The Monster on the Road Is Me

by JP Romney

  Looking out on my long future as a narcoleptic shiitake farmer, I kind of understood how someone’s mind could pop. Some people dress up as anime characters, and others ride their bikes around town trying to save their school from a murder of crows. Maybe Yori and I weren’t so different after all.

  I steadied my bike with one arm and let the other stick out like an airplane wing. Ladies and gentlemen, I said to myself, we’ve reached a cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet. The seat belt sign is now turned off, so please feel free to move around the cabin.

  Okay, yes, pretending my bike is a Boeing 777 Star Jet is a teensy bit like cosplay. But you can’t compare airplanes and anime. Airplanes are real. They exist. Real people sit down in real Japanese airliners like MD-11 J-Birds or Flower Fleet 737s and fly all over the world. Does that make me an otaku nerd like Yori the Bus Driver? No. Well, Flower Fleets and Star Jets sound kind of cutesy, but no, still no. The Flower Fleet is awesome!

  You’re in for a treat, everyone, I could hear my copilot say. The pilot tonight is Koda Okita, the boy from Kusaka who never sleeps.

  I have to correct him.

  I’m sorry, the man from Kusaka who never sleeps. Fly-Man, we call him. Everyone knows Koda flies very fast but also very safely. That’s why he wears a helmet, even in the cockpit.

  No, no, no.

  One more correction, folks, our pilot does not wear a helmet. He never wears a helmet anymore because helmets look stupid. It would be silly for a pilot to wear a bicycle helmet in a cockpit anyway. That was just a joke and I apologize to Fly-Man and all of his ancestors.

  If my bike really had been a Star Jet, I would have flown around the corner of my street and immediately sensed something was very wrong. My tires screeched and shuddered to a halt in the middle of the road. Without even unbuckling my helmet I stepped off my bike and let it crash to the ground.

  The eyes of a hundred crows stared back at me. From the housetops and the fence posts, from the fields and the trees and the cars and the road itself, a massive black flock silently stood and watched every move I made.

  “What do you want?” I whispered.

  They didn’t answer. They just stood there, boring holes into my skull with their lifeless gray eyes.

  “Get away from me.”

  They could have been statues. A hundred stone birds covered with real feathers and real beaks, staring, relentlessly staring. They pushed in on my brain like giant hands. The edges of my eyes felt cold. I smelled ice. My left pupil began to drift. I tore off my helmet, but the pressure wouldn’t let up. The birds were all connected. Stitched together like bits of string, they were united in trying to crack my head like a melon using only their awful, beady eyes.

  The flock suddenly lifted up into the air and dropped back down again. Fresh air rushed into my brain. The crows clicked their beaks and flapped their wings, darting their eyes from side to side. For some reason the strings were all tangled up now.

  I flipped around when I finally heard the low growl.

  “Whoa!”

  A white fox crept past me toward the flock, hair raised and lips curled. The crows in the front hopped back. A few flew up into nearby trees. The fox gnashed its teeth and the flock lifted up into the air again. Some dropped back onto fence posts and car hoods, but the fox lunged and the flock finally exploded, cawing and darting off in every direction until the road was empty and quiet.

  Huh. Maybe foxes aren’t such bad luck after all.

  The critter was calmly licking its front paws as I inched my way up behind it. I reached my hand out.

  “Hey there, little friend, just gonna give you a scratch behind the ears for saving me—”

  The fox flipped around and lunged at me, snarling and snapping its teeth.

  “Foxes are not pets!” I squealed.

  The wild animal ran off into a rice field, leaving me in the middle of the road trying to steady my breath. So now I’m thinking foxes aren’t good luck or bad luck. They’re just ornery varmints who lash out at anything. Anyone who tells you otherwise has obviously never tried to be friends with one before.

  10

  Kusaka Matsuri. Each October the people of Kusaka gather at Ōmura Shrine and celebrate the founding of our town. That doesn’t sound so awesome, but believe me, it is.

  On the night of Kusaka Matsuri there are food booths and games and festival performers. My parents even leave the shiitake farm—if you can imagine that. Haru and I race through the crowds, pushing our way past the booths and the hundreds of people. Maybe someone sells Haru a cup of sake and we take turns sipping at it until the lights turn fuzzy. That’s never happened, but what if it did? Anything is possible at Kusaka Matsuri. Everybody gets into it. Everyone has a good time.

  This year might have been different, though. Ichiro’s funeral was held just a week before the festival. His body was cremated six days before. There was talk of canceling the matsuri altogether, but in the end the town went through with it. The decorations and the booths had already been built. The toys and food and fireworks already purchased. The performers had been rehearsing for months.

  Some people said they wouldn’t go. They couldn’t dance and drink and toast Kusaka Town after two kids walked into our high school and killed themselves. “This isn’t a time to celebrate,” they said. “It would be a shame to the memory of the students.”

  “The unfortunate deaths of Aiko and Ichiro are a struggle for us all,” the mayor of Kusaka said in response. “But that is precisely why we must continue with Kusaka Matsuri.”

