My Mother is a Fish - A NaruHina fanfiction inspired by Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying'
Across the schoolyard is a boy with blonde hair, so messy and unkept that she's pretty sure he rarely washes it or brushes it. He wears a bright orange jumpsuit and a pair of teal goggles. In class he slouches in his seat and scratches his name on his desk and stares at girls or out the windows with some glaze over his eyes.
His expression is always some sort of extreme, and he never keeps it hidden: extremely dumfounded, extremely ecstatic, extremely bored, extremely rageful, extremely hateful, extremely joyful, extremely lonely.
Then, there is his voice, so high-pitched and abrasive, like some piece of metal grinding against another piece of metal. He shouts and makes declarations and bursts with sudden laughter or something like a barking noise. He rambles and babbles and talks about himself. He tells lies and grins with his eyes closed and when people laugh at him and walk away he stops grinning and just watches them.
Then, there is his hygiene. His clothing is full of dirt and grass stains and smells like the unwashed private parts of a growing boy. His face is always smeared with grease and his teeth are always a bit yellow and crooked. His breath always smells like ramen and onions and old milk.
He is altogether unappealing.
And yet, when he passes her desk, her heart beats faster, her face gets hot and she can't look anywhere except at her hands. When they speak she stutters and her mind drowns with input and her voice catches in her throat. When she sees him cheating in sparring class or on exams, or when she sees him thieving fruits and bread from the market or graffitiing on walls and signs and statues, she feels some glow in her chest. She doesn't know why.
Like her, his grades are poor, dead last.
Then, there are the three dash marks on each cheek, like dark cuts or scars, and - to her - it seems somehow related to why he sits alone on that swing in the schoolyard, staring at everyone, and why his parents never pick him up, and why she's heard adults whisper about him in tones that sound sinister, worried, cutting and secretive, like each whispered sentence is a knife grinding against whetstone.
She was told never to speak to him. Instead, she watches him and thinks about the time she saw him training in the forest, and even after collapsing he kept shouting that he'd surpass the Hokage.
And, the time those older boys bullied her and he stepped between them and they beat him up and tore his scarf. The way he lied in the snow, full of bruises, his body shaking, some groan escaping his throat as her attendant whisked her away.
She was told never to speak to him, so instead she watches him and imagines what he would do if he had a father like her's and a sister like her's. If he lived in a mansion so big he might not see anyone he loves all day, with a family full of people who dote on him but never look him in the face and stop speaking when she enters a room. If he traveled out of the village most weekends to meet with potential future suitors, older boys who appraise her with shifting, casual glances and scoff when she drops the cup in a tea ceremony. What if he spent most suppers in silence, speaking when spoken to? What if he had alien eyes that frighten people? What if his mother were a fish, too?
Yesterday, after school, she found him sitting on the swing, the chains creaking slowly, shadows of the overhead leaves fluttering about his face. As she approached, her knees shaking, her hands in her pockets, he raised his head and grinned wildly but she could see the emptiness behind it all. Intending to thank him for stopping her bullies, she opened her mouth, but her voice died. He stopped smiling and didn't say anything, and the input rushed and scrambled around her head.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"My mother is a fish," she told him. He stared at her, jumped out from the seat and stuck his tongue out before running away. She watched him run, how his little legs kicked up dust and dirt, how his orange jumpsuit almost glowed in the light of late afternoon.
'But it's true,' she wanted to yell out. She tried, she opened her mouth, a noise emitted, she said the sentence, but her voice was too small and he was far away, hopping over a distant fence and disappearing past a dip in the landscape.
Standing there by the swing, she remembered the time her mother left for the hospital saying she'd have a new sister. When she came back, there was the sister, so small and tiny, wrapped in a white blanket, a fuzz of dark hair on her scalp, her head too small for her big, white eyes. Her father carried her sister in the crook of his left arm, and in his right he carried a jug of water with a koi in it. When she knelt to look at the fish, she saw it's eyes were blank, too, but black and shining. He poured the koi into the pond outside and then watched it swim for four hours before retiring to bed. Now, her sister is older and the koi still swims about the pond. Every morning, she watches it before school.
Today, she sees him sitting on the swing, again, gazing out at all the parents picking up their children. She stands in the midst of the crowd and hears the voice of her attendant. Turning, she sees him standing across the yard, talking to a teacher. Setting her face with determination, she breaks out from the throng of people and runs over to the boy on the swing and opens her mouth, but he speaks first.
"My mother-" he starts and then hesitates, the word 'mother' sounding formal and blockish, he gulps and keeps going, "-is a, a wildebeest!"
Closing her mouth, she just watches him. The chattering crowd recedes into the back of her mind. The blushing in her cheeks recedes, too, and the cram of input in her head goes slack and clears up, like muddy water being filtered.
She's heard of that animal once, but cannot not remember when and does not know what it looks like. But, she imagines a hairy, wild creature full of claws and teeth sitting in the pond outside her home. It's fur matted wet against it's body. It's jaw grinning, it's gums black, it's teeth white. The creature sits there and watches her, howls and looks away.
"Wow, cool," she says, a little smile emerging in her face. Grinning, he laughs through his teeth, but does not close his eyes.
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