Love & Other Natural Disasters

by Misa Sugiura

  But that is who I am. Someone I’m not, though, is the girl who Willow thinks she’s dating. But that’s okay—because I’ve realized that I don’t want to be that girl. She’s not real. She’s not me. And pretending to be her isn’t fair to me or Willow.

  What if I got Willow to break up with me? What if I convinced Arden she really should try to get Willow back? How could I make that actually happen?

  Eventually I end up in the courtyard, where Dela, Cliff, and two Academy of Art students are putting the finishing touches on the Tanabata Pavilion in preparation for the gala this weekend.

  I haven’t talked much to Dela since Arden’s party; I’ve been extra busy with Willow, and Dela’s been extra busy with the final preparations for the gala. She did ask me once what I’d been about to tell her about me and Willow in the break room, but I couldn’t tell her the truth, because it wasn’t the truth anymore. I had to pretend I’d forgotten. I watch her frowning over a knot she’s tying in some thread, and then reaching for a pair of scissors to cut it off the spool, and—ting—a solution comes to me.

  What if I broke up with Willow?

  It’s so obvious, I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it before. But I see it now. Those complicated schemes are the old me—the one who didn’t want to face reality. If I break up with Willow, I’ll make her sad. She’ll be angry with me, probably. I’ll feel awful. But it’s the right thing to do.

  “Hey,” says Dela. “If you’ve got time to stand there watching us, maybe you could give us a hand.”

  “Happy to.”

  I join Dela in tying each wish to a silver silk thread and hanging them from the bamboo trees in the Tanabata Pavilion. As I work, I’m aware of Dela’s every movement. Now she’s behind me. Now she’s across the courtyard, talking to Cliff. Now she’s next to me, stretching on tiptoe to reach a branch over her head. She’s rolled her sleeves all the way up, and there’s a freckle on the top of her upper arm where it creases into her shoulder that I wish I could kiss. Not that I would ever, of course.

  “What?” Dela glances at me over that freckle, and I feel my cheeks flame.

  “Nothing!” I say. Dela’s gaze intensifies. I look at her arm again. “Sunscreen! Maybe you should put on some sunscreen. So your arms don’t burn.”

  Dela looks up at the sky, which is overcast at best, and back at me. “From the sun?” Her voice is weighted with irony.

  “Cloudy days are deceptively dangerous,” I protest.

  After one more pointed look at the sky, she says with a little grin, “I’ll pass. But I appreciate your concern.”

  Should I ask her if she still thinks she and Arden aren’t going to last? Should I tell her I’m planning to break up with Willow? Maybe we could rely on each other for moral support.

  But that’s just more of the same, isn’t it? More plotting and planning. And I don’t want my breakup with Willow to be just a part of my grand plan to be with Dela. I have to break up with her whether I know Dela really wants to be with me or not. And, come to think of it, I don’t want Dela to break up with Arden for my sake.

  No, I do want that. That would be amazing.

  But I don’t want to be the one who makes it happen. That wouldn’t be fair to Dela or to Arden.

  I watch her as she ties another butterfly to a branch and gives it a little push. She watches it swinging back and forth. “What are you thinking?” I ask. When she doesn’t answer right away, I lean close to her and joke, “Are you making a wish?”

  “No.” She gives the butterfly another push and her cheeks turn pink.

  She was making a wish.

  I will not make this into a whole new fairy tale. I will not. I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and I’m not going to do it because of some romantic fantasy I make up in my head.

  But I really hope her wish was about me.

  38

  IN THE END, I COULDN’T HANDLE THE LOW, LOW neck and back of my gala jumpsuit (and neither could Dad), so Stephen and Lance gave me a couple of safety pins and found a short friend who was willing to lend me a tuxedo jacket. And Willow couldn’t do my hair and makeup since Mrs. Hsu booked salon appointments for their own glamorizing process, so I’ve been left to my own devices on that front. But I think I’ve done a pretty good job, and the end result is that I love how I look.

