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I have searched for my mother’s love in all corners of the world.
— Annie Ernaux
“Mae!” calls Pran, dashing through the hallway. The jackets on the hanger flutter in the breeze he leaves behind. He comes to a stop at the end of the dining table, at which his mother is sitting and reading the newspaper. When he arrives, hands braced on his knees and face flushed red with exertion, she clucks her tongue and turns to the page detailing all of the news about local businesses.
“What have I told you about running in the house, Pran?” she says, eyes never drifting from the small printed words. Pran straightens immediately, eyeing the dirt he tracked in. “What is it?”
He holds out the paper crushed in his hands to her. She squints at it, unimpressed, before dropping her newspaper on the table and smoothing it out. As she reads, Pran says, “Our teacher said we’re starting a class band. Best is playing the piano, Pat—I mean, Prim said she knows how to play the drums. Mae, can I join? I wanna learn how to play guitar!”
Pran is only eight. He doesn’t know—the dirt he tracks into the house is difficult to mop up, the handprints he leaves on the cushions have to be smoothed out, his existence soaking into the house like a perfume needs to be aired out. Everything has its place. Everything has a clear-cut path. He doesn’t know any of this. All he knows is that when he went to the mall with his father three months ago, he walked past a music shop and fell in love.
His mother crushes the paper in her fist. “Pran,” she says quietly. “What was your rank after the last exam?”
Pran swallows. “Second,” he mumbles. “Pat managed to score one point better.”
She turns to look at him, one hand gripping his shoulder. Pran winces under the pain shooting into his muscle, but doesn’t say a word. “You have to work hard,” she says, mouth thinning out into a line, “it’s only when you are consistently the best that you can take time off for these silly hobbies. Let Pat get distracted by all of this. Meanwhile, you work your way up.”
Pat’s learning how to play the drums. Pran knows, because he sees him with the curtains open. On the first day of school, when they were supposed to be introducing themselves to each other, Pat stood up and said his name with a surety that Pran has never had. Most days, Pran still has to stop himself from scribbling a question mark next to it. Most days, he watches Pat’s easy way with his over-abundance of friends from the corner, where nobody passes except to toss something into the trash can.
Pran keeps his eyes trained on the ground. “Yes, Mae.”
His mother releases him. “Go along, now. Don’t you have an exam next week?”
It’s only maths. Pran doesn’t need to study hard for that. “Yes, Mae,” he says, and goes, leaving the paper fluttering on the table.
At fifteen, Pran worries his lip between his teeth when he spots a familiar figure scurrying around the corner. He grasps his books tighter to his chest and hurries along. Sighing as he spots a gaggle of people coming his way, he’s forced to slow down, letting Pat catch up with him.
“Hey, Pran,” he says, one strap of his open backpack tucked around his left shoulder. His hair is swept across his forehead. Pran resolutely doesn’t look. “What are you up to?”
“I’m going to the library,” he bites. “Now go away before someone sees us together.”
Pat’s eyebrows furrow at that. His mouth pulls down into a scowl. “No need to be rude,” he says, even though that’s all they’ve been to each other since they were born, “I just wanted to ask what you got on the last exam.”
“I ranked first in our year,” says Pran, shifting the books under his arm. Before he can stop him, Pat is rolling his eyes and lifting two off the pile to tuck under his own. “What are you—Pat, give me my books back.”
Pat waves a hand. “Your mother must be proud. Of the rank, I mean.”
Pran stops in his tracks. Pat doesn’t realise, walking a couple of steps ahead before he pivots, cocking an eyebrow. “Do you live to be a thorn in my side?” hisses Pran, holding a hand out. “Just give me back my books and annoy someone else about their grades.”
He doesn’t mean it. They have this quiet friendship going on, changing to rivalry at the blink of an eye when they’re not in school anymore. But within these walls, Pran can breathe. He doesn’t mean it, but he waits for Pat’s face to fall, for his mouth to tug into a frown. Pat knows him like nobody else—down to his GPA, his worries, his dreams. Maybe it’s because of that, because they’ve been intertwined since birth, woven into the thread of each other’s lives—it never comes.
Instead, Pat grins.
“You caught me,” he says. “I know what you had on that exam. What I wanted to really say was that I heard you practicing guitar in the music room the other day. You’re really good, Pran.”
Pran blinks at him. When his mother had told him he wasn’t allowed to play guitar, he found refuge in the music room instead. The teacher in charge of the keys had promised not to tell anyone. Pran always keeps the door firmly shut, ready to jump up and pretend like he is searching for something if anyone comes in. There are so many secrets under his skin he doesn’t know how to keep track of them anymore.
