Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  “You could say that.”

  “Do you think you’ll go?”

  I touched my wrist, but it felt bare and strange. I’d forgotten to put my watch back on. “Yeah? I mean, I should go, right? It’s Paris.”

  “I can imagine you there,” he said. “Drinking wine, wearing scarves, going to museums. You could pull that off.” He grinned and his sunglasses fell down onto his nose. He pushed them back up again.

  “Mom would be alone, but not alone-alone,” I said. “Alison would only be one state away. I don’t know. It still feels pretty strange. When I was a kid, all I wanted was to move to Paris, and now it might really happen.”

  I breathed the heavy air, which tasted earthy and bitter. Maybe, in a few weeks time, I’d be in Paris, dunking pains au chocolat in bowls of hot chocolate and hunting for dresses at my favorite flea markets. Maybe I’d be somewhere I actually wanted to be.

  I tried to focus on that instead of the way I was unraveling from the inside, my molecules breaking apart and rearranging every time I glanced at Jamie.

  “So,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching up. “The question is, are you sure you still want it?”

  We arrived at the torii that marked the entrance to the central area of the shrine. Before we went in, we had to wash our hands and mouths at a fountain, a temizuya. I ladled water into my left hand, then my right, then my left again and rinsed out my mouth.

  “My mom comes here for New Year’s,” I said. “She always e-mails us pictures of the thousands of people waiting in line to get in.”

  “You don’t go with her?”

  I felt a tiny twinge of guilt in my stomach that I quickly suppressed. “Alison and I go to my dad’s for New Year’s. In Paris. She spends it by herself.”

  He nodded. People around us were washing their hands at the temizuya. I’d been to shrines with my mom and for school trips before, but I still worried I would embarrass myself. “I feel so noticeable here,” I whispered. “Do you think we seem like loud, obnoxious gaijin?”

  “First of all,” he said, “you’re currently whispering. And second of all, this is one of the most famous shrines in Japan. We’re not the only foreigners here, I promise.”

  We walked through the torii—bowing as we went—and then we were in the middle of a broad square paved with striated gray stone. The square’s edges were marked with low wooden buildings with slanted green roofs. We were facing a building that was slightly taller than the rest, its roof curled up at the corners. The shrine. Or the outer hall of it, according to Jamie. Groups of people stood in the archways, clapping, bowing, and throwing coins for good luck. More people hovered in the center of the square, taking pictures and consulting guidebooks. Jamie was right. We definitely weren’t the only foreigners there.

  “What should we do?” I asked.

  “We should walk,” Jamie said. “It’s our thing.”

  At the various stalls around the square, you could buy charms, woven amulets that hung from thick, colored string and promised health or safety or success. Jamie tried to read the painted kanji signs that described what each charm was supposed to do. I liked the way he blushed and laughed at himself when he messed up. I liked the way he laughed at himself, period. I thought about David, who strutted and crowed and dragged the spotlight with him wherever he went. Jamie was the kind of person you could talk to all night without getting bored, who was funny in a quiet, observant way. And now that I’d noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it. I couldn’t imagine paying attention to anyone else if he was in the room.

  We came up to a tree with three walls propped around it sitting in the far-right corner of the square. The tree’s branches spilled over the walls, and the walls themselves were covered in hooks with small wooden tablets hanging from them. Hundreds of wooden tablets, all inscribed with handwritten messages.

  We stopped there.

  “They’re called ema,” Jamie said, reading a nearby sign.

  My eyes scanned the tablets. Some had neat vertical rows of kanji on them; others had pictures of flowers or anime characters drawn on.

  “What do they say?” I was half tempted to touch one. There were so many of them, layered on top of one another. Some tablets were hung precariously over the others, their woven threads barely catching the hooks. I wondered if they would drop to the ground, like acorns.

  “They’re wishes,” he said. “Do you want to write one?”

  “What would I say?” I asked.

  “How about ‘I wish I could stay in Tokyo forever’?”

  “Ha. Is that what you’d wish for?”

  He took a breath. “If you did.”

  I turned away, my cheeks burning. I wanted it to be true—it was terrifying how much I wanted it to be true.

