YAJIMA, kieran dillon

[KIERAN DILLON YAJIMA]

SEVENTEEN. LOCAL. GAY. SHY. KAZUYA KAMENASHI.
( KIERAN DILLON YAJIMA )

I SEE YOUR EYES, YOU'RE BARELY SOBER.
I HEAR YOUR VOICE, YOU'RE CALLING OUT FROM ME TO YOU.
the character

ABOUT KIERAN i'm kieran dillon yajima, but obviously just call me kieran which is, fun fact, a gaelic name that means 'little dark one.' i'm a guy, which is kind of really obvious, but i'm also gay which isn't quite so obvious, but i think it is a little bit. i'm seventeen and a local because i dropped out of high school. a lot of people have told me that i look like kazuya kamenashi, but i don't even know who that is, so i can't judge how accurate that is.

THE PERSONALITY i'm really shy. at least, that's what people think. i just like my personal space, mentally and physically. it's not that i'm anti social, i just don't like people very much and i prefer reading to interacting. my mom says it's a little bit concerning, but we both know she doesn't mean it because she's always been just the same as me. i don't show much interest in having friends because i honestly couldn't care less whether i do or not. i have a few acquaintances that are kind of like friends and maybe they are 'true' friends, but i wouldn't know the difference. i like to be by myself, with a book, reading. i'm really good with words and i could write sonnets, poems and novels that everyone seems to agree are fairly good. contrarily, i can't use the words out loud. when i try speaking with them, they seem heavy and awkward or maybe it's just me making them so. i guess i'm not really good for much unless i have a pen and a piece of paper to hide behind, which is going to suck when i get older. but i honestly just don't like talking to people. it's just not what i'm built for. it takes absolute ages for people to get close to me, but once they do, i will honestly put my entire soul into their happiness and well being. it's funny how i'm like that. i either care too much or not enough. the people i love rank so far above me in importance, some people can't even believe that the person they befriended-the shy kid who won't look anyone in the eye-is so passionate and loyal. i would give anything for my family or for anyone who i chose to enter into a relationship with. if i love a person, that person had better expect all the love and devotion that i can give and that's a lot. it's sort of like a sap all of my feelings out of regular relationships so that i can give everything i can to the people that i think really matter. that's probably why i don't have an abundance of friends, but i can live with that, so long as the people that i truly love know just how much i love them. i like chocolate and caramel, especially when they're together. oh, and especially when they're in ice cream form. i like strawberries and puppies and burger king, but most of all, i love reading. i absolutely freaking love it. books are like-you ready for this overused and ridiculous cliche?-a drug for me. i couldn't go without them. i read more than i breathe and i probably know more words than the sats. my goals are to graduate high school and become an author or to graduate high school and become a poet like emily dickinson who didn't leave her house. she didn't even get any of the attention for her work, which would suit me fine. i don't like attention. i hate that feeling when every eye in the room is looking at you, or when every head simultaneously turns to stare. that's the worst. i also hate cherries because of this one time last year when i went to a party and drank too much cherry vodka. i'll never drink again and i forevermore hate cherries. cherries and alcohol. i'd rather die than try either of those things ever again. i'll go to a party, but i won't like it much and i won't drink. i also hate swearing. i don't do it because it just makes people sound stupid. if the world would just increase their vocabulary, they wouldn't need to resort to using such stupid language. but that's just my opinion. my greatest fear is that something will happen to mina. she's my world and i don't know what i would do without her.

