CHAPTER TEN: IDEAS
"I'm sure we both know
that we can get through these days with
some words that I wrote
and some that we choose to say
It's hard now to live out all
the days caught in between
where we are and where we hope to be."
"Ideas" - The Title
He was running out of creative ways to avoid Seifer, albeit not for a lack of honest-to-god trying. On Tuesday, it had been as simple as gathering his street clothes, hustling out of the locker room in a record ninety seconds, and changing in a restroom closer to study hall. On Wednesday, it'd involved a strategically timed approach to their gym teacher to discuss the possibility of using the school's swimming pool and keeping him talking until well after Seifer and company had vacated the locker room.
Thursday's variation on avoidance in three parts was a direct result of the conversation in gym on Wednesday. Anyone wanting to use Radiant High's swimming facilities was required to take a swim test, he'd been informed. The school seemed disinclined to want to deal with the prospect of student drownings. Riku figured a basic skills assessment was a fair enough compromise in that regard.
He'd been given permission to take the test over his normal sixth period gym class. Just like that, Riku had found another means of skirting around the prospect of being cornered by Seifer, however inadvertent.
At this point, Riku would take what he could get and be content not to complain about it.
The test also necessitated another student's presence — that of Radiant High's swim team captain who'd be evaluating him. Riku had learned soon after that the head of RHSH's competitive swim team was none other than Tidus.
Riku guessed he could see it, Tidus as captain of the school's varsity swim team, although he couldn't honestly say he'd put much thought into the extracurricular interests of any of his classmates. He'd been too focused on trying to navigate the social ropes at a new school, too distracted by thoughts of Sora's continued absence, to further his goal of getting to know others on campus.
That included Tidus. It covered Selphie and Wakka too, as well as Hayner and his usual group of friends. While Riku had been tempted to try his hand at accepting Pence's standing invitation to sit with them again during lunch, he wasn't sure he could trust himself around Roxas enough not to start rooting around for more information about Sora.
It'd been hard enough to keep his mouth shut around Kairi and just hope she'd say something informative during the few words they exchanged at the beginning and end of each study hall period. As it currently stood, Kairi really hadn't.
Because Sora's texts weren't giving him any clues. Nevertheless, Riku had reread every single one on multiple occasions. He'd tried to connect the words Sora was choosing to divulge about his illness with the knowledge of assorted medical conditions he'd been researching online. This meant revisiting messages that were days old just to see if there was something he might have missed.
As far as Riku could tell, there was nothing.
Riku still enjoyed texting with Sora; his classmate's messages were sharply observant, articulately worded. The more humorous exchanges also tended to bring a silly smile to his face in places he probably shouldn't have a silly smile on it, and they provided a minor respite from worrying about Seifer's continued attempts to "have a little chat", not to mention Hayner's persistent stoniness whenever their gazes had the misfortune of crossing the same sightline.
It was just too bad Sora's messages couldn't save him from the extended periods at school when he couldn't check his phone, when he had to resign himself to listening to academic lectures with questionable factuality and participate in science lab sessions he vaguely remembered having completed in ninth and tenth grade already.
There were also periods of silence, times when he wouldn't get a text from Sora for hours on end. It was those yawning conversational chasms that worried Riku the most. None had been as large as Monday's nearly day-long gap, but there were times when Sora's response time would noticeably lapse. Riku supposed Sora might be resting. Despite his uncertainty about whether it was a head cold or an unfortunate case of food poisoning that was actually ailing his classmate, either would provide a reasonable excuse to need to go silent on occasion.
Riku'd never heard of a head cold keeping someone out of school for the better part of a week, though, and wasn't food poisoning generally short-lived? He'd always thought so.
It was these types of troubling thoughts that he was pondering on his way toward the locker room when Riku collided with another student who had stopped abruptly in front of him — someone with all-too-familiar blond hair, blue eyes, and monochromatic arm bands winding from his wrists all the way up to his elbows. Someone who also hadn't exactly gone out of his way to be friendly to him or acknowledge his existence all week.
"Shit," he said, the word associated both with the identity of the student as much as his own blatant inattention. Riku took a step back, tucked a section of wayward hair back behind his ear. "Sorry about that."
Although Roxas looked up, he said nothing, offered no snarky remarks. His expression remained impassive. While his eyes met Riku's without reservation, there was a vacant, closed-off quality to the look that was unnerving.
Shuffling to one side and around his classmate, uttering another murmured apology, Riku increased his pace toward the locker room, his hand rising to the strap of his messenger back, as though seeking something to steady itself with.
Yeah, asking Roxas about Sora was definitely out of the question. Roxas seemed to have an uncanny knack for throwing Riku off-kilter, whether or not he was doing it with any ounce of sentient intention.
Entering the locker room, Riku made his way past changing students at their lockers with determined purpose. Vaguely, he noted Seifer and his company of friends off in one corner of the room, could even feel eyes on him as he disappeared into the shower and bathroom area. Locking the door to the handicapped stall, Riku dropped his bag and rummaged through it until he found one of the swim bottoms he used to wear during polo practice back in San Francisco. Maybe it was a little cowardly to get changed in a bathroom stall, but under the circumstances, Riku figured this was the simplest way to ensure Seifer didn't catch him unawares while he was in a vulnerable position.
Once changed, he waited out the sounds of students filtering from the locker room, their voices echoing in the narrow corridor that connected the changing area to the indoor gymnasium. Only when the last remnant sounds of shuffling footsteps faded entirely did Riku emerge, street clothes and messenger bag in hand. He dropped his belongings off at the locker he'd been assigned, eyes scanning the room to ensure no one had remained behind waiting for him, then returned to the shower area for his usual pre-swimming routine.
This area was empty too, and Riku entered the showers feeling encouraged at the thought of getting to swim again, even if just for a basic skills assessment. The moment the shower's water hit his head, the moment it began running down his shoulders and back, tension began to drain out of his shoulders. It even reduced the enduring ache in the muscles of his neck.
