Obscure (Chapter 1)

Okay so hello. I’m not good with like writing to people, so you’ll have to forgive the fact that I just don’t know what I’m doing right now. So, your name is Cas, right? I think that’s what your dad told me it was. I don’t remember. I’m still pissed off he’s making me do this as my senior project.

I mean, I barely know you, I tried to get out of the first one by telling him how stupid it was to try and write a five page essay using one word to describe all four years of high school. He’s making me write to you about high school, instead of an essay. So as a heads up, you’ll be seeing random letters in your locker throughout the rest of the semester. Don’t get freaked out about it though, I’m not your secret admirer or anything, so don’t even being to think that.

So yeah, I have to write to you and stuff, and I guess you have to read it so your dad could be happy (though I don’t care if he’s happy or not. He’s an ass and you and I know it), and so that I can get my grade and get an A in that class before going off to whatever college decides to take me under their wing. Damn that was a long sentence. Anyway so (sorry for repetition) I’ll write to you and stuff.

Also one thing that you should know about me and my high school years is that there’s really no real goal. I didn’t have a goal freshman year, and you know I’m eighteen now and I still don’t have a goal in life. I never have really and that’s okay I guess. I just want to make good grades and hopefully get into Tulane. Also I’m trying to help my friends, my parents, my sisters, and myself stay “sane”. So that’s pretty much it; that’s how it’s always been.

And I know that stories are supposed to have a tangible goal, and that it’s supposed to follow a certain order of rising action and climax and resolution and stuff that we learned in fifth grade. If you’re one to get annoyed if a story doesn’t have a goal (i.e. if you’re one who likes more unrealistic stories about heroes trying to save the world, and not stories about a little slice of life), this one isn’t for you. So when you get these letters in your locker, just know that it doesn’t follow an order. Shit happens, and people react, and then other people react, and it’s just a chain of reactions of reactions.

If you think about it, then that’s all life really is. Sorry to get all super deep hippie druggie or whatever, but honestly life is just a bunch of reactions to the actions of others, which were honestly reactions of another reaction. There’s a lot of reactions in my life. In everyone’s life actually.

I should really start this story, I’m sorry I’m wasting your time.

So, I guess I’ll start off with the summer before my freshman year. I’d had enough of living with my mom, and so had everyone else but my mom, so I moved to the town my sisters and my dad had been living in for three years before I got there. That place just so happened to be the small, itty bitty, close-knit town of fucking Mercury, Georgia.

That’s how a lot of these kinds of stories start, don’t they? With a new start. Someone moving somewhere or even someone simply making a change, like changing the way one would act, or changing the way you act because you’ve come to some sort of psychological truth that’s forced you to change the way that you think about every little thing in the entire universe. Yeah that’s how most clichéd stories starts.

But I mean, everything’s cliché now. Someone goes, “Oh she likes him? That’s so cliché” and nobody is ever original. And when we do find something original, we either accept it and exploit it for everything it’s worth before throwing it out to the dogs, or we just scream “fuck you” to it’s face and wait for another version of the same thing to come out later.

My life is a cliché, just another version of the average “fucked up teenager” story that people seem to love nowadays. My life is basically a rip off of stories like “Fault in Our Stars” (with out the cancer), and “Perks of Being a Wallflower” (with more gayness), or even something as simple as “High School Musical” with out the singing and dancing, but with all the falling in love and finding out “your true destiny” or whatever. So, my life, and the story I will tell, is practically something that you’ve heard of a million times before, and I am sorry for that.

If you want to stop reading then go ahead. I don’t care; it’s a kind of therapy for me to be talking about this anyway, so I could care less if you read it or not. Hell, just say you read it so we can be over with this. You don’t have to listen to a story about teen angst and I can just write about what I wanna write about and we can call it a day. I like that. It actually sounds like a good idea. Just do that, we’ll both be okay.

So, if you’re reading or not, I’m going to continue. My dad kept telling me that I was doing the right thing by leaving my mom to stay with him. I could never tell if he was happy that I was with him now, or if he was happy for me for getting away from her. I’d love to think that it would be the latter, I mean, my mom totally went berserk after she found out I was gay. I told her, she flipped her shit, and I was grounded until “I came to my senses” as she put it. My dad was fine with it though, and because of that, they continuously fought over the topic of my homosexuality.

My mom said she didn’t want to live in a house with a heathen, and my dad said he didn’t want me to live in the same house as an intolerant bitch. After a few more months of fighting and screaming and crying, my sisters had finally had enough and took me away from her.

They brought me to my dad, and said, “Akira can’t stay at that house anymore.”

Kiyoko agreed. She grabbed my hand and said, “We’re not letting go of her until she’s living with us.”

So, yeah. I’d like to believe that my dad is just happy that I’m safe, but I don’t really care either way. I’m just glad I’m away like everyone else is.

