Ink

Chapter 1

I made it halfway across the courtyard before I realized I was still wearing my school slippers. No lie. I had to turn around and slink all the way back to the genkan, the stifled laughs from my classmates trailing me as I mustered what slippered dignity I could.

God, way to scream foreigner. You’d think after a couple of weeks I’d have the routine down, but no. I’d gone into that mode again, the one where I forgot everything for a minute and walked dazed through the sounds of the Japanese being spoken around me, not fully comprehending that it wasn’t English, that I was on the other side of the world, that Mom was…

“Katie!”

I looked up to see Yuki running toward me, breaking from a group of girls who stopped chatting, staring at us. Their stares weren’t unfriendly—they just weren’t exactly subtle.

I guess that’s expected when you’re the only Amerika-jin in the school.

Yuki grabbed my arms with her slender fingers. “You do not want to go in there,” she said in English, motioning at the school entrance behind us.

“Um, I kind of have to,” I answered in broken Japanese.

Forget English, Diane had said. It’s the easiest way to get flu-ent faster. It’s easier to forget everything, I guess. Forget I ever had any other kind of life.

Yuki shook her head, so I pointed at my slippered feet.

“You still shouldn’t,” she said, this time in Japanese. I liked that about Yuki—she knew I was trying. She didn’t insist on English like some of the other kids. “There’s an ugly breakup going on in the genkan. Really, really awkward.”

“What am I supposed to do, wait?” I said. “I’ll just be in and out, ten seconds.” I held out my fingers for emphasis.

“Trust me,” she said, “you don’t want to get in the middle of this.”

I peeked around her shoulder, but I couldn’t see anything through the glass. I tapped the toe of my slipper on the ground; it felt so flimsy.

“Some big shot?” I said in English, and Yuki cocked her head to the side. “You know, a daiji na hito or something?” If Yuki was worried, it was probably gossip-worthy.

She leaned in conspiratorially. “Yuu Tomohiro,” she whispered. In Japan, everyone went by their last names first. “He’s fighting with Myu.”

“Who?”

Yuki’s friends giggled behind us. Had they been eavesdropping the whole time?

“Myu, his girlfriend,” she said.

“No, I know Myu. The other one,” I said.

“Yuu Tomohiro?” Yuki said, her arms waving wildly as if that would jog a memory I didn’t have. “Top of the kendo team? They let him get away with almost anything. You don’t want to draw his attention, trust me. He has this cold stare.

I dunno…he seems dangerous.”

“So, what, he’s going to stare me down?”

Yuki rolled her eyes. “You don’t get it. He’s unpredictable.

You don’t want to make enemies with a third year in your first two weeks, do you?”

I bit my lip, trying to peer through the glass door again.

I didn’t need more attention, that’s for sure. I just wanted to blend in, get my homework done and drift through school until Nan and Gramps could take me in. But I also didn’t want to stand in the courtyard in a pair of slippers, stuck for who knows how long. Anyway, it’s not like they could make my life a living hell if I left Japan, and it would all be sorted out soon, right? This wasn’t where Mom intended me to end up. I knew that.

“I’m going in,” I said.

“You’re crazy,” Yuki said, but her eyes shone with excitement.

“They don’t scare me.”

Yuki raised her fists up to her chin. “Faito,” she said. Fight.

In her most encouraging, you-can-do-it voice.

I grinned a little, then stepped toward the door. Even from outside I could hear the muffled yelling. When it died down for a minute, I took my chance.

Just in and out. I’m in slippers, for god’s sake. They’re not even going to hear me.

I pulled open the door and let it close quietly behind me before I stepped onto the raised wooden floor. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. The yelling was still muffled, and I realized the couple were on the other side of the sliding door into the school. Perfect—no way they’d see me now.

I snuck between the rows and rows of shoe cubbies looking for mine. It wasn’t hard to find—it was the only one with a pair of leather shoes sticking out approximately a mile, surrounded by the neatly tucked-away slippers in everyone else’s boxes. We all wore slippers in the school to keep it clean, but they weren’t your typical cozy bedroom slippers. They were more like papery white f lats. Japan had slippers for everything—school, house, toilet room, you name it.

