Metamorphosis

📅 Summer 2010

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ, ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ɴᴇɢʟᴇᴄᴛ/ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ, ᴀssᴏʀᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ sʏᴍᴘᴛᴏᴍᴀᴛᴏʟᴏɢʏ, ᴀɴᴅ ʜᴏᴍᴏᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀ〛

 They did get to hang out more, in summer, despite Athena’s three weeks of remedial math classes, which were frustrating at best and occasionally so infuriating that she’d break a drumstick trying to blow off steam afterwards. Once, the broken half flew off entirely and hit Kato in the back of the head, which he found hilarious.
“You should just drop out and commit to being a mechanic or something so I’m not combing out splinters the rest of my life,” he laughed.
“No, if I told my mom I was dropping out to be a mechanic, you’d be combing out bits of me the rest of your life. After she telekinetically exploded my ass from sheer fury.” 

 Eventually she managed to scrape through the lessons with the lowest possible passing grade, which her parents received in likely the same manner they would have had she failed. Kato brought her a cupcake with a “D” shaped candle in it.
 “Are you making fun of me?” she moped. He looked so shocked by the question that she felt immediately guilty for asking.
 “What?! Fuck no. I think it’s worth celebrating,” he said. “Besides, it’s a little badass, right? You get to pass and you get to deprive your folks of any gratification. Win-win. Let them be miserable. You did it.”
 She smiled, and let him lift her spirits, and licked all the frosting off the cupcake before handing the cake part back to him with a grin and a “For you.”
 “Gross,” he laughed, then ate it anyway as if to prove a point. They sat on her lawn and watched the fireflies start to come out and it felt like the rest of the summer would maybe get easier with all the bullshit out of the way.

 Unfortunately a new shadow was cast over their summer break from there, in the form of Kato’s mom having a significant relapse: One that kept her so bed-bound that personal hygiene became a concern, and–since his dad wouldn’t have taken time off work unless in a medically-induced coma–Kato ended up having to stay home more often than he’d have preferred, dealing with it. 
 “It’s like it’s how she copes,” he muttered to Athena at one point. “Something stresses her out and no matter what you do, she goes under. She can always be upset enough to leave. She can never be upset–or anything else–enough to stay.”
 “I’m sorry it’s so bad this time,” Athena said. “Do you–”
 “I don’t want to talk about it,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “You’re not supposed to have to change your parents. At least not before they’re ninety. I wish she’d just agree to the fucking shock therapy at this point.” And then he didn’t say anything else about it at all.

 Athena went over to his house on July 7th, and the only evidence that it was his birthday was that it was written on the calendar in the same neat writing that indicated Mary's appointments. 
 It didn’t feel like a birthday. His dad was at work, as usual. The house was as stark and sterile as ever.
 Athena brought him a little ceramic replica of the Colosseum and watched him pretend to show it to his mom, who stared at the ceiling like she was dead.
 “It’s my birthday,” he told her. His voice cracked but Athena was the one who ended up with tears on her cheeks, and she silently retreated to the bathroom to hide them from him. 
 “I’m fifteen, now,” she overheard him repeating before she shut the door; “It’s my birthday, mom. Does that mean anything? …Can’t you at least be here for that? Or…or is it why you’re not?”

 They went to her house afterwards–maybe fled to her house, afterwards–and watched a movie called Agora, which Kato seemed to enjoy, even while pointing out certain inaccuracies, but Athena found herself so shaken by the morning that she ended up getting sniffly whenever a sad scene came up, and there were a few of them.
 “What’s wrong with you today?” Kato asked, raising an eyebrow, apparently genuinely confused.
 “You’re old now,” she deflected. “Soon you’ll be too rickety to play music with me anymore and I’ll have to watch you go bald.”

 She had to get on a plane and leave for England just a few days later. Her parents had planned a month-long holiday from July to August, which both she and Seth were dragged along for. She considered simply laying down on the ground and forcing the dragging to become literal, because the trip was a rather miserable tour of self-centeredness with a lot of time spent visiting various pompous “family friends” who frowned at her American accent and one of whom called her ‘stocky.’ 

 Her mom attempted repeatedly to wrestle her into skirts or dresses, instead of her go-to basketball shorts or the ripped jeans and t-shirts she’d taken up, and when she failed to, would openly lament about her going through a ‘tomboy phase,’ to excuse the improper dress to whoever was hosting them.

  All the family friends who had kids talked about which impressive university their progenies were studying at, or what esteemed career they were rising in the ranks of, and when trapped in the room with it Athena mindlessly went along with her mother’s claims that she was attending a public school of her own volition because of her all-encompassing desire to eventually get a job involving public policy, for which she desired to have hands-on experience on par with the common man. How very virtuous of her. 
 It certainly wasn't that she’d failed to live up to the expectations of the elite private primary school they’d shoved her into when she was young, and then been dumped elsewhere so as not to have them waste their money. 
 Athena took to wandering around outside to escape; texting Kato instead and having staring contests with stray cats and one backyard donkey.

