The Bravest Thing

by Laura Lascarso

  “I noticed,” he says, “but I’ll take my chances.”

  I don’t want him to take any chances on my account, but I do want him to have my number in case Hiro calls him, so I give it to him.

  “I’m a good listener,” he says, “if you ever want to talk.”

  I nod. “Thanks and hey, if Hiro calls or texts, could you let me know?”

  “For sure.” He kind of stares at me. I look away. “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do.” I rub at my eyes, then my stomach.

  I’m falling apart.

  Hiroku

  THE REST of Petty Crime arrives three weeks after we do. The plan is for the band to spend a week rehearsing, a month or so recording, and then Seth will stay behind and do whatever cleanup is needed on the vocals and instruments. I’m documenting everything to be used in a web series on the band, or maybe to cut up some of the footage for their next video. I have some ideas already for what I want to do with it, a mix between the Red Hot Chili Peppers “Breaking the Girl” and the Smashing Pumpkins “Today,” with the desert featured prominently.

  On the day everyone arrives, Seth hosts a get-together at our place for the band, significant others, and whatever friends and groupies have come along for the ride. The inside of our trailer is too small, so the party spills into the front, where there’s a fire pit and a ring of lawn chairs. Seth sets up a cheap charcoal grill as well.

  The smell of the charcoal makes me uneasy, but I try to put it out of my mind.

  Mitchell and Dean, the bassist and lead guitarist, are easy enough to reunite with again. A handshake and a how’s it going suffices. They mostly stayed out of the drama between Seth and me. Mitchell has a wife and young kid, and Dean, who’s older, is a recovering alcoholic, tough as nails. The few times he’s slipped, he made himself go out and get a tattoo as punishment. I’m not sure how that’s a punishment, because his tattoos are pretty rad, but I understand the mind games you play with yourself in order to stay sober. I’m losing mine every day.

  My reunion with Sabrina is a little bit rougher.

  “The fuck are you doing here, Hiro?” she says by way of greeting. She’s the only other person who calls me that.

  “Just soaking up the sun,” I say. Seth’s a few feet away, no doubt within listening range.

  “I thought this song had been played out,” she says with no trace of amusement.

  “It’s making a comeback.” I want to keep it light. No drama.

  “Still powdering our noses, Marie?” For Marie Antoinette. Somehow it turned into a drug reference. We’ve been friends for years, so we have a lot of coded messages. It’s how we communicate when Seth’s around.

  I shrug in response. I don’t want to get into it with her in front of everyone else, Seth included.

  “Rehab was that good, huh?” she asks.

  Seth comes up then and slings his arm around her shoulders, squeezing a little too tightly. She recoils from him. “You know the thing I like most about drummers, Sabrina?” he purrs. She says nothing. “Yes, that’s it. They know exactly when to shut the fuck up.”

  She glares at him and shoves him off her, walks over to the cooler and pulls out a beer, tilts the bottle my way. “Cheers, Hiro, to the reunion tour.”

  I need something to do other than wilt under her deep disappointment, so I get a fire going in the pit I made earlier that day out of random rocks that were lying around. I arranged them so it looks like a mosaic of a sunburst. I don’t know why I went to the trouble. I could have just piled them up. I guess I have a lot of time on my hands.

  Most everyone in the entourage has a guitar, except Sabrina and me. Sometimes she plays the bongos or taps her sticks to keep a beat, but she gets bored quickly. Sabrina has a lot of aggression, and she truly loves beating the hell out of her drum kit.

  “So, how was rehab?” she asks me later that evening. The sun has set and the stars are out. I like looking up at the night sky in the desert and seeing the vastness of our universe. I find comfort in being reminded of just how small and insignificant we humans are.

  “Fucking sucked,” I say.

  “And your new school?”

  “Same.” I’m not going to tell her about Trent or the assault. If she asks me why I came back to Seth, I’ll make something up.

  “Make any new friends?”

