Shadow

Chapter Five

Katie

So this was what my life had become.

I sat on the bed, not even bothering to raise the blinds. The light from outside only emphasized the features that reminded me this room wasn’t mine. Bright red walls, posters of bands I didn’t listen to, a black dresser with a graveyard of torn stickers littering the top. Linda’s daughter Jess had started university in September—Linda had barely made the drive back across the country in time to help plan Mom’s funeral. And now I haunted Jess’s room like some kind of ghost, pale and lurking in dark corners.

I remembered the day in July when Linda and Mom were having coffee in our kitchen, Linda laughing nervously about empty-nest syndrome. “What am I going to do with all my free time?” She was giggling. Mom had patted her arm quietly as Linda babbled on.

Mom could always see through people to the real story, see what was really in someone’s heart, even if they didn’t know it themselves. It made her a great journalist but a tough mother. She always knew when I was lying, so there was no point in telling her anything but the truth. We talked over everything instead, every dilemma that weighed on me, every drama that seemed huge and crushing and mountainous.

It was funny, looking back on it. Those troubles were feather-light compared to losing Mom. This was the real mountain looming over me, and now Mom wasn’t here to help me navigate it.

But I would make it through, right? I was already better, a few weeks dulling the sting of losing her.

Lying to myself, of course. I was in pieces. What would Mom say if she were here? Pat me on the arm, pour me another cup of tea. Talk to me, Katie. You can’t climb a mountain if you don’t look where you’re going.

Living with Linda was all right for a while. School started, and everything was back to normal. At first my friends walked on eggshells around the subject of Mom’s death, a few timid sorrys muttered nervously, like they were somehow killing her just by saying it. But after a few weeks they moved on to the usual high school news, who was dating whom, the chem teacher’s breakdown in class, the mystery graffiti in the lunchroom. Only I was trapped in the past, some sort of time-warped version of myself that couldn’t break free from the grief. Some days I took off at lunch, tears rolling down my face all the way back to Linda’s. Friends stopped calling to see if I wanted to do things. They knew I’d end up blubbering, which is no fun, fair enough, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt caged in, like I couldn’t grieve. How could I? My life was still in limbo, stuck at a weird crossroads where the only way to go forward was to rip everything to shreds again.

I was stuck in this weird room of harsh red and black, the ceiling sloping in like a tomb and shelves of books that weren’t mine.

A room missing its girl. And a different girl in its place. Like some kind of changeling.

There was a polite knock on my door, followed by the handle turning and creaking as Linda tiptoed in.

“Hey, Katie,” she said with a forced smile. “Doing okay today?”

“Yeah,” I said. We were strangers, really, linked only because of Mom. And yet she kept the smile on, even with me sitting on the bedspread Jess had picked out, the room that was supposed to be empty for her visit back from college this week.

“You’re making yourself at home in Jess’s room, right?” she said, her eyes falling on my suitcase still in the corner. “You might feel better if you unpack, you know? Her dresser’s empty. And you know you can read any of her books if you want, okay?”

“Thanks,” I said. I’d peeked at her books my first week, feeling like a bit of a snoop. All epic space adventures and murder mysteries. Reading about space only made me feel confined; murder mysteries only filled my thoughts with death. The redness of blood and the blackness of space, echoed by the paint colors in her bedroom, stifling as they tried to absorb me and make me fit.

They couldn’t. I was just too different.

“If you want me to move my stuff for Jess’s visit—” I started, leaping to my feet like I was going to start clearing out right away. But all I had was a small pile of books beside the bookshelf and my bulging suitcase in the corner. It was kind of pathetic, really.

“That’s okay.” Linda smiled. “You barely have anything to move. And anyway, Jess will take the couch for now.”

“But it’s her room,” I said. The wider Linda’s smile, the more intrusive I felt. We both knew I was in the way.

“No worries,” she said. “She’s a big girl, and she’s only here for a few days. She’s lucky I haven’t turned her room into some kind of yoga studio or something. Maybe I’ll talk to her about letting you paint it something else. That red really makes the room look so much smaller.” Like changing the color would make me fit, but it was sweet of her to try. “Um, have you changed your mind about the Japanese class starting tonight?”

The mention of it sent my heart pounding. I couldn’t face it. Starting a new life meant admitting Mom was gone.

“Maybe,” I said. “But I-I’m not sure if I can.”

“Okay,” Linda said gently. “But I just think...” She looked at my face, and I must’ve looked like a wreck because her eyes softened and she backed out of the room. “I’ll check with you later, okay? Think about it.”

“Sure,” I said, and the hallway swallowed her up. Just me again.

I collapsed back onto the bed, staring at the sloping ceiling above me.

“I can’t,” I said to the stucco. “I can’t stay here.”

The house was too small for a charity project like me, and I wasn’t helping with the skipped classes and creepy emo lurking I did in Jess’s room. Some days it was all I could do to get up and brush my teeth. I was skipping more and more classes, falling further behind. I could see it looming in Linda’s eyes—the talk, when she’d have to politely remind me that dropping out of school was only hurting myself. I could see it in her face, that she felt like she was letting Mom down every time I cut class.

I was struggling, but she didn’t know how to help me. I was some foreign thing dropped in her lap, and she was as lost as I was.

Tell yourself the truth, Katie. Look at that mountain. Size it up, or you’ll never climb it.

It was time to face the truth. Staying with Linda wasn’t a choice. I was a puzzle piece crammed in the wrong box.

Japan couldn’t be any worse than this, right? I reached for the travel guide at the bottom of the stack of books I kept beside Jess’s cluttered shelf. The pages were worn with all the tearful nights I’d spent flipping through. Diane lived in Shizuoka, which wasn’t featured at all on the glossy photo pages. About an hour outside Tokyo, its claim to fame was the fields of tea surrounding the city for harvest. That and a great view of Mt. Fuji, although the book featured a view from Kamakura so I couldn’t be sure.

I didn’t know if I had it in me to go to the Japanese class. I’d set the bar pretty low the past few weeks—I bet Linda wasn’t even expecting me to make it to the front door. I reached for the required textbook and cracked open the spine.

“Holy crap,” I said, staring at the foreign squiggles and lines. Three writing systems—two phonetic and one made up of ancient Chinese symbols called kanji. It said I needed to know thousands of the symbols to read a newspaper. I tossed the book on Jess’s bed, crammed between the bookshelf and her black desk. The shelf was old and rickety, and some nights I swore it would come crashing down on my head. Death by book avalanche. Not the worst way to go, I guess.

A minute later, I picked up the book again.

A-i-u-e-o.

Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could pick up the shards of my life and make something with them.

Maybe this was a choice I could make.

I stared at the symbols for hours, sketching them out on my notebook five at a time, starting with the hiragana. I wrote them over and over, until my page was a sea of vowels, shaky-handed letters that could spell anything I wanted them to. A page full of potential, a page full of choice.

The door opened again, this time Linda dangling her keys from her hand, her pale face worried and hesitant to ask. But she did, after a moment.

“You ready to go, sport?” she said, jingling the keys.

My fingers curved along the loops of the hiragana I’d drawn.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready.”