I never really liked my mother at that time anyway. I mean, I love her because she’s my mom and you’re supposed to love your mom, but I didn’t like her, if that makes sense. She constantly made me feel like a complete piece of shit. You know, by saying things like “Akira why are you so fat all of a sudden?” or “Why don’t you put more make up on, you need it” or my favorite “My life would be so much easier if you never came along”. So you know, she basically treated me like someone she had to deal with rather than her actual daughter.

Once again, sorry my life is a cliché. I wish I could change it. I wish I had this picture perfect life. I wished my mom had treated me better and I wished I could just be normal, half the time. I wish that, but then I think about how different I would be. I mean, I wouldn’t have met Chase, or gotten the chance to become as close to my dad and my sisters as I did. I would’ve just had a normal relationship with them, rather than the type where I trust them with everything that went on in my life, and I don’t know if I would be able to handle that. So it’s a bittersweet feeling, not being about to change your life and all.

Sorry I keep breaking away from the story as well. It’s two in the morning right now, and I’m tired as hell and Beast is lying on my legs like he’s a toy dog or something. He’s killing me; I’ll be lucky if I’m able to walk tomorrow. Anyway I’m going to get back to the story and I’m going to stay on track and not get distracted anymore.

But I mean please do understand that I’m just writing down unfiltered thoughts right now, and most likely I’m going to be too lazy to edit it out in the morning so you’re probably just going to have to deal with it. This may happen periodically depending on my mood and how late and/or early it is. So you have been warned my friend.

Okay I’m getting back to the story, the actual start of the story, which starts with me, sitting in my new room, on my new bed, with the sun setting in my window and my curly brown hair brushing the tops of my shoulders. My new room was quite bland to say the least.

I’d just moved in, of course, so it would be bland, but there was such a boring connotation to the word bland. The walls were completely white, the kind of white that’s at a doctor’s office, or that neon white that always show up in futuristic type movies. The orange-ish color of the sun gave it some sort of color, a pretty one I might add, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy my desire for something to spice up this new space.

I didn’t have any pictures to unpack, I’d thrown all of them away right before we moved, and I never went to any concerts, so I didn’t have any special posters I wanted to hang up. Painting was out of the question for now, so the only thing that could possibly count as decoration for my room would be the empty black dresser in the corner, and the boxes of everything else lining my whitewashed walls of my boringly bland room.

Hardly a thing had been unpacked since I got here; we’d been too tired driving back and forth from Atlanta to Mercury. I mean, I didn’t do any of the driving and I was tired. I didn’t want to do anything but sleep for the night, or for the rest of the week, or for the rest of the year, or for the rest of my life. Sadly, I knew that the only option that would do for now would be sleeping for the night.

Miyako and Kiyoko were moving things around in their room. They shared a room like always (one of the typical twin things to do). It was interesting to hear their border conflicts, with Kiyoko being a Hello-Kitty loving typical Asian girl, and Miyako loving classic rock and 90’s grunge stuff. Border conflicts were the highlight of moving. 

I could hear Kiyoko moving something, then Mimi said, “Don’t put that damn thing over here.” I was so ready to listen, but, my dad being the overly cheerful and happy-go-lucky man that he is, decided that the best thing to do would be to call me into the kitchen.

So even though I was ready to put my ear up against the wall and hear my sisters fight, my nose was being led to all of the great smelling wonders that were being created in the kitchen.

I walked to the front of the house—it’s only a one-story craftsman style house. My dad said that there was no reason for so much space when we only had the four of us living in it—and saw my dad with a kiss the cook apron on, a chef’s hat that he bought a few years ago, and trying to put out a fire he created with a towel that I hoped wouldn’t catch the fire like some sort of deadly disease.

“Are you okay,” I asked him, sitting on the chair to the small table in the kitchen.

“Uh no. I’m not,” he said, not looking at me. “Well actually I’m not dead yet so that’s cool.”

I laughed and brushed some hair from my face. “How’s the breaking in the kitchen thing going?”

He smiled, and looked back at me. “I’m breaking it if that counts.”

Miyako came storming in, with her long black hair rushing behind her. “Dad!”

My dad rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Yes?”

“Kiyoko is trying to barge in on my space. And she thinks that you’ll vote in her favor.”

“No I do not!” I giggled as Kiyoko came in the kitchen. “She’s not giving me enough room. I’m a growing young lady, I need my space.”

Dad walked up to my sisters and wrapped his arms around them. They were of average height, taller than me, but shorter than my dad, who was barely touching six feet.

“You girls wanted your sister here, right?”

“You wanted her here, too,” Miyako said.

“She wanted herself here too,” Kiyoko added. “You want to be here, right Akira?”

I jumped at the mention of my name and nodded ferouciously. “Yeah of course I do.”

“Well either way,” my dad said. “Two of you three would have to share a room.”

My sisters grumbled and looked at each other. “Fine,” they said in unison. My dad sent them off to finish up their room while he was getting dinner together.

