Spirits of the Noh

6

O n Thursday morning, Kara’s father woke her before her alarm could go off. She drew a deep breath, only vaguely aware of the conscious world, eyelids fluttering, and then she felt his grip on her shoulder, jostling her.

“Kara, get up,” he said.

Even in that blurry, not-quite-awake state, she noticed the edge in his voice. Not anger, but concern-a little fear, perhaps-and she forced herself to open her eyes. Her father sat on the edge of the bed, barely seeming to weigh the mattress down, and for the first time, she noticed that he had become even thinner since they had arrived in Japan. Local cuisine didn’t really allow for a lot of extra weight. Her mother had called her dad “the stork,” but now he looked even more like a bird than ever. Tall and thin, sometimes awkward, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and stared at her.

“You awake now?” he asked.

“Define ‘awake.’”

Rob Harper didn’t even crack a smile. That was when Kara knew the morning had brought trouble. And even as that thought entered her mind, she remembered the night before, listening to her father and Miss Aritomo outside as they said good night after their date-hearing her dad tell the art teacher that he loved her. Her own smile vanished, and now they regarded each other with mutually grim expressions. Last night, he had knocked as if to ask her permission to enter, though he hadn’t. This morning, it seemed any reluctance he might have felt about confronting her about her eavesdropping, and about his feelings for Miss Aritomo, had passed.

“We need to talk,” her father said.

“Dad,” Kara began. “It’s not like I was eavesdropping. You guys were hardly even whispering, and my window is right there. I couldn’t help-”

But he frowned, waving away her concerns. Anything she might have to say about the prior evening would apparently have to wait.

“You need to get up, honey. We’ve got to get you over to the school right away.”

For the first time, Kara bothered to look at the clock, and realized he had woken her nearly an hour before she normally would have gotten up. The light coming through her window had seemed dim when she had opened her eyes, but she had assumed they were in for another overcast day. Now she realized that it was only the hour that made it seem gloomy in her bedroom.

“What is it?” she asked, searching her father’s dark eyes.

“Mr. Yamato wants to speak with you,” he replied.

Which was when she realized that her brain wasn’t translating. She cocked her head to study him. “You aren’t speaking Japanese.”

He gave a small shake of his head. “Not this morning, I’m not.”

Startled, she flinched. “Wait, are you angry with me for something?”

“Not now, Kara.”

“I didn’t do anything. I already said-”

Irritated, he sighed and stood, throwing up his hands in surrender. “Could you please just get in the shower? If you saw or heard something you didn’t want to last night, that’s going to have to wait until later. Right now we have more important issues to deal with.”

More important than you falling in love? she wanted to say, but didn’t. Obviously, as far as her father was concerned, this-whatever it might be- was more important. That started her thoughts churning.

Kara threw back her sheets. The sun had started to brighten outside and the breeze that came through the window felt almost too warm. Judging by the morning, Thursday was shaping up to be an absolutely brutal day.

“Fine,” she snapped, climbing out of bed.

Her father blinked, a glimmer of regret in his eyes, perhaps reminded by her tone that they were supposed to be allies, not enemies.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just an ugly situation, and we’re supposed to be there in forty-five minutes.”

Frustrated, Kara cocked her hip, staring at him. “What is an ugly situation? You’re talking in riddles!”

His expression turned darker still. “It looks like we have another runaway.”

Kara froze, icy fingers closing on her heart. The shadows seemed to shift with malign intent in the corners of her room. Outside, the sky had brightened and the air felt close and thick around her.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“A girl named Wakana something. She lives in the dorm. From what Mr. Yamato said, some of the students are suggesting she was Daisuke’s girlfriend, that it’s likely they ran away together. Her parents live in Tokyo, but he’s a local boy, and his family apparently didn’t approve of him dating. I don’t know. I don’t have all the details, but-”

“But it sounds plausible,” Kara interrupted.

“As much as anything.”

For a moment, she felt relieved. There was some logic to these theories. She could imagine it happening that way, and that made her feel a little better, until she remembered that her father had said Mr. Yamato wanted to see her, specifically.

