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Langa sighed as he lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The fan was rotating slowly enough that his eyes could follow an individual blade as it made its way around, and after the tenth or eleventh time it completed its journey, he had to admit to himself that this was a pretty lousy distraction.
“So I…” he started, but his voice sounded so loud in his room, so big that he didn’t want to finish.
“God,” he muttered, turning on his side. “This is so stupid.”
His father had died a month ago. It was sudden and also not sudden at all. After the funeral, settling affairs with insurance, and what felt like several hundred thousand people rotating in and out of their house bringing as many covered dishes, things seemed like they were finally starting to calm down. He was glad – the more people who showed up with their good intentions and various casseroles, the more he had to mumble thanks and agreement when they lobbed pity and “poor baby”s on him.
He was, truthfully, sick of it. He knew his mom was grateful for people to talk to, but Langa didn’t really have a lot of friends his age, and certainly none that would shoulder this grief with him.
Which is probably what led his mom to driving him to a grief counselor a week after the funeral, softly explaining in the car that this would be good for both of them, in the long run.
Langa didn’t have a problem with therapy, as a concept. He knew that it helped a lot of people and it was generally a net good. But the thing was this: he really, really didn’t like talking to strangers, doubly so if it was about his personal life. And the trauma and grief related to losing a parent at 17 was about as personal as life could get.
But he would do anything for his mom, even before it was just the two of them, so he went. Every week. Did his best not to shut down and stare at the floor.
The woman, Dr. Howell, was very sweet. She didn’t push him to talk if he didn’t want to and she didn’t ask how he was feeling, which he appreciated. The answer he most wanted to give to that question lately was “Not Great Thanks,” and he figured she probably knew that.
So he kept going. He liked her well enough. He wanted to make his mom happy. He didn’t think it would make him feel any better about his dad, not really, but he wasn’t going to put up a fight.
They were four sessions in, and she was asking him about ways he felt close to his father.
“What are things that make you think about him?” she asked, her kind eyes crinkling at him from across the room. “Things that make you happy.”
“I dunno,” he replied. “I guess, like, Arby’s.”
She laughed brightly, surprised. “Arby’s, as in the restaurant?”
He nodded. “We would go there a lot. He always had coupons. My mom would make fun of him for it.”
Dr. Howell smiled as she wrote on her notepad. “What else?”
“Old movies. The, uh, the show Firefly.” He smirked a little. “He loved it. The scifi channel has these marathons sometimes where they’ll play all of Firefly in a day, and he would always watch the whole thing.”
“Mm,” she hummed. “Anything else?”
His throat dried as he thought of suiting up and trolleying up mountains.
“Snowboarding,” he said quietly.
“Oh? Did he like to snowboard or did he just watch?”
“We, uh, would go together all the time. Almost every week when it snowed, before…”
Before he got sick.
She nodded and put down her pencil. “Langa, the reason I’m asking you to recall these things is because I think it would be beneficial for you to, maybe, participate in some activities that remind you of your father, to help you feel close to him, if that wouldn’t be too painful.”
He didn’t say anything. Everything was painful these days.
“Do you think you could sn–”
“No.”
Anything but that. It was his dad’s favorite sport, it was one of the first memories Langa had, it was their thing. Truthfully, he didn’t know if he would ever snowboard again. How could he, without his best friend beside him, laughing and telling him he was doing great?
She nodded again like she understood. “Okay, that’s alright. How about this: I know you haven’t talked to him since he passed. Why don’t you try that? It could help you feel close to his memory, and act as a sort of… therapy, when you’re not here.”
Langa wanted to say no. He would feel silly, he would feel dumb, he didn’t want to. But he promised his mom he’d try, give this a fighting chance.
“I… I guess so,” he said weakly.
She smiled at him. “Perfect. It doesn’t have to be anything grand or meaningful, not if you don’t want it to. You can just… tell him about your day, if you want. Complain about math.”
“I like math.”
“English, then. History. Anything, really. The world is yours to complain about. Just try to talk to him a little.”
