Chapter 1

The last thing my father said to me before he shipped out overseas was, if I persisted with this drama of thinking I’m gay, it would kill my mother like a dragon breathing fire on her. So of course I had to build a dragon.

I hadn’t intended to build a dragon. It’s just that after he’d moved us here to the island the base was on, he’d left. I had no friends here, couldn’t take my music lessons anymore, and there was nothing to do and no way to get to it if there had been. We lived just off base, off the bus lines, close to a rocky strip of coastline where the water was too cold for swimming or surfing, and I knew nobody at all.

I couldn’t get a job and there was nowhere I could even volunteer. Staying home with my mother until school started was a no-go. She was too crazy, IMHO. Other people thought she was fine. The other problem was she missed my sister, and her own sister too, because back in the city we’d lived only about a mile away, and Mom had the car every day. Not that she needed it; we could walk everywhere or take the bus. Plus, we had two cars and Dad didn’t need his every day. So my sister, being older as well as ‘the responsible one’, could drive the second one sometimes, and I, being just turned seventeen, should have been able to, but Dad hadn’t wanted me to go ‘out on my own’ yet and neither Sis nor Mom would go with me. They weren’t trying to be mean (they said), but they were just both so busy, you know.

So we moved. Sis, being eighteen, stayed in the city, moving in with Mom’s sister. She started community college and smoking pot at the same time; well, she may have had a head start on the pot. I could smell it from her room sometimes. It gave me migraines. I’d make a lousy doper. Once Sis had slipped me marijuana-laced brownies and I’d been sick for three days. She was disgusted with me. Mom was offended because we couldn’t tell her what had done it so Sis said it was probably something I ate, which translated into something Mom cooked. Nobody else was sick so Dad figured I must have a test at school or something and just wanted to get out of it. Nobody in their right mind makes up vomiting as a school excuse and I was in no way bulimic, just sick. Being sick made me sick! No, seriously, even if you just talk about someone else who is throwing up, my stomach decides that a full in-house cleaning is just what it wants. Either direction, or both, move it out, folks!

Gah, enough. I’m trying to stop looking at what I can’t do and look at what I can do, which is lie here and complain. No, come on, self, you can do better than that. I could go for a walk or clean my desk or finish unpacking my clothes and stuff. Oh hell, Mom just turned on her Celtic music. I’m going for a walk.

Summer? Does the sun ever come out? I know it ‘rains all the time in Seattle’ but who cared? Besides, it was mostly mist. But here? Ugh. It’s cold and the wind is cold and I’m wearing my jacket. And shorts. Fuck this, it’s summer. I’m walking on a beach that’s colder than our old vacation beach was in winter but I refuse to wear jeans in summer.

Our vacation home was in Hawaii. FML.

You know what I had left from our last vacation? My tan, my muscles, happy memories, a not so happy encounter with a wave too big for my skills, aka, scars, and a wonderful encounter with my gay ER nurse who not only stitched my leg up, but…well, let’s just say we got together a few times after that north of the nude beach, okay?

I, uh, I miss him.

I usually walk north but today, with the tide out as far as it was, I walked south. I hadn’t been this way before. About half a mile along, I came to an old cemetery, up a short, maybe six foot high bluff, twenty feet or so above the high tide line. I pulled myself up and stood there, astounded. It was completely overgrown with weeds and wildflowers, with trees taking root over some of the headstones, vines climbing up some of the monuments. There was one those—what do they call it, little building, where the dead are put inside. The door was open. I didn’t go in. I was drawn to a couple of toppled steles that were falling over the side of the bluff. They had Japanese writing on them. I hoped there weren’t any bones or anything sticking out. Some of the dates on the stones were over a hundred years old, and many were of children. Their stones had little lambs and Bible verses on them. There was one where the child—infant, really—had died the same day it was born. That took my mind right back to last year when Sis had made me take her for an abortion. All I did was drive and keep my mouth shut, before, during and after, not even defending myself when the other people in the waiting room cast horrid glances at me, accusation in their eyes, presuming I was the father. I was horribly embarrassed but I knew it had to be ten times worse for Sis. By the way, we call her Sis because she wants us to, because she hates her name. I like her name. If I were a girl, I’d want to be called Gertrude Primrose too, wouldn’t you?

I knew I’d never tell her about the little gravestone by my feet.