Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  “I need to put on shoes.”

  “Shoes?”

  “Yeah.” He gave her a pointed look. “Both of them.”

  “Okay.” She rolled her eyes and pulled a pair of large purple headphones over her ears. “Don’t take forever. Mom says you have to be there before ten.” She shoved past me and walked toward the elevators.

  Jamie held on to both sides of the doorframe and pushed himself forward. “Do you want to come in?”

  “I can’t,” I said, my shoulder still pressed against the wall.

  He laughed. “Are you a vampire? I already said you could come in. So we’re cool.”

  “No. That’s not—” I gestured behind me, at the elevators. “I thought you had to leave.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Nah. Not for another minute, at least. Come in.”

  He stepped back. And this was it. The moment where I followed him or turned around. I could go forth into the apartment and confront him exactly the way I’d planned, or I could run away. Like a crazy person.

  I walked into the genkan and stepped out of my shoes. It was weird because I could hear the same construction noises I’d heard in Mika’s apartment the day before. She might have been below my feet at that very moment. Maybe right below them, lacing up her sneakers and getting ready for a run.

  I slid my finger back under my watch.

  “You’ve never been here before,” Jamie said.

  “No.” I let go of my watch. “We always hung out at Mika’s.”

  Jamie crossed his arms, and his expression turned cold. “My parents get sort of weird about guests.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Does that mean I should leave?”

  He shook his head and his eyes softened. “It doesn’t mean that.”

  And then we fell into an awkward silence. I tried again to conjure up the things I’d planned on saying—Why did you send that text? Why did you tell me about boarding school? Why are you talking to me, period?!—but he was being so nice. Disturbingly nice. All I could choke out was “Okay.”

  “Come on.” He tilted his head toward the hallway. “I’ll give you the tour.”

  I followed him, furious at myself for chickening out. And, honestly, a little unnerved by the state of his apartment. It was just so—American. Every room was practically a display case of potpourri bowls and dance trophies and reclining leather armchairs. It was like, if you looked out the window, you might not even see Tokyo.

  We stopped by his room, and I stood in the hallway while he rooted through two open suitcases. This was more like Jamie. There was a loft bed covered by a crumpled green comforter and a small framed picture of Japanese calligraphy hanging above the pillow. The walls were lined with built-in shelves crammed with Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and Japanese grammar and kanji workbooks, which reminded me of my own collection of astronomy and physics tomes—stacked on top of one another, spines cracked and worn.

  My gaze settled on a framed movie poster hanging on the wall beneath his bed. The image was familiar: a woman’s face superimposed over a sweeping mountainscape, messy hair blowing across her face and one hand clutched to her chest. Across the top, in gargantuan gold font, it read, A CENTURY DIVIDED.

  “That’s a—big poster,” I said.

  Jamie shrugged and yanked on a pair of black sneakers with red laces. “My mom put it there while I was gone. You should see the one in my grandparents’ house.” He made a face. “Actually, no, you shouldn’t.”

  I stepped closer to the room. It smelled like tea and allspice.

  “Ready?” Jamie grabbed a blue hat from one of the suitcases and pulled it over his half-dried hair.

  “For what exactly?” I asked. Ugh. What was I doing? I wasn’t supposed to be making small talk.

  Jamie bit his bottom lip, like he thought I was being cute. “The American Club, unfortunately. Mom has important presidential duties with her International Women’s Group. I have to help for post-expulsion-groveling reasons.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “You could come?”

  I pointed at myself. “Not a member.”

  “Ah,” Jamie said. He looked embarrassed, which made me embarrassed, too. Everyone was a member of the American Club except us lower echelons of the T-Cad community. Also, my mom once said she’d rather amputate her own foot than belong to a club where all you do is eat hamburgers and take yoga classes with smug, wealthy expats.

  “It’s as pointless as pointless gets,” Jamie said. “All I have to do is fold napkins.”

  “I see.”

