Mom was still at work when I got home, but she texted to say I should order pizza. I hated speaking Japanese on the phone. I couldn’t even gesture—I was completely powerless. I had to ask for toppings that were almost the exact same word in English as they were in Japanese. (Cheezu. Oh! And hamu please. I mean, hamu onegaishimasu.) Alison was in the living room, sitting on the floor going through a box of Mom’s old CDs. She’d put on Scarlet’s Walk by Tori Amos, the one Mom used to play when we were little kids. Back when her hair was longer and she’d burn dinner almost every night. It was right after my dad left.
I sat down in front of my sister. There was a fan going, but it barely shuffled the lethargic air around. I picked up a pile of Bubble Wrap and started popping it.
“Don’t do that,” Alison said.
I popped one in defiance. “I think Dad’s calling tonight.”
“Sure he is.”
“He’s calling from Provence,” I said. “It’s the big vacation month in France, remember?”
She picked out a Cranberries CD and flipped it open so violently the cover flew out. “And I care because? It’s not like I live there.”
I shrugged. We didn’t talk about it much anymore, but four years ago, I almost had lived there—almost moved in with Dad and Sylvie in Paris. It didn’t work out because Sylvie got pregnant with the twins and Mom and Dad thought it would be hard on me, living with newborn babies.
And even though I was glad I’d come to Tokyo and met Mika and David, a part of me still wished I’d ended up in Paris. In a place I could have stayed.
But I didn’t want to get into all that with Alison—not when I was about to start on something way worse. “Question,” I said, rubbing a bubble between my fingers. “If your girlfriend sent you an e-mail right now and said she wanted to talk, what would you do?”
Alison’s head snapped up. She sucked her lips into a thin, pale line. My sister wasn’t one for forgiving, or forgetting. If she knew what Jamie had done, she would have told me cutting him off was the smartest move I could make. She would have told me that no one—no one—deserved a shot at hurting me twice. The room filled with Tori’s piano, with the noise of traffic moving to and from the station, with the Japanese commentary over a sports game playing in someone’s apartment.
“Fuck that,” Alison said finally.
“Right,” I said, and popped two more bubbles.
CHAPTER 9
TUESDAY
THE DOOR TO JAMIE’S APARTMENT looked a lot like the door to Mika’s. Except it said 12A instead of 11A, and there was a straw welcome mat out front with MY HOME IS MILES FROM HERE written on it in a fancy curling script.
I slid my index finger into the space between my watchband and wrist. It was so early. He wouldn’t be awake. Or if he was awake, he’d be doing things. Normal morning things like showering and eating breakfast. I had no idea what I was doing here.
All I knew was what I’d decided last night after I’d talked to my sister. After I’d tried (and failed) to fall asleep in my stuffy room, the windows open, the warm air ballooning with the sounds of the city. I’d stayed up thinking about the week slipping away, imagining it as a fraying rope I was desperately clinging on to. In a few days, I’d be gone and then I’d never have the chance to ask Jamie why he’d sent me that text. Or why he’d never told Mika about our fight. Or why he trusted me not to tell her about boarding school.
I needed to talk to him. But first I had to knock on this door.
The door flung open, and Hannah careened into me. I stumbled back.
“What the hell?” Jamie’s sister staggered back, too. She was carrying a red duffel bag that thunked against the doorframe.
“Hey,” I said. Oh crap. I hadn’t expected this. “Is—uh—is Jamie home?”
She narrowed her eyes. “He’s home. Because he’s sleeping.”
“Of course,” I said, backing up a little. “That makes sense.”
Hannah popped her gum. She was four years younger than I was and athletic and kind of scary. She was always skipping school to go shopping in Kichijoji. Mika and I had seen her once, hopping the fence at the back of the football field. She was the type of person who’d get thrown out of boarding school.
Not Jamie.
“Hey, Hannah. Who are you talking to?” As soon as he came to the door, the floor seemed to spin beneath me. Jamie was the exact opposite of asleep. His hair was damp, and he was wearing a navy-blue T-shirt and jeans worn to white at the knees. When he saw me, his eyebrows shot up.
“Hey!” he said.
“Hey,” I said, steadying myself against a wall. I felt like I might disintegrate. Like confronting him was an idea that only made sense at two in the morning, when I was hot and sleep deprived and delirious.
Hannah snapped her gum again. “I’m going to the American Club. I’ve got dance rehearsal, and Mom’s setting up her boring lunch thing. She took Alex, too. You coming?”
He turned to her and my resolve collapsed even further, a weight towing down through my stomach.
“Later,” he said. “I need to get dressed.”
“You are dressed,” she said.
“I need to put on shoes.”
“Shoes?”
“Yeah.” He gave her a pointed look. “Both of them.”
“Okay.” She rolled her eyes and pulled a pair of large purple headphones over her ears. “Don’t take forever. Mom says you have to be there before ten.” She shoved past me and walked toward the elevators.
Jamie held on to both sides of the doorframe and pushed himself forward. “Do you want to come in?”
“I can’t,” I said, my shoulder still pressed against the wall.
He laughed. “Are you a vampire? I already said you could come in. So we’re cool.”
“No. That’s not—” I gestured behind me, at the elevators. “I thought you had to leave.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Nah. Not for another minute, at least. Come in.”
He stepped back. And this was it. The moment where I followed him or turned around. I could go forth into the apartment and confront him exactly the way I’d planned, or I could run away. Like a crazy person.
I walked into the genkan and stepped out of my shoes. It was weird because I could hear the same construction noises I’d heard in Mika’s apartment the day before. She might have been below my feet at that very moment. Maybe right below them, lacing up her sneakers and getting ready for a run.
I slid my finger back under my watch.
“You’ve never been here before,” Jamie said.