I reached for my shoes as Myu’s high and whiny voice echoed from the hallway behind the sliding door. Rolling my eyes, I pulled off the first slipper and then the other, clunking my shoes onto the floor and sliding my feet in.

And then the door slid open with a crash.

I crouched down, jolted by the footsteps stomping toward me. I did not want in on this performance.

“Matte!” Myu shouted, followed by a flurry of shuffling footsteps. “Wait!”

I glanced at the door to the courtyard—too far to make it without being seen. And just by trying to plan my escape route, I’d waited too long. If she saw me now, the way I was pressed against the wall all spylike, she’d think I was eavesdropping, and I didn’t need rumors circulating about me. I was already a gaijin, an outsider—I didn’t need to be a weirdo, too.

“Oi,” said a second, annoyed voice. It was deep and rich—

must be Yuu Tomohiro, dangerous kendo star. He didn’t sound that dangerous. In fact, he sounded pretty disinterested. Cold, like Yuki had said.

Myu rapidly churned out Japanese words I didn’t know. I caught a particle here and a past tense there, but let’s face it—

I’d only been in the country for a little more than a month and studying for five. I’d crammed all the Japanese I could, but I realized the minute I was on the plane that it had all been useless if I wanted to have a real conversation. At least I could name just about all the fruits and vegetables in the grocery store.

Great plan there. Real useful. Things had improved since I arrived, but still, talking to Yuki or taking notes in class was not the same as following the high-pitched babbling of a major social breakup like this one. That was hard enough in English. I could really only make out the most important detail, which was that she was seriously pissed. You didn’t need much vocab to tell.

I peeked around the wall of cubbies, hugging the wooden frame so I wouldn’t be seen. Yuu Tomohiro had stopped in his tracks, his back to me and his head tilted back, staring up at her. Myu’s long legs made her school uniform look scan-dalously short, her kneesocks slumped in coils around her ankles. She clutched a black book at the top of the steps, her nails painted neatly in pinks and glittery silver.

“What is this? What is it?” she said over and over, waving the book in Yuu’s face.

Um… I thought. A notebook?

Yuu Tomohiro shrugged and climbed the steps back up to the sliding door. He reached for the notebook, but Myu whisked it behind her. He sighed as he leaned back against the opened door, his slipper pressing against the wooden frame.

“Well?” Myu said.

“What’s it look like?” he said. “A notebook.”

I rolled my eyes, even though my answer had been pretty much the same.

“Baka ja nai no?” Myu shrieked at him.

He was taller than her, but not when he slouched like that against the wall. And the more she fumed at him, the farther he seemed to slouch into the door. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his navy blue school blazer and tilted his head down, like he couldn’t stand to even look at her or something. His copper hair, too bright to be natural, flipped in every direction like he hadn’t taken the time to brush it, and he’d grown his bangs long—the way he was staring at the floor made the tips of them brush against his eyelashes.

I felt the heat rise up my neck. Yuki had not warned me he was so, well, pretty. Okay, gorgeous. I almost expected sparkles and rainbows to burst out of the walls anime-style, except his lips were turned in a smirk, and the way he crumpled against the wall exuded a smug superiority.

It was obvious Myu got the message. She looked absolutely livid.

“You think I’m stupid?” she said again. “Or are you?”

“Does it matter?”

What the heck had I walked into?

I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Myu’s face was puffy and pink, and every now and then her words got all choked up in her throat. She threw a string of questions into the air and they hung there with no reply. She became more frantic, the silence more tense.

What the hell did he do?

Cheat on her, maybe. That was the obvious answer or she wouldn’t be so pissed. And he had no reply for it, because really, what could he say?

Yuu Tomohiro shook his head, the copper strands dancing around, and his head suddenly twisted to the cubbies beside me.

I shrunk flat against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut and praying he didn’t see me. Myu had stopped ranting and a thick silence fell over the genkan.

“Is someone there?” she said.

Oh, crap—he had seen me. It was all over. I’d forever be the gaijin who has no life and eavesdrops on bad breakups to sate my emo side.