He wasn't concerned about the swimming test. Not really. Riku had been swimming for as long as he could remember, first in private classes with his friends thanks to their parents' exclusive fitness club affiliations, then as a member of his middle school's swim team. Then it was water polo the moment he got to high school. He'd even braved the bitter iciness of Pacific waters along the Northern California coast, mostly on dares from friends during trips to the smattering of beaches just a few miles north of San Francisco proper. He could hold his breath underwater for over two minutes, as needed, didn't even mind opening his eyes despite the prospect of stinging chlorine. Anything Tidus wanted him to do to pass this thing, Riku was pretty confident he could handle.
Twisting the shower's knob to off, Riku shook his head, then pulled his hair up and secured it behind his head with a thin elastic band before making his way over to the door labeled with a sign indicating the way to the Radiant High's swimming pool.
With its bland cement interior and school logo made up of paint half peeled away a few decades after its original application, Radiant High's aquatics center wasn't anything to write home about. For the purposes of Riku's current interests, which he hadn't yet defined beyond getting back in the water after two weeks off now and counting, it'd serve its purpose just fine, however.
Pausing beneath the pool area's entranceway, Riku scanned the space, first noting the one and three meter diving springboards at a section of the pool separate from the standard lap area, then taking in the yellowing spectator bleachers directly across from him, along with the rope and hard plastic lane lines that divided the pool lengthwise. With peeling paint, uneven concrete underfoot, and scummy overhead lighting, this looked nothing like his school's recently updated swimming facilities. Nevertheless, there remained a certain level of comfort associated with the familiar short course competitive standard pool size that he was by now well accustomed to.
There appeared to be a class of younger students taking place, maybe sophomores or juniors, which was why Riku initially overlooked Tidus at the far end of the pool. It was the flash of movement indicating his classmate's beckoning wave that ultimately caught Riku's attention.
Making his way toward Tidus, Riku glanced at the swim class, noting that some of the students were making attempts at performing what appeared to be the butterfly — or possibly a really awkward version of breast stroke. It was hard to say, given all the extraneous arm flailing that was happening.
So, when Hayner'd said the school's focus and funding went into team sports, it seemed safe to assume swimming wasn't top on the list among the viable athletic tracks, Riku hazarded to guess.
Dressed in a pair of long swim trunks and a plain white tank top, a worn wooden clipboard in hand, Tidus nodded as Riku came to a stop next to him. They exchanged one word greetings before Tidus looked down at what Riku could just make out as being a short checklist that looked like it'd been printed off an actual typewriter, then Xeroxed for ten years straight until the ink was only a shade darker than the paper itself.
"Coach said you wanted to use the pool during open hours."
Riku directed his gaze up, away from the checklist. "Yeah."
Glancing over at the splashing throngs of underclassmen, Tidus raised his brows. "What's your experience level?"
Riku followed his classmate's line of sight and considered how much he should say. Ultimately opting for brevity in favor of oversharing, he answered with a succinct, "I was on my school's water polo team before I moved here."
"This shouldn't be that hard then."
As Tidus spoke, he moved closer to the edge of the diving section, Riku following a few steps behind. He watched as Tidus pulled out a pencil from under the clipboard's metal fastener, before looking back up at him.
"Ready? The first requirement is just to jump into the water."
Tempted to make a joke and ask if he got extra points for style, Riku ultimately decided to err on the side of caution and keep the words to himself. He made up the remaining distance from Tidus and the pool's edge, noting the cement likely worn smooth by decades of teenage feet, by hands using fingers to grip as they pulled adolescent frames out of chlorinated depths.
He entered the pool without ceremony, feet first, arms by both sides. Riku let the initial shock of cold pool water engulf him, savored the rush of bubbles that rose around his face, feeling their oxygenated effervescence as they passed through tendrils of loose hair hovering weightless above him. Pausing only a moment to open his eyes, to appreciate the soundless vacuum of calm ten feet of vertical watery extent afforded him, Riku relaxed his shoulders, stretched his arms out on either side of him, then scissor-kicked his way back to the surface to receive his next instructions from Tidus.
The test was straightforward, simple, just as Riku'd anticipated. It started with him treading water for a minute, then being tasked with retrieving a small weighted ring thrown down to the bottom of the pool. From there, it was just one lap of freestyle across the pool's twenty-five meters, half the length across which Riku had once competed during swim meets and IM relays prior to switching his focus to polo during his freshman year.
Tidus didn't say much throughout the test, simply went down the list in front of him, ticking off brief marks with his pencil after Riku completed each exercise. Before long he was nodding, seemingly satisfied, following the action up with a murmured, "all done."
Pushing himself half out of the water on locked elbows, Riku swung one leg over the pool's edge, knee momentarily bent before he straightened and rose to a standing position. Water streamed downward as he reached both hands up to tuck loose strands of hair behind both ears, then wrung the excess water out of the hair still secured behind his head.
He looked over at Tidus, realized his classmate was studying him quietly.
"This close to the Gulf, I'm guessing everyone can swim pretty well." It was a comment meant to elicit a simple reply, a safe topic, mere smalltalk to break silence that could easily lapse from comfortable to awkward if allowed to linger too long.
A small smile formed in response, Tidus' gaze moving to the flailing theatrics of the class still taking place on the other side of the pool. "You might be surprised."
With a light jerk of his head, Tidus started moving, his plastic flip-flops faintly thrumming against the pads of his feet as he walked. Riku followed a few steps behind him.
"Open swim is Thursdays after school, but it was cancelled today." As he spoke, Tidus shifted the clipboard, holding it in one hand against the side of his hip. "You obviously passed with flying colors, so I'll get the paperwork submitted to make it official. But yeah, feel free to come next week and do laps, dive, or whatever you want."
