I Want to Kick You in the Back Read online

  I Want to Kick You in the Back

  Loneliness makes a sound. It’s crisp and clear and loud, like an alarm bell going off between your ears. And it’s enough to make your head feel ready to split. The reason I keep tearing pieces of our leftover science class print-outs into slender strips is to keep my classmates from hearing that sound coming from inside me right now. The noise of the paper ripping drowns out the ringing of the lonely bell, and better yet, makes me look deliciously disaffected. I could care less about microorganisms, and as I cast a sidelong glance over the rest of the class, I decide they’re way more excited over chloroplasts than any high school student really should be. Fine, then, you guys have fun reading all about the Brazilian Elodea. I’ll just be over here, ripping up these print-outs. The mountain of shreds accumulating atop my section of the desk grows bigger and bigger with each noodle-like strand I add to it. It is a solitary monument to my detachment.

  Sharing the same workstation is a gaggle of girls all gathered around the microscope, chatting busily as they peer in over and over again; I don’t suppose I’d get a turn with it even if I wanted one. Their exaggerated movements send particles of dust flying everywhere, and it’s really rather pretty how they sparkle in the sun’s light. Unfortunately, those same sun beams keep reflecting off the microscope’s lens and flashing into my eyes. It’s enough to make me want to pull all the curtains closed and send the science room into darkness.

  “We’re going to be doing group experiments today, so everyone form teams of five with whoever is sitting closest to you.” That was our teacher’s thoughtless instruction at the beginning of class. His words sent a wave of visible tension throughout the room as eyes began swimming frantically in search of friends. Did he honestly think any kid would just pair up with whoever happened to be nearest? It goes without saying that people will try to stick with their cliques. It was June now, two months into my first year of high school, and I already had my class’s social structure down pat. I could draw you a pretty accurate graph of it even, which was funny considering there’d be no place for me on it. Once I’d have thought there’d be a line connecting me to a girl named Kinuyo, my friend since middle school, but apparently not, seeing as how she’d just ditched me in favor of her new group. Thanks to that, when the time came for the teacher to ask if there was anyone left not in a group, I had no choice but to raise my hand. Looking back on it, that was lame of me. I should have just answered, “yes.” I think I must have looked pretty scary, holding my hand at face level and glowering all over the room. There was one other leftover besides me, a boy named Ninagawa, who raised his hand in the same servile fashion. It was an utterly depressing scene. What our raised hands communicated loud and clear was the fact that neither he nor I had yet to make any meaningful connections within our class.

  Ninagawa and I were placed in a group with three other girls who nonchalantly pointed us toward the two oldest seats in the classroom. A far cry from the sleek metal chairs everyone else was sitting in, these two were beat-up with paint chipping off them to reveal the raw wood underneath. I didn’t think they even deserved to be called chairs anymore, but in that sense they were a perfect fit for leftovers like us. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to make it sound like we were being forced to sit there or that the girls were being bullies. We were the leftovers, so we sat in the leftover chairs. It made perfect sense. We had been sitting for some time before I took a break from my shredding of the print-outs to take a look at my leftover-in-arms. Since these chairs squeaked like crazy with the slightest movement, I had to take care to turn my head softly.

  Like me, Ninagawa was making no effort to be involved in the lesson. Instead he was whiling away the time by reading a magazine placed discreetly upon his lap to keep it out of the teacher’s sight. Wait a second... is he really reading? While they were focused on the pages, the hollowness of his eyes made it seem like they saw nothing at all. I realized we were aging, he and I. Every time our classmates laughed, every time our teacher made a comment as he circled the desks, we each grew another year older. His staring at his magazine and me ripping up print-outs, were just our way of enduring the trauma of the sudden, accelerated aging we were being subjected to.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling there was something a little off about this guy. It was like the unexpected discomfort you get when biting into a sandwich where the lettuce hasn’t been cleaned and you end up with grit grinding between your teeth. But I wasn’t able to put my finger on just what was wrong, which was beginning to get on my nerves. What is it? What could it be?