“No one,” he said, but it sounded off.

I couldn’t bear it and I peeked around the cubby wall.

Yuu was looking away. So he hadn’t seen me after all. Thank god—I could go back to just being the Slipper Slinker.

Myu’s eyes puffed up and overflowed, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “So it’s really true,” she said. “She’s pregnant.”

Oh my god. What is this? Who are these people?

“Sou mitai,” Tomohiro smirked, which was way too casual a yes. A response like that was downright cruel. Even I knew that.

Myu’s glittery fingernails tightened around the book. She raised it high above her shoulders, the loose papers inside it slipping until it was a mess of corners.

Then she hurled the book at the floor.

The notebook exploded with pages as it trailed down, the papers catching in the air and filling the room like rain. They twirled and twisted as they came down, white edges framing thick lines of black ink and charcoal. They fluttered down to the floor like cherry petals.

One of the drawings fell in front of me, tapping gently against the end of my shoe as it came to a rest.

“What the hell?” Yuu shouted, picking up the book from the floor.

“What did it all mean, then?” she whispered. “What was I to you?”

Yuu straightened to his full height and tilted his chin back until his gleaming dark eyes gazed straight into hers. He took two swaggering steps toward her, bending forward until their lips almost met. Myu’s eyes widened.

He stood silently for a moment. Then he looked to the side, and I saw a pained look in his eyes. He breathed heavily, his cheeks pink, his eyes glossy. So he did have feelings after all, the beast. He started to reach for her chin with his fingers. And then his hand suddenly dropped into his pocket and he laughed.

“Betsu ni,” he said in a velvet voice. Nothing special.

You’re lying, I thought. Why are you lying?

But Myu looked like she’d been punched in the gut. And even with the cultural barriers that stood in my way, it was clear to me that he’d just discounted all her suffering, her feelings—the whole relationship. He looked like he didn’t give a shit, and that’s pretty much what he’d said.

Myu’s face turned a deep crimson, and her black hair clung to the sides of her snot-streaked face. Her hands squeezed into fists at her sides. Her gaze of hope turned cold and listless, like a mirror of Yuu’s face.

And then Myu lifted her hand and slugged him right in the jaw. She hit him so hard his face twisted to the left.

He lifted his hand to rub his cheek, and as he raised his eyes, they locked with mine.

Shit.

His gaze burned into me and I couldn’t move. Heat flooded my cheeks, and shame tingled down my neck.

I couldn’t look away. I stared at him with my mouth open.

But he didn’t call me out. He lifted his head, flicked his gaze back to Myu and pretended I didn’t exist. I let out a shaky breath.

“Saitei,” she spat, and I heard footsteps. After a moment, the door to the hallway slid shut.

I let out a breath.

Well, that was today’s dose of awkward.

I looked down at the paper, still touching the tip of my shoe. I reached for it, flipping the page over to look.

A girl lay back on a bench, roughly sketched in scrawls of ink as she looked out over the moat of Sunpu Park. She wore a school uniform, a tartan skirt clinging to her crossed legs. Little tufts of grass and flowers tangled with the bench legs, which had to be creative license—it was still too cold for blooms.

The girl was beautiful, in her crudely outlined way, with a lick of hair stuck to the back of her neck, her elbow resting against the top of the bench and her hand behind her head.

She looked out at the moat of Sunpu Park, the sunlight sparkling off the dark water.

A pregnant bump of stomach curved under her blouse.

The other girl.

A queasy feeling started to twist in my stomach, like motion sickness.

And then the sketched girl on the bench turned her head, and her inky eyes glared straight into mine.

A chill shuddered through me.

Oh my god. She’s looking at me.

A hand snatched the paper out of mine. I looked up, my mind reeling, straight into the face of Yuu Tomohiro.

He slammed the page facedown on top of the pile of drawings he’d collected. He stood too close, so that he hovered over me.

“Did you draw that?” I whispered in English. He didn’t answer, staring hard at me. His cheek burned red and puffy where Myu had hit him.

I stared back. “Did you draw it?”

He smirked. “Kankenai darou!”

