Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  Yeah. Right. After seeing him with his mom, I definitely didn’t think that was the case. Maybe Jamie had done something at boarding school that meant he had to leave. Maybe he’d cheated on a test or been caught with a girl in his room. Or maybe he was in legal trouble. Maybe he’d stolen a car or robbed a gas station for cigarettes and booze and condoms.

  Maybe he’d killed a man.

  I checked to see if Mika was online. If she was, I could ask what Jamie had said about boarding school or about his parents or—no. I couldn’t do that. She’d have serious questions if I showed a sudden, reinvigorated interest in Jamie. I’d lain low the whole summer after he left, and when I came back to the T-Cad at the beginning of freshman year, I was convinced he’d have told her everything and that she’d come up to me in the cafeteria and punch me.

  But she didn’t. And I realized he hadn’t said a word. Still, she must have known something had happened. Whenever she brought him up, I got so distant and twitchy that, eventually, she dropped it altogether. Jamie had turned into this strange, vacuous space between us. The He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named of our friendship.

  God, why couldn’t I stop fixating on this? I wished Jamie had never come back to Tokyo or followed me into Mika’s kitchen or stood in front of me in this waiting room looking lost and uncertain. Like someone familiar. Like someone who used to be my friend.

  At 10:49, Ms. Suzuki’s door finally opened. I hunched over my computer and squinted at it. (The only thing on there was my screen saver. A picture of a cat.)

  “Hey,” Jamie said.

  He was standing over me, looking worse than he had an hour and twenty-four minutes ago. His skin was pale, and he’d pushed some of his hair off his forehead so that it stuck straight up. “Ms. Suzuki said there was a water cooler out here?” He said it like it was a question.

  I jerked my head back. Since my headphones weren’t attached to my computer, the cord just fell to the floor. The door to Ms. Suzuki’s office was open, and I could hear her asking Jamie’s mom about North Carolina beaches.

  “Yeah, it’s right…” I started to point over my shoulder. “I’ll just show you.”

  The water cooler was on the other side of the SAT bookshelf. The bookshelf itself almost blocked our view of Ms. Suzuki’s office. Jamie stood behind me as I filled a plastic cup with water. When I turned around, I was standing so close to him I could see a faint bleach mark on the chest of his T-shirt.

  “Did you get in trouble this morning?” I whispered. “For staying out so late?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” He glanced over his shoulder. “But it wasn’t a big deal. It was just because I left the house without telling my parents where I was going. And without having a cell phone.”

  “Jamie,” I said. “You’re an idiot.”

  He shrugged. “I know. But hey, sorry about my mom.”

  “You’re sorry about your mom?”

  He exhaled slowly. He seemed irritated, but I wasn’t sure if it was with me or with himself. “I’m just sorry. That was a general apology for—all kinds of things.”

  My cheeks warmed up. I couldn’t have a serious conversation with him about last night. Not when I could hear his mom’s voice—her strong southern accent—wafting into the room. Not when I was in my place of business. “Forget it, Jamie,” I whispered.

  He pressed his lips together and furrowed his brow. I could see the few freckles on his neck, right above the collar of his T-shirt. Jamie had fair skin spotted all over with freckles and moles, the type of skin the sun could probably burn right off. It was always turning red, where his backpack rubbed his neck, where he scratched the back of his hand. Whenever he blushed.

  The first time I’d noticed this was back in eighth grade, when I was eating lunch with him and Mika and David. Mika had just laughed at one of his jokes, and his face went red up to his hairline. I thought it was really annoying. Everything about Jamie annoyed me back then. He was squeaky and small and desperate. Desperately desperate. He told too many jokes; he tried too hard to make other people like him. I found it all so infuriating that for the first few months I hung out with them, I could barely handle his presence.

  Until, one day, he talked to me.

  “You’ve got such a cool name,” he said. “It’s like Sophie Hatter, in Howl’s Moving Castle.”

  “My name is Sophia,” I huffed. “And what’s Howl’s Moving Castle?”

