THEN
I didn’t hear from Seth that whole weekend after McKinney Falls. I looked for him at school on Monday but couldn’t find him at his usual hangout spots either, which wasn’t completely unusual, but it was strange that he didn’t call or text me. He also didn’t respond to my texts. I was starting to worry it was me he was avoiding. On Tuesday I worked up the nerve to find Mitchell at school and ask about him.
“He’s, uh, sick,” Mitchell said.
Seth was fine on Friday. “What is it? The flu?”
Mitchell wouldn’t look at me. “No, it’s…it’s something else. I can’t really talk about it. Sorry, Hiroku.”
I watched him hurry off to class, which was something Mitchell never did.
I texted Seth, Mitchell says you’re sick. You okay?
I got nothing in response.
I pondered that exchange between Mitchell and me for the rest of the day. What illness did Seth have that he wouldn’t want to tell me about? If it was cancer or something like that, I’d have heard about it already. Maybe it was none of my business, and I should leave it alone, but I was worried about him. Seth’s mom wasn’t exactly the nurturing type, and Seth never said a word about his dad. What if he really was sick and feverish, and there was no food in the house? Or he needed a doctor, and there was no one there to take him?
What if he was lonely?
After school I biked to Pho Please and picked up some soup for Seth, then rode over to his house to deliver it, thinking even if he couldn’t come to the door, maybe his mom could give it to him and let him know I’d stopped by. I knocked on the door to his house, but no one answered. I tried texting him again.
I’m at your front door. I brought soup.
I stared at my phone for what seemed like forever. Finally, a response.
Soup?
From Pho Please. Still warm.
Again, his response took forever. Were his fingers broken or what? I was thinking I’d just leave the tub of it on his doorstep when finally Seth appeared. He looked haggard and withdrawn with dark purple rings around his eyes, greasy hair, and a vacant expression. He squinted a little, almost like he didn’t recognize me.
“You brought me soup?” He shielded his eyes from the late afternoon sun.
“Yeah, Mitchell said you were sick.”
Seth’s mouth quirked a little, but not enough to be considered a smile. I couldn’t tell what it meant.
“Here.” I held it out to him. Meanwhile, my mind was working over what kind of illness he might be suffering from. Seth took the plastic tub and stared at it.
“It’s pho,” I told him because he seemed bewildered by it.
“I can’t believe you brought me soup,” he said again. He looked like he was about to cry.
I laid a hand on his shoulder. “Seth, man, are you okay?”
His eyes drifted to meet mine where I stood two steps beneath him. I wished he’d tell me what was going on. I was really worried.
“I’m not contagious,” he said.
“That’s good to know. I’ve had all my shots too.”
He cracked a smile and reached out to me. I took his hand.
“Come on.” He pulled me with him, shutting the door behind us.
I’d never been inside his house before—we’d always hung out in his garage. Their house had a similar layout to ours—a split-level ranch-style house built in the 60’s—but the rooms in Seth’s house were very stark with hardly any furniture in them. The floor was wood plank that appeared to be the subfloor, and there were areas with gaps big enough you could squeeze a dime through. There were also a lot of his mother’s “sculptures” as Seth called them, decorating the place. They looked like elaborate papier-mâché objects with sticks and stones and broken glass and bits of what looked like horsehair incorporated into the design.
“My mom’s an artist,” Seth said by way of explanation.
It was cool…kind of… if you wanted to live in a drafty warehouse gallery with super creepy sculptures staring you down.
I followed Seth upstairs to his room where nearly every inch of wall space was covered in band posters or artwork. I assumed the art was Seth’s, mostly abstract sketches that looked somewhat chaotic, the charcoal lines drawn with a heavy hand, tearing across the paper and careening right off the edge. It was more a question of what was outside the paper than what was contained within it. I didn’t make that observation to Seth though. He’d invited me into his personal sanctuary, and I wasn’t about to give him my Art Theory 101 critique.
Seth collapsed into his unmade bed and held his comforter up for me to join him underneath. I unloaded my two-ton backpack on the floor and took off my shoes. The pho was sitting on the edge of his messy desk, unopened. He must not be hungry.
“Seth, what’s going on?” I asked when we were both entirely under the blanket and staring at each other with our noses just inches apart.
“I’m suffering from a bout of melancholy,” Seth said. If I hadn’t seen his face and his surroundings, I’d wonder if he was being funny or overly dramatic, but it actually seemed pretty serious.
“You’re depressed?” It seemed strange that it could come on so quickly. Four days ago he seemed on top of the world.
“Pretty much. I’m bipolar. Recently diagnosed.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d never known anyone who was depressed or bipolar. I didn’t really know much about it. Perhaps stupidly I asked, “Is this what it’s like?”
Seth nodded with a heavy sigh and blinked slowly. Every gesture, every word seemed to take so much effort for him. It was as though he was moving underwater. I felt bad for making him put forth the effort.
“You don’t have to talk about it.” I searched for his hand under the blanket, found it and squeezed.
“It’s not usually this bad. I have medication I’m supposed to take, but the pills make me numb to everything, and they really kill my libido.” He looked up as if to see if I was going to make some judgment about that, but I didn’t know what to say, so I only stared back at him. “What’s the point of living if you can’t feel anything, you know?” he asked.
I nodded. I sensed this was something he didn’t share with many people and that I was being let in on a very intimate and personal thing. Any judgment or harsh word from me might crush him. I’d never seen Seth so vulnerable before. He placed my hand over his heart. “I’m glad you came by. Will you stay?”
“Of course.” I scooted closer to him on the bed and put my arms around him, hugged him close to my chest. He nestled against me like a puppy and gripped my back. He might have cried for a spell too, but even that was without his usual passion.
