Who We Are

📅 Late 2009

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ + ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ〛

 It was exciting, to have someone to maybe play music with. Savannah and Devon had been more into field hockey or gymnastics, and then cheerleading; they didn’t share Athena’s taste in music, and didn’t play any instruments, so…her drumming had been a rather private affair. Her parents didn’t care to listen to her play, which was probably for the best, since she couldn’t imagine them not being critical. Seth listened to her back when he lived at the house—he was the one who’d gone ahead and bought her the drum set, after all. Even before she’d managed to get any good at it, he’d sat in the garage with her and studied while she probably made an awful amount of noise, and he’d noticed her progress—probably because it got easier for him to endure, not that he’d ever have said it that way. 
But he’d moved out a few years ago, and though he did listen sometimes when he visited, wanting to know if she was still enjoying music and to hear anything she might want to share, most of the time it was…well, lonely, being a one-man-band.

Suddenly, though, she didn’t need to be: Kato played guitar, and was willing to see what they could do by putting their heads together. It was easiest for him to come over to her house for it, because she couldn’t exactly take her drum set on the bus, but she was somewhat self-conscious when first bringing him over, because her house was so big and her parents’ wealth felt…excessively visible. 

He looked wary just walking through the neighborhood from the bus stop, and did stop dead in his tracks when they turned up the walk.
“I know,” she muttered, scuffing her sneaker on the ground.
“...I’m glad I met you before I met your house,” he said. “I’d have assumed you were an asshole.”
“Yeah, well…assholes own it,” she replied. “Sethy moved to East New York just to keep them from visiting.”

Seth wasn’t in East New York today, though—when they walked in, he was standing in the kitchen, washing his hands.
“Seth!” Athena called happily, “I didn't know you’d be here!” She ran up to hug him, and a smile bloomed on his lips as he turned to return the hug, despite his wet hands.
“Well, I was not intending to be…mum insisted I come over and meet some acquaintance of hers who works with the da Vinci surgical system,” he said with measured distaste. “You would think they’d give it up by now, wouldn’t you?” 
“Is she still here?” Athena asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Thankfully not. They both left to attend a gallery.” He looked over her head, to Kato. “Who is this?”

Overjoyed at the unexpectedly early opportunity to introduce them, she waved Kato over from where he’d stayed standing at the kitchen threshold, like an uninvited vampire. 
“This is my friend…he goes by Julian or Kato,” she said; “Jules, this is my brother, Sethfire.”
Sethfire dried his hands and hesitated only briefly before extending one for a handshake. “Pleasure to meet you, Julian.”
Kato shook his hand, and his eyes raked over the extensive scarring that riddled Seth’s inner arm, but he didn't comment on it. Instead he said, “...Sethfire?” and raised an eyebrow.
“The suffix is in relation to Prometheus. The gift of knowledge,” Sethfire replied, a long-suffering sort of look to his eyes behind his round glasses, which he dropped the handshake to adjust. “My mother’s…innovation. Just ‘Seth’ is more than fine.” He paused to roll down his sleeves, which he buttoned at the wrists before continuing: “A…word of advice, Julian: Should my parents say anything untoward? Don’t take it to heart.”
Kato blinked; maybe at the warning, maybe because Seth talked weird, but he let it go again, as with the scars, and the name, and the house. “Thanks, no worries. ‘Thena already told me your folks are full of it,” he replied. 
Sethfire allowed a small, chagrined smile. “Likely pathologically, yes. I’m glad you’ve been forewarned.” 

He unfortunately couldn’t stick around; he’d more or less skated through all the rest of college, but his thesis finally seemed to have succeeded in challenging even him, and he needed to return to it and all his strenuous studies. He gave Athena another hug and added, before leaving, “Good meeting you, Kato. I hope I’ll be less hurried next time.” 
Kato’s expression brightened at the use of his bonus name. “Yeah, ditto, Sethfire.”

