Wishing I could pick up that phone again and smash it to pieces.
He was my dad. His home was supposed to be my home. I was supposed to just—fit there. Like I was supposed to fit in Tokyo. Like I was supposed to fit with Mika and David. But they’d let me down, too. And I didn’t get to keep Tokyo—I didn’t get to keep any of this.
So I wasn’t going to try anymore.
Seconds and minutes and hours came and went. The sun was starting to set, and I was on the floor between the beds. But I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. Or how long I’d been sitting for. There was movement in the hallway, and my heart screeched into my throat. If that was Alison, there was no way I could talk to her. No way I could tell her anything Dad had said. I grabbed the spare key card and ran to the door, desperate to get out before she came in. Desperate to get somewhere I could be entirely alone. I pushed at the door—just as someone started knocking on it.
“Sophia?”
“Caroline?” I opened the door and there she was, in a purple tank-top dress and hot-pink flip-flops. Her eyes lit up the second she saw me. “Hey!”
“What?” I stumbled back, wishing I could impose reason on this seriously unreasonable situation. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh.” She held up her phone. “I texted you.”
“You texted me?” I shook my head emphatically. “I didn’t get it. I don’t have a cell anymore.”
“I know. Your mom called when she saw my message. She said she was canceling your phone contract, but she told me where you guys were staying.” She blushed and started fiddling with the strap of her blue-and-white check purse. “Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could go together tonight? I know it’s lame, but I’d feel better if I didn’t show up alone.”
“Go where?” I asked.
She cocked her head, confused. “Your good-bye thing. Mika’s birthday. You didn’t forget, did you?”
My stomach roiled. Oh God. Mika’s birthday. My good-bye thing.
“No,” I said. “I’m not going.”
“What?!” Caroline stepped into the room. “You have to go! It’s your last night in Tokyo!”
“Technically, tomorrow night is my last night in Tokyo.”
“Were you asleep or something? It’s super dark in here.” She was right—the room was growing dimmer by the second. Outside the window, buildings were turning into something bigger and stranger, something with thousands of greedy eyes. She walked toward the lamp in the corner of the room, and I felt my temper fraying. What the hell was she even doing here?
Why couldn’t I be left alone?!
She flipped on the light and turned to examine me. “Are you sure everything is okay?” She narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t about David, is it?”
“Oh God.” I crumpled into the chair by the window. My head was aching, but I wasn’t thinking about David. I was thinking about Jamie.
About how he must have been waiting for hours.
About how I’d never tried to contact him.
And how I didn’t want to.
“Sophia?”
I crammed my hands into the pockets of my sweatshirt and pressed my forehead into my knees. “Can’t you go by yourself?” I asked. “What does it matter if I’m with you or not?”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “Of course it matters. You’re, like, my only friend here.”
My head jerked up.
“I mean”—Caroline licked her pink, glossy lips—“I have friends in Tennessee and everything. But not here.”
“I’m your friend?” I asked, and then realized how harsh that sounded. “I mean, of course I’m your friend.” I slumped back and rubbed both hands over my face. “Sorry. I’m having a seriously shitty day.”
“Yeah.” Caroline sat on the end of my bed. She was being sympathetic and understanding even though she had no idea what had just happened.
“I was just surprised,” I said. “About the friend thing. It’s just, you’re so—popular.”
She laughed a little. “What makes you think I’m popular?”
I pointed at her phone, which she was now clutching in both hands. “You’re always texting people.”
“Yeah, people in Tennessee. And sometimes I think they just text back out of pity. I don’t really have friends in Tokyo. Well, except for you. You’re kind of my best friend, actually.”
“Please,” I snorted.
“No!” she said. “I’m serious! I’ve never had super-close friends. I went to this ginormous public school outside of Nashville, and I was really shy. My only friends were the ones I did tennis and swimming and stuff with. And they kind of treated me like an outsider.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I said, a wave of guilt washing over me for all the times I’d treated her the exact same way. She shrugged, and her cheeks went red. And, much to my surprise, my icy feelings toward her started to soften up.
Still, she couldn’t possibly think of me as her best friend. I’d always seen Caroline as a character from an American teen movie. The Homecoming Queen. The perfect, pretty popular girl. She was David’s girlfriend, and I was the dorky sidekick she found semi-amusing.
But maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe we had more in common than I’d thought. Both of us lost in huge American schools, both of us wondering if our friends liked us as much as we liked them. And I guess she’d been dating David since she moved to Tokyo a year ago. Which meant I was one of the few people she hung out with on a regular basis. On an everyday basis. Which meant…
Holy shit. We really were friends.
And I’d been a bastard to her from the second I met her.
Caroline said, “I’m not going to miss your last night here because of stupid David. After tonight, we might never see each other again.”
Someone was walking down the hall, and panic exploded inside of me again. What if it was Alison this time? What if I had to talk to her?
“Fine,” I said, standing up.
“Fine?” Caroline stood up as well. “It was that easy?”