"Cool, thanks." Riku felt a modicum of relief in knowing the test really had been as simple as he'd been anticipating. He hadn't truly thought Tidus would be unfair in assessing his swimming abilities, but after a handful of days interacting with him only on the most superficial of levels, Riku hadn't really known what to expect. What he did know was he'd been missing getting to swim on a regular basis. Polo season was long over, but it'd become routine to swim at least a few days after school every week, to spend time with other swimming enthusiasts among his former school peers if only to be able to counter Kadaj's teasing claims of him being a complete social recluse since his main other extracurricular interest involved holing up in front of a computer at home.
Now he'd have that outlet again, at least one afternoon a week. Now, Riku hoped, he'd have something to focus on apart from what was going on with Sora. That said, the irony wasn't lost on him that it'd been at Sora's suggestion that he'd even considered asking about using the school swimming pool in the first place.
Anyway. No need to dwell on that. This was good. This was a positive turn of events.
"So…" As they approached the locker room entrance, Tidus slowed. "How long have you been swimming like that?"
Riku paused, not quite sure what Tidus was asking. "Like …on a school team?"
Glancing over him, Tidus nodded, expression still a measure of neutrality that Riku couldn't read one way or the other.
"I started in middle school, then joined the water polo team as a freshman when I got to high school."
"Ah." With another nod, Tidus turned back, began to walk into the main locker room. They were early, and if Riku hurried he thought he might be able to shower off, switch back into street clothing, and make a hasty exit before Seifer and the others returned from the neighboring gymnasium.
Still, the tone of Tidus' inquiry left a sense of incompleteness to the conversation they'd been having. As they both entered the bathroom and shower area, Riku slowed to a stop and quirked his head, fixing his gaze on his classmate. "Why do you ask?"
Tidus didn't stop, but he turned his head enough for Riku to catch a subtle smile in profile. "I was just thinking about how we might not've placed dead last at State this year if you'd ended up moving here a few months earlier."
Before Riku could form a response that didn't give away his surprise at the comment, Tidus had already skirted around the corner that led toward the assigned lockers, leaving him not only to shower off on his own but also to consider the revelation that some people might truly be starting to warm up to him at this school after all.
o - o
In Riku's estimation, the level of perfume Kairi was wearing in study hall should have warranted immediate disciplinary action — or at least a firm directive toward the nearest restroom to wash some of it off with absolutely zero room for optional pitstops.
It was times like these he was grateful his mother had always been uninterested in wearing what amounted to nothing less in Riku's mind than an overt form of airborne chemical warfare. Because, as it stood, the scent Kairi was currently sporting was having an alarmingly astringent effect on his otherwise healthy lungs.
As was becoming the usual norm since their group had been reduced from three to two, they sat beside each other at their standard library table, schoolbooks and notepads out, pencils and pens prepped to help when rote lesson memorization from straight-up reading ultimately started to fail them. Four days into the week and already finding himself ahead in most of his classes, study hall was getting increasingly monotonous for Riku without Sora's bubbly presence. Before long, he found his attention drifting, away from a mathematics assignment that wasn't due for almost a week, back toward a personal project he and his friend Neku had been in the middle of back home prior to the upheaval that followed in the direct aftermath of his move to Radiant Hollow.
But first, yet another iPhone check for text messages.
In keeping with his resolve not to be too invasive in his own line of topic choices, Riku had mostly let Sora lead each e-conversation throughout the week. Their latest exchange of back-and-forth messages had revolved around Kairi, with Sora trying to use Riku as a sounding board to help figure out where to go to celebrate her upcoming eighteenth birthday.
Considering the only things in this town Riku was even remotely familiar with involved school and his family's rental home, he hadn't been able to offer much by way of suggestions. Nevertheless, he'd proposed an alternative prior to his swim test, offering to meet Sora at his home sometime over the weekend and help him brainstorm ideas in person.
He was willing to admit to himself, at least, that the suggestion might have had more to do with wanting to see Sora than any real interest in throwing the perfect party for Kairi.
Sora had yet to respond to that last message. Not for the first time in the span of four prolonged school days, Riku found himself wondering if he should be worried by this latest lengthy silence during a time of day Sora was usually pretty chatty.
Determined to do something at least marginally productive that didn't involve worrying about whether he'd said something wrong in his last text, Riku pushed his math book away, then made a grab for his notepad. Flipping to a blank page, he stopped for a moment, trying to remember where exactly he and Neku had left off with their side project a few weeks ago.
Riku bit the metal ferrule at the end of his pencil and tried to focus his thoughts. Since the project was what effectively constituted a web app they'd been hand-coding for the better part of six months, figuring out where to pick up with it would have been considerably easier if he'd had a laptop in front of him. He considered accessing the online repository where his code was stored via iPhone, but nixed the idea just as quickly. One, it'd be a pain to read on such a small screen. Two, he'd be tempted to return to his text messages and skim everything he'd received in the last handful of days from Sora. Again.
It really shouldn't have been so hard to maintain a modicum of focus. Forget Kadaj. Maybe he was the one with an undiagnosed attention deficit problem.
With a harried sigh, Riku leaned forward and began to sketch out a basic model-view-controller diagram. If he couldn't remember exactly where he'd left off, he could at least refresh his memory on what features had been already added.
Still, he couldn't entirely let go of the feeling that this was an utter waste of his time, that his mental faculties were better spent elsewhere today, pretty much anywhere but on this. After the Sora-free week he'd been having, the realization rankled.
He noticed Kairi's change in position as she leaned in closer to him by the sudden increase in repugnant fragrance more than the result of any actual movement on her part.
"I thought you were on the basketball unit in gym."
Riku glanced up from his notebook and hoped to god his eyes didn't start outright watering.
"We are." He eyed what looked like a fresh layer of makeup and the addition of hoop earrings that seemed to dwarf the already diminutive features of her face. "Why?"