We stayed like that for a while, neither of us saying much, doing nothing more than holding each other. I watched the sun set through a crack in his drawn curtains. I texted my parents to say I was going to miss dinner because I was working on a project at a friend’s house, due tomorrow. So many projects.
When night came, Seth began to talk about his family life growing up. How his mother had an affair with a married man who wanted nothing to do with her or Seth once he was born; how they’d lived like nomads when he was little, couch surfing at whatever boyfriend or friend his mother could convince to keep them; how he didn’t really have a home until his grandmother died and left them this house. Only then did his mother start spending her monthly allowance on things like food and electricity. Seth was waiting until he turned eighteen and gained access to his own trust fund, and then he was out of there.
“She has really shitty taste in men,” he said.
I listened while he poured out his life story to me with his cheek pressed against my beating heart and his voice scratchy and thick. I made him some tea, and we drank it, cross-legged, in his bed. Then I heated up the soup and we ate that as well. I didn’t hear his mother once, which meant she must not have been home. That made me doubly sad for Seth, because if it was me, my mother would be checking on me nonstop.
“I can’t believe you brought me soup,” Seth marveled as he ate.
“That’s what you do when someone’s sick,” I told him.
Seth smiled. The color was back in his cheeks, and he looked a little brighter than when I’d arrived on his doorstep hours ago.
“No one’s ever done that before,” he said.
“Not even Mitchell?”
Seth shook his head. “Not even Mitchell.”
When we finished, I put the bowls in the sink downstairs. When I came back up, Seth seemed to want something from me. “You want me to go?” It was getting pretty late. I should probably head home anyway. Even if my parents believed I was working this long on a project, Mai wouldn’t.
“I want you to stay with me, right here in my bed, forever.” He had a dreamy look in his eyes, but I didn’t think he was kidding. I sat down across from him and grabbed his hand again.
“I can come back tomorrow.”
He nodded. “I’d like that.”
The next day Seth wasn’t at school, so I went over to his house again. This time I had a package of chocolate panda bear-shaped cookies we got in my grandmother’s last care package. We ate them up in Seth’s bedroom. He had his guitar out and was noodling around on it a little bit. He’d meant it when he said the band was going in a different direction. His new songs had melodies that rose and fell and better reflected his vocal range. His guitar playing shifted from soft, plinking notes to fast, angry chords. Even without words, it felt like there was a complete story within the song.
“I really like your new sound,” I told him. “It suits you.”
“Thanks. I need my music. It keeps me sane.”
He’d also showered and was dressed in normal day clothes instead of sweats and a stained and grubby T-shirt. I didn’t want to ask him how long it would take for him to recover and come back to school, but I did worry about him failing automatically because of all of his unexcused absences. I figured that was a conversation between him and his guidance counselor or his mom, and I didn’t want to put any extra pressure on him.
We mostly hung out in his room. Seth asked me all kinds of questions about my parents and my sister and what Japan was like. We’d gone there for two months that past summer to visit my mother’s family. My mother was from Kanazawa where my grandmother still lived, but my aunt and uncle lived in Tokyo, which was much more exciting. We toured the entire country while we were there, and it was the first time we’d visited when Mai and I could get around independent of our parents, which made it a lot more fun. Seth was amazed I could speak fluent Japanese and wanted to hear me say all kinds of random things, including swears and insults, of which I knew a fair amount thanks to my cousins. Seth told me about the obsession he’d had a couple years back with Visual Kei, which is like this Japanese glam rock where the performers dress somewhat androgynous with a lot of makeup and crazy costumes and hairdos. Seth asked if I’d ever been to a show in Japan and when I told him no, he said we should go together one day.
Then we started kissing. It wasn’t like the hot and heavy making out we’d done previously. These kisses were more exploratory in nature and tender. It was like we were starting over because this vulnerable version of Seth was one I’d never seen before. He seemed more honest to me without the theatrical or performance element to his personality. I liked that about him too—the excitement and the drama—but really I just liked being around him, talking to him, hearing what he had to say about the world and his art, who he was and who he wanted to be. I loved it too when he sang. He had a real talent.
I also liked the way he touched me—too much, perhaps.
At one point we were wrapped up in each other’s arms, chest to chest, his face nuzzled against my neck when he paused kissing me to say, “I like this.”
“I like this too.”
He sighed into my neck and said quietly, “You touch something in me I thought was dead.”
It was really sweet of him to say it, but also really sad, like he’d already given up on himself. “Maybe it was only sleeping,” I told him.
He glanced up at me and smiled, but even that was a little gloomy. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he continued.
“You won’t,” I said automatically. He seemed so fatalistic, and yet, I’d worried the same thing too.
“I’ve never been someone’s boyfriend before,” Seth said, running his fingertip down the slope of my nose, “but I want to try with you.”
“Just because I brought you soup?”
The rumble of his laugh made me laugh too.
“It’s not just the soup.” He stroked my hair and tucked a lock of it carefully behind my ear. Every gesture of his was done with so much attention and gratitude. “It’s because I think you’re really special, and every time I see you, I feel better about my life. You make me feel hopeful, Hiroku. There’s so much about you to like.” He stopped as if surprised by the words he’d just uttered. He blinked a couple of times and looked at me again. “So, will you be my boyfriend?”
I waited a beat, something I’d learned from him, how to build the suspense and savor the moment. I knew all of the reasons why this was a bad idea, included among them the possibility of getting my heart broken, but I couldn’t be rational about it. I was already too far gone.
“Fine, Seth, I’ll be your boyfriend.” I said it like it was a chore, but there was a huge smile on my face.
He grinned with self-satisfaction. Then he leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “I’m going to make you feel things you’ve never felt before.”
A tremor of excitement raced through me, and I melted a little there in his arms. “You already have.”