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Pran hated turning sixteen.
He hated spending his birthday alone, hated that nobody knew, and Pran hated that he hated it. Pran knew it made little sense, with how few people he had bothered to interact with here, with how limited his access was to friends back to home, it made little sense to begrudge those around him for not wishing him a happy birthday. Pran doesn’t even care all that much about his birthday normally! But he couldn’t help feeling acutely alienated this year. It’s irrational, Pran knows, but he couldn’t help the way he felt.
Pattaya is only roughly two hours away by car from Bangkok, depending on the intensity of the traffic. One hundred kilometers away. For a teenager with no transportation access of his own, it might as well be the next country over.
Boarding school is different from university. It brings all the burdens of the beginnings of adulthood without any of its privileges. Here, Pran isn’t free, he’s simply unmoored. He’s a sailor with a broken compass, half of a map, and an unfamiliar crew.
It had been a lonely, arduous journey. He’s only just grasped his footing. He’s just begun to learn the ropes, when summer break came along. Pran dreads it.
It’s Pran’s first time starting summer break without Pat.
It’s odd. This time last year, just like every other year in Pran’s memory, they would have their report cards out, select classmates gathering around, reading and comparing their grades, subject by subject, out loud.
Instead, he’s surrounded by teachers packing up the classrooms, students packing up their bags, everyone getting ready to be picked up or to take the next bus or train out of the district. Nobody cared about his grades beyond giving him pointers on what to prepare for the coming academic year and, ‘Hey, here’s a list of optional preparatory books to purchase, if you’re interested, but don’t spend the entire break studying!’
School’s out! Vacation ads cover every marketing space the city has to offer. And Pran scowls at every single one with a passion.
Pran doesn’t want to go home, nor does he want any part of his former life barging into his current one. Not after all the hard work he’s put in to survive, to uncover and plant his damaged, fragile roots in this foreign soil. He’s still mad at his parents and coincidentally, his mother seems less than amicable to the idea of him coming home.
And let you fraternize again with the enemy? Her stare seems to convey over the grainy video call image.
Instead, Pran is told, “We’ll come to see you. Pattaya is a nice place. We’ll book a room at the nearest resort.”
Pran doesn’t have the heart to do it, but his inner child screams at his dad, Don’t come! Don’t come! You’ve tossed me away so how dare you come here. Don’t half ass your abandonment! Leave me in my exile! Don’t come!
It’s childish. So Pran swallows his screams, smiles into the phone and says, “That’s nice, Por. Sure, see you.”
Pran spends the first few weeks helping out at the school farm, for extra credit he claims, when it’s really just to put off meeting his parents for a little while longer, delaying the inevitable. It’s a good change of pace for a city boy like him. He struggles, he gets his pristine nails covered in grime and dirt, and he sweats like a pig, as much as he would running laps around the soccer field. Pran spends his evenings by the beach, cool sand beneath his sore feet, collecting seashells only to toss them back into the sea at the end of his long, winding walk. An exercise in futility.
Pran’s hands grow calluses, they grow in spots different than it would if he held a guitar, but it is a physical reminder enough, that this life is his, that this life is his to shape. Pran kept himself busy, and the days of physical exertions kept his nocturnal mind light and free. Weeding, planting, watering, milking; the routine motions became meditative, somehow.
Pran was at peace, for a scant while.
In the end, there was a change of plans, and they decided to bring Pran home after all, after getting their fill of a summer getaway and facetious play as a happy, harmonious, model family.
Pran still didn’t want to come home, but he couldn't exactly tell his parents that, and every reason sounded like a flimsy excuse that boils down to a child’s tantrum.
I’m afraid of seeing Pat. I’m afraid of falling all over again. What if I see him? What if I don’t? What if I come home and everything feels unfamiliar too?
That’s a third heartbreak Pran would rather spare himself from. It’s one thing to know the world doesn’t revolve around you. It’s another thing to have the weight of this realization entrenched on your shoulders and shoved into your face every way you turn, rendering you small and invisible; unimportant.
Pran feels like crying the further away they drive from Pattaya. His nose has acclimated to the salt in the air, the rust creaking the hinges of his dormitory gates, and the wind that brings it all to tousle his lengthening, locks. Even the sunlight feels different here, calling him to spend longer hours lounging in the sun, grass stains on his shorts, tan lines on his once pale thighs, black hair turning brown.
The sun in Bangkok is harsh and unforgiving.