Scrunching her nose slightly, Kairi shrugged. "Because you smell like pool chemicals instead of your usual showered off sweat."
And you smell like you doused yourself in Walmart fragrance from the red-tag clearance aisle. What's your point?
Biting his tongue in an effort to keep the mean-spirited thought to himself, Riku turned both to take in a perfume-free breath and settle his internal annoyance long enough to find a zen mental place before responding.
"I was taking an assessment so I could do the open swim session after school."
"With Tidus?"
Kairi's expression changed, seemed to become more keen on what he was saying. For someone who gave off an air of effortless indifference on par with Roxas more frequently than not, to Riku the change was marked.
He nodded. "It's on Thursdays after school. Just not today, apparently."
Gaze drifting away from him, Kairi mimicked his nod. Her attentiveness seemed to dissolve just as quickly as it had appeared, until her eyes ultimately returned to the textbook in front of her.
Not particularly eager to return to his notebook scrawls, Riku decided to try to try another angle with Kairi and just hope it didn't get himself bitchslapped seven ways until Sunday, or whatever that expression Roxas had uttered last week encompassed.
"You're pretty dressed up for a school day. Did I miss Radiant High's version of a Project Runway talent show or something?"
The question got her attention, which had been his aim. The exaggerated eye roll that implied just how lame she thought his observation had been was just an added bonus, he supposed.
"I'm going out on the town tonight," she said, apparently willing to throw him a verbal bone after all. "Didn't want to go home and change before, that's all."
Suppressing the urge to ask how one went 'out on the town' when there wasn't much by way of a town here to speak of, Riku cocked his head, expression turning arch. "I'm guessing Sora's not part of this 'out on the town' equation."
"You guess right." Again, that cautious look of discerning scrutiny he'd seen a few days ago resurfaced as Kairi eyed him. When Riku didn't immediately offer up a response, she turned back to her book. This time, eyes fixed on one spot on the page in particular, Riku noted that she didn't seem to be actually reading anything.
Maybe he should have returned to his own project for the remainder of the hour. But Riku was curious, maybe even a little emboldened by Tidus' recent words of praise after his swim test. Whatever the case, he was feeling reckless enough to pose the inquiry that had been on his mind a lot more than it probably should've been for the past full week.
"Because he's still sick with that stomach bug, or because you're going somewhere it'd be hard to navigate on crutches?"
Kairi's head whipped up so quickly Riku was surprised he hadn't heard her neck crack in overt protest from the wrenching motion. She was regarding him now again, her expression a visible melange of guarded and …something else. It was something that if Riku didn't know any better he might actually call fearful.
Whatever the case, it looked out of place filtering across her usually more self-assured expression.
Interesting, he supposed, except he wasn't done with his line of questioning yet.
"Or, sorry, was it a head cold? I keep forgetting, since I've heard so many different versions of the same story."
That seemed to do the trick, although Riku wasn't certain what exactly he'd accomplished beyond being a little sarcastic. Just the same, Kairi's expression transformed; the uncertainty dissolved, rearranged itself into something much more formidable.
"Okay, Sherlock." Eyes narrowing, Kairi folded her arms one over the other. Without comment, Riku took in a newly painted shade of garish nail polish purple as she leaned back in her chair and regarded him. "What do you think you know?"
Although her voice was lowered to a soft whisper to account for the librarian, Riku noted the underlying steeliness in the words she'd just spoken.
"I saw you both on your way to the pick-up area at school last week." Just like Kairi, Riku kept his tone quiet so his voice wouldn't travel. "I wasn't sure if I should bring it up in study hall or at the party on Friday, so I didn't. And Sora hasn't been around this week, so it's not like I could ask him."
At first, Kairi said nothing, and they sat together a few moments in silence simply eyeing one another, the quiet rustling of paper and scratching of pencils the only sounds within discernible earshot.
Despite himself, Riku found his gaze drifting, thoughts following shortly after. They turned away from Kairi who didn't seem particularly eager to engage him or explain anything further, back to the people at home, friends who he'd known since childhood. None of them would ever have imagined keeping this big of a secret from him. So why did Sora feel such an apparent need?
Part of him knew that he wasn't entitled to information about Sora's personal life, not from Sora and especially not from Kairi. He hadn't known either of them before two weeks ago. But that logical part of him was being surpassed by his growing frustration, coupled with a mix of disconcerting feelings for Sora that he was still having trouble working out and the quiet admission that he had never been predisposed to rationality in moments of heightened emotionality anyway.
"Don't treat him different because of this, y'hear me?"
Unceremoniously jolted from his preoccupied thoughts, Riku spared Kairi the briefest of wary glances. It was enough to see her expression set and resolute next to him, a look that unequivocally implied it wouldn't be worth the effort to argue with her. Riku inhaled deeply again before he remembered to turn aside and was rewarded with a solid lungful of chemically fragrant air that burned a stifling warpath from his throat to chest. He forced himself to exhale slowly without succumbing to the temptation to clear his throat via an outburst bronchial fit of coughing.
Maybe it was the addition of dark eyeshadow that gave Kairi an even more ferocious mien than usual, possibly the realization that all she had to do was unclasp a hoop earring and reach out to be able to stab the shit out of him if she felt the inclination to do so. Whatever the case, there was something about the look Kairi was shooting him that Riku found intimidating.
His voice was much more conciliatory when he next responded.
"I wasn't planning to…"
"Well, good." Her words remained quiet but audibly clipped. "He's special, Sora," she continued in a tone that gave Riku the distinct impression he was being lectured. "He's kind and a nice friend and smarter'n most everyone in this town probably combined. Last thing he needs is some fancy West Coaster feelin' sorry for him or making him think he's less than perfect just the way he is."
