I frowned. “They’re going to be so pissed. They’re going to excommunicate you.”
He gave me a wry, amused look. “They’re not the Catholic Church. I’m not Henry the Eighth.”
“How can you be so casual about this?”
Jamie shrugged and pressed the red button on the machine. A claw zoomed forward from a corner of the glass case. “My parents were upset about the whole flunking-out-of-boarding-school thing, yes”—he pressed the button again and the claw whizzed to the side; it was hovering over the box of Pockys now—“but at this point, they kind of expect me to fuck up. I don’t even think they mind that much. I guess they would if I were actually theirs.”
The claw touched the corner of the box and scraped it. But it didn’t grab on.
“Jamie,” I said. “You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t know.” The game finished, and he dropped his hands by his sides.
“If you really mean that, you’re stupid. Because you are theirs. Because they’re your parents.”
“Come on,” Jamie said, nodding his head in the direction of another aisle.
Even though it was bizarrely unpopulated that night, the arcade still hummed with its own energy. Jamie had gone quiet. I hoped he wasn’t upset with me for saying that. I hoped he didn’t want to go home. Although, to be honest, it might have been better for both of us if he did. It might have saved me from feeling all these… feelings. The ones that made me want to stay out all night with him. To stay in this pocket of the week where time stopped breathing.
Jamie stopped at a machine, and I figured he’d fish out a few hundred-yen coins to play the game. Instead, he sat down on the floor. I sat next to him, close enough that I could smell the laundry detergent on his T-shirt. I inhaled deeply.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have talked about your parents like that. It’s obviously none of my business.”
He shrugged. “I asked about your dad. You can ask me whatever you want.”
I shoved my phone into my bag, and my hand scratched against the canvas. “So tell me about them. Your parents, I mean.”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes—I could see his eyelashes moving against his cheeks. “My parents got married in their thirties. They wanted kids, but they couldn’t have kids, so…” He lifted his hands helplessly. “Voilà.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“My birth mother?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Yeah, a couple of times. Once when I was three, right after the movie came out. And once when I was six.”
“Did your parents know her?”
“Sort of. It was an open adoption. Lauren—that’s her name—is from a town not far from where my parents grew up. But her family threw her out when they found out she was pregnant. She was seventeen.”
“Jesus,” I said. “That’s, um, my age.”
“I know,” Jamie said.
I shifted uncomfortably. The stiff purple carpet felt like Styrofoam against my bare legs.
Jamie went on. “Every year, my parents sent Lauren pictures of me, and she sent me birthday cards and stuff. But my parents wanted to help her as well.”
“Help her?”
“Yeah. They wanted her to go to college and make something of herself, I guess.”
“So what happened?”
He knotted his hands together and held them between his knees. Jamie had always been so light and open, like he couldn’t contain his emotions even if he tried. But now he seemed small and closed in. This was Jamie from a new angle, through a hidden door, and I wanted to do something for him. To help him.
“Lauren couldn’t handle it,” he said. “It was too much me. Me in pictures, me in a movie, for Christ’s sake. Plus my parents breathing down her neck all the time.” He went silent for a moment. “Anyway. She moved to Oregon. She’s a dental hygienist now, I think.”
“Do you talk to her at all?”
“Nope.” He cleared his throat. “No one heard from her. Until last year.”
“Wait.” I scooted toward him. “You mean you met her again?”
He sighed. “She contacted my parents’ lawyer and said she wanted to visit for Thanksgiving. She was supposed to come to my grandparents’ place from the airport, but—she never showed. She freaked, I guess, and couldn’t handle it.”
I thought about Paris. About how much I’d wanted to live there and how heartbroken I’d been when I’d found out I couldn’t. But no matter how weird things were in my family, I never doubted for a second that my mom and dad loved me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, placing my hand next to his on the ground. “I can’t imagine doing that. I can’t imagine cutting off someone you’re supposed to love.”
Jamie turned suddenly to face me, his expression resolved. “But that’s the thing. She wasn’t supposed to love me. That’s my parents. And they do, but they have all of these expectations. After last Thanksgiving, I skipped class and I totally bombed my exams. Honestly, I should have been kicked out at winter break, but the headmaster gave me another shot because my glorious grandparents donate so much money. Anyway, he didn’t have a choice when I failed next semester, too.…” He sat back again, miserably. “My parents said I didn’t deserve that school. And it’s like—I don’t deserve their family, either. I know I don’t.”
A speaker nearby kept playing the same twenty seconds of a song over and over. I focused on how close our hands were, only a sliver of purple carpet separating them, and wished I could close the gap.
“Okay,” he said, sitting forward. “Okay. This is important. Tell me where you want to go to college.”
“What?” I laughed. “No.”
“Why not? Are you worried I’ll apply? Because you shouldn’t worry. I already failed out of school. I’ll never get anywhere in life.”
“No.” I knocked his shoulder with mine. “I’m not worried about that.”
“So you think I couldn’t get in?”
“Jamie! This isn’t about you.”
“But still.”
I tugged nervously at the bottom of my skirt. “MIT.”
“Wow! Really?”
