“Fine. Whatever.” My feet were drowning in my shoes, and my clothes were suctioned to my skin, but I could barely feel it. I could barely feel any of it.
“Here.” He shoved something at me. It was a candy bar, one of the Meiji milk-chocolate ones with the strawberry center. “This was in the pile of stuff Mika and I bought. I grabbed it for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry it’s kind of wet.”
It was wet. The cardboard wrapper was so soggy, I thought it might disintegrate.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to the train station. You realize you’re going in the wrong direction, right?”
“I know where I’m going.”
“Sophia?” He put both hands on my shoulders, and I blinked, surprised. It was strange that Mika and David were gone but that Jamie was here. Standing close enough that I could see his freckles and the green in his eyes. Their gold and brown flecks reminded me of calligraphy strokes. “Please try to think clearly,” he said. “You’re freaking me out a little.”
“You don’t get it.” I squeezed the chocolate bar in both hands. “I knew this was going to happen. I knew I was going to lose them. But not”—my voice went hoarse—“not like this.”
His face filled with pity. “It’s okay,” he said. “We all build someone up in our heads. We all fall for someone who hurts us.”
“Is that what you did? Did you build Mika up in your head? Did Mika hurt you?”
“What?” He let go of my shoulders and took a step back. “Do you think I have a crush on Mika?”
“Please,” I said. “Everyone knows you do.”
“And by ‘everyone,’ you mean?”
“Me,” I said. “David. And also Caroline.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“You know what?” I waved the chocolate bar menacingly at his face. “I don’t care. I don’t want a detailed report on your feelings for Mika. They are what they are, and that’s fine. But are you really telling me you don’t have a problem with the fact that David and Mika have been sleeping together? Sleeping together?”
His tone was firm. “I’m telling you I don’t have a crush on Mika.”
“Well, why NOT? What’s wrong with Mika?” Now I was yelling.
“Nothing.” He pushed his hands all the way through his now soaking-wet hair. “Why are you mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you.”
He crossed his arms. “Bullshit.”
“I’m not mad at you! You’re harmless. You—you bring me candy.”
“Which you should eat, by the way,” he said. “It might make you feel better.”
“Stop being nice!” I snapped. “You’re making it difficult for me to express my rage.”
“Seriously. I don’t mind. Express away.”
He sounded so earnest, it jolted me out of my anger. I wiped the mess of rain and tears from my face. “No,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He started pacing. “Yeah, I did. I’m a total jackass. And I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I chased you out here. Tonight and—and that other time. I’m sorry I was such a dick about you and David. I’m sorry I made you not want to talk to me for the last three years.”
“It’s fine, Jamie. Seriously.”
He stopped pacing and stood in front of me again. His eyes were pleading, and his cheeks were flushed. I wondered if his neck felt warm. I wondered why I was wondering that. “It’s really not,” he said. “I was pissed off because I thought you had a crush on David and that I was just some little dweeb you put up with because you had to. And then I sent that text, and it was all downhill from there because I went to boarding school, and then I got kicked out.”
“How?” I asked. “How could you get kicked out? It just doesn’t seem possible.”
He sighed. “I got kicked out because I failed a couple of my classes. I failed most of my classes. And I did that because I’ve been fucking miserable for the last three years. Here’s my summary of the last three years: They were the worst. And I’m sorry, all right? I really am sorry.”
I could feel tears tracking down my cheeks again, the warmth of them dissipating in the cool rain. “But you were right. I did flirt with David. I was pathetic.”
“Yeah, you definitely weren’t.” He nudged my hand with his. “Please. At least eat this. It’s gonna melt.”
I ripped back the cardboard and foil on the candy bar and broke off a piece. It did taste good. Like fake strawberry. Like the past four years in Japan.
“Is it true?” I asked. “What David said?”
He paused. “About me being adopted?”
I nodded.
He glanced down and scuffed the ground with his toe. “Yeah. That’s true.”
“How did David know?”
Jamie shrugged. “Mika must have told him.”
“She never told me.”
He shrugged again. I broke off another piece of chocolate and shoved it into his open hand. For a moment, the rest of the night felt vague, smudgy and uncertain compared with the vividness of my fingers on his wrist, of the rain falling between us, steady as a pulse.
“Jamie,” I said, my hand still on top of his. “I think we should catch our train.”
“Junior fucking year.” Mika scrunches a plastic wrapper in her hands. “Well, this is gonna be a whirlpool of misery.”
We’re hanging out on the steps of the T-Cad station, eating breakfast and killing the last ten minutes of summer vacation.
David brought his new road bike, and he’s riding it up and down the street.
“Bullshit!” he yells. “Two more years and we’re out of here, kids.”
“One more year for me,” I say. I’m ripping my melon bread into pieces, dividing the parts with crystallized sugar on top from the ones without.
“Ugh,” Mika scowls. “First Jamie, now you. You’re all going to leave me alone with that asshole.”
“You shut your dirty mouth,” David says and turns the bike.
“We have to take the SATs this year,” she says. “And my parents are making me take five goddamned AP classes.”
“You should have my parents,” David says. “They don’t give a crap.”
Mika flips him off.