Gen sat in the chair, the black apron latched tightly around his throat, his phone in his hand, his hair smelling of chemicals. Kana took another chunk of his hair and placed it in a piece of aluminum foil before hitting it with some red hair dye. Their dad was in the garage, trying to breathe in something much more pleasant than hair dye. This usually meant he was working on his old project vehicle, an older beat-to-hell Chevy truck.
Kana tugged his hair so she would look at him in the mirror. He glowered at her.
“What?” he demanded.
“You seriously just left him there?” she hissed. He had told her everything.
“I got scared! I’ve never said anything like that to anyone!”
“Except that little shit back in middle school,” Kana pointed out.
“Except him, yeah,” Gen admitted, turning his gaze back to his phone. “And see how well that worked out.”
“So you’re expecting Mika to do the same thing that kid did? Just leave you alone somewhere in the dark?”
Gen said nothing, just scrolled through his social media feed.
“Have you heard from him since?”
“It’s been two hours, Kana. He was supposed to play with his siblings and I’m sure he’s having dinner right now. I’m not going to bother him.”
She folded another foil and got to work on the last layer at the bottom near his shoulder blades. “Your hair is getting really long. Are you sure you don’t want me to cut it?” She had already trimmed it before she started dying, but she was going to go over it once more to clean up anything she may have missed.
He glared at her in the mirror and she raised her hands, accepting defeat. His eyes went back to his phone just as it chimed.
It was a text from–
“Oh my god, is that from Mika?” Kana exclaimed excitedly. “Let me see!”
Gen growled and opened the text.
Are you busy later?
Kana gasped. “Tell him no and to come over.”
“Kana, please…”
Should be free in like an hour. I’m being tortured by my sister right now.
Kana smacked him in the head with the flat end of a brush.
LOL is she dyeing it like you said?
Haha yeah. Want me to come by and pick you up? We can go to the power plant if you want.
“Noooo! Bring him hereeee!!” Kana whined.
“Seriously?!”
“Go process, you buttmunching dingledorf!” She pointed the brush to the back door. He flipped her off and went out to the back porch.
Before Mika could respond, he quickly said, Kana wants you to come over. 😣 She wants to meet you.
The response came back as one word: Sure
…To…?
A long pause before the reply. He saw the two words as his dad joined him. Your place.
“How’s it goin’?” Donovan Parker asked as he lit his nightly cigarette and took a sip of his whiskey. He only had one drink a night, nothing more.
“Okay,” Gen said. “I’m gonna bring a friend over in a bit, if that’s cool.”
Donovan stared at him. “You made a friend?”
Gen nodded, a small smile on his lips. “Mhm.”
“This the kid you’ve been studying with for the last few weeks?”
“His name is Mika Torino. We have a couple classes together, but he didn’t know that until recently.”
Don chuckled. “Ever the invisible man,” he said. “Finally someone spotted you, is that it?”
“Something like that,” Gen said. “So it’s cool then?”
“Fine by me, but make sure you respect whatever curfew he has with his folks.”
“Yes, sir.” He turned back to his phone. My dad said it’s cool. Guess he wants to meet my first friend lol. What time do you need to be home?
LOL okay, tell him I’m happy to meet him, too. So, I’ll see you in an hour? Can you get me from the store again please?
Gen frowned but didn’t question it. Didn’t even question the fact that Mika completely ignored the curfew question. Sure, I’ll text you when I get close.
OK sounds good. See you soon.
He heard the timer go off and walked through the house and into the garage, taking his place at Kana’s hair sink.
Before she blasted his head with the water pumped directly from Antarctica, he said, “He’s coming over.”
She squealed with joy and shot him in the face.
-*-
Mika jumped into the truck without a word, dropping his backpack at his feet, his hair tied in a messy half-knot at the back of his head. He slumped in his seat, hands shoved into the front of his oversized hoodie, his leg bouncing a mile a minute. He kept his gaze averted.
