Seven Days of You

by Cecilia Vinesse

  “Were you just going to move to New Jersey and never tell me about you and Jamie?”

  I held the onigiri halfway to my mouth. “That’s—an interesting question.”

  “Damn straight it is.”

  I put down the onigiri, weighing how to respond. “Technically, though, I could ask you the same thing. I mean, if everything hadn’t been inadvertently revealed in the most dramatic way possible, would you have told me about you and David?”

  Mika chewed. She seemed pretty run-down, dressed in the same clothes as last night with heavy black makeup tracks around her eyes. “That’s different,” she said. “We were dumb and pointless. And I would have definitely told you if I was in love with him.”

  My eyes widened. “I’m not in love with anyone.”

  Mika brooded over something for a minute. She was acting so neutral, I couldn’t tell what she actually thought about all this. “Whatever. I’m not going to argue with you. But if you can’t see that Jamie’s in love with you, you are pretty freaking dumb.”

  “Did he say that?” I whispered.

  “No!” she said. “No one tells me shit. But the two of you are so pathetically transparent. Every time he called me for the last three years, he asked about you. Every time I mentioned him in front of you, you got all awkward and blushy. Yes! See! Just like that!”

  I picked a loose piece of rice off my onigiri. Everything that had happened with Jamie had felt so secret. “How much do you know?” I asked.

  She sighed. “I tried to ask him about it the other day, but he was all doofy and vague. I know he likes you. And I know you two have been, like, making out on street corners all week. And I know you had a big blowout yesterday.”

  My stomach jolted. “How do you know all that?”

  Her expression turned solemn. “I seriously hope you don’t envision a lucrative career with the CIA.”

  Mika opened her bottle of iced coffee. The plastic bag sitting on the table between us rustled in the wind. Even though I knew it was my last day here, I still couldn’t believe it. The air was lighter than it had been all week. I could have sat outside for hours, the day going on and on with no end in sight.

  But of course, it was going to end. Just like Jamie and I had. My brain must have been on some kind of demented autopilot because it kept steering me straight back to him. To the heartbreak and the certainty and his don’t talk to me. My stomach jolted again. “Do you want to walk? I feel like walking.”

  We gathered the food and coffee and went down almost the exact same paths Jamie and I had run down on Tuesday. Except they were more crowded now. People knocked into my shoulders or hustled me forward in their vigor to get through the park. Two little girls sprinted past us, their laughter floating back on the breeze. I watched them, and it made the pounding in my head grow stronger. The sun was uncomfortably hot, and the symptoms of my post-alcohol consumption came back in full force. I took Mika by the forearm and led her toward the shade of a tree.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I should tell you something,” I said. “But you already know. But, whatever. This is the kind of stuff I need to say out loud.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I really like Jamie,” I said in one breath. “I have for, like, a long time. And the only reason I didn’t want him to come back to Tokyo was because, right before he left, he told me I was always throwing myself at David, and then I yelled at him and—”

  “Hold up,” Mika said. “He said that?”

  “Actually, he texted it. And he meant to text it to you. I always figured that’s how you guys talked about me when I wasn’t around.”

  “Sophia. Of course we didn’t. He was probably being a shit because he was jealous.”

  I nudged a patch of grass with my foot. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore. Not now that I’m leaving and I kissed David and—I know I hurt him. I hurt Jamie. Which means that he hates me and you hate me and that’s why I can’t e-mail him.”

  Mika’s eyes swept over me, evaluating me. “Trust me, it would make a difference.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I do. Jamie likes you, more than he likes most people. Just cut the self-pity act and be nice. God, if you knew how weird things were with his family right now…”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling even more sick. “He told me.”

  Mika scowled. She twisted the cap of her bottle off and then on again. “Well, I’m glad he talks to someone about it. He doesn’t to me, but I know things have been screwed up all year. I overheard his parents fighting in the lobby the other day, about keeping his birth mom away from him.”

  “What?” I asked. Why hadn’t he mentioned that?

  Mika scratched her ear. “He was miserable every time we Skyped. The only thing that cheered him the fuck up was moving here. And don’t kill me for saying it, but he seemed seriously relieved when he found out he was coming back before you left.”

  Thinking about that made everything hurt even worse. Jamie had cared about me. He’d kept caring about me—until I’d shoved him aside as violently as I possibly could. “God,” I said. “I am actually a horrible person.”

  “You are not.” She pointed at me with her plastic bottle. “But you should see him. Today.”

  My head was swimming with too much information. I sat down, my back pressed against the tree trunk. She slid down next to me so we were shoulder to shoulder.

  “Why do you want me to see him?” I asked, closing my eyes. “I was so pissed at you for lying about David. You’re allowed to be pissed about this.”

  “Dude, I’m not. I totally knew the you-and-Jamie thing would happen. You realize I’ve had three years to get used to your long-distance mooning, right?”

  “But you’re mad at me about something,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

  There was a silence. A tentative one. I opened my eyes, and Mika was staring at her shoes, blushing.