  “But…” He pulled at a loose thread in his hat. “We could walk together?”

  I assumed we’d stop at the train station since that was the best way to get to the American Club, but we kept going—mostly in silence—until we reached Kitanomaru-koen, the park that surrounds the Imperial Palace. I’d been there tons of times with Mika. It’s vast and treed and veined with moats. It’s where the sakura bloom in April, where people come to walk under petals that float through the air like origami rain.

  Each step I took beat out another syllable of the question I wanted to ask.

  Why?

  Why?

  WHY?

  “Check out this moat,” Jamie said, veering toward a metal railing at the side of the path. I sidestepped a group of joggers to catch up with him. There were pastel-blue rowboats bobbing in the water below, but I didn’t want to talk about boats. My heart was pounding so fast, it hurt. I was bracing myself for a leap, for a free fall.

  “Why?” I blurted.

  “Why?” he asked. “Well, it’s a moat—”

  “No.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to suppress the dizziness washing over me. “Why did you send that text? Is that—is that what you and Mika used to say about me?”

  “No. Oh God, no.” He stepped toward me but stopped himself before he got too close. He looked panicked, the way he had three years ago when I’d told him I didn’t care about him. “Mika never said anything like that. I was just mad. Mad that I was leaving and that my parents were sending me to that stupid school and that you were standing there, laughing it up with David. I was so—mad.” He gripped the back of his neck. “I know that’s not an excuse.”

  “Of course it’s not,” I said, my voice coming out high and shrill. “What you said—I trusted you, Jamie. We were friends. But you called me desperate. And I used to worry that I was desperate. That I didn’t deserve people like Mika and David and that everyone could see that. And then you sent that text, and it was like you could see that. Even now—even just talking about it—it makes me feel all—” I shook my hands out as if that conveyed something.

  “It’s all my fault,” Jamie said. “I’ve thought about that so many times.”

  I pushed my hair behind my ears and concentrated on the water. “You have?”

  He threaded his hands together and glanced down at them. He was wearing a thin leather band on one wrist I’d never noticed before. “I should have sent you an e-mail or something. I wanted to, but I didn’t think you’d write back.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I wouldn’t have.”

  He shrugged and shifted his gaze back to the moat. A couple more joggers ran past, music playing through their headphones. We were in the park, but the city wasn’t far away. The roads around us were heavy with traffic, and the paths were swarming with tourists.

  “Look.” I sighed and surprised myself when I said, “You’re not the only one who screwed up that day, all right?”

  He leaned against the railing. “No shit.”

  “It was—” I started. “Well, it was the worst day ever, if you want me to be honest.”

  He turned to face me, his eyes warm but cautious. I didn’t know what we should do. Where we could possibly go from here.

  What do I say to him now?

  “Okay…” He tipped his head toward me and my breath went sharp. “Are you hungry?”

  “What?”

  “I’
m hungry.” He nudged me with his elbow and bounced on his heels. “Starving, actually. We should find a konbini.”

  I exhaled. My veins were still thrumming, but there was something different, some minute change in the atmosphere I couldn’t quite place.

  Maybe this was a truce?

  Or maybe I was nuts.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  “Excellent,” Jamie said. “But we have to do it fast.”

  And then he started to run.

  The morning sun reflected in the skyscrapers that circled us, and a rainbow-patterned kite flashed above, glittering like fish scales. There was a miraculous breeze, maybe because I was running.

  “I’m not Mika!” I shouted. “I don’t run!”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. We guessed streets to turn down until we found a konbini. “Success!” Jamie said, tightening his grip to stop me from skidding forward.

  “Is it like you remember?” I asked and tried to see the konbini the way I would have if I’d been gone for the last three years—small and fluorescent and stacked with every snack and drink and plastic bento box one could begin to imagine.

  “Everything and more.” Jamie pointed to the fridges at the back of the store. “Behold! Caffeine!”

