A/N: Yay, I'm actually not taking forever to get a chapter up. Don't really have much to say here. Uh, I feel crappy because I'm using so much of the book's dialogue and descriptions in this story. I feel like it isn't even my story. I'm trying to change some things and make it more different, but I keep lapsing back into doing the same thing. X.x' Oh well, at least this chapter's done.
NT aka Aku-chan – Aw, you're too nice. *-* **Hands you a free chocolate milk shake from the fast food place Ken likes so much in this story**
Jay Man – Yup, you guessed right. Geez, it took me like three times to read that part in the book and understand what the fluorescent things on his back were. Thanks for wishing me luck and inspiration – it seems to have helped me write this chapter sooner. ^-^
This chapter is dedicated to the both of you. Thank you so much for reviewing this fic.
Same disclaimer, same warning from before.
Chapter 3: In Which Ken Makes His Proposal To Help Takeru
When I woke up again, the clock in my face read 9:00. I was trying to figure out whether it was morning or night when my brain became conscious that it was dark in the room. Okay, it was nine o' clock at night, but where was I?
I noticed three flickering lights standing out amongst the darkness in the room. There were three lighted candles on a dresser. I was in Ken's room. I'd been there since six-thirty.
I turned around in the bed. Ken was still laying with his head back against the wall, fingers laced across his stomach, staring into the darkness, looking as if he was thinking hard about something. I wondered if he'd been doing that all this time, while I was asleep. I didn't think he'd slept while I was asleep. It was as if he had been watching over me.
"Feeling better?" I heard him ask quietly.
I nodded and brought my arm to my face to press against it, yawning.
"Mom made food. Smell it?"
I sniffed at the air, and I could just make out the scent of food. My mouth watered. I slid out of his bed and stood up.
"Want to eat before you leave?" He shifted his head to look up at me.
"No thanks," I politely declined. I didn't feel like eating anything for the rest of the night. "I don't eat red meat."
He sighed and sat up in bed. "How did I know you were going to say that? You don't eat red meat, you don't eat fast food...no fun."
"I have plenty of fun. Just not with fatty foods and dead cows."
He threw his head back and laughed. I was surprised he hadn't hit his head on the headboard of the bed.
I moved toward the dresser mirror and looked myself over. "I look like I just got hit by a truck. Your mom is definitely going to think I'm weird, or something's wrong with me."
"And that would be the end of the universe?"
He hopped off of the bed and walked out his bedroom door. I quickly followed. We made it all the way down the stairs before his mother turned to talk to me from where she sat watching TV on the living room couch.
"Would you like to invite your friend to dinner, Ken?" she asked. "It's still warm."
"He said he has to get home," Ken piped up, before I could tell her no. I smiled gratefully. I hated to tell mothers that I wouldn't stay for dinner, since they seem to take that kind of thing like an insult sometimes.
"It was nice to have you here. I hope you come back soon," she said to me.
I smiled and bowed to her. "Thank you for letting me stay over." I felt weird saying that, since she hadn't exactly been asked permission to let me stay. She just smiled, though.
She stood up and walked over to me to shake my hand. When I looked her in the eye, I saw something that seemed to be like an urgency. She was hoping that Ken and I would become friends. It was as if she wanted her son to have a friend like me, and it made me wonder what kind of friends Ken usually had.
"Anytime you kids want to go and hang out or anything, you have my permission," she went on. I almost raised an eyebrow at her but caught myself in time.
"Okay," I said, since I didn't know what else to say in response to that.
Ken grabbed my arm and began leading me to the front door. He let out an uninterested half-giggle. I thought he was probably directing it at his mother, instead of at me.
"You know what she's thinking, don't you?"
"Yes."
"And you're not embarrassed? She's your mom. Moms create guilt."
"You're right, they do." He nodded. "Only, she's not my real mom. I'm adopted. You don't have as much guilt when you're able to tell yourself, 'She's just a nice lady who's nice to me when she feels like it.'"
"You're adopted?" I stared at him. "Well, you've lived a very unusual life."
"Yeah, it's an epic classic," he said disinterestedly.
"Can I hear it some time?"
"Maybe." He cleared his throat and switched the attention back to me. "So, you're suffering from this eating disorder, your mom doesn't want to do anything about it, your dad is too far away to help much, and your friends have no idea."
I laughed. "Geez, you make it all sound so horrible."
"Well, how would you like to get treatment without anyone knowing about it? You won't worry your mom about money, your friends won't notice any change, and you wouldn't have to bother your dad."
The idea made me stop in my tracks and turn to him, my eyes slightly wide in curiosity. "There's no way I can do that without my parents knowing."
"There could be. We just have to take a bus. It's a long ride. You know how you have to wait for test results from the doctors for a really long time?"
I nodded, grimacing.