  “The thing is,” she said, “it really sucks that you’re moving, okay? But you know what else sucks? Staying. Like, I’ve been meeting new people and saying good-bye to them since freaking kindergarten. They always go somewhere new and get new lives and forget about me, and it’s the goddamned worst.”

  Mika sounded vulnerable. The opposite of how she’d been all week, surly and defensive toward me. I’d assumed that had been about Jamie and David. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was trying to protect herself from losing something as well.

  “And you know what else?” she said, sitting up taller. “I don’t even know if I’d be friends with dweeby Jamie if we hadn’t lived in the same place for so long. But you’re—you’re really important. So I don’t care about you and Jamie. I don’t care if you get married and have weird curly-haired babies and live in a castle in France or whatever. Just—don’t forget about me, okay?”

  “Of course not,” I said and grabbed her wrist. Because maybe our friendship wasn’t perfect, and maybe we were both a little damaged for it, but she’d always been there for me. And I wasn’t about to let that go. “I’m really going to miss you.”

  She was attempting to be nonchalant, but her eyes wavered. Mika didn’t have the same emotional face as Jamie, but I could read it now. “Whatever. But forget about me, bitch, and I will haunt your dreams.”

  I pushed her shoulder teasingly. She fell over, sat up, and pushed mine back.

  “Hey,” I said. “If I ever live in a castle in France, you can totally have your own tower or something.”

  She paused, and then smiled. The most beautiful, genuine Mika smile I’d ever seen. “Deal,” she said, sticking her hand out to shake mine. “But only if it has a fucking moat.”

  We walked back to the hotel and stood in the lobby, swaying in the air-conditioning. Mika had to go home. She was meeting some cross-country kids for a pre-season run, and then she was busy all afternoon. “My parents are making me write sample college essays,” she said. “Because this is adulthood, apparently.”

  As
soon as she was through the sliding glass door of the hotel, she turned around, came back, and hugged me. She buried her head in my neck, and I felt her take a long, unsteady breath. When she pulled away, there were tears in her eyes. And I was crying, too.

  “Okay, okay.” She lifted the collar of her shirt to wipe her face. “People can see this. We’re in broad daylight.”

  I took the elevator up to my room, threw open the curtains, and collapsed onto the unmade bed.

  CHAPTER 31

  SATURDAY

  ALISON WAS SITTING ON THE OTHER BED. She had her legs crossed and was bouncing them up and down. There was a pair of sunglasses tangled in her hair, and she was wearing my favorite pair of her shoes—red lace-ups with crosshatch stitching on both sides.

  How long had she been there? Had I been asleep?

  “I hope you’ve been drinking water,” she said. “And I hope you haven’t been sleeping this whole time.”

  I pulled the sheet around my shoulders like a cape. Dorothea Brooke was on the floor, drinking from her travel bowl. I reached over to scratch her back. “I’m not sleeping,” I said. “I’m hungover.”

  “This is unhealthy,” she said. “You need sunlight, and you need open spaces.”

  “I’m not a plant.”

  “Get up,” she said, still bouncing her leg. “This is important.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this all of a sudden? Why are you trying to expose me to life? Expose yourself to life, you big hypocrite.”

  “I found somewhere you need to go.” She was standing now and pacing the aisle between our beds. Something was wrong. There was sweat around her hairline and on her shirt.

  I hoisted myself onto my elbows. “Have you been exercising?”

  She dumped my flip-flops in front of me. “Sophia.”

  I sighed. “Come on. I’m exhausted and sad. Can’t you just let me feel sorry for myself?”

  Alison kicked the bed frame lightly. “This is important.”

  “Sleeping during the day is bad for you,” Alison said as the glass door of the hotel swept open. She put on her trusty pair of sunglasses.

  “Ha!” I said. “You’re such a—”

  In the almost blinding sunlight outside the hotel, I saw a boy. A boy wearing a slouchy knitted cap, bending over to get something from a backpack.

  It was him.

  It was him, and I was going to run the hell away.

  It was him, and I was going to eat a mint because my breath was probably terrible.

  It was him, and I was going to tell him I was sorry, and then I was going to fade into the mists of time forever.

  But it wasn’t him.

  I exhaled and fell against Alison’s side. She shouldered me off. “For God’s sake. Don’t swoon all over me.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, glancing in the direction of the slouchy-hatted boy. He wasn’t really a boy. He was probably in his twenties, older than Jamie. Taller, too, and he had an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. In my semi-dazed state, I might have stayed there longer, forcing myself to accept the definitive proof that this person—a backpacker probably, a tourist—wasn’t Jamie. But Alison was already clipping down the street away from me. I had to jog to catch up with her.

  We headed through the Imperial Palace grounds and kept right on going toward Iidabashi. The air was crisp, and it didn’t really seem like summer anymore. The sun was sitting lower in the sky, and the light had turned almost golden.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, hopping a little to keep up with Alison.

  “So far,” she said, “we’re just walking.”

  “The last time you and I walked somewhere together, it did not end well.”

  The light at a pedestrian crossing turned red, giving Alison no choice but to break her stride. “That’s because you refused to tell me what’s been happening with you and your gang of miscreants.”

