Somebody
By. Misery's-Toll
Chapter Nine: Life as is
If I was sincere and whispered my fears
Would you still be here?
Would you stay?
Would you stay with me?
- "Stay" by Michelle Featherstone
It's December 27th.
Hinata's birthday.
Hinata invites over Naruto, Gaara, and Sakura and the boy that always stares at her--Kiba, and then the boy Sakura doesn't know at all named Shino who always hides his face.
Sakura learns that Kiba lives in the house behind Kurenai, and because Hinata used to visit her godmother so often, the two families took down the fence in the back, and they share a yard. Shino has known Kiba since they were twelve, and Hinata instantly took to the quiet boy.
They live in a small run-down neighborhood where the paint is peeling off of the outer walls of the one-bedroom, one-bathroom home. Hinata sleeps in the attic on a pallet on a spare mattress on the floor. The flooring is stable enough, and Hinata's make-shift room contains a mattress, a desk, and a box that she keeps her clothes in. There is no lamp, but Hinata has a flashlight for when it gets dark at night.
Kurenai doesn't have enough money for a television, so the kids just sit on the vacant space in the middle of the floor. Gaara sits close to Sakura and Naruto at all times; Kiba and Shino are clearly not comfortable with him being there.
Kiba's dog sits in Hinata's lap while she giggles and touches him.
"So, Sakura, fall down the stairs again?" the owner of the dog asks.
Tell them. Tell them. Tell them.
Sakura looks up from Akamaru.
"Oh, you mean this?" Sakura slightly touches the bruising on her cheek bone, and laughs emptily, "I tripped on the corner of the carpet and hit my face on the table…clumsy me, you know?"
Is Ino's reputation more important than your well-being?
Gaara touches the hand that is on the floor behind her back and she curls her pinky around his index-finger and Naruto sends Kiba a glare.
"Hmm," Shino sounds, and everyone looks at him, "Someone is here."
Naruto rolls his eyes and sticks out his tongue, "Well, duh, we're all sitting here-"
The doorbell rings, and Hinata jumps up, tripping over Gaara's leg, yelling apologies all the way to the front door. Sakura gets up and follows behind the girl, and Gaara automatically follows, Naruto bringing up the rear. Kiba shrugs and he and Shino tag along.
Neji is in the doorway, his eyes averted as he holds a box towards Hinata, "Happy Birthday."
lovelovelovelovelove
Hinata stares for a moment before a huge smile breaks out onto her face, "Would you like to come in?"
He looks at each of the party guests individually before looking to his cousin, "Ah…I shouldn't."
Her smile drops a little and she nods, "Tell father and Hanabi I love them?"
"You know I can't do that."
lovelovelovelovelove
It's not enough on its own.
Hinata nods again, and Neji is gone. She turns around, her eyes sparkling with crystalline tear-drops that will never fall, before grabbing the hand of the person closest to her, Kiba, while she carries her cousin's gift to her in the other.
The group makes a birthday cake. When Gaara drops the spoon and kneels to pick it up, and Kiba spins to show off his dance move to Hinata and knocks the sack of flower off the counter with his elbow, the redheaded boy looks hysterically similar to a clown with his red hair and white-powdered face and darkly-circled eyes, and the group is left laughing for five minutes straight.
After working for over an hour to make the dough correctly, they take a break for Hinata to open gifts. They sprawl out on the kitchen floor and Kurenai watches from the corner of the room with an amused smile on her face as Kiba and Naruto bicker over whose present Hinata should open first.
Through the commotion, Shino quietly hands the blue-haired girl his gift, a large, flat square wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper, reindeer prancing all over.
"Sorry. Difficult to find 'Happy Birthday' at this time of year."
"Hey, she was supposed to open my present first!" Naruto shouts, but Kiba quickly whacks him over the head to silence him.
Hinata carefully takes apart the paper, not tearing any of it, and she pulls apart the two pieces of cardboard laid together in the box.
"I remembered that you had a record player, so…"
Hinata smiles softly at her friend as she watches the light gleam off of the shiny black disc.
Kiba and Naruto both stand up immediately, but Naruto abruptly shoves Kiba back down before throwing his own gift to Hinata's feet and grins widely, "Open mine! Open it!"
Hinata blushes when she opens the box to find four different colored spools of thread, a new needle, and a pair of sewing scissors.
"Thank you, Naruto."
Kiba, looking dejected, hands Hinata a gift bag with colored tissue paper overflowing from the top. Hinata opens it and pulls out a small booklet with a badly-drawn picture of a dog on the front.
"Kiba's I'll-Do-Whatever-You-Want-If-it-Applies-to-These-Coupons Book," Hinata giggles before flipping through the pages. She sets the stapled-together booklet on the floor beside her where she sits, "Thank you very much, Kiba."
"See? I got a 'thank you very much' and you only got a 'thank you.' So take that!" Kiba shouts, pointing in Naruto's face.
"Yeah, yeah, Dog Breath. Go gloat to your pup," Naruto sticks his chin up.