  The mayor of Kusaka Town was a small man with a bald head. His suit always looked like it had swallowed him whole and was hungry for more. But if you heard the mayor speak without seeing him, you’d never know he looked like that. I guess that’s why he’d been elected in the first place.

  “There is something great about this town,” he continued. “We have lived and thrived in this valley for more than two centuries. We have met disaster after disaster, and our people have overcome it all. Mudslides and earthquakes and floods have tested us, but we have always isshō ni ganbarimashita. We have never given up.

  “The tragedies of Aiko and Ichiro tell me that something terrible has happened to us. We have become forgetful and lazy. We have ignored the signs that our children are hurting. The solution isn’t to hide in our houses with the doors and windows locked. No, we have to show our children that life is good. That Kusaka is an amazing place to live and work and go to school. We have to celebrate who we are, not hide from it. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, bring your children. Dress them in their yukata and geta sandals. Take them to the booths and the lights and the games. Bring smiles to their faces. Show them why we have stayed in this valley for two hundred years.”

  Now, some might say that the mayor didn’t want to lose the money he’d already put into the festival, but I don’t think that was it. I think he believed the festival would save us. At least a little bit.

  * * *

  “What did you say?” My mother stood in the kitchen, spooning hot bowls of shiitake soup.

  “Do you think dreams mean something?” I asked again, kneeling down to the table in the front room. “You know, in real life.”

  “One more time,” she said louder.

  “The boy asked if you believe in fortune-telling!” my father shouted across the table and into the kitchen.

  My mother was frowning when she walked in.

  “That’s not what I said.”

  My father ignored me and blew his nose into a handkerchief. My mother rattled a bowl of soup down in front of me. My parents are so old! Not normal old either. Really, really old. My mother had me when she was fifty. “It’s a miracle,” the doctors had said.

  “Yes … a miracle,” my father had replied, rubbing his face and leaving the room.

  So fifteen years later my sixty-five-year-old mother tried to steady her hands and not spill mushroom soup on our low dining table. She grinned and asked if
I’d been seeing ghosts.

  “What? Ghosts? No,” I said. “Do you guys listen to anything I say?”

  “It would be nice to see my sister again,” she said to herself.

  My father shoved his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Yes, Koda, give all the family our regards if you happen to see them wandering through the halls.”

  “Will Haru be attending the festival?” my mother asked, setting chopsticks next to my bowl.

  “We go together every year. He should be there. As long as his uncle isn’t trying to punish him.”

  “Perhaps it would help Haru to have more fun in his life. You could invite him to spend more time on our farm. I think he would like that.”

  “Um, no, he would not like that.”

  “Why not?” my father asked. “You like being a shiitake farmer.”

  “I do not. Not even a little bit!”

  “Every boy wants to be a shiitake farmer,” my father said.

  “Why would anyone want to be a shiitake farmer?”

  My mother pushed up from the table and shuffled toward the kitchen.

  “You’re in the dirt,” my father continued. “With mushrooms. All boys like dirt. And mushrooms.”

  “What boys like mushrooms? Boys like TV games and anime and, I don’t know, ice cream. Nobody likes mushrooms. Mushrooms don’t even like mushrooms.”

  “Well, you should eat them more often, then,” my mother said, returning from the kitchen with a plate of steamed shiitake buns. “The more you eat something, the more delicious it becomes.”

  “I don’t think that’s true at all,” I said.

  “What do you want to be, then?” my father asked.

  I stared into my stupid mushroom soup bowl. “You know what I want to be.”

  “Oh, a pilot. Mother, get JAL on the phone and ask them if they need someone to fall asleep and crash a plane into Mount Fuji.”

  “Stop it,” my mother whispered.

  “You’re a shiitake farmer, Koda. You come from a long line of honorable shiitake farmers. The sooner you accept this, the easier your life will be.”

  “That’s enough,” my mother said.

  “Honorable shiitake farmer,” I said under my breath. “What would a dishonorable shiitake farmer be?”

  “One who goes around with his head in the clouds,” my father shot back. He turned to my mother. “That’s the reason he has the problems he does.”

  “Urusai!” My mother almost never raises her voice. So when she does, we all know to keep our mouths shut. “This is supposed to be a happy night, both of you. Please, don’t ruin this.”

  My father wiped his face and we finished our soup in silence.

  11

  I tied on my yukata and slipped into a pair of sandals. I’d have to hurry if I was going to meet Haru near the entrance to Ōmura Shrine. Before I could get through the door, my mother called from the kitchen.

  “It’s good luck to share an umbrella with a girl at Kusaka Matsuri.”

  Share an umbrella? Gods, my parents are so old. “Yeah, thanks,” I called back.

  “I’m just saying, in case you happen to meet a nice girl at the festival, take an umbrella.”

  “Well, I’m not going to do that.”

  I could tell from the silence she was frowning.

  “I don’t even want to meet a girl at the festival,” I said. Because some girls want you to steal things. Some girls call you a little thief and send you on quests to steal memories that no one actually has. Some girls are best to avoid altogether.

  “Da dee da dee dum da dee,” my mother sang to herself, dancing in the kitchen. I guess she got over the umbrella thing.

  “Stop spinning around in there,” my father called. “You’ll fall and break a hip.”