  “I’d wish you weren’t moving,” he said, the words tumbling out. “If I could wish for anything.”

  “Jamie.” I couldn’t face him. My ears were ringing.

  “I’d wish I were going to Paris next year,” he said. “I’d wish I’d never gone to boarding school. I’d wish—”

  “Jamie,” I said. “Stop.”

  “Okay.” I felt him take a step back from me. I could hear the letdown in his voice. “I’m sorry.”

  I turned around, and before he could take it back—before the moment could turn to glass and shatter into pieces—I kissed him.

  CHAPTER 23

  THURSDAY

  IT WAS BARELY A KISS. My lips on the corner of his mouth, my hand on his neck. There was a warm pulse against my palm. When his throat moved, I felt it in my skin.

  He stayed still, eyes closed, hands lightly touching my waist. I stepped closer to him, and he brushed the back of his fingers against the bottom of my T-shirt.

  He pulled back, just enough so that our mouths lost contact. But I wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. I grazed my lips against his and held the back of his hair. My breathing had gone all weird and shaky. My heart was beating so loudly, and all I wanted was to kiss him more. To kiss him completely. To press into him, and open my mouth, and feel his whole body move against mine. I leaned forward an inch, and my shirt hiked up at the back—his hands skimmed the surface of my skin. I gasped and jumped out of his grasp.

  “Sorry,” I said. My lips were tingling like crazy.

  “Sorry,” he repeated, his neck turning red. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “No, I didn’t mean—” I wanted to kiss him again, but I was conscious of the fact that we weren’t alone. People were still tossing coins into the shrine. A sudden breeze rustled through the branches of the tree, making the ema clack against one another.

  I grabbed him by the fingertips. We stayed like that for a moment, our hands linked between us like a jump rope. “I just meant, that wasn’t planned,” I said.

  He blushed. “No. I guess not.”

  I studied him. The corners of his mouth, his eyebrows—they were light brown. I took him in, piece by piece. The broken line of his nose, the white spots on the tips of his teeth.

  “Is this okay?” he asked, glancing nervously at our hands. “Do you want me to let go?”

  Instinctively, I stepped forward. Our hands moved together.

  “No,” I whispered. “No thanks.”

  We stayed like that as we walked to see the inner square of the shrine. It was quiet and I felt sleepy. Not tired, but sleepy. Like I was in that moment when you lie down in bed in the dark and everything feels warm and safe.

  We walked back through the sacred forest, back into the gray city. I was waiting for the spell to break, for Jamie to pull away or touch his hair or something. To give me an apologetic shrug. Well, I think we can both agree that that was weird. Am I right?

  But he didn’t.

  We kept walking, past Harajuku and all the way up to Omotesando. The sky was starting to darken. The trees running up and down the dori sparkled in the light from glass shopping centers. It made me think of a thousand twinkle lights. It was the Champs-Élysées in Paris and Fifth Avenu
e in New York all rolled into one. My stomach lurched as I remembered that soon I would be flying toward one of those cities. In fact, the movers were coming tomorrow—

  I dropped Jamie’s hand. “Oh shit!”

  “What?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine.” I dug through the mess of receipts and flyers and purikura in my tote until I found the plastic cardholder with my Suica card inside. “Except it’s not. I have to go. I have to pack. Like, I’m beyond the point of having a choice in the matter.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.”

  “Right.” I hoped I didn’t sound as heartbroken as I felt. I hoped he couldn’t hear the catch in my voice. “I guess I’ll see you around. Tomorrow maybe?”

  “No.” He opened his hands and flexed his fingers. I wanted to grab them again. Or kiss him. Maybe I could kiss him good-bye. Maybe I could kiss him good-bye and start running down the avenue and then we wouldn’t have to deal with a real good-bye later. That was probably the best idea I’d ever had. Bravo, Sophia—

  “I mean, that’s fine. I’ll come with you. I’ll help you pack.”

  I stepped closer to him. “You do not want to help me pack.”

  “Of course I do.” He was smiling. “I’m a great packer, and anyway, what else am I going to do tonight?”

