Shadow (paper gods)

by Amanda Sun

  “I’ll talk to Linda,” Nan said. “Katie, you know Gramps and I will do everything we can to get the custody papers in order as soon as he’s well, right? Japan is just temporary.”

  Yeah, I thought. But how long is temporary? What if Gramps doesn’t get better?

  I smiled feebly and Nan squeezed my hand, lifting herself slowly off the bed and stumbling down the hallway. She wasn’t well either—Diane and I could both see it.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You got it,” Diane answered. “And if and when you’re ready to come to Japan, I have a spare room that needs some decorating.”

  I tried to smile. It came out hollow and fake. “Okay.”

  “Listen,” she said, reaching for my hand. At the last minute, she pressed her fingers into the comforter instead. Maybe this whole thing was scary for her, too. “Let’s find a good Japanese class so you can start learning. Just in case. I mean, it’s something to take your mind off everything anyway, right?”

  My room felt as stuffy as the living room had. I needed fresh air, or the walls would start rippling.

  “Okay.” Anything. Just leave me alone. I need to be alone.

  You are alone, Katie. You’ll be alone forever now.

  “Katie.” Diane’s voice was steady. “Don’t try to do everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She stood up, ran a stiff hand through her tangled hair.

  “I mean it’s okay to need help,” she said. “Let’s start small. I’m going to order some dinner. Chinese okay?”

  I nodded, then fell back on my pillow. Diane backed out of the room and clicked the door closed behind her, the smell of cocktail weenies and rancid punch lingering in my room.

  At least I could escape to my dreams, where Mom was still alive. Where I could choose what happened next.

  It’s called running away, I told myself. Some choice.

  Japan?

  What if you never come back, Katie?

  “You’re never coming back either, Mom,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

  The world around me swirled to blackness.

  Chapter Four

  Tomohiro

  Even with the cold and biting wind, I found Myu on the school roof where we often shared lunch on warmer days. Usually there’d be a few students up here, but the cold weather had forced them into hidden corners of the school to eat their lunches—the home ec tables, the far shelf in the library, the row of harps in the music room that formed a wall of strings. Myu was alone up here, and it was too quiet, eerie.

  She stood with her back to me, her fingers threaded through the links in the chain fence around the edge of the roof. The wind tangled and untangled her hair as I stepped closer, watching it dance and whirl around her. She gazed out over the courtyard, almost deserted in the cold.

  She was crazy to be out in this freezing wind, even if the sun was so bright I had to shield my eyes. But I liked that about her, when she did unexpected things. Her glittering nails and dangling earrings made her seem fragile sometimes, like something delicate, but then I’d find her standing alone on the roof in a storm, and I’d see the strength in her.

  I smirked, just a little. Things were never what they appeared to be, not in my world.

  I took another step toward her, my movement hidden by the sound of the wind encircling us.

  She’d confessed to me up here that day. Sato and I had come up to the roof to drink our cold milk teas after kendo practice. I remembered throwing the can at him hard that day because I was pissed. He’d brought down a tsuki hit that I’d barely dodged, and I hadn’t even anticipated it. It used to be so easy to take him down, but he’d been getting tougher, and somehow while I was busy drowning in the nightmares that haunted me, he’d left me behind and surpassed me.

  I’d looked at him, scrolling through his phone for any texts from them, any threats they wanted him to make today, any runs or jobs they wanted to send him on. It had started the spring we’d entered Suntaba, and it was getting worse. He was spiraling into his own darkness, and the thing was, he’d chosen it. It wasn’t like me. I didn’t have a choice. Why would you take a normal life and throw it away?

  The bitterness had spilled over inside of me as it joined with my frustration from kendo practice.

  I hate you, I’d thought as I ran my thumb down the cold tea can. Your life was normal. You don’t have the nightmares. You could even be the better kendouka if you focused.

  I didn’t hate him, not really, but the jealousy was white hot as I pulled back the can, the weight of it sloshing in my hand as I hurled it toward him.

  Your life was normal, and you fucked it up.