 “Mum really is full of it at present, isn’t she?” Seth hummed, giving her a start when he silently joined her in someone’s pretentious courtyard where she’d been contemplating knocking over their ornate birdbath. “Overstuffed, even. It does seem worse around this lot.”
 “At least they can actually brag about you,” Athena muttered. “I don't know why they even brought me along if they need to lie about me. They could have just left me at home and said I died saving Henry Marsh from getting hit by a truck or something.”
 Seth stifled a small laugh with his hand. “They aren’t entirely truthful in regards to me, either,” he reassured her. “Mum does always remind me to ensure my sleeves are buttoned before we exit the car. And did you know that I am, after all, interested in those surgical robots? Dad just now informed me of my intentions to work with them.”
 “I can’t believe they’re making you wear your brace all the time, either,” Athena said, eyeing Seth’s long coat, which despite the milder English summer temperatures, must have still been rather stifling—but it was “necessary” to conceal the ridges of the Boston brace under his dress shirt. “Like, what, they think scoliosis is a character flaw?”
 “At least it assists with alleviating the back pain,” Seth offered neutrally. “Mum’s comments on my limp, not so much.”
 “Yeah, you prat, your shoddy hips are making her look bad,” Athena dryly ribbed, before leaning into him. “We should just go and get face tattoos together and blow it all up.”
 “Excellent plan. I think I will get ‘I am not a surgeon’ across my forehead,” Seth chuckled, rubbing her shoulder. “Yourself?”
 “2 + 2 = 7,” Athena said.

 Athena got back on American soil just a couple weeks before school was set to start and immediately made plans with Kato. They’d texted and called and everything, but the trip had largely been hot garbage and she wanted a chance to rant to him about it in person. When she met him at the Little Neck station, she was taken aback: He was taller.
 He couldn’t have gotten that much taller just while she was away, but it was like she’d not noticed it while it was happening in front of her eyes, so she’d gone to England without updating her memory—and now somehow the month-long interlude between seeing one another had thrown it into stark relief.
 “You’re tall,” she said.
 He rolled his eyes, but smiled. “I missed you, too.”

 He’d gotten them museum tickets and took her to Manhattan to see a collection of Roman art or something; he was telling her about it on the way, but a lot of the words melted into a history-class-esque drone and she just ended up nodding.
 “How’s your mom?” she asked when he seemed to have finished telling her about the specific exhibit he was looking forward to.
 “Walking and talking and forgetting I exist. The usual,” he said. “How’s yours?”
 “Walking and talking and pretending a fake version of me she made up in her head exists,” Athena responded, “the usual.”
 He laughed.

 He paused on the sidewalk outside the museum when they finally got there, grabbing her shirt sleeve before she could start up the steps.
 “Hang on, I want a cigarette first,” he said, digging a pack of Newports out of his pocket.
 “Since when do you smoke?” Athena asked, watching him light up with a look of consternation.
 He shrugged and exhaled a nasty-smelling cloud. “Since someone traded me a fake ID for a bottle of addy.” 
 He’d convinced his psychiatrist that his morning pill was wearing off by the afternoon, he told her, and got prescribed a ‘booster’ immediate-release dose he was supposed to take at lunchtime. He sold it instead. It was good money.
 “So you started smoking? That’s so gross.” She covered her nose with her shirt. He grinned and blew more smoke at her.
 “Could be worse. Better cigarettes than crack, right?”
 “Depends how bad crack smells,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. He laughed and stubbed out his cigarette when he hit the filter. He binned it.
 “Hey, at least I don’t litter.”

 In amongst the exhibits he rambled animatedly about whatever they were looking at, but Athena found herself mostly looking at him. He was several months older than her and he’d had a more angular, grown-up-looking profile from the start, but he’d still certainly been a boy a year ago, when they’d met. Not too much taller than her, with a light voice and a softer jaw. Now he really was looking like a young man, and she knew that had started before she’d gone overseas, but it seemed so much more obvious now, looking up at him while he talked, his new smoking habit having added some harshness to his voice, maybe, emphasizing how it had dropped. It was still by no means “deep”—especially not with Seth as a point of reference; he made everyone’s voices seem light in comparison. But still…his voice had changed. 
 So had the rest of him. It wasn’t just his height, which she’d noted. His weight hadn’t dropped so drastically as to make her overtly worry again; it seemed like it had maybe just stayed stable and not accounted for his growth spurt, though, because his jaw seemed sharper and his cheeks looked hollower. His nose, which had always been large and hooked, had been broken at some point the previous spring and never set, so the bump in it had become permanently more pronounced, and it added to the overall sense of maturity in his increasingly angular features. He was still clean-shaven, but with a new emphasis on the shaven: There was a faint, somewhat patchy blond-brown shadow to his jaw now, and she couldn’t remember if it had been there before or not.

 When they finally re-entered the school hallways for 10th grade, the greater fight he’d started to dig out of himself the previous spring was on full display, too: Taller, sneering, bitter, biting, battle-scarred.