THE HISTORY i was born on june 17, seventeen years ago in south dakota. my parents were normal back then. scott christian yajima and beth cassandra yajima. that's them. they were great up until i was twelve. but we'll get to that. i have one sister, quinn mary-elizabeth yajima, who's a year younger than i am and very annoying. even when we were toddlers, she was the one poking, kicking and biting me while i was just trying to watch a movie or take a nap. she was the pest in the car when i just wanted to read or sleep. she's always been the energetic, outgoing one and she was the one who became the darling of her teachers and her classmates. there was one point in time where she became too much of a darling, but again, we'll get to that. when i was five, i started kindergarten and of course my teachers had lots of comments about how i didn't like to be around other kids and how i just wanted to play by myself. my parents told them that i'd always been a sweet, shy child and that that was just the way i was. sometimes i wonder if they could have forced me to be more social as a kid and if that would have made me into a different person who focused less on the fantasy worlds i read about and more on my friendships. as it was, though, i was taught that the only relationships worth putting effort into were the ones with people who i truly loved. so i spent the rest of elementary school by myself and perfectly happy with it. the other kids my age seemed to just get it and they left me alone to do as i pleased. however, in middle school, i met a girl named grace. she was incredibly sweet and a new student and she didn't leave me alone, which at first was very annoying. however, after awhile she became something of a best friend and by the summer before freshman year, i thought i was in love. she was in love, that much was clear. we started going out at the beginning of our sophomore year and it didn't take long before we learned that she was pregnant. it was also around that time that i met tony. i didn't really know him all too well, but i was definitely attracted to him in a way that i had never-and have never since-been attracted to a girl. i was in love with grace, but not in the way that she was in love with me and nearly eight months after first learning about her pregnancy, she gave birth to our beautiful daughter, mina. mina's two, by now. simultaneously, i learned that my fourteen year old sister was sleeping with her english teacher-who was admittedly rather hot. i didn't tell anyone, but i made quinn promise to stop. it was all too much for me all at once, but quinn did stop. even if she didn't, she never let on that she was still seeing him and for that i was grateful. i don't remember the teacher at all. it wasn't him that mattered so much as what he was doing with quinn and i needed that to stop.

after a short time out of school with mina, grace decided to come back, leaving mina with her mom. it was an awful, awful mistake as it turns out, because that was the day stanley gordon took a gun to school and shot five people. grace was the last one before stanley lost balance and dropped his gun. i remember it so clearly. not the dropping of the gun or how a couple students held the kid down, but the fact that grace's white shirt was flowering all over with bright red blood, like weeds that didn't belong there. i remember telling her that everything was going to be okay and that she'd be fine. i remember knowing how that wasn't true at all. grace was my first true friend and the mother of my baby girl who she'd left alone for the first time. a six week old baby. it was like something out of one of my books come true because it was just so catastrophic. i refused to tear myself away from her until i was ordered to by the emts, but they still let me ride in the ambulance with her. she was my wonderful grace. and now she's not because she's not here anymore. i waited in the waiting room with grace's mom and with mina and when the doctors told us the truth, grace's mom was so upset. she burst into tears and left the hospital, leaving me with mina, which i didn't mind. she was my little version of grace. she didn't look like grace much, persay, but she had green eyes like grace even though there was the gentle slope of my japanese ancestors to them. her hair was very light, too, since mine is light brown naturally and grace's was blonde. grace's mom tried contacting me later that day and told me that she couldn't bear to see the grace in mina and i told her that that was fine and that i'd be moving with mina and my mother and sister to to a town in california. that would kingsford, in case you didn't catch that, which you probably did. the thing is, my mom was severely depressed and getting out of bed was an issue for her and we wanted to get her to a new setting. my dad needed to stay behind for work, but my mom, quinn, mina and i left and that's how we got here. when i turned sixteen, i dropped out of school to help take care of my mom and to take care of mina without having to pay for daycare. money was incredibly tight and i just couldn't afford it.

SO SAY THAT YOU JUST WANT TO RUN AWAY.
AND REPLAY ALL THE THINGS THAT I TRIED TO SAY.
behind the character

hey bitches, it's CAZI and i've been pimpin' these hoes for about EIGHT YEARS. i know right, it's great isn't it? need to get a hold of me? hit me up by PM. AIM. MSN. EMAIL. i'm also in the EASTERN time zone just so you know. don't need to be telling you people twice. also meet the rest of my lovely babies, NO OTHERS!