“How did you…”
“I heard you singing,” says Pat, shrugging. “I’d know your voice anywhere.” For a moment, Pran thinks his heart flatlines. His hands shake to grip his books, still, as Pat’s smile quirks up into that smirk of his. “You’re good, but not as good as me on the drums.”
“Fuck off,” mutters Pran under his breath, shaking his head. Pat falls into step beside him. “You—“
“Don’t worry,” says Pat, holding his index finger up to his mouth, “I’ll just help you with the books till the library and then I’m out of your way. And I won’t tell your mother.”
Pran doesn’t say thank you, because they’ve never expressed any sort of gratitude to each other, but he knocks Pat’s shoulder against his and thinks he might understand.
“Are you not doing anything for your birthday, Pran?” asks his father over dinner. His mother had ordered in from his favourite restaurant, takeout boxes of pad thai and red curry and sticky rice littering the table. Pran keeps to himself at his corner, very carefully spooning the rice out of the box so he doesn’t spill anything on his mother’s floral tablecloth.
His mother doesn’t look up from her plate. “We’re having dinner now, aren’t we?”
“I meant with friends,” says his father, glancing at him. Pran’s hand grips so tight around his chopsticks that they feel like they’re close to splintering in his palms.
“They’re all busy,” he says, shoveling the last of his rice into his mouth. “Exams are coming up, so we’re focusing on studying right now.”
Pran’s mother nods. “You’ve got sensible friends,” she says. “Bring them home sometime, Pran.”
“I’ll ask them when they’re free,” he says, looking into his empty bowl. “May I be excused? I’ve still got some homework to do.”
His father furrows his eyebrows, but nods. “It’s still your birthday, son,” he says. “Take a break.”
Pran nods, fleeing upstairs. Once his door is closed and the hum of his parents’ conversation reduces to white noise in his ears, he exhales. His room is swathed in darkness, enough for him to focus on his breaths. One, two. One, two. Curling his palms into fists, he slides down the door, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He’s about to murmur something to himself to calm down his racing heart, but before he can, something rattles against his window.
“Who’s there?” asks Pran, looking up. A shadow slinks by the glass before it gives way and a familiar figure prances into the room.
“What are you doing on the floor?” asks Pat, perching on his desk.
Pran scrubs a hand over his face and gets up, sighing. “Get off my desk before you break it,” he says, and Pat obediently scurries onto the bed. “And stop making so much noise. Why are you here?”
For a moment, Pat glances at the floor. He doesn’t meet his eyes when he holds out something in his hand. “Here, my sister wanted me to give this to you.”
Pran blinks, tilting his head to look at it. It’s a messed-up looking cupcake, frosting overflowing over the edges and the squiggles barely reading happy bday, pran. Pran’s seen Pa’s baking before—it’s all over her Instagram—and it’s pristine. If he touches this one a bit too firmly, it’ll crumble away in his hands.
“It’s chocolate,” says Pat hurriedly. “Your favourite. Or—or that’s what she said, anyway.”
Pran bites down a smile. He’d seen Pa this morning while taking out the trash, and she’d pushed her glasses up her nose and wished him a happy birthday. “Tell her thank you from me.”
Pat hums, nodding. “So, you finally caught up with me, huh?” he says, and Pran rolls his eyes, holding the cupcake in both of his palms.
“No way.”
“Pran, come on.”
“I said, no way.”
“Seriously, man. The teacher picked you! You can just tell your mother it wasn’t your choice.”
That gets Pran to look up from his notes. Once the initial excitement of being chosen to be in their class band—and the promise of spending many evenings with Pat, pressed up together from shoulder to waist—had worn off, he’d realised just how much of a problem it’d be. Pat looks up at him, chin resting in the crook of his hand.
“My mother would never accept that excuse,” says Pran, twirling the pen in between his fingers. “You can find someone else.”
“Why won’t it work?” asks Pat, pouting. “Your mother wants you to focus on school, right? Well… well, she can think of this as extra credit!”
Pran snaps his book shut. “Your family is flexible,” he bites. He thinks of the time his mother had confiscated his phone when she found out he’d been watching acoustic covers of songs on the radio, trying to figure out the chords himself. The times when he’d ranked first, and all he’d done was fulfil her expectations, not gone above and beyond. “Mine is not. Mark my words, this is gonna end badly.”