“Yes, really. I mean, I’ll apply. But that doesn’t mean I’ll get in. That doesn’t even mean I’ve got a shot.”
“What do you want to study?”
“I don’t know.”
He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Liar.”
I sighed. He was right, but I was used to not talking about this. David and Mika got bored whenever I tried. “Astrophysics,” I said. “I guess I’ve just—I’ve always been fascinated by the universe, about all the things we don’t know and just by how malleable everything is…” I trailed off. “Okay. That was super dorky. I’m stopping now.”
“Don’t,” he said.
I blushed. “It’s really not worth thinking about. I’ll have to get a scholarship because my parents can’t afford the tuition. If I go to Rutgers, I’ll get reduced tuition because of my mom.”
“No,” he said. “You won’t need to do any of that. You’ll get a scholarship and go to MIT.”
The firm way he said it—like he didn’t doubt for a second it was true—made my gaze skitter down to the floor. Whenever I told someone about MIT, they’d usually give me a spiel about having backup options. I felt like one of us should be practical. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a scholarship to M-I-freaking-T?”
“No? Very difficult? You’ll still do it.”
I shoved his knee, and he shoved mine. His impossibly bright smile was back, and it made me feel light-headed. This was the Jamie I remembered, the one who couldn’t contain what he felt or believed in. I was so relieved to be with him and so overwhelmed by his belief in me, I wanted to reach over and touch him one more time. Just to make sure this was really happening.
He threaded his leather wristband around his index finger. “Anyway, Mika told me how you kicked everyone’s ass in that AP Physics class. If y
ou don’t go to MIT, you’ll do something else awesome. I know this for a fact.”
“For a fact?” I shoved his knee again, lightly this time. “Are you a visitor from the future or something? Did you cross the boundaries of space and time to be here, Jamie?”
His eyes warmed up ten degrees. “That is exactly what I did.”
Outside, the heat was crawling back into the air.
Music slid out the windows of karaoke places. People glided in and out of nightclubs, out of konbinis, out of izakaya. Some entrances were shuttered, but others were thrown open to the street, spilling light onto the sidewalks.
In fact, all I could see was light. Unfurling on the ground, bursting in windows, glowing on the vertical signs that ran all the way up the sides of buildings. Shibuya fizzed with light, pushed back the darkness.
“What should we do?” I asked.
Jamie walked a few steps in front of me and then walked back again. “What do you want to do?”
“I really have no idea.”
“Karaoke?”
I tightened my ponytail. “Don’t feel like it.” The thought of being inside made my skin feel itchy. The thought of Jamie and me in a small, dark room… I couldn’t even begin.
“Let’s walk,” I said. “I want to see it all before it disappears.”
The roads were bright passageways. All of them strange and new in the middle of the night. Even the people seemed different, less inhibited than they did during the day. They were taking pictures with their phones, checking their reflections in darkened windows, sitting on the curb outside the 24–7 McDonald’s eating hundred-yen ice-cream cones.
“I’m not sure how to proceed,” Jamie said. “I feel like we have to talk about everything just because we can.”
“We can’t talk about everything,” I said. “We have a limited number of hours.”
He contemplated it for a moment. “That is some serious pressure.”
We reached a quieter, narrower street. I was startled when a group of people sprinted out of an alleyway and crossed in front of us, a blur of glittering colors and loud voices.
Jamie and I stood still. We briefly made eye contact and then looked away at the same time, which made me feel all weightless and fluttery. I was falling for him. That was why I was so determined to stay out with him all night. That was why I kept moving toward him even when I didn’t have to. It was daunting and it was scary, but I was drawn to him, like he had his own gravitational force.
“My first question,” he said, “is where are you from?”
I touched the strap of my watch. “Um. France, Japan, Poland, New Jersey.”
“Never mind. Next question.” He stepped in front of me. We were by an Internet café pumping techno music into the street. Black lights lined the stairs that led up to the entrance, giving us both a blue glow. It heightened the curiosity on his face. “My question is, do you even know how intimidating you are?”
I pulled my cardigan around my rib cage. “Intimidating?”
“Yes. From the moment I met you, you intimidated the hell out of me. You’re so cool. And terrifying.”
“Terrifying?”
“I don’t mean it like that,” he said. “You’re terrifying in a good way.”
“Obviously. Like spiders or serial killers or life-threatening diseases.”
“You’re terrifying the way a book is right before it ends. You know? When you have to put it down because it’s too much to take in at once. You are the most terrifying person I know.”
He was smiling at me. Even in that aquarium light, I could see the freckles dispersed across his nose and cheeks, and the gold flecks like matching freckles in his eyes.
“My question for you,” I said, “is why do you have all those Japanese books in your room?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “I want to be a translator.”
“Like you want to work for the UN or something?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I think I want to translate books. Novels, actually. It sounds pretty stupid, I know.”
I gave him a mock scowl. “No. It’s amazing. I can’t speak Japanese. I still can’t speak any French.”
He lowered his eyes self-consciously. “Trust me. I have to get a lot better. Right now, I wouldn’t have a shot in hell of translating a street sign.”
“You’re smart.”
“Right. Of course. And ruggedly handsome and able to leap buildings in a single bound.”
