Second Life: Kaeru
“Where do we go from here?
The words are comin’ out all weird
Where are you now
When I need you?
...
Who are my real friends?
Have they all got the Bends?
Am I really sinking this low?”
-Radiohead, “The Bends”
“Okaeri nasai.”
The tunnel swallows Randy’s voice greedily, then spits back distorted echoes.
“That’s your line,” he says quietly, lifting the jar I’m in to eye level. “I’ve never been here in my life.”
I swim in a slow spiral in the waters of the mayonnaise jar, trying to take in my new surroundings. It is disorienting, to say the least. First of all, it feels as though I’m in a floating pool, with Randy’s spider-like fingers grasping the narrow neck of the jar, suspending its waters high above the earth. Second, I’m used to the extreme horizon of my world being the comforting yellow-painted walls of Randy’s room. Now, with the world stretching out so far into the distance, I feel infinitesimally small and humble.
Nevertheless, no matter how unfamiliar this all feels, a part of myself knows this place. This is the rain drainage canal, the one Randy spoke about. It lies in the field behind his house, surrounded by chain link, with angled walls sloping downwards to a flat, lichen encrusted floor. And at one end, the end we’re currently standing at, the canal delves into the earth of the field itself, transforming into a tall dark tunnel, with a pool of stagnant rain water at its mouth. Brown algae lines the edges of the water, and reed-like plants on either side hang their heads expectantly.
This, I realize, I remember, is home.
Still grasping my jar with one hand, Randy lifts the handle of a large white bucket (containing a fishing net and a lamp) with the other. He looks up at the skies, dark and ominous with thick storm clouds. And for a long time, he seems to hesitate, his face opaque and distant, no doubt lost in memories...
***
Looks like trouble.
Three mokes are lounging about at the foot of the stairwell, taking up as much space as possible. They look dangerously bored. Their eyes are deceptively glazed over, like white ash surrounding hot burning coals. They are practically waiting for fresh fuel to set them alight into full flame.
I don’t want to oblige them, but my backpack is killing me and I want to get to Nerd Corner as soon as possible; this stairwell’s the shortest route. So I carefully avert my eyes, and weave my way as swiftly and as quietly as I can around their laceless hightops, and over the folder with the near pornographic image of a woman and a car. All the while, I silently recite a mantra over and over, all centered around the word “Suck”: “Life Sucks, Puberty Sucks, Wheeler Intermediate Sucks.” There is nothing more effective at smothering thoughts of danger than a blanket complaint, after all.
A couple of skipped steps, and I make it through this Charybdis unscathed.
Or so I think.
I’m almost at the top of the stairs, my eyes trained on the railing of the second floor, when I suddenly feel a sharp tugging sensation. My backpack, normally heavy with textbooks, seems to gain a hundred pounds in a flash, pulling me, not quite downwards, but backwards, into the stairwell I’d almost cleared. There is a terrifying sensation of falling back, back, back, where my eyes cannot reach, all the while with the dim awareness that the ground behind me drops away, jagged and toothed with zigzag steps.
Then, there is an impact, one that pounds the wind out of my body with a yelp, one that rattles my arms out until the folder I’d clutched splays open, vomiting its contents all over the stairwell. I feel my body slide down the incline, my backpack bump bump bumping down each stair. Then my legs, confused as to where to go, flip up into the air. I finally stop at the landing, looking as though I were three fourths of the way to completing a somersault, ass in the air, body curled like a snailshell, belly exposed, shirt rippled up into my face.
I hear laughter. I don’t need to look to know that it’s the mokes, the ones that I thought I cleared on the stairwell. Apparently one of them thought it would be entertaining to see a nerd flipped over like a turtle, wriggling and helpless. Forget the fact that said nerd could’ve broken his neck.
I take a deep breath, quell the indignation I should be feeling but don’t (this is old hat after all), wear a sheepish grin on my face (“Oh whoopsie, silly me”), and try to roll my body sideways to right myself. I manage to roll over onto my belly, my backpack riding the base of my skull, my weight pitching forwards towards the landing.
A high-topped shoe slaps the ground an inch from my face. “Ho cuz, your backpack was too heavy,” one of the mokes says. Laughter.
“S-s-sorry,” I stutter (stuttering seems more convincing than plain speak).
I crawl backwards, up the stairs, and with a Herculean effort, manage to lift my body (backpack and all) up until I’m sitting upright. To my dismay, I see my papers, my precious and private comic book drawings, are all over the stairwell, exposed. I scramble to pick them up, sheet by sheet by sheet.
“Check dis out!” shouts a moke, snatching one of the sheets from the ground just as I’m about to reach it. He looks at the drawings on the sheet, then looks back at me. “Ho, cuz, you one artist yeah?” He again looks at the drawings. “What dis, one toad?”
I nod, smile, anything to get it back.
The mokes, all three of them, gather around the piece of paper. One of them squints at my face. “Dis you yeah?” he says. Giggles. “Mus be. Ugly.” Yes, I realize that I must resemble a toad, stooped near the ground, practically on all fours. And my face. I absently brush at the fresh zits on my nose, my cheek, breaking away orange crystallized oil. Those are close enough to warts and parotoid glands. Again, I nod, I smile. In a strange way, the mokes have paid me a compliment.
Suddenly someone walks between myself and the mokes, deftly snatching the paper from their hands. He stoops down on the stair beside me, offering a hand to raise me up.
It’s the new kid. He just transferred over roughly a week ago, and though he is in all of my classes, I don’t really know him yet, can’t remember his name. Intelligent, well-spoken, clearly not from anywhere around here, probably military. And aloof. With looks like that, why wouldn’t he be?
Hesitantly, I take his hand.
“Eh!” shouts one of the mokes.