  Oh! I’ve got it now. It’s his magazine! On the open pages I could see images of female models and a headline reading: “A Look at Casual Summer Accessories.” That’s a women’s fashion mag he’s reading! Suddenly I felt very humbled. Compared to the positively bold strangeness of this guy cracking open a magazine like that in the middle of class, me tearing up paper didn’t seem like much. If anything, you could even say I was making myself useful, as these were leftover print-outs that would probably be shredded anyway. Did he even realize? Could he even begin to imagine how weirded out everybody would be if they caught him reading that?

  As my butt was still planted firmly on the moth-bitten orange seat cushion, I raised my chair off the ground and inched toward Ninagawa slowly. The magazine came into better view, and I spied a number of models striking poses dressed in camisoles and other summery clothing. No doubt about it, that’s a women’s fashion magazine. If he’d noticed me, Ninagawa made no sign of it, continuing to stare fixated, hunched over like a hollow human husk.

  “What’s so interesting about that?” I ventured to ask. At my words, Ninagawa raised his head, and his face gave me a fright. Suspicious, beady eyes peered out at me from behind overgrown bangs, as black and heavy as if a bottle of soy sauce had been poured over his head. In his mouth, all the more noticeable, for his eyes being half-hidden, I spied sharp-looking and uneven teeth. Without responding, Ninagawa cast his heavy gaze back on his magazine, sinking his head down between his shoulders as if to ward me off. Had I just been blown off? I’d find it funny if I hadn’t gone through the trouble of scooting my seat all the way over to him. Since I had, I decided to keep peeking at the magazine over his shoulder. That’s when I caught sight of a familiar smile.

  On the page on which Ninagawa had been staring was a photo of a woman dressed in skinny jeans stretching relaxedly. I knew her. I had met her once, back in middle school, a few years ago. It’s not often you meet someone like a model in a town like this, so I remember having gone out of my way to buy a magazine she was in so I could point to her photo while I bragged to my friends. Her smile hadn’t changed a bit since I’d last seen her. “Oh, I’ve met this model in person, at the Muji Store in front of the train station,” I said out loud. This caused Ninagawa to abruptly turn all the way around to face me, his chair crying out in pain as he did. “You must be mistaking her for someone else,” he muttered after a moment. “I am not,” I protested, feeling sort of miffed. “How could I forget a face like hers?” This model had a very distinguishable facial structure. Her high-bridged nose and pronounced cheekbones were unusual for a Japanese person. Perhaps she was of mixed heritage? “You know the old City Hall building, the one that used to be an old mansion? She told me she’d go there to do a photo shoot in front of it.” Ninagawa responded to my explanation by giving such a deep, heavy sigh I was afraid his soul was going to leak out with it. Then he cradled his head in his hands, grasping his long bangs between his fingers. Had I said something to offend?

  “Ninagawa, Hasegawa! Quit fooling around!” I heard the teacher say, who had made his way over to our side of the classroom, to scold
us. “I’m warning you, on the next test there’s going to be a problem asking you two to do a sketch of a microorganism, so you better take a good look at the ones beneath your microscopes. I also suggest you study the zoomed-up photo of a prokaryote on page twenty-three of your science textbooks.” After the teacher had made his instruction and moved on to address the next group over, Ninagawa placed his magazine, which he had hidden beneath the shadow of the desk, into his bag. In its place he produced his science textbook, opening it up to page twenty-three as advised. He began underlining text intensely in red pen. I watched the ink dry on the page as the pen traveled from one line to the next. “That’s a lot of red,” I whispered, my voice a bit choked. Ninagawa pressed down hard on the pen tip, and the ink gathered and spread out on the page as a little red pool that I couldn’t see as anything other than blood. I decided now was the time to put an end to my interaction with Ninagawa. Swiftly retreating, chair under butt, I bit back feelings of bitterness both toward the bizarre Ninagawa and myself for having felt any fleeting sense of camaraderie toward him.

  Back in my spot, I found my mountain of paper shreds missing. The breeze coming in from the open window had blown it away, scattering white strips all over the floor. I quickly knelt down to gather them up, but the playful wind, carrying with it the tepid scent of the science room’s water tank, sent the strips I’d missed sailing out of my grasp. As I began hopping lowly like a frog to capture them, I realized that in doing so I’d completely wrecked the disaffected youth persona I’d been trying so hard to project. Can’t I even be allowed my posturing? Was I always doomed to failure?

