Meantto me.
I think the suggestion is Dr. Denovo’s gentle way of telling me that I’m failing at therapy. It’s not his fault. Doc’s a good guy. He wants to help me. It’s just when I’m sitting across from him in our one-on-ones, him in his scholarly wingback chair, me on the old, tired crying couch, trying to talk about Seth, I get all emotional and clam up. Or I only half-explain things.
I hate that. I’d rather say nothing at all than say the wrong thing.
Besides, how can you put into words the way a person makes you feel? How they can make you see things about yourself and the world in a way you never saw before? How, in just two years, they can transform you into a completely different person?
Dr. Denovo says there’s a lot of shame surrounding addiction. He says,we live in a culture of vicious shame.I like the way that sounds.A vicious shame.Sounds like the title to one of Seth’s suicide songs. In any case, I think it’s Dr. Denovo’s way of telling me this isn’t all my fault.
The journal, at least, gives me something to do. The antidepressants keep me up at night, and my roommate here in New Vistas must be on something that makes him tired because he’s always sleeping. He snores a lot too. Sounds like a rusty scale the way it climbs to a crescendo and tapers off, then silence for a beat before it begins again. I try to match my breathing with his to see if it will help me fall asleep, like counting sheep. It doesn’t work though. And every time I change positions to try and get more comfortable, the waterproof material that encases the thin mattress of my bed makes this really depressing noise.
That’s my current soundtrack: my roommate’s snoring, reminding me I’m a failure at sleeping, punctuated with the crinkle of cheap plastic.
I’m crawling the walls in here.
But I’ve written quite a bit so far, and if I angle myself just right, there’s enough light coming in through the murky window to see my handwriting. Sometimes just the exercise of writing soothes me. Like a meditation, I’ll write my name in cursive, Hiroku Hayashi, tracing the loop-de-loops across the blue lines until suddenly the page is full.
Honestly, most of the time it’s not my name I’m writing.
It’s his.
THEN
I started going to Seth’s house in the afternoons after school. My best friend Sabrina had marching band practice pretty much every day. Mai was always hitting the books to stay at the top of her class, or else she had a function for one of her many student activities. Columbia wasn’t easy to get into, even for the valedictorian. Any time she had left over, she devoted to her boyfriend Terrance, who was probably second in their senior class but accepted his position behind my sister with grace. My parents didn’t get home from work until at least six, which left a whole four hours unaccounted for.
What’s that expression? Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. My hands were idle.
Most of the time Seth’s band was there with him. They called it “rehearsing,” but they ended up arguing a lot, mainly Seth and the drummer Dylan, who had graduated from Hilliard the year before and was taking classes at Austin Community College. Dylan also had a shit job—his words—at a gas station and was always arriving late or sometimes not at all.
The first time I showed up, Dylan shot me a dirty look and said, “Who’s the kid?”
I froze where I was standing, still gripping the shoulder straps on my backpack. Seth invited me—rather, insisted I come “directly after school”—but apparently he didn’t clear it with the rest of his crew. I glanced toward the street thinking maybe I should leave.
Seth looked me up and down slowly like it was his personal pleasure, smirked, and said to Dylan, “That’s Hiroku Hayashi.”
The bassist, Mitchell, gave me a nod. He was a senior at our high school and Seth’s best friend, I assumed, since I usually saw the two of them together between classes and at lunch. I think they also rode to school together. Mitchell was a quiet, contemplative kind of guy who mostly kept to himself. Seth used to say whenever drama arose,Mitchell’s like Paul, and Paul doesn’t get between ya’ll.
“What’s he doing here?” Dylan asked with a snarl. I didn’t know the answer to his question, so I chewed on my lower lip and glanced between him and Seth.
“Looks like he’s going to do his homework.” Seth motioned me to the couch as if introducing me to an unfamiliar piece of furniture, then glared at Dylan, challenging him to say otherwise.
“What are you, like, thirteen?” Dylan asked.
“Fifteen,” I answered. Predictably, my voice cracked.
“I don’t like other people around while we’re rehearsing,” Dylan said.
“You’re going to have to get over your performance anxiety if we’re ever going to play out. Hiroku’s our first groupie.”
Mitchell grinned a little at that. I took it to mean I was expected to stay. Dylan glared at me and did an aggressive drumroll sequence that sounded a little uneven to me. I set my backpack at my feet and figured I might as well crack open my books because my homework wasn’t going to do itself. Seth brought over a pair of noise-canceling headphones and gently crowned my head, taking the time to tuck the hair behind my ears for me. His forefinger traced the outside of my ear as he leaned down and whispered, “Trust me. You’re going to want these.”
I tried to keep an open mind about their music, but Seth was right about them sucking. They were all noise and no organization. They were so bad that I went home that night and listened to actual metal music to make sure it wasn’t just me.
I went to their band practice a few more times over the next couple of weeks. Mitchell would say what’s up to me or at least nod in my direction, but Dylan refused to acknowledge my existence. Perhaps to aggravate Dylan, Seth doted on me—made sure I had something to drink and snacks, interrupted their practice to ask me what I was studying or reading—but he never acted like anything other than a friend or an overprotective older brother, which confused the hell out of me because I thought we were at least going to mess around. I didn’t have the courage to mention it to Seth, so I was left to obsess about what our interactions meant to him and generally overthink things.
One afternoon after his bandmates had packed up and left, Seth asked me what I thought of Skull Necklace. I was sitting on the plaid couch, which was by now an old friend, and Seth was cleaning up. He kept things pretty tidy on account of his mother not wanting to trip over all the cords when she needed to do laundry. I got the sense that he and his mom lived more like roommates than family. The couple of times I’d seen her, it was only in passing, and she seemed annoyed by the band’s presence but not enough to actually say something. Seth once said she suffered from a chronic case of wanderlust, but had the good fortune of a trust fund thanks to some distant relative who’d struck oil back in the day—just enough to pay the bills, not enough to go hog wild.
My math textbook was open next to me with my homework on my lap. I pretended like I hadn’t heard Seth’s question because of the headphones, but really, I didn’t want to answer him. Seth came over and took them off, asked me again with a little more steel in his voice, “What do you think of Skull Necklace, Hiroku?”