Bad move, I think to myself, even as I allow the new kid to help lift me up on my feet. I should’ve just continued to play the clumsy fool. And he, he should’ve just left well enough alone.
The new kid doesn’t respond to the mokes, even after I’m standing squarely.
“Eh!!” the moke repeats.
The lead moke lays a hand on his arm, and is about to wheel him around.
Just then, Mr. Onodera, the P. E. teacher, happens to enter the stairwell. “Eh, what’s going on!” he shouts. Overweight (isn’t it ironic that most P. E. teachers are?) and in shorts that expose his thick unbending knees, he’s not exactly intimidating, but he’s still an authority figure.
The moke releases the new kid’s arm. “Na-ting,” he says. “Right?”
I nod quickly. “Yeah, nothing,” I say. “We’re alright.”
Mr. Onodera frowns at me. “What da hell happened to you?” he asks. “Fix your shirt, damnit!”
I quickly tuck my shirt into the front of my jeans, to the accompaniment of the grunts and squeals of the mokes’ ill-concealed laughter.
Mr. Onodera scowls in disgust at all of us, and then climbs the stairs slowly, ponderously, like an elephant on its hind legs.
“Come on,” I urge, pulling the new kid’s arm up the stairs, before Mr. Onodera’s weight and influence completely disappear. He cooperates, thankfully, and we quickly ascend the stairway, feeling the eyes of the mokes bore into our backs.
***
Randy takes a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go,” he says quietly.
His shoes blow bubbles as they submerge into the water. Ripples fan out across the scum-ridden surface, and below, throngs of black tadpoles swim urgently in all directions. Randy takes a wading step, then another, and another, pushing waves forward into the darkness.
After a few careful steps, he formally enters the tunnel. Daylight is suddenly eclipsed, and sound is suddenly enclosed. Swaying gently within my jar, I feel the difference almost instantly. There is a coolness and a stillness within the tunnel, a sense of things long undisturbed.
Not far beyond the tunnel entrance, I feel the floor rise almost imperceptibly, and as I gaze down, I notice the water growing shallower and shallower. At first, Randy is shin deep in the water, then ankle deep. Soon, Randy’s shoes emerge, squish-squashing like soaked sponges in a carpet of fine silty mud.
Randy squats down, the grey light from the entrance at his back, and places my jar on the muddy floor beside him. He removes the kerosene lantern from the bucket, places it next to me in my jar, and strikes a match from a book he’s stashed in his pocket. Sheltering the flame in his palm, he ignites the lantern. All in complete silence. The walls and roof of the tunnel suddenly materialize as ghostly surfaces, shifting shadows.
Gazing at the newly illuminated tunnel, I cannot decide whether it is the lamplight that turns everything orange, or whether it is the walls themselves that carry that color, after years of exposure to Mililani’s red dirt...
***
“Hey, my name’s Wright.”
That’s how the new kid introduces himself to everyone over at Nerd Corner.
Currently, Nerd Corner is part of the wide covered bridge that connects B building to E building on the second floor. That bridge does not join E building directly, but wraps around the building’s side, forming a sort of eddy or whirl of student traffic in the process. In fact, it detours so sharply that it creates a stagnant pool, a black hole, that has been nearly impossible for the Nerds to leave. It is here that they gather, lining their heavy backpacks all in a row against E building and hunkering down between them, like fresh meat between bell peppers and pineapples on a shish kabob, just waiting to be cooked and eaten.
I nod to everyone. “He saved my life.”
Wright detects the lacing of sarcasm in my voice, and glances at me.
“I- appreciate your help,” I tell him slowly, “but I had things under control. See, now those assholes are sure to come after us. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t come here already.” I peer in the general direction of the stairwell.
Wright shakes his head in mild exasperation. “Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “I was just trying to help.” He hands me the sheet of paper that he recovered, glancing at it as he does so. “Here. It looked important. And I didn’t think they were going to give it back to you. Not in one piece anyway.”
I quickly return the sheet to its folder. “Thanks,” I say, this time with a bit more sincerity. Because I do appreciate it. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me since- well, since I can’t recall when. And he seemed like he actually meant it. Such kindness, well, I don’t know how to respond to it any more.
“You’re more than welcome,” Wright says warmly. He reaches out a hand suddenly; I realize, slightly dumbfounded, that I’m supposed to shake it. My hand creeps out hesitantly, unused to the gesture, and he grasps it, firmly but gently. “My full name’s Wright Kanagawa,” he says. “Named after the Wright brothers, you know, the ones who flew the first plane over at Kitty Hawk? Stupid name, but I wasn’t in much of a position to object when it was given to me.”
His voice and manner are smooth and disarming, and all the Nerds can’t help but laugh. Including me.
“So, Wright,” I say, emphasizing the name, “Where are you from? Obviously not from around here.”
Wright smiles. “What gave me away?” he asks jokingly. “I’m most recently from Japan. Iwakuni. No, I’m not Japanese,” he adds, in response to our expressions, “not full, anyway. See, my dad, he was stationed over at the base in Iwakuni for a couple of years. I went to school on base. Originally, I’m from California, I mean, I was born there, but-”
“Military,” I interrupt, nodding. “We’ve got a lot of that. Half of us are.” And as if to prove it, I proceed to introduce some of the other Nerds: George, the Mormon of the group, whose military family hails from Idaho; Cliff, the chess playing karateka whose family lives on base at Wheeler; Byron, another military brat, obsessed with the show “V” (Visitor) and Frank Herbert’s Dune series; Ledward, the slight, clean Chinese Trekkie (NOT military) who’s got a head for the math and science, and the mechanical pencils and scientific calculator to prove it; and finally, me (again, NOT military).
