With a final “fuck you,” Dylan heaved what remained of his drum kit and threw it into the back of his truck. He peeled down the street while laying on his horn the whole way.
Seth stalked back toward the garage, pausing to tap my chin lightly as if to reassure me he wasn’t having a psychotic break. Then he looked at Mitchell and said, “The band is going in a new direction. Are you in?”
Mitchell didn’t even hesitate. “Totally.”
“Even if our new name is Seth Barrett and His Seven Flaming Faggots?”
Mitchell chuckled. “We’re going to need a few more members to pull that off.”
Seth told him the band was on hiatus until he discovered their new sound, and Mitchell left soon after for his shift at Sunoco. I offered to go as well, thinking Seth might need some time to cool off, but he told me to stay.
“You’re my muse,” Seth said. “I want you with me all the time.” Then he played me a few melodies he’d been tinkering with on his guitar. I didn’t know much about composing songs, but I offered feedback where I could. Then, like it was nothing, he asked me if his outburst had scared me.
“Not really,” I lied.
He stopped playing and glanced up, searching my face for untruths. “It didn’t?” he asked with a note of surprise. Perhaps even disappointment.
“Well, maybe a little,” I admitted.
Seth grabbed my hand. The sharp calluses on his fingertips tickled my palm. “I lost my temper, but I’d never act that way toward you.”
“That’s good,” I said, and then after a moment’s thought, I asked, “Why do you feel like you need to tell me that?”
“Because you looked a little freaked out by it.”
I thought I’d been playing it so cool, but Seth was able to read my most subtle expressions. “My family doesn’t do emotional outbursts,” I told him. “Well, except my dad, and that’s more like a throwing knife to your heart. In my house, it’s more of a sit-and-stew-on-it-type situation.” My specialty was sulking and giving people the silent treatment. When my dad pissed me off or hurt my feelings, I could go days without speaking to him.
“I don’t want you to stew on anything with me. I want to know every single thought that goes through your head, no matter how big or small.”
I wondered if that was true, so I decided to test it. “Did I break up the band?”
Seth laughed, full-bellied, head thrown back. He had such a lighthearted and sprightly quality about him when he was amused, like Kitsune, the trickster fox who could shapeshift into human form in order to pull pranks on unsuspecting humans. When Seth finished, he looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yes.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I felt really bad about it. “That was never my intention.”
Seth shrugged. He didn’t seem broken up about itat all.“We’ll build another band together, without any dickheads or homophobes. Maybe we can even get a drummer who can keep a beat.”
“That should be a prerequisite.”
Seth smiled and shook his head ruefully. He was really quite beautiful. His imperfections came together in a most perfect way. “Whatever you say, Yoko.”
Despite his ribbing, my chest expanded a little because Seth had said we’d build the bandtogether. I loved the way that word sounded coming from his lips.
NOW
My roommate in New Vistas is a cutter. That’s the word he uses to describe himself. We all have problems with drug addiction, but some of us have bonus issues to work through. Group therapy can get really messy when all the other junk bubbles up to the surface and overflows like a clogged sewer pipe. Some of the kids in New Vistas have survived some really terrible shit. I’ve been lucky in that way—my parents never abused me, I’ve never been homeless or hungry, never had to sell my body for a warm bed. In some ways, it feels like I haven’t suffered enough.
Anyway, Ryan is a cutter, and a couple of days into us being roommates, he shows me proof. The cuts are so straight and orderly they look almost geometric, like a Piet Mondrian line drawing. I don’t tell him that though because I don’t want to encourage him. By now, all of his cuts have faded away to silvery scars. I ask him what convinced him to stop cutting, and he admits that he hasn’t really stopped. He just retraces the old lines so they don’t make new scars.
“I don’t cut too deep,” he says to me like it’s a threat.
“That must take a lot of self-control,” I tell him, not realizing how fucked up it sounds until after I’ve said it.
“It does,” he says seriously.
“It’s like that for me too,” I admit. “Only it isn’t a blade.”
He thinks I’m talking about drugs, but I’m not.
