Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  “To be revealed,” she said.

  “Do you know how to get there?” I asked. “Do you remember how to buy train tickets?”

  “This teenage sarcasm thing is already getting old,” she said. But when we got to the station, it turned out she had forgotten which station we were going to. I looked it up on my phone, calculated the price, and punched the location into the machine for her.

  “Tokyo Tower?” I said, fishing out the magnetic strip of paper. “Really?”

  “God, Sophia, I’m trying to be meaningful here.”

  Dad used to take us to Tokyo Tower when we were kids, on rainy days when we were bored and antsy. It’s one of the few memories I have of the first five years of my life, when we all lived on the same continent together like an actual human family. He liked Tokyo Tower because it was modeled after the Eiffel Tower. Alison and I liked it because it was painted bright orange. We’d never been to Paris back then, and Dad used to describe it to us in detail. Cars whizzing around the Arc de Triomphe, gold statues of men on horses, bridges draped regally over a wide, curving river.

  It was strange that Alison had chosen a place that reminded me—that reminded both of us—of Dad. But there we were, waiting in line for an elevator to take us to the observation deck. There were a decent number of people in line with us. Most of them tourists.

  “Have you talked to Dad recently?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, rolling the sleeves of her hoodie up to her elbows. “We talk every night. He reads me bedtime stories, and I call him if I have nightmares.”

  “Don’t be so hard on him.” I pulled my cardigan around my stomach.

  We got in an elevator. A woman wearing a navy-blue uniform held the door and bowed as we walked in. I smiled awkwardly and bowed back. There were long windows in the elevator, so we could see the inner workings of the tower as we rode up. It was like being inside an orange spiderweb.

  “Have you talked to him?” Alison asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “He didn’t call the other night. There’s probably no phone service at the vacation house.”

  “Sure there isn’t. And I bet there’s no Wi-Fi, either. Or a landline.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. “Me neither.”

  She sounded relieved. So was I. Alison and I couldn’t talk about Dad—all it did was make us fight.

  The windows in the observation deck were everywhere, forming a huge circle, a 360-degree view. There was a small glass panel in the floor where you could stand and stare at a very distant slab of sidewalk. A girl in high heels wobbled tentatively over it and clung to her boyfriend’s arm while he laughed.

  Alison and I stopped at a computer where you could bring up detailed pictures of the view. She tapped the screen a few times, then got bored. “All of this can be seen on Google Maps,” she said. “We didn’t have to go outside.”

  “Whatever you say, Howard Hughes.”

  She twisted her lips to the side. “How did you even make that reference?”

  I shrugged. “Mika has a thing for young Leonardo DiCaprio.”

  I crossed my arms again and held my stomach tighter. The thought of Mika made my insides squirm.

  “It used to be more impressive.” Alison leaned toward the window so that her nose almost touched the glass. The city was saturated with buildings that were white and gray and brown with miniature streets gridded between and toy trees filling the gaps. A rainy haze gave everything indistinct edges.

  “This place is mediocre since the Skytree opened,” I said. “It’s, like, twice this height.”

  “I can’t believe we paid for a mediocre tower,” Alison said. “Let’s at least eat something.”

  There was a café one level below, where Alison got coffee and french fries and I got an ice-cream sundae. We didn’t really talk once we were sitting and eating.

  If David and Mika were here, we’d watch the people in line and try to guess what they’d order. David would kick me under the table and raise his eyebrows when I kicked him back. If David and Mika were here…

  But then I remembered that particular “if” was impossible. A non-if. Tears pounded behind my eyes. I dropped my lipstick-stained spoon back into my bowl.

  “Goddamn it,” Alison said. “Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Like hell it didn’t.” Alison stabbed the air with a french fry. “You’re moping all over your ice cream. You look like crap.”

  “I look like crap? You’re really going to lead with that?”

  She fixed me with her most resolute stare, daring me to blink first. “You were fine yesterday, but today you’re falling apart at the seams. Elaborate.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened to you?”