Everyone greets Wright with not a little awkwardness. We’ve all seen the new kid before, he’s in all of our classes after all, but six months into this tortuous year, with all the insults and pranks, and with the social circumscription of our group as the official Nerds of the school, we’re not used to interacting with strangers. In fact, we’ve developed a natural distrust in the entire human race.
Still, whether he realizes it or not, once we are all introduced, he’s one of us. No initiation ceremony, no spitting on the palms, nothing more than an exchange of names. And what a deal! He now has open access to all of our little diversions, from chess to role playing games. And he can also join us in everything else that goes along with being a Nerd, the bad stuff, some of which he’s already seen.
But even as he joins our fold, I feel a reluctance. There’s- something- about Wright. His clean cut looks, his easy, affable ways. They simply don’t belong here at Nerd Corner.
Even looking at him from a guy’s perspective, he definitely has a face. He seems to have inherited the best traits from his mixed heritage: a jaw that’s neither brutishly square nor femininely angled; eyes that are wide, but with that subtle asian fold at the edges to give a sense of discretion; and a nose that is perfectly shaped, neither squat and pug shaped, nor triangular and brittle-looking.
Compare him to most of us at Nerd Corner. Me, for instance. Puberty hasn’t been kind. My skin could rival a Middle Eastern nation, it produces so much oil, yet ironically, there never seems enough of it to lubricate my rusty-brake vocal chords; my eyes, myopic, focus down upon open printed pages, and, when none are available, preoccupy themselves with shoe details, or misshapen cracks in the pavement; my back, hunched like a camel’s, daily bears my stretched-to-breaking backpack, sinking my chest and pushing my belly close to the ground.
Maybe all that I feel about Wright is a bit of envy. I mean, what I wouldn’t do for a face like his, for the simple power to look someone in the eye without imploding in shame.
Yes, that must be it, the source of my reluctance. Envy.
After all, compared to the rest of us, especially me, well, Wright is as out of place as a royal prince amongst toads.
***
I am so absorbed by the patternless stains upon the walls and ceilings of the tunnel, the cane spiders that skitter about like splayed hands, the flying roaches that scamper away from the light, antennae tasting the air, I am so absorbed by all of this that I fail to realize that we’ve suddenly stopped. The water in my jar is as ignorant as I, and makes the same mistake of pushing relentlessly forwards. We are both stopped in our tracks by the curved wall, the water swelling and cresting over the lip of the jar with a slap, and me momentarily kissing the glass.
As the water sways to equilibrium, I’m able to catch my bearings and look around. Randy, I realize, has placed the jar on the concrete floor beside the white bucket. He has removed the red fishing net from the bucket, and is holding it at the ready in his right hand. His left hand, meanwhile, holds the kerosene lamp slightly forward, cutting a swath into the darkness ahead. For a moment, two spots twinkle at the edge of the lamplight like dying stars. And then, the shadow that owns them hops away into the deeper darkness. Without hesitation, Randy springs after it, carrying the lamplight away with him.
As the darkness of the tunnel falls like a curtain, I feel my heart race suddenly and without warning. Could it be him? Could it be that he is still alive, after these three long years?
When Randy returns, holding the lamp high, my heart is impatiently still, like the form wriggling, captured, in the base of the net. But as he gets closer and closer, as I gradually make out the shape weighing the net down, I feel my heart sink.
He hasn’t caught Big Brother.
All he’s caught is a stinking toad.
***
“There are only two reasons why someone would help a Nerd.”
I am recalling the conclusion of my brief conversation with Cliff, a sort of aside exchange that occurred in one of the rare moments when Wright was not by my side. “Only two reasons,” he repeated. “One: they want something from you. And two-“ here, he had looked me in the eye, as though trying to pass enlightenment on through secret transmission and telepathy- “they want something from you.”
My face had scrunched in bewilderment.
“Think about it,” Cliff had said as he departed. Because suddenly, like a magnet, Wright was there.
And now, in the back of my mind, I am thinking about it, puzzling over it.
What did Cliff mean?
It’s been a week since Wright joined us, and what a week. Although Wright and I have not been confronted by the mokes or their associates (in fact, they always seem to disappear like cockroaches whenever we approach), the other Nerds have noticed an increase in harassment of late. George got shouldered by someone the other day, so hard that he fell back into a couple of girls behind him. Ledward’s backpack was stolen from Nerd Corner a minute before the end of lunch recess yesterday; after a painstaking search after school, he found it in a trash can on the far side of the campus, its contents emptied out beside it. His scientific calculator had been crushed.
While shit happens every so often, this recent turd storm has led the other Nerds to conclude that it all has something to do with Wright, and his recent inclusion in our group. And although I have a strong suspicion that they’re right, I am reluctant- no, vehemently opposed- to exiling him from the Nerds.
He and I have grown inseparable, after all. I’ve found in him a great listener, and an engaging conversationalist. It’s not as though I didn’t have that before, with my other Nerd friends. But even among Nerds, there are different wavelengths, different permutations of idiosyncracy, and in Wright, I seem to have found a perfect match, the clearest reception. It’s almost as though he knows what I am thinking, or rather, where I am going, and arrives there first to greet me.
The others don’t see him as I do; in fact, as evidenced by Cliff’s comments, there seems to be a current of unease and distrust amongst them. As a result, Wright and I have become semi-ostracized. There is no room on the E-building side of Nerd Corner for us to either lay our backpacks or our buts. We’ve no choice but to lean against the nearby railing, our bags at our feet.
This issue, our half-exile, is inevitably on Wright’s mind. I can tell. He’s gazing with unfocused eyes towards the center of campus, exposed like a two-tiered ant farm, students milling about and dispersing in hurried patterns only dimly apparent from this distance. Or maybe he is staring above it, into one of those strange grey Wahiawa skies, the kind that make the heavens look as though they were made of frosted glass. Either way, he seems to be trying to float away, far, far away from this place, attempting first flight like his very namesake.
