The poem that Jamie left for me in my locker has me moving through the day in my own personal bubble of happiness. I want to hug myself and spin around every time I think about Jamie, about the way she looked at me, about the poem. And if I did spin around, tiny sparkling stars would come streaming out of my pockets. Everything is ice-cream sundaes and rainbows and Christmas all rolled into one, and most of the time it’s enough to make me forget about Dad and That Woman. When that memory threatens to burst my bubble, I take a peek inside the poetry notebook and immediately feel better. Until one time it occurs to me that the poem could refer to Dad and That Woman, too. Ick. I shove that thought out of my head, out of my bubble. Just concentrate on Jamie’s signature and how it says “Love, J.”
There, that’s better.
After cross-country practice, it’s difficult not to hold Jamie’s hand on the way to my house. It’s really difficult not to fall right onto my bed and start making out the moment my door is shut. Well, let’s be honest. It’s impossible. We spent all of Sunday apart after our first kiss(es) on Saturday—what do you expect?
Eventually—reluctantly—we take a break and get our books out. When I’ve managed to concentrate on my trig homework for almost forty minutes, I reward myself by looking up at Jamie, who is lying on the bed scribbling notes in the margins of The Awakening—another fun nineteenth-century book about adultery. It’s about a woman named Edna who feels trapped in her marriage, and she falls in love with a man who’s not her husband. In the end, she can’t bring herself to subject her family to the scandal it would cause if she were to run away with her lover—but she also can’t bring herself to go back to life the way it used to be. So . . . she drowns herself in the ocean. Cheery stuff. I feel sorry for poor Edna, trapped in a time when women had no choice but to become housewives and have lots of babies. Though I’m mad that she killed herself. I wish she’d fought back. Then I think about what’s okay to do in society today, and what’s still scandalous.
I remember how Jamie started to put her arm around me at the dance.
“Do your friends know? I mean, about. You know.”
Jamie puts her book down. “About you? Or about me?”
“You, I guess.”
“I came out to a few of them this past summer—you know, Christina, Arturo, JJ. A couple others. I was with this girl, Kelsey, from Stanford track camp. But we weren’t together for very long, and I dunno. I didn’t post anything anywhere. I don’t think a lot of other people know. But as long as they don’t give me a hard time about it, I guess I don’t really care who knows.”
“Was Kelsey the one who . . . walked all over you?”
“Yeah. I . . . she was the first girl I ever . . . you know. And she was so, like, experienced. I guess I fell pretty hard, and then she basically punted me when camp was over. She was just playing me the whole time. And I kinda lost it. I was so pathetic, like, ‘Why? What did I do? How can I change?’ Texting, calling . . . ugh.” She shudders. “Christina was so mad at me.”
Christina again. “I don’t think she likes me.”
Jamie exhales slowly. “I know. I wish you guys could get to know each other better. She’s been there for me through everything, and she’s just afraid I’ll get hurt again. I told her it’s not like that with you, but you know.” She shrugs, then takes my hand. “You wouldn’t do that to me, right? You wouldn’t just leave me like that.”
“Never.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Good.” She leans over and kisses me once, twice, three times.
Time for a study break.
After a few minutes, I start worrying about the pile of homework still waiting to be done. I know. I’m so messed up. Feeling guilty about homework makes me think of Mom, and thinking of Mom makes me worried she’ll walk in on us, so I pull away and ask Jamie, “Does your mom know?”
Jamie shakes her head. “Are you kidding me? She would freak if she knew. She’s like old-school Catholic. She’s all ‘strong Latina’ this and ‘independent woman’ that, but I think that underneath she’s pretty old school. Like, she made me promise not to have sex until after I become a doctor and get married.” She giggles. “She’ll probably get that part of her wish even after I get married—if I get married . . . and if you define ‘having sex’ as ‘putting a dick in your you-know-what.’”
I don’t know why, but that makes me blush.
Jamie laughs again, then says, “Maybe I should tell my mom about us. At least she’d stop worrying about me getting pregnant.” She sighs. “Do your parents know?”
“I didn’t even know for sure until you.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hm. And what do you think so far?”
I guess homework can wait a little longer.
A couple of study breaks later, Jamie asks if Mom knows about Dad’s affair. I don’t have a good answer. “I don’t know—it’s not like they’re acting different or anything. They’ve never seemed really close. But I mean, people in Japan don’t like, hug and kiss or say ‘I love you’ to each other, really.”
“That’s messed up,” says Jamie. “I didn’t know Japan was so, like, weird.”
Suddenly I feel a bit defensive. “It’s not like that so much anymore. Plus they’re from the countryside from like, super-traditional families.”
“Huh. Well, anyway. I think you should tell your mom, just in case. Show her that picture. She deserves to know the truth.”
“Yeah, maybe. But she’ll kill me for being out at karaoke.”
“So tell her your friends went out, took the picture, showed it to you, and you recognized your dad.”
“Then she’ll think they’re bad kids and she’ll never let me go out with them again.”
“So hang out with me and my friends.”
“Yeah . . . maybe. I dunno. I don’t want to ditch my friends.”
“Hanging out with my friends doesn’t mean you’re ditching yours.”
“I know, I just—whatever, that’s not the point. The point is I don’t want to tell my mom about my dad. It’ll mess everything up.”
“Like things aren’t gonna get messed up anyway?”
“I know . . . but maybe they won’t. I—it’s been going on for years, now. How am I gonna tell her that? Maybe . . . maybe she’ll figure things out on her own. I mean, it’s her marriage, right?”
“But it’s your family. I know it’s hard, but she’s your mom. You have to stick together. Someone has to tell her, and it’s not gonna be him. She deserves to know. She deserves to have a choice.”
“Yeah, I know she does, but I just . . . I wish I didn’t feel like it was up to me.”
“I know.” Jamie puts her arm around me, and we sit like that, with my head resting on her shoulder, for a long time. It feels even better than everything we’ve done together so far.
After I see Jamie off at the bus stop, I come home almost ready to have a talk with Mom. But not quite. Because how can you ever be ready to tell your mom that your dad is having sex with another woman? I don’t know.
Tonight’s dinner is special, for o-tsukimi, the harvest moon festival. Everything is round, like the full moon. Mom’s making tsukimi-soba—buckwheat noodles with a raw egg cracked on top—chicken meatballs, kabocha with sweet-salty sauce, and daikon, carrots, and taro root boiled in fish broth. She’s even found some fu—tiny starch dumplings to go in the miso soup—that have pictures of rabbits on them, because in Japan, instead of the man in the moon, there’s a rabbit. Mom’s a good cook, and she’s proud of the meal she’s made. I take a photo and text it to Dad, to spite him: