Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  “Hello?” Alison snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Are you ordering or what?”

  Alison and I ordered two donuts each. She got black coffee, and I got a creamy latte and dumped three sugar syrups into it.

  “Blech,” Alison said when we were sitting down. “This coffee tastes like garbage.”

  “But they give you free refills.” I gestured at the employees in bright yellow shirts who walked briskly between tables, topping off everyone’s cups. I ripped my pink frosted donut into halves and then fourths. I wished I hadn’t let myself think about Mika and David. Now I was obsessing over how much I missed them. How I would never karaoke with them again or go to purikura booths after school or text them nonstop when I stayed home sick.

  I sipped my creamy coffee and tried to concentrate on Jamie instead.

  Alison stared at me. “So. You’re still pissed at me, right?”

  “Nope.” Since I wasn’t wearing my watch, I reached for my cell to check the time. But I didn’t have it anymore. Mom was taking it to the Docomo store to cancel my contract.

  Alison took a bite of her jam donut and chewed. “But you were pissed at me. At Tokyo Tower. You were royally pissed at me.”

  “I’m not pissed at you.” It must have been almost three. Which meant I needed to hurry. I needed to get to Shibuya so I could meet Jamie. So I could hear his voice and touch his skin. Because when I did, I didn’t feel like everything was ending. I didn’t feel the future dragging me toward something I couldn’t control.

  Alison leaned over the table, and a curtain of dark hair dangled near my latte. “Where did you go that night? After Tokyo Tower?”

  I sighed. “Mom told you. I was with Mika.”

  “No,” she said, “you weren’t.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was.”

  Alison frowned. Deeply. “I heard you and Mika in the kitchen yesterday. You guys didn’t sound like you’d just had a fun little slumber party together.”

  I felt a rush of annoyance. “You were listening to us?”

  “God, Sophia. Have you been to our house? I can hear when you freaking breathe.”

  I thought about last night and about Jamie, which made my face blaze all the way up to my forehead. “Look,” I said. “It’s nice that you care. Weird, too, I guess, but nice. Do me one favor, though. In the future, if you find yourself worrying that I’ve locked myself in a public bathroom for the rest of my life or something, call me. Don’t wake Mom up in the middle of the night. Don’t panic her.”

  Alison sat back and made a tsk sound. “You’re not an adult yet. You were acting crazy, and Mom should know when you’re acting crazy.”

  “Well, she does know,” I said. “And that’s why I’m moving to Paris.”

  “Wait… what did you just say?”

  “Yeah. Mom called Dad, and they said I can live in Paris this year. If I want to.”

  Alison didn’t seem fazed. “But you’re not going.”

  “You actually have zero say in this. Zero.”

  “You’re not going,” Alison said. “What the hell, Sophia? You’re not seriously considering this?”

  I shoved two large hunks of pink donut into my mouth. “I have considered it.” I swallowed. “Seriously.”

  “Sophia,” she said, angry now. Angrier. “You can’t do that. You can’t leave Mom alone.”

  “Why not? She already said I should go.”

  “Fuck!” Alison slammed her hand on the yellow tray, making me jump. “Are you kidding me? She’s our mother. You can’t abandon her. Not for someone who walked out on us because he was too French or we weren’t French enough or whatever bullshit reason he had for doing it.”

  “He didn’t…” I shook my head. “He was young. And I know he used to be unreliable, but he’s not like that anymore. He has a family now.”

  “Yeah, the family he wants. A real family.”

  “Stop saying stuff like that!” I shouted and then lowered my voice. “Just stop talking about us like we can be replaced.”

  “Fine.” Alison jabbed the air with her finger. “Then why don’t you go to Paris? Why don’t you go find out how reliable he is? Part of me really wants to watch this whole goddamned scenario go down in flames, to be honest.”

  I bristled. “Why do you always get so bitchy about this? The last time I almost went—”

  “He didn’t want you there! Don’t you get that? He’s the one who decided it wouldn’t work. He’s the one who said you shouldn’t go. Mom didn’t tell you, because she thought it would wreck you.”

  My stomach and chest clenched. It didn’t make sense—Mom had explained why I couldn’t go to Paris then. She’d talked it over with Dad, and they’d decided, together, that I should come to Tokyo instead. “That’s not what happened,” I said.

  “Of course it is! God! Do you have any clue how hard this is? Watching you cling to all these ridiculous ideas of him? You want to think he’s this normal dad to us, but he’s not. And if you go there, you’ll see that. You’ll see how little you matter to him.”

  I dropped my gaze to the table. I couldn’t believe it—I wouldn’t believe any of it. “It isn’t like that,” I insisted.

  “Sophia, I’m begging you,” Alison said, her voice cracking now. “If you go to Paris, he won’t treat you like you belong there. You’re going to get hurt.”

  Confusion engulfed me. I wanted to argue with her but didn’t know how. She was lying. She was saying this to scare me out of going.

  Wasn’t she?

  “Please,” I whispered. “Can we please stop talking about this now?”

  “So when do you want to talk about it?” she shouted, a sob breaking through her words. “When you’re boarding a plane to freaking Paris?!”