  She blinked. “This isn’t about me.”

  “Really?” I balled up a napkin in my lap. “You spend all summer being Girl, Interrupted, and this isn’t about you? You get a free pass from talking about your shit?”

  Alison sat back. “This is about you. I took you out. I’m making an effort.”

  “So make an effort,” I said. “Tell me what happened with your girlfriend. Or tell Mom, at least. Do you even realize how much she worries about you? You completely cut us off!”

  She crossed her legs, one foot banging the underside of the table. “I did not.”

  “Please,” I spat. “What about your friends at the T-Cad? What about Dad? You cut people off all the goddamned time.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Just back off, okay? We can’t all live in naive little Sophia World. Sometimes you leave people, and then you move on.”

  I laughed, but it came out harsh. “Because look at you. Moving on like a champion.”

  “At least I know when to let go. God, have you seen yourself recently? You idolize Dad even though he abandoned us. Which is pretty much the number one thing a parent isn’t supposed to do. And! You wear that ridiculous watch like you’re still a—”

  “A kid?” And now I was shouting. Loud enough that the two women having lunch at the next table flinched. “I’m still a kid? Because I don’t want to lose everyone who loves me? Because I don’t want to spend my whole fucking life finding people and then moving on from them?!”

  The muscles on either side of her jaw twitched. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. I was just trying to find out if you’re okay.”

  I wasn’t okay—of course I wasn’t okay. The tears had broken down the doors. I was really crying now. I was, as a matter of fact, falling apart. At the seams.

  “Why did you even bring me here?” I asked. “Are you trying to make me upset about Dad, too? Are you trying to remind me how worthless and alone I am?”

  “Don’t be selfish,” Alison said, more annoyed than frustrated now. “I’m here, too. Worthless, check. Alone, check.”

  “No.” I wiped tears from my mouth, and my hand came back smudged red. “I’m not like you.”

  “What do you want me to say to that?” Alison said.

  I stood up and pushed my tray across the table. “Nothing, okay? I just—I don’t want you to say anything.”

  I went into the bathroom, found an empty stall, and sat on top of the toilet seat. There was a speaker mounted on the wall to my right—an Otohime—and I waved my hand in front of it until the polite sound of running water began. I cried so hard, holding my Musée d’Orsay tote against my chest, curled over it. I cried until my throat was scratchy and my head throbbed. Until I was sure Alison wasn’t coming to get me.

  Until I was sure I was alone.

  CHAPTER 15

  WEDNESDAY

  MY PHONE STARTED RINGING.

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was probably Alison, calling to tell me to grow up or pull myself together or some hypocritical bullshit like that. I dug around in my tote and gripped the phone in my hand, waiting to see if the muffled ringing would stop.

  It
did. Thank God. I’d already had my daily quota of my sister’s judgmental self-righteousness. She’d been like that practically my whole life, ever since Dad left. Although, in fairness, it was better when we were little kids. She was more protective of me then. We’d walk hand in hand through Charles de Gaulle airport every January, Alison shooting death glares at anyone who tutted at me for crying. But as we got older, things got worse.

  She said she was sick of how I put up with Dad. She said he was a Russian nesting doll of disappointment, each disappointment leading to another even when you thought it wasn’t physically possible. The phone calls that never happened, the sporadic e-mails, the summers he said we could come stay with him until he decided to visit friends in Vienna instead. The angry whispered phone calls we’d overhear Mom having with him late at night. The way she punctuated every word when she said he was letting. Us. Down. Again.

  Things changed after he got remarried. He moved into a house outside the city center, in an area full of small brick houses and kids who’d bike around the quartier all day long. He never backed out of having us to visit. He called us once a week. At least.

  And then, four years ago, when Mom said we were moving back to Tokyo, my parents gave me a choice: I could go to Tokyo with Mom, or I could live in Paris instead. Dad and Sylvie had a decent-sized house, and there was an American school I could go to, and that way I could stay in one place until I graduated.

  I’d chosen Paris. Because it was the only thing that hadn’t changed since my parents got divorced. And I had this theory that maybe—possibly—it could also be home. Until the babies. Until Mom had to sit me down and explain it wasn’t going to work out. Not then, anyway.

  And even though I wished it wouldn’t get to me, it totally got to me. I’d wanted a life in France. I’d wanted to slice out the times I’d spent with Dad—watching Hitchcock movies, eating falafel in the Marais, hanging outside cathedrals in the evenings waiting for the bells to ring—and make those times last beyond four weeks a year.

  And that, Alison couldn’t understand. She couldn’t understand why I’d pick Dad, why I’d even imagine picking him.

  “You realize he’s not our actual parent,” she’d say for the hundredth time. “Just because he acts like this Cool Guy, that doesn’t mean he is. That doesn’t change the fact that he ditched us in the first place.”

  “He didn’t,” I’d reply. “He left Mom. They left each other.”

  Someone else came into the bathroom, yanking me from my thoughts. I took a deep breath and walked out. Thankfully, Alison wasn’t in the café anymore, or on the observation deck. I stood by a window and closed my eyes, imagining the gray buildings and the traffic and the rain outside, all of it utterly silent behind glass.

  A part of me wanted to go find Jamie, even though I knew that was crazy. But I could feel the strings connecting me to my life snapping one by one. I was floating in the air, untethered, and I needed something to grab onto.

  My phone started to ring again. This time, I scrambled to pull it out of my bag, Jamie’s name thrumming in my thoughts. But it wasn’t him or Alison or Mika or even my mom.

  It was David.

  By the time I got to Shibuya, it was after six. The real reason you’re here, I told myself, is you don’t want to be alone, you pathetic, needy loser.

  When I’d answered David’s phone call back at Tokyo Tower, the plan had been to hang up on him in twenty seconds. But then he told me that Caroline had dumped him. Then he told me, in an even sadder voice—one that was shaky and nearly transparent—that he wanted to see me. That he missed me.

  And that had broken down my last defense.

  David was at Smiley’s, an America-themed restaurant that served a plethora of huge drinks and many-layered hamburgers and had black-and-white photos of old Hollywood stars covering the walls. It was in a knot of narrow streets too small for cars to drive down and crowded with konbinis, karaoke places, cafés, and boutiques.

  David was on the second floor of the restaurant, at a table with his back to the window. A glass of something pink and frothy sat in front of him—and Jamie sat across from him.

  I actually gasped. This had to be an alternate universe. Jamie would never hang out with David, because a) David was a jackass and b) he was a jackass who’d just blabbed to everyone that Jamie was adopted.

  Thinking about last night, I felt a fresh plunge in my stomach: My best friends lied to me; they aren’t my best friends anymore. To ground myself, I focused on Jamie. He was wearing a short-sleeved red T-shirt, and there was a black coat thrown over the back of his chair. The rain had dampened his hair, which was both endearing and frustrating. Did he consistently keep his hair half-dry? Was that how he made people like him?

  “Sofa!” David waved frantically with both hands even though I was standing next to him. “I’m not drinking, see? This is a nonalcoholic smoothie. James has one, too!”

  “There’s fruit in it,” Jamie said. “It’s nutritious.” He stirred his drink with a straw and smiled up at me. I tried to smile back but ended up glowering instead. I mean, Jesus Christ. It was like they were on a tropical cruise together.

  “Sit down,” David said.

  “Can’t.” I pointed at the two-person table. “No chairs.”

  David grabbed one from the next table and dragged it over, patting the green plastic seat. “All fixed!” There was a cigarette behind one of his ears, and he didn’t look miserable. He didn’t look like he’d recently had his heart torn from his throat and smashed to pieces.

  I shoved my umbrella under the table and sat with my bag in my lap. A few tables down, an American couple kept saying “Oh my God!” and taking pictures of their elaborate sundaes with upside-down waffle cones sitting on top.