Pat puts his palms up. “Okay, alright. We can keep it a secret, if you want. But it’s not fair. You like playing guitar, right?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“If you like it, you should play with us,” says Pat, straightening up in his seat. “It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t have much to do with school. Tell your mother you’re in an after-school club. Tell her it’s the maths Olympiad club.”
“If I tell her that, you know she’ll be expecting me to enter one, right?” says Pran dryly.
“Then just tell her that. I’ll help you study for one. Come on, Pran. The other guys are cool. We’ll be friends in no time.”
When Pat said none of this was fair, he was right. But Pran learned at the tender age of eight that not everybody has parents who will come to their school recitals. Not everybody shines as bright as Pat, blinding like the sun, and captures people into their universe.
Friends. Before he can stop himself, Pran is nodding.
A rock bounces off his window.
Pran has his hands gripped into the wood of the desk. If he leaves them there longer, it will splinter off and cut into his skin. He presses harder, eyes squeezed shut as he tries to block out the incessant knocking on the glass. The evening keeps playing out in technicolour, like film reel sputtering. All he can see is his mother, mouth pulled thin and arms crossed, and Pat’s hands on the drumsticks as he loses the rhythm.
He knew. From the moment this began, from the moment he’d had a guitar under his palms. This was always going to end like this—aflame. His mother sets fire to everything she touches. Maybe that is why Pran constantly burns, now at the end of his wick.
“Pran,” hisses a muffled voice from outside the window. When Pran looks through the sliver of an opening fluttering in between the two curtains, he sees Pat clutching his arms close to his chest, biting his lip. “Open the window.”
Pran pulls the curtains flush together. The knocking doesn’t stop.
“Pran, just open the window. I heard from the others that your mother is transferring you somewhere else.”
“Mae, I’m sorry, it was a mistake—”
His mother, who hasn’t spoken to him since she caught him red-handed on stage singing to Pat, turns on her heel so quickly that he bumps into her. At sixteen, he’s taller than she is, and yet he stands in front of her as if he were six and still yearning for her approval of his drawings. “If you knew it was a mistake, you wouldn’t have made it,” she says coldly. She grips his shoulder. Two girls whispering in the corridor scutter away at the sight of it. “Pran. You’re letting yourself become distracted by all of this.”
Pran squirms under her touch. “Mae, let go, please,” he says, trying to wriggle away. “I’m not distracted. I still have the first rank.”
“I didn’t raise you to talk back to me,” she says. Her fingers dig into his skin, leaving hot burns behind. “If this is what playing guitar and—and socialising with that boy has done with you, then I need to take you out of school.”
Pran’s heart drops to his stomach. He looks from his mother’s ablaze eyes to his father’s, who ducks his head in disappointment. “What do you mean?” he says. “Mae, you can’t just take me out of school.”
“I have a friend who’s on the school management team at a private school with boarding,” she says, dragging both of them to the administrative office. “She can get us a discount on fees. You need to realise what’s truly important, Pran. You need to study and work your way up to the top instead of wasting your time with things like music. In the end, it’s your own intelligence and hard work that will get you places. You’ll get better opportunities at the school I’m talking about. For everyone’s good, I’ll transfer you there.”
His mind plays the last sentence on repeat, like a sick record stuck in a loop. “Transfer… me?” he echoes. “But I know everybody here already.”
“Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you need to start fresh.”
She doesn’t let go of his shoulder until they’re there.
“Pran. Come on. It’s cold outside!”
Clenching his hands into fists, Pran rips the window open. “Go away,” he says, moving his body in front of the glass so that Pat can’t climb his way in. The red-hot anger subsides into a low thrum when he sees Pat, flayed open. “Pat… I’m in enough trouble as it is. I just can’t take it anymore.”
“Pran,” starts Pat, but Pran already knows the future. He knows, just like he knew that picking up the guitar would end in nothing but flames, that letting Pat in now means it’ll be harder to scrub him out later. The existence that has plagued him since he was born, competing in the first one to crawl and the first one to talk and the first one to score full points in an exam, is the same that knows him down to the bone. They’ve been intertwined so long, it’ll be hard to untangle himself from him—to figure out who he is without having to compare himself to Pat. The loneliness yawns an aching gap inside of him.
He closes the window and draws the curtains, burying his face in his hands so he doesn’t break down right then and there.