I looked at him blankly, and he sneered.

“Don’t you speak Japanese?” he said. I felt my cheeks flush with shame. He looked like he’d settled some sort of battle in his mind, and he turned, walking slowly away.

“She moved,” I blurted out.

He stumbled, just a little, but kept walking.

But I saw him stumble. And I saw the drawing look at me.

Didn’t I? My stomach churned. That was impossible, wasn’t it?

He went up the stairs, clutching the papers to his chest.

“She moved!” I said again, hesitant.

“I don’t speak English,” he said and slammed the door. It slid into the wall so hard it bounced back a little. I saw his shadow against the frosted glass of the door as he walked away.

Something oozed through the bottom of the sliding door, sluggish like dark blood. Did Myu hit him that hard?

The liquid dripped down the stairs, and after a moment of panic, I realized it was ink, not blood. From the drawings she’d thrown, maybe, or a cartridge of ink he’d kept inside the notebook.

I stood for a minute watching it drip, thinking of the burning eyes of the girl staring at me, the same flame in Yuu’s eyes.

Had Myu seen it, too? Would anyone believe me? I wasn’t even sure what the heck I’d seen.

It couldn’t be real. I was too tired, overwhelmed in a country where I struggled to even communicate. That was the only answer.

I hurried toward the front door and out into the fresh spring air. Yuki and her friends had already vanished. I checked my watch—must be for a club practice. Fine. I was too jittery to talk about what I’d seen anyway. I ran across the courtyard, sans slippers this time, through the gate of Suntaba School and toward the weaving pathways of Sunpu Park.

When my mother died, it didn’t occur to me I would end up on the other side of the world. I figured they would put me in foster care or ship me up to my grandparents in Deep River, Canada. I prayed they would send me up there from New York, to that small town on the river I had spent almost every summer of my childhood. But it turned out that Mom’s will hadn’t been updated since Gramps’s bout of cancer five years ago, when she’d felt it was too much of a burden to send me there. And Gramps still wasn’t doing well now that the cancer had come back, so for now I would live with Mom’s sister, Diane, instead, in Shizuoka.

So much sickness surrounded me. I could barely deal with losing my mom, and then everything familiar slipped away.

No life in Deep River with Nan and Gramps. No life in America or Canada at all. I’d stayed with a friend of Mom’s for a while, but it was only temporary, my life stuck in a place where I couldn’t move forward or back. I was being shipped away from everything I knew, the leftover baggage of fading lives. Mom never liked leaving American soil, and here I was, only seven months without her, already going places she wouldn’t have followed.

And seeing things, hallucinating that drawings were moving. God, I’d be sent to a therapist for sure.

I told Yuki about the fight the next day during lunch, although I left out the part about the moving drawing. I still wasn’t sure what I’d seen, and I wasn’t about to scare off the only friend I had. But I couldn’t get it out of my mind, those sketched eyes glaring into mine. I wouldn’t imagine that, right?

But the more I thought about it, the more dreamlike it felt.

Yuki turned in her seat to eat her bentou on my desk. I wasn’t used to the food yet, so Diane had packed my bentou box from side to side with squished peanut-butter sandwiches.

Yuki gripped her pink chopsticks with delicate fingers and scooped another bite of eggplant into her mouth.

“You’re kidding,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand as she said it. “I still can’t believe you went in there.”

She’d pinned her hair back neatly and her fingernails were nicely painted, reminding me of Myu’s delicate pink-and-silver nails. I wondered if they’d chipped when she hit him.

“You didn’t even wait for me to come out,” I said.

“Sorry!” she said, pressing her fingers together in apology.

“I had to get to cram school. Believe me, I was dying inside not knowing what happened.”

“I’m sure.” Yuki did like her share of drama.

She lifted her keitai phone in the air. “Here, send me your number. Then I can call you next time I abandon you in the middle of the biggest breakup of all time.”

I turned a little pink. “Um. I don’t have one?”

She stared at me a minute before shoving the cell phone back into her bag, then pointed at me. “Get one. Maa, I never realized Yuu Tomohiro was so mean.”

“Are you kidding? You told me he was cold!”