  I shrug and pull down on the brim of the hat Berlin gave me. I wear it whenever I can because it reminds me of when we went horseback riding, and the way Berlin greeted me that day with a little dip of his hat. So hot and so sweet at the same time, a perfect gesture. I guess I’m smiling just thinking about him, because Sabrina kind of nudges me. “Tell me about him.”

  I feel comfortable talking with Sabrina about Berlin. I trust her not to say anything to Seth, and it will do her good to know I was involved with someone else.

  “He was a cowboy.” That day on his ranch, I wanted to rip off everything else but the hat and just devour him from head to toe. Snapshots of him flit through my mind. His broad chest with his rust-colored hair gleaming in the sunlight, gray-blue eyes that crinkle with kindness and change colors with the sky. His hands, big and callused and surprisingly gentle.

  “His friends didn’t know,” I tell her. “We had to keep it a secret.”

  “That must have been hard,” she says and lays her hand on mine. It’s the same thing my father does to my mother when she’s upset, which makes me miss them too. Sabrina has always been a good listener. She hears the spaces between the words, the things I don’t say.

  “It was hard.” My eyes start to sting a little. I regret the way I left things with my parents and Berlin. I hope Spencer has reached out to Berlin like I asked. Maybe they’ll even get together. Pickings are slim in Lowry. The thought of them having each other kind of makes me feel better about it all.

  “Is that why you went back to Seth?” she asks, this time with less judgment.

  “Yeah.” I sniff a little and drag my arm across my eyes, adjust my hat. I glance across the fire and see Seth staring at me with a crazy look in his eyes.

  “Reminiscing over there?” he calls sweetly while continuing to strum his guitar. Sabrina glares at him. Neither of us responds, so he continues. “Hiroku had an interesting year. Why don’t you tell us about it?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I say shortly. I don’t know what he’s getting at, but I figure it’s nothing good.

  “You want to show us that little souvenir you got from your redneck boyfriend?”

  I shouldn’t be surprised he’d throw that in my face the moment he feels threatened, but I hoped he’d moved past embarrassing me in front of his friends to make himself feel better.

  “Hiro, don’t tell me you got a tattoo?” Sabrina teases, elbowing my side.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say coldly. Their expressions all flatline, except for Seth. His smile widens.

  “Go on, show them,” he says like it’s funny. Like it wasn’t one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.

  “No.” I wish the word alone would choke him off so he won’t utter another goddamned thing.

  “They branded him,” Seth says, his mouth turning downward. “That’s why you came back, Hiroku, isn’t it? That’s how fucking bad it had to get?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Seth,” Sabrina growls. She reaches out to me and I evade her, get up and grab my cigarettes on my way out. I hear Seth groan and say something like, “Looks like he’s mad at me, again,” even though I’m sure he’s secretly pleased with himself. Insert knife, turn, then act surprised when the blood starts gushing out.

  “Come back, Hiroku, baby,” he calls like a condescending asshole. I flip him off and keep walking.

  I head out under the starry sky like a lone wanderer, my cheeks wet with tears. That happens to me sometimes—I’ll just start crying without really realizing it. I can still get on my bike and get lost in the desert. Pick some random hotel room to hole up in until the withdr
awal subsides, but I don’t have the money to pay for it. And what place would give a room to a dodgy-looking teenager anyway?

  I lie back in the sand and stare up at the stars until the anger drains away, leaving that hard, shriveled knot inside me that passes for a heart. I imagine Berlin’s arms around me, the way he made me feel safe without trapping me. I reach under my shirt and trace the tender skin, feeling bitter and confused all at once, thinking about how the scars you can’t touch are just as dangerous because of how easy it is to forget they’re there.

  Berlin

  MY DAD’S worried about me. He thinks I might be depressed, even though he doesn’t say the word. Other than school, I don’t leave the ranch much. I’m losing weight from all the stress, and I haven’t been sleeping so great either. He wants me to go to the doctor, not like the flu doctor, but a therapist.

  “There’s a lot going on upstairs,” Dad says to me over dinner one night. “I’m not the most talkative guy. Might help you to talk to a professional.”