“What’s that mean?”
I ask the question suddenly, abruptly, drawing him back down to earth, or at least, down to this second floor corner. I am pointing at his folder. On the cover is a symbol, kanji, done neatly in segments of black electric tape.
“What?” Wright responds, smiling serenely, as though he had just been stirred from a dream.
“That.” I point again to the folder.
He flashes a grin. “You took Japanese,” he says. “Don’t you know what that means?”
I shake my head no. “Japanese school was a joke,” I say. “Sometimes I think the only reason my sis and I went was to keep us out of trouble after school.”
Wright laughs briefly. “Well, that’s supposed to be the kanji for ‘komaru.’ Do you at least know what that means?”
“It’s a verb, right? To have a problem.”
Wright nods. “So this character represents having a problem. Know why?”
I shrug my shoulders.
Wright traces his index finger over the central part of the kanji. “This part here is the symbol for tree,” he says. Then, he traces his finger over the periphery of the kanji, the rectangular frame. “And this part here is a box. Thus: a tree in a box.”
After a moment of thought, I shrug my shoulders again. “So? What has that got to do with you?”
Wright smiles gently, turning away again to gaze into the distance. “Life, everything, is always ‘komaru.’ Everything always has a problem. Everything always IS a problem. And me, I guess you could call me a problem child.”
I take a moment to attempt to digest Wright’s answer, but it feels like I’ve swallowed a stone. I exhale sharply. “Sounds Buddhist,” I comment finally. “And depressing.”
Wright smiles vaguely. A few moments of reflective silence. Then: “I’ve showed you mine, now you show me yours.”
“What?”
“That folder. I meant to ask you a while back. What was on that sheet of paper?”
“What sheet of paper?”
“The one I recovered. The one with the pictures of toads.”
I smile sheepishly, embarrassed. “That? That was nothing.”
“Come on,” Wright urges. “Look at the trouble it caused. It wasn’t nothing. The least you could do is tell me what it was.”
I sigh, exasperated. Finally, I mumble, “It’s my comic.”
“Your what?”
“My comic,” I repeat in a hushed voice, just loud enough for Wright to hear.
“You draw comic books?” Wright seems pleasantly surprised.
“Yeah, well,” I mutter, “not books. Not even a book. And they kind of suck. I never show them to anyone. It’s just a kind of closet hobby of mine.”
“What’s your comic about?”
“It’s called ‘Amphibious: the Un-Toad Story,’” I begin slowly, hesitantly (Wright laughs). “It’s about this small group of toads who live underground, in the sewers and rain drainage canals. They want to rise to the surface and live free under the sky, but they are afraid of getting squashed by cars, or dissected in biology labs. So they scheme to somehow earn the respect of the humans so that they’ll be allowed to live on the surface in peace.”
Wright smiles fondly. “Sounds familiar somehow,” he says. “Does it have a happy ending?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I say, “I’m not done with it yet. It’s a work in progress.”
“Can I read it?”
I shake my head no.
“Oh, come on,” Wright pleads.
“When I’m done,” I say, “I promise.”
Wright seems about to object, then changes his mind, nodding his head slowly. His mouth screws into a quirky grin. “You know, what is it with you and toads anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I mutter vaguely.
Silence. Both of us turn away to gaze off into the distance.
“The Japanese word for frog or toad is ‘Kaeru,’” Wright offers softly, from out of nowhere. “And ‘Kaeru’ is a homophone for the Japanese words ‘return’ and ‘change.’ Did you know that?”
I am silent for a moment, trying to figure out the significance of Wright’s enigmatic statement. “So what?” I ask finally.
“I don’t know,” Wright mutters. “Just thought you might like to know, that’s all.”
Again, silence. Then, in a quiet voice, he says, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“What’s your fault?”
“You know,” Wright says, facing me, vaguely worried. “You were right. I shouldn’t have done a thing. I shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
“Water under the bridge,” I say quickly.
Wright shakes his head. “Not for them,” he says, nudging in the direction of the Nerds.
“Them?” I laugh, surprisingly loud. “The Nerds?” And suddenly, before I know it, before I can even anticipate it, I feel myself carried away by a tirade, my voice loud enough for everyone at Nerd Corner to hear. “Let me tell you about the Nerds. Nerds are just like toads. The only time toads gather is when it rains really hard or when it’s about to. Like toads, Nerds have no sense of loyalty, no sense of friendship. They gather together solely out of fear, and because they have no place else to go.”
I turn towards the other Nerds, to project my voice more directly towards the intended targets. “And you know what happens with toads the day after a big rain? You smell them, baking in the sun. Pancakes flattened by car tires. Sometimes you see dozens of them all on the same street. And nobody cares. They all just take it as a matter of course. It’s the same with Nerds. Stepped on, and nobody cares. Because whose fault was it, ultimately? It was their own damned fault. Always running away, always afraid of being alone, never sticking up for one another.”
Wright lays a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, that isn’t fair,” he says softly. “And besides, you’re talking about the Nerds as though you and I were any different.”
I smile sardonically. “I know,” I say. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”
Wright frowns, turning away to look back at the skies. They are the same as ever, implacable and distant, like a frozen and impenetrable ceiling.
***
“Sorry Polly. I’ve only got two hands.”
Randy says this absently as he pokes the handle of his fishing net into the base of the bucket. He seems to be shuffling or stirring something about. He gingerly lifts my mayonnaise jar and slowly deposits it into the bucket. As I descend past the white plastic rim, I am horrified by what I see below me. A dozen or so toads form a loose crater at the bottom of the bucket, crawling over each other in their slow panicked attempts to escape. Parotoid glands (the swollen mounds on their cheeks) ooze white milky toxin. Soon, I am surrounded by them, their bloated rubber bodies stacked around me.