“What does that have to do with me?”

Rob Harper regarded his daughter with concern, but she saw other emotions in his eyes and wondered if any of them were suspicion.

“Wakana’s roommate flipped out, apparently. She’s told some wild stories. She also claims that if Mr. Yamato wants to know what happened to the missing kids, he should ask you.”

Kara’s mouth dropped open. It took a moment for her brain to start working again, and then she narrowed her eyes, nostrils flaring. “This roommate? Are we talking about Mai Genji?”

He nodded. “That’s her.”

“She’s nuts,” Kara said, wondering just how much detail Ume had given when she had told Mai about the events of the spring.

But her dismissive, angry tone didn’t seem to influence her father. Instead, he appeared troubled by her speaking Mai’s name. Then it struck her just how much damage something like this could do to his standing at the school. Simply to have his daughter called in to see Mr. Yamato was an embarrassment to her father, but if the principal thought Kara had anything at all to do with these students vanishing, it would dishonor him greatly. It might even endanger his job.

“How bad is this for you?” she asked, switching to Japanese for the first time that morning.

He hesitated before also changing to Japanese. “Go on,” he said. “Jump in the shower. We’ll talk more on the way over there.”

Kara did as he had asked, hurrying to get cleaned up and dressed. At first, all she could think about was the missing girl, and what might have happened to her, and what Mai might have said to Mr. Yamato

… and the trouble that might cause. But as she wolfed down the little bit of cereal that her father had poured into a bowl for her, other thoughts and feelings began to interfere, memories from the night before.

When all of this was done, another conversation awaited Kara and her father, and she wasn’t looking forward to that one, either.

In the corner of Mr. Yamato’s office nearest the window, a burbling fountain stood on a small round table. Loose, round stones were piled on the edges of a dozen pagoda-like levels, and the water sluiced around them, running down to the base, only to be drawn back up through the throat of the fountain and begin the course again. A single, lovely scroll hung on the wall behind the desk, bearing the image of a crane standing proud among some bamboo, and the kanji for the word “wisdom.” On a simple, three-tiered black shelf sat half a dozen bonsai trees of varying sizes. A smaller shelf held perhaps a dozen books of such age that their spines were worn and cracked, and any titles long since faded.

Kara had never been in the principal’s office before. In truth, she’d paid him as little attention as he had seemed to pay her since she had started at Monju-no-Chie school. Mr. Yamato had struck her from the moment she’d laid eyes on him-though struck certainly wasn’t the right word-as totally average for a middle-aged Japanese man. Thin and well groomed, a bit of white in his black hair, fussy with his small, square glasses, he was the picture of orderliness, and thus, completely boring.

Now, though, looking around the office, she wondered if the whole boring routine was just an act. Could anyone really be this bland? This calm? The room screamed “Serenity now!” as though it had been calculated to do exactly that.

On the other hand, so much of Japanese culture was about the appearance of order and conformity and control. If Mr. Yamato’s ordinariness was a facade, he had perfected it. She glanced at the bonsai trees and smiled inwardly. Her friends only ever called her bonsai when they were teasing her, but students who didn’t know her, or the soccer girls and their circle, still used it as a derisive thing sometimes. Kara liked it, actually. She owned it. There could be no denying the truth-she was a bonsai-and she didn’t feel the need to argue the point. The little trees were beautiful and elegant and proud.

So while Mr. Yamato glared at her through his small, square glasses, she kept the bonsai foremost in her mind, trying her best to keep her poise, both inside and outside. Otherwise, she knew she would never be able to lie convincingly… especially in front of her father.

“Kara,” Rob Harper said, his voice tight, “Yamato-sensei asked you a question.”

Pushing aside her guilt, she drew a breath and made a small bow to Mr. Yamato. The principal sat behind his desk, and her father in a chair to her right, beneath the window, but Kara had been left to stand.

“I’m sorry, Yamato-sensei. I was surprised by the question. I don’t really know how to respond to it, except to say that I have never had even a single conversation with Daisuke or…”

Kara frowned. She couldn’t think of the girl’s name.

