Kicking the Hive(mind)

📅 Autumn/Winter 2009

✚✚ ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ & ᴜsᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ғ-sʟᴜʀ ✚✚

 In comparison to what she’d known Kato to go through, it was nothing, but Athena had to admit to feeling rather like an underdog even in her own layer of the high school social hierarchy. His isolation the previous day had spoken to her, even before they’d gotten talking and realized they had more in common than either of them might have thought. She wasn’t alone the way he was, no, not by a long shot, but she was more rough-and-tumble than even “sporty” girls were maybe meant to be; a tad too potentially-queer and loudly opinionated. She didn’t try to appease any of the boys around her, but it didn’t tend to come off to many of them in a “hard to get” or “thrill of the chase” way that could have earned her their favor—not that she wanted that, but it didn’t. 
She laughed off jabs from around her, though, and even if she maybe felt a little on the outside sometimes, she had friends, and friendly acquaintances, and she’d always been the type to just talk to people, so it wasn’t like she expected anything fucking haywire to happen just because she stuck up for some outcast kid once.

She’d been sick of Trent for a while, anyway; his crude jokes sucked, he made his buddies less likeable by proximity, and his tendency to call anything he found unsavory “gay” or “faggy” didn’t lend any polish to his shit personality. The guys roughed each other up all the time; Athena hadn’t had any qualms kicking him in the ankle.
But she hadn’t been supposed to. Especially not for David Winters.

As soon as the next period after that lunch she started to be trailed by jeers over her new choice of company.
“You’re just jealous that he’s pulling girls you can only dream of, Chris,” she replied haughtily, making one of his friends snicker. Ribbings were typical, if stupid; he’d still be picking her for his team next time they played flag football in gym class anyway, for sure. Everyone just had to giggle over nothing first. Basically that K-I-S-S-I-N-G crap from elementary school all over again, she thought, rolling her eyes. 

Some of the comments were a little crueler than that, but she ignored them all the same, just like when people tried to get a rise out of her by calling her a lesbo or something. It was all just dumb shit and really not worth dealing with, so she laughed it off like any other time before and, when she saw Kato sitting by himself in the cafeteria again, rebelliously plopped down across from him for the second day in a row.

He sat up with a jolt when she sat down and looked downright startled to see her again; then even more so when she greeted him, though a small upturn made it to his lips. 
“Hey-o, K-O,” she said. “Aren’t you gonna have lunch?” He didn't have a tray in front of him. 
He glanced swiftly away. “Ah, no, I'm on a diet. I can only have knuckle sandwiches,” he replied, though his lips twitched upward.
She snorted despite herself. “Sorry, that's not funny,” she quickly emended.
“Damn. It was meant to be,” he smiled, ducking his head and letting the hair that’d loosed itself from his ponytail fall into his eyes, which he cautiously turned back to her. 

It struck her how shy he seemed; how different from how all the rumors painted him. She hadn’t put a huge amount of stock in them, sure, she knew better than that—but he kept coming across more withdrawn than…sinister and brooding. Sometimes his tone had a bite to it, true, maybe a venomous one—she’d heard that a bit yesterday, but it was usually due to a topic like his shitty circumstances; it wasn’t like he was just caustic as a rule. He was supposed to be some sort of dark, deranged, gay nutjob. Instead he’d spent most of yesterday talking excitedly about nu metal with her, and now wore a fragile, timid smile over the fact she’d sat with him again; hiding behind his hair and apparently struggling to hold eye contact.

“Okay, it was funny. Just not the bit that’s real.” She rolled her apple across the table to him. “Here. Keep the doctors away.”
 “Thanks.” He spun the apple around on the tabletop, still with that small smile on his lips, and Athena opened her mouth to ask something, but caught sight of Devon’s platinum blonde weave out of the corner of her eye and turned to wave over her and Savannah, who’d just entered the cafeteria.
“Hey, Savvy, Dev! Come join us!” Athena called brightly: God knew Kato could use a few more people in his corner.
Savannah and Devon halted briefly, but startled expressions flashed across both their faces and they averted their eyes before continuing walking, quickly, away—like unnerved birds not quite so harried as to take flight, but thinking about it.
“...What the fuck was that?” Athena said, staring after her friends. 
Kato hunched his shoulders. “You should probably go with them,” he answered. “...I'm not a good sidekick. Unless you like being treated like shit.”
Athena shook her head and waved away the comment. “I’ll talk to them, they’re probably just being dumb and buying into the hivemind; they’ll come around,” she said, irritated with the immaturity of her friends and hoping Kato didn’t think worse of her for it.
“Wouldn’t bet money on it,” Kato muttered. “My dad’s known me for fourteen years and he hasn’t had a change of heart yet either…Maybe you’re just missing the same signs I am about whatever’s the matter with me.”