  “Don’t listen to your father, Koda. Go to the festival. Have fun. It will be a magical night.”

  I was sincerely hoping it would not.

  * * *

  I left my bike and helmet in the parking lot of Ōmura Shrine and walked up between the two stone lions guarding the entrance. Haru wasn’t there, so I sat down near the gates and waited.

  As the students of Kusaka High School pulled into the lot with their friends and families, I noticed our school counselor standing near the entrance of the shrine, bowing and wishing everyone a happy evening. The parents would nod to Ino-sensei and say, “Konbanwa,” before leading their kids inside. The headmaster walked by with his wife. He nodded at me without really looking. Shimizu-sensei didn’t see me at all when he walked by. Probably too busy talking to ghosts or whatever. Even ex-sumō Ikeda-sensei lumbered through the gates without yelling about basketballs or algebra or any number of other things that usually make him angry. Festivals are nice.

  After a while, though, I was the only one left. Haru never showed up. The lights and sounds of Kusaka Matsuri glowed behind me, but I was outside. Alone. And kind of cold.

  “Hello, little thief.”

  Moya walked up and crossed her arms in front of her. She was wearing a slim dress that seemed too adult for a fifteen-year-old. Her hair, pinned back with a silver barrette, shone bright black against the night. I’d never noticed how pretty she was before.

  “It’s Koda,” I stammered back.

  “I know your name. And you know your name, so I think we’re ready now.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To go inside,” she said, pointing.

  “The festival?”

  “Where else would two totally normal people go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s go be normal.”

  Moya looked up at the lights and took me by the hand. She tugged on my arm, pulling me through the entrance to the festival beyond.

  “I didn’t find anything at Yori’s house,” I said to the back of her head. “All he cares about is manga and river trolls. I don’t think he even knows about the crows.”

  “You’ll find the memory, Koda. I believe in you.”

  “If Yori doesn’t know about the crows,” I said, “how could he have a memory of them? Maybe we should be looking somewhere else—”

  The fireworks over the matsuri started in an explosion of blue and red and green. Moya’s face lit up.

  “The festival is a safe place,” she said. “It’s a happy place. Let’s just have fun tonight.”

  “I mean, you’re the one who said this was urgent.”

  “Do me one favor, though,” she said, letting go of my arm and facing me. “Don’t steal my memories. I know it’s in your nature, but just don’t. Leave mine alone.”

  “I … How would I steal your memories?”

  “Promise me.”

  “I mean … Okay, yes, that’s an easy promise to keep. If you don’t want me to know your memories, don’t say them to me.”

  Moya stepped to the side and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re cute. Dumb, but cute.”

  What was going on here?

  “Follow me,” she called, running into the festival.

  I looked up at Ōmura Shrine and did the one thing I knew I’d probably regret. I ran after Moya.

  * * *

  I will be honest—I don’t remember a lot of what went on the night of Kusaka Matsuri. My head felt … thirsty. That’s the only way I can describe it. Thirsty to take in everything. To hold on to it and never let it go. It felt like I was watching a dream, but I wasn’t cold and I knew I wasn’t sleeping.

  Moya and I slipped in between the crowds of people, making our way along the rows of rickety booths glowing under orange lanterns and strings of colored lights. There was food everywhere we looked: chicken shish kebabs, marinated eggs, boiled daikon and skewered konyaku, cabbage pancakes with brown sauce, mochi dango rice balls, squid-on-a-stick, frankfurters, pork dumplings, fish cakes and garlic pot stickers, fruit jellies, sweet bean paste, ice cream pastries. And fried tōfu. A lot of fried tōfu.

  There were booths with toys and prizes hanging from every inch of free spac
e. Bouncing-ball games, ring-toss games, guessing games, and fishing games. Moya pointed out a metal tub where players were trying to snag eels with a piece of string and a fishing hook. I’m guessing you got to keep the eel if you caught it, but I never saw anyone win. Leathery farmers lumbered by us, swimming in the fog of alcohol found on every corner. There were also bottles of Mitsuya Cider, melon soda, natchan! orange drink, bubbling Ramune, Pocari Sweat, white grape juice with floating bits of aloe, peach water, and cartons of strawberry milk.

  There was an old man stumbling by on stilts, and in the corner a stage was set up where a play about Kusaka’s founding was being performed. There were man-sized drums where taiko players pounded out a heartbeat to the night. There were priests and priestesses, businessmen and party girls, kimono and tiny sandals, papier-mâché floats and costumed parades.

  Everything blurred together in a spinning haze of colors and wrappers and dripping skewer sticks, but by the end I never wanted to leave. I never wanted to be away from Moya for a moment. She was like a single point of light. A thread of clarity keeping my mind firmly in place. If she walked away, I knew the darkness would come toppling back down.

  We walked to the last booth, and Moya ordered another plate of fried tōfu along with a glass of rice liquor. The man behind the counter smiled and set down a plate of agedōfu and a glass of sake.

  “Arigatō,” she said, and the man bowed.

  “How did you do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?”

  “How did you get him to give you sake? You’re, like, fifteen!”

  She adjusted her dress and touched her hair. “Do you think I look fifteen?” she asked.