Bristling at the comment, Riku unconsciously matched Kairi's narrowed eyes as he looked back over at her. Kairi's expression had already softened, however, and when he spared a second to think about it, he realized none of the things she'd said had been meant as personal insults toward him anyway. Definitely not in the way Seifer and other students had been perpetuating. These were the words of someone wanting to protect a close friend.
Unsure how to respond, or even if her comment warranted a return reply at all, Riku shifted in his chair. He dropped his head, still-damp tendrils of hair brushing against cheeks on either side of his face, offering him just a hint of the chlorine smell Kairi must have initially gotten a whiff of and felt the need to comment about. Coupled with the persistent cling of his classmate's fragrance, their corner of the library was fast becoming a bastard love child of two olfactory offenses.
Moreover, Kairi still technically hadn't told him what going on with Sora, and Riku wasn't even sure if he was justified in feeling frustrated anymore.
It had been Sora who'd first reached out to him here though, not the other way around. Riku had been enrolled at this school with the knowledge that he'd already gotten into his top choice college. He'd known going into this whole relocation that the credits he'd completed at his last school qualified him to walk in that institution's graduation ceremony, not this one's.
Radiant Hollow was a temporary situation, something to offer normalcy to his life until he could go home and move on with it for good. It was an interim, and Riku wouldn't have much minded if he'd had to endure a little under three months without making friends with people he never planned to see again. He hadn't necessarily wanted to stick out, to be the butt of people like Seifer's racist jokes. But sliding by under the radar would have been just fine, as far as he was concerned.
He hadn't planned on meeting someone like Sora, definitely hadn't anticipated actually caring how he came off to anyone else at this school.
Between Sora's absence and Kairi's associated guardedness, then Roxas' avoidance, Hayner's enduring stoicism, and Seifer's determination to corner and talk to him, Riku felt like he was socially floundering now more than ever.
The rub of it was that he'd never asked to be handed any of this juvenile nonsense in the first place.
Mind made up, it took one quick motion to reach for his messenger bag, another to retrieve his school supplies from the study hall table, and Riku was standing, aware of Kairi's newfound attention on his actions but not outwardly acknowledging it. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said in a whisper, words polite, tone neutral as he turned to go.
He stopped only once, up at the librarian's front desk to explain why he was leaving last period early, then exited the library, hand in his pocket to retrieve his iPhone without a backward glance on eyes he could still feel following him.
Gaze traveling to the phone in his hands, Riku took only a short moment to scan the lock screen. Sighing, he pocketed the device, then began the trek over to the admin office to get the parking permit paperwork he'd told his mother he'd take care of a few days earlier. It shouldn't have been such a letdown, Riku knew. Still, he couldn't help but feel that nagging, fortified disappointment at the realization that Sora still hadn't answered the last question he'd posed via text message about offering to visit him.
o - o
It was more about a lack of homework to busy himself with than being an internet stalker. A least, that was the angle Riku was in the active process of mentally justifying to himself. Otherwise, he had no viable rationale for looking up Sora's Facebook profile while once again stuck home alone after school.
Besides, he continued reasoning with himself as he shifted the laptop to a comfortable position across his thighs, it's not like there was any real harm in looking. Anything he saw would be what was Sora had made publicly available. He'd freely admit he enjoyed the occasional hours-long coding session, but he wasn't about to try and hack into a social network as large as Facebook for the sake of an unrequited high school crush.
Or whatever the hell it was he was currently feeling.
Sora was relatively easy to track down online; his name was distinctive, and it wasn't like Radiant Hollow was that large of a town to begin with. In the span of a few minutes of light internet snooping, Riku was face-to-face with Sora Strife of Radiant Hollow Senior High School. Or his profile picture, technically.
And Roxas. A smiling — beaming — photo of Roxas standing right next to his twin brother in the profile box's frame.
Riku blinked, took a moment to process the image. He'd seen Roxas smile before, sure, but it usually felt insincere or put-on for a specific purpose.
There was nothing artificial about the expressions on either face in this photo. It was Sora pursing his lips into an expression of mock seriousness, brows comically furrowed and looking one-eyed toward the camera. Everything about Sora was the same as Riku was accustomed to, except possibly for age. Glancing at the post-date, Riku quickly confirmed the photo had been uploaded about a year ago, when both boys would have been a year younger.
It was Roxas who gave Riku pause, the primary reason being that the expression he was so effortlessly making reminded him much more starkly of ...Sora.
Eyes wide, two pools of acute blue, if Riku homed his focus directly toward these individual features, he'd have been hard-pressed to distinguish between the two siblings at all.
That was just the start. Apart from the noticeable differences in skin tone and hair color, Roxas was offering a bright smile so similar to what Riku was accustomed to seeing on Sora, he could almost let himself believe the features had been swapped via a clever manipulation in Photoshop. It was the first time Riku felt he could truly see the fraternal similarities in their appearances.
Roxas seemed to have been caught mid-laugh; his brows were raised, eyes looking slightly away from the camera. There was a measure of spontaneity to the moment that the image had captured superbly, which gave it an endearing quality.
There were a couple older profile pictures of Sora alone, which Riku studied in turn. Each incrementally younger version of his classmate had been taken from mid-chest and up as he'd been either smiling or making a less than serious face. Scrolling down Sora's actual profile page, Riku noted a decided lack of recent status updates; either Sora wasn't an avid Facebook user, or he kept his statuses private. Well aware of how to bypass some social networking privacy features, Riku contented himself instead with clicking through to the photo albums that were publicly visible.
A quick scan of the screenshot previews gave him more than enough to focus on.
There weren't a lot of public pictures, but the sampling was enough to offer Riku a glimpse of the last few years of Sora's personal life. Most of the people tagged were those he recognized — Sora with Selphie and Tidus poolside at Radiant High, images of Wakka and him making faces on the bleachers that overlooked the RHSH football stadium. There was even a younger version of Sora and Kairi grinning by a campfire at a marshland clearing that looked starkly similar to where they'd been last weekend.