  “Sophia. Of course.” He blushed. “And it’s a Ghibli movie.”

  “I don’t watch those.”

  “Why not?”

  “Uh, they’re cartoons. That’s why not.”

  The next day, he brought his copy of Howl’s Moving Castle to my locker after school. I mumbled a thanks and shoved it in my backpack, and I might not have watched it at all if I hadn’t finished my homework early that night. (I finished my homework early a lot.) I watched it twice, until Alison said I was hogging the TV, and then I watched it two more times on my laptop, curled up on my bed till three in the morning.

  “It was so weird,” I said to Jamie at lunch the next day.

  “Weird in a bad way?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, thinking it over. “Weird in a… crazy way. I liked it when Howl turned into a bird and when Sophie got so angry she turned young again.”

  “I know, right? Sophie is awesome. She’s such a badass.”

  Jamie brought me all his Ghibli DVDs, one after the other. Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro. I’d thought they were kids’ movies, but they weren’t. They were the closest thing to magic I’d ever experienced. More beautiful than real life. More beautiful than anything.

  We’d talk about them at lunch, sitting in the courtyard next to Mika and David, who got bored and started ignoring us.

  “I think I might have seen Totoro when I was a kid,” I said. “But yes, I loved it. I loved the cat bus.”

  “We should find a cat bus,” Jamie said, pointing at me. “My whole life, I have wanted to find a cat bus.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Obviously we should do that. I mean, God, it’s a freaking cat bus.”

  He laughed and his ears turned pink, the color of strawberries in cream.

  He has skin like a mood ring, I’d think. Or a modern-art painting.

  Looking at Jamie’s neck, I remembered the way he used to make me feel. It was stupid, but there it was, a familiar dull ache in my chest and stomach. I remembered waking up in the morning, already excited to talk to him. I remembered the wrench of disappointment whenever he stayed home from school. I remembered running late to lunch and seeing him scanning the crowd, trying to find me.

  It was such a disorienting feeling, I almost had to sit down. I almost forgot how much I currently hated him.

  He took the water from me. “Thanks,” he said, relaxing the set of his shoulders a little.

  I pulled at the heavy sleeves of my dress and gripped them in my palms. “You’re welcome.”

  He started to walk away but then came back and leaned down to my ear, his breath warm and minty against my cheek, making the tidal wave of memories grow stronger and stronger as he quickly whispered, “I got kicked out, that’s why I’m back, don’t tell Mika.”

  CHAPTER 8

  MONDAY

  “WHAT UP?” MIKA SAID when she answered the phone.

  “Hey,” I said. “Nothing. Bored. What are you doing?”

  “Running eight miles.”

  “Really?”

  She laughed. “Fuck no. I’m microwaving cookies.”

  There was no one else in the bathroom, so I pressed myself into the space between the hand dryer and the sink. My skin felt crawly and alive, like I’d just chugged a liter of soda.

  “So?” Mika said. “You want to come over tonight? We can watch One Piece. Eat some cookies or something.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. “Maybe. Are you going to invite David?”

  “Why? Are you trying for a last-minute make-out session before you abandon
us forever? You can’t make out in my apartment, you know. I don’t want to be haunted by the visuals.”

  “Mika. Gross.”

  “It’s not gross. You want to make out with him, right?”

  Heat rushed over my face, and I was glad Mika couldn’t see me. “I like David. I would not be opposed to kissing him, if it came to that.”

  “Wow!” she said. “That there was some sexy talk. Bust that out on David, and he won’t be able to resist.”

  “Shut up. I back up my statements with data.”

  “Stop it! You’re turning me on!”

  “Anyway,” I said, talking over her, “it’s probably sexier than anything Caroline could say. Like, wow! You are so much cuter than all the guys in Tennessee combined!”

  “You got that right, baby,” she said in her mock David accent. “I am one hot Aussie. I am—the Thunda from Down Unda.”

  “Oh God.” I giggled so loud it bounced off the bathroom walls. “You are disturbed.”