Kato stared at the door for a moment after Seth had closed it behind him. “Prometheus,” he said, “Damn. If your parents didn’t suck, I'd think they were cool. I love, like…Mediterranean history and everything. I mean, I’m more into Ancient Rome than Ancient Greece, but still. Potato-tomato.” 
He chanced a sideways glance at Athena. “I guess I see why you didn’t judge me about the ‘emo’ thing.” 
Athena frowned and hugged her arms to her chest, inspecting the corner of the foyer instead of his expression. “I don’t really wanna talk about it…I found him, though. After his suicide attempt. When I was eleven.”

They went upstairs to her room, and even though she hadn’t wanted to talk about it, she suddenly couldn’t resist. She’d had no choice but to tell Savvy and Devon back when it happened: Their parents knew her parents, and they’d been friends at the time and noticed her missing a week of school. She probably should have missed more, but her parents wouldn’t let her, and she’d been walking around like a zombie when she did go back, and so she’d had to tell them. And yeah, they’d listened and been horrified and told her how terrible it was, but they hadn’t understood. No one had understood, not even her parents, who’d found her sudden aversion to raw and rare meat—or anything that looked or smelled too much like blood—after the fact to be irritating and unreasonable. Somewhere along the way, she’d decided that no one could understand, and she hadn’t realized it until suddenly she was in her room sitting cross-legged across from someone who actually might, in whatever small way, from at least the other side.

“Why do you do it?” she asked, then covered her mouth and looked down, realizing it was rude, only to find a lump had formed in her throat.
“Do what?” Kato asked, tilting his head. 
“Cut yourself,” she mumbled. “Sorry, you don’t gotta answer. I just…I still don’t know why Seth did. I’ve never understood, and he’s never explained it. Sorry,” she apologized again.
Kato looked more confused and concerned than offended, though, and he rolled up his jacket sleeve to consider his inner arm, his expression growing sad and thoughtful. “...I don’t do it to die,” he said slowly. “For me, it’s…I don’t know. Embarrassing.” He dropped his hand to his lap. 

Tentatively she reached out, and he let her take his wrist and turn it over, though he averted his gaze while she searched the scabbed cuts and scars on his arm for some sort of answer. All she found was a quivering, downward twitch of her lips.

“...I hurt, I guess,” Kato said, his eyes still anywhere but on her. “Inside, I’m all fucked up, and it just feels…right, or something, for it to be on the outside, too. I just feel wrong; bad; and it’s just like, maybe it’ll even it all out, or…” Finally he dragged his gaze back to her, still cradling his arm. His voice grew quieter, meeker. “...Or maybe I kind of want people to see. Notice, you know…realize how bad it is. But they already have, and you saw how people act at school. My dad just thought it was a phase when he found out, and it’s not like I’m gonna show him otherwise. But I still hurt, so I still do it, even though it’s stupid.” He gently pulled back his arm and rolled his sleeve down again. “I don’t think it’s the same as with your brother. He really, uh…went for it.”

“He died,” Athena said, and sniffled. She pulled up her shirt to wipe her eyes and ended up hiding in it. “He had to be brought back. I think twice. He was in this huge pool of blood when I found him and I had to tie pillow cases around his arms and everything. It was the worst day of my life.” She sniffed again and smoothed her shirt back down, but couldn’t seem to rally enough to lift her eyes from her lap. This was definitely not the jam-sesh Kato had come over for.