Athena frowned and studied his downcast expression. “...I think I spent all yesterday talking shit about my own parents…what’s your dad’s actual damage?” she asked. “You just said he hates your music and your math grades, which, I mean, you already know I feel ya about.”
Kato sat back in his seat and jerked his chin in the direction Savannah and Devon had gone. “He's just…like them. Cut out of a magazine. And everything else needs to be, too.” He picked at the chipped laminate at the cafeteria table’s edge. “You said your folks, like…they need to be the best, right? And you and your brother, you have to be the best, too. Like, exceptional.”
“Yeah. My brother is exceptional, though,” Athena said.
“Right. So are you. But anyway…My dad’s like that, but it’s not about being…I don’t know, extraordinary. It’s about being normal. But he’s too normal: Uncanny valley territory. The house always looks like it’s staged. He’d cry tears of joy if he won an award for ‘most socially acceptable person.’ And, well…” Kato grimaced and gestured around at the school; the emphatic amount of empty space at their table. “I’m not that.”

“...I don't understand why,” Athena said. She nursed the glow of Kato saying she was exceptional too, and tried to wrap her head around what his life must look like. Probably not all that dissimilar from her own, but still, there was something sadder about the idea of being pressured not toward excellence, but toward…accordance, maybe. Unreasonable accordance, so the bar was too high but still sounded low. How much more would it hurt to feel like you were falling short under those circumstances? At least she knew her parents were ridiculous.
“Why what?” Kato asked; “Why my dad’s a whackjob who’s afraid the neighbors will look through our windows and notice if there’s one stray spoon on the kitchen counter? And that if they did, they’d be more bothered by that than by him yelling his head off at me about it? Me neither.”
“No, I meant…why you’re not ‘socially acceptable.’”
Kato scowled. “Don’t act like you haven’t heard things,” he muttered. “Your friends have.”
“Well, sure, but most of it’s dumb to judge anyone over,” Athena said uncomfortably.
“Seems you’re the only one who thinks so.” Kato frowned at the table, avoiding eye contact again; head down, his shoulders caving inward, his face half-hidden from her and his voice leaden. Everything about him seemed to ache.

“I don’t care that you’re gay,” Athena burst out; “if that’s true, I mean, like, that’s not a problem for me. People are just stupid thinking it’s an insult, and it’s not like no one’s ever called me a dyke. Maybe I do like girls too, who cares? And I know you don’t actually torture animals or anything, the idiot who started spreading that also said Savvy slept with him and that Mr. Browning grows weed.” Athena’s heart skipped nervously over her impulsive choice to come out to him; after all, they barely knew each other. But it didn’t feel like it: They knew how each other’s parents were, and how math was, and maybe she knew what the rest of his world felt like a little better than he thought she did. “The people who shit on you for being ‘emo’ can choke, too.”

Kato jerked his head up with that same startled, disbelieving expression on his face again that he’d had when she first sat down with him. “...Yeah,” he said meekly; “I’m bi. Not that…they care about the difference, but…yeah. No animal torture.”
“Okay, so…” Athena felt a pang that he had no denial for the ‘emo’ rumors, but she’d never really doubted those anyway. Even now he was twisting his wrists nervously under the table and out of sight. “So…why don’t you correct them? I get not wanting to make the effort for a bunch of numbskulls, but you shouldn’t feel like you gotta just lay down and take it. You’re different than they think.”

