The Monster on the Road Is Me

by JP Romney

  “Okay, okay,” Haru said. “You know what absolutely makes no one feel safe, though? Bus drivers. At least not the ones who have the brain of a fifteen-year-old.”

  “Yori-san? That’s not fair. They fired him and he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Of course he did.” Haru lit another cigarette. “He was standing in the parking lot shouting about river trolls tricking the students into killing themselves. He absolutely should have been fired. That is the exact opposite of making people feel safe.”

  “He was a nice guy.”

  “Who told the school board a kappa was murdering children.”

  “I didn’t say I believed him.”

  “Well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” Haru said, taking another drag. “He got what was coming to him.”

  Haru and I sat on the curb as the evening grew darker around us. It’s true that not many adults liked Yori. He didn’t wear a blue blazer or white gloves like the other drivers who took us around on field trips. He didn’t sit quietly in his chair, face forward, bowing and waving from the wrist like some pageant queen. He wanted to talk to us. He wanted to laugh and have conversations with people who thought the same way he did. For Yori, that was a bus full of high school students.

  And we liked him. When he drove us on field trips or other school outings, he always talked to us like we were people, not kids who should be disciplined or ignored. He knew how to drive a bus—sort of—but where he truly shone was in details. Small, intricate, mind-spinning details. He could chat about your favorite food one minute and then manga the next. You could ask him what his favorite Pokémon was and he wouldn’t say “the cute green one with the hat.” Yori could go on and on about Hasuburero and how he evolves for a second time into Runpappa after being exposed to a Water Stone. If you’re an adult and have any clue what that last sentence means, congratulations, you are an otaku nerd. But for us, Yori the Bus Driver always had answers. Even if the questions were silly. Or weird. Or just plain stupid.

  “You shouldn’t breathe in the smoke, you know.”

  Haru and I flipped around. It was hard to see her at first. She was standing near the far corner of the building. When she walked into the light of the front window, though, I instantly recognized her face.

  “Why do you put the smoke in your mouth?” she asked. “Mouths aren’t made for that.” And she would know because the last time I saw her she was on fire in Aiko’s front garden.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Who do I look like to you?” she replied.

  “A girl in a gray hoodie.”

  “Then that is who I will be.”

  “What’s your name, girl in a gray hoodie?” Haru asked.

  “Moya.”

  She walked over to the curb. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a gray zip-up with ears on the hood. She looked like any other fifteen-year-old who had never been on fire before.

  “Moya?” Haru said. “That’s not a normal name.”

  “Of course it’s normal. It’s totally normal,” she said, pulling the cigarette from Haru’s mouth and pinching the embers.

  “Hey,” Haru said.

  “And I didn’t come to talk to you, anyway, smoke-mouth. I came to talk to your friend.” Moya sat down on the curb next to me, knees pointed in, lips cartoonishly pouty.

  “Me?” I said. “Why?”

  “Because sometimes it can be hard when you’re the new girl at school.”

  “Are you … I didn’t know you went to our school,” I said.

  “Just moved in. Down the street.”

  “What street?” I asked.

  “The one over there.”

  “I have no idea what you’re pointing at.”

  “It’s called … Mountain Street.”

  “Mountain Street?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Did you just make up a street name?” Haru asked, poking his head forward.

  “No.”

  “You looked up at the mountains and then said Mountain Street.”

  Moya leaned in to me and said, “That guy’s rude.”

  Haru laughed. “There are, like, ten streets in Kusaka, and none of them are Mountain Street.”

  Moya shrugged. “I was kind of hoping a cute boy could help me out with a teensy little problem.”

  “What cute boy?” Haru said. “You mean Koda?”

  “Let’s just hear her out on this one,” I said. “Also, you’re an awful friend.”

  Moya smiled.

  “I’m sorry,” Haru said to me. “It’s just, you’re so young, and you wear that giant helmet all the time.”

  “What?” I said, looking back at Moya. “No … I … it’s just a regular bicycle helmet.”