"Well, I know how you can get them in a couple of hours. And where I take you, you won't need parental permission to be treated."
"Why?"
"Because most of the kids are runaways, and everyone knows it."
I stared at him. It sounded way too good to be true. Just hopping on a bus and going away seemed so unreal, but I wanted to make sense of his mixed-up personality. I wanted to be able to spend more time with him. Besides, what did I have to lose?
I tried to compare Ken to other gay people I knew. The gay tourists around here were all businessmen that went to the beaches and used expensive sunblock to protect their skin and allow them to get a nice tan at the same time. Ken didn't fit in with them. Ken was more real, more raw...once I started to think about it, I didn't know anyone who was like Ken, who I could compare him to.
"You don't seem to fit into any of the usual categories," I said carefully.
He suddenly looked irritated. "You're trying to stereotype me. I hate it when people do that."
"I am not," I defended myself, even though I thought it might be a lie. "I'm just trying to see where you fit in."
"Same thing. You're trying to judge me."
"No I'm not. I'm just trying to get to know you." I thought of what he'd said earlier at school, and how weird it had sounded at the time. Not a girl. "It's easier to say what you're not like. You're not like any of the boys I know, but you aren't like a girl, either. You aren't like the school geniuses, but you're still very smart. You don't look like a grown-up, but you don't act like a kid." I stopped, sensing that he was getting very tense or annoyed.
"I don't like to be put into boxes. Boy, girl, dork, popular - they're all boxes."
"Sorry, but I just want to figure something out about you. How old are you?"
"Age is a box."
I stared at him. "Age is kind of important, you know. I'd feel weird hanging out with you if you were, like, twenty."
"Why should it matter? I'm still the same person, right?"
I sighed in annoyance. "Let me guess. You're one of those geniuses that thinks he's got everything figured out so he doesn't have to explain himself to anyone."
"Do you really think that?" His eyes looked a little hurt. I winced a little as I looked into them.
"No," I said truthfully, sounding sorry.
I tried to think of something to ask him that didn't have to do with boxes, but would help me understand him better.
"Have you ever read Albert Einstein?"
"Yes, I've read Einstein."
"Did you understand him."
"Yeah."
I raised an eyebrow. "What's a kid living on the streets doing reading Einstein?"
He shrugged. "Why not?"
I didn't know how to answer that. I guess I just always thought that homeless people weren't very bright. I realized how prejudiced that sounded. I suddenly knew what he was talking about when he said people use stereotypes.
"As for me and the library, that started in fifth grade or so...whenever it is that boys are supposed to start looking like boys, and girls like girls. I had to find a hiding place to creep away to where I could be left alone. It isn't too good to hang around the playgrounds and other places that kids always gathered at if you were different from everybody else. Nobody ever went to the library to hang out, though, so that soon became my little sanctuary. I remember a librarian once told me, 'If you can understand human behavior, it can't hurt you nearly as much.' That always stuck with me. So, I decided to spend my days reading in the library."
"Wow." I never would have connected runaways with libraries before that. When he put it that way, though, it made sense. "So, what did you read?"
He took a deep breath and began to name a long list of names; the only ones that I recognized were Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Hegel.
"Jesus Christ," I breathed.
"Yeah, him too. Listen, I need you to pay attention to what I'm about to say." I nodded, leaning closer to him to make sure I caught all of his words. "You can't tell anyone that I know so much. I'm trusting you with secrets that I wouldn't tell many people, and that's only because you seem to be so good at keeping your own secrets to yourself. I need for people to think I'm not as smart as I really am."
I blinked, uncomprehending. "Why?"
"Because seeing through human behavior is, like, both a blessing and a curse. Once people realize you know the hidden meaning behind their actions, they get super cautious around you. Some even beat you up. When I was younger, I had to understand why kids bullied me so much. I knew that the only reason they bullied me was because they were once bullied, they depended on my fear, and they only hated their own feelings of being victims, and not me. Knowing all of this made me feel less helpless, and actually helped me to sympathize with the kids that pushed me around. Fear is what bullies feed off of, and when they saw that I didn't truly fear them, they didn't get such a charge out of doing it. Sometimes you need to think on your feet and try to find a way to get out of a jam. You can't if your mind is paralyzed by fear."
"Oh." I started to look at him with more respect. He knew what he was talking about. He'd said he wasn't a good fighter, but in a way, he was. He couldn't land hard punches - not with those hands - but he had a pocketful of tricks.
"But when people realize you can see inside their heads and what they're thinking? They don't take kindly to that. You can get mugged in the city. Around here, though? You could get lynched."
"I don't think you have to worry about getting lynched around here, Ken," I said, smiling.
"Don't laugh."
"I just think you're overreacting, that's all."