There’s a feeling of wobbly ascension as Randy tries to lift the bucket, with everything in it. My mayonnaise jar slides this way and that across the plastic bottom, squashing one group of toads and then another, squat ugly faces pressed against the glass, all soulless eyes and saliva’d tongue and smearing milk. The light of the lamp, no doubt held in Randy’s other hand, casts strange and shifting shadows across the mouth of the bucket and through the plastic walls, transforming the stupid and expressionless toads into a chorus of sinister and “malicious adjacents.”
They all gaze upon me balefully, scampering and scraping the glass with their scabby claws, clambering over one another to build living seige towers. Their naked fear is palpable, their shivering croaks vibrating the glass like the fundamental hum of the earth.
“Save us, brother,” they seem to cry in unison. “Let us in. For we are hungry, we are afraid. And you are one of us. You belong to us.”
“No!” I shout in silent protest. “No! I am a frog, not a toad! I am Ranidae, descendant of a human prince!”
“You are one of us,” they repeat, over and over.
“One of us.”
***
“Come on!”
I grab my backpack and hoist its precarious weight onto my back. Then, I grab Wright’s arm and pull him into a reluctant sprint behind me. We leave our position of exile at Nerd Corner, leave it like cattle egrets launching off from the landfill, and proceed around the corner to E building formal. We dart around students, behind pillars, behind rows of lockers, and down a stairwell.
Wright, slightly out of breath, asks, “What is it? Is it them?”
I shake my head frantically. And before he can ask another question, I put a finger to my lips. “Shhh!” My eyes quickly scan the upper floor of E building. After a few moments, I go back up the stairs, pulling Wright behind me.
Finally, at the top of the stairs, Wright yanks himself free from my grasp. “Look, I’m not taking another step until you tell me what’s going on,” he says. “I mean, are we being chased? Or are we chasing someone?”
My eyes are glued to a group of girls standing beside their lockers. Exasperated, I nod. “Over there,” I say, breathless, pointing surreptitiously. “The Nazgirls.”
Wright squints. “Who?” he asks. “Nazgirls?” He mouths the word slowly.
“Ever read Tolkien?” I ask impatiently. “The Nazguls? Dark Riders?”
Wright shakes his head no. “Sorry.”
“Never mind,” I mutter impatiently. “Come on, follow me.”
I take a step towards the now departed figures.
Wright doesn’t. “I told you,” he says stubbornly. “Not until you tell me.”
I sigh, frustrated. “Alright,” I mutter. “Her name is Robyn.”
“A girl?” Is there disappointment in his voice?
“I saw her the first day of school,” I continue. “Have you ever seen someone who made you believe in another world, a better world? Someone who just opened up the skies?”
Wright just smiles a crooked, somewhat quizzical smile.
“Well, that’s how I felt when I first saw her. She was so- beautiful. So clean- and bright- like spring.”
Wright rolls his eyes in their sockets. “So?” Wright asks, nudging me, like a kid poking a stick at a dead animal. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I mutter. “Well, not entirely. Once, she passed by Nerd Corner with her group. I was having a really bad zit day, like I often do. One of her friends called me a toad, and everyone, SHE, cracked up. Since then, every time she passes, I- I don’t know- I play this stupid game of hide and seek. Like she and her group are the Nazguls. The Nazgirls. Dark Riders. Wraiths. Pretending that they, that she, is secretly after me. To kill me.”
“Oh,” Wright says, chuckling. Then, he repeats, “Oh,” his voice suddenly soft. “So that’s why you’re so obsessed with toads.”
I glance at the Nazgirls, then turn back to Wright, my face suddenly wry. “Funny thing is, I still think she’s beautiful.” I shake my head slowly. “Did you know male toads are so stupid, they can’t recognize what it is they’re supposed to mate? Sometimes they hump dead leaves. Even other males. It’s a wonder they’re able to survive. Just like me. Not knowing what I’m supposed to like, liking what I can never have.”
Wright’s face seems to blanche momentarily. And then, just as quickly, his smile eases into casual.
“So what about you?” I ask suddenly. “I bet you had all the hot Japanese girls after you in Iwakuni.”
Wright makes a strange inscrutable expression that I can’t read. It has a smile, but the thin discrete line of his lips doesn’t let anything out, like some near invisible crack in a porcelain china cup.
“Oh, come on,” I goad, imagining Wright’s just being humble. “They probably love hapas there, just like they do here.”
“Hapas?” Wright asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Half Japanese, half anything else. It must be because hapas are Japanese, but they’re not. Like they’re musubi, but instead of the ume inside, they’ve got something else, something mysterious, like a truffle or chocolate strawberry or something.”
Wright doesn’t say anything.
“So?” I prod.
Wright looks away for a long time, in the direction of the Nazgirls, now gone away. In an indistinct and hurried voice, he mumbles something: “I like you a lot.”
The world cracks for a moment. What did he say!?
“I mean, I’m a lot like you,” Wright amends quickly, sealing a potential fault line with duct tape. “I’m like you, I fell for what I could never have.”
I’m about to ask what he meant, when the lunch recess bell rings, loud and sudden, like an alarm clock.
***
To take my mind off of the disgusting toads, I close my eyes and try to remember my home as it once was. It’s difficult. There was little that was distinct about this place. All I can remember is that my puddle was a place of darkness and silence. Although it eventually came to feel confining (particularly after meeting Big Brother), I recall that it was nevertheless quite peaceful.
