Table of Contents
SPRING
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
SUMMER
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
FALL
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
WINTER
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
SPRING
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For my brother, Jack, and my sister, Jane
SPRING
CHAPTER 1
She still wakes me to watch the sunrise.
Not every morning, but often enough. There are so many things we can’t do together anymore. But this, we can still do this.
“Reiko,” my sister, Mika, whispers in my ear. “Reiko, wake up. We’ll miss it!”
My room is already filling with that hazy pre-dawn light that means the sun will be peeking out over the mountains in a few minutes.
“Hurry,” Mika says, bouncing on her toes. She’s wearing the same yellow cotton dress she always wears. No matter what time it is or what the weather is like. She’s always in the same yellow dress.
I groan but get out of bed, pulling on my blue silk robe that is hanging on the back of my chair. I open my window, and then, glancing back to make sure Mika is still there, I pop the screen out, and slip out onto the roof of my garage, which is directly below my bedroom.
Mika crawls out after me, and we sit at the edge of the roof, her legs dangling off, mine tucked under me, and watch the sunrise over the mountains. The golden red light turns the palm trees into silhouettes across the desert.
Mika scoots closer to me and rests her head on my shoulder. She’s more affectionate in the mornings. Less sassy, more snuggly.
I yawn and put my head on hers.
“I’ll never get sick of watching the sunrise,” Mika says softly.
“Me either,” I say.
“It’s like magic every morning.”
I nod, watching the sky change color right before my eyes, and then yawn again. “There are few things I’d wake up this early for, but a desert sunrise is one of them.”
Mika pulls back to face me, her dark, wide eyes unblinking. “But you’d wake up for me, right? It’s not the sunrise that gets you up?”
It’s early May in Palm Springs, so the morning is warm, but her words send a chill through me. I wrap my arm around her thin shoulders. “Of course, Mika,” I say. “Always.”
“Good. Because I’d do anything for you.”
This is the truest thing in my life.
And all I can do in return is smile and squeeze her hand. I love her so much it makes my heart feel like a balloon that’s about to burst. It hurts, how much I love her.
Mika stands, pulling me up with her. She lets go of my hand and tiptoes along the edge of the roof, balancing like a tightrope walker. Then she glances over her shoulder at me with a mischievous grin. “Dare me to jump?” she says, lifting a foot and leaning precariously over the side, arms out like a scarecrow.
“Mika!” I say, grabbing her wrist and pulling her back toward me. Back toward safety.
She laughs. “Oh, come on, Reiko. It isn’t that high. You climb higher, right? When you go rock climbing?” Her eyes are curious and hungry. Hungry for a world that she can’t exist in anymore.
Because she can’t go anywhere with me. Can’t even leave our house.
Because my sister, Mika − the Mika I see, the Mika I’m standing next to, the Mika I love with all of my heart, the Mika I’d do anything for − is dead.
CHAPTER 2
At school, nobody knows I still see Mika.
Nobody knows that I watch the sunrise with her almost every morning.
Nobody knows about the holes inside of me.
I put on concealer, hiding my dark circles. I paint on bright lipstick.
And I smile.
All day long.
In class, I say everything my teachers want to hear. At lunch, I sit with my girls, leaning in to hear the latest gossip about who did what over the weekend or who hooked up with who. I flirt with boys I’m not interested in but who are socially acceptable to flirt with. I laugh and I preen because that’s what is expected of me.
I hold my head high under an invisible crown as I glide from class to class, still smiling all the while, and when I feel myself about to stumble, I remind myself who I am.
I’m Reiko Smith-Mori. I shine the brightest.
But sometimes I wonder if it will ever be enough.
If I’ll ever be enough.
If I can be good enough as one when there should have been two.
I have to be.
The days are melting in the heat, and it isn’t even summer yet. When this weekend comes, I barricade myself at home. I give my friends fake excuses for why I can’t go to this or that party, and then I tell my parents I’ve got studying to do. But I’m not studying. I’m in my room with Mika. Trying to be a better sister. The kind of sister she deserves. I put the blinds down to keep the sun out and blast the air conditioner to keep us cool. Not that Mika ever gets hot. We paint each other’s nails (I even let her use my expensive nail polish) and play hours and hours of Monopoly.