  The fridges brimmed with sodas and green teas with kanji and pictures of flowers on the labels. But most importantly, they had coffee. Milky coffee and black coffee in bottles and cans and cartons with straws attached to their sides. Some of them weren’t in fridges at all; they sat in a separate section under warm yellow lights.

  “Heated coffee in a can.” Jamie’s face lit up. “I forgot about these!”

  “Well, it’s called a convenience store for a reason,” I said.

  “Because it’s konbini-ent?”

  “Good one.” I reached out to press the palms of my hands against the cold fridge. Palm prints appeared briefly and then faded.

  Jamie wandered around the store, picking out food: a bag of seaweed potato chips, chocolate-covered almonds, Tomato Pretz sticks. I watched as he examined different bags of senbei and wondered if any of this seemed new to him. When I’d moved back to Tokyo, some things had seemed like shadowed memories brought to life. Snippets from dreams.

  I realized I was staring at him and pretended to read a label I couldn’t understand on a bag of lychee gummies. Some things about Jamie seemed new, too. (Or maybe they weren’t?) Like the fact that he was sort of funny. Or the easy way he laughed, his eyes and nose crinkling up so much, it was practically bunny-like. He was broad on top and tucked-in at the sides and not exactly unattractive.

  Or, at least, some people probably thought so.

  “Done?” he asked.

  I dropped the gummies. “What do you mean?”

  He was standing in front of me, holding enough food to feed a family of rabid bears. “I mean, what do you want to eat?”

  I actually felt my eyes bulge. “You’re getting all that for yourself?”

  “No, of course not. But this is my first week back, and your last week, so what we have to do is eat everything.” He grinned. His regular grin this time, enormous and goofy. “Everything in Japan.”

  I rolled my eyes and grabbed a Meiji strawberry chocolate bar from the nearest shelf.

  “Holy crap!” Jamie said. We were sitting on a stretch of grass in the park, downing our iced coffees and tearing our way through chocolate bars and potato chips. “I really missed this. I missed all the junk foods of Japan!”

  I breathed in the metallic city air. “What else did you miss?”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, and I fidgeted with the foil on the corner of my chocolate bar. Bah. Terrible question.

  He leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his legs, crossing one ankle over the other. “I missed my brother and sister. Alex is only eight, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t remember living with me. And I missed walking around the city. Everyone at Lake Forest drives, and nobody understands the wonder of karaoke, and a lot of people are under the impression that Tokyo is the capital of China.”

  “Is that why you wanted to come back?” I asked.

  His eyes were teasing. “Because they thought Tokyo was the capital of China?”

  “I just—” I shook my head. “I don’t get how your parents could send you away. You clearly didn’t want to go.”

  He sat up. “They sent me because of my grandfather. He gives a lot of money to Lake Forest, so it was all about ‘keeping up the family name.’ They care about that. Looking good on paper.” He paused and mulled something over. “And they thought it would be good for me, I guess.”

  “Was it?”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Why are we still talking about me? Sophia Wachowski”—he held an imaginary microphone up to my face—“what are you going to miss about Tokyo?”

  “The lower crime rate,” I said.

  He laughed.

  I pulled a few blades of grass from the ground and rubbed them between my fingers. “I don’t know. I’ll miss the T-Cad, I guess. And I can’t imagine anything without Mika and David.” I searched for more to say. “And I’ll miss the sounds. You know, like the sound of the trains from my house and the sound of cicadas in summer. I considered recording some, which is stupid, I know. And I’ll miss Ramune ice cream from the konbini. And those boxes of cakes wrapped in that fancy paper you can buy at department stores. I love those. And—” I crushed the grass in my hands. “Whatever. None of this matters.”

  “Of course it does,” Jamie said, smiling.

  I shrugged.

  For some reason, I was thinking about my family’s first apartment in Tokyo. About the Thai restaurant across the street with red lanterns hanging in the windows and the corner of the living room where Dad used to sit and read me Winnie-the-Pooh. About the day before we moved out, when Mom had leaned down next to me to ask what I’d miss about Tokyo.