  “Uh. Something that doesn’t suck.”

  “You’re ridiculous.” He wrapped his hand around mine and whispered in my ear, “I’m coming with you.”

  At my front door, I let go of Jamie’s hand again. It was bizarre and sudden—all that space between us.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just, my mom’s probably in there. And my sister. She’d be merciless.”

  The curtains were closed in most of the apartments around us. It was dark but not silent. Someone was listening to a news broadcast. Someone else was practicing a Yann Tiersen song on the piano. Our house had a small front yard closed in by stone walls, and a part of me wanted to stay there, in the dark, with Jamie and the halting city music.

  “No worries,” he said. “My sister would be exactly the same. She hated the last girl I dated. They met over the summer. I think Hannah might have stolen twenty dollars from her wallet.” He paused. “Honestly, I think she’s probably the more delinquent of the two of us.”

  “Oh.” I took my key out of my bag and rubbed my fingers over my plastic panda bear key chain. So I was right. There had been a girlfriend.

  An older woman.

  I wondered if I was in over my head. Five days ago, Jamie had showed up in Tokyo and I’d been convinced he was there just to make my last week miserable. Five days ago, I’d wanted him to get on another plane and leave me alone forever. Five days later, and I didn’t even like it when he wasn’t touching my hand. In some ways, it was wonderful. But another part of me kept freaking out over these really terrifying things.

  Like, for example, what were the chances that Jamie was a virgin?

  I mean, he’d been at boarding school, for Christ’s sake. Boarding school. There are no parents at boarding school. Just unlocked dorm rooms and teenagers marinating in their hormones. And why was I even thinking about this? If I had more time, I probably wouldn’t be. I’d be thinking about practical things, like whether I had any breath mints in my tote. But the week was tightening its grasp on me, and the panic portion of my brain had seriously kicked into gear. Where is this going? Are you going to kiss him again? Are you going to do MORE than kiss him? Don’t you realize how unprepared for this you are, Sofa?!

  “We should go inside,” I blurted, pushing the door open and charging through the genkan. Mom and Alison were in the dining room, and I was almost grateful to see them. Grateful and then—horrified.

  “What the hell!” I gasped.

  The inside of the house had been scraped clean. No more papers and books scattered around the floor, no more stereo or piles of CDs. Instead there were boxes. Boxes stacked against the windows and in towers in the center of the living room. The only things left out were a few fans, some half-melted votive candles, and Alison’s laptop, which was connected to a set of portable speakers playing Joanna Newsom.

  “We packed,” Alison said.

  “You packed everything?” I asked.

  “I came home early,” Mom said. The sleeves of her T-shirt were rolled up to her shoulders, and she was eating sushi and tempura from a lacquer box.

  There were no pillows or throws on the couches, no books on the bookshelves. The ceramic frog we used to prop open the door to the genkan had completely vanished.

  “Where the hell have you been all day?” Alison asked. She wasn’t using chopsticks, just picking up pieces of tempura with her forefinger and thumb. From the pissed-off look on her face, I could tell she was still upset about yesterday. But this was so not the time to deal with that. Not with Jamie standing behind me, frozen like a kid at the edge of a pool, terrified to jump in.

  “I’ve been out with…” I faltered. “I went to get Jamie. He’s helping me pack.”

  Alison crinkled her nose in disdain. “God, why? Are you paying him?”

  Mom lowered her glasses onto the tip of her nose and gave Jamie a once-over. “Hello,” she said. “Do you want sushi? I ordered tons. You two can have sushi, and then you can pack.”

  “I don’t know him,” Alison said. “Do we know him?”

  “He’s Mika’s friend.” Mom shifted in her chair so she was facing us. “You’re back from boarding school, aren’t you?” She seemed surprisingly cool about all this, like maybe she’d been sitting around waiting for me to turn up with a strange blond boy.

  “That’s right,” Jamie said. He reached up to touch a curl at the back of his hair, then let it go. “I flew in with my parents last weekend.”