But by the time Saturday night comes around, I’m itching to get outside. Aching for an adventure. This happens when I spend too much time inside with Mika now. Sometimes the guilt tying me to her gets so heavy I can’t move, can’t breathe − and then I need to get out. I have to take advantage of every breath I have. To make it count. For me and for Mika.
Tonight is one of those nights.
So even though it is almost two in the morning, I slip out of the front door and into my red Jeep. I’ve never told anyone, but the reason I wanted a Jeep is because it makes me feel like an adventurer. Like someone brave who never needs to be rescued.
I drive, and I drive, on and on, until I get to the edges of Joshua Tree. It’s a national park, about an hour from Palm Springs. In the moonlight, the spiky branches of its namesake trees look alien, like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. I’ve been here a few times before, but tonight it feels like the park is calling me. The
re’s a boulder out here that’s great to climb. I feel safe with it, even at night, even alone.
Last year, I started rock climbing, and I love the way it makes me feel: strong, like I could do anything, but also small, like I’m this infinitesimal, inconsequential thing on this earth, in this universe. When your fingertips are gripping rock and there’s a long drop below you and the sky up above, you can’t focus on anything but being alive. Especially at night.
I park and hop out of my Jeep. My climbing shoes are already on my feet. I just need to attach the little pouch filled with climbing chalk around my waist and I’m ready to go.
The moon is bright enough that I don’t even need my flashlight. I go up to my boulder and pat it, the way someone would a horse. “Hi, pretty,” I coo. Then I laugh quietly at myself, imagining how my friends would react if they saw me talking to a rock. Everyone expects me to be a certain way, but here, in the dark, on my own, I can be however I want to be. I don’t have to worry about looking cool or being cool or anything at all. I can just breathe.
“Here we go,” I whisper, both to the rock and myself.
My fingers slip into the familiar crevices, and my feet find the almost invisible clefts in the rock, just enough for me to start to climb up. Toward the stars.
The final stretch of the climb is tricky. I take a deep breath, and I swear the night breathes back. Then I swing my legs up, grab hold of the top ledge and start to haul myself up the last bit with my arms. I’m sweating hard and breathing fast.
There is someone here.
Someone on my boulder.
We lock eyes, and the air fissures. In the same moment I find his gaze, I lose my grip. With a small cry, I scramble against the boulder, fingers digging for purchase in the granite, feet slipping out from beneath me.
His eyes widen and he reaches out for me, but he is too far away, and I’m already sliding, and then I’m back on the ground with a thump.
“Shit,” I hiss through clenched teeth.
There is a shadow above me and then a voice:
“Are you all right?”
I tilt my head back to see who is talking to me.
To see who is out under my sky, on the top of my boulder.
CHAPTER 3
The boulder boy crouches next to me. He’s white and tall with long, wiry limbs. He looks around my age and vaguely familiar.
“Do I know you?” I say, frowning.
He smiles wryly. “I know you,” he says, pushing back a piece of light brown hair that has slipped out from behind his bandana. He has long hair for a boy, past his ears, almost to his jaw. The fact that he knows me doesn’t help narrow down who he is. That just means he could be almost anyone at my high school, or even the school across town. Everyone knows me and my group of friends.
“That isn’t what I asked,” I say, my voice as sharp as steel wire.
“I’m Seth Rogers,” he says. “We go to the same school. And you are Reiko Smith-Mori.”
Now I remember him. We’re in Advanced Physics together. He sits in the back and never says anything. One of those quiet, loner guys who disappear into the background.
“You’re lucky you fell the way you did,” he says. “You could have really hurt yourself.”
“You distracted me!” I lift my chin to gesture at the top of the boulder.
He makes a small barking sound, like a seagull. I think it might be his laugh, but I’m not sure.
“What?” I say, scowling, suddenly defensive. People don’t normally laugh at me.
“Just a strange thought. That I would be the one distracting you,” he says, and then I know that he’s laughing.
But then I’m grinning too, even laughing a bit, at myself and at him and at this whole ridiculous situation, because he’s right. Nobody at school would ever believe that someone like Seth Rogers could get my attention, let alone distract me.
