Lie Like You Mean It

“I don’t think you quite understand Mina.” Zero said once we were in her room.

“Aw… but you guys!” She drew out the end of the word ‘guys’ making it sound like she was pleading. “I do too understand!” Then she looked at me. “Tell him I understand Nickybear!”

I winced at the nickname and then Zero laughed. “You don’t Mina.” He grinned.

“I-it’s k-kind of… a…” I trailed off, realizing I my vocabulary was depleted, leaving me without a good selection of words.

“It’s only on a trial basis. Nicolas doesn’t like me in that way.” He glanced at me, then kept his gaze there. “Yet.” He added, flashing a smirk before turning back to his sister.

Well, at least the arrogant, self-confident Zero was back. “Don’t get all self-righteous, Zero. I only said I don’t hate you. Which doesn’t guarantee the possibility of me reciprocating your feelings.”
“Ooohh… Nickybear just used some big words against you.” Mina mocked, giggling to herself. But I still hated the nickname she gave me. I mean, I didn’t even like to be called ‘Nick’, so ‘Nickybear’ was out of the question.

“He can do as he wants. But you, however, need to stop calling him ‘Nickybear’, got it?” He stated in a serious tone that had his sister looking confused as she sat on her rolling computer chair. She was facing us as we were seated on her bed, opposite from her. Her room had finally been decorated.

With none other than posters of various animes. Yes, Japanimation covered her walls and ceiling. Honestly, I liked the way anime was designed. Not that I watched TV much; I played a lot of games that came from Japan, ones that had been designed with anime characters. Big eyes and all. But I hadn’t expected her of all people to like anime to be truthful.

“Aww!” She let out before she took one swift movement to tackle her twin onto his back on the bed. “You and Nickybear are just too cute!” She exclaimed, shaking Zero back and forth in her arms. Apparently, he’d finally had enough and pushed her away.

“Stop that, you overly-affectionate oaf!” He shot back, grinning. She just laughed and I sat there puzzled. I didn’t understand their sibling teasing. But, then again, I didn’t have a sibling. I grew up pretty much alone which is probably why I get along with my parents so well.

“So I guess you’re not telling Anya and Garrick?” She asked.

“Not until Nicolas wants to. If he ever does.”

“Nickybear had you wrapped right around his little finger, doesn’t he?” She chuckled again.

“I told you to stop calling him that.” Zero growled, sounding almost annoyed. But I was sure he tried to keep his irritation under wraps because it was Mina he was talking to and the fact that I was in the room.

“I bet you’d be the uke, too, wouldn’t you?” She said, followed by another fit of laughter. I looked at her, blatant confusion on my face at the foreign word.

“Of course. I’m not hurting him.” He spat, as if it were simple. But it was funny to hear him say he didn’t want to hurt me. Not ‘haha’ funny, but a weird funny.

Then her smile disappeared and was replaced by an urgent seriousness. “You’re… really serious aren’t you?”

“Mina, you know as well as Nicolas does, that I hate everyone. Why would I let him in my life if I wasn’t serious?”

I felt misplaced by the conversation flow. And it all had to do with that foreign word. I’m sure that if I knew what it meant, I’d have been able to follow the conversation. Zero must have noticed my perplexed expression because he started talking again, “Don’t use Japanese around Nicolas. He has no idea what you’re saying.”

“That’s the point! Don’t you think he’d be embarrassed if he knew what I was asking?” She tried. Zero just proceeded to rub the bridge of his nose and sigh. Keeping his hand rubbing on the space between his eyes he met my gaze.

“The overly-affectionate oaf wanted to know if I’d let you top me.” As he said that, I could feel my face heat up. How could he say that with such a straight face? I really wasn’t prepared for the images that came into my mind at that. I hadn’t even thought about going that far! I was in need of some serious brain bleach.

“I still can’t believe you would.” She whispered and then fell back onto her back on the bed. I looked down at her as she hid her face behind her arm and sighed.

“Listen, I have to get back to studying.” Zero said, standing up. He walked over to me and paused, checking over to see if Mina was still covering her eyes with her arm. When he found that she was, he leaned over me to meet my lips with his. It was quick and lasted a mere second as our breath barely mingled. But I still hadn’t expected it – like the first time. I still didn’t return it because I was still unsure about a lot of things. But I got the idea that was okay with him, because I think he understood; like an unspoken acceptance.

He made the kiss silent so that it wouldn’t attract Mina’s attention; this was our moment. “Ask her.” He whispered into my ear when it was over, his breath grazing my exposed flesh, forcing me to shudder just a bit. At the door he spun around. “Mina. Tell him everything. And I mean the truth. I would… but you know I can’t.”

