The Waking

by Thomas Randall

  The alternative, that he’d slept right through her terror, was too awful to consider.

  6

  It rained all morning that Monday.

  Kara tried her best to shake off the trauma of the weekend, but the whole school remained haunted by Jiro’s death. In the breaks between classes, students talked in low tones. A couple of girls in Kara’s class even cried after Japanese History. But when there were teachers in the room, no one had an opportunity to ruminate on death. Maybe the teachers worked them extra hard on purpose that day, or maybe it was simply that, now that the first full week of school had arrived, it would always be like this. The teachers were merciless.

  Kara had to work hard to keep focused. As grim as the day was, nobody could help Jiro now. The rain let up for about half an hour, and she thought the sun might actually make an appearance. Then it began to pour harder than ever, the rain pelting down with such force that the noise of it hitting windows and walls and the roof of the school made Yuasa-sensei raise his voice. The sensei asked Ume to turn on the lights in the classroom. Outside it had grown dark as night.

  At lunch, Kara opened her bento box and discovered a small, folded piece of paper, stained with the juice of the shredded steak and peppers her father had packed for her. She unfolded it to discover a short note in his messy scrawl. Have a good day, it read. Love, Dad.

  Six simple words, and yet they made her feel so good. And less alone. Smiling, she folded the note and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

  The one thing she couldn’t shake, though, was her concern for Sakura. Ume had gone a little nuts yesterday, which could probably be forgiven, since Jiro had apparently been her ex. But clearly something simmered underneath all of this that no one had bothered to share with Kara. She didn’t understand the dynamics. Ordinarily she wouldn’t mind, but she had found a friend in Sakura and she wanted to be helpful and supportive, which was difficult without knowing the whole story.

  On the other hand, she also knew it was none of her business, and she’d have to live with that.

  After lunch, the principal called an assembly in the gymnasium and spoke to the students, discussing Jiro’s death in only the most peripheral ways, as if he had passed away in his sleep or something equally innocuous. A counselor spoke next, announcing that appointments would be available to anyone who wished to come in to discuss their feelings about the tragedy.

  When the assembly ended, the principal announced that all afternoon classes were canceled. After o-soji, the day students would be allowed to go home and the boarders back to their dorm. But he also noted that most club meetings scheduled for the afternoon and evening would still take place, so Kara thought the gesture of canceling classes seemed pretty pointless.

  Mr. Matsui, her homeroom teacher, approached her in the corridor after the assembly.

  “Today is your turn to help with the girls’ bathroom on this floor,” he said, smiling oddly.

  Kara caught herself before she could make a sarcastic remark, but the expression of dismay on her face must have been clear, for the teacher chuckled softly.

  “Don’t worry. I have given you a reprieve until next week. You can sweep classrooms today.”

  She bowed in gratitude, relieved but also curious.

  “Sensei, I am thankful, but why would you do this?”

  Mr. Matsui glanced around. Students were moving busily through the halls, preparing to perform their tasks for o-soji. No one was paying them any attention. His brown eyes narrowed behind his glasses, his square head inclining toward her.

  “You may be used to working hard in school, but I thought you might need time to adjust to cleaning toilets.”

  Kara smiled. “You’re very kind. Honestly, I would prefer never to clean a toilet. I suspect everyone feels that way. But I don’t want to be treated differently just because I’m not Japanese.”

  He studied her, smile slipping away. Serious as his expression became, she felt his approval.

  Mr. Matsui bowed. “An admirable choice.” He arched a graying eyebrow. “Report to the girls’ bathroom, then.”

  She returned his bow and hurried to her duties. For the first four or five steps, she felt proud of herself and grateful to Mr. Matsui. By the sixth step, all she could think about was cleaning toilets, and she began to wish she was the kind of person who would have accepted Mr. Matsui’s gesture. He had done it out of kindness, but if she didn’t like people being cruel or ignorant toward her because she was different, she didn’t think people should treat her better because of it, either.