  One of the servers carrying coffee stopped short near our table.

  “Don’t do this to us,” Alison said. And now she was crying. My sister was crying. “Please don’t leave us.”

  CHAPTER 26

  FRIDAY

  THE HOTEL HAD A PANORAMIC VIEW OF TOKYO, of gray buildings, red billboards, and a smudgy sky. Alison and I didn’t talk as we dropped our stuff on opposite sides of the room. Probably because everything was broken. Beyond repair. Just beyond everything. My sister hated me, and we were leaving, and this week was catching up with me, grabbing me by the heels.

  Alison snatched a key card and left the room again, the door slamming behind her. I let cranky Dorothea Brooke out of her airplane carrier and raced to the nightstand to pick up the chunky hotel phone. I would call Dad. I would call Dad, and he’d tell me that Alison was wrong.

  But as I held the plastic handset, I felt something tightening the screws of my rib cage, making it harder and harder for me to breathe. I was supposed to have met Jamie—I was supposed to have met him ten minutes ago. The realization hit me, sudden and sharp, but I couldn’t worry about that now. The only thing I could do was push the thought down as far as it would go and sit on the edge of the bed, the phone cord stretching and uncoiling behind me.

  “Allô, Philippe Moignard.” It surprised me to hear him answer in French, but I guess that made sense. It’s not like my number would have popped up on his phone.

  “Dad,” I said. “Hi.”

  “Sophia? Is everything okay?” He sounded harried. I could hear the twins arguing in the background and Sylvie snapping at them. There were other sounds as well—traffic pouring down a busy road, car horns beeping.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I was just calling because—”

  “Is your sister okay? Your mom?” His voice went distant, and he said something else to Sylvie, something in French.

  “Dad,” I said, raising my voice. “Everyone’s fine. Seriously.”

  “Emmanuelle,” he said to my half sister. “Calme-toi.”

  I pulled my legs onto the bed. All that coffee and sugar from Mister Donut was pulsing in my veins. There was a cardboard sign advertising cheap deals to Tokyo Disneyland on the nightstand, and I reached over
to press my thumb into the corner of it.

  “Sorry,” Dad said after a moment. “Maybe we can talk later? We’re on our way to the market, and Emmanuelle says she has a stomachache.”

  “Dad,” I said. “I wanted to tell you something. I wanted to tell you that—that I’ve decided to move to Paris. I know Mom said I should think it over, and I know it’s a big decision, but I have thought it over. Like, a lot. And I wanted to tell you and Sylvie first.”

  Another pause. I heard Emmanuelle’s small voice breaking into a scream, Luc joining her with a scream of his own.

  “We should talk about this later,” he said. “When you’re back in America.”

  His tone was off somehow—more clipped than usual. Something cold and prickly crawled across my skin. “But you have talked about it,” I said. “You talked about it with Mom yesterday.”

  “Sophia.” Dad sounded stern. Almost like Alison actually. “We need to think everything through.”

  Think everything through?! “But. Mom said it was my choice.”

  “Of course,” Dad said. “But it would be a lot of change, yes? You coming here.”

  No, I wanted to say. It would be the opposite of change. It would be the same bakeries and parks I visited every Christmas. The same Metro stops and the same walks along the Seine and the same museums, shoes squeaking on the same glossy floors. It would be the place I’d wanted to live since I was five years old when my dad first explained that he was moving back there.

  But I didn’t say that. He didn’t mean it would be a lot of change for me.

  “Fine,” I said, embarrassment surging through me, making my face and neck feel numb. “Sorry to bug you.”

  Dad said something else—bye, probably—but his voice washed over with static, and the call went dead.

  For a moment, I sat completely still. It was like my vision was shifting. It was like, in that moment, I could see things the way Alison must have. The e-mails he’d send a few times a week that felt rushed and superficial. The phone calls he’d cut short because of the time difference. And excuse after excuse after excuse for why I shouldn’t live there.

  I put the phone back in its cradle. Then I picked it up and slammed it down, hard. Dorothea Brooke bolted out from under the bed and into the bathroom. I stood up and sat down and stood up again. I leaned against the nightstand, wishing I could do something. Wishing I could scream so loud, everyone in the hotel would hear me. Wishing I could find my mom and put my arms around her neck and sob into her shoulders for hours.

  Wishing I could pick up that phone again and smash it to pieces.

  He was my dad. His home was supposed to be my home. I was supposed to just—fit there. Like I was supposed to fit in Tokyo. Like I was supposed to fit with Mika and David. But they’d let me down, too. And I didn’t get to keep Tokyo—I didn’t get to keep any of this.

  So I wasn’t going to try anymore.

  Seconds and minutes and hours came and went. The sun was starting to set, and I was on the floor between the beds. But I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. Or how long I’d been sitting for. There was movement in the hallway, and my heart screeched into my throat. If that was Alison, there was no way I could talk to her. No way I could tell her anything Dad had said. I grabbed the spare key card and ran to the door, desperate to get out before she came in. Desperate to get somewhere I could be entirely alone. I pushed at the door—just as someone started knocking on it.

  “Sophia?”