“I know, but I didn’t know he was cheat-on-your-girlfriend-and-get-someone-pregnant cold. That’s a different level.” I rolled my eyes, but secretly I tried to break down the number of words she’d just used. I loved that she had faith in my Japanese, but it was a little misplaced. We switched back and forth between languages as we talked.

Across the room, Yuki’s friend Tanaka burst through the doorway, grabbing his chair and dragging it loudly to our desks.

“Yo!” he said, which sounded less lame in Japanese than English. He tossed his head to the side with a friendly grin.

“Tan-kun.” Yuki smiled, using the typical suffix for a guy friend. I looked down into the mess of peanut butter lining the walls of my bentou. Tanaka Ichirou was always too loud, and he always sat too close. I needed space to think about what I’d seen yesterday.

“Did you hear about Myu?” he said, and our eyes widened.

“How do you know?” said Yuki.

“My sister’s in her homeroom,” he said. “Myu and Tomo-kun split up. She’s crying over her lunch right now, and Tomo didn’t even show up for class.” Tanaka leaned in closer and whispered in a rough tone, “I heard he got another girl pregnant.”

I felt sick. I dropped my peanut-butter sandwich into my bentou and closed the lid.

That curve of stomach under the sketched blouse…

“He did!” Yuki squealed. It was all just drama to them.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about the way her head turned, the way she looked right at me.

“It’s just a rumor,” said Tanaka.

“It’s not,” Yuki said. “Katie spied on the breakup!”

“Yuki!”

“Oh, come on, everyone will know soon anyway.” She sipped her bottle of iced tea.

Tanaka frowned. “Weird, though. Tomo-kun might be the tough loner type, but he’s not cruel.”

I thought about the way he’d snatched the paper out of my hands. The sneer on his face, and the curve of his lips as he spat out his words. Don’t you speak Japanese? He seemed like the cruel type to me. Except that moment…that moment where he’d almost dropped everything and kissed Myu. His hand reaching for her chin, the softness in his eyes for just a second before it changed.

“How would you know?” I burst out. Tanaka looked up at me with surprised eyes. “Well, you called him by his first name, right?” I added. “Not even as a senior senpai, so you must know him pretty well.”

“Maa…” Tanaka scratched the back of his head. “We were in Calligraphy Club in elementary school—you know, traditional paintings of Japanese characters. Before he dropped out, I mean. Which sucked, because he had a real talent. We haven’t really talked much since then, but we used to be close.

He got into a lot of fights, but he was a good guy.”

“Right,” I said. “Cheating on girls and making fun of foreigners’ Japanese. What a winner.”

Yuki’s face went pale, her mouth dropping open.

“He saw you?” She put a hand over her mouth. “And Myu?

Did she?”

I shook my head. “Just Yuu.”

“And? Was he angry?”

“Yeah, but so what? It’s not like I meant to spy on them.”

“Okay, we need to do damage control and see how bad your social situation is. Ask him about it after school, Tan-kun,” Yuki said.

I panicked. “No, don’t.”

“Why?”

“He’ll know I told.”

“He won’t know,” Yuki said. “Tanaka’s sister told him about the breakup, remember? We’ll just slip the conversation in and see how he reacts to you.”

“I don’t want to know, okay? Drop it please?”

Yuki sighed. “Fine. For now.”

The bell rang. We tucked our bentous into our bags and pulled out some paper.

Yuu Tomohiro. His eyes kept haunting me. I could barely concentrate on Suzuki-sensei’s chalkboard math, which was hard enough considering the language gap. Diane had been so set on sending me to a Japanese school instead of an international one. She was convinced I’d catch on quickly, that I’d come out integrated and bilingual and competitive for university programs. And since she knew how much I wanted to move back with Nan and Gramps, she wanted to hit me over the head with as much experience as possible.

“Give it four or five months,” she said, “and you’ll speak like a pro.”

Obviously she didn’t realize I was lacking in language skills.