He swallowed. “Okay. Sure.”
So that was how he ended up here, fascinated by his ceiling fan and fumbling for words. He could just lie and said he’d tried, make something up about school or a fake crush he had or something. But he figured he owed it to his mom and Dr. Howell to at least give it a shot.
He sighed again, deeply and dramatically. What was there to talk about? He frowned.
“I guess I’ll tell you about school,” he decided, his voice quieter than before. “I, uhm, I had to give a presentation in biology the other day. It was about mollusks, which are just about as boring as you can imagine. I think I did good, though. Ms. Gill smiled when I was done. So that’s good. Uhm...”
He fell silent again, thinking to earlier when he overheard a conversation his mother was having with a friend who was dropping off some kind of Jello.
“Mom’s thinking about moving us to Japan.” Thumbing at a hangnail, he elaborated, “To Okinawa. So she can be in her hometown. And, like, I guess that’s fine, if that’s what will make her feel better, but…”
Blinking hard, he said shakily, “It kind of feels like we’ll be leaving you behind.” He could feel his chest tightening and his eyes burning. “I don’t wanna leave you behind, Dad. It just… it just really sucks.”
Tears leaked out of his eyes even as he squeezed them shut. “Life really sucks without you.”
There wasn’t really much else to say besides that, but he did feel a little better, and he fell asleep soon after.
They ended up moving to Okinawa two months later. Langa didn’t even tell anyone at school, because he didn’t want anyone to look at him any more than they already did (“Did you hear about his dad?” “God, yeah, that’s so sad… I wonder what happened?”) but mostly, there really wasn’t anyone he wanted to know.
Six hours into their plane trip, he idly wondered if he’d be this lonely in Japan.
It was around 2 in the morning, he thought, and everyone around him on the plane was asleep. Sighing, he decided to stretch his legs and made his way to the bathroom.
He was almost too tall for the little cramped room, but he liked small spaces, usually. They were cozy. After splashing some water on his face and running his hands through his hair, he gave himself a good look in the mirror. He looked exhausted, to put it kindly. Maybe the lighting wasn’t doing him any favors, but his skin looked almost see-through, the bags under his eyes pronounced and purple, and his hair hung limp.
“I look like shit,” he said mildly.
His voice bounced off the walls, and it reminded him of his assignment from Dr. Howell. He hadn’t done it that often, but enough to where talking to an empty room didn’t feel as awkward as it had.
“I left some snow in a jar by your… where you are,” he began. “Before we left. I know the caretaker will probably just chuck it, but it made me feel better. So you can have some of the mountains there with you.”
Leaning back, a bit uncomfortably, against the wall, he sighed. “I don’t know, Dad. It’s not like there was anything really keeping us in Calgary, but still… I feel weird about this. Going away. My Japanese is terrible. I don’t know anyone there. There’s no snow.” Snorting derisively, he shrugged. “Not like I made any use of it since… well, anyway.”
His voice faded away and the metallic whooshing of the plane was all that he could hear. He coughed and scuffed his feet against the floor.
One would think that awkward pauses couldn’t exist if the person you were talking to couldn’t talk back, but Langa figured if anyone could make it happen it would be him.
“Do you think I’ll make friends, this time?” he asked, a little desperately.
The faucet dripped.
“Yeah,” he said, sighing as he unlocked the door to leave. “Me neither.”
“Mom?” Langa called as he entered their apartment. No reply. “Hm. Must be shopping.”
He slung his backpack on the ground of their entryway and plopped down on the couch. As his head hit the arm, he winced, forgetting the fall he’d taken when Reki had invited him to ride his skateboard.
He grinned. A job and a potential new friend in one day. And “S” sounded… fucking cool, honestly. He loved taking the black diamond trails on the mountain, and this didn’t sound much different. He wondered if they’d let him stay and watch after he made his delivery.
He wanted to tell his dad. He tended to talk to him when his mom was out – he didn’t want to upset her, for one thing, but he also didn’t love the idea of her learning about his personal life via conversations with his dead father.