The nearer they get to his old neighborhood, the more Pran reminisces of a time long past. Pran's reminisces of the distance between his childhood home and his former school. It used to be a walkable distance. He used to pass by the rusty neighbor’s gate. It always creaks so loudly, he can’t help but hear whenever Pat someone is entering the house.
Do the gates still creak the same way?
Like peeling the skin off a scabbing wound. Like pressing into a fresh bruise. The pain is much to handle, but the act is too tempting to bear. Pran’s mind wanders, circling back to Pat. It’s a given, Pran supposes, for him to walk in circles and still end up back here. How can he not, when he's kept such a tight lid on his feelings, pushing it all down just to keep on going? How can one heal when they have not allowed themselves to process.
Pran understands why his parents had a change of heart about him coming home the moment they pulled up their little street.
The next door house is busy with activity. Contractors. Renovations are underway. The noise and increase in dust particles would normally annoy his mother, but Dissaya seems to have taken it in stride, smiling pleasantly even at the stray worker crouched by their trash cans, smoking a cigarette. Not a touch of rebuke creases the smooth skin of her face, let alone slipping off her tongue.
For a panic-filled moment, Pran froze. Did they move out?
His father catches him in the act, and loudly comments, “Ah, business has been good with them away. Guess I’ll have to work harder once they come back from vacation.”
Oh.
Pran’s knees wobbled with relief. They shouldn’t have.
Pran pushes down the small spark of disappointment that he won’t be seeing Pat. He dreaded seeing him, but he also misses him… It’s complicated. First loves are needlessly complicated and needlessly painful, Pran acquiescence
Pran doesn’t want to feel as helpless as he did, so he cajoled his dad into giving him driving lessons. He spends afternoons with the back of his thighs glued to the faux leather of their family car’s driver seat. They always go right after lunch, just when the sun reaches the apex of the sky, and when business is most sluggish.
Driving a manual is as stressful as it is challenging. Pran still loved challenges, even though the ardor of winning one is notably watered down with only a ghost as his competition.
Parallel parking is a pain, though. Unfortunately, it is a necessity when one lives in such an urbanized metropolitan city. So Pran masters it, wills himself to master it, because if nothing else, at least he can have full control of this steering wheel.
Behind his parents’ backs, Pran makes plans with one of his boarding school friends to learn how to ride the motorbike next semester. Maybe he can apply for a license the following break. Pran will break free, or he’ll die trying.
Driving is different from farming. Driving is different from night walks at the beach, the beeping of tuktuks and motorbikes creates a frantic buzz directly in opposition to the serenity of waves crashing on the seashore.
Pran loiters around the neighborhood hoping to run into Pat, even though the next-door house is dark and unoccupied. Pran remembers how he used to do the same thing before moving out, waiting around for a glimpse of the other, because Pat would appear at his window at the most unexpected times, or throw the tin can over.
Pran remembered those simpler times when loving Pat seemed uncomplicated.
Pran misses those days when he could just love. It hurt to love, but at least that told him he was alive.
Now? Pran is just…empty. He's not sure if he still likes Pat or if he's simply attached to the idea of him. It's hard to tell, love is complicated, when they have to speak in between the lines, when there is so much left unsaid, and the words that are said are not what they seem.
Pran thinks back of the makeshift guitar pick Pat had cut out for him, and then of his guitar. Pran wished he had rescued it, that guitar was expensive.
Pran had been content with the little things. Wanting was enough, admiring secretly from close and afar was enough. Pran remembered folding and leaving origami notes in Pat’s locker, buying an extra cold bottle of sports drink to drop behind Pat’s collar, sticking a heart shaped sticker on Pat's back, right in the center of his spine, between his shoulder blades, and leaving him a surprise present on his desk for his birthday.
Pran had been perfectly content to love secretly, because at least, nobody will tell him no, nobody could tell him no, and as long as Pat is not aware of it, Pran wouldn't lose what he has with Pat, the bickering, the mutual understanding. He had everything to gain, and nothing to lose.
Pran had even hoped one day there would come a time when they maybe could be friends, or even something more. Because Pat had looked at him with those gentle eyes sometimes, he couldn’t help to think, more.
Back then Pran didn't know better, didn't know that the rift running between their families was that serious (who said time heals all wounds? it's been this long and they still haven't healed).
The way they got separated, Pran wonders if Pat ever thinks of him at all, if he tried at all to reach out. The Christmas concert was simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to Pran., to have been so close and suddenly pulled so far away.
