Hiroku

by Laura Lascarso

  “Didn’t that hurt?” I asked, instinctively shielding my own nipples, both fearful and fascinated. Needles made me nervous.

  “Yeah, but even that feels good sometimes too, doesn’t it?” She winked like it was a shared secret between us. “I know a guy if you’re interested.”

  Then Jeannie started complaining about Mitchell, which felt slightly awkward since I considered Mitchell a friend. Still, I offered a sympathetic ear. The gist of her grievance was that they’d been dating for about two years and were supposed to graduate in the spring. Jeannie was planning to go to cosmetology school and wanted Mitchell to find a job that paid more than working at Sunoco.

  “I mean, if you want to make it big in music, there are worse places to be, but with Skull Necklace breaking up…” Jeannie turned to me. “You were there, weren’t you? Do you know what happened? Mitchell never talks to me about band business.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. Perhaps because my parents were so career-oriented, it never occurred to me that Skull Necklace was anything more than a fun diversion. To learn that Seth and Mitchell were planning to make it their post-high school career seemed slightly naïve to me.

  Or maybe I lacked commitment as an artist.

  “I think the band is going in a different direction,” I said noncommittally. It seemed as if Seth hadn’t said anything about my contribution to the band breaking up, and I preferred it that way. I was saved then by the guys returning to tell us camp was made. I shielded my eyes from the sun’s glare to look up at them. Seth shifted a little so that he was blocking the sun, and it created a full-body halo effect. His eyes roved over me, and he licked his lips in a wicked way. The effect on me was pretty much instantaneous.

  “Hiroku and I will catch up,” Seth said to the others. Sasha and Jeannie exchanged a knowing look, which made me feel a bit like a tool, to think this was something Seth did on the regular. How many other pretty boys had Seth lured into nature, revved up on the adrenaline of cliff jumping, and then later deflowered? At the same time, I couldn’t help but be aroused by the thought of it. My body had absolutely no reservations.

  My conversation with the girls was front and center in my mind as I followed Seth along a trail into the woods. They’d welcomed me and made me feel like part of their pack, but if I was just Seth’s latest fuckboy, I kind of wanted to know it up front so I didn’t get too emotionally invested.

  As if reading my mind, Seth said, “You and the girls talk about anything interesting?”

  Somehow Seth knew my faith in him was wavering. He could sense my insecurities like a bloodhound picking up a scent trail. “Sasha’s thinking of dyeing her hair again,” I said.

  “What color?”

  “Red. Not a cherry red, more like a dark auburn.”

  Seth nodded. “I can picture it.”

  “Jeannie offered to do it for her. She said she’d do mine too. Her suggestion for my hair was purple.” I was stalling. Hair dye was much easier to talk about than what was really on my mind.

  Seth turned back to eye me. “Light purple, like a vintage violet more so than a plum.”

  I’d never before entertained the idea of dyeing my hair, but suddenly I was.

  Seth led me to a thicket of trees that was several yards away from the trail, secluded and private. I knew he’d brought me there for a reason—the tension between us had been building all day, in his sly smiles, his hands lingering a beat too long on my bare skin, a slow caress along the slope of my back.

  I wanted to be used by him, but I didn’t want to be discarded.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about?” Seth asked as he trailed his hand down my arm, all the way to the tip of my index finger, which he hooked with his.

  There were so many things I wanted to talk about, but I decided to start with something easy. “Are you gay?”

  Seth shook his head with a rueful smile. “Sasha, right?” He sighed and looked past me. “I’m… omnivorous.”

  I assumed that meant bisexual or pansexual. His orientation wasn’t really that important to me, but it was a start to understanding his end game.

  “Are you seeing someone?” I asked.

  His eyes widened, and he looked offended. “I’m seeing you, I thought.”

  I took that as a positive sign, “Anyone else?”

  “No, but I got to tell you, Hiroku, I don’t think I’d make a very good boyfriend.”