“I met someone,” he said aloud, then balked, “Wait, not – not like that. He’s a friend? I guess? His name is Reki. And he’s in my class. And he was nice to me.”
Rubbing a bruise on his left arm absentmindedly, he smiled even bigger. “He skateboards. And he works at a skate shop, and I’m gonna make a delivery for them the day after tomorrow. And I’m gonna get paid! Like, real money. I think.”
There was a warmth in Langa’s chest that bloomed when he thought about how quick Reki was to invite him to learn to skate, to help him pick out a beginner board.
“It’s crazy, I didn’t really make any friends the whole time in school back home, but we’re here for like, two weeks or something and this guy wants to hang out. He seems really cool? And so does his boss. My boss? Whatever. It’s just… really crazy.”
He gnawed at his lip as he stood to begin making their dinner. “Maybe moving here wasn’t Mom’s worst idea ever.”
Langa could barely hold it in once he closed the door to his bedroom that night.
“Dad! I did an ollie!” he exclaimed, laughing a little. “I nailed it! Without my feet taped to the board! And, and, I got it in two weeks! Reki said it takes months for most people.”
He bounced on his heels, unwilling to sit down just yet, never mind the fact that his legs were killing him. “God, I just… I haven’t had so much fun in ages. Not since… not since I snowboarded with you. It’s like, the same rush, but different?”
He thought of Reki’s awe at his progress, his encouragement as they trained every day. “And Reki’s the coolest. I think you would have really liked him. He’s fun, and funny, and really smart, like, so good at building boards. I bet he’d be great at something like mechanical engineering if he wanted to be. And he’s so nice. I don’t know why he wants to hang out with me, honestly, but he’s…”
He blinked, realization washing over him as he reflected on their fist bumps, the hours spent at the skatepark, the way Reki took every one of Langa’s comments and questions with a grin and enthusiasm. When was the last time anyone outside of Langa’s family was interested in what he had to say? Sure, people at his old school were interested when they found out he snowboarded, but once they realized it was all he knew how to talk about they wasted no time in dropping him. Reki would never do that. Langa knew it in his heart.
“He’s my best friend, I guess,” he admitted, a small smile creeping onto his face. “Like, maybe the best friend I’ve ever had? He makes me feel… special. He makes everything feel special. Everything is cooler if he’s doing it.”
He glanced at the snowboard he had hanging up on the wall by his desk. “Maybe I could bring him to Calgary, and he could try snowboarding.” Laughing, he pictured it. “Then we can see how he’d be able to stand the cold. But I bet he’d be really great at it, he’s such an awesome skateboarder. And I bet there’s some cool skating shops there that we could find some stuff at, and maybe we could go to the mall, and...”
He spent the next few minutes listing off things in Calgary he’d like to do with Reki before his eyelids began to droop and he yawned.
“I think… I think you’d really like Reki, Dad,” he said sleepily. “I like him a lot.”
“Langa,” Reki said, worry etched into every feature. “You need to stay away from him.”
His knuckles stung and his legs ached. The race had been brutal, but Langa listened to his gut, and it would have won him the whole thing if the cops hadn’t shown up. He knew he would have won.
But Reki looked dead serious, and his eyes betrayed his fear. He was scared for Langa. He thought he’d get hurt more.
“Yeah, I know.”
It wasn’t technically a promise. It wasn’t even a guarantee that he would stay away from Adam. He wouldn’t be letting Reki down if he raced him again, not really.
Even as he thought it, he knew that was a bullshit excuse.
“I don’t know what to do,” he groaned as he fried some pork for tonkatsu. “I just… it would be stupid for me to race Adam, right?”
He glanced at the family photo on the dining table, as if his dad was suddenly going to have the answer.
“It would be stupid. He could’ve killed me. I could get hurt even worse next time, and then what… what would Mom do?”
His heart constricted, because he knew when it came time to get on the course, he wouldn’t be thinking about his Mom or anyone else. Just skating against someone who could really challenge him.
“I mean, it’s almost like when we would take lessons just to learn something new in snowboarding, right? It’s just learning from someone better than you. I don’t really get how it’s different.”
