Judge by the Cover_High School, Drama & Deadly Vices

by Melissa Abigail

  “What are we going to do?” she asked, not hiding the worry in her tone.

  “What can we do? Library closes early on Sunday,” Ryu mumbled, as usual, indifferently.

  Haruna groaned, running a hand through her hair in frustration, sweeping her bangs behind her ears.

  “But we’re so close to being finished,” she said, watching as he shoved the last of his papers in his book bag before zipping it shut. He looked to her with tired eyes.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked.

  Haruna studied him thoughtfully, the possibilities in her head twisting and turning. What choices were there? It was Sunday and places were closed early. They could meet after school tomorrow, but there was never any guarantee Ryu would be available. His track record was terrible. Not to mention, she had a backlog of other assignments, club and student council commitments, and tutoring to attend to. So this day really might've been their only chance. She bit her lip, eyes squinted as she wrestled with her conscience. There was only one choice she could make.

  “My house,” Haruna said, her voice small.

  Ryu’s eyes looked like they would run away from their sockets.

  “What?”

  “You could just come over. We can finish it, and get it over with." The words tumbled out and she nodded at no one, trying to convince herself more than anything that her suggestion was a good one. Good, rather than pure insanity.

  “No. Absolutely not.” Ryu pushed back his chair.

  Haruna leapt to her feet before he did, her hands slapping against the tabletop.

  “Please. After today, we’ll never have to do this ever again, okay? So let’s just get it over with,” Haruna tilted her head, then gave the kind of glowing smile she reserved for winning over teachers, classmates and Sister Anne, “I have cupcakes…”

  Ryu didn’t look like he knew how to respond, his face screwed up in sheer bewilderment.

  “Cupcakes?”

  If someone had told Ryu that on this particular Sunday afternoon he would be driving his Mazda down the narrow streets of West Campbelton, en route to the secluded Shady Glenn Estates; if someone told him he’d have Haruna Mitsukai beside him in the passenger seat—he would have told that someone to shove it.

  No way—absolutely no way would he have ever seen it coming.

  “I didn’t know you had a car,” Haruna said. “It’s nice.”

  So Katsuo was right. When in Rome, fit in with the shallow.

  "Thanks, I guess."

  “It’s a shame, though,” Haruna continued, and Ryu could see through his peripherals that she had pinched at her nose. “Do you smoke in here too?”

  Ryu’s grip on the steering wheel grew tighter, and he could feel the sweat trickle from his palms. He wasn’t going to respond. Not today. Not today.

  Haruna leaned forward, resembling an overly curious six-year-old with the way she tilted sideways and squinted, her eyes on the stereo. Ryu scowled. She must have been about to skip the track or turn it off all together. In his head he dared her to touch it. He’d happily let her out on the spot, make a quick U-turn and head on home.

  “What are you listening to?” Haruna asked.

  “What does it sound like?”

  “It sounds like something really old. Who listens to this anymore? It’s Tupac, right?”

  Ryu swallowed hard. This must have been some sort of stress test. He wondered if there was a prize for passing it.

  “It’s Biggie. Not Tupac.”

  “Same thing,” Haruna muttered flippantly.

  Same thing? Ryu knitted his brows, resisting an urge to explode into a rant about old East Coast–West Coast rivalries and how deep these lyrics were, how every line of the song spoke to him in ways no one in this city, in this generation could ever understand. He’d end by condemning the current shallow state of music, which of course, Ryu thought was terrible.

  “I like the older stuff,” he mumbled. “Who do you listen to? Bieber?”

  Haruna frowned. “I like Sade.”

  “Who?”

  “See. You’re not the only one into ‘the older stuff,’” Haruna said matter-of-factly with a smile as she lightly nudged his shoulder.

  Ryu tensed. Did she just touch him?

  Ryu suddenly became aware of his hands again, noticing the all-too-conspicuous blue veins bulging along them. He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. “So, I turn left, you said? At the light?”

  “The next one,” Haruna answered.

  Awkward.

  They arrived at the gate and Haruna wordlessly passed the key card to him and he swiped, allowing the gate to open. As the car crawled through the neighbourhood, past the perfectly spaced apart, perfectly symmetrical houses, Ryu exhaled deeply. He wasn’t sure at what point he had stopped breathing. This was foreign territory. Forbidden territory.

  “It’s here,” Haruna’s voice chimed at last.

  Ryu pulled into the empty driveway. It was at this point that Ryu was able to take in the house in its entirety. It was expectantly beautiful, its exterior flanked by manicured evergreens and flawless, perfectly proportioned hedging. But strangely enough, something about the house just seemed… basic. Not as grand and luxurious as he had imagined. At least, compared to Matsumoto’s, it looked… tiny.

  “I guess Grandmother isn’t home,” Haruna muttered as she fumbled with a key at the front door. Ryu dallied behind her, waiting. He wasn’t sure if she had been speaking to him or thinking aloud. Once inside, he was taken aback for the second time. Everything was neat and organized. From the floors with a mirror-like finish, the Persian carpets flush against them, to the way every ornament, houseplant, silk curtain, and every piece of furniture was set with intricate detail and purpose. The house was nice. Like out of a Hudson's Bay catalogue nice. But still, it wasn’t what he was expecting. Not at all.

  “Would you like me to take your jacket?”

  Ryu’s eyes met Haruna’s.

  “No. I’ll hold onto it,” he said.

  Haruna shrugged.

  “Suit yourself." She removed her jacket and a button-up cable-knit sweater, revealing a white blouse. She lazily tossed both onto the arm of a single-seater, and started down the hall. “I’ll grab something to eat. Would you like some water?”

  Ryu found himself mostly saying “sure” in response to everything. He stood hovering in the living room, wondering whether he should follow after her or take a seat. Somehow neither of these things felt like options. He was lightheaded. What was he doing here? A subtle cramp started in his stomach. It was nearly dinner time and he was starving. She had promised “snacks." A cheap trick, yet, he conceded anyway. He began to wonder how he had allowed her to actually convince him that coming here was a good idea. Haruna returned from the kitchen, in her hand a tray yielding a large plate, bowl, and pitcher.

  “I’m guessing you must be as hungry as I am. There’s some pizza. It’s only a day old—I swear,” she said in a rushed tone. “There’s not much, otherwise. I think my grandmother went to buy groceries, but not to worry—plenty of cupcakes. We get them from this awesome patisserie on Fifth Avenue…”

  Blah blah, fancy French food from fancy Fifth Avenue. Ryu gave a weak nod, only half-listening.

  “You can sit,” Haruna said pointedly as she placed the tray on the table and took her own spot on the sofa. Heaving a sigh, Ryu sat on the side farthest from her. He eyed the food as he removed his jacket. The day-old pizza wasn’t fancy at all. And where were the maids? The butler?

  “Your house isn’t as big as I thought it would be,” he said. He watched as she poured into a glass. She glanced up strangely. Ryu began to clarify, "I always thought gated communities were filled with mansions and swimming pools…”

  Haruna scoffed, her mouth pulling into a slight curve.

  “Not every house here is like that. But it’s just the two of us—Grandmother and I—so we don’t need a house so big. Elle lives a
few blocks away—now those are some really big houses.”

  Ryu folded his arms stiffly and assembled a straight face. Weird. When he thought about it, her house paled in comparison to even his own. It was almost as if he was the rich one between them. Weirder still, was her attitude, seeming totally fine with not living in an incredibly large house. He reached for a cupcake and that's when the realisation hit. He paused before the frosting could touch his tongue.

  “Grandmother?” he croaked. “What about your parents?”

  “I don’t have any,” she said softly, not looking at him as she made some free space on the glass table to set up her computer.

  “You’re an orphan?”

  Haruna faced him, her thoughts unreadable, her smile still present, but somehow not right. “I was young when they passed. I don't even remember them so it’s not a big deal, really.” She turned away quickly, averting her attention to papers she had stacked along the table with their writing on it. “So back to this assignment…”

  “How did they die?”

  He wasn’t sure why he had asked. But he wanted to know. At least he thought, maybe he wanted to know.