“And he never said why he did it?” Kato asked gently. He hesitantly outstretched his hand to touch hers, then jerkily withdrew it on contact, as though he thought it to have been a transgression of some kind. She looked up to meet his eyes and shook her head.
“The doctors diagnosed him with Brief Psychotic Disorder.”
“You don’t think that’s it, though.”
“No.” She sat up straighter and looked out the window, then back to him. “I can’t explain why. I don’t know anything about…any of that stuff. If anyone does, it’s Seth, I mean, he’s getting a PhD in psychology right now. But it doesn’t feel right, somehow. It feels like there’s more.”
She mirrored his previous gesture, but didn’t withdraw as he had and instead held loosely onto a fold in his hoodie’s sleeve. “I still don’t understand it. Maybe you can’t understand it if you don’t do it, I dunno. But I see it, okay, Kato? I care, and…I don’t think you’re bad or wrong. I don’t think you deserve to be hurt.” She bit her lip; he mirrored the action unconsciously, his eyes having fallen to her hand at his sleeve.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “I’m sorry you went through all that. I hope he tells you what’s up one day. It’s…it’s really hard to not know what’s wrong, or how to make it better. Or to feel like…you’re not…I don’t know. To feel like they don’t notice that you’re there, too.”
“That’s the weird thing, he always is the one to notice me,” Athena said. “He’s the one who does realize I’m there—or, here. At least, like, in a good way. My parents only pay attention to what I do wrong.”

They sat and talked about their parents more; mostly hers, but his dad sounded much the same, and he understood everything she said about only being noticed for her failures and having her parents overlook or dismiss whatever strengths she possessed. He wasn’t into sports like she was, and maybe even found them distasteful; chronically last-picked-for-the-team and having been shoved around so much by the kids who were—but he was still able to grasp that it meant something that she was good at them. She’d have to pay him to attend a game, he said, since he’d be guaranteed to get bullied at one, but she wouldn’t have to pay him to cheer for her: That would come naturally. 
“I wouldn’t put you through that,” she half-laughed. 
“Good, saves me the trouble of returning the money, anyway.” He was hiding his shy smile behind his hair again. “Seems wrong to have to be bribed to support your friend, actually.”

It was so easy to talk to him. They almost didn’t get around to playing music at all that first time he came over, because they just fell into conversation and it flowed like a river and they just got each other. 

Then, when they did start playing, in some way it felt the same as their conversations. They clicked. When their hands weren’t on their instruments they couldn’t stop talking, but once they started playing, it was crazy how little they needed to. They’d choose what to go for and count it down and then they were in it together like one unit; even when starting to learn something new to them both, one-anothers missteps or hesitations didn’t trip the other up; it was just a heartbeat to recalibrate and then—again. She could relax, which was crazy, because the songs they wanted to play were a workout and a half to drum, but he was so unwaveringly on her side, so affirming of her skill, so obviously excited to share in the experience with her, that she couldn’t have stressed about it if she’d wanted to.

On the flip side, he was obviously able to sense her abundant tension whenever her parents were present. 

She introduced him to them as “David” at their inevitable first encounter because he figured he might as well keep it consistent that all the crappy people he knew called him that, and he was shit-eatingly polite when meeting them, even though her mom commented on his ripped jeans and asked him point blank what his parents did for work like it meant anything. She seemed satisfied that his dad was Dr. Walt Winters, a principal research scientist at the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, which was good, because it bought Kato enough grace to gradually become more of a fixture in the house.

Athena welcomed his more frequent presence; not just because he was great company and the music-making was a blast, but also because her mom seemed aware that actively putting one’s daughter down when company was over was improper as far as etiquette went—and even though she would still make passably disparaging remarks about both his and Athena’s dress or posture, him being there acted as a significant buffer. He never did seem to take the comments to heart, either; usually he and Athena would end up laughing about them later.

It got to where Athena didn’t instinctively freeze in place anymore when her mom—who was unfortunately frequently home, unlike her father, with his long hours as a surgeon—passed by the kitchen while they were chatting away after school and preparing snacks.
“Athena, when are you planning to—oh, David, you’re here,” her mom interrupted herself, stopping short at the kitchen’s threshold.
“Oh, Mrs. Brookes, you’re here,” Kato replied.
She simpered at his somewhat deadpan tone, apparently unable to tell if he was being insolent or not, or at the very least, unwilling to deal with it. “Well, I hope you are over as a study partner! Do be sure to tidy up in there once you’re done, you two. Let’s not take advantage of the cleaning staff,” she said, before striding breezily away once again.
Kato turned to Athena and raised an eyebrow. “Was that a fuckin’ toga?” he asked.
Athena snorted. She was used to her mom, but now that Kato brought it up, her mother’s drapey-yet-fitted one-shoulder dress did look a little Grecian. “It's a dress,” she replied.
“That was a toga.”
“It’s her favorite house dress—” Athena protested, laughing.
“What's your mom’s first name again?” Kato asked.
“Namibia, why?”
“Fuckin’ Namibius Caesar over here,” Kato said, casting a circumspect glance in the direction of her mother’s exit.
Athena cracked up, while Kato took the knife she’d been using to spread peanut butter on their apple slices and looked solemnly at her.
“Et tu, Athene?” 
She punched him lightly in the shoulder, still laughing. “Shut up.”

