A/N: Here is a new chapter. Question: is it too long? Would anyone prefer if future chapters were shorter? Many many thank yous to yellowis4happy, dishrag-chan, and midday. This chapter is a New Pornographers song title. In case it's not clear, the very last scene is a flashback.
edit: it was, indeed, too long. so now it has been split into a two part chapter. hope you enjoy!
Deconstruction
X: Twin Cinema
-/-/-/-
Akito:
"So is that why you moved?" says Britt. "Because of what he said?"
I need to think it over. "I think I would have moved eventually," I say slowly, giving myself time to think, "but it would have taken longer. Everyone knew so much about me, but that was all in the past and I just wanted to move on. Kakeru showed me how to do that."
I came here for that city feeling, that anonymity. So I could stop feeling like the weird one, or at least be weird for strangers rather than people I knew and cared about. I stayed up late studying every night after Kakeru left, so that I could get the scholarship I applied for to go into the accelerated program and move to a city where schools offered it.
Everything I have is the result of my fear of other people's expectations.
Daniel and Tohru go to get yogurt. Britt says, "Are you happier here?"
I should be. I have to be. "I think so."
"That's good."
I look towards Tohru and Daniel. Deeply engaged in conversation as they wait for their orders, neither is smiling. A pulse of worry chills me, until I decide to stop flattering myself and that they're probably talking about something that has nothing to do with me. I'd been fairly tactful with my story, and they nodded as I talked rather than cringing or even looking too surprised when I mentioned gender-revealing details.
Wait.
Did they already know?
I am an idiot. And I've never been happier to realize it. I almost laugh, but then Britt would think I was some kind of freak.
"It feels like I haven't talked to you in so long," I say.
"Yeah. Same."
"How are you?"
She looks mildly surprised, like she's not used to being asked. "Okay, you?"
"Okay."
As Daniel and Tohru come back, I almost forget about their conversation. I'm too overcome by the paradigm shift – who else knows? Rin and Jazzy don't, I'm pretty sure. Or Yuki. But would they act any differently if they did? Jazzy's hardly gender-normative and no one seems bothered. My teachers don't know, at least not my art teacher. Did that girl at the party? Kureno –
My stomach twists into a knot. Oh.
I've been trying to block that night from my memory. It resurfaces in sharp, technicolor relief whenever I start to wonder what that vague sense of loss lurking in my thoughts is caused by.
The look on his face when I yelled at him... I wasn't used to having so much power over another person. It kind of scared me. But the thought of what could have happened, if I hadn't gotten out of there... that was worse.
How can I be so terrified of both control and lack of it?
No, this can't happen. This thinking so much that I make myself sick, stop it. I'm surrounded by people who know me, who accept me. I'm with a girl who I like, and who I have a chance with. Don't ruin this.
"So, let's go meet Caylee and Ritsu," I say. "I haven't seen them in ages."
-/-/-/-
Kyo:
Every since I really became aware of my existence, I've been running. It's always been there, a constant in my life. I need that. Everyone needs that, I think: something they can control.
As a preteen, standing on the doorstep, turning the key, on days when t.v. sounds pounded all the way outside, because my mom thought that way no one would hear her crying through the walls. I'd leave her, locking herself away in her room, and I'd toss my backpack in the corner and turn back out, slamming the door behind me.
I'd tune in to my music, slightly broken headphones shooting sound and electric shocks through me and I'd run. It was this sudden reminder of why I did the things I did to feel alive. It's funny, 'cause most of the songs I liked, even as a kid, weren't happy ones, but they made everything seem less mind-crushingly hopeless. I guess it was just knowing I wasn't the only screwed-up freak who'd felt like this.
The streets ate the bottoms of my jeans and I could only go a few kilometers before the stitch in my side would cause me to collapse into the grass or on a bench. And then, sometimes, I'd laugh, even though nothing was funny – just because I felt good, and it was so different to be happy, like gravity wasn't pulling me down so hard as usual.
Then I'd draw. Or vandalize, I guess, depending on your perspective. The first time wasn't planned, I'd found a pencil stub in my pocket, thought "Why the hell not?" and started scribbling on the arm of a bench. I got so into it, by the time I was done I was squinting in the strained sunlight, wood splintered under my fingernails from ripping at the pencil to get at more lead, both arms of the bench entirely covered, along with some of the pavement.