Pran can’t keep away from the memories of Pat even as he is driving. The sun on the dashboard reminds him of another memory, of Pran at his former school, watching Pat's sleeping form, hit by the sun on the school desk. Pran wanted more than anything to go close to him and cover him against the sunlight. The murmurs and frowned crease of Pat's eyebrow causes his heart to leap somersaults. Pran goes to close the blinds instead, and then he stands against the window in a way that blocks out the light from falling on Pat's shadow. He smiles, watching Pat's expression slackening.
Pran’s dad asks him to pull over at the convenience store to buy a can of beer, and that simple query sends Pran back into the past when he and Pat tried beer together at fourteen. (Pat's father had two cans in the fridge, he stole one). The shared can of beer, his first indirect kiss. And Pran felt like such a child for finding delight in that, but he did. This stolen moment, made just for him. At that moment in time, Pran was happy. He wished time could've stopped, just for a moment longer.
They had grimaced and winced at the taste, Pran made a face and swallowed it down, but Pat spat the bitter liquid out. It didn't taste any better on the second or third sip, so they dumped it onto the grass and chucked the can into the nearest neighbor's bin.
Pran has fantasized about it. Maybe in a different universe, their alter selves would've shared a drunken kiss or two under the moonlight and the balmy summer air. Maybe that was a different kind of pain that Pran shouldn’t subject himself to. This should be enough.
Pat has sneaked in to sleep in Pran's room during the summers before. And sometimes, before their big exams, they would stay together to study. Pran still remembered how Pat had looked, passed out on his bed, pillow lines pressed into his cheek - well, book lines, rather. Pat’s hair splayed out on his sheets, Pran wanted to freeze that memory. He dreamt of a million nights like that.
He never voices them in the morning.
Pran's parents brought home a bottle of wine to celebrate their anniversary. They pop it open together with dinner the eve before Pran’s departure from home. His mother allows him to have one glass. Pran took slow sips, swirling the taste in his mouth. He took notes on how the flavor is more pleasant than the beer they shared, but somehow Pran prefers it less. He knows why. He's not sure what to do about it.
Pran knows he has to let go, he doesn’t know how to.
That night, Pran dreamt of their getaway excursions.
Of course they've sneaked away to hidden parts of the neighborhood, or at the back of the school, to be in each other's company secretly. A shared secret is thrilling, being someone's little secret is painful.
Pran remembers Pat mumbling along to an English-language song. His singing was terrible, his pronunciation even more.
"You kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath," Pat sang, off tune, the way only a boy going through puberty can, with the cracking of their vocal chords.
Pran thinks of that line and agrees - except, that's not true , because Pat doesn't know, of his feelings, of this oath taken one-sidedly.
Pran has no one to blame but himself. He knows he has to move on, but he can't, because he understands. Love isn't something you can control. You can’t tell your heart where it needs to go, you can only try to take your brain with you.
Two weeks was all it took to undo all of his progress. Pran wonders if he can rebuild his defenses just as fast the moment he steps foot back in Pattaya.
Pran writes an entry in the diary he packed into his bag- the same one he started keeping a month after moving into his new school- in the liminal hours of dawn, on the day he was due to drive back.
You who appeared in my dreams, still the same lanky boy, shoulders filling the slim fit of our school uniform, and crooked collars. You, who appeared suddenly in the blinding sun, and when I turned around, the heat of the sun warming the back of my head turned muted. At first, I thought you had stood behind me to shade myself from the sun, but you went and outdid my expectations, placing your cap on top of my head, before wheeling away on that blasted bike. It was all I could do to watch as you pedaled away, fingers gingerly caressing the one gift you seamlessly left me. As always, a kindness that leaves me breathless, a tenderness that melts into my soul.
It tastes a little like love.
Pran mulls over the entry that same evening, the enhanced humidity weighing on him like second skin.
It’s not that Pat is a bad person, it’s that Pran and all his insecurities and fears and a whole shapeless future in front of him, cannot afford to be waiting on someone who isn’t ready, who may never be ready, for him.
It’s a futile love anyway, but just because it is futile does it make his love worthless?
No.
It hurt then and it still hurts now, but Pran is thankful for the chance to love.
Pran thinks his love is best preserved in memory, best left behind to the past, to his fifteen year old self.
"He's yours to keep," Pran whispers into the briny air, and mine to lose, he finishes inside his head.
A bitter tang coats his tongue. Pran sneezes.
Like a summer cold, Pran shivers, shudders, and shakes.
He wakes.
This midsummer dream, let it remain a dream.