Mostly, there were photos of Sora with Roxas, series of carefree poses, of silly faces, of a side that depicted their relationship so differently than Riku himself had thus far gotten to witness it.
It had only been two weeks, he reminded himself. In that same span of time if the tables were turned, how much could Sora genuinely say he knew about Riku's home life?
As he continued to scroll through image after image, Riku couldn't stop himself from wondering how he could have gone almost a full week without knowing Roxas and Sora were related. He might have been left in the dark for even longer if not for their mutual exchange of numbers and last weekend's marshland get-together.
He paused in his photo perusal, still pondering the discrepancy. When Riku finally did look up, it was the image of four boys in front of a modest looking A-frame that met his gaze, the photo's publication date indicating it was about three years old. One after the other, Riku studied the four, noting the similarity in coloring between the tallest, who also appeared to be the oldest in the group, and Roxas who was standing, smiling, by his side. Sora was next to Roxas, seated on the steps that led up to their porch, wearing a graduation mortar board cap that seemed a size too big for his head. Immediately next to him another boy lounged, dark hair slicked neatly back, forearms resting on his knees covered by a dark graduation gown as he hunched slightly forward and offered the camera a subtle smile.
Sora had tagged himself. He'd tagged Roxas, and the dark-haired boy. Given the identical surname, Riku thought it was probably safe to assume that 'Ventus Strife' was another family member, possibly a brother.
On a whim, Riku directed his mouse to Roxas' tagged name, then clicked through to his profile. Without any fully formed ideas as to what to expect, at least he wasn't disappointed to see nothing beyond an empty page with no public statuses and the same profile image that Sora had used for his own account. Feeling somehow more intrusive snooping on Roxas despite not having found anything substantive, Riku deleted the tab from his browser a moment later, then sat back in his chair.
Stretching the muscles in his neck first toward one shoulder and then the other, he deposited his laptop back in its original place on his desk, then stood, in need of a momentary reprieve from his computer and the images he'd just seen.
If only Sora were as easy to take a mental break from.
Feeling antsy, Riku exited his room, making his way toward the stairs, then descending into the main foyer entryway. There were still a few days of March left, it was hardly even the start of spring, but the air seemed to be thickening with increasing humidity on every passing day. It was a stifling, unfamiliar feeling that made it feel a lot warmer than it actually was outside. Riku wasn't sure it was something he'd ever get fully used to.
Somehow, he had to survive this disgusting weather until at least the end of June. He had a feeling he was going to need to give in and at least buy a pair of shorts at some point well before then.
Still, it was a little ridiculous how much he was disinclined to go outside, to have to endure even just five minutes of humidity on his way to complete a task as simple as retrieving the day's mail.
With a light shake of his head, Riku pulled open the door and exited his house, determined to get this over with as quickly as possible. Hopping down the few steps from the rental's modest porch onto the dirt and grass that inelegantly littered the ground out and away from the house, Riku headed toward the property boundary, noting Xion's familiar outline in the direction he was heading. Her back was half facing him, head down as she scanned a single sheet of paper clutched between both hands as Riku made his way up to her. It hadn't been his intention to look at her mail, and certainly not to startle her, but as he got closer, the familiar emblem of a United States federal district courthouse jumped out at him and he found himself speaking up without announcing his arrival anyway.
"Jury duty? That sucks."
Although Xion didn't start from the sudden introduction of a new presence, Riku could see the responding tension in her stance. Slowly, she turned toward him, glancing up with a look Riku could only describe as disoriented. "Sorry?"
"Jury duty," he repeated, then inclined his head toward the paper still clutched in her hands. "I know they can call you in as soon as you turn eighteen, but they really don't waste time down here, apparently."
"Oh." Xion blinked a little, eyes drifting away at the same time that she started refolding the notice. "There are worse things, I suppose."
Well, Riku thought. She wasn't wrong.
He moved past her, to his family's mailbox, pulling out the few envelopes the mail carrier had left inside it. A quick scan showed that it was all junk mail. He'd essentially left the house for nothing.
Riku glanced back at Xion who still hadn't moved, the letter now fully folded and pressed between the fingers of one hand. She looked an unnecessary level of stunned, and he wondered if she was simply worrying about a process she just wasn't all that familiar with.
"I've heard you can request a different set of dates if they conflict with final exams or something."
She looked up, mouth opening just enough for it to seem like she might say something that her voice ultimately never ended up giving audible purchase to.
Riku took in the persisting grim look on her face and decided to try again. He wasn't sure why a jury summons would induce such a look of impending ruination, but he knew enough about how the legal system worked from his father's dealings to at least be able to offer her a small reassurance. "There's usually a number you can call to get more information if you need to request a change of dates."
Her eyes didn't meet his as they skirted from his chin to the mailboxes next to them, then ultimately to the mail in his own two hands. "Conflict," she said in a way that made it difficult for Riku to discern if it was a noun or a verb. "That sums it up quite nice, actually. Thanks."
Xion turned and began walking away from him before Riku could figure out how to reply to the cryptic statement. Much like her verbal interjection from a week ago, this departure lacked the discourteousness usually associated with taking one's leave from another person in the middle of an unfinished conversation. Riku watched her until she passed by his home on the way toward her own, then began to make the short trek back to the rental house with the renewed determination to do something productive with the remainder of his evening.
Checking his phone one more time before entering the house, Riku made a quick detour to the kitchen to throw out the mail and dig through the refrigerator for some carrot sticks and a drink. Thursdays were his mom's late days at the hospital, and his dad wasn't expected to return from his extended stay lodging closer to the Gulf until tomorrow evening. He'd be alone for awhile here still.
Then came a long weekend of car shopping ahead of them all.