“Wakana,” her father supplied.

“Right,” she said, with a quick nod. “Sakura and I have been helping out with Aritomo-sensei’s Noh play after our calligraphy club meetings because we’re kind of interested, and Aritomo-sensei has been so nice to us, advising us on our manga projects, and our friend Miho is in Noh club. I might have said hello to them, but no more than that.”

Mr. Yamato studied her intently over the top of his glasses like a prissy librarian who took the rule of silence in the stacks much too seriously. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Long seconds ticked by before he altered his facial expression, and that was limited to a slight raising of the eyebrows. At last he shifted in his chair.

“You can think of no reason at all why Miss Genji would suggest that you might know where our two runaway students have gone?” the principal asked, his voice dry as sandpaper.

Kara blinked. Was the guy a robot? She had just answered the same question, but apparently not directly enough for the principal.

“None,” she said flatly. “Except that she doesn’t like me.”

“Why do you say that?” Kara’s father asked.

Mr. Yamato shot him a stern look, then seemed disappointed when Mr. Harper did not look duly chastened. Kara stared at her father, hoping that her patented death-glance could make him more cautious with his words, even if the principal’s obvious displeasure hadn’t. They had some things to sort out between them, no question, but for now, they needed to back each other up while still staying out of trouble.

“Mai and her friends have never liked me, not since my first day of school here,” Kara explained. “Maybe it’s because I’m a gaijin. Or it might just be that I don’t like the things that they like.”

The principal nodded slowly. “They bully you, this group of girls?”

Kara shook her head. “Not bullying, exactly. But they do tease. They call me bonsai, because I’ve been…” She couldn’t think of the word for uprooted, or one for transplanted. “Because I’ve been cut away from where I grew up and now I’m here. It’s not really very hurtful. At any school, there are always going to be people you don’t get along with.”

Mr. Yamato glanced at her father, then back at Kara.

“Are there people who have seen the way these girls treat you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “A lot, I’m sure. My friends, and others. They’ve never made it a secret, though I think Mai likes me least of all. I think she blames me for her friend Ume leaving the school.”

Kara had been trying to tell as much of the truth as she could without getting into trouble. Lies were difficult to keep track of. But now she realized she had made a mistake. Mr. Yamato had not mentioned Ume, but the light of recognition sparked in his eyes when Kara brought her up, which suggested that Mai had already made a connection between Ume and Kara in the principal’s mind. What the hell had she told him? Could she really have told him the truth?

Wild stories, her father had said. Right now, she wanted very much to know what wild stories Mai had told the principal.

“Why would she blame you for Ume leaving?” Mr. Yamato asked.

Kara scrutinized the principal. If Mai really had told him the things that Ume had revealed to her-about Kyuketsuki, about haunted dreams and killer cats and blood-sucking things-surely he did not believe that story? Mr. Yamato hadn’t brought it up yet in their conversation. That suggested he was embarrassed even to discuss it, which worked in Kara’s favor.

She hated to lie, but as she felt the principal’s gaze on her, glanced at her father’s dark eyes, she knew the choice had been taken from her. Mai had already accused her once of having something to do with Daisuke’s disappearance, and yet they still had no reason to believe anything horrible had befallen the missing. No reason to believe the curse had brought fresh evil to Monju-no-Chie school.

“I have no idea,” she said firmly, meeting the principal’s inquisitive gaze but not daring to look at her father. “My friends and I didn’t get along with Ume at all, but we didn’t drive her out of here. To be honest, though, Yamato-sensei, I am glad she is gone. She was far worse to me, and especially to Sakura, than Mai has ever been.”

Kara had hoped that would be the end of it, that Mr. Yamato would dismiss her now. School would be starting in fifteen minutes or so, and he would want to prepare for the morning assembly. But he did not seem satisfied with her answer. Whatever Mai had told him, it had unsettled the man, gotten under his skin. She could almost see the thoughts roiling around in his head.