  Haruna looked up from the notes.

  “They were killed by some idiot…”

  Ryu’s breath hitched. Killed? As in murdered?

  “The driver was drunk,” she finished.

  “Oh,” he breathed, feeling relieved. Although from the look on her face, that relief was unfounded. He idly scratched his cheek. So that was why she had asked him about the orphanage? Was that why she had been treating him differently as of late? Was it because he was, like she was, without parents?

  “My father was killed, too.” Ryu had allowed the words to escape. The words felt burning, like they needed to be said, like a long-awaited confession. He stared tensely at his hand and the gradually crumbling cupcake within his grasp. “I was young also. I don’t know about my mother, though. She never wanted me, I guess.”

  He wasn’t sure why he had said any of it.

  Ryu looked to see that Haruna’s eyes had become glassy. The room held a sullen stillness. Ryu wasn’t one to cry, and he wasn’t about to, but something in that room felt heavy, heavier than he had anticipated. The lull was ended with a peculiar cawing sound. Chirping. Ryu jerked his head in its direction as Haruna got to her feet.

  “Oh, sorry—I should feed them,” she mumbled, then walked over to a table just before the kitchen entry-point. Birds. Ryu hadn’t noticed them before. Not knowing what else to do, he stumbled upwards and followed her with hands dug into his jean pockets. He figured he might as well watch. He peered into the opening of the large, rectangular cage, through its metal bars at the tufts of green and yellow, their dark eyes glittering as they looked back at him. Ryu shifted his gaze as Haruna reached inwards, allowing one of the birds, the yellow one, to hop onto her hand. She tenderly stroked its head. It cooed and she tickled at its beak. She spoke to it softly and it tweeted back to her, like they were having their own secret conversation. Ryu rubbed uneasily at the back of his neck.

  “What are they?”

  “Parakeets,” she said, then gestured to the yellow one on her wrist. “This one’s Harriet, the green one is Alice.”

  Ryu smirked. “Interesting names.”

  She returned Harriet to her enclosure then poured from a bag of seeds into their food bowls.

  “Alice from Wonderland and Harriet Tubman,” Haruna explained, unfazed by his sarcasm. Once finished, she closed the cage door. “Actually, I feel sorry for them sometimes. Being trapped in a cage with no way out. Birds aren’t meant to be caged.”

  Huh?

  “Oh! It’s already five-thirty,” Haruna blurted. She brushed past him and back to the sofa.

  Oh, right. He was there for a reason.

  It took another forty-five minutes for them to finally pull it all together. At least, the part of the presentation that required them to work together. They had come to a compromise, settling on combining the slideshow with acting. It was strange. Something so complicated, so impossible to finish, truly wasn’t at all. Haruna leaned back against the sofa's cushion, her face radiant, lit up by her widest grin.

  “We did it!” she sighed.

  Ryu shoved the last of his cupcake, his third cupcake, into his mouth. He noticed Haruna had had the same kind of calm, relaxed expression when she was playing with her birds too.

  Side-note—she wasn’t kidding. Those fancy, French, rich-people cupcakes were good. Really good.

  And her smile was…

  Haruna seemed to sense him staring at her for she turned sharply and her smile faded. “What is it?”

  “It’s weird to see you smile—for real,” Ryu said. He turned and took up his water from the table.

  “Don’t be dumb. Everyone’s seen me smile. It’s you who’s always serious.”

  “But most of the time it’s just for pretend, isn’t it?” he replied between sips. “I thought maybe I'd seen it for real when you were with your boyfriend, the first time you came to my house—but even then it was fake too, wasn’t it? Must be exhausting pretending. Always trying to meet expectations.”

  “It’s exhausting trying to meet expectations, but it’s worse to be criticised for trying."

  Ryu gulped audibly. He rounded on her, clanking the glass onto the table. Harder than he had intended. Louder. So loud, it echoed.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “You meant it exactly like that,” Haruna said, then crossed her arms. “By the way, couldn’t I say the same for you? You act like nothing gets to you, but really, it’s true what I said. You’re hurting, but you’re afraid of anyone knowing it, so you pretend to be untouchable—like a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

  Sheep? Now she was comparing him to livestock? There she went again. Analysing. He grinned, deciding he’d take the bait this time.

