The Waking

9

T he warm, white sand gave way under Kara’s bare feet, sifting between her toes. Her shoes dangled from the fingers of her left hand. In spite of the sun and the blue sky of that Saturday morning, the air had a chill that made her glad she’d worn a turtleneck this morning, but her jacket was unzipped. On the bay side of Ama-no-Hashidate, the thick black pines provided shelter from the wind that swept in off the Sea of Japan.

Loosely translated, Ama-no-Hashidate meant “bridge in the heavens,” but Kara liked specifics and preferred the more literal translation, “standing celestial bridge.” From the mountain overlooking the bay-accessible by cable car-the view was even more magnificent. The two miles of serpentine sandbar, with its pine trees only edged with white sand, were set off against the blue water.

According to local lore, for more than a thousand years, people had been visiting Ama-no-Hashidate and experiencing it in a way that Kara thought was just weird. You were supposed to turn your back to the view, then bend over and look at Ama-no-Hashidate through your legs. From that perspective, the dark spit of land against the blue water looked like a bridge across the sky.

Supposedly.

“I tried it once,” she said.

Hachiro had been walking beside her, hands stuffed in his pockets. She felt like some kind of Hollywood pop tart with a bodyguard. Hachiro towered over her. Yet for all his size, Hachiro had a gentleness that set her very much at ease.

On Friday, they’d had no school. A terrible stillness had settled on Monju-no-Chie School and on the entire area, as though everyone connected with the school held their breath and didn’t think it was safe to exhale yet. Maybe they were right, but Kara had to exhale.

This morning, she’d planned to come down to Ama-no-Hashidate and play her guitar by the Turning Bridge. Instead, she had left her guitar at home and walked over to the dorm, hunted down Hachiro, and asked him to come with her. He’d agreed instantly, and as they’d walked to the Kaitenbashi- the Turning Bridge-and across to Ama-no-Hashidate, he’d lightened her spirits, talking incessantly, making her smile the way he always did.

Until his words ran dry.

Jiro had been his good friend, so it made sense that there would be a limit to how long Hachiro could pretend he wasn’t grieving. Kara thought that her quietness probably also made him nervous. For her to ask him to accompany her this morning had been a very un-Japanese thing to do. She liked the way it made her feel, and if Hachiro was off balance, not knowing quite how to handle it, she didn’t mind very much. His utter lack of smoothness and cockiness charmed her, and given the way her expectations about life in Japan had turned out, she wasn’t in the mood to worry about fitting in.

“Tried what?” Hachiro asked.

“Hmm?” She glanced at him, saw him studying her curiously. “Oh, the whole ‘viewing heaven’s bridge’ thing. I didn’t care that I looked silly, since everyone else was doing the same thing. But I didn’t see it. To me, it just looks like an upside-down view of the sandbar, and it made me dizzy as hell.”

Hachiro laughed. “You’re not much of a romantic.”

Kara cocked an eyebrow. “You’d be surprised.”

He gave her a befuddled look and glanced at the pine trees as though he’d never seen anything so fascinating. Shoes in hand, Kara started walking again, and Hachiro fell into step beside her. Her free hand brushed his and for a moment, as though by instinct, his fingers curled with hers, then set them free.

“It’s hard to believe this is just a sandbar,” she said nervously.

“Just a sandbar?” Hachiro said. “It cuts off the bay from the sea! There are thousands of pine trees out here! It’s hardly just a sandbar. Ama-no-Hashidate might be the most beautiful place on earth!”

Kara smiled. “It sounds like you’re enough of a romantic for both of us.”

The words disarmed him. Hachiro had no idea what to make of her, and Kara liked that just fine. She found herself wishing she had brought her guitar after all.

“I suppose this is a bad time to ask if you’ve decided you don’t like Japan,” he said.

Kara shrugged and kept walking. “I don’t know. I can separate Japan from what’s happening at school, as crazy and upsetting as it all is. When I was eleven years old, a younger kid who rode the bus with me just didn’t show up at the bus stop one morning. The principal got everybody together and explained that he’d been born with a heart defect, and that he was dead. It seemed almost ridiculous. How could this kid be dead? He was in the fourth grade. But we went through it as a community. It’s different here. It’s like, students on one side and grown-ups on the other, trying to pretend this isn’t all as ugly as it seems.

“I’ll say this: of all the different things I fantasized about living in Japan, this is something I never imagined. I know I can’t judge how much I like this country while this is all happening. So right now, the jury is still out.”

Hachiro nodded thoughtfully. “What about before, when you first got here?”

Kara thought about that. She and her father had come to Japan to start over, to leave behind all the painful reminders of her mother’s death and build a life that she would have wanted for them. But now death had thrown a terrible shroud over their new home. She wasn’t ready to have that conversation with Hachiro, was she?

No. Stick to school, she told herself.

“I love the people, and it’s beautiful here. I don’t even mind being ‘bonsai.’ But there are so many kids at school who barely acknowledge my presence, who won’t talk to me or really look at me, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t bother me. Most of the time, I can ignore it. And I’ve made friends, so it’s not that I’m a total outsider. But I hate being judged just for being gaijin. If they’d talk to me and then decide to hate me, that’d be different. At least they’d be hating me for me.”

Even as the words came out of her mouth, she knew it sounded like whining. How many kids did she know back in Boston who’d been discriminated against in the same way, just based on their sexual preference or the color of their skin? Far too many.

“They’ll get used to you,” Hachiro said.

“It’s all right. They probably won’t, but it isn’t as if they’re the kind of people I want to be friends with anyway.”