At length, he seemed to decide on another question, and Kara froze. No, she thought. Don’t do it. Don’t ask.

“Have you ever seen anything strange at this school, Miss Harper?” Mr. Yamato asked.

Kara glanced at her father, saw how intently he was studying her, and wondered what he must be thinking and if the principal had already explained to him what wild things Mai had accused her of being a part of.

“I don’t understand,” she lied, turning back to Mr. Yamato, no longer feeling an ounce of guilt. This was about protecting herself and her father and her friends. “How do you mean ‘strange,’ sir?”

The man opened his desk drawer and slid out a thick sheaf of paper that had been clipped together. Kara didn’t have to ask what it was. The rich, dark colors of the first page of her and Sakura’s manga stood out on top.

“I asked Aritomo-sensei for a copy of this manga you have done with Sakura Murakami.”

Kara nodded, hoping her totally freaked-out, you’ve-gotta-be-kidding me smile would come off as sheer enthusiasm.

“ Kyuketsuki. Yes, sir?”

Mr. Yamato hesitated. He swallowed, contemplating, and glanced at her father, which made Kara realize that the principal might have told him some of what Mai had said, but not all of it.

“Miss Genji claims that you and Miss Murakami based your manga on real events that took place here, at this school, several months ago.”

Rob Harper apparently couldn’t help himself, for he scoffed a little, then tried to cover by pretending to be clearing his throat.

Kara reached up to tuck a loose strand of her blond hair behind one ear. She’d been in a hurry this morning, and hadn’t gotten the elastic quite right for her ponytail. For some reason, her sailor fuku uniform itched awfully today.

“That’s true,” she said.

Mr. Yamato’s serenity broke then. Astonishment was the first real expression she’d ever seen on his face.

“What?” he demanded.

“We weren’t trying to do anything in poor taste,” Kara said quickly. “But when those students died during the last term, and then we ran across the old Noh story about Kyuketsuki, we sort of had an inspiration. I think it really helped Sakura to draw the story, too. After her sister was murdered, she had been having a really hard time, and doing the manga was…”

Kara glanced at her confused father and switched to English. “Dad, what’s the Japanese word for therapeutic?”

Rob Harper supplied something Kara only barely caught. Her mind was awhirl as she spun out this alternate version of the truth. None of it was really a lie except for her pretending not to know what Mai was talking about. She had also committed major sins of omission, but she was on solid ground now. These were lies she and Sakura had told before.

“Aritomo-sensei made sure we were very careful to follow the original Noh play,” Kara went on. “The manga is very faithful.”

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Yamato said. “But it isn’t…”

He let the question trail off, looking at a loss. Kara felt sure he had been about to say real. But how could he ask that question without implying that he believed such things were possible, and that Mai’s story was something more than either delusion or spite toward a rival. After the odd deaths in the spring, he might well believe-no matter how he conspired with the police to explain the unexplainable-but he did not dare admit it.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Kara said. “It isn’t what?”

Mr. Yamato took off his glasses and tiredly massaged the bridge of his nose. He set the glasses on his desk and waved the question away.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said, standing. He nodded to her. “You’re dismissed, Miss Harper.” The principal turned to her father. “Thank you, Harper-sensei.”

Mai didn’t attend classes that day. When Sora-the cute guy with nice eyes who sat to her right-got up to do toban, taking attendance, Mr. Sato did not address the silence that followed the calling of Mai’s name. Sora exchanged a glance with the girl who sat in front of Kara-also, and confusingly, named Sora. Kara had often thought that if the two of them ever dated, their lives would be chaos.

As with Daisuke’s disappearance, everyone already seemed to know about Wakana going missing the night before. In the breaks between classes, Kara overheard their mutterings and realized that in some ways, rather than making them more anxious, Wakana’s vanishing had soothed the fears of many of her classmates. The two missing kids had been, if not boyfriend and girlfriend, at least “together.” With Wakana now gone, it seemed much easier to accept that they had run away together, though no one could supply anything that sounded like a reasonable explanation as to why they might want to do so.