When the final bell rang, I was relieved to find out I didn’t have cleaning duty. I had a Japanese cram school to go to, so I decided to cut through Sunpu Park and get on the east-bound train. I waved to Yuki, and Tanaka flashed a peace sign at me as he rolled up his sleeves and started lifting chairs onto the desks. Pretty sure that counts as two friends, I thought, and in spite of everything, a trickle of relief ran through me.

I headed toward the genkan to return my slippers—I wasn’t going to make that mistake again—and headed out into the courtyard.

School began in late March at Suntaba, and the spring air was fresh but cool. Green buds had crept onto each of the spindly branches of the trees, waiting for slightly warmer weather to bloom. Diane said everyone in Japan checked their cell phones daily to find out when the cherry blossoms would bloom so they could sit under them and get drunk.

Well, okay, that wasn’t exactly what she said, but Yuki said a lot of the salarymen turned as pink as the flowers.

I was nearly at the gate when I saw him. He slouched against the stone entranceway, hands shoved deep in his pockets. The sun glared off the neat row of gold buttons down his blazer and splayed through his hair, gleaming on the copper streaks.

Yuu Tomohiro.

My footsteps slowed as dread leached down my spine.

There was no other way off school grounds; I’d have to pass him. The back of his hand curved over his shoulder, his book bag pressed against his back. He stared straight at me, as if he was waiting for me.

He wasn’t…was he?

Maybe he wanted me to keep my mouth shut about what had happened. But he hadn’t understood what I was saying, right? He didn’t speak English.

His face was turned down in a sour frown, but his eyes shone as he stared at me, like he was trying to figure me out.

A bluish bruise was set in his cheek, and the skin looked a little swollen. I looked down first and then straight at him, but I couldn’t stare at him long. Nothing could settle the pit I felt in my stomach, like I was going to be sick.

If he did make that drawing move… No, that was impossible. I’d been tired, that’s all.

I stood there ten feet from the gate, unable to move, squeezing the handles of my bag as tightly as I could. My navy skirt felt short and ugly against my bleached-out legs. I was out of place at this school and I knew it.

Move! Just walk past and ignore him! Do something! my brain screamed at me, but I couldn’t move.

I let out a shaky breath and took a step forward.

He uncoiled from his slouch like a snake, rising to his full height. I wondered why he always slouched when he could look like that, but the thought sent prickles up my neck. He was a jerk anyway, even if I hadn’t seen the drawing move.

He’d cheated on Myu, got someone else pregnant and still had the nerve to laugh at it. Except that he looked like he’d been lying that he didn’t care about her. And Tanaka had said he was a good guy deep down.

Must be really deep down.

His shoes clicked against the cement as he stepped toward me, and despite all my common sense, I couldn’t stop shaking. His eyes burned as he stared me down. He was only two feet from me, and now only a foot. I’m sorry, was I the only one at the school who worried he was psycho?

His eyes flicked to the ground suddenly, his bangs slipping forward and fanning over his face as he walked straight past me, so close that his shoulder grazed mine. So close that I could smell spices and hair gel, that I could feel the warmth radiating from his skin. The heat sent a shudder through me and I stopped walking, listening to the click, click of him walking farther away.

He’s screwing with me, I thought. Trying to intimidate me or something. Shame flooded through me as I realized I’d let him get away with it. He’d reeled me in, and despite everything I knew, despite drawings staring at me and pregnant girlfriends and humiliating language barriers, I’d still let my heart twist at his gorgeous eyes.

When did I become so shal ow? I scrunched my hands deeper into the leather of my book bag, until the zipper dug into my knuckles.

“Ano!” I said to get his attention, squeezing my eyes shut as I said it. The clicking of his shoes stopped. Around us the noisy chatter of other students buzzed in my brain, fading into background noise like ringing in my ears. All I could focus on was the silence that had replaced his footsteps, the sound I imagined of his breathing.

Now what? I wanted to ask why he’d been staring at me, why everything felt off when he was there. And about the drawing, the memory sitting unsettled in my gut. But how could I ask him that? He’d think I was nuts. The limits of my Japanese shoved against me, which only proved his point and pissed me off more. What was I thinking to confront him? And what exactly could I say that wouldn’t make me look like an idiot?

