“No.” I let go of my watch. “We always hung out at Mika’s.”
Jamie crossed his arms, and his expression turned cold. “My parents get sort of weird about guests.”
“Okay,” I said. “Does that mean I should leave?”
He shook his head and his eyes softened. “It doesn’t mean that.”
And then we fell into an awkward silence. I tried again to conjure up the things I’d planned on saying—Why did you send that text? Why did you tell me about boarding school? Why are you talking to me, period?!—but he was being so nice. Disturbingly nice. All I could choke out was “Okay.”
“Come on.” He tilted his head toward the hallway. “I’ll give you the tour.”
I followed him, furious at myself for chickening out. And, honestly, a little unnerved by the state of his apartment. It was just so—American. Every room was practically a display case of potpourri bowls and dance trophies and reclining leather armchairs. It was like, if you looked out the window, you might not even see Tokyo.
We stopped by his room, and I stood in the hallway while he rooted through two open suitcases. This was more like Jamie. There was a loft bed covered by a crumpled green comforter and a small framed picture of Japanese calligraphy hanging above the pillow. The walls were lined with built-in shelves crammed with Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and Japanese grammar and kanji workbooks, which reminded me of my own collection of astronomy and physics tomes—stacked on top of one another, spines cracked and worn.
My gaze settled on a framed movie poster hanging on the wall beneath his bed. The image was familiar: a woman’s face superimposed over a sweeping mountainscape, messy hair blowing across her face and one hand clutched to her chest. Across the top, in gargantuan gold font, it read, A CENTURY DIVIDED.
“That’s a—big poster,” I said.
Jamie shrugged and yanked on a pair of black sneakers with red laces. “My mom put it there while I was gone. You should see the one in my grandparents’ house.” He made a face. “Actually, no, you shouldn’t.”
I stepped closer to the room. It smelled like tea and allspice.
“Ready?” Jamie grabbed a blue hat from one of the suitcases and pulled it over his half-dried hair.
“For what exactly?” I asked. Ugh. What was I doing? I wasn’t supposed to be making small talk.
Jamie bit his bottom lip, like he thought I was being cute. “The American Club, unfortunately. Mom has important presidential duties with her International Women’s Group. I have to help for post-expulsion-groveling reasons.”
“Right,” I said.
“You could come?”
I pointed at myself. “Not a member.”
“Ah,” Jamie said. He looked embarrassed, which made me embarrassed, too. Everyone was a member of the American Club except us lower echelons of the T-Cad community. Also, my mom once said she’d rather amputate her own foot than belong to a club where all you do is eat hamburgers and take yoga classes with smug, wealthy expats.
“It’s as pointless as pointless gets,” Jamie said. “All I have to do is fold napkins.”
“I see.”
“But…” He pulled at a loose thread in his hat. “We could walk together?”
I assumed we’d stop at the train station since that was the best way to get to the American Club, but we kept going—mostly in silence—until we reached Kitanomaru-koen, the park that surrounds the Imperial Palace. I’d been there tons of times with Mika. It’s vast and treed and veined with moats. It’s where the sakura bloom in April, where people come to walk under petals that float through the air like origami rain.
Each step I took beat out another syllable of the question I wanted to ask.
Why?
Why?
WHY?
“Check out this moat,” Jamie said, veering toward a metal railing at the side of the path. I sidestepped a group of joggers to catch up with him. There were pastel-blue rowboats bobbing in the water below, but I didn’t want to talk about boats. My heart was pounding so fast, it hurt. I was bracing myself for a leap, for a free fall.
“Why?” I blurted.
“Why?” he asked. “Well, it’s a moat—”
“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to suppress the dizziness washing over me. “Why did you send that text? Is that—is that what you and Mika used to say about me?”
“No. Oh God, no.” He stepped toward me but stopped himself before he got too close. He looked panicked, the way he had three years ago when I’d told him I didn’t care about him. “Mika never said anything like that. I was just mad. Mad that I was leaving and that my parents were sending me to that stupid school and that you were standing there, laughing it up with David. I was so—mad.” He gripped the back of his neck. “I know that’s not an excuse.”
“Of course it’s not,” I said, my voice coming out high and shrill. “What you said—I trusted you, Jamie. We were friends. But you called me desperate. And I used to worry that I was desperate. That I didn’t deserve people like Mika and David and that everyone could see that. And then you sent that text, and it was like you could see that. Even now—even just talking about it—it makes me feel all—” I shook my hands out as if that conveyed something.
“It’s all my fault,” Jamie said. “I’ve thought about that so many times.”
I pushed my hair behind my ears and concentrated on the water. “You have?”
He threaded his hands together and glanced down at them. He was wearing a thin leather band on one wrist I’d never noticed before. “I should have sent you an e-mail or something. I wanted to, but I didn’t think you’d write back.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I wouldn’t have.”