Gen stared at him and made no move to leave. Something was wrong and he wasn’t going to take silence for an answer this time. “Hey,” he said. Mika didn’t look at him. “Look at me,” he asked softly. When Mika still didn’t look his way, he reached over and put his index finger around the bottom of his chin, gently turning his head toward him. His heart slammed in his throat to see Mika’s eyes red and puffy, his cheeks streaked with tears.
“Tell me what happened, or we go nowhere.”
“Can we at least get away from here?” He shot a furtive glance down the road leading to his house. “Please?” he whispered, another tear running down his face, his chin quivering as he took his bottom lip between his teeth.
Gen nodded and left the parking lot, heading in the opposite direction toward his house. Since the college was on the way, Gen pulled into student parking and shut off the engine, cloaking them in darkness. He turned toward Mika, his left arm resting on the steering wheel, his eyes searching his friend’s face, willing him to tell him everything, even though he knew he probably wouldn’t.
“Tell me,” Gen said again.
Mika swallowed and his chin fell to trembling again. He covered his face with his hands and tried as hard as he could to stop crying. He swallowed back his tears, gasping and hiccuping as he did so. After a minute, he slid his hands, buried in his sleeves, down his face, wiping it clean of tears and snot. He rubbed the sleeves on his jeans, trying to clean them off. He knew he looked like shit, like a blubbering baby. And on the same day the guy he liked just confessed to him! Damn, he sure knew how to make an impression.
“Mika.”
Mika took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Stall…calm yourself down first. “Next week is our…last week of tutoring,” he said, his voice broken, like he was getting over a really bad sore throat. He closed his eyes as he noticed it and adjusted his hoodie. “Did you know that?”
“Mika…”
“Then it’s Spring Break!” He cleared his throat, trying to make his voice stop cracking. Trying to make himself sound normal. “Me and my friends were planning…on going to the lake.” He swallowed, glass tearing his throat.
“Mika,” Gen’s voice became more insistent.
“You should come with us,” he finished lamely, his hands going to his throat.
Gen’s hand shot out and he grabbed Mika’s hand off his throat, yanking the hoodie down. “FUCK!” He punched his window twice, then buried his head in his arms atop his steering wheel, swallowing back the hot bile rising in his throat.
Mika sat frozen, his mouth open, bruised throat exposed. Four finger marks were as clear and detailed as though they had squeezed plaster. Gen turned his head back to Mika, his face twisted with anguish. He reached out again, slowly, hand shaking, and placed his finger on the opposite side of Mika’s chin. He pushed his face, twisting his neck so he could see the second set of finger marks. Two marks crossed in the center of his throat, one on top of the other.
Mika had been strangled.
A sob broke out of Gen’s throat and tears ran down his face. “I knew it,” he whispered. He unbuckled his seatbelt and scrambled over the console to take Mika into his arms, letting the smaller boy sob into his chest. He buried his face in Mika’s hair, willing his own tears to stop. He had no right to cry, none. He wasn’t the one Mika’s stepfather tried to kill. Mika clung to him, his sobs muffled by Gen’s zip-up sweater, his entire body, his tiny body, shaking violently.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gen whispered. This was why Jo asked him to keep Mika safe. Day one of his promise and he had already failed. “I could have just brought you back with me. I could have prevented this.” A terrifying thought occurred to him. “What about your mom? The kids?”
Mika shook his head, the sobs quieting. “He doesn’t touch them.”
Gen’s arms tightened as the meaning of that hit him. “So they’re safe with him? Seriously?”
“I didn’t say that,” Mika said, his hands gripping the front of Gen’s sweater, sniffing back the remains of his pain. He coughed and pulled back just enough to look up into Gen’s face if he wanted to. “I said he doesn’t touch them. You can still hurt someone and not use your fists to do it.”
