I threw one of my socks at her, and she laughed.
Outside, it was hot but not punishing. The sky was clear, and there was an actual breeze. I couldn’t decide if the world was mocking me or trying to cheer me up. We walked to a konbini and I ambled down the aisles, contemplating how this was the last time I’d be in one of these. The last time I’d browse shelves upon shelves of green tea jellies and individually wrapped kare pan. Mika grabbed some onigiri and two bottles of iced coffee from one of the fridges.
“I want to eat everything,” I joked as she handed them to me. “Everything in Japan.”
“Huh?” she said.
Regret twisted my insides. “Never mind.”
We sat at a stone picnic table in Kitanomaru-koen, which, it seemed, was where everyone in Tokyo had decided to go. Families and joggers and cyclists and couples holding hands. It was so lively, almost like being at an outdoor festival—a matsuri full of food stalls and game stalls and people dressed in yukata. I put on my sunglasses—Jamie’s sunglasses, actually—and started unwrapping my onigiri.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” I said. “I didn’t tell you that yesterday.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Mika said. “I am officially adult-ish.”
“High school senior–ish.”
“A legitimate high school senior in two days.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re right.”
Mika beat an impatient tattoo against the tabletop. “Sophia, I’m going to ask you a question.”
I managed to wrangle the onigiri from its packaging without separating the seaweed from the triangle-shaped mound of rice. “Okay.”
“Were you just going to move to New Jersey and never tell me about you and Jamie?”
I held the onigiri halfway to my mouth. “That’s—an interesting question.”
“Damn straight it is.”
I put down the onigiri, weighing how to respond. “Technically, though, I could ask you the same thing. I mean, if everything hadn’t been inadvertently revealed in the most dramatic way possible, would you have told me about you and David?”
Mika chewed. She seemed pretty run-down, dressed in the same clothes as last night with heavy black makeup tracks around her eyes. “That’s different,” she said. “We were dumb and pointless. And I would have definitely told you if I was in love with him.”
My eyes widened. “I’m not in love with anyone.”
Mika brooded over something for a minute. She was acting so neutral, I couldn’t tell what she actually thought about all this. “Whatever. I’m not going to argue with you. But if you can’t see that Jamie’s in love with you, you are pretty freaking dumb.”
“Did he say that?” I whispered.
“No!” she said. “No one tells me shit. But the two of you are so pathetically transparent. Every time he called me for the last three years, he asked about you. Every time I mentioned him in front of you, you got all awkward and blushy. Yes! See! Just like that!”
I picked a loose piece of rice off my onigiri. Everything that had happened with Jamie had felt so secret. “How much do you know?” I asked.
She sighed. “I tried to ask him about it the other day, but he was all doofy and vague. I know he likes you. And I know you two have been, like, making out on street corners all week. And I know you had a big blowout yesterday.”
My stomach jolted. “How do you know all that?”
Her expression turned solemn. “I seriously hope you don’t envision a lucrative career with the CIA.”
Mika opened her bottle of iced coffee. The plastic bag sitting on the table between us rustled in the wind. Even though I knew it was my last day here, I still couldn’t believe it. The air was lighter than it had been all week. I could have sat outside for hours, the day going on and on with no end in sight.
But of course, it was going to end. Just like Jamie and I had. My brain must have been on some kind of demented autopilot because it kept steering me straight back to him. To the heartbreak and the certainty and his don’t talk to me. My stomach jolted again. “Do you want to walk? I feel like walking.”
We gathered the food and coffee and went down almost the exact same paths Jamie and I had run down on Tuesday. Except they were more crowded now. People knocked into my shoulders or hustled me forward in their vigor to get through the park. Two little girls sprinted past us, their laughter floating back on the breeze. I watched them, and it made the pounding in my head grow stronger. The sun was uncomfortably hot, and the symptoms of my post-alcohol consumption came back in full force. I took Mika by the forearm and led her toward the shade of a tree.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I should tell you something,” I said. “But you already know. But, whatever. This is the kind of stuff I need to say out loud.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I really like Jamie,” I said in one breath. “I have for, like, a long time. And the only reason I didn’t want him to come back to Tokyo was because, right before he left, he told me I was always throwing myself at David, and then I yelled at him and—”
“Hold up,” Mika said. “He said that?”
“Actually, he texted it. And he meant to text it to you. I always figured that’s how you guys talked about me when I wasn’t around.”
“Sophia. Of course we didn’t. He was probably being a shit because he was jealous.”
I nudged a patch of grass with my foot. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore. Not now that I’m leaving and I kissed David and—I know I hurt him. I hurt Jamie. Which means that he hates me and you hate me and that’s why I can’t e-mail him.”
Mika’s eyes swept over me, evaluating me. “Trust me, it would make a difference.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do. Jamie likes you, more than he likes most people. Just cut the self-pity act and be nice. God, if you knew how weird things were with his family right now…”