  The door to the girls’ bathroom swung open as Kara approached, and Miho came out lugging two bags of trash.

  “Hi,” Miho said, stopping in the hallway. She made a face. “Listen, I wanted to tell you I’m sorry for running off yesterday. I didn’t want to leave Sakura on her own—”

  “It’s okay,” Kara interrupted. “I understand. Or, I guess I do. As much as I can, since obviously there’s a lot going on around here that I don’t know, with Sakura and Ume and all of that.”

  Miho started to reply, probably to apologize, but Kara held up a hand.

  “No, no. It’s just an observation. I’m not upset about it. I’m new, and we don’t know each other that well yet. It’s okay.”

  Miho looked unsure. “Really?”

  Kara smiled. “Really.”

  “So, what are you doing for o-soji? I’ve already got the trash, so . . . oh, no. Don’t tell me you have toilet duty?”

  Kara executed a deep, theatrical bow.

  Miho laughed and shook her head at the same time. “Well, the good news is that after today, you won’t have to do toilets again for months.”

  “The worst part is that I sort of volunteered for it.”

  “What?”

  “A long story,” Kara said. “I’ll explain later.”

  She opened the bathroom door. Miho started down the hall with her garbage bags. The door had started to swing shut when Miho called back to her, and Kara propped it open with her hand.

  “Yeah?”

  “You only have a week left to decide what club you’re going to be in,” Miho said. “Miss Aritomo will be doing a presentation for new members at Noh Club today. You should come.”

  Kara thought about it. She’d done some research online over the weekend about Noh theater, mainly because Miho had already suggested she join the club. Some of it seemed really interesting, though it sounded like a ton of work.

  “Okay. I’ll come.”

  Miho beamed.

  Kara sat with Miho in the middle of Miss Aritomo’s classroom, listening to the art teacher talk about the Noh theater club. The woman spoke with contagious passion, eyes alight with a love for her subject. No wonder Dad has a crush on her, she thought. Petite and very pretty, Aritomo-sensei had a quiet intelligence and a bright smile, and Kara had yet to see her in an outfit she didn’t envy. Today she wore a simple white blouse and beige skirt, but the cut was so stylish that she looked like she’d just stepped off a runway.

  Any time Miss Aritomo’s name came up, Kara’s father got a certain look in his eyes, a glimmer of a grin that he couldn’t hide. He might not even know how attracted he was to her, but Kara knew him too well to miss it. She’d seen him grieve and, though he had laughed a lot as well in the past two years, when things were quiet, he often got a lost, distant look in his eyes that she could never seem to erase. He might not think he was ready to fall in love with someone else, but every time she saw that glimmer in his eye, Kara made a wish that it could happen for him.

  As for Noh theater, Kara found everything about it fascinating. As an art form, it dated back seven hundred years. The masks, the costumes, and the precision of the performances all seemed to her to reflect the magic and mystery that Japan represented in her heart.

  Miss Aritomo had welcomed them all and seemed very pleased to see Kara, which made her feel good. She had spoken briefly about the origins of Noh theater and the respect that its greatest practitione
rs received, as well as the seriousness with which all those involved approached their work.

  “In total,” Miss Aritomo told the gathered students, “there are only about two hundred and fifty Noh plays.”

  Kara raised her hand. From the surprise on Miss Aritomo’s face, she realized she probably should have waited until the end of the presentation to ask questions, but her hand was already up.

  “Yes, Kara?”

  “I’m sorry, Aritomo-sensei, but didn’t you say that Noh theater had been performed for seven hundred years?”

  Miss Aritomo nodded. “That’s right.”

  “And there are only two hundred and fifty plays?” To her, it seemed like Noh theater could be no different from novels, with millions of stories to be told.

  The teacher smiled. “It is a precise art form, not something that can be created quickly. But you are right to question the number. Over the centuries there were certainly many more, but still not as many as you might imagine. Only specific kinds of stories have ever been considered appropriate for Noh theater, so the number of works is naturally limited.”

