OK now I’m worried. What’s going on? Tmb
Damn. I should have just sent her a quick text right away. Just said I was at the movies with Elaine and Reggie and Hanh, instead of stressing over hiding the fact that I was there with Caleb. But I didn’t, and now she’s worried. Maybe even suspicious. All this dishonesty is clouding my judgment.
On the other hand, Jamie didn’t exactly post regular bulletins about her activities last night. What was she hiding?
On the other other hand, she did tell me where she was going, and who she was going with. It wasn’t her fault that Kelsey probably planned all along to show up without her parents.
But Jamie could just have refused to go—didn’t she say that Kelsey’s dad was the main reason she agreed to dinner in the first place? If she’d refused, maybe I wouldn’t have felt like she was going to leave me. Maybe I wouldn’t have wondered if I should be with Caleb instead. And it wasn’t like I planned to kiss Caleb. He was planning to kiss me—he said it himself. Like Elaine said, it’s not cheating if (you think) the other person is cheating, too. Right? So none of it was my fault, exactly.
Right?
I’m still locked in a heated debate with myself when my phone rings.
Jamie. Shit. I consider my options.
1. Answer the phone.
2. Ignore the phone.
Answering the phone leaves me with only two options:
a) Tell the truth.
b) Lie.
Whereas ignoring the phone gives me time to:
a) Figure out how to tell the truth.
b) Figure out a plausible lie.
c) Put off dealing with this altogether.
Looks like I’m going to ignore it. I put the phone next to me on the bed and wait for it to stop ringing. When it chimes to tell me that Jamie’s left me a voicemail, I pick it up and listen.
Hey, Sana, where are you? You haven’t been answering your texts, and I’ve been thinking a lot this afternoon, and I’m kinda . . . well. I dunno. Anyway. We really need to talk. I mean, I . . . I really need to talk to you. It’s important. So, yeah, um . . . call me, okay? Or text. Or whatever. Okay, um . . . bye.
Alarm bells start ringing in the back of my head. Why would she “really need” to talk to me? What’s so important? Maybe it’s my conscience talking, but suddenly I’m worried that she knows about me and Caleb, somehow. Or she suspects something. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Mercado was mobbed with people this afternoon. It would have been easy for someone who knew Jamie to have seen us and told her about it. Or . . . I think back to all the phones and all the photos, all the Instagrams and Snapchats, and my heart sinks. I’m done for.
What am I going to do?
For now, I text Jamie:
Hi, sorry I didn’t get back to u—phone totally glitched out today. I can’t talk right now—have to help mom w dinner
We’re talking tomorrow, anyway, right?
Seconds later, she replies.
OK. It’s kinda big so prolly best in person anyway.
Can we hang out at your house, maybe, like after lunch?
Kinda big. Best in person. Please let her not know about me and Caleb. Please let her not have decided she’s better off with Kelsey after all.
I’ll meet u at the bus stop
Miss u
I add three hearts, delete them because they look pathetic (See how much I love you? Please don’t break up with me!), then add them again and tap Send before I can change my mind.
Seconds later, she replies.
OK, see you tomorrow
And even though my own hearts said, “Please don’t break up with me,” her hearts seem to say, “You’re a liar.”
I don’t think I can handle talking or texting with anyone else today, so I put my phone in airplane mode and waste an hour wishing I had something like those magic jewels from the tale of Toyo-tama-himé, the ones that control the tide. Except they’d control time. Then I could go back and not kiss Caleb. Or at the very least, keep tomorrow from coming.
32
TOMORROW’S HERE. I WAKE UP NERVOUS. DAD’S probably waking up with That Woman. Mom’s probably waking up knowing it. Caleb and Jamie are both waking up thinking I’m their girlfriend, and Jamie’s also probably waking up knowing I cheated on her.
What a disaster.
I really need to break things off with Caleb. And Jamie is probably getting ready to come over and break things off with me. The prospect of all of the awful things that have to happen today would keep me pinned to the bed all morning, but shortly after 8:00 a.m., Mom makes me get up because she can’t stand the thought of anyone wasting a single minute of a perfectly serviceable Sunday morning by sleeping in. Mom actually seems a little down—who wouldn’t be, knowing their husband was spending the morning with his mistress?—so after breakfast, to make us both feel better, I suggest we make an apple tart, one of her favorite fall sweets. She smiles, surprised. “Nandé?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Because it’s apple season.”
She makes the crust while I peel the apples. I let her correct me. “Hold like this, oya-yubi koko,” she says, and places my thumb here, in front of the edge of the blade, so I can scooch the knife toward it, spiral around the apple, and cut the peel off in one long strip. I don’t even argue when she grouses, “Every Japanese knows how to peel apple correctly. American schools should teach it. It’s the basic skill.”
By the time the tart is in the oven and everything’s been washed and put away, it’s nearly noon, and Mom’s talking about taking a short break before getting lunch ready. Perfect. Just enough room in my schedule for an awkward, painful conversation with Caleb. Come on, just do it. I go to my room and rehearse a speech: Caleb-you’re-the-best-friend-a-girl-could-ever-have-and-I-really-really-like-you-but-I-don’t-think-I’m-the-right-one-for-you-as-a-girlfriend-I’m-so-sorry. Ugh. It’s awful. But I don’t know what else to say.
I type, Hey, can you talk? and send it.
No response. Two minutes go by. Five. Ten. Finally, the phone chimes.
Sorry, we’re having Family Time. No calls. Ttyl?
Well, I tried. I type, OK, maybe tonight and let relief seep into my body; but it’s expelled and replaced with dread on my very next breath. I put the phone down and wish again for those magic jewels, and that it were tomorrow, already. I wish there was a better way.
After lunch, Mom wants to make tonjiru for dinner, a pork stew with carrots, taro root, daikon, burdock root, ginger, and miso—perfect for fall, and really labor intensive what with all those veggies to peel and chop, so I offer to help. It calms me to think of nothing but chopping vegetables and skimming broth, and after working next to Mom for a while, making something delicious that we’ll both enjoy later, I think I understand a little bit about why she spends so much time cooking.