He sighed as he checked on the rice cooker. “I wish... I wish Reki understood. I know he’s just looking out for me, but this is so much bigger than anything we’ve done before. Anything I’ve done before.”
Groaning, he squeezed his eyes shut. “I just wish you were here. I can’t talk to Mom about this. She’d just get worried. But I know you would understand. Right?”
Nothing but the bubbling of the oil and the starchy smell of the rice cooking greeted him.
“Big help you are,” he muttered murderously.
Langa’s room was dark except for a sliver of streetlight peeking in through his window. He sat on the floor, his back against his bed, and he couldn’t breathe.
He tried to do the exercises Dr. Howell taught him, but they weren’t working, all he could see was Reki in the rain, yelling, scared –
walking away.
He pressed his palms to his eyes until he saw stars and forced himself to take short, staggering breaths.
“Dad,” he said, and his voice sounded ragged, raw. “Dad, I don’t know what to do. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, I said I wouldn’t and then I did, and…”
The hurt, broken look on Reki’s face flashed across his vision, warped.
“And he’s never going to talk to me again, and I can’t let that happen, I can’t , oh God, Dad, what do I do?”
He started to cry, then, pulling his knees to his chest and holding them tightly.
“I love him, Dad.”
He’d never said it aloud, had barely allowed himself to think it, but there it was, and boy, once he felt better he’d be sure to write the book on How Not To Come Out To Your Dead Dad.
“I love him so much, he’s everything to me, I don’t know what I was thinking.” A sob tore its way out of his chest. “He’s my best friend, and, and like, the only person I ever want to talk to, and I love him and I can’t lose him too!”
The last part came out as a yell, and an anger overtook him that he hadn’t felt in years. Everything came rushing back that he’d been trying to skate away from, the long nights in the hospital, the phone call Langa got at school, the horribly understanding doctors and nurses, the beeping noises that haunted his nightmares, the breathing tubes – the nothingness. The godawful nothingness.
“You left us, Dad! You were supposed to get better, you were supposed to come home, and you just left ! And now we’re in fucking Okinawa, and I fell in love, like an idiot, and you’re not here !”
His eyes stung and his throat burned, but he stood on shaky legs and shouted as loud as he could, “ Why aren’t you here ?!”
There was no answer. There never was. Langa climbed miserably into bed and clutched his pillow like a lifeline as he sobbed himself to sleep.
Langa felt lighter than he had in months.
“Hey, Dad,” he began, sitting in Reki’s room while the redhead was on a snack run. “I can’t talk for long, but I just wanted to tell you that I, uh, raced against Adam and I beat him. I won. But I guess… you know that, right?”
The vision of the snow whipping his face, of his dad grinning back at him, and he wasn’t sure he believed in an afterlife, or ghosts, but he knew what he saw.
“I had so much fun. It was an awesome beef. And Reki and I are cool again. I guess I haven’t talked to you since we fought. I’m so glad we’re okay. I mean, we’re more than okay. I missed him so much, you know?”
He smiled sadly. “I miss you too. All the time. Mom says I look more like you every day, but I think she’s supposed to say that. I know she’s sad, too, but she doesn’t let on most of the time.”
The tell-tale warmth indicating incoming tears prickled at the back of his eyes, but he didn’t cry this time.
“We miss you every day, but I think we’re getting better. A little at a time. I love skateboarding, and I love my friends, and I love Reki. And I think that’s good.”
He nodded, smiling as he looked at Reki’s wall of stickers and posters. “I’m good, Dad.”
The door burst open and Reki’s eyes widened, his arms full of chips, snack cakes and sodas.
“Yo, were you, uh… talking to someone?”
Langa bit his lip a bit before smiling and nodding. “Yeah, c’mere.”
Reki looked a bit confused but dumped the snacks on the bed and sat on the floor beside Langa. “What’s up?”
Threading his fingers through Reki’s, he smiled and took a deep breath.
“Uh, Dad, I want you to meet my boyfriend, Reki.”