  She had a point. “Do you want to me to tell you about my gang of miscreants now?” I asked.

  The light turned green.

  “Well, we’re still walking,” she said.

  I told Alison about Jamie. And about Mika and David. I told her about staying in Shibuya all night and about getting drunk and letting David kiss me. I told her how awful it was knowing you would miss someone but knowing that all your missing would get sucked into a vacuum because, once you left, the person you cared about wouldn’t be a complete, genuine person anymore. Just a blurred, inconsistent memory.

  Saying it out loud made me feel crazy. It also made me feel like I was standing on the glass floor in Tokyo Tower, mentally rehearsing what would happen if the transparent platform dissolved away. And it also made me feel okay. A little less alone.

  We turned onto a narrow street lined with trees and apartment buildings. Alison stopped and I stopped, too.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Alison said. “Except. This is it.” She lifted one hand and made a halfhearted flourishing gesture. A deadpan ta-da.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The place,” she said. “The apartment.”

  “The apartment?”

  Alison took me by the shoulders and pointed me at a squat brick building behind us. It had black metal balconies on every floor and a parking lot tucked to the side.

  “Third story,” she said, tilting my chin up. “The apartment we lived in with Dad.”

  It didn’t seem like much. The innocuous black balcony was crowded with plants and a couple of red plastic chairs. There was a sliding glass door behind the chairs, but the glass was reflective. I couldn’t see inside.

  “Are you joking?” I asked.

  Alison shook her head.

  The apartment we’d lived in with Dad, the first time we lived in Tokyo. I’d figured it still existed, of course, but I’d never been back. Because it was too distant and awkward and way too weird. Plus, I’d had no idea where it was.

  I turned on Alison, suddenly and inexplicably furious with her. “How long did you know this was here?”

  Alison shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I made Mom take me this morning. I didn’t think she’d want to, but she was oddly at peace with the whole thing.”

  I scrambled for something to say, but everything I thought of was wrong. Maybe I could try to make myself feel the way I’d felt the last time I was here. But that was impossible; I’d been five then. And this building could have been any random apartment building in any random part of the world.

  “This is not what I expected,” I said.

  Alison sighed. “I know. I remember it being taller.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  A woman came out of the parking lot. She had bobbed hair and was talking on a cell phone in French. The French school was near here, I realized. This was the neighborhood where all the French expats lived.

  “I figured you should see it,” Alison said. “You know, before we leave forever.”

  “Well.” I folded my arms over my stomach. “There it is.”

  “Come on,” she said. “We’re here. We might as well check out the front door.”

  Together, we walked into the parking lot. And that was when I remembered the day it snowed and Dad took us down here. I’d pulled the snow off car windows with my hands while Mom took pictures from the balcony. I remembered unbuckling my seat belt and running out of the car and Dad catching up to me, yelling. I cried so hard that Alison yelled back at him, in French.

  That same parking lot was so much smaller than I remembered. Only six or so spaces with a few trees clustered at the edges. The building itself was five stories tall and made of orange-red brick. The front door had a cast-iron handle attached to it that used to be too heavy for me to pull by myself. Dad would open the door with me, all four of our hands holding on tight.

  I pressed my palms against my temples. “How have I never been here?”

  Alison sat down on the curb. “Because it’s depressing.”

>   “It’s surreal,” I said. “And it’s nothing at all like I remember. Where’s the Thai restaurant across the street?”

  Alison dipped her head and gave me a confused look over the top of her sunglasses. “The Thai restaurant? You mean the one with the lanterns?”

  I nodded.

  She pushed her sunglasses back up. “That was in New Jersey. Across from the first rental house.”

  “Really?” I sat next to her and traced a small scab on my knee with my thumb. This all felt so strange. And wrong, like trying to pull on a jacket I hadn’t worn since preschool. “So I should probably mention that you were right,” I blurted.

  “About the restaurant?”

  “No.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “About Dad. I called him yesterday to ask if I should come to Paris and he reacted—exactly the way you said he would.”

  A check-mark-shaped crease appeared on Alison’s forehead. I waited to see what she’d do. Gloat, maybe. Or give me a lecture. About betrayal and lost childhood and Sylvia Plath or something. I braced myself for it.

  “You know the girl who broke up with me last year?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, surprised. “Of course I don’t. You never talk about her.”

  “Well, shut up, then. Because I’m talking about her now.” She tilted her head back and sighed. Her hair was so long, it brushed the sidewalk. “The girl in question was named Cate. She broke up with me because she had another girlfriend. An ex-girlfriend at some bumblefuck university in Indiana.”

  I took off my sunglasses and played with the earpieces. Music was blasting out of an open window above us, something yelly and French. “So they weren’t really broken up?”

  “Nominally,” she said. “Nominally, they were broken up. But they spent the whole year talking to each other and thinking about each other, and they were in love. That’s how Cate explained it—they were so in love.”

  I wanted to hug my sister, but I knew she would kill me. So I just put my hand on the slab of sidewalk between us. “Do you want me to beat her up for you?”