I mean, he’d been at boarding school, for Christ’s sake. Boarding school. There are no parents at boarding school. Just unlocked dorm rooms and teenagers marinating in their hormones. And why was I even thinking about this? If I had more time, I probably wouldn’t be. I’d be thinking about practical things, like whether I had any breath mints in my tote. But the week was tightening its grasp on me, and the panic portion of my brain had seriously kicked into gear. Where is this going? Are you going to kiss him again? Are you going to do MORE than kiss him? Don’t you realize how unprepared for this you are, Sofa?!
“We should go inside,” I blurted, pushing the door open and charging through the genkan. Mom and Alison were in the dining room, and I was almost grateful to see them. Grateful and then—horrified.
“What the hell!” I gasped.
The inside of the house had been scraped clean. No more papers and books scattered around the floor, no more stereo or piles of CDs. Instead there were boxes. Boxes stacked against the windows and in towers in the center of the living room. The only things left out were a few fans, some half-melted votive candles, and Alison’s laptop, which was connected to a set of portable speakers playing Joanna Newsom.
“We packed,” Alison said.
“You packed everything?” I asked.
“I came home early,” Mom said. The sleeves of her T-shirt were rolled up to her shoulders, and she was eating sushi and tempura from a lacquer box.
There were no pillows or throws on the couches, no books on the bookshelves. The ceramic frog we used to prop open the door to the genkan had completely vanished.
“Where the hell have you been all day?” Alison asked. She wasn’t using chopsticks, just picking up pieces of tempura with her forefinger and thumb. From the pissed-off look on her face, I could tell she was still upset about yesterday. But this was so not the time to deal with that. Not with Jamie standing behind me, frozen like a kid at the edge of a pool, terrified to jump in.
“I’ve been out with…” I faltered. “I went to get Jamie. He’s helping me pack.”
Alison crinkled her nose in disdain. “God, why? Are you paying him?”
Mom lowered her glasses onto the tip of her nose and gave Jamie a once-over. “Hello,” she said. “Do you want sushi? I ordered tons. You two can have sushi, and then you can pack.”
“I don’t know him,” Alison said. “Do we know him?”
“He’s Mika’s friend.” Mom shifted in her chair so she was facing us. “You’re back from boarding school, aren’t you?” She seemed surprisingly cool about all this, like maybe she’d been sitting around waiting for me to turn up with a strange blond boy.
“That’s right,” Jamie said. He reached up to touch a curl at the back of his hair, then let it go. “I flew in with my parents last weekend.”
“I’m sure Sophia would trade places with you in a second,” Mom said casually enough, but I knew she was thinking of our conversation about Paris. Which made me realize I hadn’t thought about it in hours. Which made me feel totally guilty. “Both of you eat,” Mom said. “Have whatever you want. We’re almost done.”
“I’m not done.” Alison dunked a deep-fried piece of sweet potato into a plastic container of tempura sauce.
“I’ll have a little,” Jamie said. “Thanks so much.”
I figured Jamie and I would sit there and quietly shove a few nigiri into our mouths before escaping upstairs. But Jamie was determined to make conversation. He asked my sister what her major was; he asked Mom if she was looking forward to going back to Rutgers. It was crazy. Maybe this was something his parents had taught him. Chew with your mouth closed. Ask polite questions, and make sure your hosts feel at ease.
Mom answered his questions, and then she asked him about boarding school. He gave a seemingly straightforward but evasive answer. “I wouldn’t go back. Which is lucky, I guess, because I don’t have to.”
Alison kept staring at me in this horrified way, like she was trying to send telepathic messages: Oh. My. God. Can’t you make him stop?!
I’m not sure how long we sat there for. Longer than I wanted to, that’s for sure. My mom and Alison were not easy people. David, for example, avoided them at all costs. But here was Jamie, not avoiding them at all. Treating them like they were guests at a cotillion or something.
After dinner, Mom said she and Alison were going to take a bunch of garbage bags to the trash spot by the station and buy some more packing tape at the konbini. Before they left, Mom offered us herbal tea and Jamie accepted. As soon as she handed us our mugs (mine had a picture of a cat chasing a mouse on it; Jamie’s said THIS IS MY CUP OF TEA), I jumped up. “We’ll drink these upstairs.”
Halfway up the stairs, I heard the back door open. At the top, I heard it swing shut. Jamie and I paused. It was quiet, like the house itself had drifted to sleep. We went into my room, and I switched on the lights and closed the door behind us.
“Before you ask,” I said, “yes, it is always like that.”
“Like what?”
I gave him my best oh please expression. “Dial back the southern charm, Colonel Sanders. I’m talking about my mom and Alison and me. We’re like—we’re the three witches in Macbeth.”
“Huh?” He laughed and shook his head.
“You know. We’re three moody women who sit around lighting candles and drinking tea.”
“So?” Jamie hitched his shoulders up. “I like tea. You know what else I like? Incense. And Enya. That song from the first Lord of the Rings movie—I love that song!”
“You’re defying all kinds of gender norms right now,” I said, smirking a little.
Jamie looked at the wall behind me. When he spoke, it was with an exaggerated southern accent. “Well, well. Look at that! Big Ghibli fan, huh?”
I glanced at my Spirited Away poster and Totoro toys. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t blow this out of proportion.”
Jamie didn’t stop smiling. He walked over to my nightstand and put his mug down. “Do those work?” He pointed up at the twinkle lights on the ceiling.
I gestured at his feet. “Yeah. That’s the extension cord.”
He plugged it in, and I turned off the main light. The ceiling began to glow.
“Cool,” Jamie said.
I put down my mug and cleared a spot on the floor by my bed. We sat down on my rainbow-patterned throw rug.
“Is it just me, or is it hot in here?” he asked.