  I felt clunky and awkward. Makeup sat in sticky clumps on my face, and my hair was frizzy from the rain. Jamie kept tapping his fingers against the dark wood of the table.

  “So,” David said. “What should the three of us do this evening? Karaoke?”

  “I thought you were upset,” I said.

  David snorted and leaned back on his chair, tipping it onto two legs. “Because of Caroline?”

  “What about Mika?” I asked.

  “Pah.” He waved his hand like he was swatting away a bug. “She’s just pissed off. Or not talking to me, or something.”

  “She seemed pretty angry last night,” I said.

  David shrugged, but his grin was good-natured enough. The restaurant was dim, and rain fogged up the windows, making the lights and all the buildings blurred and hazy.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Jamie pushed his menu across the table.

  “Thanks,” I said. We briefly made eye contact, and my heart jumped. This whole situation was seriously unnerving. To my right was the boy I’d obsessed over for the last four years, the boy I’d tied up in my hope and longing until he’d hacked through all of it. To my left was—Jamie. I could feel his tentative gaze on my cheek.

  David dropped his chair back to the ground. “Anyway,” he said, leaning forward to make eye contact with me, “you’re all dressed up, Sofa. And look. Look at your lipstick.”

  The couple near us held up their phones to take more pictures of the restaurant. I fiddled with the laminated corner of the menu. “Can’t. It’s on my face.”

  He clapped his hands and laughed. He was trying to banter, but I couldn’t match his enthusiasm for it. I examined a picture of an avocado-topped cheeseburger instead.

  “You see?” David said. “This. This is why you can’t leave.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  UGH! STOP ENGAGING WITH HIM, SOPHIA! Why was four years of secret pining so hard to snap out of?

  “Because,” he said, “you’re smart as hell. Because you get me.”

  “Yeah, well. You’ll survive.”

  “Life is about more than surviving.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m pretty sure that goes against the entire evolutionary principle of ex
istence.”

  “Trust me on this, little Sofa,” he said. “Life is about other people. It’s about finding people you love and holding on for good.”

  “Yeah, because you’re really skilled at that.” I flicked my eyebrow up, challenging him to respond. A small smile played across his lips, and a thrill raced through me. And even though I knew it was stupid and pointless and wrong, I still loved the way he craved my attention. He reached out his hand and touched his thumb to the corner of my mouth. All the heat rushed from my cheek to my lips. “So, so weird. Sofa in lipstick—”

  Crack!

  David leaped out of his chair. I sat back and blinked hard. Jamie’s glass was lying on its side. It had fallen and knocked into David’s glass, which had knocked into David’s lap. The American couple turned to gape at us.

  “Fuck!” David yelled. His black pants and green polo were soaked through with smoothie.

  Jamie started pulling napkins from the napkin dispenser. “Sorry. I’m an idiot.”

  David glared. Pink liquid pooled on the table, pieces of wilted fruit floating in it.

  I pushed back my chair. “I’ll get more napkins.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Jamie said.

  “Not both of you,” David snapped. “Sofa, you stay here.”

  “Jesus.” Jamie gripped the back of his chair with both hands.

  “What?” David asked.

  Jamie leaned back, and the muscles in his throat tensed. He looked like he was bracing himself for something. “Just stop. Stop saying that.”

  “What?” David asked.

  “‘Sofa.’ Stop calling her that. It’s offensive. It’s like saying, ‘Hey, you, piece of furniture, carry all my body weight for me.’”

  David curled his lip. “Lay off, James. No one asked for your input.”

  “Jamie, please. Stop,” I whispered. That American couple seemed really interested in what we were doing now. Their ice cream was starting to melt.

  A waitress came by and asked if everything was okay. Jamie said something apologetic to her in Japanese, and she nodded reassuringly at him. (Stupid, wet-haired Jamie.) She took a dish towel from the pocket of her apron and started wiping at the mess. Jamie asked for a handful of new napkins and helped. David stormed off to the bathroom.