He had already baked some fish and he was trying to do something with potatoes but that whole idea went up in flames, literally. So we were only having fish and no sides, which I wasn’t complaining about. I never really ate much anyway, and having too much food left over on my plate would only upset him. Less food was good.

So my dad with his greying hair flopped down on his forehead, and sweat practically pouring down the side of his face, me looking at him as if he’d just committed a murder, and my sisters continuing to bicker with each other, dug into our food and started our first dinner together as father and daughters, with no mother and no explosive fights and no crying teenagers and no sadness or madness or depression or anything negative to ruin the evening. Just a calm four-person dinner and everything was fine.

During this first dinner, my dad suggested we get a puppy, and I said sure (my sisters were extremely excited). He suggested we go over to my new school soon, and I said sure (my sisters were extremely excited). He suggested I join the softball team, and I said sure (once again, my sisters were extremely excited). He suggested that I try to make some new friends before the year started, and I said sure (my sisters would help me out). He suggested that I try not to be such a loner in my first year of high school, and I said sure.

My dad was always so blunt about things. I loved it. He said what was on his mind, and didn’t go around corners to try and get his point across. If he was hungry, he’d say “Goddammit I’m hungry.” If he were mad, he’d say, “Goddammit I’m mad.” If he thought I was a loner and I needed to stop it then he’d say, “Goddammit Akira, make some friends.” You get my point? He said Goddammit a lot.

So, my first dinner in my current house consisted of a lot of “Goddammits” and a lot of suggestions. I was glad though. At least he wasn’t forcing me to do stuff. My dad had come to terms with that fact that my sisters, mostly Miyako, would practically do whatever they wanted to do, and trying to control their actions would only created a gap between us that the three of them didn’t want there. So all he did was make suggestions and try to help them through stuff as it came along. And that spilled over to me once I got there.

He was more of the experiential parent, you know the ones who let their children do whatever they want within the confines of certain boundaries set in place? He was the kind who chose to let the kid experience shit for themselves and then they’ll just help them with the consequences. He was the type of parent every teenager wanted. All of the kids who liked to party and go out on the weekends wanted a parent or two like my dad, who just went with whatever and let them do what they wanted. It worked out for Miyako mostly, Kiyoko when she wanted, and lucky me, I got him. The girl who rarely went out on the weekends and who barely had a social life got the dad who didn’t care what she did as long as she was in the house before eleven.

“Akira,” my dad said after a while. “How’re you feeling about everything?”

I shrugged and popped a piece of fish in my mouth. “Fine, I guess.”

“You can give a better answer than that, Akira,” Miyako said.

“Don’t push her to say anything,” Kiyoko said. “She just got here, you can’t expect her to answer that right away.”

“She could have an idea though,” Mimi said. “I mean, at least she is out of that toxic house and away from Sierra.”

“Miyako, that’s her mom, don’t talk bad about her,” my dad scorned.

“Look, I’m just saying that she’d gotta be happier here than with her mom.”

“Well,” I finally chimmed in. The three of them turned their heads to me and I smiled more sheepishly than I’d like. “I’m happy here.”

Kiyoko’s face lit up like the sun and she leaned in close to me. “You are? Really?”

I chuckled a little bit and nodded. “Yeah. I’m happy with everything. I’m happy that I’m with you now. And, I mean, I haven’t really been anywhere, so I don’t know what the town is like exactly, but yeah I’m just glad I’ somewhere new and far away.”

“Well, we can go into town tomorrow if you want,” my dad said. “Your sisters still have school, but I’m off work, so we can go into town if you want. I have to get a lamp for my room, and some other stuff for the house anyway.”

“You can just get a night light, Dad for a lot less money.”

He looked at Miyako like she was crazy and shook his head. “Night lights are for people who are scared of the dark.”

“You are scared of the dark.”

“Miyako, I’m not scared of the dark, or anything for that matter.”

“Which explains why you freaked out during that black out, last year, right?”

Kiyoko and I laughed, and my dad’s face turned red. “Hush you. I saw a rat.”

“Oh so you’re scared of rats too?”

“Eat your food Miyako.” We erupted into laughter at his embarrassment and he just cursed the three of us under his breath.

My sisters still had about a week of school left, so they went to sleep earlier than I did. I could hear them bickering over something in their room, though they kept their voices down low so I couldn’t hear how unhappy they were with sharing a room with each other on my account.

But, I mean, they seemed like they were more comfortable with the arrangement we had before I got my own bed and stuff. I’d sleep in the same bed with Kiyoko or Miyako, depending on the day or the mood they were in, or sometimes in my dad’s bed when he would work night shifts at the hospital. So, I mean having to share a room rather than a bed would be more comfortable than sharing a bed, but my sisters are always in a different world than most people, so they’ve got an excuse.

I just went back to my room, tired from moving things around all day, and fell right to sleep, listening to the sound of my sisters bicker, and my dad getting dressed to go to work.