  “I’m fine, Dad.” I don’t want to talk to a therapist. I want to talk to Hiro.

  But I can’t talk to him, so I start following Seth Barrett on Instagram. The first few posts are just Seth in the desert. Then, in the background of one of the pictures, I see Hiro gazing off into the distance. I can’t make out his face, but I recognize his posture and the camera slung across his shoulder.

  I tell Mrs. H. about it and show her the post, but Seth never gives any clues in his pictures as to where they are. He must know Hiro’s parents will come after him.

  As the days progress, Hiro is featured more and more. I watch the two of them grow closer in Instagram photos, a different kind of pain. Hiro starts off in the background, then a side profile, then looking at the camera. The first time I see his face, my breath catches and my stomach somersaults like it did when I used to hear his bike coming up the drive or pulling into the parking lot at school. He isn’t smiling, though, just staring at the camera with his dark eyes and pouty mouth.

  In the most recent one, Seth is kissing Hiro’s cheek while Hiro makes a frowny face, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looks sexy as hell. It guts me, but at the same time, it reassures me to know Hiro is okay. Maybe Seth realized what a treasure he had and he’s treating him better.

  Still, I recall the way Hiro pulled away from me when I tried to touch him, like he was scared of being hurt again. Sometimes in the photographs, I see Hiro curling into himself or gazing off with a faraway look in his eyes, and it concerns me. I say a prayer for his safety. I hope that even if he isn’t calling me, he’s staying clean and calling his mother.

  Spencer keeps up with me outside of school and invites me to go out with him and some of his other friends. After the conversation about the therapist with my dad, I decide to accept his invitation, if only to prove I’m mentally stable. I meet them at what Spencer calls his “art installation,” which turns out to be a bunch of printed photos taped to a cement wall. He and his friends are shooting at it with a paintball gun.

  “All the people who’ve wronged us in the past,” Spencer says and takes aim on a blown-up yearbook picture of Trent, Anderson, and me from one of our practices. We’re all posing like the guy in the Heisman trophy statue. The Lowry Lions haven’t won a game since I quit the team. Their play-off dreams are going down the tubes. It gives me some satisfaction, but it’s not nearly enough. They should be punished for what they did to Hiro. I think about it every day, how they got away with it. What’s to stop them from doing the same thing to someone else?

  Spencer shoots and marks Anderson’s shoulder. He shoots again and hits Trent’s forehead. “Bull’s-eye,” Spencer says. “Want to take a shot?” He offers me the gun.

  I raise the gun and take aim at the picture. I mark myself square in the chest, then hand the gun back to Spencer.

  “Did you mean to hit yourself?”

  “That guy is dead and gone.”

  His eyebrows raise. “How symbolic. Your aim is killer. Take a few more shots.” He hands the gun back and tells me who he wants me to hit and where. I tag them all like a mercenary, a machine.

  “I’m glad you’re playing for our team,” Spencer remarks.

  “I am now.”

  I hand the gun to someone else and remember the time I took Hiro shooting, how it felt to hold him in my arms, like that’s what my arms were made for. He belonged there and I did too. I feel terribly lonesome, even though I’m surrounded by new friends. I hear my phone ding, the alert I’d set for posting a picture on Instagram. This picture doesn’t have Seth in it at all, just Hiro walking away, middle finger raised in the air. It’s dark, must be from that same night. On his head I can just make out the hat I gave him.

  Seth’s words describe the photo. My sweet Hiroku… hate to see him go, but love to watch him walk away…#loversquarrel

  What were they fighting about? Where was Hiro headed? It’s pitch-black wherever he is—no city lights at all. And he’s walking off by himself. I think of those cliffs at the quarry and his desire to hurt himself. In my gut I know he’s not happy. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I shake my phone. “Just call me.”

  But my phone stays silent.