  “I’m sure Sophia would trade places with you in a second,” Mom said casually enough, but I knew she was thinking of our conversation about Paris. Which made me realize I hadn’t thought about it in hours. Which made me feel totally guilty. “Both of you eat,” Mom said. “Have whatever you want. We’re almost done.”

  “I’m not done.” Alison dunked a deep-fried piece of sweet potato into a plastic container of tempura sauce.

  “I’ll have a little,” Jamie said. “Thanks so much.”

  I figured Jamie and I would sit there and quietly shove a few nigiri into our mouths before escaping upstairs. But Jamie was determined to make conversation. He asked my sister what her major was; he asked Mom if she was looking forward to going back to Rutgers. It was crazy. Maybe this was something his parents had taught him. Chew with your mouth closed. Ask polite questions, and make sure your hosts feel at ease.

  Mom answered his questions, and then she asked him about boarding school. He gave a seemingly straightforward but evasive answer. “I wouldn’t go back. Which is lucky, I guess, because I don’t have to.”

  Alison kept staring at me in this horrified way, like she was trying to send telepathic messages: Oh. My. God. Can’t you make him stop?!

  I’m not sure how long we sat there for. Longer than I wanted to, that’s for sure. My mom and Alison were not easy people. David, for example, avoided them at all costs. But here was Jamie, not avoiding them at all. Treating them like they were guests at a cotillion or something.

  After dinner, Mom said she and Alison were going to take a bunch of garbage bags to the trash spot by the station and buy some more packing tape at the konbini. Before they left, Mom offered us herbal tea and Jamie accepted. As soon as she handed us our mugs (mine had a picture of a cat chasing a mouse on it; Jamie’s said THIS IS MY CUP OF TEA), I jumped up. “We’ll drink these upstairs.”

  Halfway up the stairs, I heard the back door open. At the top, I heard it swing shut. Jamie and I paused. It was quiet, like the house itself had drifted to sleep. We went into my room, and I switched on the lights and closed the door behind us.

  “Before you ask,” I said, “yes, it is always like that.”

  “Like what?”


  I gave him my best oh please expression. “Dial back the southern charm, Colonel Sanders. I’m talking about my mom and Alison and me. We’re like—we’re the three witches in Macbeth.”

  “Huh?” He laughed and shook his head.

  “You know. We’re three moody women who sit around lighting candles and drinking tea.”

  “So?” Jamie hitched his shoulders up. “I like tea. You know what else I like? Incense. And Enya. That song from the first Lord of the Rings movie—I love that song!”

  “You’re defying all kinds of gender norms right now,” I said, smirking a little.

  Jamie looked at the wall behind me. When he spoke, it was with an exaggerated southern accent. “Well, well. Look at that! Big Ghibli fan, huh?”

  I glanced at my Spirited Away poster and Totoro toys. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t blow this out of proportion.”

  Jamie didn’t stop smiling. He walked over to my nightstand and put his mug down. “Do those work?” He pointed up at the twinkle lights on the ceiling.

  I gestured at his feet. “Yeah. That’s the extension cord.”

  He plugged it in, and I turned off the main light. The ceiling began to glow.

  “Cool,” Jamie said.

  I put down my mug and cleared a spot on the floor by my bed. We sat down on my rainbow-patterned throw rug.

  “Is it just me, or is it hot in here?” he asked.

  “What?” I giggled. “What do you mean? Oh, the air conditioner. Yeah, it doesn’t work. Hold on. I’ll open the window.”

  I opened it but kept the curtains closed and sat down again. It was like being trapped in a jar of fireflies. Trapped with a beautiful person who wants to kiss you.

  And he did want to kiss me; of that, I was 100 percent certain. And I wanted to kiss him. That’s why I’d closed the door. That’s why I’d sat with him in the dark. I was creating the optimal make-out environment.

  Creating the optimal make-out environment. I really didn’t know what I was doing. Like, not at all. I wished I could press pause on all this and let myself hyperventilate for a minute. Or call Mika so she could tell me that what I was feeling was perfectly natural and to just go with it. Not that I could call her anymore. Not after our fight this morning. If I’d tried, she probably would have told me to fuck off and leave her best friend Jamie alone.