  “A comically large bicycle helmet.”

  “It’s because of the padding, Haru. There’s nothing funny about responsible headgear!”

  I looked back at Moya. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Gods, you two,” she whispered. “Look, Koda, I need you to steal something for me.”

  “Okay, she’s all yours,” Haru said.

  “You want me to steal something?” I said. “That’s your teensy problem?”

  “Well, you are a thief, aren’t you?”

  “What? No.”

  “Sure you are,” Moya said. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes. Don’t touch me, though.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “I’m serious, kid.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “I will punch you right in the boy bits if you lay one finger on me.”

  “I don’t touch girls!” I blurted out.

  “Smooth,” Haru whispered.

  Moya leaned in close to my face. “Yep, you’re one of them,” she said.

  “One of what?”

  “A suri. A pickpocket. A cutpurse. You know, a thief.”

  “Um, no. I’m fifteen and I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

  “Normally, kid, this is not a good thing. Everybody hates a thief, especially suri. Also, you’re kind of small. And Haru’s right—you have a ridiculous helmet. But for now, I need something stolen and you’re the only one who can do it. Here’s the address.”

  Moya handed me a piece of paper.

  “Seriously, who are you?” I asked.

  “Have you seen the crows, Koda?” Moya said.

  Haru leaned forward. “What crows?”

  “I’m having a private conversation with your weird little cutpurse friend here, thank you very much.”

  “That’s insulting,” I said.

  “Your handsome cutpurse friend,” she corrected.

  “Well, all right, then.”

  “Have you seen the crows?” Moya repeated.

  I looked over at Haru.

  “This isn’t an abstract question, Koda,” Moya said. “These aren’t normal crows. They watch you back. Either you’ve seen them or you haven’t.”

  I didn’t want to say it, but …

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is the one time in the history of the world when being a dirty little thief is the best thing you could be. Go to the address. It’s the only way to stop what’s happening to this town.”

  “What exactly am I supposed to steal?” I said. Because that was obviously the sanest question to ask.

  “A memory,” Moya said, pushing up from the curb.

  “A memory? You want me to steal a memory?”

  “Of course,” she said, looking down at me like I was the moron. “It will be attached to something you’d find in a river. Maybe a rock. Or a stick. An arrowhead! Arrowheads would be an excellent place to start. Very traumatic. If you see an arrowhead, definitely steal its memory.”

  “Steal the memory from an arrowhead? What does that even mean?”

  “You’re the suri. Go to that address and steal the memory that’s there. Don’t wait, kid. The Road is spreading.”

  With no other explanation whatsoever, the strange girl turned and wa
lked back the way she came.

  Haru slowly pulled another cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Well, she is fired.”

  “What?”

  “I’m firing her.”

  “From what?”

  “I don’t know. From being a person? She’s cute and all, but she is broken in the head and I am firing her from being a person like the rest of us. What the hell was that about crows?”

  “She asked if I’d seen crows.”

  “Everybody’s seen a crow before.”

  “Then everybody would have said yes.”

  I folded the piece of paper and slipped it into my slacks.

  “You’re not seriously going to that address, are you? I guarantee it leads to a graveyard. A graveyard for kittens. That she made herself.”

  “Actually go there?” I scoffed. “No, I wouldn’t do something like that.”

  But yes, I would.

  6

  School reopened during the first week of October. When third hour ended the next day, Shimizu-sensei set down his chalk and excused us from homeroom. The rest of the students filed downstairs to change for gym class, but I stayed behind. What was an arrowhead memory anyway? And what made a new girl from “Mountain Street” think I could steal it? The last time I’d tried to steal something was when I was eight. It was a pack of strawberry Hi-Chew. I dropped it down my pants when my father was at the register at Lawson’s. The candy slipped right down my leg and hit the floor. Everyone turned around. “I’ll take that as well,” my father said, shaking his head. The cashier raised an eyebrow and added it to the receipt. That was the beginning and end of my grand criminal endeavors. I’m thinking Moya might have me mixed up with some other teenage thief from Kusaka.