A moment passed, and I heard a single laugh under his breath. Then the click, click, click of him walking away toward the eastern wall. The clicking suddenly sped up, and I turned to look. He ran at the wall, leaping up the stone face and grabbing the branches of the momiji tree above, slipping over the wall and out of sight.

I’d let him do it again, let him tip me off balance for the second time in five minutes. I shuddered with anger as I stared at the branch, still swaying, dusting the wall with maple leaves.

The branch.

I didn’t spend my summers hiking in the woods for nothing.

My shoes pounded against the cement as I raced toward the wall. Students backed out of my way just in time, breaking apart their little groups out of curiosity about what I was about to do next. Slippers were about to take a backseat.

I threw my hands around the tree trunk and pressed my feet against the slippery bark. My book bag clattered to the ground as I reached for the branches, hoisting myself up.

Leaves and twigs tangled in my hair, but I climbed higher and higher, until I cleared the wall and the street on the other side came into view.

I scanned the sidewalks for the Suntaba uniform—there, behind the line of salarymen. He was combing a hand through his copper hair, his blazer draped over his arm.

“Yuu Tomohiro!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. He jerked to a stop, but didn’t turn around. I stared at the curve of his shoulder blades under the white dress shirt as he breathed in and out slowly.

Then he turned, looking up in slow motion when he didn’t see me on the street.

“That’s right, Tarzan, look up!” I screamed in English. “You’re not the only one around here who can make an exit!” My lungs burned with adrenaline as I watched him stare at me.

I couldn’t help it. The grin spread across my face, knowing I’d beaten him at his own game.

He waited a minute, completely still, and I wondered if he hadn’t understood a word I’d said. Not that it mattered.

He’d still get the point. I was the winner.

“What do you have to say now?” I shouted.

Still nothing.

And then he slowly raised his arm, his finger pointed.

“I can see up your skirt,” he said.

Oh god.

I’d totally forgotten I was wearing my short uniform skirt.

Crap, crap, crap!

I twisted to look down at the ring of students gathered around the tree trunk. They were starting to giggle, and if they hadn’t been looking up my skirt before, they definitely were now.

A couple of squealing girls reached into their bags. They better not be bringing out cell phones to immortalize my humiliation.

I let go of the branches with one hand to press my skirt tight against my legs. I turned back to look at Yuu. He was smiling, beaming even, like this was some sort of amusing moment we were sharing. Like it was just the two of us. And worse, the smile made my stomach twist. Then he beat his fists against his chest a couple times Tarzan-style and turned, walking out of sight.

My fingers tightened around the branch. Why did he act like two different people? A giggle from below and my anger surged up again.

All right, Mr. Creepy Sketch Guy. You want war?

You’re on.

The maze of Sunpu Park calmed me down a little. It always did, with the twisting hedges and the murky moats in deep channels. An old castle towered over the eastern side of the park, but I didn’t see much of it on my way home. I headed south over a long concrete bridge above the water teeming with koi, and then twisted past the underground walkways to Shin-shizuoka Station.

I scanned my pass, and the little metal doors slammed into the sides of the barriers to let me through. I walked slowly to the platforms, my eyes squinting at the signs of scrolling kanji.

The train was coming in three minutes, so I sat on one of the light blue benches and rested my bag on my lap.

I noticed a twig caught in the wool of my skirt, and I pulled it from the fabric.

“Why did I do that?” I groaned, slumping my chin on my bag. As if fitting in wasn’t hard enough, I had to go and climb a tree to yell at a boy and flash my underwear to half the school population.

Maybe I should be sick tomorrow.

A group of girls suddenly rushed in front of me, laughing as they punched out texts on their cell phones. One of them tripped over my foot, and her friends caught her by the shoulders as she stumbled.

“Sorry!” I burst out, tucking my feet as far as I could under the bench.

The girl looked at me for a minute, and then the three of them shuffled away, mumbling loudly to each other. Their green-and-blue-tartan skirts showed me they were from a different high school, so why should I care if they were being snobby? I wanted to stick my tongue out but stopped short. It was too much—I didn’t fit in at school, and I couldn’t even blend in at the train station. How the heck was I supposed to survive here anyway? Without Mom, without anything familiar. The tears started to blur in my eyes.