"Oh yeah? Well, you wouldn't like it if I started looking inside your head at all of your hidden garbage, would you? Don't worry, I won't, but just imagine if you were someone whose hidden garbage was such a great amount-"
"Hold on, what about my hidden garbage?" I cautiously stared at him.
"See? You're getting defensive."
"No, it's because I don't have any hidden garbage. I'm just fine." I knew what I sounded like, though. My voice sounded like I was trying to convince him to believe me. I didn't know how he'd know about anything else - I'd only told him about my bulimia. I cringed as I remembered what I'd said back in his bedroom. 'I have nightmares. Sometimes they're bloody...'
"That's called the 'defensive stance.' Standing with your arms crossed over your chest. Did you know that the people most afraid of their own thoughts spend half their lives with their arms crossed? Put your arms down." He gently reached out to pull them down to my sides. "There. Now, look me in the eye and tell me again that you don't have any hidden garbage."
I wanted to. I wanted to look him in the eye and say it again, make him believe my words. I wanted to make him forget about anything I'd said about my nightmares back in his room. Unfortunately, I'm a very bad liar. I decided to just say, "I can see why people would hate you."
"If you're going to hate me, you might as well hear my thoughts about you."
"I don't want to." But I was suddenly scared he could see into my head. See what I dream about at night, see the scary thoughts that ran through my head when I least expected them too. I thought he could see the bloody poetry I wrote when I was in a bad mood, that I kept somewhere in the back of my closet in a box that no one but me would ever look through. "Go ahead, say what you were going to say." I braced myself for whatever was about to come out of his mouth.
"I think you would be doing yourself a favor to go and see a shrink."
I deflated. I wanted to pretend he wasn't there, but he was standing right in front of me, and I had to look at him. I wanted to become invisible to him. "How is it any of your business? What right do you have to say a thing like that to me?" I asked coldly.
"Takeru, calm down. You know I don't mean it in a mean way. I'm just trying to help you. Going to a shrink is like...going to a masseuse."
I felt my face growing hot with anger. "A masseuse? The only masseuse around here has gone home for the winter, because her only customers are the rich lady tourists and the faggots-"
I gasped, my hand flying up to cover my mouth. His hand did the same, covering his mouth, but I got the odd feeling it was to smother a laugh. I sunk down onto the sidewalk, not believing that word had just flown out of my mouth, and at him, of all people.
"That's another version of the defensive stance," he said through his fingers, his voice muffled. "Dropping out of my gaze and turning away."
"Fuck you."
"Really, I understand. This is part of the reason I should never be allowed to become a shrink. I'm way too blunt."
"You're a nightmare," I told him. I suddenly got paranoid. "What exactly is it that you know about me?"
He sat down cross-legged next to me, on the sidewalk. "Just that you're suffering from an eating disorder, you have bad nightmares at night, and you can't talk to people about it."
"That's all?" I sighed in relief, and then felt stupid. Duh, I'd just implied that there was more he didn't know.
"Well, yeah. I'm not a shrink, you know."
I took a deep breath. "Tell me everything you think you could assume about me, from what you already know. Tell me about my hidden garbage."
He paused, and grew thoughtful. I could tell his mind was cranking. Things suddenly started spilling out of his mouth in half-sentences, like he was saying everything just when he was thinking it. "Well, you've had illness and trauma...no one to talk to...but you always have shit coming from somewhere. Bloody nightmares, you said...gone beyond just dreaming, or you wouldn't be so crazed...you've got artistic tendencies, so you must use something to get it all out...writing poetry or making music...same part of the brain as dreams...you're writing bloody poetry."
I gawked at him. My jaw hung wide open, and I tried to figure out how he'd thought all of that up. It was like being naked in front of him or something. I didn't slap him because I had the odd feeling he could have predicted it. "You are a regular nightmare."
"I could get myself lynched. So, you won't tell anyone that I'm like this, right?"
"I'm going home." I stood up and brushed myself off. He stood up, too. I turned and began to walk home, not looking back. I could feel him staring after me. I stopped suddenly. "Where is this place you want to take me?"
"It's on the island nearby. Franklin Hospital. Come to the bus station at eight tomorrow morning."
"Okay." I decided I just wouldn't show up. I didn't promise him I'd be there or anything. For some reason, I felt like I was getting even with him.
"And if I don't see you, I'll just go on to school."
I turned around to face him slowly, feeling weird, like he had just read my mind. "What makes you think I wouldn't come?"
"You didn't turn around until after you asked. We're not connecting. Sorry, I've been a pain to you."
Then, he turned and started walking back towards his house.
'Obnoxious and weird,' I thought. I decided I wasn't going anywhere with him the next day. Maybe it'd be better if I just forgot about him. My earlier interest in him was slowly fading to nothing again. I turned and hurried home, where I knew I'd find plenty of good phone messages, since I'd just left my friends back at the café earlier that day.