“I remember the way we used to talk about those movies. You made everything seem so—”
Beautiful. Jamie made the world seem more beautiful than it had ever seemed before. And bigger. Like it was a dark sea I wanted to swim in. Like it was a place I wanted to explore.
I needed to say it to him. Even if it connected us in a way I couldn’t take back. Even if it meant I would inevitably get hurt. “You make everything beautiful. And—you made me feel less like life was going to swallow me whole. And you made me feel the opposite of small and stupid and alone. For the first time maybe ever.”
As he was looking at me, his eyes flicked back and forth. Like he was reading a book. Like he was memorizing a passage. “I don’t feel like tonight is real,” he said. “Do you think we’re both sleeping?”
“Ha,” I said. “Maybe sleepwalking.”
“Sophia?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t wake up.”
CHAPTER 18
THURSDAY
“SUMIMASEN!” THE GIRL TOTTERED a few steps away from me and bowed.
I shook my head. “Sumimasen.” At the very least, I could say sorry in Japanese.
We were standing on a street corner fed by the traffic from various nightclubs. The sidewalks were hectic, and I was tired, and the heat was getting more intense by the second. Maybe from all the walking and walking and walking. The girl smiled at me. She was wearing bright red platform heels and a black dress. “America jin desuka?”
“Um, hai.”
“Nai!” Jamie said, grinning. “Tokyo ni sundeiru.”
The girl’s expression became elated. “Eh—! Nihongo sugoi desune.”
Jamie blushed so hard, I was amazed all the blood vessels in his face didn’t burst. The girl asked him a few more questions, and I stood to the side, following most of what they were saying but too self-conscious to join in with my own basic, T-Cad level-two Japanese. The sounds of Tokyo transformed into a gentle murmur, and the night grew warmer and hazier and—was my head against Jamie’s shoulder? I pushed myself away.
“Tired?” he asked. The girl was gone. There were patches of sweat around the neck of his red Anpanman T-shirt.
“You speak Japanese good, Jamie. So good. Can we stop walking now?”
“I’m not sure how to break it to you, but we’re not currently walking.”
But we had been walking. For so long. A little while back, we’d tried to go to a bar. Jamie ordered a beer, but neither of us drank any. It was too loud to think. Or talk—I wanted to talk. So we walked instead. Outside, in the imperfect dark, we could talk as much as we wanted to. There was all this space above, all this room for our voices to go.
“Jamie.” I blinked through the glue in my eyes. “I need to sit down.”
“We need coffee.” He raked his hands through the sides of his hair. The sweat made it into a disheveled mess. I sort of wanted to run my fingers through it. Sleeplessness was giving me all kinds of irrational desires.
“There’s no coffee here,” I said. “You’re hallucinating.”
He looped his hand around my wrist and gave me a small tug. Then he started to run. We started to run. All the lights blotting and blurring, the roads unraveling in a familiar way. There were fewer people out now, everyone weighed down and listless, like we were in a distorted version of the bustling city Tokyo usually was.
We didn’t have to run for long till the street deposited us on the edge of Shibuya Crossing. My eyes opened wider. It was like racing through the solar system and stu
mbling on the sun. All the signs and the screens and the people and the cars. Light and sound crawling up, up, up.
“Wow,” I breathed.
Jamie squeezed my wrist. “Look behind you.”
I already knew what was there, of course. The building had huge paneled windows that faced the crossing. Advertisements flashed across its glass exterior, and a sign in all caps ran along the facade of the second floor.
STARBUCKS COFFEE.
“Coffee,” I said.
Inside, everything was exactly what I needed. The air-conditioning, the whirring espresso machine, people in green aprons smiling. There was light folky music playing over the speakers and, as soon as we walked in, all the baristas chorused, “Irasshaimase.”
“It smells like life,” I said, feeling a little teary. “This is where life comes from.”
Jamie dug into his pockets for change. “I have a plan. I’m going to get two enormous green tea lattes with all the whipped cream and sprinkly things they’ve got, and you’re going to go upstairs and steal the couch.”
“The couch?”
“It’s the only couch,” he said. “It’s in front of a window. You’re going to steal it and we’re going to stay there till the trains start. This is our destiny.”
“The couch,” I repeated.
Jamie joined the surprisingly long line. Somehow, my dead legs carried me up the stairs to the second floor. An array of insomniacs crowded around the small tables and counters that ran along the floor-to-ceiling windows. The entire room hovered over Shibuya Crossing like balcony seating. As Jamie had predicted, there was a maroon couch situated in the center of all the windows, wedged between two counters.
I shuffled over. The couch was occupied by the sleeping body of a guy wearing skinny jeans and a leather jacket. There was no way I was going to be able to steal it. How does one steal a couch, exactly? I waved down at him. “Um. Hello?”
He didn’t respond. Presumably because he was asleep.
“Okay.” I nodded, and my head felt like it was bobbing in water. I was swimming. “Okay. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
I lay on the ground in front of him, in the small sliver of space between the couch and the window. I put my bag under my head for a pillow, and then I fell asleep. Right there, right in the window, where everyone in the whole wide world could see me.
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