He was funny. That was something people at school didn’t realize—he was funny. And smart. He thought he was dumb, at least sometimes, but even her parents could tell he was smart, because when her mom came up at one point and asked what they were studying, and why they absolutely had to play music afterwards, he reeled off an impressive sounding lie involving their alleged exploration of Ptolemy’s intense diatonic scale and how it compared to Pythagorean tuning, and how it all was somehow related to math. Athena nodded along, amused by how her mom did, too, with a lot of “of course”s and “well, naturally”s, despite most likely understanding only a hair more of what he was saying than Athena did, herself. 
Her mom would never admit to not knowing anything though, so he did eventually manage to infodump her out of the room. 
“I bullshitted, like, 75% of those numbers,” he beamed at Athena after her mom retreated; “Don’t actually remember ’em. But the history was true. Also…you’re playing the drums.”

Regardless, Namibia prodded at them less, afterwards, likely to avoid another bruise to her ego over having a kid school her about wolf intervals and the syntonic comma. She'd stay downstairs or out of the garage and make pompous excuses to be in another room where she was doing undoubtedly very important things, and the house size—for all its ostentation—at least let them avoid her parents better.

His house was a third of the size of hers, but it wasn’t that which made it so claustrophobic when she finally did go over. It was heavy-feeling inside, and it did look like it was staged. 
Except the lists. To-do lists, chore lists, household expenses. Grocery shopping was down to a science: There was one list for Monday and one list for every other Saturday and one list for the first Sunday of every month. The calendar had “Mary therapy appointment 8am” in neat cursive letters every Tuesday and Thursday, every week, every month. It had to be routine by now, but it was still there on the calendar. 

“My dad loves lists. He makes lists of what to yell at me about,” Kato said when he caught her staring at all the papers, and she thought he was joking—but then he pulled a yellow legal pad out of a kitchen drawer and turned it back a few pages, and sure enough: A numbered list of “To discuss with David, 11/16, 6pm.”
“I think I missed the bus a few times that day and was late…he should have added ‘punctuality,’” Kato said, inspecting the note, which contained—among other points—“bed not being made every morning” and “mistakes on recent English quiz.”
“I got a 97,” Kato said. He shoved the pad back into the drawer. “He wanted to know if I'd reviewed it for what I got wrong. Then he reviewed it so he could tell me what I got wrong.”

It started to really make sense, what he’d said about “uncanny valley normal.” The house was “perfect.” The grocery schedule was “perfect.” Everything had to be exactly perfect. In this place, innovation might come across as doing something wrong—even if it were true, they couldn’t learn fractions by playing the drums around here.

“I forgot…you gotta take your shoes off. And tie the laces,” Kato abruptly mumbled, backtracking to the front door.
“…Once they’re off my feet?” Athena asked, raising an eyebrow. 
“It looks neater.”
They carefully organized their shoes next to the door. Kato tried to make sure they were parallel enough to the welcome mat, in case his dad came home before they left. 
His dad worked 80 hour weeks, “but only because they wouldn’t let him work 85 hour weeks.” His mom didn’t work, at least not right now. There was something wrong with her. 
She laid motionless in the bedroom when they walked in and didn't acknowledge the door opening.