  “Fine. I’m in so much pain. Why? Tell me,” he asked, mimicking her folded arms.

  “Because your father's dead and your mother abandoned you.”

  Ryu felt a frown creep up. She said it like it was nothing.

  “Not having parents isn’t the worst thing in the world,” he muttered.

  It wasn’t. Being a White Flower with a constant target on your back? That was much worse.

  Haruna looked away, crestfallen.

  “I guess we just view ‘the world’ differently," she said.

  Ryu studied her carefully. So? Had he guessed correctly? Haruna really had hoped, had expected because they were both orphans that she could fully understand him?

  “So what are you saying? That we’re, like, kinda the same, or something?” Ryu asked, tempering his curiosity with a casual, indifferent tone.

  She looked at him again, and this time her eyes were not only glassy. They also had hints of brown and gold at their centre.

  “I’m saying you’ll never understand someone if you can’t stop assuming you already know everything about them.” She pivoted and retrieved the now-empty tray. “I better put this away.”

  Ryu watched in a daze, watched the sway of her ponytail as she turned her back on him and flitted to the kitchen once again. He brought up a hand to scratch his head. She had turned his own words on him. Had he also done nothing but assume? Strange feelings came over him as the dots connected. All that talk of pain, loneliness, pretending… was Haruna even talking about him? Or was she really talking about herself? Could it be she was much deeper, more complicated than he had thought? Maybe what she wanted all along was for him to understand her. They'd known each other for years, but he didn't know her at all.

  The grumble in Ryu's stomach came again.

  What time was it?

  He glimpsed his watch. One minute after seven. Yikes. He needed to get out of there. Ryu shot up on impulse, intent to find Haruna when a photo on the mantel caught his eye. He went in for a closer look. Slowly, he reached out, running a finger along its edges
. He took it carefully into his hands.

  It was a portrait, the photo of a teenage girl dressed in a black graduating gown, her mortarboard tilted back. Its tassel hung loosely and rested against her ear, against a cascade of light blonde ringlets. Something about this girl, her marble eyes shining like oceanic crystals, sincere, bright and promising, something about her struck him. The longer he looked, the more he couldn’t help but feel like he had seen this girl somewhere before, as if he could hear her speak to him.

  Did he know her?

  “What are you looking at?”

  Ryu felt the nerves like a jolt of electricity at his back, and in a fluster, the frame fell from his grasp onto the carpet. Haruna rushed over in alarm, and Ryu dived to retrieve it.

  “U-Um, I was just… uh, this.”

  He knitted his brows at his inability to form a sentence. Since when did he become a tongue-tied klutz? He met Haruna’s eyes with unease—but that's when he felt his breath leave him again. With limbs stiff, the picture frame rested lamely in his hand.

  “Oh yeah, that’s Mum,” Haruna said, cautiously taking the frame from him and resetting it on the mantel.

  Ryu balked. “Your mother?”

  “Well, yeah,” Haruna said, lifting a brow, “Don’t we look alike? Except, she has great hair. Way nicer than this.”

  She tugged at the end of her ponytail for emphasis. Then she looked to the floor and Ryu lowered his head to watch her retrieve a small photo he hadn't noticed.

  “This must have fallen out the back,” she noted, then she showed him. There again was that blonde girl, though she looked older, in her twenties, and beside her was a young woman with oversized sunglasses, her auburn curls meeting at her tan-brown shoulders.

  “It’s my mum with one of her university friends,” Haruna said as though he had asked. “My grandmother hid a lot of these photos in weird places. She doesn’t like the pictures with this other girl in it, I guess.”

  Haruna manoeuvred back to the sofa and Ryu followed behind her, limbs rigid like tree branches. That stunningly beautiful blonde girl was Haruna’s mother? Ryu saw something flick before his eyes. He faced Haruna who had waved a hand in front of him to draw his attention.