I picked it up and jammed the button on the side. The beeping stopped. “Everything is okay,” I announced. “The sound is not happening anymore.”
“Oh my God!” Alison was sitting up as well now. She jutted her bottom jaw at me. “What the hell? Our flight doesn’t leave till almost noon. I do not want to be experiencing consciousness right now!”
“Sorry,” I said, pressing a few more buttons, hunting for an explanation. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I set it for when we get on the plane.”
“You and your metaphysical countdowns! Always with the goddamned metaphysical countdowns!”
“They’re not metaphysical.” I tapped the watch’s screen. “They’re just countdowns.”
The only possible explanation was that I’d miscalculated the time. But that had never happened to me before. Like, actually never. I knew how to schedule a countdown. I could have been a professional timekeeper, if I so desired. The watch was still in my hands. I ran my fingers over the embroidered flowers. They were raised and nubby, especially where the pink thread was starting to unravel. I half expected it to tell me what was going on. I half expected it to beep again.
I half wanted it to.
Alison lay back down and jerked the comforter all the way over her head. Dorothea Brooke rested her cheek on my forearm and seemed as awake as I felt.
I tried to think this through. The last time I’d checked the countdown was in Shibuya, in the ramen shop with Jamie. I’d taken it off the next morning and hadn’t even touched it again until that night, when Jamie and I were packing. After we’d finished, Jamie had handed me my watch. He’d told me not to forget it. And before that, I’d left the room to take the tea mugs downstairs. Which meant he could have picked up my watch and…
Oh.
Oh my God.
I grabbed the clothes I’d laid out the night before. Green sweatpants, yellow tank top, underwear, socks. I rushed to the bathroom to assess the remaining clutter. There were toiletries strewn around the sink, and my clothes from yesterday balled up on the floor. I brushed my teeth and shoved hair ties and face wash into my sushi-printed makeup bag. As I was doing all this, I repeated to myself: Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up.
I gathered up the final scraps of my existence and zipped them into my suitcase. My laptop, my passport, and the last of my money were crammed into my backpack.
“Explain yourself,” Alison said. She was sitting up again, and she seemed pretty unimpressed with everything I was doing.
“I can’t explain,” I said, slinging my backpack onto my shoulders. “Not now. Tell Mom I’ll meet you at Tokyo Station, on the platform for the Narita Express at nine.”
“Nuh-uh,” Alison said. “There is no way on earth I’m letting you leave.”
My flip-flops were by the closet. I felt an irrepressible surge of optimism. The early countdown wasn’t an accident. It had happened for a reason. I slid my flip-flops on and hoisted my suitcase onto its back wheels. It was heavy, but I could handle it.
I could handle this.
“Please,” I begged my sister. “After this, I swear I will never do anything fun or crazy ever again. Nothing. I’ll just go to school and study and, even if I get a driver’s license and a car, I will use those powers for good, not for evil. Like, I’ll grocery shop for Mom or visit our grandparents every afternoon. I’m going to be the most boring, well-behaved teenager in the whole world, starting at nine this morning, if you just let me go now.”
She was going to knock me out, I could tell. Or call Mom. She was going to lock me in the bathroom and tell me I could leave this room over her dead body.
But she didn’t do any of those things.
She got up, grabbed her shoulder bag, and pulled out a wad of thousand-yen bills. “The last of my yen,” she said, stuffing it into my hand. “Take a taxi if you’re running late.”
I closed my fist over the money. She was the best person in the universe, and I was about to tell her so when she held a hand up to stop me. “Seriously. Go now. Because I’m still half-asleep, and when I wake up, I’m going to begin the long process of regretting this for the rest of my life.”
I opened the hotel door.
Everyone in Shibuya had an umbrella.
Everyone except me, of course.
I propped my suitcase upright, swung my backpack around, and took out the T-Cad sweatshirt I’d packed in case it got cold on the flight.
It was six thirty on a Sunday morning, but there were still people in the plaza around the station. Clubbers staggering home arm in arm, women in matching pink tracksuits power walking in circles. Some young Australian tourists hovered near one of the station entrances. They were wearing ripped jeans and bandannas tied around their heads. One of them leaned back to take pictures of the tops of buildings.
Across the plaza was Hachiko. Loyal Hachiko with his nose held high, still waiting for someone. I’d wheeled my suitcase past him once, but I decided to do it again. Even before I reached him, I knew, for a fact, no one would be there. Hachiko was a place people went to meet, and no one had anyone to meet at six thirty on a Sunday morning. Regardless, I walked toward him, and I thought, Don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up. But with every step, I got my hopes up a little bit more, defying my logical brain.
No one was there.
Except me, of course. Because I was an idiot. An idiot who came here for a set of carefully deduced reasons.
They were:
If Jamie had reset my watch, it was because he wanted to see me before I left. If he reset my watch, it was because he wanted me to wake up early and go somewhere to meet him. And the only place I could think of was Shibuya. It was where I’d first seen him one whole week ago. Where I’d spent all night with him, every second unspooling and holding us in its amber. Before that awful night in Roppongi, I was supposed to meet Jamie in Shibuya, at Hachiko.