“‘Sup mom. You’ll never believe it, I made a friend. This is Athena,” Kato greeted loudly, some amorphous edge to his tone. His mom slowly turned her head and grimaced, then went back to looking at nothing.

“Catatonic depression,” Kato said once they were out in the hall again, the door shutting behind them, hunching his shoulders but sounding irritated.
“Is she always like that?” Athena asked, unnerved.
“No. Sometimes she’s verbal.” 

They retreated to his room. It was a little messy. It was the only part of the house that felt normal. 
“She shuts down like that a lot. Like, a few times a year. But even when she’s ‘here,’ she’s not really here. Definitely not for me. Sometimes I pretend she still notices me enough to give a fuck, though,” Kato half-joked, or he said the last sentence like a joke. It was just incredibly fucking sad. 
“Nothing works?” Athena asked.
“The docs are out of ideas except shock therapy.” Kato pantomimed being electrocuted; Athena frowned.

“Are you, like, mad at her for it?” Athena asked, glancing towards the dark hallway. “She seems…ill.”
Kato scowled. “Well, your folks are, too, right? If it’s true they’re clinical narcs, like Seth thinks,” he retorted. “You still wish they could pull their heads out of it for half a second for you, don't you?” He kicked something on his floor. “Feels like your kid should be enough, doesn’t it? But I’m not.”
“Well, sure, but…” Athena motioned something with her hands, unsure how to explain that this felt different without making him feel somehow sided against. “I don’t know.”
“Even on good days, she’s absent. Or passive. Okay? I get it: Right now she’s a tragic invalid and I’m a shitlord, but when she’s not, and dad’s screaming at me about anything—anything—she just sits there and Lets. Him. Yell.” Kato stared at the floor, his jaw tight and quivering. “She just says he wants what’s best for me. She’ll have a couple ‘good’ months in a row, right, but when she does? Everything is of equal importance, like maybe she knows she’s on a timeline. You’d think she might wanna, I dunno, check up on her goddamned kid before she goes under again. Make some happy fuckin’ memories. But that’s not it; she’s everywhere, and all of it’s the same to her: Job if she gets one, chores, me, watering the yard, what the temperature will be tomorrow—and whatever she’s doing, sometimes she’ll just go sad and distant and nothing drags her out.” He looked up at Athena, his eyes piercing, but wet. 
“When she’s up and walking, I’m still competing with the fucking forecast for her attention. And when she’s a vegetable, I’m competing with it for her inattention. And the in-between she’s usually too busy being suicidal to think about me or the weather, so…whatever.”

Athena didn’t know what to say, so she hugged him. He seemed startled by it, then returned the hug, almost fiercely. She felt intensely grateful—even more than usual—to have had Seth at home so much of her life, making sure she knew she mattered to someone in the family. She wished Kato had a Seth: He desperately needed one. Even with her there in his room with him, under that roof, he somehow looked alone.

When Athena met Walt, he was strange. Stern-looking, stern sounding. He was blatantly unhappy with Kato for having someone over without asking, and he all but demanded to know how regularly she expected to be coming over, and wanted her to know that 4pm-6pm was dedicated study time, whether he was home from work by then or not, and that she needed to leave by 7pm, and she’d be expected to follow the house rules. 
“She just won’t come over,” Kato said sullenly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“...How do you live like that?” Athena asked when they left for the train station.
He thought for a few moments. “...I just don’t use plates.”
“What?”
“There’s a specific way to load the dishwasher—I bet he has a fucking list about it somewhere. But I’m always doing it wrong somehow, and so he has to butt in and do it himself. He’s mad if I put the dish in the dishwasher, he’s mad if I don’t put the dish in the dishwasher. So I just don’t use plates. That’s my life.” Kato laughed. “If only I could just do everything right.”
“Yeah…then you could be a soulless mannequin just like him,” Athena said, shaking her head. “I think you should keep doing things wrong.”
“Hey, cool, thanks. You too. Wanna not get into Yale together?”
“Let’s not do it.” 

They shook on it and laughed.