Gaara gives Hinata a bottle full of colored sand. She doesn't understand, but that's okay because she thinks it's very pretty and she thanks him for it anyway, and she will keep it on the bare desk in front of her window, because that way even when it's dark she'll be able to see it by moonlight.
Sakura gives Hinata a pair of jeans. The hem at the bottom of each pant leg is a little frayed, and they're hand-me-downs, but Hinata has needed a pair of pants so that her legs won't freeze anymore when she goes outside.
And Hinata is practically dancing as she begins to play the record that Shino has given her.
A girl who has nothing can be happy because she loves everything.
"So, who wants cake?" Kurenai asks.
"It doesn't have any frosting," Naruto points at the lopsided mass of bread that may or may not have been left in the oven for too long.
Hinata fishes through the cabinets for a few moments before finding what she's looking for. She walks over to the cake and squirts the hot-pink-almost-liquefied frosting all over the top of it.
The cake is cut and passed to each guest, and everyone sings for Hinata. She smiles through it, blushing a shade to match the frosting and enjoys the tuneless singing of her friends that clashes horribly with the record playing in the background.
"This cake tastes like shit," Kiba says, laughing through his mouthful of undercooked over-frosted desert.
"I concur," Shino nods.
You could be happy too.
It is night and all of the boys are gone, and Kurenai has gone to her night-job. All of the natural light has stopped filtering through the window-panes and Sakura and Hinata lay back to back on the blue-haired girl's mattress.
"Sakura, how do you really get all of your bruises?" Hinata asks.
Sakura's breathing halts for a second. Hinata's question breaks the unspoken agreement between them –to never mention the other's poor living status.
"They're simply a reminder that I should remember my place in the world."
Hinata is quiet for several moments before shifting under the holey quilt so that the girls' backs are touching.
"Someday we will find boys who will buy us houses to live in and they will love us like our parent's couldn't."
Sakura doesn't want to, but she briefly imagines it; it is nothing too extravagant. Just a one-bedroom house with a kitchen and a bathroom and a living room with maybe a twelve-inch television and walls where the paint doesn't chip, and clothing that fits, and maybe even a Christmas tree when that time of year comes. A real Christmas tree with a porcelain angel on top.
And she wants it so badly that it hurts maybe just a little.
Sakura thinks that Hinata is imagining it too, the way the girl curls in on herself, as if trying to keep all of the warmth in her body from escaping even though there's a hole that she can't find, so she'll try to cover everything to make sure she gets it, her hand over her stomach.
"Someday I'll be a doctor, and you'll make medicines that will cure the world."
The room is silent again.
"Sakura…" Hinata's voice is soft, "When everyone else is gone, will you still be here?"
Sakura reaches behind her and grabs Hinata's hand, "I won't ever leave you."
The two lay in silence for a long time following, and Sakura is just about to drift to sleep when she feels Hinata shift and press her forehead into the hollow between Sakura's own head and neck, her soft breathing echoing in her ear.
Sakura's voice comes out just a breath,
"I won't ever leave you."
Don't make promises you can't keep, little one.
It is
the day before we
go back to school.
Ino is
out and she
has been all night.
The night-life isn't so great.
When
my mother turns her back to
unlock the door
a squirrel
dashes mid-way
across the street.
A car slows down in front of it before
speeding up.
"No!"
Nature is just…running its course, child.
But there's nothing natural about a human in its fancy truck, speeding over an innocent creature.
My shout
startles my mother and she
drops her bags when I
run towards the street,
the squirrel flying in the air.
I reach it
just as it hits the ground.
It's skull is
smashed
and it's tiny body
goes into spasms.
And I wonder if there is
maybe
a squirrel heaven
and
squirrel angels
too.
Could there possibly still be one out there for humanity?
It is
twilight
and I have
dug a hole and
put the squirrel in
a box.
While a funeral has value to a human
to a squirrel it's just like keeping another animal from its next meal.
I hum
a little tune as
I bury the
unfortunate
creature.
Ino
--who
came home with
red patches on her neck
that I had
never seen on her before
and I wonder if maybe
that's why she wears collared shirts
every day--
watches me from the porch.
When I
put the shovel away she
laughs
half-heartedly with
a bitter edge.
"You are such
a freak."
Am I a…
freak?
FreakFreakFreakFreakFreak.
"What happened to
your neck?"
Ino
uncomfortably
adjusts the
crotch of her
designer jeans that
lately it seems she wears
a little less proudly
these days
and says,
"They're proof that
somebody
loves me.
Unlike
you."
And I wonder
how many times the words
'somebody'
and
'you'
can be put together
in my life time
without anyone
calling me
somebody.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
A/N: This chapter had angst-reduction surgery without my permission. And yeah. So I have no good explanation about the random squirrel thing. I was just coming home one day and one of my neighbors saw a squirrel and sped up to drive over it. I think I've witnessed a few too many squirrel deaths in my life. But anyways, my mother wouldn't let me bury it, so Sakura did it for me. Oh yes. And there's that whole 'I'll put the next chapter up in three days' thing. But honestly, I've been busy. Painting my walls is not as fun as I thought it might be.
-MT