Those memories, vague though they may be, are a far cry from the tunnel I sense now. For one thing, there is a feeling of pressure that I don’t remember, a feeling of being sealed away beneath tons of concrete and earth, like a living man in a coffin. For another, this place is hardly silent. Sure, it is quiet, for the most part, but every now and again, eerie unidentifiable sounds seem to vibrate the very walls of this place. I rationalize them, telling myself that they must be the sounds of cars rolling over the asphalt street above (didn’t Randy say this tunnel ran beneath Meheula Parkway?). I even allow for the idea that every vibration from the surface, from footsteps to whispered conversations, must go somewhere eventually, and that it might as well be here. Like rainwater, those sounds must seep down from the surface world, mixing together, losing their identity, until they become part of an adulterated morass of noise.
I tell myself all of this, trying to make the sounds seem innocent and harmless. But each time I hear them echo through the tunnel, I cringe, imagining that there is something else making them, some ancient animal, malevolent and laughing and secret. Waiting to spring upon me and consume me whole.
Strange. This was once my home. Once upon a time, I actually belonged here. Now I feel like a stranger, an intruder.
What has changed?
***
Wright’s smile doesn’t come easy today. In fact, it doesn’t come at all. His face, when he happens to turn my way, looks pale, gaunt, haunted. The rest of the time, all I can see is the back of his head, or at most, a quarter profile, framed by the same view of the center of campus, the same faded sky.
“Wright,” I say softly, “What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. “Just- trouble at home,” he offers finally, turning just a bit so I can see an upturned corner of his lips, a feeble attempt at a smile.
I nod slowly. “Anything- you want to talk about?”
Again, there is a pause. “Have you ever-“ he begins suddenly, then halts midsentence. “My parents want me to be a certain way, and I want to oblige them, I really do. But I can’t.” He turns to look at me, his eyes reaching for confirmation, understanding.
“Tell me about it,” I mutter. I pause. “No, really, tell me about it.” No reaction. So I continue. “My parents, sometimes I feel like they couldn’t care less how I do in school. Sometimes, I feel like doing something really outrageous, like failing spectacularly, just to- I don’t know- get some attention, that’s all.”
Wright looks away. “I wish my parents gave me- less attention. I wish they just left me alone.”
“What’s the deal?” I ask, confused. “I mean, you’re doing fine in school, aren’t you?”
Wright smiles sadly. “Not everything is about school,” he says. “My parents- they just want me to be a certain- way, that’s all.”
I shake my head. I don’t know how to make Wright feel better, I don’t know what’s really eating him, but I do know my take on the issue. “You know, it’s cliche, but I think it’s useless to try to be something you’re not. I gave up since coming to Wheeler. For a while, I tried to be like my big brother. I followed in his footsteps the best that I could. But somehow, I didn’t arrive where he did, respected and loved by everyone. I ended up somewhere completely different. When people started calling me and my friends the N word, when they started calling the place where we hung out Nerd Corner, I slowly realized that I wasn’t like my brother, and that things were probably going to be very different for me. It was hard at first. But in the end, I realized, I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I mean, frogs might be able to transform into princes, but toads? Toads just stay ugly forever.”
Wright responds almost immediately, a trace of anger in his voice. “That’s all fine to say in the abstract,” he says. “But what if- I mean- there are consequences. You can’t just-“ He stops, unable to complete his sentence.
I’m surprised at the words that next come out of my mouth, and the way that I say them, all calm and even. “Look, everyone here looks down on us Nerds. Everyone despises us. But then, people are always looking for an excuse to hate other people. People are always afraid. So you might as well just be yourself, because- well, because you don’t really have much of a choice. And whatever your parents' intentions might be, they can’t force you to transform. What’s that saying? You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t beat it dead?”
Wright’s voice slowly crescendos from silence to a half-laugh; even when that laugh fades, it leaves a trace of a smile, like a bathtub ring, on his face. After a moment, he asks, out of nowhere, “Have you found an ending yet?”
“What?”
“For your comic.”
I smirk. “Not yet.”
***
Randy stops abruptly, forcing the jar to ram up against the side of the bucket, temporarily squashing a few toads in the process.
“Dead end,” I hear him mutter aloud. “But it can’t be. There must be another-“ I can feel Randy turn this way and that, the water in the jar swirling, the light of the lantern bobbing erratically. “There.”
And then I hear Randy grunting as he struggles to carry us, the toads and I, through a much narrower tunnel. I can feel the pressure of the space, I can hear it in the way Randy’s exhalations echo tight and quick. After what seems a long time, we finally seem to emerge into a wider space.
Randy lays the lamp and bucket down on the floor, and then carefully lifts my jar out of the bucket.
We are now in a somewhat cramped rectangular “room.” The walls on two sides are dominated by large circular holes, roughly five feet in diameter; no doubt it was through one of these that we entered this place. On another wall, a set of rusty metal rungs rises eight feet up to a circle in the ceiling, through which a small spot of white light descends. The last wall opposite it is just short of six feet, and above it is a slightly sloping shelf covered in detritus. Beyond the shelf is a flat rectangle, framing pale light, like a thin window in a prison cell. A rain gutter.
Randy gently places the jar on the floor beside the bucket. Then, he looks around, apparently searching for something. “It should be here,” he mutters, thinking aloud. “Your home is supposed to be here, on the other side of Meheula.”
But there is no puddle here. No standing water. Only moldy leaves, tennis balls, and other forgotten garbage.
“If not,” he sighs reluctantly, “then through another of these tunnels.”
Exasperated, he tiptoes up to the shelf to get a view of the surface world through the rain gutter.
Trapped in my jar on the floor next to the bucket of toads, I can’t see a thing...
***
The next morning, a day after Wright’s pensive mood, he is a completely different person. He’s humming a song as he stands beside me at the railing. After a few repetitions, I recognize it. It’s a Billy Joel song, the one with the lyrics, “Tell her about it, tell her all your crazy dreams.”