“What’s to correct?” Kato asked, his eyes darkening again. “Other than the animal abuse stuff, but nobody actually does believe that, I don’t think, they just like to say it. The same way they like to say I’m ugly or a tranny or retarded.” He looked up at her; a half-bitter, defeated shadow crumpling his expression. “I don’t think you’d get it, because you’re different than all of them. But let’s get real: People don’t want to hang out with a gay cutter who reads too much and can’t shut up about history. It’s, like, biological. Like when horses stomp a weak foal to death so it won’t slow down the herd.” A shallow, aberrant smile crept in and twisted his lips; something grim that made his face look hollower as a whole.

“Well…count me out of biology class too, then,” Athena frowned. “It can’t be everyone. People just don’t know you yet. Why not join the GSA club…? They’d at least understand the, ya know. Bisexual part of it.”
“Why aren’t you in the GSA?” he asked, and let out some sort of laugh. “They get treated the same. Or, not quite, ‘cause I know they still wouldn’t wanna take the risk. People know being seen with me gets a target on their backs…I lost friends in middle school ‘cause they didn’t wanna get bullied anymore for hanging out with me.” 
“What?” Athena found herself aghast. Yeah, some people had been asses to her yesterday, but the idea of throwing someone out to face the wolves alone just to not have to deal with a dumb insult or two left a sour taste in her mouth. She’d be abandoning some foundational part of herself by doing that; be giving in to the shitty power struggle that Seth had never let himself get sucked into with her and their folks, who seemed a grown-up’s world mirror of high school with their networking events, business partner gossip, and the disassociation from anyone ‘unsatisfactory;’ the whispers and the ‘tsk’ing and the upturned noses.
“That’s so fucked!” she exclaimed.

“...Is it?” Kato asked, raising his eyebrows. 
She noticed again how sad his eyes were, and realized he wasn’t really asking if it was fucked up or not to leave someone in the dust like that; he was asking if it’d happen again—or maybe he had already decided that it would. 
“Yeah, it is,” she affirmed. “Now you’re stuck with me.”
He smiled. It was still sad. “Well…sorry, then,” he said.

She brushed off his pessimistic preemptive apology, and they were able to chat away the rest of the lunch period in much the same fashion as the previous day; exchanging numbers at the end and making loose plans to hang out outside of school at some point; maybe at her place; he could bring his guitar and they could play music, or something. It sounded fun. 

His sad, haunted smile and his ‘sorry’ shadowed her after lunch ended, though, because suddenly the giggling in the hallways seemed more pointed than it had been before.

“Two lunch dates in a row with Dickless Winters, huh?” one of her least favorite members of the football team sneered, looming behind her at her locker.
“More lunch dates you’ll have in your life,” she responded carelessly. Someone laughed, but it was a cruel sound that came off more like a hyena cackle-calling the rest of the clan to a kill than anything actually on her side.
“Yeah? Looking forward to letting him skin your cat?” someone else jeered; gruesome, said like a euphemism, it made her skin crawl.
“Y’all are fucked up,” she responded, and stalked off to class still holding her head up despite her tense shoulders, hoping if she shrugged it off enough, all the dumbassery would blow over faster.

Instead there was a snowball effect to it, and within the week she felt like she was getting a real taste of what Kato must experience every day. Homophobia was thick in the air; heavy, like a raised club.
“Why are you shacking up with him, you mistake him for a girl?” someone sneered at her during gym, throwing a basketball at her stomach with far more force than necessary for a casual pass.
“No, he mistook her for a dude, hahaha!” his friend responded. 
“Whaddya mean ‘mistook?’” 

The mocking laughter after such comments was cruel and harder—much harder—to shrug off than any jabs had been before. Really...things were feeling scarier. Suddenly the guys who were only annoyances before seemed more threatening; even the ones who had been decent when not in the company of their “bros” didn’t seem to have their sunny sides on show when flying solo anymore. One of them—someone who’d previously been kind enough and even bought her something from the vending machine once before—shoulder-checked her in the hallway and snapped, “Don’t touch me, dyke.” 

Another—maybe jokingly—asked her out, saying that maybe if she went for it then Trent wouldn’t “wreck” her. That had been a scary kind of ambiguous verb, and she’d gone to Savannah and Devon then, to complain about injustice and hopefully find support, both for herself and for Kato. She’d just explain that he was actually fine—cool, even. Maybe they could help chill some of the rumors out or something; and plenty of guys had eyes on them—maybe if they showed that the shit wasn’t impressing them, some of the dudes would cool it. 