  Then she had shown them a long scene from a Noh play entitled “Aoi no Ue” on DVD, and Kara had watched, breathless. Like the limitations on form and story, the slow movements of the performers interested Kara a great deal. The skill involved impressed her as immense, similar to the discipline in ballet. What she had gleaned from a quick online search on Sunday morning did not begin to communicate the strange, dreamlike beauty of the actual performance, which in this case had something to do with exorcising the spirit of one woman from the body of another. It seemed most Noh plays had something to do with gods or monsters or spirits.

  So weird, she thought, watching that ten-minute scene. In the U.S., ghost stories get no respect, but here, it’s high art.

  While watching the DVD, though, Kara caught several members of the Noh club—boys and girls—sneaking dark looks in her direction. These weren’t soccer girls, obviously, since they were in the Noh club. It wasn’t Ume’s clique but other students Kara didn’t know yet.

  She brushed it off, trying to ignore it, but the longer it went on, the more she began to feel unwelcome.

  “One element of Noh theater that many find interesting is the solitary preparation of the performers,” Miss Aritomo explained toward the end of the presentation. “Unlike most theater, Noh performers work in private. The actors and singers practice independently, only joining all of their efforts together for the actual performance, which adds to the challenge but also introduces a spiritual, ritualistic element that we will discuss in future meetings.”

  Something struck the back of Kara’s head. She grunted and turned around, even as she heard the ping of metal on the floor. A five-yen coin rolled a few feet and then fell over.

  Someone had thrown it at her.

  Several of the club members would not look at her. Others stared at her in curiosity or defiance, as if to say, What are you going to do about it?

  “Kara?” Miss Aritomo asked, “Is something wrong?”

  She considered speaking up but knew it would get her nowhere. Nobody would admit to having thrown the coin, and no one would tell on whoever had done it. She was an outsider.

  “I’m sorry,” Kara said, bowing her head. “Something buzzed around my head. It must have been a fly.”

  Miss Aritomo gave her an odd look. “All right. Let me know if any other flies trouble you.”

  Again, Kara inclined her head.

  When Miss Aritomo began to speak again, Kara risked a glance at Miho, who sat in the next row, one seat up. The quiet girl might not come to her own defense, but the glare she cast back toward the kids sitting behind Kara was withering. It made Kara feel a little better, but not much.

  After the club meeting ended, she and Miho went downstairs and waited for Sakura outside in the rain. They hid in the arch of the doorway on the side of the building, where Sakura usually smoked. The rain had lightened, but still they were thankful for the overhang of the roof and the recessed door.

  “What did you think?” Miho asked, in English.

  Kara blinked, taking a moment to switch her brain back into English. “It’s cool.”

  Miho smiled at the Western slang. “Cool, yes. Very cool.”

  “But I don’t think it’s for me.”

  “Don’t . . . ,” Miho started, and then switched back to Japanese. When she was upset, the effort it required for her to speak English made her impatient. “Don’t let them stop you from joining. You’ll enjoy it. And those idiots will leave you alone once they know you. They’ll get used to you.”

  Kara leaned her head back against the door, staring out at the rain, wondering what was taking Sakura so long. She sighed and looked at Miho. Raindrops had beaded on the girl’s glasses, but Miho had not bothered to wipe them.

  “I won’t get used to them. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can be a part of that group. I understand why you love Noh theater so much. I want to love it, too. The costumes and masks are amazing and it seems so . . .” She didn’t know the Japanese word for ethereal. “It feels almost like a dream. And I adore Miss Aritomo. She’s really sweet. But if I’m around those people, I don’t think I’ll be able to love it, Miho. It’s pretty clear I’m not welcome there, maybe because I’m a gaijin and Noh is such an ancient Japanese tradition. But the reason doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to stay where I’m not wanted.”

  Maybe calligraphy was the way to go after all.

  “I’m sorry,” Miho said. She looked disappointed but did not try to change Kara’s mind.

  “Me too.”

