“It’s fine. We’re fine,” I say. What I mean is, I’m fine. Ever since Mika died, my mom is always wondering if I’m fine.
My mom locks eyes with me in the mirror. “I never said you weren’t.” Then she smiles. “Well, we’ll have to have him over for dinner sometime soon.”
If I thought telling my mom was hard, telling Libby is practically impossible. At first, she thinks I’m joking and laughs so hard she snorts. Then, when she realizes I’m not laughing, and neither is Dre, she gets upset that Dre knew first and we have to deal with that, and then once I’ve mollified her enough, she turns to me with wide eyes.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I say, my eyes daring her to say something else.
She flops back on my bed. “He’s kind of cute,” she goes on slowly. “I guess. In, like, a lanky, weird kind of way.”
“I think he’s cute,” I say, surprised by how defensive I feel.
“And that is what matters,” says Dre with authority.
“Oh my God, what are you going to do at school?” Libby asks. “Are you guys going to be like … making out all over the place?”
“No way,” I say, a bit horrified by the idea. “We’re just going to be … normal.”
“So not talk to each other at all? Because that is what you usually do at school.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “It’ll be fine.”
“I wonder what everyone is going to say,” Libby says quietly, more to herself.
I stiffen, but before I can say anything, Dre puts her hand on my arm.
“Who gives a shit? It’s Reiko. Our best friend. We don’t care what everyone says.”
“Obviously,” says Libby, like she wasn’t just wondering what people would say.
“If we act like it is normal, it is,” Dre goes on.
Libby snorts again.
“Libby!”
“If you say so,” she says. Then she rolls over and nudges me with her foot. “So is Seth a good kisser or what?”
CHAPTER 34
School starts next week so I only have a few days left to try to make things better between me and Seth. School is going to be tricky enough without things being weird with us. If I’m going to be confident about him, I need to be confident about us.
I need to make some kind of grand gesture. He loves a grand gesture.
I’ve got a surprise for you, I text. Be ready in an hour?
It’s like the dinosaur picnic all over again, but this time, I’m the one with the surprise. When I told Dre and Libby about the dinosaur picnic, they melted.
“Ohmygod, that is the cutest thing EVER!” Libby cooed.
“And you ditched him to go to a party at the track?” Dre asked, eyes askance.
“You were the one who said it was going to be the party of the summer!” I protested.
“That was before I knew you were out on, like, the most romantic and creative date of all time,” she said.
“Plus, it couldn’t be the party of the summer without me,” said Libby. “Please.” She rolled over on my bed. “Who knew Seth Rogers was so romantic?”
Me! I wanted to scream, I knew it! I knew it and I still screwed up.
So now I’m making it better.
Seth texts me back. K, is all I get, but I’ll take it.
We’ve got all day. All day to go on an adventure. All day to make things better. He’s quiet in the car, but the closer we get to our destination, the more his eyes light up.
“Are we going … up the tram?”
I grin at him. “I remember you saying that you wanted to but never had.”
He grins back at me, and then it is like he remembers that he’s supposed to be mad at me, because he shuts it off. The ghost of his grin lingers, though, and he still looks happy, even though he’s not smiling anymore.
“Good memory,” he says.
“I know what you like,” I say. Because I do. I know him.
I know him.
I buy the tram tickets for both of us. The tram starts in the valley and ascends two and a half miles up the mountain. Apparently, it’s the largest rotating aerial tram in the world. At least, that’s what the signs tell us.
“The largest rotating aerial tram in the world!” I say, nudging him. “Come on, that’s pretty impressive.”
He shrugs. “I guess.”
I nudge him again, keeping my arm close to his body. “I know you think it’s cool.”
His grin, the one he’s playing hide-and-seek with, comes out again. “All right,” he says. “It’s pretty cool.”
And it really is. It’s like being inside a slowly spinning snow globe. As we climb, the world changes before our eyes. Cacti turn into evergreen trees, and the yellow sand of the desert gives way to a stony mountain face dotted with dirt trails and patches of green grass.
“We’re going through five biomes,” Seth says in my ear. Even if he’s mad at me, he can’t not share facts. “We started in the Sonoran Desert, the low, hot desert, and we’ll pass through the Upper Sonoran, and then open woodlands, Canadian, Hudsonian, and end in the Alpine. All in twelve minutes. All on the same mountain.”
“We’re going through Canada?” I say, widening my eyes.
Seth snorts. “Don’t play dumb, Reiko. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I was just kidding. You know how into natural history my dad is. Of course I know what the five biomes are. And that this mountain has all of them.”
It is amazing, though, a bit like watching a nature documentary, when time is sped up and shows the different seasons, but it’s all happening in real time, right below us.
“Rei! Look!” Seth has his nose pressed to the glass. “Quick!”
I look up just in time to see a hawk soar past, its wings spread wide. It is so close, I can even see the brown-and-white pattern on its tail feathers.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe. It is the freest thing I’ve ever seen.