  “Hurry, Koda, go,” Shimizu-sensei said.

  I got up from my desk. I started to walk out of the room, but something stopped me. It was Shimizu-sensei. He was just staring out the window. It wasn’t like he was bored or even sad. It was something else. He looked afraid.

  I almost minded my own business and left the room, but then I remembered Aiko and turned around. “Daijōbu desu ka?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”

  Shimizu-sensei reached out and touched the windowpane. “Do you ever feel like someone could be watching you?”

  Yes. She has a name, wears a gray hoodie, and is sometimes on fire.

  “Um, no,” I quickly said.

  “I mean, a ghost, Koda. Do you ever feel like a ghost is watching you?” He turned and smiled. Not a normal smile. More like a my-house-just-burned-down-and-all-I’ve-got-left-is-this-smile smile. “I’m kidding,” he said. “Totally kidding. But seriously, we make these shrines and pray to our ancestors hoping they’ll hear us, right? But what if they really are listening? What if they’re watching us back? That isn’t comforting, Koda. That isn’t comforting at all. It’s terrifying.”

  Interesting point. Hadn’t thought of that before. I wanted to say something intelligent, but instead I just opened my mouth and said, “Uh.”

  “Go on to gym class, Koda.” Shimizu-sensei turned to the window again.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  He didn’t look back.

  I stepped out of the room and walked down the hall. People were definitely not feeling safe. Students, teachers, office ladies—it didn’t matter. The two suicides had broken each of us in different ways. Sometimes you caught people crying in the halls. Sometimes teachers took smoke breaks too far from the school. Other people, like the headmaster, stayed in their office all day with the door shut. Shimizu-sensei was afraid of ghosts. That’s not so strange, right? Just another kind of fracture.

  I stopped in front of the glass door to the mathematics room. That was where they’d found Ichiro last week. Inside. Alone. Twisted at the foot of Ikeda-sensei’s desk.

  I reached out to try the door. It was unlocked. The room was empty and the lights were off. The windows should have lit up the walls, but they didn’t. It was hard to see. The room was deeply dark and deeply empty.

  I walked inside the math room and closed the door. Stupid? Maybe. Creepier than dead ancestors? Probably. Better than doing basketball drills in gym class? Definitely.

  The smell of the room stung my eyes. No one had been in here since they’d cleaned it. The chairs were still piled in the corner. The teacher’s desk was pushed back against the wall. Near the front of the room, Ichiro’s last word was rubbed raw into the floor.

  I knelt down over the faded lines. I could almost feel Ichiro in the strokes he’d left behind. The floor was cold beneath my feet. I reached out to touch the last place Ichiro had touched.

  The searing freeze shot up my fingers and under my sleeves. It wrapped around my neck and mouth and eyes. The entire universe was suddenly frosty and still as the carvings on a grave.

  Then the chairs in the corner shifted. I knew I’d fallen asleep, but knowing you’re dreaming somehow doesn’t stop the panic. I heard someone straining to tear apart a piece of fabric. I tried to say something. Tried to ask who was there. But when I opened my mouth, only cold air came out.

  I stood up, turned, and reached for the door, but then the moaning came. Softly. A whisper of a moan, really. A voice lost in a winter’s fog. “Don’t go,” it said. “Please. Don’t leave me here with them.”

  The voices of a hundred crows filled the room, drowning out the floating voice. I let go of the door but didn’t turn around. I could feel a shadow swaying back and forth behind me, rising up from the pile of chairs. “They told me it was my fault,” the voice cried. “They told me I could have stopped it.” The voice was now screaming to be heard over the wings and the screeching. “How would the birds know that? How would cutting myself bring my parents home?”

  Through the reflection in the glass door, I recognized his face. The birds fell silent.

  “Crows fly.

  A traveler on the road

  Is lost.”