I'd made this comic, sort of. Except it didn't have panels. It was supposed to, but then details started leaking over the borders, so in the end I stopped planning and just drew. It was about a superhero who could control wind, so that it could lift him up and he'd fly, and he could save people from falling, and he could fight evil with cyclones he willed into being. He saved all the innocent bystanders, stopped the crimes, got the girl. For superheroes, stuff always works out in the end.
When the story was complete, at least for the time being, the wind carried him and his girlfriend, another superhero, one who could control plants, off to new places and adventures. In the last scene, drawn on the pathway like a graphite puddle leaking from the bench, they smiled as, with arms outstretched, they soared away.
It's gone now. Faded by the sun and scraped by the sleeves of people stopping to rest, washed away by the rain – it was nearly gone after the first few days, and after two weeks it looked as though it never was. That's okay. The things I make are meant to be temporary, because they're part of the city and the city is always changing.
If running is my constant, this is the yin to the yang, entirely transitory. My style changes all the time. As I'm pulling a paint can from my backpack and quickly shaking it, hearing the paint rattle inside, I know that I'll be lucky is it doesn't get whited out in a week. But until then, at least I'll have something to look at, something that lets me have some impact on the things I see everyday.
I still vandalize and I still run. As I switched schools, moved from a house to an apartment, passed in and out of friendships and relationships, I pushed myself to go further, get stronger. I couldn't stand still.
-/-/-/-
When a time ends, you usually don't realize it. Or I don't, at least. I guess.... I guess you get so used to the way things are that you don't notice stuff until it's gone, whether it's good or bad. You don't think about it. But you feel it, sometimes, like energy, a beat to move to, or else like a membrane between you and the world.
When my mom died, my dad and I moved into a small apartment. We gave up on the illusion of being a family and stopped talking to each other. We yell sometimes. Being angry is better than being nothing.
-/-/-/-
Tohru:
"It's okay, Grandpa – I can take the bus."
"Nonsense, there's no need to when it's hardly out of Taro's way."
Taro cut in – "Actually, I have to go right now, and if she isn't ready –"
"You're ready, aren't you Tohru?"
"I have to get my backpack from my room, but other than that."
"See?" I could hear the smile in my grandfather's voice. I dashed to retrieve my pack. "Have a good day!" he called after Taro and I as we left the house.
"Bye! You too!" I said, waving behind me.
"Come on!" said Taro, the car door slamming as he stepped in. I got into the passenger side, then had some difficulty transferring my overfull backpack into the back seat. Taro tapped his finger on the dashboard as I maneuvered the heavy, unwieldy bundle, try to fit it between the space of the two chairs without dropping it or hitting his head. Once I'd finished and seatbelted myself in, he pulled out of the driveway without a word.
Despite having gone through my morning routine, if I can call it a routine considering this was the first day of it, I didn't feel ready at all. I've never minded school, even if I'm not particularly good at it. I hadn't anticipated being nervous. First days have always made me anxious, with so many people I don't know all around, but I thought, with everything that had happened, things like this wouldn't bother me anymore. They shouldn't have bothered me.
Mom wouldn't have wanted me to worry. She would tell me to be brave and do my best, that if I was true to myself then of course the other students would like me, all the ones whose opinions mattered at least. I looked out the window with newfound determination at the colours washing past. Mid-height, brown buildings. The school was minutes away.
"Lot of stuff," says Taro.
"Huh?"
"Your backpack. You know you only need textbooks and a binder for your first day, don't you? And you probably won't even use those."
"I know."
"Then what's in your backpack?"
"Oh... you know..." I could feel his eyes fixed on me, refusing to release me until I'd supplied an answer he found acceptable. "My lunch... a book... my screenplay binder... calculator-"
"You brought your screenplays?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"In case I want to work on them."
"You work on them all the time, and it's not like you've ever finished one."
"I might be close."
"You don't know?"
"I'll know when it's finished." The car parked with a jerk and I stepped out, then took my stuff from the back. "Thank you for the ride. Sorry Grandpa made you do it."
The wind stung my skin and tossed my long hair all around. As I opened the door to the building I was hit by a blast of warm air and a wave of sound. Students were everywhere, pressed close together, talking to their friends.