  I spin around, turn my back to the mirror and look over my shoulder at myself, then face the mirror again and do a couple of the red carpet poses that Willow taught me. And I know I promised myself no more fantasies, but tonight is special, so I allow myself to have just one. I imagine myself standing all made up and gorgeous in the soft glow of the fairy lights amid the butterflies and cranes of the Tanabata Pavilion. Dela will enter the courtyard, and when she sees me, she’ll say something like, “Wow,” under her breath, and I’ll say, “What?” and she’ll say, “You,” and I’ll tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and say, “Me?” all bashful and shy, and she’ll say, “You look beautiful.” And then Max clears his throat and yanks me back to the present, and I realize with a jolt that I’m smiling and waving coyly at Dela (which is to say, myself) in the mirror.

  “Hiiii,” he says, imitating my wave.

  “Get out!” I throw a shoe at him, but he ducks and runs, and it sails past him into the hallway.

  Anyway. Back to the fantasy:

  We’ll approach each other slowly. And with the lights sparkling around us, and music from the party playing faintly in the background, we’ll each take a final step forward, we’ll hesitate for a tantalizing moment . . . and then we’ll share our first kiss, sweet and soft as a whisper, and everything else will fall away, and it will all be romantic and swoony and beautiful and perfect.

  But in order for any of this to happen, Dela has to break up with Arden. And I have to leave that up to Dela, which I hate. The old me is still begging to be allowed to make it happen—I can think of three ways right now—but I won’t let her. Because not only do I want Dela to come to me on her own, but nothing I’ve planned has turned out the way I thought it would, anyway.

  Speaking of things not turning out the way I planned them, there is the tiny problem of me not having broken up with Willow yet. I’ve asked her twice to go out after work, fully intending to tell her—but both times, she started talking about how excited she was about the gala and how much fun we were going to have as a real couple, and I couldn’t summon the courage to tell her that I didn’t actually want to be a real couple. And I can’t break up with her tonight, at the gala—that’s practically like breaking up with someone at the prom.

  “Hey, anger management.” Max appears in the doorway once more. “Hurry up. We’re all waiting for you downstairs,” he says, and mimics my wave again before ducking my other shoe and disappearing.

  I collect my dignity and my shoes, and hurry downstairs to a chorus of oohs and ahhs, which helps my mood a little. Dad and Baba are here to see us off, and Dad gets all misty-eyed. “Look at my baby,” he keeps saying, and Lance keeps saying, “Don’t infantilize her,” and Dad keeps replying, “Yeah, yeah,” and then saying it again. Baba, to my shock, not only doesn’t snap at Lance for correcting her son, but agrees with him. “You are so grown-up,” she says to me. “So sophisticate. Not a baby anymore.” Of course, she ruins it by recalling the time Stephen and Dad went to prom and how they were so handsome and their dates (both girls) were so pretty and sophisticated, just like me. Maybe it’s a sneak attack on Lance and Stephen, or maybe it’s just a fond memory that she doesn’t feel she has to filter. Or maybe she can’t filter it anymore.

  Ha. Leave it to Baba to remind me that I can hope and dream and look for silver linings all I want, but I can’t escape real life. So, fine. I had my fantasy, and now I will face every part of this evening—painful, joyful, whatever it might be—exactly as it is.

  39

  WILLOW FLIES TOWARD ME ACROSS THE ATRIUM, breathtaking in an emerald-green, diaphanous dress, a tasteful rhinestone tiara set in her flowing black locks, and shimm
ering eye makeup that makes her look like a real fairy princess. I experience a ghostly flicker of regret. She is unquestionably the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. But beyond her, just as she wraps me in a hug, I see Dela. She’s wearing skinny black pants, a bolero jacket, and funky patent leather loafers, and she’s upped her makeup game with a smoky eye that makes me melt. Suddenly, the girl in my arms feels the way she looks—impossible, magical, a romantic fairy-tale illusion—and all I want to do is let her go so that I can embrace the real-life girl across the room.

  “What happened? Why are you wearing that jacket?” Willow steps back and surveys me from top to bottom. “You’re hiding the best part of the outfit!”

