But I felt okay.
Maybe because Mika’s apartment was so bright and sunlit in the morning, so unlike the ethereal cavern it had been a few hours earlier. The kitchen was flooded with daylight, and I could see construction going on in the building across the street, orange cranes moving around like robots from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I texted my mom to let her know I was up, toasted two thick slices of shokupan, and ate them at the table by the window.
Mika’s parents didn’t care if I ate their food. They liked it, I think. They liked having me over for dinner, anyway, because they were always telling Mika to invite me. Mika’s dad made amazing food: hot soba noodles with an egg cracked on top, hand-rolled sushi stuffed with salmon, tiny strawberry-and-cream cakes for dessert. After dinner, Mika and I would watch TV, and her mom would bring out tortilla chips and homemade guacamole with lots of chopped-up tomatoes and chili peppers in it.
“They really like you,” Mika would say drily. “You’re the daughter they never had.”
I couldn’t say it to Mika, but I really liked her parents, too. I liked how smart they were. Mika’s mom wrote a column about being an American expat for the Japan Times. Her dad was the vice president of a big Asian airline and was constantly jetting off to places like Thailand and China and India. Every time he saw me, he’d lend me a brand-new science book or ask me how my physics class was going. He kind of reminded me of my dad, actually.
It was early, and Mika had slept through both my alarm and hers. According to the schedule tacked to the corkboard above her desk, she was supposed to go on a four-mile run that morning.
“Eff no,” Mika said when I tried to wake her up. “Do you want me to vomit and then die?”
She didn’t look great. Spiky hair flattened against her head, and a weird white crust crystallized at the corners of her mouth. Seeing Mika like that was enough to keep me sober for life.
“Can I borrow some clothes?” I asked. “My stuff smells like an ashtray full of beer.”
“Dude, yeah. Take whatever.”
I grabbed a dress from the bottom of her closet, a grungy plaid one that could have been stolen from the set of My So-Called Life.
There was no time to wash my hair, so I put it in a high ponytail and crammed all my old clothes into my tote. It occurred to me that this might be the last time I ever did this—get ready at Mika’s, borrow her stuff. Her apartment felt like a real home, and I was jealous that she got to stay here, in one place. And I was really jealous that Jamie could just come downstairs whenever he felt like it and hang out in her room.…
I grabbed the Suica card from the bottom of my tote. I had to leave before eight to get to the T-Cad by nine for the last day of my summer job. It sounded quiet outside Mika’s front door, but I looked through the peephole before I opened it. And I sprinted all the way to the train station. Just in case.
The T-Cad was what everyone called the Tokyo International Academy.
It’s an hour outside Tokyo’s city center, in a suburban neighborhood full of little houses and little shops and a train station with only one platform. But the defining feature of the T-Cad neighborhood is definitely the cemetery. To get from the station to the school, I made my way through a cemetery so large and complicated there were maps posted at the entrances.
I could feel heat creeping into the morning air, but I walked slowly because it was the last time I’d be here, wandering down concrete paths that wound between dark green lawns, past graves made of rough gray stones arranged to resemble small houses or temples. There were more flowers lying in front of the graves than usual, I guess because of Obon, the Buddhist festival of the dead. The flowers made the air smell like sweet floral tea. Walking there alone, I could almost trick myself into believing the rest of Tokyo didn’t exist.
“Sophia!”
Well, except for the fact that Caroline was racing up behind me, shouting.
“Hey! Sophia!” She ground her bike to a halt and put both feet down to steady herself. “I knew it was you! Your hair is, like, very recognizable.”
“Hi,” I said.
Caroline lived nearby and worked as a lifeguard at the T-Cad swimming pool, which was open for students during the summer. I sometimes ran into her on the way to work.
“Wow!” she said. “You look exhausted.”
“Do I?”
“Oh my God, yeah!”
Caroline didn’t look exhausted. Which was completely illogical. “What time did you even get up?” I asked.
She pursed her lips, thinking. “Like five-ish? I guess? I went home first so I could shower and get my bike.”
“Jesus,” I said. “How are you awake?”
“Konbini coffee!” Caroline pushed her sunglasses into her hair and smiled a terrifying cheerleader smile.
“Uh-huh.” I started walking and she walked with me, wheeling her perfectly functioning bike beside her. I kicked a stone along the path and silently fumed. I did not want to spend my morning with Caroline Cooper. She was so—blond. And swishy. And she totally wasn’t David’s type, no matter what Jamie said. David made jokes about hating school, but he was smart. I’d seen him sitting at train stations, hunched over paperback copies of Kurt Vonnegut stories and On the Road. He needed someone who appreciated that side of him. Someone who got his jokes.
“What do you tell your parents when you stay over there?” I asked.
“Oh!” Caroline glanced at me self-consciously. “I tell them I’m staying with you.”
“Seriously?” I asked. Christ! Who did this girl she think she was? Had she forgotten that we were not—by any stretch of the imagination—friends? She’d moved to Tokyo a year ago, and we hadn’t so much as been to each other’s houses.
“They think you’re totally great,” she said, as if that was what I’d be worried about.