When we get to the top, we’re surrounded by firs and evergreens, and the desert below looks like another planet. Seth tilts his head back to take it all in. I think he’s remembering how he used to feel about me and why we make such a good team.
We wander along one of the trails, further and further away from the mountain tram station, further and further away from the people who came up in the tram with us, further and further away from the desert. We stop when we get to a small clearing coated in pine needles.
“Wanna play pine cone baseball?” I haven’t played in years, not since I was little and my dad used to take me and Mika and Koji up here.
“What the hell is pine cone baseball?”
I pick up a large stick. “This,” I say, “is our bat. And these” − I gesture to the pine cones all around us − “are our baseballs.”
Seth looks skeptical.
“Oh, come on. What? Are you worried I’ll beat you?”
In response, Seth picks up a pine cone and lobs it at me. I hit it so hard it explodes, raining pine cone bits all over Seth.
“I’d say that’s a home run,” I say, running a small victory lap around the clearing. “You’re up!” I toss him the stick I used as a bat.
He catches it, and then stands awkwardly next to a tree, the stick hoisted over his shoulder.
“Heeey batta batta batta, swing batta batta batta,” I sing out, pretending to throw the pine cone.
“Come on, throw it!” Seth shouts.
“What kind of stance is that?”
“Just throw the ball! I mean the pine cone!”
I throw and he swings wildly, so wildly he nearly knocks himself off balance, and misses.
I laugh. “Strike one!”
I throw again, and again he swings and misses.
“A swing and a miss!” I call out like a sports announcer. “One more strike and you’re out!”
“Who taught you to throw like that?”
“I used to play catch with my dad for hours.”
“Maybe that’s why I’
m so bad at sports. No dad to play catch with.”
“This can’t be your shtick for ever, you know.”
“What?”
“The whole I-don’t-have-a-dad thing. Lots of people don’t have dads.”
“Spoken by someone who has no idea what it is like not to have a dad.”
“Seth, you know I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“Well, you’re doing a crappy job at it,” he says. Then he sighs. “Just throw the damn pine cone.”
This time, I throw the pine cone straight at him.
He makes contact, and it sails up through the trees into the sky and disappears.
We both wait a minute for it to come back down. To land on our heads.
It doesn’t.
After I lose count of how many pine cones we’ve lost and exploded, and we’re both getting sweaty and hungry and tired, Seth pushes a stray hair behind my ear. His hand brushes my cheek and it sends unexpected sparks through me.
“I worry that you’re going to hurt me.” Seth’s voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear him. He doesn’t say again, but he doesn’t have to.
“I won’t hurt you,” I say, and the silent again floats in between us.
“People never know what they’ll do,” he says.
CHAPTER 35
The night before school starts, Mika comes into my room. She puts her head on my shoulder. “I never got a senior year,” she says, and I feel a chill dance up my neck.
“I know,” I say. “So I’ve got to make sure mine is perfect, for both of us.”
“Do you think you’ll be homecoming queen? Like Mom was?”
“I hope so.”
“You will be. I know it. You have to be. For me and for Mom.”
“OK, then,” I say, with more confidence than I feel.
“It doesn’t seem like you’ve been getting ready for senior year. It seems like you’ve just been with Seth.” She wrinkles her nose in distaste.
The funny thing is that Seth isn’t taking up as much of my time now as he was at the start of summer. Since what happened at Morongo, we haven’t been hanging out as much. But he is taking up quite a bit of my thoughts. When I’m not with him, I’m thinking about him, and wondering if he is thinking about me. I’ve never felt like this about any guy. Never worried about them this much.
“I don’t see what is so great about Seth,” Mika grumbles. “He isn’t even very handsome.”
I raise my eyebrows. “What do you know about boys being handsome?”
Her face drops. “Nothing,” she whispers. Then she turns away from me. “I shouldn’t be here.” Mika never talks about where she should or shouldn’t be. I don’t want her to be anywhere but here. I don’t want her to disappear.
“Of course you should,” I say. “Where else would you be?”
“I should be in college.”
The chill spreads all over my body. And I’m reminded again again again how much life she’ll never get to live.
“I should be playing music in college. Maybe have a boyfriend. But Koji is playing music now. And you have a boyfriend. And I have nothing.”
It’s then that I notice the water around my bed. It rises quickly until it is lapping at the blankets and starting to soak my pillow. It’s coming higher and higher—
… water, so much water… Mika reaching for me … water slapping me in the face … choking … water so much water…
I wake up with a gasp.
I’m sweat-drenched, but my room is dry. There is no water anywhere.
And Mika isn’t there either.
I look at my phone. It’s two a.m. I wish it wasn’t the night before the first day of school. I wish I was out in the desert with Seth. I wish I hadn’t screwed things up with him, the one person who makes me feel like I’m just living in the moment – or at least he used to.
I wish I could go back in time and fix everything.
Bigger things than what happened with Seth.
But I can’t.
After a minute’s hesitation, I call him.
“Hello? Reiko? Are you all right? It’s two in the morning!”
“Hey,” I say, suddenly feeling shy and awkward. We’ve never really talked on the phone before. Nobody I know does, except me and Dre.