“Is this a project for school?” asks his mother as she pores over the drawings on his desk. Pran hovers in the corner with a glass of water he’d just poured himself from the kitchen. She leafs through another couple. Pran had snuck pencils and paints out of the art room for them. Most of them are just still life studies—of fruit, of the sunset, of his parents in the car on their way home for summer break. The others are raw sketches of the good bones of buildings.
“Yes,” says Pran, hands tightening around the glass. “It’s a summer break project. I’m working on it with Wai.”
His mother hums. “He’s a nice kid, you know.” She pauses on the painting of a building at sunset. Pran winces, ready for the tirade on how he’s wasting his time on this. “You have a good eye, Pran.”
Pran blinks. “Mae?”
“Have you thought about studying architecture?” she says, turning her gaze on him. “I think you’d be good at it.”
“You think so?” asks Pran, voice small. It’s his last year of school—everyone is thinking about where their path leads next. Pran knew he had only the choices his mother deemed reasonable; something like engineering or astrophysics. He’d never dreamed that architecture would be okay, too.
His mother nods, rustling the sheets of paper aside. Pran realises too late that she’s opened his sketchbook, flipping through the pages. It’s only when the light catches the traitorous sketch of Pat grinning at him over the drums that he stops in his tracks. He remembers scribbling that one down during the band practices last year, the ones that felt like they went on for years. He remembers how they ducked their heads together to fine-tune the melody. His heart stops beating when he sees his mother frown at it, mouth turning downward in displeasure. She’s made no secret of how much she hates Pat. How Pran has had to carry forth the burden of her past, whatever it is.
“Mae, that’s from last year—”
“Pran,” she says, devoid of emotion as she closes the book shut, “it would be a good idea for you to study architecture.”
Sometimes, Pran wants to grip his mother by the shoulders and make her feel the entirety of his quiet suffering. Sometimes, he yearns to shake her, to yell at her, to knock some sense into her head. To make her realise—how long he’s been cutting parts of himself away to fit into her mold. To make her understand—there’s so much of him he can’t be because of the way she’s defined him through this petty rivalry. Sometimes, Pran wants to up and move. To disappear into the background like he’s done for so much of his life. To run away so he doesn’t have to bear the weight of a million expectations on his shoulders. As she looks back down at the gentle strokes of soft paint that make up a beaming Pat, he wants to yell, This is the truth! You want the truth from me, always! Why can’t you stomach it now?
He puts the glass of water down. “Yes, Mae,” he says.
His dreams stay buried in the ground until he meets Pat again.
He gives him his guitar with steady hands. Pran flutters his own over its neck; memories yawning awake with every touch. He only finds out later that Pat had begged their professor to let them back into the competition, just so that Pran could perform. When he steps onto the stage, with Wai at his back instead of Pat, he’s reminded of high school. Of the days he spent hiding behind corners and lying to his mother about after-school commitments so he could sneak his way into the music room and practice with people who were—tentatively—becoming his friends. Of the technicolour, intense way he loved Pat. How all of that resulted in his life being uprooted and flung somewhere else, like a puppet on a string.
So he keeps his distance. He bites his lip and keeps an arm’s length between him and Pat, even though he knows what they’re hurtling towards. But then they kiss on the rooftop, and they make the bet at the beach, and suddenly it’s not clean-cut anymore.
It’s only that: every time he closes his eyes, he sees his mother in front of him. She tells him, as always, to work hard. To focus on school, not let silly things like music—and Pat—distract him from what’s really important. When Pran was standing on that stage, hands steady on the chords, he’d expected her to show up. Expected her to find out again and drag him out of university, even though this time he’s an adult. It’s only that: Pran has never rested a day in his life. He’s needed to go above and beyond, always. Score that one point better, complete that assignment for the extra credit, join the rugby team because sports is a noble pursuit. It’s only that: now he sees Pat again, he aches. If his mother ever found out, she’d grip her fingers into the flesh of his shoulders so hard that his body would leak blood.
In another lifetime, his mother could have been someone who was able to love him—and not the thought of who she wants him to be.
“Stop thinking so much,” says Pat, pulling up next to him on the rooftop. He’s wearing a sleeveless shirt, mouth shaped into a pout. “You’re just going to stress yourself out.”
Pran snorts and turns back to watch the Bangkok skyline, lights blinking at him in the distance. “At least one of us should be thinking.”
“Not about our parents,” says Pat, nudging him with his elbow. It doesn’t feel like the bet anymore—it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to one-up each other. Rather, Pat’s eyes are softened into sincerity. “Come on. Don’t think about your mother.”
