“It looks so small,” I said.
Jamie flipped my stuffed puppy into the air and caught it. “It looked small before.”
I knocked my arm against his, and he bopped the top of my head with the puppy. It was hard not to kiss the side of his neck, but I could hear Alison moving around in her room next door, listening to cello music.
“Hey.” Jamie put the puppy on top of my suitcase. “Don’t forget this.” He picked up the watch from the otherwise empty dresser and handed it to me.
“Right. Thanks.” It felt almost hot in my hand. Staring at its faded purple-and-white face sobered me up for a second—the inevitable was coming. The only reason Jamie was here was to help me pack my room. So I could get on a plane and leave.
I dropped it on the suitcase. “You’re going to miss the last train,” I said. “I’ll walk you to the station.”
Mom was sitting at the desk in her room, typing on her laptop. I knocked and said I was taking Jamie to the station. “Okay, good.” She pushed her glasses onto her head and gave us a weary smile. “Still miles to go for me. Thanks for all your help, Jamie.” Jamie nodded and tugged his leather wristband. I stared intently at some loose plaster on the wall.
Going downstairs felt like walking into a crime scene, everything neat and square and cordoned off. And then we were outside, and Jamie was reaching for my hand again. The night opened up around us: a breeze rustling the laundry on someone’s balcony, cicadas croaking in the trees that curled around buildings. I could smell yakisoba and the vague perfume of persimmon trees, all of it floating up to a dark smear of hazy sky.
Since it was just before midnight, every store we passed was shuttered, but a few vending machines lit our way down the hill. Someone biked past us with a small dog sitting on a cushion in the basket. But then they were gone, and we were alone.
Jamie lifted our joined hands and pointed them at the sky. “Check it out,” he said. “There are exactly four stars up there.”
I looked up. “Those are probably airplanes.”
“So cynical,” he said. “Those count.”
He stopped walking, so I did, too. “Stupid question,” he said, sounding nervous all of a sudden. He was swinging my hand back and forth. “Did you miss me? When I was in the States?”
I frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a stupid question. That sounds like a trick question.”
He laced his other hand with mine, like we were going to start dancing up and down the empty street. Like we were in one of those cheesy movies from the 1950s with big, long dance sequences at night under the stars. I could see Jamie in one of those movies. All that goofy charm and that wide, expressive face.
“Actually,” he said, “don’t answer that. I’m gonna stop talking before I embarrass myself some more.”
I turned away. There was a cat sitting in an alleyway between two stores, its flashlight eyes blinking at us. “I don’t know what to say. I thought we’d fucked things up so much when you left. I thought you were living proof that I was a loser with no ability to make genuine connections with other human beings.”
“Wow.” Both of his eyebrows quirked up. “That’s quite a compliment.”
I rolled my eyes and shoved him a little. For the past three years, I’d tried so hard not to think about him. When I sat in the courtyard at lunch, when I watched my favorite movies, when I checked my e-mail and knew I’d never see his name there again. “You were my first real best friend,” I said, realizing with each word that it was true. “Of course I missed you. Every single day.”
He didn’t say anything or even smile. He just kissed me, with all those airplanes twinkling above.
CHAPTER 25
FRIDAY
I DIDN’T GET UP WHEN MOM knocked on my door, but I did when Alison came in and tore the sheet off me.
“Get your shit together,” she said. “The movers are here.”
“I’m up,” I mumbled, burying my face in my pillow. “My shit is together.”
Alison snorted. “Yeah, you seem real alert. Change your clothes.”
I grabbed the first things I found in my suitcase. A green-and-black striped T-shirt, a pair of skinny jeans, a plastic belt covered in pictures of comic book covers, and my toiletry bag. There were people downstairs. I heard furniture scraping across the floor and boxes bumping into doorframes.
Seeing the house picked clean was even worse in the morning, sunlight and dust filling up every empty corner. None of this belonged to us anymore—it belonged to a stranger.
“Don’t think about it,” I whispered. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth with a miniature toothbrush and a tube of travel toothpaste. As I pulled my shirt over my head, I smelled mint on my shoulder. Memories of last night sparked in my nerve endings—Jamie’s mouth and the careful loops he’d drawn up and down my arms.
The iron fist gripping my stomach loosened as I reminded myself that whatever else happened today, I was going to see Jamie. He didn’t have a cell, so I couldn’t call him. But last night, before he’d gotten on his train, we’d agreed to meet at Hachiko at four. That thought was like putting on a coat of armor. It was like putting on headphones to drown out the racket downstairs.
I practically skipped out of the bathroom and back into the chaos of boxes.
The movers were there all morning, Alison and me swooping around them, and Mom directing them in Japanese. It was noon, and then one, and then, somehow, it was after two.
The last few boxes huddled in small groups by the genkan. The rest of the house had transformed into nothing but blank walls and spongy carpet. Mom shouted at me from the top of the stairs that we’d be leaving for the hotel in an hour.
And after that, I’d go to Hachiko.