  David did come over to Mika’s, and they decided we should go to Shibs. It was dark out, but the air was still cloying with heat. David and Mika kept walking ahead of me, which was irritating. We went to an arcade and they played video games, which was even more irritating. They were all built for two players.

  “I keep kicking your ass,” Mika said matter-of-factly.

  “Damn it, Tamagawa!” David said. “Do you even know which score is yours?”

  “I saw Jamie today,” I said, and instantly regretted it. The idea of talking about Jamie made me fizzy and anxious. But his name had come out so easily, like I couldn’t physically keep it inside.

  David and Mika didn’t notice my awkwardness, though. They were playing the taiko drum game, each of them smacking wooden drumsticks against wide-barreled drums, trying to match their beat to the one scrolling across the screen.

  “Baby James!” David said. “And where is Baby James this evening? Didn’t he want to hit on Mika again?”

  “Fuck off,” Mika said.

  “Oh, come on,” David said. “I just don’t get why you like the guy so much. He’s so boring. He’s like…” David slouched and pouted and rubbed the back of his head.

  A nervous laugh escaped my mouth, and Mika scowled at the screen. “Ugh, guys. Concentrating now.”

  “Hey.” David pointed at Mika with his drumstick and then at me. “Anyone else think it’s odd that James just moved back here? All of a sudden?”

  “Maybe?” I said and scratched my collarbone. I could have told them what I knew. I could have told them and given up my new duty as Jamie’s official secret keeper.

  Mika sighed through her teeth. “Thanks for throwing the game, jackass.”

  “Bloody suspicious,” David said, “if I do say so myself.” He smiled at me, but I couldn’t bring myself to smile back.

  “It’s not suspicious,” Mika said. “He hated that snobby-ass school. He’s been begging his parents to let him come back for years. And, trust me, if you knew them, you’d get why it took so damned long to wear them down.”

  “So… what’s up with his parents?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  But not casual enough, I guess, because Mika frowned at me. “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t care. It’s just a question.”

  She watched me for a second longer, then shrugged. “His parents are—I don’t know. They’re uptight. His dad’s always away on business, and his mom wants to move back to the States, but his dad won’t ask for a transfer. I swear, they make my family look normal.”

  Your family is normal, I wanted to say. But didn’t. I stared at the opposite end of the aisle, where there were purikura booths and a guy feeding money to a claw machine full of Sailor Moon dolls.

  David clapped me on the back. “That must have been nice for Sofa. Seeing James.” He rubbed circles between my shoulder blades. “Sofa can’t wait to spend some quality time with James.”

  I recoiled. “Don’t be weird.”

  “You were acting pretty fucking weird last night,” Mika said, the blue spikes framing her face like an angry tiara. “You didn’t talk to him at all. What? Are you too good for him now or something?”

  “I talked to him. He just—he’s different. Which you obviously noticed.”

  David guffawed. “Well spotted.”

  Mika’s face was frozen in irritation, the colors on the screen glimmering in her eyebrow stud. “Whatever,” she said. “Clearly you’re not Team Jamie anymore. That doesn’t mean you have to go all sullen bitch whenever he walks into the room.”

  “I don’t go all sullen bitch,” I said, in a distinctly sullen and bitchy way. They ignored me and went back to their game. But in the chirps and pings and ploings of their machine, I heard it. I couldn’t stop hearing it.

  I got kicked out, that’s why I’m back, don’t tell Mika.

  Mom was still at work when I got home, but she texted to say I should order pizza. I hated speaking Japanese on the phone. I couldn’t even gesture—I was completely powerless. I had to ask for toppings that were almost the exact same word in English as they were in Japanese. (Cheezu. Oh! And hamu please. I mean, hamu onegaishimasu.)

  Alison was in the living room, sitting on the floor going through a box of Mom’s old CDs. She’d put on Scarlet’s Walk by Tori Amos, the one Mom used to play when we were little kids. Back when her hair was longer and she’d burn dinner almost every night. It was right after my dad left.

  I sat down in front of my sister. There was a fan going, but it barely shuffled the lethargic air around. I picked up a pile of Bubble Wrap and started popping it.