  The answer had been so obvious.

  It had been home.

  Jamie shifted toward me. I thought he was going to say something, and I really didn’t want him to, because I really didn’t want to cry in front of him. But he just handed me a Pretz stick. We ate in silence for a moment or so. The traffic on the nearby road sounded like a river, like water crashing over rocks and tumbling by.

  “Hey,” Jamie said after a moment. “Did you mean what you said the other night? About my hat? Do you really not like it?”

  I swallowed my mouthful of Pretz. “God no. It’s awful.”

  His lips twitched. And then we were doubled over with laughter, falling toward each other like a book closing shut.

  CHAPTER 10

  TUESDAY

  “DON’T ASK ME,” MIKA SAID on the phone. “It’s David’s stupid plan. That dude has some screwed-up ideas about how to spend an evening.”

  “Why does he want to go to the T-Cad?” I was sitting on my desk, staring out the open window, listening to the trains whooshing in and out of the station. Dorothea Brooke was stretched out beside me, luxuriously chewing the tail off a toy mouse. “Is this a joke?”

  “Who knows? He’s a fucking psychopath. He also said you should wear all black and that we’re meeting at the T-Cad train station at eight. In other news, where the hell have you been all day?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been calling you for the last ten hundred hours.”

  “You have? I didn’t hear my cell.”

  “Did you get my texts at least?”

  “Um. I didn’t open them.”

  “They said ‘help!’ and ‘save me!’ and ‘this is urgent!’”

  “Sorry. I was gonna open them later.”

  “You’re useless, you know that? Mom’s back in town, and she’s been terrorizing me all morning.”

  “How is she terrorizing you?”

  “Have you finished your summer reading? Have you been keeping up with your preseason training? How many miles did you run yesterday? Have you checked to
make sure you’re still registered for your AP classes?”

  “Yikes.”

  “What she doesn’t understand is I am exhausted.”

  “Why? Did you and David go drinking last night?”

  “Jesus, no. I’m not an alcoholic.”

  “I thought you two were hanging out after I went home.”

  “We barely did anything. Anyway, boring. Have you been home all day?”

  “What do you think?” There were no trains going at that moment, and the city seemed loud and quiet at the same time, like it was holding its breath, like it was hovering at the top of a roller coaster, waiting for the perfect moment to fall. If I told Mika the truth about being with Jamie, she might think it was weird. Or she might think it meant nothing at all. I let out a breath. “I’ve been packing.”

  At 8:07, the only other person at the T-Cad train station was the guy in the booth behind the barriers.

  I stood by myself at the top of the steps that led down to the darkened street. All the small shops were closed except for the always-reliable konbini, which glowed like a fluorescent blue-and-white beacon.

  This was probably part of David’s ridiculous plan. Dress me up like a cat burglar and send me to the T-Cad alone to—to what? David lived for ridiculous plans like this. Usually, it was one of the things I liked most about him. Usually, it made me feel like life was electric and unpredictable.

  Tonight, it did not.

  I sat on the steps and checked my phone. Mom was texting me updates on her packing and asking—again—if I was okay. She’d seemed worried when I told her I was going out tonight. (“I’ve barely seen you since Sunday,” she’d said as I’d scarfed a peanut butter sandwich over the sink before I left. “Mom,” I’d said between bites. “In a week, I’ll see you all the time because I won’t even have friends anymore.”)

  In retrospect, that probably hadn’t made her worry less.

  I closed my phone and tried as hard as I could not to think about Jamie.

  But that was impossible. It was like trying not to get a song stuck in your head. A song you (reluctantly) like. A song you (kind of, sort of) want to hear again. I still didn’t know why he’d been at the T-Cad, and I didn’t know why he’d been kicked out of boarding school, but I was starting to get a picture of him at boarding school. Studying Japanese instead of doing schoolwork, not going home on weekends. I could almost see him, could almost fill in the last three years.