The House Above the Sea

9.

Neo leaves for the fishmonger early the next morning, practically inhaling the veggie omelette Aunt Vivian makes him and jetting off towards the garage. As it was before, as it likely has been for several years, the boombox sits on a high shelf above Uncle Duke's pick-up. Neo stretches up, nudging the stereo carefully from its place until it collapses into his arms, a plume of dust shooting up and drawing a cough from his lungs. He shifts the stereo under one arm, and guides his bike out into the street with the other.

The stereo's heavier than he expected, and by the time he reaches the house on the cliff, his arm is shaking a little with the weight of it. Neo rests his bike against the porch and mops sweat from his already-frizzing hairline. Cicadas hum in his ears, birds gliding above his head in clean arcs. He shoulders the door open, dropping the stereo at the base of the rickety stairs.

"Kit?" he calls, the vacant walls throwing his voice back at him."It's Neo."

At first there is nothing, until a quiet shuffle of feet announces Kit's presence. He peeks out from around the staircase, watchful, black hair mussed and falling into his eyes.

When he steps into view, Neo laughs. "Nice jacket. Where'd you get it?"

Kit rolls his eyes, adjusting the sleeves of Joey's old neon orange windbreaker, which nearly swallow his hands. He looks at Neo, then at the stereo on the floor in front of him, and raises an eyebrow.

"I just came to drop it off real quick. Do you know how to use it?"

Kit pauses, hesitant. He shakes his head.

"Okay. Well, I have to go to work, but I can show you how when I get back," Neo says. He smiles, wondering if he imagined the disappointment that seemed to cross Kit's face at that moment. "So? Will you wait for me?"

Kit returns Neo's smile: a gentler, quieter version of it, a soft, slow bridge after a vibrant chorus. He nods his head.

All through his shift, Neo can't focus. He's never been good at focusing anyway, but today sets a new precedent, his mind a jagged, abandoned road he can hardly navigate. One moment he is thinking of New York, of the first time his father took him to a Yankees game and Neo nearly broke his nose trying to catch a ball; the next he is thinking of Joey, how his eyes were suddenly glassy as he said, We don't know a thing about each other, do we? And finally, finally he thinks of Kit, the seashell looped around his throat and his soft, twittering hands, slender fingers like a musician's. Kawamoto, Kit. Kit Kawamoto. What he would give to understand the mystery of that name.

Something blunt hits him, quite painfully, in the back of the head. Neo whirls, discovering it to be Bernie's fist. "No spacing out on the job!" she orders, leaning over his shoulder and eyeing the slab of pale, slippery cod he was in the process of wrapping. "That's sloppy. Wrap it tight, like a present. Would you want a present that lumpy, kid?"

Neo sighs, nervously adjusting his hair net. "Isn't it the thought that counts?"

"No! Of course not! If that were true I'd have a lot more friends," Bernie says, shaking her head. She knocks a fist against his temple again, this time hard enough to make Neo wince. "Back to work, airhead. Really. What's got you so out of it?"

Neo considers it for a moment, and even then, he doesn't come up with an answer that feels is entirely correct. "I'm not sure," he answers her, the thick wrapping paper crinkling in his hands. "I think I'm just...looking forward to a lot of things right now."

Bernie pauses long enough to scowl at him, as if silently scolding him for making no sense. But there's something else in that scowl, Neo thinks—something that speaks less of scorn and more of a quiet, prescient sort of knowledge.