  “Caroline?” I opened the door and there she was, in a purple tank-top dress and hot-pink flip-flops. Her eyes lit up the second she saw me. “Hey!”

  “What?” I stumbled back, wishing I could impose reason on this seriously unreasonable situation. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh.” She held up her phone. “I texted you.”

  “You texted me?” I shook my head emphatically. “I didn’t get it. I don’t have a cell anymore.”

  “I know. Your mom called when she saw my message. She said she was canceling your phone contract, but she told me where you guys were staying.” She blushed and started fiddling with the strap of her blue-and-white check purse. “Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could go together tonight? I know it’s lame, but I’d feel better if I didn’t show up alone.”

  “Go where?” I asked.

  She cocked her head, confused. “Your good-bye thing. Mika’s birthday. You didn’t forget, did you?”

  My stomach roiled. Oh God. Mika’s birthday. My good-bye thing.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going.”

  “What?!” Caroline stepped into the room. “You have to go! It’s your last night in Tokyo!”

  “Technically, tomorrow night is my last night in Tokyo.”

  “Were you asleep or something? It’s super dark in here.” She was right—the room was growing dimmer by the second. Outside the window, buildings were turning into something bigger and stranger, something with thousands of greedy eyes. She walked toward the lamp in the corner of the room, and I felt my temper fraying. What the hell was she even doing here?

  Why couldn’t I be left alone?!

  She flipped on the light and turned to examine me. “Are you sure everything is okay?” She narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t about David, is it?”

  “Oh God.” I crumpled into the chair by the window. My head was aching, but I wasn’t thinking about David. I was thinking about Jamie.

  About how he must have been waiting for hours.

  About how I’d never tried to contact him.

  And how I didn’t want to.

  “Sophia?”

  I crammed my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt and pressed my forehead into my knees. “Can’t you go by yourself?” I asked. “What does it matter if I’m with you or not?”

  “Are you kidding?” she said. “Of course it matters. You’re, like, my only friend here.”

  My head jerked up.

  “I mean”—Caroline licked her pink, glossy lips—“I have friends in Tennessee and everything. But not here.”

  “I’m your friend?” I asked, and then realized how harsh that sounded. “I mean, of course I’m your friend.” I slumped back and rubbed both hands over my face. “Sorry. I’m having a seriously shitty day.”

  “Yeah.” Caroline sat on the end of my bed. She was being sympathetic and understanding even though she had no idea what had just happened.

  “I was just surprised,” I said. “About the friend thing. It’s just, you’re so—popular.”

  She laughed a little. “What makes you think I’m popular?”

  I pointed at her phone, which she was now clutching in both hands. “You’re always texting people.”

  “Yeah, people in Tennessee. And sometimes I think they just text back out of pity. I don’t really have friends in Tokyo. Well, except for you. You’re kind of my best friend, actually.”

  “Please,” I snorted.

  “No!” she said. “I’m serious! I’ve never had super-close friends. I went to this ginormous public school outside of Nashville, and I was really shy. My only friends were the ones I did tennis and swimming and stuff with. And they kind of treated me like an outsider.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I said, a wave of guilt washing over me for all the times I’d treated her the exact same way. She shrugged, and her cheeks went red. And, much to my surprise, my icy feelings toward her started to soften up.

  Still, she couldn’t possibly think of me as her best friend. I’d always seen Caroline as a character from an American teen movie. The Homecoming Queen. The perfect, pretty popular girl. She was David’s girlfriend, and I was the dorky sidekick she found semi-amusing.

  But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe we had more in common than I’d thought. Both of us lost in huge American schools, both of us wondering if our friends liked us as much as we liked them. And I guess she’d been dating David since she moved to Tokyo a year ago. Which meant I was one of the few people she hung out with on a regu
lar basis. On an everyday basis. Which meant…

  Holy shit. We really were friends.

  And I’d been a bastard to her from the second I met her.

  Caroline said, “I’m not going to miss your last night here because of stupid David. After tonight, we might never see each other again.”

  Someone was walking down the hall, and panic exploded inside of me again. What if it was Alison this time? What if I had to talk to her?

  “Fine,” I said, standing up.

  “Fine?” Caroline stood up as well. “It was that easy?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

  Caroline threw back her shoulders and looked me over. Suddenly, she was the American Homecoming Queen, and all I wanted was to crawl into my bed, to hide under the covers until I had to catch my plane.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You’re giving me a look.”

  “No offense,” she said, crossing her arms, “but if we’re going out, you seriously have to change.”

  Caroline picked out an outfit for me: a black stretchy skirt that I approved of because it covered my still-scabbing knees and a loose blue shirt that was slightly sheer. The shirt, I approved of less. I could kind of see the outline of my bra, which was neon green.

  It was way too much, but whatever, I didn’t care.

  The only thing I cared about was going somewhere crowded—somewhere I could be absorbed into the blare of music and the crush of bodies. Somewhere distinctly not here.

  After I got dressed, Caroline insisted on French braiding my hair.

  “I didn’t even know people still did this,” I said.

  “I love French braiding!” Caroline said. “My sisters and I do it for each other all the time.”

  “I think you and your sisters have a very different relationship from me and my sister,” I muttered.