  The girls stood in the recession another few minutes, just listening to the sound of the rain.

  “This is strange,” Miho said.

  “What is?”

  “Sakura never takes so long. She likes calligraphy, but that doesn’t stop her from being the first one out the door when the meeting is over.”

  “Maybe it isn’t over,” Kara suggested.

  Miho shook her head. “No. They never go on this long.”

  The tone of her voice, even more than the words, told Kara that Miho was worried. The way Sakura had been behaving the day before, in the wake of the discovery of Jiro’s body—she might just be feeling oversensitive. Maybe Sakura had just wanted some time alone.

  They set off together, walking around the front of the school. Most of the juku students and those who didn’t live on campus would have left immediately after their club meetings. Half a dozen guys and girls gathered a short way down the front walk, standing under umbrellas, probably talking about whatever meeting they’d just come from.

  Kara glanced down toward the bay but didn’t see anyone near the water. With the storm, she couldn’t even make out the location of the shrine that had been created for Akane.

  “Let’s try inside,” Miho said.

  But none of the students they encountered had seen Sakura. Kara spotted Mr. Matsui and asked him, but he also shook his head.

  They walked to the room in the eastern wing, at the farthest, rear corner of the first floor, where the calligraphy club had its meetings. Two girls remained in the room, though no teacher was present. They worked quietly on a large piece of parchment, practicing the sweep of the brush over paper, one girl seeming to guide the other.

  “Reiko?” Miho asked.

  Both girls looked up. The older one reacted, lowering her gaze a moment before focusing on them again.

  “You’re looking for Sakura?” Reiko asked.

  Miho nodded.

  “Do you know where she is?” Kara asked.

  The girl shook her head. “Not exactly. In one of the classrooms, I think. But I don’t think you should interrupt them.”

  “Them?”

  Reiko’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought you knew. It’s really creepy. The police are here. They took her out of our meeting to talk to her about Jiro.”

  Kara knew her mouth was hanging open
and how foolish it must have looked, but she couldn’t get it to close. Her heart began to pound and she felt her face flush. She and Miho turned to each other, but it was obvious that neither of them had any idea what to say.

  The police were here. What did that mean? Had somebody listened to the accusations Ume had made the day before? Did they have a reason to? Kara hated the questions, but she hated not having the answers even more.

  “Poor Sakura,” Miho said, at last.

  “Yeah,” Kara agreed. But in the back of her mind, she was also thinking, Poor Jiro.

  That night, Kara sat at the small desk in her bedroom, staring at her computer screen. The rain had stopped but the clouds had never gone away, and now—long after dark—the air still felt chilly and damp. She wore a hooded woolen sweater, the sleeves pulled down over her hands, leaving only her fingers uncovered.

  Her doubts had returned full force. She hated the emotional seesaw she’d been on the past few days; that just wasn’t the kind of girl she wanted to be, some emo drama queen. But she didn’t know how else she was expected to react to the ugliness moving to Japan had brought into her life.

  Had she made the wrong friends? It seemed so. At first she’d felt such sympathy for Sakura, but now all of this death and brutality had come too close.

  A lot of the guys she knew at home listened to Led Zeppelin, though the band had broken up when their parents were little kids. Still, they wore the T-shirts and scribbled lyrics on their notebooks. She knew plenty of the songs herself, and most of her guy friends were torn between whether “Stairway to Heaven” was the best or worst rock song ever written. Kara was on the fence, but the lyrics came to her now.

  There’s still time to change the road you’re on.

  Could she switch gears now—switch friends, even? Would others accept her?

  That’s not the question, Kara, she thought. The question is, do you want to?

  She didn’t.

  Weird as all of this stuff with Sakura was, the girl had been the first person under the age of thirty to be nice to her in Japan. Kara liked her, and she liked Miho as well. Maybe they hadn’t known each other long, but no way was Sakura capable of killing someone, even by accident. Kara felt guilty for even considering such a thing. She couldn’t turn her back on a friend just because things were getting weird and nasty.