To Cas:
Taylor and I talked a lot that summer. She kept saying how she wanted me to meet her friends, and how she wanted all of us to become great friends like how the two of us did. But that didn’t happen. It always ended up being me and her or just her and her friends doing something that I wasn’t invited to. I always got to hear about it the next day though.
It turned into a tradition to go out to the lake at night and hang out and talk or swim or smoke sometimes when she felt like it. I told her a lot about myself. I told her about my relationship with my mom, and how much we didn’t get along, and how I practically hated her when I came out to my parents.
I told her how bad she made me feel and how she drove me to hurting myself like how some people do when they’re hurting like how I was. I told her how much it hurt to hear that I was an abomination and that I was a failure and that I was the worst daughter from the one person in the world who is supposed to love you no matter what or who you are. I told her that when my sisters found out what I was doing to myself, and why I was doing it they immediately packed up everything I owned and took me back to their house, which is where I’ve been since May.
She found out that after I came out to my school, I lost my friends, which didn’t make what I was going through at home any easier. I lost all but one friend who was named Alex and she was eighteen and I was fourteen but we didn’t care because I swear we loved each other and that was all that mattered. But she ran off to college before I had the chance to say goodbye. I think she wanted it like that, I think she wanted to leave with no answers and tons of questions.
I found out more about her. I found out that she wanted to kill herself many times last year, and that she was so close one time that if she had made a wrong move the knife would be so deep in her wrists she wouldn’t be able to dig it out. I didn’t hear why she wanted to die. She never told me why. Only that she wanted to, and that she didn’t.
I heard a lot about this guy named Nick, and that he was the only one who was able to bring her back from fully committing every time. He was a senior this year, and she was going to miss him when and if he went off to college. She said that he was like an angel, and that he was always there for everybody. She told me that he’d been through a lot too, and that he knew how to help people when they were hurting.
“If you had someone like Nick back at your old place, maybe you could’ve dealt with your mom better,” she told me once when we were wading in the water under the moonlight. “He can help you. He can help anyone. He’s amazing. He’s saved me so many times. When God wasn’t there, he was. I’d pray to Nick before any abstract being that’s supposed to be watching over all of us. And you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because God has forgotten me, and Nick hasn’t. God doesn’t love me, and Nick does. God doesn’t save the ones who need it. He leaves us behind because we aren’t worthy. You and me, Kira, we’re forgotten. You, and me, and all of my friends.”
The more she talked about her friends, the more this feeling grew inside of me that she didn’t want me to meet them. I was being stupid and paranoid, but I got the feeling she only wanted to talk to me when she had no one else to talk to, and like a I was a last choice for her. I mean, I was glad she was still talking to me, and that she wanted to still smoke with me but that didn’t knock the feeling that I very unwanted.
My sisters actually really hated Taylor, and they hated the fact that I spent so much time with her. Miyako, of course, was a hell of a lot more blunt and brash about how she felt than Kiyoko was. One night when I came home from hanging out with Taylor, Miyako got pissed off and cursed me out for it.
She said, “Goddammit, Akira, didn’t we tell you to stop hanging out with her? She’s evil; she’s like the fucking devil. She isn’t good for you, she isn’t good for anybody, not even herself. And her friends are just the worst.” And other stuff I can’t really remember too well.
Kiyoko walked out of their room and told her twin to stop yelling at me like that, because I’d already been through enough torment from my mom. So Miyako went back to her room, and Kiyoko stayed back and talked to me for the millionth time about Taylor.
The thing was that, even though I didn’t show it, it angered me to no end that my sisters hated my only friend at that point. I mean, I’d finally reached out to someone, made a friend, even though I didn’t really want to, and they didn’t like her. They hated her. For reasons that I will keep a secret to let you be surprised at the end, or whenever I decide to reveal why they hated her so much.
My sisters didn’t understand Taylor; they didn’t know her like I did. They didn’t know about her past (though neither did I. I just have a bleeding heart for people who’d been like me). They didn’t understand her, and they just judged her based on this persona that she put on for people she didn’t trust.
On a brighter side, though, my dad found a dog. It was a bullmastiff and he was literally the biggest puppy I have ever seen or had or petted or done anything with. He was so big, and my dad said he would only get bigger. Though when my dad said that he said it in a crazed sadistic way that made me scared for my safety for about half a second. My dad said he was going to be a good guard dog, and said that he was going to start training him soon. We named him Beast because he was quite literally a beast but he liked the name, so we kept it.
Hikari also found a friend. A little guy her age who was just as weird and bitchy as she was. They were still middle schoolers, so they needed permission to go hang out together, but they were cool together. They’re still friends too. He has the most generic name. Michael Smith.
The last night of summer consisted of Kiyoko and Miyako going to a back to school party, and Taylor and I going to the lake and having a smoke. Hikari was jealous because we all got to go out before school started and she didn’t. It didn’t matter, she was still thirteen and too young to even act like us. I had yet to actually inhale the smoke, and I think she noticed that but if she did she didn’t care.
