“God, Sophia, I’m trying to be meaningful here.”
Dad used to take us to Tokyo Tower when we were kids, on rainy days when we were bored and antsy. It’s one of the few memories I have of the first five years of my life, when we all lived on the same continent together like an actual human family. He liked Tokyo Tower because it was modeled after the Eiffel Tower. Alison and I liked it because it was painted bright orange. We’d never been to Paris back then, and Dad used to describe it to us in detail. Cars whizzing around the Arc de Triomphe, gold statues of men on horses, bridges draped regally over a wide, curving river.
It was strange that Alison had chosen a place that reminded me—that reminded both of us—of Dad. But there we were, waiting in line for an elevator to take us to the observation deck. There were a decent number of people in line with us. Most of them tourists.
“Have you talked to Dad recently?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, rolling the sleeves of her hoodie up to her elbows. “We talk every night. He reads me bedtime stories, and I call him if I have nightmares.”
“Don’t be so hard on him.” I pulled my cardigan around my stomach.
We got in an elevator. A woman wearing a navy-blue uniform held the door and bowed as we walked in. I smiled awkwardly and bowed back. There were long windows in the elevator, so we could see the inner workings of the tower as we rode up. It was like being inside an orange spiderweb.
“Have you talked to him?” Alison asked.
“No,” I admitted. “He didn’t call the other night. There’s probably no phone service at the vacation house.”
“Sure there isn’t. And I bet there’s no Wi-Fi, either. Or a landline.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said.
“Fine,” she said. “Me neither.”
She sounded relieved. So was I. Alison and I couldn’t talk about Dad—all it did was make us fight.
The windows in the observation deck were everywhere, forming a huge circle, a 360-degree view. There was a small glass panel in the floor where you could stand and stare at a very distant slab of sidewalk. A girl in high heels wobbled tentatively over it and clung to her boyfriend’s arm while he laughed.
Alison and I stopped at a computer where you could bring up detailed pictures of the view. She tapped the screen a few times, then got bored. “All of this can be seen on Google Maps,” she said. “We didn’t have to go outside.”
“Whatever you say, Howard Hughes.”
She twisted her lips to the side. “How did you even make that reference?”
I shrugged. “Mika has a thing for young Leonardo DiCaprio.”
I crossed my arms again and held my stomach tighter. The thought of Mika made my insides squirm.
“It used to be more impressive.” Alison leaned toward the window so that her nose almost touched the glass. The city was saturated with buildings that were white and gray and brown with miniature streets gridded between and toy trees filling the gaps. A rainy haze gave everything indistinct edges.
“This place is mediocre since the Skytree opened,” I said. “It’s, like, twice this height.”
“I can’t believe we paid for a mediocre tower,” Alison said. “Let’s at least eat something.”
There was a café one level below, where Alison got coffee and french fries and I got an ice-cream sundae. We didn’t really talk once we were sitting and eating.
If David and Mika were here, we’d watch the people in line and try to guess what they’d order. David would kick me under the table and raise his eyebrows when I kicked him back. If David and Mika were here…
But then I remembered that particular “if” was impossible. A non-if. Tears pounded behind my eyes. I dropped my lipstick-stained spoon back into my bowl.
“Goddamn it,” Alison said. “Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Like hell it didn’t.” Alison stabbed the air with a french fry. “You’re moping all over your ice cream. You look like crap.”
“I look like crap? You’re really going to lead with that?”
She fixed me with her most resolute stare, daring me to blink first. “You were fine yesterday, but today you’re falling apart at the seams. Elaborate.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened to you?”
She blinked. “This isn’t about me.”
“Really?” I balled up a napkin in my lap. “You spend all summer being Girl, Interrupted, and this isn’t about you? You get a free pass from talking about your shit?”
Alison sat back. “This is about you. I took you out. I’m making an effort.”
“So make an effort,” I said. “Tell me what happened with your girlfriend. Or tell Mom, at least. Do you even realize how much she worries about you? You completely cut us off!”
She crossed her legs, one foot banging the underside of the table. “I did not.”
“Please,” I spat. “What about your friends at the T-Cad? What about Dad? You cut people off all the goddamned time.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Just back off, okay? We can’t all live in naive little Sophia World. Sometimes you leave people, and then you move on.”
I laughed, but it came out harsh. “Because look at you. Moving on like a champion.”
“At least I know when to let go. God, have you seen yourself recently? You idolize Dad even though he abandoned us. Which is pretty much the number one thing a parent isn’t supposed to do. And! You wear that ridiculous watch like you’re still a—”
“A kid?” And now I was shouting. Loud enough that the two women having lunch at the next table flinched. “I’m still a kid? Because I don’t want to lose everyone who loves me? Because I don’t want to spend my whole fucking life finding people and then moving on from them?!”