  I gave him points for being honest. Still, there was something that was eating at me. It wasn’t about being his only lover or having him make any kind of commitment to me—not then, at least. I needed some assurances, but I was never good at asking for what I wanted.

  “Just say it, Hiroku,” Seth said impatiently.

  If I was going to be played by him, I wanted to know how.

  “Is this a thing where you’ve never been with an Asian guy before, and you’re using me to try and test the waters?”

  Seth’s eyebrows lifted like he wasn’t expecting that. And then he frowned with his whole face settling into it. “I’ve been with an Asian guy before. I don’t think he was Japanese, but it was close enough.”

  That wasn’t exactly the response I was looking for, though I learned pretty early on with Seth, not to ask questions if you didn’t want to know their answers.

  “Is that it?” he asked when I didn’t respond right away. “Or is there something else you want to know?”

  Of course, I wanted to know more, but I didn’t feel it was my place to interrogate him. He was allowed to have secrets.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I said.

  He eyed me a moment longer as if debating with himself whether or not to say more. Then he leaned in close enough to kiss me, so close I could feel his breath on my face and smell the sunshine on his skin, but at the last moment, he turned his head. “We’d better get back before all the food is gone.”

  I looked away so he wouldn’t see the wounded expression on my face at what felt like a rejection.

  “Yeah,” I said hollowly, biting back my disappointment. “We better.”

  I followed him back to the campsite, neither of us saying much at all, but I knew somehow that by asking those questions, I’d done something wrong.

  All they’d brought to eat were hotdogs and I was a vegetarian, so I ate a couple of buns with ketchup while they all took turns asking me why I didn’t eat meat. I was a little sensitive about it already—my parents had never been very supportive of my dietary decision, which I’d made when I was thirteen after watching a documentary on industrial chicken farms. I tried to be patient about it because people always had questions, but when Sasha asked if it was because of the cute widdle bunny wabbits, I kind of exploded.

  “Look, I don’t like the thought of an animal having to die just so I can eat a burger or a chicken wing or a hotdog—if that’s even meat. It’s just not worth it to me when there are other alternatives.”

  They all turned to Seth, perhaps thinking I’d gotten too mouthy, but he didn’t comment on it either way, just eyed me with a curious expression. It seemed he was letting his friends interrogate me so that he didn’t have to. Later on, when we were collecting wood for a fire, he told me he had some meat I could eat. My whole body burned, from my toes to my ears, and I couldn’t come up with anything clever to say. I couldn’t even meet his eyes. Seth laughed.

  They smoked and drank and talked shit into the night. I assumed we were sleeping on the rough blankets they’d spread around the fire because no one had brought a tent or sleeping bags. My dad bought the excuse that I was staying the night at Sabrina’s, which I’d done on occasion since elementary school, and Sabrina agreed to cover for me if I told her tomorrow what the hell was going on. I was zoned out watching the fire when Seth poked me in the ribs. He’d stopped strumming his guitar. They hadn’t packed any camping equipment, but they’d somehow managed to fit two guitars in Mitchell’s trunk.

  “We need more wood,” Seth said. I glanced over at the stack whe
re there was still plenty.

  “Come on, Seth,” Sasha said. “He’s not a baby.”

  I glanced up at their faces, orange hued from the firelight and just a little bit demonic looking.

  “Did I miss something?” I asked.

  Seth set down the guitar and handed me a flashlight. “Go get some wood. I don’t care what you come back with, just stay out there for twenty minutes or so.”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Sasha huffed.

  “Sasha,” Caleb warned in a low rumble. She rolled her eyes.

  “He’s already skipped school for the first time today,” Seth said. “He doesn’t need to witness all of our bad habits.”

  I glanced over to where Caleb was holding a baggie in his hand, kind of hiding it behind his palm but not very well. I wanted to prove I was one of them, that I could be trusted to at least sit around the fire while they did…whatever they were planning on doing, but the look in Seth’s eye was determined.