She somehow managed to get one of her friends to come with her, so it was three of us. Akira, Taylor, and her friend Maggie who had the most clichéd Asian girl look going on. She had the straight hair and the bangs and the eyes and everything. I thought it was funny how I wasn’t even remotely close to being Asian and yet I had a Japanese name and Maggie had an American one. I didn’t point it out though, I didn’t want to seem weird.
The first thing she said to me when I got into Taylor’s car was, “So what’s your deal?”
And Taylor said, “She’s gay.”
And Maggie said, “Cool, I’m crazy. Well, my name’s Maggie, but I’m also crazy.” And she explained that she’d been diagnosed with some illnesses (yes, illnesses, as in more than one of them), not wanting to tell me which ones. She only said “illnesses”, and the one thing that she was mad about was the fact that they still made her goes to school.
“I’m trying to get out of it. Maybe I’ll attack one of the bitches in my grade and they’ll send me to the loony bin.” She and Taylor laughed about it but I was scared. I didn’t know if she was serious or if she was kidding and why would someone even joke about something like that?
Maggie begged Taylor to pick up another one of their friends that she promised to hang out with tonight. His name was Chase, and he didn’t talk. He climbed into the back seat with me and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Badly cut brown hair and soft blue eyes, that’s how I remembered seeing him for the first time. He looked at me like I’d risen from the dead and backed away a little bit.
I gave him a smile, trying to show him that I was friendly and hoping that I wasn’t the only sane person in this car. When he didn’t smile back, I said hi, and he just stared at me.
“Are you not going to say anything, Chase?” Taylor asked. Chase looked at her in the rearview mirror, and then at me, and out of the window. “Sorry Kira, but you won’t be getting much out of him. Chase hasn’t said a word to anybody but Nick since May. Right Chase?” But all he did was glance her way and then back out of the window.
Maggie giggled and took off her seatbelt. Taylor looked over at her and started smiling. “Kissing him isn’t going to make it better.”
Maggie just ignored her and climbed in the back seat and fell onto Chase. He held her; wide-eyed and looking like a deer in headlights. “Hi,” she said. She leaned down to his face and pressed her lips on his.
“Don’t let it bother you too much, Akira,” Taylor said. “They’re in love with each other.”
“No we’re not,” Maggie said before kissing Chase again. Her hair fell in such a way that it created something like a curtain that covered his face; I couldn’t tell if he was kissing her back or just taking it.
After a while though, she stopped, and just climbed back in the front seat without saying a word. I looked over at Chase, who had the same expression as he did when he first got in the car with us. Only this time, he had lip gloss smudged on his lips.
When we got to the lake, Chase didn’t want to get out of the car. The three of us stood outside of the car, trying to get him out and telling him to come with us but he didn’t. He just sat in the seat with his hands in his lap and tears welling up in his eyes.
After a while Taylor gave up and pulled out her phone, saying she knew who could get him out. I wanted to suggest to just leave Chase in the car, or even call the night off and take him home, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know Chase or Maggie for that matter and I didn’t want to make a bad first impression on a bunch of mentally ill teenagers I barely knew.
After Taylor made her call, we all climbed in the back and sat with Chase. He now had a reddened tear streaked face that he didn’t bother to clean. He just let his pain show on his face and he looked like he had no intent to mask it.
I was sure that if he talked, and if he was asked if he was okay he would say no instead of trying to cover it up like how most people would try to do in a situation like that. He just struck me as the kind of person who would simply say tell the truth when asked a question like that.
Maggie sat in his lap, and kept trying to wipe his face while whispering to him, but he got tired of it and shoved her hands away from him. She got angry, and took a cigarette before leaving the truck.
Soon enough, a red Jeep Wrangler drove up and two people hopped out of the sides. One of them was a tall muscular white guy with long brown hair that fell loosely on his shoulders, and the other was a light skinned black guy who matched his friend’s size.
Taylor grumbled and cursed under her breath as she got out of the car and walked over to the two new boys. “Dude,” she shouted. “What the fuck? I said come alone.”
She and the white guy hugged and he kissed her cheek before letting her go. She walked over to the other guy and he hugged her, but he didn’t give her a kiss like how the white guy did, and I instantly knew that he wasn’t the Nick I had heard so much about.
It surprised me that Taylor was only an inch or two shorter than these guys, and I was probably a whole foot smaller than the three of them. She was so tall it, kind of scared me a little.
“Sorry about Ty,” he said walking over to Taylor’s car. “He came over a few minutes before you called. I couldn’t leave him so I brought him here with me. He’s a bit fucked right now so just give him a minute before doing anything to or with him. Anyway, what’s the problem? Something with Chase?”
Taylor confirmed it and told him what was going on. Nick opened the door and looked at Chase, who hadn’t stopped his silent crying since we’d arrived. Nick called out his name, and Chase turned his head towards him.
He asked Chase why he wouldn’t get out, and instead of not saying anything, he nervously looked around before leaning into Nick. He covered his mouth with his hand so we couldn’t see what he was whispering, and when he was done, he pulled away and Nick smiled. He put his hand on Chase’s shoulder and flipped his long hair back and asked him if he wanted to go home.
