Someplace Like Home |n.j

26.

"You're really not going to your dad's funeral?" Harumi lifted his watch to look at it, "It already started."

The three of us are drinking on the rooftop of Kenji's house, it's around five in the afternoon. I decided not to go, so they didn't either.

My mother didn't care enough to take me, or even try to convince me to. I know she'll care enough to give me shit about it later though.

She's always like that. She's never there when you 'fuck up', but she loves showing up to scold you for something she never cared enough to save you out of. It must be a hobby or something. Because she does it a whole lot.

"Yeah," Kenji followed, "You should go. He's still your father." Harumi hands me his beer and I willingly accept it, taking a sip out of the bottle.

"There are exactly two things that embarrassed me the most in life." I began to explain, "You know when our parents get busted by the police for gambling or fighting or whatever? And there's always that one second when we meet eyes with the police before we run...that's the first one. 'Second one was when I went to the hospital to look at my father's dead body. I wanted nothing to do with him, 'didn't want to be seen with him,"

I remember just how stiff my legs were, standing before the hospital bed as my mother weeped. Whenever nurses and doctors passed by, they would look at us with that gaze that made me want to hide in a hole. Yeah, I'm that child with a pitiful father, there was no need to drill it in with those expressions.

I was angry before anything. Even in his death, he existed as the plague in my life, the infection, the virus. If he was someone else, I wouldn't be smoking on the side of the road at two in the morning, nor would I be going to the hospital to look at my father's beaten corpse.

They know what I mean already, but I'll finish what I'm saying, "I don't want to go to his funeral because I don't need a third thing to be embarrassed about."

I don't want to see his dead pathetic face again. If people at school didn't already bully me for this, I would. That's all I was, the daughter of a lowlife. Now I'm the daughter of a dead lowlife. It's not better.

I need to be a different person. I need a different life.

"Your mother's going to kill you for it." Harumi nudged my foot with his. I was jammed between them, my two best friends. It's nice. I look at him and draw my gaze to the freckles on his cheeks, and the poorly dyed orange hair. I'll miss it when I leave.

"She didn't even ask me to go. She doesn't want me to show up because she needs reasons to hit me,"

"My father's like that too," Kenji sighed, grabbing the bottle of beer we've been passing around to get a drink for himself, "My mother pushes him around, but he loves her too much to say anything, it all just spills out when he's with me."

The sun was starting to sink down now, I laid down and crossed my hands behind my back, watching the sky dye itself yellow.

"Some parents we've got," They all followed me to do the same while Harumi exhaled out. Kenji and I hummed along in unison.

I don't want to be like them, but they probably didn't want to be like their own parents either. And they probably didn't turn out to, they just became something else.

"...you won't miss him though?" Harumi quietly asked.

"No." I gulp. I shift to my side in a hunched position. My eyes follow the ant running down the roof. A small smile fights to surface when I see Kenji's hand crawl towards mine, then finally landing on top of it. We both know this isn't going anywhere, and he knows that I'm never going to be his. But for now we're happy, so I try not to think about that, or talk about it.

"You guys are fucking disgusting," I heard Harumi gag, and I roll my eyes just as Kenji did.

"Go get a boyfriend first, then come back to us," Kenji snapped back, sitting up now with his hand off of mine. Does he think I'm his girlfriend then?

I turn to look at Harumi and see the comedic scowl on his face fade, "You know I'll get kicked out."

Kenji and I are the only ones that he's come out to. I don't blame him. Maybe he'll be public about it in a few years after he moves out of that shit-hole. His first boyfriend will probably be an asshole because Harumi wouldn't know better. But he'll connect with his community and he'll learn. It's a shame I won't see him evolve. Kenji will though. Nobody here really leaves each other unless they leave this town. Everybody grows up and grows old with each other. Unless they get killed first, like my late father.

"Shit," The familiar profanity leaves my lips as I jolt at the buzzing in my pocket. This was bound to happen sooner or later.

I pick up the phone, "Mo-"

"You get here right the fuck now or I swear to god I'll slap you so hard you meet your father,"

***

I held my cheek right where the stinging pain arose with my teeth biting on my lip. I turned back to stare at her, a glance I made sure she saw.

"Don't touch me," I spat out blood as I took a step back.

"Don't fucking touch you? This is your father's fucking funeral and you didn't bother showing up on time like he was nobody!"

"Yeah, the funeral you're interrupting and swearing in the middle of. What are you doing?" I gritted, dropping my hand back to my side. I'm glad Kenji and Harumi didn't come along when I told them not to. I don't want them to see me like this.

I was quiet when I entered the funeral venue. I didn't want to make a fuss, well, for that reason and also that I didn't want people to know I was here. But my mother had other plans when she snatched me by my arm during a speech by some man I'd never seen. Her hand came flying toward my face. Was it a slap? A punch? I couldn't tell, something in between. I do know that it hurt like a bitch. The sound of her hand against my cheek bouncing off the walls had everyone freeze immediately. It was humiliating. I made sure not to cry, even with the tears rising to my eyes.

I don't know why she's acting out during his funeral, she acted like she cared about it when she screamed into the phone earlier.

"You have no idea how ridiculous you're being, acting like your parents mean nothing!  You're out there doing whatever the fuck, like your father had nothing to do with you. I thought you would know better on such an important day, you're embarrassing our family,"

Important my ass, and embarrassment? Don't talk to me about that, I've been eating embarrassment for breakfast for the past seventeen years. If she wants to yell and swear like a child, she'll be pleased to find that I can do that too.

"I don't even know why we're doing this. The pricks hits you! He gambles away all the money you make, he's never been no goddamn husband and he sure as hell was no father! So I don't know why you're asking me to show up, alright? Or why you're even showing up, or why he even has a funeral in the first place. Let him die, let him be forgotten, I don't know why we have to give a fuck," I exhaled harshly with my chest heaving after spilling everything out of me. Fuck. I kick down the folded chair that I was supposed to sit on and yell mentally at the pain shooting up my foot.

I shove my hands in my pockets and turn back around. I walk out of the room before my mother could snap out of her state of shock and give me her fist again.

Kenji
we're outside

Kenji
picking you up from that hell hole

Kenji
don't stay there. you don't have to

-
wasn't going to
-
omw