If Riku thought school ran the baseline risk of boring him to death, getting to the nearest Audi dealership and testing out cars for an entire day might be an effective way to finish him off. Try as he might to muster even an iota of enthusiasm for anything associated with luxury vehicles, Riku just didn't see what interested his dad so much about cars in general. They were fine for getting around with, and he was used to driving the high-end models his parents usually purchased every few years, but that was the extent of his own fascination with them, if it could even be called that.
His dad, on the other hand, loved everything about them, kept up with each year's new release on his favorite makes and models. He went to car shows on weekends at every opportunity; once in a while, Riku even agreed to join him in an effort to find some common ground. In reality, he found himself sharing very few interests with either parent, be it professional or extracurricular. He wasn't sure if that was an unusual anomaly or simply a result of not having seen either of them much as a kid because of their intense work schedules.
Heading back to the stairs, he glanced toward Xion's house out of something akin to habit as he passed the dining room windows. He'd gotten so used to seeing her familiar silhouette in a gently rocking swing seat as she read on the front porch of her own house that it seemed somewhat out of sorts to note her manifest lack of presence now. She must've gone inside after retrieving the mail today for once.
He took the stairs two by two on his way back up to his bedroom, quietly clicking the door shut before making his way back to his desk. His workspace was a two-monitor setup, just like back home, powered by a Macbook Pro connected via Thunderbolt cable to both desktop screens. Depositing his plate of carrot sticks and a glass of water at one edge of his desk, Riku settled back in, connected the cable to his laptop, and tapped in his password.
The screens lit up, illuminating his room in a stark, electronic white. Still unable to banish Sora entirely from his involuntary thoughts, Riku was at least glad that he'd had the foresight to delete the evidence of his earlier Facebook search so he wouldn't be tempted to revisit the public photo albums every five minutes. Determined to focus, he launched his Mac's command line so he could pull up the directory on his computer with the latest hard copy of his app stored in it.
He pulled up the web-based public repository in his browser next and took a look at the history of changes he'd made. It'd only been a few weeks since he'd last worked on this project with Neku, but it felt substantially longer. The mental fatigue that came with a different setting and trying to keep all the new people he was meeting straight in his head seemed to stretch the two week period into a more yawning span of time than accounted for by actual reality.
He probably shouldn't have been surprised to see recent updates. Being public, anyone could see the code he'd been working on, comment, and even fork portions and add on to it. The beginnings of an app that users could update with indie band performance locations and dates and not much more at this point, the project wasn't particularly innovative; Riku had merely been working on it with Neku out of a shared love of lesser-known music and in the interest of making a calendar for themselves so they didn't miss any of their favorite musician appearances during the upcoming school year at Stanford.
Skimming down the update history, Riku saw that Neku had forked one of the app's folders that contained front-end aspects associated with the design layout. Curious, he tabbed back over to his command line and made a pull request for the new repository files, then saved them into a temporary directory and pushed them to his localhost server to see what had been changed.
As he surveyed the new design elements, Riku found himself unconsciously relaxing, settling in. Neither parent understood this interest, and he had a hunch that both thought it was a waste of time he could otherwise be using to study something more directly relevant to his preordained college science track. There was something engrossing about web development though, more so than the idea of either medicine or law. It could be just as technical as either of those professions, to be sure, but there was also something artistic about code, in Riku's mind, an aspect that bordered on poetic in the way it could be written in various ways to get to to the same ultimate endpoint. He could spend hours trying to debug a single block of code, and it could be maddening, mentally exhausting. There were times he'd stepped away from his computer, temples pounding, molars grinding against each other, because there was something just slightly off with the syntax or order of his coded directives.
The moment he figured out what was wrong, however, the exact instant he refreshed his server and saw that the change he'd made had resulted in the desired effect, every frustrating minute felt worth the effort expended.
Now, as he looked at the changes implemented since his last repo login, Riku smiled an unconscious smile. He'd never been very good at front-end aesthetics, didn't have a visually intuitive bone in his body, in his personal opinion. He liked the back-end, the code that connected itself to other invisible elements and ensured everything functioned the way it should. In that way, he and Neku made a good team for a project like this.
Tabbing over to a chat program, Riku signed on and pulled up his contact list, seeking Neku's online moniker, sing17.
The design looks good, he typed, then hit send. Did you use Bootstrap?
With his status set to green-available, Neku responded almost immediately.
yea. got bored waiting for you to fix the ordered dropdown. #sorrynotsorry
Oh, right. Riku'd said he was going to find a workaround to that issue almost a month ago.
I'll check Railscasts for a tutorial, he offered. Or ask on Stack Overflow.
Neku responded with a thumbs up emoji and a lowercase 'k'.
Reaching for a carrot stick, Riku placed it half in his mouth to free up his hands so he could type another response.
How's everything? Are you rooming with J on the senior trip?
The following radio silence put Riku on notice that he might not be hearing anything further from his friend, even though Neku usually switched his status to 'away' when he randomly decided to become non-responsive. If Riku was considered quiet, Neku fell closer to verbally-averse on occasion. Kadaj often made jokes about how autistic Neku acted, which Riku found ironic considering his cousin's own learning challenges.
In a way though, Kadaj's jabs may have been somewhat on point, however unintentional. Neku had always been a little quirky, preferring music to people, and Riku still hadn't forgotten how often he used to get into trouble for trying to sneak earbuds into place in the middle of classes at school. Neku rarely agreed to go out to louder venues with their usual group, the exception being band performances. He also rarely made eye contact, and had a level of concentration when it came to activities that held his interest that Riku found enviable. As much as Riku enjoyed coding, two or three hours was generally his max before he needed to get up and step away. It wasn't unusual for Neku to pull all-nighters when he was in the middle of an intense coding project, on the other hand. Although his friend wasn't the most adept at social scenarios, his grades had always been admirable, and just like most of their other friends' parents, Neku's mother was busy enough with her own career to have been oblivious to instances where her son might have been subtly struggling.