Chase shook his head and whispered into Nick’s ear again. “Alright then,” Nick said. “If you want to go, just tell me and Ty and I’ll take you home, you got that?” Chase nodded and Nick stepped out of the way so he could get out of the car. Maggie made a comment about how that wasn’t fair, but I was just left with the question of what he said and why it took this guy with long hair to get him out of the car, and why no one else could do it.
Another car, this time a severely damaged old Honda Accord, pulled up and three people, two boys and one girl, came out of the car.
“There was a party and I wasn’t invited?” One of them, a skinny pale dark haired boy, said throwing his arms in the air. “Shows what good friends you are. Fuck you. Assholes.”
“Why are you here, Cyrus?” Taylor asked with a large dose of annoyance in her voice. “And why’d you bring them?”
“I saw Nick and Ty driving, and I followed them. When I knew where they were going I went to pick up Taboo and Beau was with her. And now we’re here.”
“So what’re we here for?” The girl, a curvy and very attractive Hispanic girl, asked walking closer and crossing her arms over her chest.
“Well,” Taylor said. “I came here to smoke with Maggie and Akira, but-”
“Who in the hell is Akira?”
And that was the very second that everyone stopped what they were doing to turn and look at this girl who was sitting on the bed of a truck with a red flannel top on and a pack of Marlboros in her shirt pocket. Never have I ever been so nervous to say hi to a group of complete strangers in my life. But I did, and they just stared at me like I was an animal in a zoo.
Taylor saved me by walking up to me and wrapping her arm around my shoulders. “She’s a friend I made earlier this summer. She’s been coming out here with me to smoke and swim and talk and stuff like that.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “So she’s cool then?” Taylor nodded and looked at me and nodded again. “Cool. How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” I answered.
“So you’re a sophomore?” I shook my head and told her I was a freshman and she nearly screamed. “Thank you! Thank you now I’m not the youngest here! I was so scared that I’d be alone my senior year without any friends, but now you’re here! Thank you!”
She introduced herself as Estella but told me to call her Taboo because that’s what everyone else called her. The rest of them introduced themselves, and I told them I was Akira but they could call me Kira and that I just moved here over the summer and that I was glad to meet them.
We all went on the bank of the lake and sat down, wading our bare feet in the water. I had the cigs, so I was the one to pass it around to everyone. Taylor had her white lighter, and lit hers then passed it around just as I did with the pack.
Everyone was smoking, except for me of course. I just let mine burn slowly in between my fingers, flicking the ash off every few minutes and waved it around a bit, and nobody noticed what I wasn’t doing.
They asked me where I moved from, and I told them I was from Atlanta. There were the comments about how I was a “big city” girl and whatnot, and they wanted to know the details, but I didn’t tell the whole story, I just told them that my family wanted me away from my mom, and moving here came with that deal.
“What about you?” I asked Nick, who asked me about my move. “Taylor told me everyone has something going on with them, what’s yours?”
He sighed and blew the smoke he held in his lungs out into the air. “I prefer not to share my shit with people I don’t know I hope you don’t take that in a negative way. It’s just something of mine I hope you understand.”
“Completely,” I said, starting to feel comfortable and a bit bold. “I haven’t told you everything about me, I like to keep some mystery about myself.”
“Oh really?” He asked. “And what mysteries are you keeping from us?”
I smiled and brought my knees closer to my chest, saying, “It wouldn’t be a mystery if I told you now would it?”
He smiled, nodded, and took a drag of his cigarette. “You’re right, you’re right.”
Cyrus had an idea to go swimming, and we all agreed. I thought we were going to stay in our clothes, but they had other plans. The boys stripped down to their boxers and the girls down to their panties and their bras. I felt a little uncomfortable, but since the guy’s cocks didn’t shoot up at the sight of Taboo’s unbelievably sexy ass in too small underwear then I was fine in my bra and panties too.
Taboo was the first to jump in the water. She climbed on the tree and let herself fall, not screaming, not saying anything, just falling until she hit the water and the splash broke the silence. Taylor followed and the guys just ran in from the bank like a crazed giraffe.
The only people left were Chase, Maggie, and I. He still had his clothes on and, like me, had a lit but unsmoked cigarette in his fingers. Maggie was holding his hand, and he held hers in return though just by looking at him, you wouldn’t notice. He had her hand sort of tucked behind him in a way that you wouldn’t tell unless you were looking hard enough, and he was looking at the moon, eyes still red and puffy from earlier and lips slightly parted as if he was going to say something.
I wanted to wait, just in case he did, but Maggie glared at me in the most unexpected way possible, telling me to leave them alone. I can take hints, even if they aren’t given to me, and I stood up to leave. I gave Chase one last look, and I caught him staring at me, but he quickly looked away in the same kinda way that you do when you don’t want someone to know that you’re staring at them.
“Akira!” I heard. I turned back to the lake and saw Taboo, boobs floating on the surface and black curly hair slicked back exposing her beautiful skin and full face. “Akira, come on! The water’s great.”
I looked back at Chase one last time, who was looking at me but once again quickly diverted his attention to the grass below him. Maggie took a look at his face before kissing his cheek, and laying her head back on his shoulder. I sighed, threw my cigarette on the ground to burn out by itself, and walked to the water.
✌ Akira Waters ✌