  Hiroku

  AFTER TWO weeks of recording, the stress of having to play nice with his bandmates is wearing on Seth. Most nights he spends drinking in the trailer and complaining about something someone did or said that day. I mostly listen without comment, since Seth has made it clear he doesn’t want to hear the other side’s perspective.

  While they record, I spend most of my time behind the camera, which allows me some distance. When it comes to their familial spats about the guitar solo being too long or the drums being too loud, I stay the hell out of it. Whenever I can get away, I roam around town, meeting the locals, hanging out in the pool halls, the diners, and sometimes the library. I never have much money, only my “allowance,” which is the cash Seth leaves for me on the bedside table every few days like I’m some kind of live-in hooker.

  Seth doesn’t like it when I go to town. He wants me in the studio, even if it’s only to stand there and look pretty. We get into arguments about it sometimes. Despite my flirtations, I’ve never given him a reason not to trust me, but still, it doesn’t lessen his desire to control me.

  “Sabrina beats those drums like a caveman—no finesse,” he says one night after we’ve just gotten high. I’m lying on the couch staring at the oscillating fan as it pivots back and forth, thinking about how much the two of us have in common, me and that fan. The fan exists to serve me. I exist to serve Seth. We’re both trapped in a cage that follows a predestined course, travels only so far as is permitted, then comes right back. In return for this service, the fan gets jolts of electricity and I get painkillers.

  Seth is sitting in an old, tattered recliner, working on a collection of empty beer bottles, oblivious to everything save for his own obsessions.

  “Maybe I should bring in someone else to do a few of the slower songs so you can actually hear the vocals,” he says.

  “You do that and it’ll break up the band, Billy.” Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins, known for being an insane control freak who ended up recording himself playing all the instruments because he didn’t think his bandmates were getting it right. They broke up soon after that.

  “Maybe you could talk to her, Hiroku,” he says with a whine in his voice. “She listens to you.”

  “Fuck no, Seth. I’d rather have dental work without Novocain.”

  But he keeps on about it, wearing me down until I finally agree to say something to her if it comes up. The next day, while I’m behind the camera recording them, Seth picks a fight with Sabrina about her heavy hand until they’re both mouthing off to each other. Then Seth turns to me and asks me what I think. This isn’t how I intended to go about it at all, so I tell him I have no opinion. That pisses him the hell off, so he starts talking shit to me until I finally just pack u
p my shit and walk out.

  Seth doesn’t just let me leave, though. He chases after me, into the parking lot of the recording studio, telling me to “get the hell back there” and “don’t fucking walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”

  “Fuck off,” I say without stopping. I have my bike with me, thankfully. I’ll go down to the local dive and drink a few beers to chill out. The town is small. They know me already, and the band. They serve me even though I’m underage.

  Seth catches up to me and grabs my shoulder, spins me around so that I’m facing him, then slaps me square across the face. My cheek stings but I resist the urge to touch it. The look on his face is surprised and then curious, like, what am I going to do about it?

  “And the beat goes on, huh, Seth?” I turn away and continue to where my bike is parked. I expected to feel… more. More hurt and anger, more betrayal, but something inside me has died ever since I left Lowry. Seth’s antics just don’t have the same effect they used to. He mostly makes me tired and depressed.

  He chases after me, trying on a new character, the contrite boyfriend. I ignore his half-assed apologies, load up my equipment, get on my bike, and make the loop of tinyass towns in the epicenter of nowhere. I think about heading back to Lowry, but then I’ll have to face my parents while coming off drugs. I’m too messed up to go back there. I don’t want them to see my worst self. I need to quit the drugs first, then Seth.

  I stop at a bar in town and get shit-faced, play pool so badly I think the other guys are letting me win, consider going home with one of the bikers who’s hitting on me, but in the end decide it probably isn’t worth it.

  It’s late when I get back to the trailer. Walking up to the front door, I’m wobbly on my feet. I should have taken up that biker’s offer to bring me home. I open the door to find Seth waiting for me, a meanass look on his face. He’s been drinking too.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he fumes, taking up all the space in the trailer. At times like these, the place isn’t big enough for the both of us.