I couldn’t imagine a future without it.
“Hiroku, I’m an artist. That’s what I’ll always be, whether it’s music or theater or something else. I’m never going to do time at a nine-to-five job or punch a clock. I don’t give a shit about getting a diploma or a GED from the great state of Texas. Our school system is a joke with all their revisionist history and standardized conformity. Shoving that bullshit down our throats like we’re livestock. Hilliard and the rest of them can suck my big fat dropout dick.” He took another hit, blowing the smoke out of his nose like a dragon. He peered up at me with distrust. “And here I thought we were making such progress.”
That rubbed me the wrong way. I felt it immediately, a prickly heat spreading over my skin, causing me to tense up as though physically throwing up a wall. I crossed my arms over my chest. “What does that mean?”