  Ichiro recited the words. The bloody knife fell from his fingers, clanging to the floor.

  7

  The room was still dark and abandoned when I woke up. I gripped the door frame, slowly pulled myself to my feet, and stepped into the hall. Somewhere below me I could hear balls hitting floors and walls and old backboards.

  “Were you in Ikeda-sensei’s room?”

  I turned, my head still feeling swimmy. It was my best friend, Kenji. Great.

  “No,” I said. “The door was open, so I came over to close it.”

  “I’m going to tell,” he said.

  “Do it, Kenji. But make sure you wipe the cookie crumbs off the front of your shirt first.”

  I guess I wasn’t the only one who was going to be late to gym class.

  “Baka,” he hissed, and scurried off down the hall.

  I rubbed my head where I’d smacked it on the floor.

  By the time I got changed into my white shirt and blue shorts and slipped into the gymnasium, the boys were on one half of the court throwing basketballs at an uncooperative hoop and the girls were practicing proper volleyball form by hitting a ball over an imaginary net. Ikeda-sensei was sitting on the lowest bleachers.

  No one liked Ikeda-sensei. He was an ex–sumō wrestler teaching math and physical education at a high school. If that sounds like a demotion, you’d be thinking the same way he does. The doctors couldn’t explain it, but Ikeda-sensei’s eyesight went from eagle perfect to mole-man blind in less than a year. He had to get these superthick glasses, drop out of his sumō stable in Ōsaka, and return home to this dinky town. As you can guess, he was a very large, very angry, very blind man. Students didn’t like him, parents didn’t like him, fellow teachers didn’t like him. He was as big and mean as an ox. And like any ox, Ikeda-sensei was to be avoided at all times.

  “Koda, over here!” called out Kenji, apparently still on a sugar high from his secret cookie break. “You want to shoot a basket?”

  He asked that last question with a demonic grin crawling across his face. He knew I did
n’t want to shoot a basket. He knew I couldn’t make a basket if I was standing on a ladder clutching the rim with one hand. But all the other guys had stopped and everyone was staring at me.

  “That sounds like fun,” I said through clenched teeth.

  Kenji hurled the ball at me. I grabbed my head and dropped to the floor. Which seemed like a totally reasonable thing to do when someone was trying to murder you with a rubber ball. No one saw the potential danger in this, so they all just laughed instead.

  I picked myself up and smiled at Kenji. “Tossed it a little hard there, didn’t we?”

  “Gomen,” he said back. “Forgot who I was throwing it to.” He grabbed another ball and gently rolled it along the ground. Fifteen seconds later the ball bumped against my toe like an infant’s kiss. I kept my eyes locked on Kenji and snatched it off the ground.

  I walked up to the orange line and bounced the ball with both hands.

  “Gods,” someone whispered.

  Well, if this was the one time the gods were looking down on me, I hoped they’d guide the ball through the air and help me slam that hooping net—if that’s a thing people say. I shot the ball. And missed. Not the hoop part, I missed the backboard. And the pole. And the wall behind it. I did hit the bleachers, though, which, considering how all of my other gym classes have gone, was a record.

  “Ooh, so close,” Kenji said gleefully. “All you have to do is aim higher. And throw the ball a little harder. Well, a whole lot harder. Just pretend you’re a normal boy and not a five-year-old shōgakusei. Then shoot the basket. It’s my fault really, I should have clarified that.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said. “Like this?” I grabbed another ball and threw it. Hard. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown anything in my life as hard as I threw that ball. And I didn’t miss! Did I make a basket? Of course not. But I did hit the hoop. Take that, Kenji! The basketball zinged off the rim like a stray cannon shot. Over the heads of the boys standing by. Over the divider line. Over the imaginary volleyball net.

  “Yabai!” the girls screamed.

  Oh. That’s not good.

  It was like the ball was drawn straight to the side of some random girl’s head. She never had a chance.

  “Koda!” she screamed. “Are you serious?”