“Why are you calling?”
“I … just wanted to talk to you.”
“Reiko, we have to be up in, like, five hours. What do you want?”
His curt tone cuts through me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just couldn’t sleep. I … had a bad dream.” That’s the closest to the truth I can get.
“So since you couldn’t sleep, you wanted to make sure I couldn’t sleep either?”
“Well, no. It’s just that…”
“What?”
“I wanted to tell you that obviously we’ll hang out at school,” I say, my words tumbling out faster than I mean them to.
“I mean, I’d hope so. We’re dating now, right? Like, actually dating?”
There’s so much venom in his voice that I hold the phone away from my ear, like it might hurt me.
This isn’t the Seth I’m used to.
“Can you stay on the phone with me?” I ask.
“Look, Reiko, I’ve got to sleep. You do too. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Come to the back parking lot,” I say, desperate to keep him on the line a bit longer. To win him over. “I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
He laughs a little. “Reiko, I know who all your friends are.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice is warmer now. “That’ll be cool.”
“See you tomorrow,” I say.
“Goodnight, Reiko.”
I click off and turn over.
But I can’t turn off the hurt buzzing inside me.
FALL
CHAPTER 36
“Guess what I did?” Libby is bouncing like a rubber ball, her cheerleading skirt swishing around her hips.
We’ve been back at school for three weeks. After the first week, my group of friends went from seeing Seth as a bit of a novelty, like he’s a goat I insisted on bringing to school, to seeing him as a real person. A person who is becoming part of our group. Libby is especially flirty nowadays, tugging on his long hair, draping herself over him in a way that would be totally unacceptable if he was anyone else, but since he’s Seth Rogers, the new toy, it’s fine.
He’s goofing around with Zach, Peter and Michael at the moment, in the car park where we all hang out. It’s a funny thing because the boys who ignored him or picked on him for years and years are now hanging out with him. Ever since I said he was with me, he became one of us, almost like he always was.
When I see him with my friends, I wonder if someone is going to tell him about Mika. But that would be a weird thing to just bring up. And they must all assume he already knows. Because that would be the type of thing a girl would tell her boyfriend.
I just never did.
I wonder if he knows. If he’s always known.
I wonder if that changes anything, or doesn’t matter at all.
I shake my head, shaking the thoughts away.
“I nominated Seth for homecoming court. Isn’t that inspired?” Libby goes on.
“My Seth?” I choke out.
“Your Seth?” Libby’s laugh tinkles like cut glass.
Dre is watching me carefully.
Help me, I tell her silently.
“Who else’s Seth would he be?” Dre says, voice low.
“Oh, I’m just teasing; of course he’s ‘your Seth’. Come on, Reiko! God. I thought you’d be pleased.” Libby rolls her eyes. “Anyway, I nominated him! Him, Zach, Peter, Michael…”
I wonder if I should have nominated Seth. Since I’m his girlfriend, after all. But I feel weird about it. I don’t know why. It’s just that homecoming is my thing, like my friends were mine and Seth was mine. And now everything seems to be bleeding together, almost with
out me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I remember what Libby used to say about Seth. And now she’s acting like he’s some sort of catch. Seth has changed around Libby too.
“I thought you said Libby was an idiot,” I said to him a couple of weeks ago after he called her cool.
“She’s all right,” he’d replied, shrugging, and watching her walk away, hips swaying.
“Well, I nominated Reiko,” says Dre now, still hovering close to me.
I grin at her. “I nominated you, too.”
“Hope one of you bitches nominated me,” Libby says.
“I did,” Megan says.
“Aw, babe!” Libby coos, linking her arm through Megan’s, and staring pointedly at me and Dre. This has been happening more and more recently. We’ve never hung out with Megan that much outside of school, but in school it always used to feel like we were a four. Now it feels decidedly like a two and two. Me and Dre. Libby and Megan. Of course, we all still hang out, but … something is different.
And I don’t like it.
Dre and I are walking back to my car after school when she stops and nudges me. “Oh my God, is that Nick Forrester?”
Nick was a senior when we were freshmen and he was the undisputed best-looking guy in the whole school. Even when I was dating Julian, and they were friends, I would get totally tongue-tied and awkward around Nick.
And now he’s walking toward us – no, not just walking, swaggering. He’s grinning too.
“Reiko Smith-Mori, right?” He doesn’t say anything to Dre.
“Nice memory,” I say.
He looks into my car. “This your car?”
I hold up the keys.
“Cool,” he says. “I like a girl in a Jeep.”
I snort. “Whatever the hell that means.”
Nick hasn’t aged well. He’s got a beer belly that he didn’t have in high school.
He shrugs and finally looks over at Dre. “I don’t know if I remember you. What’s your name again?”
“Andrea Torres,” Dre says. “My older sister is Tori?”
“Oh yeahhh. I remember now. Didn’t she throw that sick party after prom? The one that the cops busted?”
“Yep. And that’s why my mom won’t ever let me throw a party,” says Dre.
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