  I took the flashlight and stalked off into the woods, far enough to where they couldn’t see me, but I could still hear their laughter and the muted sounds of their voices. Even though I knew Seth was trying to protect me, I was mad that I’d been dismissed.

  Like a little kid.

  I gave them forty minutes instead of twenty, partly because I wanted Seth to come looking for me, but he didn’t. When I got back, their eyes were all glazed over, and they had doofy expressions. Caleb’s eyelids kept fluttering like he couldn’t stay awake. Seth just had a wide shit-eating grin on his face.

  “What are you guys on?” I asked him.

  “A little this, a little that,” Seth said. “You sleepy?” He turned his head toward me, and it took his eyes another second to catch up.

  “Yeah.” I was exhausted and also irritated that they were in la-la land, where I was not.

  Seth shook out our blankets and made a little nest. He told me to put my head on his lap and he’d sing me a lullaby. Then he sang an acoustic version of “Tonight, Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins like I’d never heard it before. So beautiful it made me want to cry.

  “You sing like an angel,” I told him as I was drifting off to sleep.

  Seth smiled. “An angel, huh?”

  “Yeah, but dark too…like a fallen angel.”

  “So…like Satan?” Seth asked with amusement.

  I chuckled at that, drunk with fatigue. “Yes, exactly. You sound just like Satan.”

  At some point in the night, I felt Seth at my back with his arms wrapped around me. I awoke in the morning to his erection pressed up against my ass cheek.

  “Morning,” he whispered in a scratchy voice as the sun rose over our messy, thrown-together campsite. Seth tightened his arms around me, and I arched back into him so that our bodies made complete contact. He placed one hand flat against my chest and ground his pelvis lazily against me as my own erection swelled in my pants. The urge to reach down and stroke myself was overwhelming, but all around us, people were starting to stir.

  “Something to look forward to,” Seth whispered and rose from our blankets, stretching his arms dramatically above his head, leaving me cold and aching and alone. A little bit bitter too, if I was being honest.

  We ate whatever food was left over from the night before, which for me was another hotdog bun. They dropped me off down the road from my house midmorning. Before he opened the door to let me out, Seth drew me to him and kissed me long and hard on the lips.

  “Jeeze, Seth,” Sasha said, “Let the kid come up for air.”

  Jeannie fanned herself dramatically like a swooning Southern belle. Seth broke away and stared at me like he was looking for my reaction. It was a cruel thing to do, leave me with all of that unquenched thirst.

  I had to wonder if Seth was building the suspense for our next sexual encounter, the same way he did in conversations and in songs. So many times he’d rev me up with a word or a calculated touch, only to drift off to other matters. Part of me thought I should just make my desires known, but I didn’t have the courage to do it, so instead I was stranded and waiting—always waiting—for him to make the next move.

  “Think of me,” Seth said with pursed lips, and I hoped his friends didn’t catch on to the unstated portion of that sentiment.

  Outside their car, I pulled my backpack onto my shoulders like Atlas bearing up the world and watched them speed off with a hollowness in my gut and a low frequency humming in my balls.

  My mom was on the phone with my grandma in Japan when I came inside the house. It was something like midnight over there, so I just waved at her and headed upstairs. Dad was in his study, thankfully. I needed a shower to wash the campfire smell off of me and a real meal because I was starving. I was gathering up a change of clothes when Mai came into my room.

  “You forgot to knock,” I said. Mai and my mother didn’t always follow protocol for privacy.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  I detected attitude in her voice, rare for Mai. She wasn’t like your typical teen girl, more like a middle-aged woman. She shut the door behind her. Her phone was in her hand as she approached me.

  “How’s Sabrina? Mom told me she’s going through a breakup.” Mai tilted her head like a songbird and waited for my response, her arms held akimbo.

  Mai knew enough about my social life to know Sabrina didn’t have a boyfriend. I suspected Sabrina might even be into girls but, like me, hadn’t made it known.

  “She’s fine.” I chose not to elaborate any further.