Hachiro nodded. “I understand that. I’m starting to realize there are people who are my friends that I don’t want to be friends with.”

Kara paused and looked out at the bay. Hachiro came to a stop behind her, but he didn’t move to her side.

“You mean Ume?”

Hachiro didn’t reply. When Kara turned, she saw the contemplative expression on his face.

“She’s one of them,” he admitted without a trace of a smile. “I’m starting to wonder how well I know a lot of the people I thought I knew.”

Kara began to reply, but Hachiro cut her off.

“No,” he said. “That’s not true. I’ve been wondering that for quite a while.”

Four feet separated them, but without taking a step, she felt that the space between them had vanished. The sun felt warm on her face and she could smell the detergent her father used to wash her sweater.

Hachiro might really be as good a guy as she’d hoped.

“Can I ask you something?” Kara said.

“Of course.”

“Sakura thinks her sister is haunting Ume and the others.

She and Miho think that Ume knows who killed Akane. But when I ask them why they think that, they won’t tell me anything else. So what is it? Why would they think that?”

Hachiro didn’t look away, and she was grateful for that. But he cocked his head and regarded her a moment as though sizing her up anew, seeing more deeply into her than he had before.

“Maybe we should start back,” he said. “We could get something to eat.”

“Does that mean you’re not going to answer me either?”

“No. It just means that we’re halfway across the bay, and I’m getting hungry.”

Kara smiled. “All right.”

They turned together and started back along the sand and she switched her shoes to her right hand. The water lapped against the shore, but otherwise the world had become eerily silent. The boats out on the bay seemed very far away.

“Last year, Jiro was Ume’s boyfriend. That’s why I know her and her friends a little better than other people. They wouldn’t have paid any attention to me except that Jiro and I are… were friends.”

He paused, and she could feel a wave of grief emanating from him. Kara wanted to make his sadness go away but didn’t know how to begin.

“Akane, though… she was beautiful, and always seemed to be lost inside her head. Something about her was just different, and fragile. For months, she and Jiro were best friends, and Ume hated her for it. And then Jiro did something stupid.”

Kara’s stomach gave a little twist. “What?”

Hachiro didn’t look at her. They kept walking. “He told Akane that he loved her.”

“And Ume found out?”

Now he stopped and turned, and his eyes were dark. “I don’t know. She might have.”

Kara pushed her hair away from her face, that sick feeling spreading.

“What did Akane say? To Jiro, I mean, when he told her he was in love with her?”

Hachiro sighed. “What you’d expect. That she loved him as a friend. The worst thing a girl can ever say to a guy.”

Kara took that in. “Do you think Jiro would have hurt her?”

“Jiro’s dead. And I don’t care who wants to say it might be suicide. He wouldn’t have killed himself. To some people it might look like he did kill Akane, and did it out of guilt, but I know-”

“I believe you,” Kara interrupted. She didn’t want to tell him about the conversation she’d overheard between her father and Miss Aritomo-that would feel like a betrayal of trust-but she couldn’t just say nothing.

“You do?” Hachiro asked, surprised.

“I do.”

“Good. So Jiro didn’t kill Akane, and then someone killed him.”

“So do you think Ume could have done it?”

Hachiro gave a curt shake of his head. “No. I can’t imagine it. The police talked to everyone, and they think it was random. Someone walking by the bay that night attacked her.”

“But they never arrested anyone.”

“They never had any suspects that I know of. No witnesses. I don’t think they knew where to start. Anyway, Ume’s not strong enough to have hurt Jiro, and I have to think whoever killed Akane also killed Jiro. Otherwise, there are two killers out there, and that’s pretty hard to believe.”

Kara nodded, but she didn’t know what to think. Ume and her friends might not be haunted by a ghost, but their nightmares wouldn’t let them sleep. Hana had killed herself. And Ume had enough guilt to accuse Sakura of drugging or poisoning her.

Tonight, she would be spending the night at the dorm, in Miho and Sakura’s room. The school allowed boarding students to host day students for sleepovers on the weekends before or after a holiday. This weekend didn’t qualify, but her father had called the dorm director Friday afternoon to ask if, under the circumstances, the rule might be bent. It would be good for the students to be able to share their feelings about the tragedies of the past two weeks, he’d said.

The dorm director had agreed, earning Kara’s father many hugs.

As odd as Sakura had been behaving, Kara had been a little unsure about how much she was looking forward to the overnight. Now her anxiety began to build. She didn’t want to take Ambien tonight, and she knew bad dreams would plague her. Psychology wasn’t the culprit here, she felt sure. How long would it be, she wondered, before someone else fell apart to the extent that Hana had?

“Is this why you asked me to come out with you today?” Hachiro asked, a look of badly disguised disappointment on his face.

“No,” Kara assured him. “It isn’t. I just thought it would be nice to take a walk. We both needed to clear our heads. I’m sorry I got us onto such unpleasant topics.”

“That’s all right,” Hachiro said. “It would be impossible to pretend we’re not thinking about them.”

“Exactly. Anyway, on to happier thoughts. You mentioned lunch?”

His eyes lit up. Hachiro was still a growing boy, and he needed to be fed. And Kara found that she was getting pretty hungry as well.

They walked along the shore of Ama-no-Hashidate, headed back to the Turning Bridge. Several times, Kara thought Hachiro would take her hand, but he never did.

“There is one other thing that’s kind of troubling me,” Hachiro said.

“What’s that?”

“Earlier, you mentioned the nightmares that everyone’s having, how you can’t sleep?”

“Yeah?”

Hachiro didn’t look at her. “Jiro was having them, too. He talked about his nightmares all the time. Akane was in some of them. He said she had no face.”