“You’re not stupid, Hiroku,” she said in a voice like iron. “He’sthe stupid one.”
NOW
Escape.
There is no escape from the pain here in New Vistas. Not physical pain, but existential anguish. That’s probably the worst thing about it. Not only are you dealing with your own bullshit, but you get the echo chamber effect of everyone else’s trauma as well. Misery loves company? I don’t think so.
At home, I was able to mask my pain, at least from my family. Put on a happy face for the few hours I was in their presence and then sneak off to do whatever bad things I did to get me through. Here, the residents see each other so often and have to talk about it so much, that the mask is pointless. We’re all inside out.
Ryan is my friend, probably my only friend in here. I don’t know why I’m so exclusive, but I find it hard to trust others, and Ryan has proven himself pretty trustworthy with my secrets. I’ve also come to realize that Ryan might be gay or bi and struggling with it. He might also be developing a crush on me, even though we’ve both agreed to adhere to the strict No Touching policy of New Vistas.
In any case, Ryan listens to me talk about my former life, my friends, my sister, Seth. Sometimes I’ll tell him a happy story and he’ll get a moony look on his face. “I can see why you fell in love with him,” he’ll say. And that’s where I begin to trip up because if I only told the good stories about Seth, he’d seem like a regular Prince Charming, and if I only told the bad, he would more closely resemble a monster. Neither representation is fair, nor is the fact that the stories are being told through my perspective and colored by my own wounded feelings, and if Seth were telling this story, it would be completely different, which makes me wonder: if everything is so subjective, then what is fact and what is fiction?
I go over that a lot in my mind and in this journal—who was right and who was wrong? It’d be so easy to make Seth the villain and me the victim, and place all the blame on his shoulders, but I’m not innocent. I knew what I was doing. I was mean too. And spiteful. Sometimes, I baited him. I definitely punished him.
I envy Sabrina and her iron will and her ability to determine right from wrong and always make a decision with confidence. My sister has it too. Fortitude.
But I am like water with no structure of my own. I take on the shape of whatever container holds me and without it, I struggle to know who or what I am.
And that’s why, even when I knew it was wrong and that he was bad for me, that we were bad for each other, I chose him. Because Seth understood me, even the parts that made me ashamed, and he loved me in spite of it.
His love for me was truly unconditional.
THEN
Oh, the excuses he made.
It meant nothing.
I didn’t even know his name.
You never said we were monogamous.And then when that got no response,Monogamy is for heteros.
All of this was communicated to me in texts and voicemails and one rather long, rambling email where Seth went from opining on his love and devotion to me to blaming me for being so insensitive as to not respond to his numerous appeals.
I stayed home from school the day after I found out Seth was cheating on me, choosing instead to bury myself under my blankets and wallow. I didn’t get it all out, so I stayed home the day after that too. My sister covered for me with our parents and said something really nasty and contagious was going around school. She came home Friday afternoon with what she called breakup snacks. My cousins had sent me a bunch of links to torrent sites where I could download their favorite anime series and martial arts movies. I had about 24 hours queued up to ease my misery. Mai came in after I’d just finished one series and had switched to old episodes ofZatoichi, some of which didn’t even have English dubs. I’d already seen all 26 of theZatoichifilms, but never the television show.
Mai was grossed out by the blood and continually hiding her face behind a pillow, but after the first couple of hours, she became increasingly desensitized to the gore.
There was one scene where the blind swordsman, the show’s main character, was dueling another man, and towards the end of the fight scene, you can tell the other guy is slowing down, but you don’t know why until you realize the blind swordsman has been gutting him all along, so elegantly and with blows so well-placed, you couldn’t even tell until his opponent is glassy-eyed and dead. The swordsman was almost kind in the manner in which he killed his opponent, but the end result was the same.
I didn’t even see it coming.
I questioned everything I thought was true about our relationship. Did Seth really love me or had I only imagined it? And if he did love me, why wasn’t it enough for him to be faithful? What had I done wrong?
I kept seeing that blond boy on his knees with his mouth so full of Seth he was practically choking on him. Even worse was seeing Seth’s body move like that, hearing him make those noises… Had I not given him everything he wanted? Was I not desirable, clever, available… enough for him?
That was the only conclusion I could draw. All roads pointed to me not being enough. Seth’s sexual appetite was so strong that I couldn’t satisfy him, so he went elsewhere, and he hid it from me. Because he didn’t want to hurt me. And he didn’t want to get caught. Like a fucking coward.
I had so many questions. So many insecurities I thought I’d overcome were now staring me down like floodlights. And in the midst of all that was the deep aching in my bones that made even getting up to go to the bathroom seem like an insurmountable chore. I didn’t want to go to school on Monday either, but Mai insisted, so I dragged my ass through my schedule, avoiding Sabrina during lunch because I was mad at her too. Even though she’d exposed what was going on, she should have told me herself so that I’d know what I was walking into. Instead, she played games and let me walk blindly into that shit show.
In a way I’d lost Sabrina too because she was no longer loyal to me, but to Seth and the band.
I walked home from school—the long way because I didn’t want to have to pass by Seth’s house. He was still calling and texting me. I’d shut off my phone somewhere around third period and only turned it on after school to see the endless string of messages and missed calls. Most of them were from Seth, but there were a few in there from Sabrina as well saying she was sorry but that I needed to see it for myself. Two from Jeannie slamming Seth. One from Sasha passing along the number of a guy who saw me at a Petty Crime show and thought I was cute with the message,You can do so much better.One from Mitchell not mentioning the eventat alland instead simply saying,Let me know if you need a ride to school.
That one actually made me feel better.
Caleb didn’t have my number, so there were no texts from him. He wasn’t there that night, but I figured Mitchell would have told him. Or not. It was hard to say.