I tried to avoid people as I walked, but it was difficult to get control where I went – most of the crowd ignored me and obscured my path or pressed me in the wrong direction. I couldn't get close enough to the doors to make out enough of the room numbers to put them into a pattern to find my class. I turned in circles, like I thought the answer to everything might be hiding right behind me.
It was while I was like this, trying to take in everything around me, that I saw her.
S was talking with some friends, all three of them wearing black. My first thought was that they were some kind of school club, but as I got closer the rips in their clothes told me it wasn't formalwear.
She was sitting on a bench beside a person with long red hair. A girl with brown hair was standing talking to them. I walked up to them. "Hi," I said to S. "I don't know if you remember me, but we met last year."
Her friends turned to look at me. She said, "Tohru, isn't it?"
And so it began.
-/-/-/-
Here are some things about S.
She listened to music all the time. Sound waves overflowed from her headphones and filled the air around her whenever it was quiet.
She moved with confidence, like she was comfortable in any space, and sometimes I forgot she couldn't see. Sometimes it felt like she was looking right at me.
She smelled like spices, like mint or rosemary.
Being around her, in that aura, made everything feel more new and interesting.
She didn't take off her sunglasses, even at her house.
Her parents yelled at each other a lot, and sometimes their arguments leaked through the walls of her room. Neither of us ever mentioned this or them.
She had two older brothers, both of whom had already moved out. Most of her clothes were hand-me-downs from them. She didn't mind this.
Emitt, the one who was closest to her in age, still lived in town, attending the university. Sometimes he got her tickets to concerts and they went together. She invited me along once, to a band that was supposed to be a big deal. At first I was worried I'd have to pretend to enjoy it, but as the guitars started up and the vocals rung out, and the bass thumped through the floor and what must have been thousands of hands started to clap in rhythm, I fell into it.
It was like falling underwater and realizing I could breath. It was like I was suddenly surrounded by something, part of something, more than just air. I sang with the chorus, feeling the sound move all through my body. I was part of the crowd that cheered them back on for three more songs at the end of the show and when it was over we walked into the night, buzzing with happiness, voices worn and laughing.
That was the first time we kissed. She touched my face gently, following the curve of an eyebrow, tracing my cheek, nose, lips. "I want to feel how you feel," she said. Her brother had gone to get the car and we were waiting on a bench in the park. "Your expression. Your emotion."
I don't know if she was leaning in to kiss me or if it was just that she was tired and wanted someone warm close to her, but I felt a tug to close the last of the distance between us. As her mouth pressed against mine, it surprised me that I would initiate something like that. I'm sure it was that last song's fault, making everything feel so possible.
I'm still glad I heard that song.
One time when she was over at my house Taro told her to stay away from me. She didn't listen to him. Sometimes I worried that she only asked me out officially in order to spite him. Sometimes it all at once occurred to me that we really didn't have much in common, her and I.
Her room was empty except for her bed, a desk, a rolling chair, and an electric keyboard Emitt brought home from a garage sale for her when he still lived there.
She played it everyday, crazily, frantically, beautifully. The dark of her clothes seemed to swirl as she moved, hands all over from one end to the other, able to go from glassy, rainy soft chimes to hammering, thundering chords in an instant. She played so fast I couldn't figure out what I was hearing. So I stopped trying to figure it out and just listened.
Sometimes, even though I liked it, it was hard to listen to. All those thoughts and feelings without words were too much to take in in that blank room. With no windows and the door closed, it was like they had nowhere to go except into my head, around and around.
One time I caught her smoking and it made me cry.
My emotions have always been close to the surface, but I know it seemed like an overreaction even by my standards. She sharpened everything I felt. It was very confusing. I know I worried about her getting hurt more than she did.
She could see light, or feel it maybe. If she held fabric over her eyes and stood with her face to the sun, she could tell if the cloth was black or white. She said the doctors never explained how she could do this. I liked to imagine them in lab coats, puzzling over equations and microscopes and coming up with nothing. It was a miracle. One day it occurred to me that maybe she just never asked.
All her clothes were either black or white.
I transferred from drama to philosophy in second semester so I could be in her class. I never told her this. She was happy to have someone to talk to, but I would have felt silly if she knew how much it meant to me to be around her.