With a sigh, Kieran leaned against the back of the bench that he was sitting on. He wondered vaguely why girls always took forever to go shopping. His sister was currently with Mina shopping for new clothes at the Children's Place while Kieran waited with his credit card to pay for whatever Quinn chose for the little girl. He'd been here for at least half an hour and was incredibly close to plowing into the store and demanding for Quinn to hurry up. But Kieran was patient; he was always patient, especially when it came to Mina. He half-considered going to the food court and getting something to eat, but the idea of getting up and walking all the way there was not an appealing thought. Instead, Kieran pulled out Cujo by Stephen King and opened it to the first page. He'd read it before and though it hadn't ranked among his favorites, he'd thought it was rather interesting, despite the fact that King's novels were generally a little bit too weird for Kieran's liking. But Cujo had been kind of interesting and Kieran hadn't been to the bookstore in awhile, so this was what he had. Actually, Kieran had to take a trip to the bookstore soon before he had a panic attack or something. Maybe he could hold the half hour in a clothes store over Quinn's head and coerce her into not complaining if they stopped there on the way home. In general, Quinn loved to rant about how much she hated bookstores every time Kieran had to bring her with him. It was annoying and unnecessary and had convinced Kieran to never ever take her with him. However, she was easily bargained with and certainly this could only end in Kieran's favor. With a slightly annoyed grumble, Kieran tucked his book back in his messenger bag and leaned his head on his palm, which was in turn resting on his knee. There was something about waiting that made it hard to focus on things--even reading, which was odd considering Kieran never found focusing on reading hard at all. He could read or write for hours without even realizing that a second had gone by. But waiting made that difficult, especially since his mind seemed stuck on Quinn and Mina. It was always sort of a little bit like that when he wasn't with Mina. Trying not to think about her was easier said than done, no matter how many times Kieran would reassure himself that she'd be fine. It was during those times away from her that Kieran wondered how parents could leave their children or how teen parents could ever give their babies up for adoption. Doing so would have literally killed Kieran. His social life--not that he had much of one in the first place--was easily sacrificed for Mina. Everyone who couldn't bear to do that was simply insane in Kieran's mind.

But again, he reminded himself not to think about Mina. She was with Quinn and no matter how irresponsible Quinn was with her own self, she always took special care to make sure that Mina didn't get into trouble or get taken or, God forbid, hurt in the slightest. And besides, not much could happen in a Children's Place, could it? Absolutely not. Now take out your book and relax, he tried telling himself, but at the same time, he uncharacteristically didn't want to. And the thought of reading through his own poetry was just as unappealing, as was simply writing something new. Instead, Kieran stood up idly and walked over to the soda vending machine a couple yards away. He dug in his back pocket for a one dollar bill, but instead came up with four quarters, which were just as useful. However, once the money was in the machine, Kieran suddenly realized that he didn't even want any soda. With a sigh, he punched the Orange Crush button anyway and grabbed it when it came out, opening it but not drinking anything from it. Lazily, Kieran went back to the bench to get his bag, checked his phone to see that Quinn hadn't called and to make sure that it was still on, just in case the magical phone fairies had turned it off for absolutely no reason. It was still on and Quinn hadn't tried to get ahold of him, either. He began walking, though he didn't really have any idea where he was planning on going. For a plaza of this size, it didn't seem to have a bookstore and no other stores really held Kieran's interest. He just wasn't one of those gay guys who liked to go shopping. He was pretty much a failure to his kind when he thought about it. Kieran couldn't even picture himself as one of the flamboyant gays who seemed so comfortable with wearing glitter and sharing their opinions loudly about everything. Just trying to picture himself acting like that made a faint smile rise to Kieran's lips. There was nothing flamboyant or outgoing to Kieran at all.

At that moment, Kieran realized that he needed a new pair of gloves after Mina had thrown one in the duck pond during their last visit to the park. He checked his phone again to make sure that Quinn didn't need him and then he ducked into Old Navy. If Quinn wasn't finished shopping by the time he found a pair of gloves, then he'd call her and tell her to hurry up. Spotting the gloves, Kieran walked over and grabbed a pair. They were plain, black knit gloves. Perfect. As he turned the price tag over to check that the price, the gloves slipped from his hand. With an annoyed groan, Kieran kneeled down to pick them up.