  The can smacked into Satoshi’s chest and he curled his fingers around it before it could drop. “Oi, what the hell, man?” he said, his deep eyes searching mine. “Save it for when you beat the crap out of Katakou School’s team.” He grinned then, pressing a gentle fist into my shoulder before cracking the pop tab backward.

  I remembered the shame that followed.

  I hate you, I’d thought again, but this time it was myself I hated.

  And then Myu had appeared at the top of the stairs, her skirt hiked up short and her nails painted with blue bows or stars or something that sparkled in the sunlight.

  She’d stood there for a moment, her hair catching on the wind the way it was now, her eyes locked with mine and a letter in her hands. She’d looked determined, like I was just an argument she had to win.

  Another rejection I’d have to make. Another person I’d have to push away.

  And something in me had snapped. I wanted to be normal, like Satoshi. I wanted it more than anything.

  So I’d said yes when she confessed—yes, let’s go out. And I don’t know which of us had been more surprised.

  So much had changed in three months. The nightmares still haunted me, but I didn’t feel as alone. In the daylight, standing here with Myu, I could almost imagine that being normal was possible.

  A gust of wind twisted her hair around her bright red-and-cream muffler, and I reached out my hand for her.

  Alone on the rooftop together. Romantic or something, right?

  But alone on a rooftop with me could be deadly. That’s what happens when you’re marked. I was drowning slowly, drop by drop.

  I didn’t want to live in shadow anymore. I didn’t want to push her away.

  I rested my hand on her muffler, her tangled hair soft against my fingers.

  She whirled around. “Yuu-chan.”

  “Myu,” I said. “What are you doing out here? Sa-me zo.” I tucked the knit muffler tighter around her neck.

  “It’s cold,” she agreed. “I was just thinking. About us.”

  Oh, great.

  “What about us?” I said, wrapping my arms around her. She didn’t move away, so I figured it was a good sign.

  “Are you...is everything okay with us?”

  How could it be fine when I was less than human?

  But I wanted it to be fine. God, how I wanted it to be fine. Myu put up with my crap—wasn’t that all I could ask for?

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “It’s great.”

  She could destroy me now. She could ask if what Sato had said was true. Was I with another girl instead of her? Could I tell her where I disappeared to all those times, or why I didn’t answer my phone?

  No. I couldn’t tell her anything.

  If she asked, I would be silent, and she would leave. And I would be alone on the rooftop, looming over the world that could never really be mine.

  Myu smiled and leaned into me. “Suki,” she said. I love you.

  I held on to her, looking out at the emptiness of the courtyard.

  Is this what love is? Because if she lets go of me, I will gasp and sputter and drown.

  There will be nothing left of me but emptiness.

  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 m
oment.

  “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.”

  Chapter Six

  Tomohiro

  For a while I thought I was in control. There hadn’t been any more incidents, at least not ones that caught anyone’s attention. What was another scrape or gash on my arm? If it was contained to only me, then I considered it under control.

  Not anymore. My hand shook as Nakamura-sensei wrote the kanji on the board.

  “I know it’s the last day of class,” he chuckled, his fingers dusted white with chalk as he sketched each stroke, “but I don’t want any slackers, got it? One more lesson so you’re prepared for Year 3 History, ne?”

  “Haiiiii,” droned the students, but I couldn’t speak. I stared at the name on the board.

  Taira no Kiyomori. The one from the dream.

  “So, who knows about Taira no Kiyomori?” Nakamura said. “Anyone?” A few tentative hands shot up. Definitely not mine.

  “A samurai, right?” said Tanaka Keiko. I knew her vaguely, because a long time ago I’d been in Calligraphy Club with her brother, Ichirou. I couldn’t announce the connection to her, of course. That had been when it all started.

  “More than a samurai,” Nakamura said. “He established the samurai-run government in the 12th century. He put his own son on the throne as emperor and staged a coup that changed everything for the samurai families. He also contributed heavily to the rebuilding of Itsukushima Shrine. But...” He paused dramatically, like my heart wasn’t already in my throat, like I wasn’t going to be sick. “There are rumors he wasn’t even from the Heike family, that his father wasn’t actually Taira no Tadamori.”

  Nakamura leaned against his desk, looking at us with gleaming eyes.

  “They called him the Monster,” he said. “The Demon Son.”