“Hypocrite,” says Pran, laughing just a little. That gets Pat’s eyes to crinkle. “As if you’re not thinking about your father.”
Pat waves a hand. “All the time. Who doesn’t think about their parents? About what they want us to do?”
Pran turns to him, open-hearted and with his hand as a bridge between their bodies. “How do you stomach any of it?”
“I don’t,” says Pat simply. His fingers brush against his; it feels like rebirth. “Their expectations just are. It’s a fact of being their children. What do you want to do, Pran?”
Pran watches their hands, curled into one another. He knows where this is going. In the end, Pat’s always been the one to give in. In the end, they were always going to end up here. He sighs, shoulders drooping.
“I think,” he says, “I just want a break.”
“I heard about the Freshy Music Contest.”
Pran’s hand tightens around the glass. He is not eight anymore, cowering underneath his mother’s rage; nor is he sixteen, letting her pull the strings on his life. He puts the glass down, avoiding his father’s eyes. “Yes,” he says. “We ended up winning.”
His mother levels him a look over the rice. “I thought you left all of those things behind you.”
“I’m our year’s president, and I play guitar. It’s not like I couldn’t take part.”
“As long as you’re not letting your grades drop,” says his mother, back to delicately spooning out some curry for herself. “Is that boy bothering you?”
Something snaps inside of him, and he’s dragging his chair backwards, screeching against their pretty polished wood floor. “No,” he says, forcing his palms to stay palms, “he’s been helping me, actually.”
Pran’s mother drops her fork. “Pran,” she says, quiet and deadly, “are you continuing that dim-witted friendship you once had with him?”
“Mae, I’m an adult,” says Pran, and for once he feels like it. For once, he could stand up to his mother and win. Like a snake waiting to dart out of the grass, Pran thinks he’s let the anger boil over in his chest for long enough. “I can speak to whoever I want to.”
“You don’t understand,” she insists. “You’re still a child. You don’t understand that being friends with—with people like that gets you nowhere. You know them, Pran. They’re leeches. They’ll attach themselves to you and slow you down. They’ll destroy your future.”
Tears are leaking out of her eyes. Pran yearns, like a small child, to reach out and wipe them away, to fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. He steels his jaw and works past it. “I’m doing well. I have the highest rank of my year. Mae, would it kill you? Would it kill you to say you’re proud of me, just this once?”
She’s brushing her tears away. Like a blade that never stops cutting, she digs her heels into his pain. “Did I raise you to disrespect your mother like this?” she says, slapping a hand down against the table. The glasses clatter. “Did I raise you to not listen to me?”
Pran flinches at the sound and then laughs, hollow to his own ears. “You never listened to me anyway,” he says, and walks out.
“No way.”
“Baby, come on.”
“I said, no way.”
Pat pouts as their friends make fake-retching noises next to them. They’re sprawled out on the table in between the architecture and engineering buildings, trays of food lined up next to each other. “Please,” he says, grasping his hand. “You’re the best guitar player I know.”
“Oi!” yells Wai, from where he’s squashed in next to Korn. “What about me?”
Ink glares at him. “You’re not even half as good.”
Pran hides a smile behind his hand and says, “Wai is pretty good. Just play with him.”
“But I want to play with you,” whines Pat. He gestures out at the sky. “Just picture it: if we form a band—me on the drums, you as the guitarist and singer, Ink on the synths, and I guess we can have Wai too, and Korn, and maybe Safe—then we’d be fostering interdisciplinary relationships. We could even play at bars and make some money. It’s a good way to de-stress.”
“We need you, man,” says Korn, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Pran doesn’t flinch. “Your songwriting is too good to pass up. We don’t want to have to make do with your fool of a friend here.”
Pran fits his chin into the crook of his palm. As he watches Pat pout, he’s reminded of high school. How he loved silently, then, and how he played guitar hidden in the shadows of the music room that bonded them for a long time. How he hung his head low whenever he walked past his mother.
How, now, there’s a missed call from her on his phone.
“Fine,” he relents, and lets Pat kiss his cheek in gratitude. “We’ll hash out the details later, okay? I need to go to class now.”
Pat jumps up. “I’ll walk you there,” he says, holding out a hand. Pran waves goodbye to his friends, the ones who stand next to him now. The ones who would be willing to dive into the line of fire if it meant he’d walk out safely. He takes Pat’s hand in his, intertwining their fingers.
“Let’s go to the music shop later,” says Pran, mouth ticking up into a smile. “I need to get new strings for my guitar.”