“You seem in a better mood today,” I comment.
Wright just flashes a grin. Then he lays a hand on my shoulder. “Listen,” he says. “I’ve been thinking. That girl, what was her name?”
“Robyn.”
“Yes. Robyn. I think you should let her know how you feel.”
“What?” I say, incredulous. “Are you kidding? I told you what happened-“
Wright shuts his eyes and nods his head, signaling that, yes, he’s well aware of it. “I know, I know,” he says. “But still. You’ve got to do this. You have to. And I’m going to help you.”
I shake my head. “Why? I don’t get it. Why do I have to do this?”
“It’s like you said yesterday,” he says, patting my shoulder. “You don’t have a choice but to be yourself. And part of being yourself is expressing yourself.”
I want to say something, but nothing comes out. He’s using my own words, my own consolations, against me.
“See, I’ve been thinking,” Wright says, as he looks away, towards the same view, the same sky. “Beauty is oblivious. Maybe it IS oblivion. It forgets itself, AND it has the power to make those who see it forget themselves. The only thing that you can do when you fall in love with someone who is beautiful is to make him aware of himself, so that he knows how beautiful he is. And in so doing, you can remember yourself again.”
“She,” I correct. “Robyn is a she.” I don’t understand what Wright is talking about. Not in the least. Oblivion? But it really doesn’t matter if I do. “I’m not doing a thing,” I say emphatically. “I’m not stupid.”
But Wright is insistent. “Come on!” he urges. “I’ll even help you. After all, I’ve taken your problem to heart. I own your problem.”
“Help me?” I say, shaking my head, laughing. “How can you help me?”
“Why don’t you write something,” he suggests. “A poem or something. And when you’re done, I’ll deliver it for you. Hand deliver it.”
I smirk. “Sounds pretty corny to me.”
“It’ll be a start,” Wright says. And he gives me a nod and a smile with such enthusiasm and confidence that, for a moment at least, I almost believe I have a hope in hell.
As I turn towards the distant Western skies that hover over the Waianae range, a small and brief break in the clouds lets down a Jacob’s Ladder, a brilliant and ephemeral bridge to the heavens above...
***
Randy lifts the jar up, supporting it as he lays it on the sloping shelf. “There,” he says. “Does any of that look familiar to you?” And then, in a soft voice, as though overcome in spite of himself, he murmurs, “It looks so different from down here, doesn’t it. It looks so-” He leaves his thought unfinished, or at least unexpressed.
The only things I can see through the gutter are the bottom of a driveway across the street, and part of an old beat up car parked next to the curb. The light that illuminates them is subdued, not bright and warm like ordinary sunlight. But somehow I understand. Even if we can only see mundane and ordinary things outside, because we are seeing them framed by the borders of the rain gutter, from underground, they look wonderful, sublime even. Like Randy, I feel a sudden longing to be a part of that world, breathing the unbound air, swimming in the light.
Randy removes the jar from the shelf, and lays it back again on the litter strewn floor, next to the bucket of toads. “No, I suppose nothing looks familiar,” he says. “You wouldn’t have been high enough to see any of this.”
He seems to spy something in the corner, amidst a pile of detritus. He gingerly picks it out with his fingertips. It looks to be some sort of magazine. The image on the cover has been warped by water and frosted with mold, but it is distinct nevertheless: it depicts a human woman with no clothes on, posing provocatively. Randy smirks dismissively, but still tries to peel the magazine open, making a soft tearing sound. The image he reveals in the center of the magazine is riddled with fungus spots and white furry tears; the face, once pretty perhaps, has been disfigured by the warps that run through the paper like keloid scars.
Randy sidles up towards the raingutter to get better light. He’s in the middle of squinting hard at the decomposed paper, like he’s trying to burn holes in it with his eyes, when there is an ominous sound, a sudden booming. It comes most clearly from the emptiness beyond the raingutter, but it also seems to come from the walls that surround us, from the very earth itself. It is followed immediately by another sound, a kind of hissing that swiftly builds from indistinct to all-encompassing, like someone gradually turning the volume up on an off-air channel. Or maybe it is the world shhh-ing us, telling us to shut the hell up in the most polite way possible.
Randy drops the magazine, backs away from the rain gutter.
It’s good that he does, it’s futile that he does, because all of a sudden, a dirty waterfall thunders through it, drowning out the sky...
***
All throughout gym class, Wright keeps bugging me about the poem.
I run cross court, always just behind the action surrounding the basketball, always just too late to be effective were anyone to pass it (as if anyone would), while Wright, on the opposite team, pretends to play defense, tagging me like a shadow. And in every brief moment when I’m just standing around and waiting for the direction of play to change, he asks me, over and over again, “Is it ready?” and “Can I read it?”
So finally, sweaty and dirty in the locker room, I oblige him. I remove the piece of notebook paper from my backpack, one edge ragged from being torn from its spiral. Just before handing it to him, I give the poem one more once over:
“Beauty so free, yet virtue so fair
An earthbound angel with short, sable hair
A morning star in troubled skies
Despair disappears when I look in your eyes
Canst ever you know what you mean to me?
You’re everything that an angel could be
I long for you with all my heart
And wish never were we apart
But with all my effort, all my strife
Were I to fight for all my life
And all I get was a sweet, brief smile
Yet to me, twould all be worthwhile.”
I wince at the “canst” and “twould.” Are those even real words? Well, it makes it sound, I don’t know, Shakespearean.
Wright shakes his head disapprovingly the moment he sees the sheet of paper. “You’d better recopy it on stationary or something,” he says.
“Whatever,” I mutter. I leave him to read the poem alone, heading over to the bathroom stalls to take a dump.