Kara herself said little about it, except to Miho, to whom she spoke softly during each break, telling the tale of her morning meeting with Mr. Yamato in pieces. It wasn’t until lunch that they were able to discuss it at length. They retreated to a corner of the room, back by the lockers, having barely picked at the lunch in their bento boxes. Even then, they had to whisper much of their conversation. It had not occurred to Kara that Mr. Yamato might actually believe any of what Mai had told him, that the deaths caused by the ketsuki in the spring might have been mysterious enough to force him to consider a supernatural cause. Now that this seemed to be the case, should they bring what they knew to the principal?

“We have to talk to Sakura and Hachiro about it,” Miho told her, glancing around to see that no one was close enough to eavesdrop. “But I don’t know why you would want to discuss it with Yamato-sensei now. If there is no sign of anything… strange, then why should we bring it up at all?”

Kara let out a breath, nodding. “You’re right. I guess I just hate carrying this around like it’s some big secret.” A frown creased her brow as she thought of her father the previous night, telling Miss Aritomo that he was falling in love with her. “Secrets only end up hurting people eventually, and I don’t want it to hurt us.”

Miho paused in the midst of unfastening a clip in her hair. She drew it out and let her hair fall in a curtain across her face, then stared at Kara, one eye entirely hidden.

“This isn’t just about the curse, or about Yamato-sensei, is it?” Miho asked. “What’s wrong?”

Kara nearly told her right then, but though no one seemed to be listening, she did not feel comfortable talking about her father’s love life where any of his students might overhear.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” she said in English. “Just stuff with my dad.”

The look on Miho’s face made Kara wince inwardly. She assumed that Sakura and Hachiro would react the same way. Kara had always had such a good relationship with her father, and her anger obviously came as a surprise, especially since Miho and Sakura seemed to look at her and her father as proof that parents and their kids could actually like each other.

Once again, Miss Aritomo canceled the post-Noh club meeting. Apparently, progress had been made on the set by the club members, and the performers were still practicing on their own, as they were intended to. But the volunteers were told that they wouldn’t be needed until the following Tuesday, which was just fine with Kara. She had been doing her homework later and later, and wanted to get an early start. More than that, however, she just wanted a little time for herself, when she didn’t have to think about classes or curses or her father’s feelings for her art teacher.

During o-soji, Kara and Miho had talked to Hachiro and Sakura, but the two of them had only echoed the conversation they’d had earlier. Still, as she walked the short distance home from school, Kara could not prevent curiosity from tickling at the back of her mind. Why had Daisuke and Wakana run away, and where had they gone? Where could a pair of high school kids go in Japan, without a bundle of cash, where they wouldn’t be reported or discovered? The mountains? Could they have gone camping? Were they holed up in some seedy Miyazu City hotel?

Either way, their situation would turn ugly soon enough. They’d run out of money, and roughing it would lose its appeal fast. Kara’s friend Paige Traficante had run away for three days freshman year to escape her parents’ constant alcohol-fueled battles, but even that had not been enough to keep Paige away when her money ran out. Prostitution and drugs had seemed like things that only happened to runaways who weren’t smart about their plans, and it had turned out that Paige had not been as smart as she believed.

Daisuke and Wakana would be back.

Unless, of course, something bad happened to them. With runaways, it was always a risk. Walking home in the fading heat of the August day, Kara shuddered a little, but didn’t allow herself to consider what other dangers the runaways might face in Miyazu City. A chill rippled up her spine but she ignored it, and told herself she had nothing to be afraid of.

Still, she shifted her backpack from one shoulder to the other and picked up her pace, and in another minute she reached her front door. In that afternoon time of long shadows, with evening not far off, the windows seemed very dark. It would be a little while yet before her father came home, and Kara felt a tightness in her chest as she let herself in, turned on a lamp in spite of the soft light coming through the windows, and locked the door behind her.

For a moment, she considered making dinner, but there were no messages on the answering machine, and her father hadn’t called her cell phone to say he would be late. If he hadn’t asked, she wasn’t about to volunteer. Instead, she retreated to her bedroom, and her guitar.