  “Don’t do that,” Alison said.

  I popped one in defiance. “I think Dad’s calling tonight.”

  “Sure he is.”

  “He’s calling from Provence,” I said. “It’s the big vacation month in France, remember?”

  She picked out a Cranberries CD and flipped it open so violently the cover flew out. “And I care because? It’s not like I live there.”

  I shrugged. We didn’t talk about it much anymore, but four years ago, I almost had lived there—almost moved in with Dad and Sylvie in Paris. It didn’t work out because Sylvie got pregnant with the twins and Mom and Dad thought it would be hard on me, living with newborn babies.

  And even though I was glad I’d come to Tokyo and met Mika and David, a part of me still wished I’d ended up in Paris. In a place I could have stayed.

  But I didn’t want to get into all that with Alison—not when I was about to start on something way worse. “Question,” I said, rubbing a bubble between my fingers. “If your girlfriend sent you an e-mail right now and said she wanted to talk, what would you do?”

  Alison’s head snapped up. She sucked her lips into a thin, pale line. My sister wasn’t one for forgiving, or forgetting. If she knew what Jamie had done, she would have told me cutting him off was the smartest move I could make. She would have told me that no one—no one—deserved a shot at hurting me twice. The room filled with Tori’s piano, with the noise of traffic moving to and from the station, with the Japanese commentary over a sports game playing in someone’s apartment.

  “Fuck that,” Alison said finally.

  “Right,” I said, and popped two more bubbles.

  CHAPTER 9

  TUESDAY

  THE DOOR TO JAMIE’S APARTMENT looked a lot like the door to Mika’s. Except it said 12A instead of 11A, and there was a straw welcome mat out front with MY HOME IS MILES FROM HERE written on it in a fancy curling script.

  I slid my index finger into the space between my watchband and wrist. It was so early. He wouldn’t be awake. Or if he was awake, he’d be doing things. Normal morning things like showering and eating breakfast. I had no idea what I was doing here.

  All I knew was what I’d decided last night after I’d talked to my sister. After I’d tried (and failed) to fall asleep in my stuffy room, the windows open, the warm air ballooning with the sounds of the city. I’d stayed up th
inking about the week slipping away, imagining it as a fraying rope I was desperately clinging on to. In a few days, I’d be gone and then I’d never have the chance to ask Jamie why he’d sent me that text. Or why he’d never told Mika about our fight. Or why he trusted me not to tell her about boarding school.

  I needed to talk to him. But first I had to knock on this door.

  The door flung open, and Hannah careened into me. I stumbled back.

  “What the hell?” Jamie’s sister staggered back, too. She was carrying a red duffel bag that thunked against the doorframe.

  “Hey,” I said. Oh crap. I hadn’t expected this. “Is—uh—is Jamie home?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “He’s home. Because he’s sleeping.”

  “Of course,” I said, backing up a little. “That makes sense.”

  Hannah popped her gum. She was four years younger than I was and athletic and kind of scary. She was always skipping school to go shopping in Kichijoji. Mika and I had seen her once, hopping the fence at the back of the football field. She was the type of person who’d get thrown out of boarding school.

  Not Jamie.

  “Hey, Hannah. Who are you talking to?” As soon as he came to the door, the floor seemed to spin beneath me. Jamie was the exact opposite of asleep. His hair was damp, and he was wearing a navy-blue T-shirt and jeans worn to white at the knees. When he saw me, his eyebrows shot up.

  “Hey!” he said.

  “Hey,” I said, steadying myself against a wall. I felt like I might disintegrate. Like confronting him was an idea that only made sense at two in the morning, when I was hot and sleep deprived and delirious.

  Hannah snapped her gum again. “I’m going to the American Club. I’ve got dance rehearsal, and Mom’s setting up her boring lunch thing. She took Alex, too. You coming?”

  He turned to her and my resolve collapsed even further, a weight towing down through my stomach.

  “Later,” he said. “I need to get dressed.”

  “You are dressed,” she said.