I heard a muffled greeting as a boy called to the girls. They didn’t answer him. Typical. Rude bunch of—

He said hello to them again. They still didn’t answer. What was their problem?

“Domo,” he tried again, and this time I looked up.

His dark eyes caught mine immediately. He had black hair that flopped around his ears, with two thick blond highlights tucked behind them. His bangs trailed diagonally across his forehead, so they almost covered his left eye. A silver earring glinted in his left ear as he nodded at me.

Wait. He’s talking to me.

“Hi?” I managed. It came out like a question.

He smiled. He wore the same uniform colors as the girls—

a white dress shirt and navy blazer, a green-and-blue tie and navy pants—and he leaned against the pillar near the bench.

His body was turned away from the clique, and they seemed a little pissed that he was talking to me. From the smile on his face, I wondered if that was the point.

“You go to Suntaba?” he said, pointing at my uniform.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You must speak Japanese well, then.”

I smirked. “I wouldn’t say that.”

He laughed and walked toward me. “Can I sit?” he said.

“Um, it’s a free station.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Okay, so when did hot guys from other schools start trying to pick me up on train platforms?

He leaned in a little, so I leaned back.

“Don’t let them get to you,” he mumbled. “They’re just airheads anyway.”

“Them?” I said, looking over at the girls. They pretended they weren’t staring, which only made it more obvious.

“Yeah,” he said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ve been through worse.”

He laughed again. “Rough day?”

“You have no idea.”

“Jun!” one of the girls squealed at him—an ex he was trying to make jealous, maybe? He leaned in closer and winked like we were coconspirators. And then a little chime flooded the station, and the train roared past, the brakes squealing as it slowed.

I grabbed my bag from my lap and we lined up by the giant white arrows on the f loor. The cars opened up and we filed in. I grabbed the metal rail by the door so I could make a quick getaway at Yuniko Station. It’s not like I didn’t appreciate attention from Jun the ikemen—and was he ever gorgeous—but I just needed some space to myself to think.

The doors closed behind us and the train lurched forward.

But in the crowds outside the window, I saw a tall figure in the Suntaba uniform. With copper hair and a puffy bruise on his cheek.

I stepped back as the train jolted, nearly knocking me over.

It pulled slowly out of the station, barely moving along the platform.

“You okay?” Jun said behind me.

Impossible. Why would Yuu Tomohiro be here when I’d watched him walk the opposite direction? He looked different when no one was watching, like his features had softened. He waited in line for a Roman bus, emerald-green with an old motor that made the vehicle bump around as it idled. When it was his turn to get on, he actually stepped to the side with a smile and helped a gray-haired lady behind him up the steps.

Was I hallucinating again? That did not just happen.

Then I lost his face in the crowd, and the train reached the end of the platform, speeding up as it snaked across the bustling city.

“I’m fine,” I said when I found my voice again. “Just saw a guy from my school over there.” I waved my hand vaguely at the window, but the sight of the bus was long gone.

“Tomodachi?” Jun said. “Maybe koibito? ”

I choked. “What? No! We are not friends. Not even close.”

Jun smiled. “You just looked f lustered, that’s all.” He tucked a blond highlight behind his ear, rubbing his earring between his fingers.

“Because I’m tired,” I said a little too sharply. “It’s nothing.”

“Ah,” he said, giving the earring a tug. “The rough day you mentioned.”

“Right.”

“Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand into his blazer pocket.

In the corner of the train car, the group of girls was still whispering about us. Jun stood beside me, silent as he stared out the window. I felt a little guilty shutting down the conversation, but I couldn’t help it. My thoughts were a tangled mess.

I watched the buildings blur outside the window as the train sped past.

What was I thinking, climbing a tree and yelling at Yuu like that? So much for a fancy exit—I’d just dug a deeper social hole to curl up and die in. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the smile on his face, as if we were in on the same joke. He’d looked harmless enough helping that woman onto the bus.

But that’s not how he’d looked staring at me from the gate.