Mina sat up and looked at him blankly and then gave him a weak smile. “Yes, Boss.” She said, complying with his order.

Mina didn’t look at me until we heard the door to our room shut. “You know what Zero whispered to me on your first day of school? Before we left?”

I shook my head and then she leaned forward and rested her face on her hand, looking straight ahead.

“He asked me to keep an eye on you. And that other time! When you said you’d rather just stick to being who you are instead of forging a new identity in class. You know, when Zero stormed out.”

“C-Can you just… start at the beginning?” I asked, all this remembering was making my head spin. I didn’t really isolate incidents and searching for them within my scattered memory wasn’t exactly giving me any results.

She took a deep breath and stretched forward. “Yeah... yeah, that sounds good.”

“It’s funny… Zero used to be a lot like you. An absolute sweetheart, really.” She pushed a piece of stray hair behind her ear and I stifled a laugh. Zero being a sweetheart? “I’m not kidding. In middle school, he was really popular and had a lot of friends. But his grades weren’t as good as they were now. Mom wanted him to have good grades.”

She looked a little thoughtful and then hoisted herself off the mattress. “Uh…” She mumbled, digging in the drawer of her bedside table. “Here we go!” She pulled out a worn black-and-white photo of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties with a sorrowful smile. “Zero and Mom were pretty close, y’know? Hardly ever fought. Our Mom was adopted and when Zero and I were ten, she went through her birth parents’ records. Um… she uh… found out that her biological father had Huntington’s disease.”

“Uh… care to elaborate?” I asked quietly.

“Well, it’s where uh… it’s a degenerative terminal disease. And after she tested herself for it, it came back positive. She didn’t tell us anything about it.”

“So how-”

“I’m getting to that.” She shut her eyes and laid back on the bed. “So anyways… to put it bluntly, she killed herself.” I froze at those words. But the only thing I was thinking is, How must Zero have felt since he and his mom were close?

“She couldn’t handle the fact that she’d become a burden on the family. It happened four years ago when we were in seventh grade. That’s when Zero changed.” Mina started tracing figures in the air with her hand. Probably to keep her mind off of the past she was now repeating. “He… he was the one who found the body. I’m sure Mom meant to make it as clean as possible and that’s why she took an overdose. But, oh God, it was terrible. The medication ended up making her throw up blood and it was everywhere.”
I started feeling sick just from hearing that. It wasn’t because it sounded repulsive, but because Zero had been the one to find the body. It had to be terrible.

“You could say he went into shock. It was his way of coping. He blocked it all out, everything. Every memory, every image. He forgot, repressed it. He had a complete breakdown, a personality crisis. He became cold and stopped talking to his friends. He started studying more because that’s what Mom wanted him to do.”

I just sat there, trying to take it all in. Mina suddenly sat up and wrapped her arms around me, draping her head over my shoulder. I tried to return the hug out of kindness. “He told me you make him remember how he used to be. He knows he’s forgetting something and that’s a start.”

“So I… I make him remember…” My head was hurting from all the thoughts going on in my head.

“Himself?”

I’ll probably always think that the kid has problems, but everyone does. And it wasn’t going to change the way I thought of him.

She jerked away from me and then took my face in her hands. “Nicolas, don’t stay with my brother out of pity.”

“You’re kidding me right?” I retorted. “I wouldn’t do something like that! I wouldn’t stay with him just because I thought, ‘oh, I feel sorry for this kid’.” And I didn’t feel sorry for him. Yes, I hated – loathed – the fact that he had to witness something that horrifying.

Mina smiled a little and said, “Good kid.” And then she released me.

It’s extremely difficult to explain, but I wasn’t going to throw away every moral I had just so I could pity him. And I’m sure he wouldn’t like that either. “So, is he bi-polar?”

“Well… I’m not sure. Because he’s really only nice to you. It might be because you’re slowly uncovering the personality he left behind a long time ago.”

“Yeah but… that doesn’t make any sense… isn’t he just the person he is now? There is no ‘past Zero’ there’s only the present one. You’re gonna have to own up to that and realize that he’s just who he is.” I said and stomped out of her room. From my doorway I heard her burst into laughter. Not mockingly, but more like she was happy that I’d said such a thing.

“So… how… how did it go?” Zero asked cautiously as I shut the door behind me.

“Eh… I just realized that your past doesn’t really matter too much to me.” I said, smirking. There was a hint of a smile on his face for just a second.

But it was the truth… all I needed was the present.