I’m almost done deciphering the graffiti in the stall after a bout of particularly heavy pushing when I notice things get real quiet in the locker room.
A voice erupts echoes.
“So, where your luvah, faggot?”
It’s the moke, I realize. He isn’t in our P. E. Class, so he must have slipped into the locker room unnoticed.
“What?” Wright’s voice, defiant.
“You heard me, mahoo.”
“Ho, check it out!” The voice of another moke. “One love poem.”
“Give that back!” Wright shouts.
The mokes hoot. Then one of them reads aloud, slowly, mockingly, in a falsetto voice: “Bee-yu-ty so fay-ah, ver-too so free-“
”Whoa, I’m surprised you can read,” Wright spits.
Bad move.
I hear a slap, the sound sharp and crisp.
Then: “Eh, Troy, bettah watch out, look, he checkin you out!” Hoots.
Another slap, then a more cushioned impact. I hear Wright groan.
“Fakin’ fag!” shouts Troy, the lead moke. “No look at me! You fakin’ faggot!” Each syllable is emphasized with a hit, accompanied by hoots, laughter.
Throughout the exchange, I’m wiping, pulling my shorts up, all as quietly as possible. But then, when my fingers touch the latch of the stall, I pause. No, I stop. I positively freeze.
They’re right, the mokes are, I realize. How could I not have seen it? Really, was I that oblivious? Cliff’s remark: “they want something from you.” Wright’s words: “I’m a lot like you.” The slip-up that preceded it.
If I get out of this stall, if I try to come to Wright’s aid, won’t I just be confirming the rumor? Won’t I look like- I can’t even think it. It just makes me cringe in disgust, suddenly knowing what he is, what they think I am.
So instead, I sit back down on the toilet seat, and clench my head in my hands, trying to drown out the hits that echo throughout the locker room.
Finally, I hear Mr. Onodera’s voice. “Eh! What’s going on!?”
The sounds of a scuffle, of running away, of fading laughter.
Then I hear Mr. Onodera’s voice, uncharacteristically soft. “Oh no. Oh no.”
I open the latch, rush out, push through the crowds of towel-clad boys.
But I’m too late.
I’m far too late.
***
Rainwater streams in torrents.
The light of the lamp is instantly doused. The white bucket tips over. Toads are breast-stroking and drowning all over the place, swirling like floating pieces of rubber, amidst the other flotsam: the fishing net, tennis balls, leaves, the porn magazine, an old frisbee. The mayonnaise jar somehow remains stationary in the middle of this maelstrom, water frothing and churning all around it.
Randy meanwhile clings to the metal rungs. His eyes search for me amidst the tumult. “I’m sorry!” he shouts above the sound of rushing water. “It looks like I’m going to have to leave you here!” And he climbs up the rungs one by one, up to the circle in the roof, water streaming down in a column through the small hole within it. He presses a palm against the circle and pushes.
It doesn’t give.
***
“Hello, may I speak to Wright?”
“Wright’s not here,” a woman’s voice answers curtly. His mother. “Whom may I say is calling?”
“My name is Randy,” I answer. “I’m his classmate.”
“Randy?” she asks, her voice instantly warming. “Oh yes, Wright is always talking about you. He says you’re his best friend.” She clears her throat, and restores some formality to her voice. “May I relay a message?”
“Uh, sure,” I begin awkwardly. “See, the biology teacher, over at Mililani High? Every year he offers to pay for toads. Because he needs them for dissection? A buck a toad. And, I was wondering- see, there’s this canal behind my house, there’s always a lot of toads living out there- and I was wondering if he wouldn’t want to come? If he’s okay, that is. To help me catch some?”
“I can answer for him,” Wright’s mother says, after a pause. “He won’t be able to. He’s taken a trip with his father you see.”
“A trip?” I blurt. “I’m sorry, but can you tell me where he went? And for how long?”
Wright’s mother clears her throat again. She doesn’t answer immediately. “I’m only telling you because you are his best friend, and you deserve to know. Wright won’t be coming back. As you know, he had that- incident- over at Wheeler. This isn’t the first time. He had similar problems over at the school in Japan. My husband and I have tried to be patient with Wright, but- but we feel that he now has no other option but to attend a private boarding school. Wright and his father are visiting a few good prospects over in Washington State.”
“But- but-“ I stammer, not believing what I’m hearing, “it wasn’t his fault, what happened.”
“I know,” she says slowly, the words carefully chosen. “If anything, it’s our fault, my husband and mine. We’re always encouraging-” She clears her throat, regains her tempo. “Well, Randy, I’ll tell him you called. And does he have your address?”
I rattle it off mindlessly. Then: “Can you tell him something for me?”
“Sure.”
I want to say something pithy and profound, yet veiled enough to fly undetected past the censors between his mother’s ears. But there’s a lot of pressure coming from the other side of the receiver. “Tell him I’m sorry,” I say carefully. “And tell him- tell him that- tell him that there is a happy ending.”
A pause. “Sure,” she says absently. “Goodbye, Randy.”
“Goodbye.”
***
Randy stands with both feet on a slippery rung, braces his back against the wall, and pushes both hands up. With a scraping sound, the circle leaps up from its housing. Rainwater streams in through the new crescent shaped opening, dousing his hair, his face. Randy turns away, glances once more down at me. His eyes sad, regretful, he still smiles. He pushes the metal circle away, growing an opening like the moon, and climbs up and out, into the falling sky.
Water submerges the jar completely, scoops me out of it, carries me away on swift, torrential currents to who knows where, who knows when.
Carrying me.
Home.
***
Amphibious means to have two lives.
One is the life you want.
The other is the life you have.
One imprisons the other; one frees the other.
One carries the other; one burdens the other.
Which is which?
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