  “So, why’d you lie to Mom and Dad about hanging out with her last night?”

  My sister always knew when I was lying, for better or worse. The good thing about it was she usually didn’t tell on me.

  “I was with some friends at McKinney Falls. We left school at lunchtime. Dad would have freaked out about it.”

  Mai glanced down at her phone. “And since when are you friends with Seth Barrett?”

  I came over and looked down at her phone. Seth had posted a video to Instagram of me jumping off the cliff in my underwear. #enjoyingtheview at McKinney Falls. Thank God my dad wasn’t on Insta. Anyone who followed Seth would infer things from that hashtag, just as Mai had. Seth had low-key outed me to our high school. I should probably be upset by it, but in a weird way, I felt relieved and even a little flattered. He’d more or less went public with his feelings for me.

  “He lives in the neighborhood. We play basketball together sometimes.”

  “And now you guys are going on overnight camping trips together?”

  For whatever reason, I felt the need to guard our relationship like a dog with a bone. “What of it, Mai?”

  She narrowed her eyes like she was put out by my attitude. “Seth Barrett is a loser, Hiroku. He’s probably not going to graduate because he skips so much school. He and his friends are into drugs. The bad kind. You’re a freshman and he’s a senior. If you’re doing this just to be popular—”

  “I’m not.” I honestly didn’t give a shit about being popular, then or ever. I just wanted a place to belong.

  “Then what’s going on?”

  I had secrets, and I knew if I didn’t give Mai something, she’d take it to my parents, and they’d probably ground me and if not that, be breathing down my neck about every little thing I did, which would put a real damper on my growing fascination with Seth.

  “There’s something you should know,” I told her. Her eyebrows lifted in a way that told me she was giving me her full attention. She was a patient listener. I’d always appreciated that about my sister. She knew how hard it was for me to express myself and didn’t pressure me to rush my words.

  “I’m into dudes.” She blinked a couple of times, and before she could say anything, I followed it up with, “You can’t tell Dad. Or Mom.”

  She came over and drew me into a hug. “I won’t, but you shouldn’t be sneaking around like this, Hiroku. Are you and Seth…together?” She sounded pained when she said it, like the word “together” left a
bad taste in her mouth.

  Technically, no. “We’re just friends. I have a lot of questions, and he’s…helping me through it.” In more ways than one.

  “I’m glad you found someone to talk to, but I meant what I said about Seth. He’s a terrible influence.”

  “Those are just rumors, Mai.”

  She gave me a stern look. “Sometimes when stories get told so often, you can’t help but believe them.”

  I wanted to say something to defend Seth’s honor, but everything Mai had said about him was true; not that he was a loser, but he did skip school a lot, and he was definitely into drugs. That didn’t mean I would do them too. People ate meat around me all the time. I just had to draw a similar line.

  Mai grabbed my shoulders. She was shorter than me now but still had the ability to make me feel like a little kid. “I won’t tell Mom and Dad, but that means you have to tell me what’s going on. No secrets.” She bit her lip. “Wait right here.”

  She left and came back a minute later with a fistful of condoms.

  “Mai,” I protested. I didn’t want to think about why she had those condoms. My parents tended to avoid all talks about sex with us. My dad, in our brief and incredibly stilted conversations, made it seem like our family honor was at stake if I even considered having sex with a girl, and the idea that I might want to have sex with a boy had probably never even crossed his mind, which meant everything I knew about sex came from the Internet or friends or on occasions like these, Mai.

  “I keep these in a shoebox under my bed,” Mai was saying, “tucked into my old ballerina slippers. It’s always stocked, so you can come in any time and get some. I don’t want you doing anything with anyone without one. Go it?” She held out the strip to me. I took them reluctantly, folded them up like raffle tickets, and shoved them into my back pocket.

  “Yes,” I said moodily.

  “And be smart about Seth, Hiroku. I know he’s exciting, but you have to be careful with your heart. Especially your first time.”