“What are you talking about? Just ditch this boy you’re with, he’s basically socially diseased,” Savannah said in response to Athena’s rant, recoiling as though the cruel metaphor had some kernel of truth to it.
“What?! No he’s not, he’s nice!” Athena snapped back, affronted, “I don't know what everyone’s problem with him is.” 
Savannah and Devon exchanged a grimace. “He’s just gross, ‘Thena, and weird, okay? You need to stop hanging out with him.”
“Why? He’s less gross than half the dudes on the football team as far as I can tell!”
“Athena, he’s a freak. I heard he cuts himself in class sometimes,” Devon said; “and that’s not even going into, like, the gay stuff—”
Both comments easily set Athena off: Neither being gay nor cutting oneself made them a freak. Bristling, she responded to the one she could without the risk of explicitly outing herself.
“You know about Sethy though, Dev, so is he a freak to you?” she spat. Were her friends calling her brother names, too, without her knowing?Devon glanced uncomfortably at Savannah, who frowned, too.
“Well of course she’s not saying that,” Savannah said; “but it's not normal, is it? And it’s different, like we’re talking about David Winters here, he’s just crazy. There's a reason he has no friends. You need to ditch him, honestly, it's for your own good.”
“I’m not going to ditch someone because the fuckin’ rumor mill tells me to!” Athena snapped, lifting her chin.
Her friends’ expressions grew yet more chagrined. “Listen, Athena, if you stick with him we really can’t keep hanging out with you, like, that’s just a total mess. Sorry.”

At first all Athena could do was gape at them, but finally she managed to force out a scoff. The Numb music video she’d discussed with Kato at their first interaction felt more and more relevant, and it was surreal to watch it play out.
“Fine,” she said, turning on her heel; “Enjoy your hard won reputations, I guess! I’ll enjoy being a decent fucking person!”

——

“...You still have a shot at it, ya know,” Kato imparted to her a few weeks on. He’d started to seem a little less shy around her, now that she’d committed to standing at his side like a guard dog, consistently calling him by his chosen names and making nicknames from both, and exchanging insults with the idiots she’d used to tolerate. She’d never realized quite how unpleasant they could be, and having experienced it, felt firmly glad to be rid of them. She did learn where the rumors had come from, though: Kato wasn’t shy around them. Or…he’d still start with his head down, and his arms around his books, trying to duck out of whatever confrontation he was being dragged into. But when backed into a corner, he did develop a sharper tongue; a wilder look in his eyes. He’d sneer a challenge even knowing the punch was coming, or get greeted with a “Hey, faggot,” and turn around and smile and say, “Please, can’t you form a line? I can't suck all your dicks at once.” He’d get the shit kicked out of him when she wasn’t there to jump in, but he took pride in at least landing a verbal jab. In all honesty, she kind of admired his guts.

“A shot at what?” she asked. She flicked a paper football across the table at him and lodged it in his sandwich. He laughed; a real one. 
“Goal.” He flicked the paper football back at her through the air and hit her on the nose. “A shot at having an actual social life again.” He gave her a self-deprecating sort of smile. “You could still turn it around; just yell a bunch of slurs at me and clock me in the jaw or something. I feel kinda bad about ruining your life.”
“I just don’t think it’d work, Jules,” Athena said, faking a disappointed sigh. “Kind of showed my hand when I bit Jacob last week when he was tryina jump you.” 
“Damn, true. Thanks for that.”
“Thanks for the opportunity. Dude’s a tool.” Athena smiled. “I don’t feel like you ruined my life. They’re a bunch of jerks anyway.” She unfolded the paper football and re-folded it into a tiny airplane, which she threw at him. It tailspun and landed on his sandwich again. “Wanna come over and jam again this weekend? My mom has an important dinner to attend so she can’t bitch about the noise.”
Kato beamed. “Hell yeah.” His hair still fell into his eyes, but he didn’t seem nearly so hidden anymore, and he always lit up when it came to playing music. None of her other friends before had shared that with her, let alone made her feel like it was a marked skill of hers. Kato made her feel like Dave Lombardo.

No, she thought to herself; he definitely hadn’t ruined her life.