As she picked out the first few chords of a song, the tension she’d been feeling since her father had woken her that morning began to ease away at last. Her muscles relaxed, and soon she lost herself in the song, opening her mouth to sing.

Halfway through, she heard the front door open and her fingers faltered on the strings, making a discordant jangle that she cut off with the flat of her hand. The rush of anger that came up from within felt unexpected, but a moment later she realized she should not have been surprised. Amid the anxiety about Kyuketsuki’s curse and the numb shock that came with lying to the principal’s face, the real source of her anger had been simmering since the night before.

A soft knock came at her bedroom door. Last night, she hadn’t answered. Now she sat up, rigid on the edge of her bed.

“Come in.”

Her father opened the door and poked his head in. He looked wiped out, even a little pale.

“Hey,” he said. “You doing all right?”

Kara held the guitar tightly, silenced. “Fine.”

“You ready for dinner?”

“I’m not very hungry, actually.”

That stopped him. He frowned, apparently trying to sort out what to say next. “That song sounded really pretty. Why did you stop?”

Kara could not think of a reply, so instead she let her fingers begin to drift over the guitar’s strings again, picking up the song roughly where she left off, but she didn’t sing. She hung her head, tuning him out and the song in.

“I know we need to talk,” her father said, stepping farther into the room. And why the hell was he doing that, when she’d made it so obvious that she wanted him to leave? “I figured it could wait until dinner, but maybe it can’t.”

Kara looked up at him. “Can’t what?”

“Wait.”

She kept playing, the haunting tune soft, lyrics in her mind if not on her lips. She hated girls who got all drama queen over something minor like this, but couldn’t help herself.

It isn’t minor, she told herself.

“Kara,” her father said. “Look, you need to talk to me. Nobody in the world knows you like I do. This morning, in Yamato-sensei’s office

… I know you were hiding something. You weren’t telling him everything, and that scares me. Not to mention it puts me in a situation that could get really awkward. I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong, except for not telling him whatever it is you know-”

Her hands fumbled a discordant note and she turned to stare at him.

“Are you kidding me, Dad? Seriously?” Kara shook her head. “You could have prepared me better for this morning. You could have warned me. When we were in there, you could’ve taken my goddamn side! I haven’t done anything wrong, not that you even care about that, and you just let him interrogate me like that?”

Her father stared at her like she was a stranger. He cocked his head.

“I did take your side, if you recall. And Yamato-sensei called me on it. I don’t know what this is really about, Kara, but you can’t distract me from the fact that you’re hiding something by lashing out.”

Kara stood up, swung her guitar around to hang across her back from its strap, and turned to face him.

“Oh, I’m hiding something? I guess that means I’m the one who promised we’d start over together, that we’d be a team. Wait, no, I don’t think that was me after all. Just like it isn’t me telling the first woman to come along that he’s in love with her, but not letting his daughter in on that little detail. So much for the team supreme!”

Her father flinched. “That’s what this is about?”

Kara grabbed her keys and cell phone off her bureau, stalked toward him, and faced off with her father at the threshold to her room.

“Remember what you said, Dad? You said we were doing this for Mom as much as we were for us.” She gritted her teeth to keep from crying, hating the uncontrollable emotions surging up inside her but unable to put the brakes on. “So much for that!”

She started toward him and her father stepped aside, then seemed to think better of it and pursued her down the short hall and across the living room toward the front door.

“Kara, stop. You’re not going anywhere,” he said, voice stern.

At the door she turned, guitar still hanging across her back. “I need some me time, Dad. But you’re all about the me time lately, so I’m sure you understand. I’m going to go find a quiet place to sit and play my guitar.”

“I’m not sure it’s safe,” he said. “I don’t want you out after dark, Kara. Those kids-”

“It’s not dark yet,” she retorted, though night would not be far off. “Besides, they’re runaways, remember? And I’m not running away,” she said, voice breaking. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

She slammed the door on her way out.