  Placing the collected strips back on the desk, I quickly lay my head over them to keep them from being blown away again. Like a mother bird protecting her nest, I gathered the shreds up in my arms. The sharp edges of the paper poked my face, but it didn’t hurt. Pressing my ear against the black wood of the desk, which smelled vaguely of chemicals, I closed my eyes. While tracing my pencil around a picture of a Brazilian Elodea on one of the print-outs. I could hear the sound of the lead pressing through the paper and into the desk as a scratching sensation that seemed to travel directly into my eardrums. I could also hear the clattering noises of the microscope being moved and voices talking and laughing. But those sounds were far away from my nest of paper silence. I found it funny how, although we were using the same desk, the environment around me seemed so completely removed from myself. Yet I wasn’t unthankful for it. Their perpetual laughter seemed to be far more suffocating.

  I must have dozed off, as I eventually awoke to the sound of the bell. Opening my eyes, I found my field of vision obstructed by something white. It was one of the paper strips, stuck to my brow. Blinking rapidly, my eyelashes brushed the corners of the strip, which fell off soundlessly. After it had, I recognized a pair of eyes directly facing mine. They were Ninagawa’s, who had also laid his head on the desk, staring at me soullessly.

  * * *

  It looked like he was dead. Seriously, it looked like he was dead

  “Okay already, I get it. Now hurry and finish copying my homework. We have to hand this assignment in by four, remember?” Kinuyo dismissed me, but fear was still coursing through my veins. “I’ll never forget those eyes! His pupils must have been completely dilated. They were black as night!” I recounted with a shiver. “Of course they were. He’s Japanese!” Kinuyo retorted. She just didn’t understand. She hadn’t seen what I had, that gaze that seemed to look right through me, those eyes devoid of life, like a zombie.

  “...and then he asked me to come over his house today after school!” I exclaimed. “What for?!” Kinuyo replied, this time with a suitable amount of surprise. “That’s what I’d like to know. He just suddenly asked me, and I was too scared to say no. What do you think’ll become of me if I go?” I was legitimately concerned, but Kinuyo just laughed. “Maybe he’s in love with you.” Her nonchalance didn’t sit well with me. “Who’d fall in love with a girl whose own best friend sees fit to ditch her, anyway?” I asked pointedly. “There you go again, saying stuff like that...” Kinuyo paused uncomfortably, but I could see that the corners of her mouth were twisting upward, like a cat’s. “Sorry I bailed on you during class. But there wasn’t enough room for you in our group...” Kinuyo apologized, but the way she shrugged her shoulders infuriated me. I also found the word “bail” lacking to describe the gravity of what she had done to me.

  Kinuyo had begun wearing make-up ever since we started high school. Every day she put on so much white eyeshadow it made her look like her eyes had rolled into the back of her head each time she blinked. She’d also started dying her hair, but only just brown enough that the teachers wouldn’t notice, a popular fad these days. “You could at least use the word, ‘Ditched’.” I remarked as I toyed with a tuft of Kinuyo’s hair, which, tied with a thin hair band, jetted off of her head like a tail feather. “...Sorry I ditched you.” Kinuyo obliged me, but I still felt dissatisfied. “Ugh, ‘ditch’ doesn’t sound right either. Next time just say, ‘I’m sorry for stabbing you in the back by abandoning you’.”

  “Kinuyo, we’re gonna play cards!”

  I turned my head to see Kinuyo’s group calling her over from the corner of the classroom. It consisted of four other members, the most eye-catching of whom was the tall girl who was nearly as wide, with black hair braided so elaborately as to resemble an art piece. Apparently, she was in a brass club, and it certainly looked to me like she had strong lungs. Sitting beside her was another girl, this one with a bob cut. She was still wearing a long-sleeved blouse with her uniform long after everyone else had changed into short-sleeved ones for the summer, which must have been an attempt at looking nonconformist. Almost as if hiding behind the two girls was a skinny boy with a buzz cut who was part of the baseball club. He was the cheerful type who liked to crack jokes, yet I noticed his eyes were always darting about uncomfortably. The final member was a boy with the poor posture and loud voice of your typical delinquent. All four were looking over at us intently, and with their faces and bodies all so different from each other, they looked to me like bunch of weeds somebody had gathered together in a bouquet.