Gen exhaled and shut his eyes, resting his chin on the top of Mika’s head. “Goddammit, Mika Torino.” His embrace became less fierce, one hand on the back of Mika’s head, the other around his shoulders. His arm relaxed, his hand moving to the side of Mika’s face. They sat that way, Mika’s hands flattening against Gen’s chest, for several quiet minutes, his breath settling, his crying done. Finally he leaned back and looked into Gen’s eyes.
He wanted so badly to kiss him right then. To feel what it was like to be kissed by someone who actually cared about him and not the person he pretended to be around everyone else. He was broken, battered, and bruised. He had kept that hidden his entire life. Why did he choose now to let someone see it? Why did it have to be Gen?
“Let’s get going.” Gen said, his voice soft. He reluctantly released Mika and settled back into his seat. He turned the engine over and drove off. Mika realized there was no music playing like there usually was. He pointed to the display.
“Can I play something?” he asked.
Gen just nodded.
Mika touched the music app icon on the screen and scrolled until he found something he liked. He pushed play and the familiar cords of the main theme from Sword Art Online began to reverberate throughout the cab. He turned the music up, surrounding them with it. In response, Gen’s foot pressed harder on the accelerator, forcing him to become Mika’s hero, even if that just meant taking him away from his abuser for a little while.
It wasn’t long before they were driving through a nice neighborhood, quiet and brightly lit with multiple streetlamps. Every yard was neat and there was no chainlink in sight. The houses were well maintained, even if they weren’t huge and flashy. It was apparent Gen’s family lived in this neighborhood. After a few turns through the residential street, he reached up to press the garage door clicker that hung on the visor above him. One large garage door rolled open and Gen slowly pulled in. Once he had, he closed the garage door and shut off the engine.
Before Mika could open the door, Gen stopped him with a hand to his lower arm. “Wait,” he said. “Couple things you need to know.”
Mika swallowed as Gen removed his hand. “First, my dad doesn’t know about me. At least, I don’t think he does. Kana does but she’s cool about it. I tell her everything so of course she knows how I feel about you. That said, prepare to be grilled and smothered. And I do mean smothered.”
Mika allowed himself one soft laugh.
“Secondly,” his eyes became serious and he reached out and took Mika’s hand, folding it within the safety of his fingers. “I can’t hide your marks from my dad.” Mika’s eyes went wide and he tried to pull away but Gen held fast. “He’s a cop, Mika. He knows the signs, can see everything you hide. You don’t have to tell him what you don’t want to. Hell, I don’t know everything, but I can take one wild fucking guess. He might ask you to make a report.”
Mika opened his mouth to protest but Gen shook his head. “You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. I’m just telling you what to expect, that’s all.” He tucked his thumb under one of Mika’s fingers, exposing it from the cave of his hands. “You’re safe here, Mika.” He brought the finger to his lips, kissing the tip of it, gently, his eyes closing. He opened them slowly, resting them on Mika’s surprised face. He grinned. “Sorry,” he said. “It was either that or your neck.”
He released Mika’s hand and exited the truck. Mika joined him a second later, his bag on his shoulder. Gen opened the garage door to the house and stepped inside the wide open kitchen.
“I’m back,” he called out. Mika came in right behind him just as Gen closed the door. “Prepare yourself, young Mika. She is a passionate one.”
“What?”
Gen moved aside as a tall blonde woman ran over, breasts bouncing, hair flying, arms outstretched.
“Yay, finally, Mikaaa! It’s so good to finally meet you!” Kana wrapped her arms around the smaller boy, pulling him into a fierce hug. He flinched and hissed, his face crumpling. She stepped back instantly, holding him at arm’s length, her entire demeanor changing. Her eyes scanned him up and down before she stood tall and looked over at Gen who was coming back from the fridge with two waters. He handed one to Mika and just nodded.
Kana took Mika again into another, gentler hug. “You’re safe here, sweetheart.”
Comments (0)
See all