Much like dealing with Kadaj's wandering thoughts, Riku had developed methods of handling Neku's idiosyncrasies throughout the years of their friendship, to the point where he sometimes hardly noticed them anymore. That included Neku's frequent lapses into silence when they were chatting online. Unlike Kadaj losing his tenuous hold on concentration, it was more likely that Neku had returned to whatever it was he was focusing on prior to their conversation with tunnel vision so intense he probably hadn't even heard the message's ringing notification, if he even had his audio enabled in the first place.
Crunching into the carrot, Riku turned away from the monitor to retrieve his glass of water and take a sip. By the time he turned back, a response was blinking in front of him.
He looked at it, initially surprised to see anything from Neku after a few minutes of silence. The surprise blossomed into bewilderment when he actually read the response.
lol, no. we're not going. didn't your mom tell you about our visit?
Leaning forward, Riku typed out a quick reply.
No, wth?
He'd assumed that was enough of a prompt for Neku to catch on that he wanted further clarification. Just his luck, this was the moment Neku decided not to respond.
He waited two minutes, ate a few more carrots and noted that Neku's status had switched to away. He made it another five before clicking on the chat program's real-time call button.
Riku figured there was about a fifty-fifty chance of Neku actually picking up. After a few electronic rings, the line ultimately clicked through, indicating his friend had accepted the call. Although Neku didn't say anything, Riku could hear rapid-fire keyboard clicking coming through from his end of the audio feed. The video had been disabled on Neku's end, possibly via something as simple as a post-it note fastened over his computer's built-in camera. Riku's mind wasn't particularly blown by this realization; Neku had never liked the social convention requiring eye contact during one-on-one conversations.
"What were you saying about a visit?"
There was a pause in the typing sounds from Neku's end of the connection.
"The senior class, in a moment of collective what-the-fuckness, voted on Half Moon Bay and the Monterrey Aquarium. Unless you're ten, it's not worth the time it takes to drive down to either one of them."
The typing resumed while Riku tried to make the connection between a stupid senior trip venue and a hinted-at visit halfway across the country.
"So… you're coming to Radiant Hollow instead."
Neku scoffed. "With the way you've been describing it to Kadaj? No way. It sounds worse than watching fish do nothing for five straight hours surrounded by people I actually hate."
That wasn't all that inaccurate, Riku conceded. But he still wasn't totally following.
"Maybe I'm just being slow on the uptake, because I'm still not seeing how a visit fits in here."
"You are." The typing started up again as Neku continued speaking. "But your parents should've already told you. We're doing a long weekend in New Orleans. Mom's been gushing about it all week."
Um, what? All week? Riku wasn't unaccustomed to his mother spacing out and forgetting to tell him things, but this was so far out in left field he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around it.
"If we're lucky," Neku continued, pausing in his typing once again, "we can do our own thing and let them do theirs. I do not want to spend an entire weekend listening to your cousin bitch about having to walk around a museum or something."
Pulling up his computer's calendar, Riku skimmed the month of April and did some quick calculating as he tried to remember when the senior trip had been initially scheduled.
"So, you guys are coming three weeks from now?"
"Something like that. Ask your mom." Neku resumed typing. "And fix the dropdown soon. It's obnoxious."
He disconnected before Riku could respond.
Sitting back in his chair, Riku looked up, over his computer monitors and out into the encroaching darkness from the window behind his desk. All this time, he'd been counting down the months, the weeks, sometimes even day by dragging day, until he could return home and restart his regular life. Now people from the only world he'd ever known were going to be visiting here.
Or within a ninety minute driving distance, anyway. Close enough.
He wanted to be happy about the news, and to an extent Riku was. There was even a level of relief knowing they wouldn't be encountering some of the xenophobic bullshit he'd been dealing with here. The idea of Kadaj or any of his friends encountering Roxas was just too much for his socially overwhelmed mind to process.
Or, Jesus, Seifer. Without question, the moment that neanderthal opened his mouth and said something even hinting at derogatory within hearing distance of Kadaj, Riku had no doubt that it'd result in a fight. Some people thought through the consequences of their decisions prior to acting on them. Kadaj did not happen to be one among their numbers.
The sound of another notification pulled him away from his ponderings, and Riku looked up, re-entering his password to access his idling computer.
He saw no unread chat messages. Neku's status indicated that he'd signed off, or maybe gone on invisible.
Confused, Riku stared at the screen, trying to figure out the sound he'd just heard.
A moment later, it came again, from a position lower than his computer's speaker. Riku looked down, suddenly remembering the phone stored in his pants pocket, and feeling more than a little stupid. His phone's notification sound wasn't even remotely similar to the one his computer made.
Sliding it out and skimming the lock screen to read over both of what turned out to finally be responses from Sora, Riku felt the telltale signs of returning physical tension.
The first message was a polite rejection of his offer to pay a visit to Sora's house, citing some reasonably considerate concern about still being contagious and passing the pseudo-stomach flu off on Riku, which he didn't buy for a single second. The next message was shorter, a simple statement that Sora expected to be back in school on Monday at the latest.
He stared at both messages for longer than they took to read again, unsure if the sudden heat in his chest was enduring concern or blossoming anger. Idly, Riku wondered if he had a right to feel either.
It was a head cold, then later amended to a nebulous combination of stomach flu and food poisoning. But the blue sclera he'd personally observed indicated something more serious, something totally unrelated to either claim of temporary illness. And myriad secrets, lies offered up with emoticon smiles attached as though preemptively softening the blow of latent untruthfulness. Above all, there was the realization that no matter how much Sora seemed to want to include him, Riku was, without question, still an outsider into the lives of others here.
Jaw still tight, Riku took one last look at his lit-up lock screen before depositing it on the table next to his empty snack plate, face down. He made the quick decision to figure out how to respond later, gaze drifting back to his web app project. Right now, he needed to lose himself in something familiar, something concrete and straightforward and unrelated to Sora, for just a little while longer.