  “I’ll be right over!” Kinuyo answered them in a cutesy, put-on voice. “Listen, I’m sorry about what happened earlier in class, but you can join us now! Finish copying my homework, and let’s go play cards together.” “With those people?” I sneered unconsciously. “Don’t be jealous.” Kinuyo chided. “Jealous? Me?” I replied flatly. I seriously wasn’t, but Kinuyo seemed to think I was, regarding her group with eyes full of pride. “I think it’s so cool how we’re co-ed. It’s really modern,” she sighed. “Yeah, it’s modern, all right... so modern you can’t tell who’re the girls and who’re the boys,” I quipped as I moved my pencil away from tracing the Brazilian Elodea to sketch some quick cartoons of her friends. I think I captured their likenesses quite succinctly in just a few lines. When I handed the paper to Kinuyo, she couldn’t help but start to giggle quietly, placing it face down on the desk. One of the things I love best about her is the way she’ll always laugh unreservedly if something really is funny.

  “Kinuyo,” I called her name. “What?” She replied through her hushed laughter. “When I’m alone, I end up talking to myself. Don’t you find that sad?” I asked. “I do. That’s so pathetic I could cry. That’s exactly why I want you to come over and play cards with us,” she replied. “No. Let’s play cards by ourselves,” I said honestly. “I can’t do that,” she replied, equally as honest. The tuft on her head swaying to and fro, Kinuyo skipped over toward her bouquet of weeds. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to dilute herself among the likes of them. Was soaking and saturating in the same solution with others really that much fun?

  I hate being a leftover, but I hate being part of a group even more. Once you’re caught up in one you have no choice but to patch yourself into it, and that’s a sorry thing to have to do. I was in a group in middle school, and it was asphyxiating. Having to gossip
incessantly, force yourself to get excited over things you couldn’t care less about, and cling to boring subjects just to keep the chatter going... just ten minutes of that felt like an eternity. Maybe because I had to do it so much back then, I was now quite good at telling when people were fake smiling. The trick is to look out for parts of a face that are out of sync with the mouth. For example, if their brows are creased with tension, or their eyes are squinting uncomfortably, or their upper lips are pulled back too far to reveal angry gums... then you know they’re just pretending. Even though Kinuyo is the type of girl to only truly laugh when something is legitimately funny, when in her group she starts to fake smile just like that. Why she’d want to continue carrying on like that into high school was beyond my comprehension.

  At dusk, after my club practice had ended, I found Ninagawa waiting for me in front of the school gates. I said, “Hello,” but he didn’t respond, eyes set firmly on the ground. I had no choice but to follow as he wordlessly departed in the exact opposite direction of my house. Walking ahead of me down a narrow road I’d never been on before, Ninagawa’s shadow stretched out long and black, far enough that the shadow of his head came just to my feet. Each time I trampled over it, I felt my backpack, which carried my science textbook inside it, growing heavier and heavier.

  In stark contrast to the newer Western-style houses surrounding it, Ninagawa’s home was Japanese style and looked like it had been around a long time. The iron front gate gave a high-pitched shriek as Ninagawa pushed it open, and we followed a slick-looking stone path to the small entrance door. On it I spied Ninagawa’s family nameplate, and noted how the difficult kanji character for “Nina” was made up of the radical for insect, giving his whole name a bug-like impression.

  Before stepping into his house, I called out a greeting, but there was no reply from within the darkened rooms. “My parents are still at work,” Ninagawa informed me as he took off his shoes and headed inside. Perhaps because it was an old house, the ceiling was low, and the whole place felt cramped. The sliding screen door directly opposite the entranceway was shut, and Ninagawa opened the frosted glass doorsill to the side of it, which opened up into a dark, narrow and long hallway I couldn’t quite see the end to. What I did feel was the coldness of the floor beneath me, seeping through my socks. Actually, the whole house was cold enough to make you forget it was summer outside.