-/-/-/-
Yuki:
Rin's been drawing on her arms again. They're folded across her knees as she sits opposite me on the train, feet pulled up on the seat, staring at the blurred city graffiti flashing past the window. Dark, flowering vines cover most of her skin. Most of the flowers are nothing that would bloom on earth – abstract swirls, stars, feathers, guitars, skeletons, things recognizable as flowers but with too many colours to be real, band names, people.
"It's just as well we didn't tell him," she says.
"We still might."
"He'd turn us in."
"I think that if he was like that we'd already have been reported for the party."
She studies her fingernails. "I've been consoling Kureno all week. I guess he can come across a bit weird, but there's no way he would have done... that."
"I know."
She smiles bitterly. "Yeah, of course you do. He is weirder than usual around Akito, though."
"Does he like him?"
"Like, like like?"
I nod.
She shrugs. "I don't know. I can't really picture him liking anyone."
"There's more to him than he lets on."
"Yeah," says Rin, "that's why no one has a clue what's going through his head half the time. Maybe him and Akito would make a good match after all."
-/-/-/-
Hard as it is to believe, I came up with the plan.
"We hold our arms like broken wings.
Our feathers clipped,
Nobody sings.
Around our footsteps, sky falls.
Puddles blackly
Drown us out.
One day,
Sound will slip
Untranslated
Past your lips
Through the floorboards,
Through the ground
We'll close our eyes
And jump. No wait,
No pause, no goodbye,
Under our shoes
We'll feel sky."
The words rang out in Rin's clear voice through the cafeteria as Kureno, Haru and I sat around the table. Her expression never changed as her gaze traveled over the single sheet of lined paper, and it was impossible to tell whether she approved. Finally she slammed the sheet down on the table, looked directly at Kureno and said, "Why didn't you tell us you could write?"
"It's not important," he said, reaching for the paper.
Rin pulled it away. "Yes, it is. This is good. Really, really good. If you can't appreciate that, you don't deserve to have talent."
Kureno, apparently stumped over whether to protest or accept this as a compliment, was silent a long time. When Rin refused to say another word or look away from him, he said, "Can I have it back, please." It wasn't really a question. Most things that would be questions if other people said them aren't when they come from him. He talks like the answer is already decided, and an inquiry or insistence from him won't make any difference.
"Only if you do something with it."
"Like what."
"Get it published."
"Doesn't our school have a competition for that now?" said Haru. "They pick the best poem and it goes into a magazine."
"You know they'll only choose a shitty poem about school spirit," said Rin. "Or things that were socially relevant a hundred years back."
"We should make our own magazine," said Haru.
"No one in this school would read it," said Kureno. It was true. The students who were accepting of those in our group either didn't like reading or didn't have money – and we couldn't afford to photocopy enough for several copies of a magazine and give it out for free. The people who liked reading and could afford it tended to think we were freaks.
"What if we put it somewhere where they'd start reading it without knowing what it was? And then, once they figured it out, they'd be so into it that they'd finish?" I said.
"You mean like posting pages of it around the school?" said Haru.
"They'd get taken down within the day," said Kureno.
"What about," I said, "if we put it in the yearbook."
Rin laughed. "That would be amazing. All those jocks expecting to see their photo, and instead they get stuck with us."
"No, really," I said, "Britt's in yearbook, and Kureno, you're good with computers. Jazzy could design the look of it, and we can put photos and drawings and text into it." Noticing their expressions, I added, "By the time it's printed, we'll already have graduated so there's nothing they can do to us."
"So, would we put our names on it or be mysterious, anonymous art-hackers?" said Rin.
"Names," I said, "so that this school will remember who we are. And since we're all going into literary or visual arts careers anyway, it will help to establish a reputation early."
I was being reckless, and I knew it. Even if the school couldn't expel us, I was sure there were other things someone could do. But that didn't matter. If we ended up on the six o'clock news, we'd make the best of the attention. We were going to do something crazy, something that would take the rest of the student body by storm. Everyone who thought they knew us would see the sides of us they never took the time to consider, all after we were gone.
"Okay," said Rin. "Let's do that, then."
And then there was no going back.
(((chapter continued)))