  “Oh, I . . .” I rehearsed saying, It just wasn’t me earlier this evening, but it turns into, “My dad made me wear this,” as I pluck at the jacket. Crap. Come on, Nozomi. Girl up.

  “It’s okay,” Willow says with a reassuring smile. “You still look great.”

  “And you look like a princess!” I say. Best to keep the focus on her.

  “Oh, you’re sweet. You don’t think the eyes are too much, though?” Willow glances down and plucks at the gauzy layers of her dress before lifting her eyes to look intently at me. She turns her head from side to side, the better to give me all the angles. Her eyes are lined in dark green, with a streak of gold shadow under her lower lashes and sparkly green and gold shadow on her eyelids—it’s a slightly toned-down version of her Titania look from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “It’s perfect,” I say, and it’s true. On anyone else it would look like a costume, but on Willow, it’s spellbinding.

  Arden enters the atrium with an elegant older Black couple who I guess are her parents. She’s just as glamorous as Willow, in a cream-colored gown dotted with dozens of blue appliquéd butterflies. Her hair has been straightened and pulled into a sleek updo and arranged into gleaming black rosettes on top, encircled with blue and white bejeweled butterfly combs. It looks like she’s moving in her own personal cloud of magical winged creatures.

  Willow murmurs, “Wow.”

  “She looks good,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  Is that longing I hear in her voice? Regret? I cross my fingers. Please let her be having second thoughts about me. Please let her be wondering if she should try one more time to get back together with Arden.

  “Hey! We should get our picture taken before the line gets too long,” Willow says, the light and energy back in her voice. She grabs my hand and pulls me to the Instagram booth, and we pose for a series of photos before Mrs. Hsu finds us and suggests in a strained voice that we get to work.

  For the first part of the evening, each of us has to do a shift at our daytime jobs: Willow works the gift shop. Max and I hand out pamphlets of some of the blurbs I’ve written and take guests on tours of the museum. Dela is working at the Tanabata Pavilion. Willow and I exchange a few careful kisses (nobody wants to risk messing up their lipstick this early in the evening), before she drifts off to her post at the gift shop, mouthing Later, and giving me a look that would have set Past Me’s insides on fire with longing, but which, now, only makes me a bit wistful. She won’t like breaking up, but I know that she’ll be happier with someone else in the end.

  I check my watch. I still have twenty minutes before my first tour, and I want to get in a wish at the Tanabata Pavilion while it’s still quiet.

  The installation is open but still empty when I arrive. Good. I stop at the Wishing Table at the entrance to the courtyard, where stacks of delicate origami/wishing paper and ceramic cups full of pens sit at intervals on one side of a long table. After writing their wishes down, guests will hand them to one of five Wish Administrators on the other side who will fold each one into a crane or a butterfly, and hand it back. I pause to write something on a wishing paper and fold it into a crane myself.

  I wander through the courtyard, which is suffused with the light of hundreds of tiny LEDs. The origami forms float among them, suspended from the bamboo branches; it really looks like a magical bamboo grove filled with stars, birds, and butterflies. The paper wishes flutter and rustle against each other, and everything is hushed and quiet, the way it should be, so that the wishes can be heard. I know I should exchange my crane for one of the wishes suspended here, but I keep it in my hand and climb the spiral staircase to the roof of the pavilion at the center.

  I emerge onto the rooftop platform and pause, surprised, under one of the glass lanterns that punctuate the railing around the deck. Dela is sitting in an Administrator’s chair in the opposite corner, lighting the wishing fire in a high rimmed glass bowl. The fire casts a warm glow on her face, which is serious and pensive. She’s never looked more beautiful to me. She looks up, and while she doesn’t stop and gasp the way she did in my daydream, she does look happy to see me.

  “You have a wish to send up?” She nods at the one in my hand.

  I look down at it and turn it over in my hands and realize that now I have to give it to her, and I panic. I didn’t think this through. She wasn’t supposed to be here. What if this whole thing with Dela is just another story I’ve made up, just another fantasy I’ve woven out of nothing, to replace the one I let go? Suddenly I’m seized by the absolute conviction that Dela will unfold my wish, read it, and look at me with the same derision that I heard in Helena’s voice this spring.

  I tighten my grip on my wish and croak, “No, I just picked up some paper and folded it out of habit.” I listen to myself in dismay. I meant it to be a joke about all the folding we’ve done, but it comes out sounding like the lie that it is.

  Dela’s eyebrow twitches, and she holds out her hand. “Give it to me,” she says. “I’m not going to look at it.”

  “No, really, it’s blank. It doesn’t say anything,” I insist, and hide it behind my back, which I realize too late is about as incriminating as it gets.

  “You’re lying.” She walks over and I crumple it up in my fist and try to decide whether it makes more sense to throw it off the roof or push past her and throw it into the flames.

  She reaches her hand out again, and when I don’t produce the wish, she sighs and says, “Here.” She steps aside and points to the fire. “Do it yourself. Go ahead.”

  I take a step forward, but then I remember what I promised myself earlier. Didn’t I swear to face every part of tonight—even the painful stuff—exactly as it was? I did.

  “You should see it,” I say, and reluctantly I hold out my hand and close my eyes.

  I feel her take the wish from my hand, hear the paper crinkle as she uncrumples it and unfolds it. There’s a moment of unbearable silence, and I picture what she’s seeing in front of her. I drew a heart with our names in it, the way you do in elementary school:

  “Nozomi plus Dela,” she reads. It’s so childish. I don’t know what I was thinking. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter, aware that I’m trying, ridiculously, to make myself disappear.

  There’s the soft hiss and crackle of the wish catching fire, and a flash so bright I can sense it even with my eyes closed, and the smell of smoke. And then, unexpectedly, the light pressure of her hand on my arm. I open my eyes in surprise. What I want more than anything is for her to pull me toward her, to see her brown eyes sparkle before I close my eyes again and feel her lips on mine . . . No. Stop. Even though literally every molecule in my body is straining toward her, she’s still with Arden, and she thinks I’m with Willow. Which I am. Right. She’s probably just going to apologize and say—

  “Arden and I broke up.”

  I blink at her. “You what?”

  “We broke up. A few minutes ago.”

  “Oh” is all I say, but in my head, it’s mayhem. Why tonight? Whose idea was it? What did they say to each other? And I know this is exactly the path I just told myself I wouldn’t go down, but . . . does this have anything to do with me?

  Oblivious to my internal frenzy, Dela continues. “I wasn’t planning to. But she started talking about all these
plans she had for us as a couple, and I couldn’t handle it. I told her it was too much for me, and she accused me of not trying hard enough. And I said why should I, because she’s obviously still into Willow. Like at her birthday party? I know she sang that song to me and all, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off you and Willow. Well. Off Willow, anyway.”

  “Oh,” I say again. “And then what happened?”

  “We yelled at each other for another minute. But then she admitted I was right. And then we broke up. So . . . yeah.”

  “And why, um.” I swallow. I have to ask. “Why are you telling me this right now?”

  “Come on, Nozomi. You have to know.”

  Her hand reaches toward mine, and our fingers catch for a moment before she lets go. I feel as if my insides have turned into pure light, that it must be pouring out of my very skin.

  It’s happening. I can hardly believe it. My fantasy is actually coming to life, and for once, I’m not making any of it up. Right? It’s not the result of some elaborate scheme I’ve concocted, it’s not all in my head . . . Dela decided this all on her own. It’s perfect.

  We’re standing so close to each other that I can feel the heat coming off her body, so close that I think I can even feel the air around us and between us pulsing with the rhythm of her heart, or mine, or our two hearts combined. And then, just as I lean forward to kiss her, I hear a voice.

  “Nozomi?”

  Willow is standing at the top of the stairs, her lustrous green gown shimmering in the fairy lights, her face like stone.

  40

  I JERK AWAY, QUELLING THE URGE TO SHOUT, “It’s not what it looks like!” because, of course, this is exactly what it looks like, and for some reason this strikes me as so funny that I have to fight back a very strong impulse to laugh.