“But seriously, are you OK?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say. But for a second, I almost wish I could play the damsel in distress, and have him whisk me away on a white horse − take me out of my life and into another one. There’s something about Seth out here in the desert dark that is so different from the Seth Rogers at school, so different from anyone in my normal life. And it feels like an escape. A way out of being the Reiko I’m always supposed to be.
I look away from him, feeling unsure. Behind him, the moon is so large and so low I could scoop it out of the sky like a gyoza out of soup.
“What is it?” he says, following my gaze.
“Do you see the moon? It’s beautiful.” It is glinting and glowing – one second it is pure gold and the next, ivory white. After a moment, I lie down to get a better view of it, hands behind my head. It should be weird, lying down next to Seth Rogers to look at the moon, but for some reason, it isn’t. Maybe because it is the middle of the night, maybe it’s because of that dark desert sky, but I almost feel like I’m in a dream.
Seth sits next to me. I scoot a tiny bit away from him, giving myself more space to get comfortable, more space to breathe. He lies down too, his head close to mine but his body going the other way, so our heads make the top of a triangle.
“There’s nothing like it, is there?” he says, and I know he doesn’t mean the moon but the desert at night. And I’m surprised, because that is how I feel too, and who knew that Seth Rogers and I would have anything in common? Because the desert in the dark is the only place I’m able to breathe a little easier.
I don’t need to tell him that, though, or that I’m out here to forget about Mika. Mika, who takes up so much of my heart that it feels too big for my chest, like it’s pushing all the air out of my lungs. It strikes me that out here, even with Seth Rogers, maybe especially with Seth Rogers, I can be exactly who I want to be. And it’s strange, because I barely know him, but lying under the same sky, breathing the same air, I feel closer to him than I have to anyone for a long time.
“Shooting star!” Seth says, and points.
I see the tail just before it disappears. “Did you make a wish?”
“Same wish I always make these days.”
I don’t ask. Everyone knows wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud.
I see another shooting star; this one looks like it is shooting off the moon, and it dances across the sky.
I don’t say my wish out loud either.
The stars start to pop like popcorn, until I lose count of how many shooting stars we see, how many wishes I make.
“It must be a meteor shower,” says Seth in a soft voice, and I notice that he’s scooted closer to me, closing the gap between us like a minute hand moving toward midnight. Each minute that passes brings him closer to me.
“I wonder where that expression ‘thinks he hung the moon’ comes from,” I murmur. Watching the stars is making me sleepy − like they are singing me a lullaby. “I wouldn’t want someone to hang the moon for me; I’d want them to get it for me.”
“Like this?” Seth reaches up into the sky and plucks the moon out, holding it out to me. It shimmers in his palm like a pearl. “Without the moon, there won’t be any tides.”
My mouth goes dry. No tides means no waves, no waves means no—
Wet, coarse sand … in my nose … in my mouth, and water, so much water, my lungs a bubble about to burst…
“Do you want it? Reiko? Reiko?” Seth’s voice wakes me, brings me out of my sleepy memory, and I’m grateful. My view of the moon is blocked by his face. He’s leaning over me, and in the darkness I can barely make out his features. “Reiko? Reiko? Are you all right?”
“Did you get me the moon?” I ask, my words sleep-slurred.
“I can if you want me to,” he says in his husky, hoarse voice that doesn’t match him at all, and I smile up at the moon, but Seth thinks the smile is for him, because the one he gives me back is brighter than the stars falling all around us.
When he lies back down next to me, he’s so close that I can feel the hairs on his a
rm and I can hear his every breath, and we watch the sky until the sun rises and the moon fades away.
CHAPTER 4
At school the following Monday, I find myself looking for Seth. I know I’ll see him in Advanced Physics, but I watch out for him between classes and at lunch too. I want to know if he’ll look different; if we’ll say anything to each other. Or if we’ll just continue on like normal, as the Seth Rogers and Reiko Smith-Mori everyone knows.
I don’t have a crush on him or anything like that. God, no. Even if we shared this weirdly romantic bonding moment out under the stars, he’s still Seth Rogers and I’m still me. But … I liked how I felt around him. I want to feel like that again.
I don’t see him anywhere and I wonder where he hangs out. Then I wonder why I never thought about where anyone goes but my group of friends, who are always in their same spot in the back parking lot, holding court.
“Distracted much?” my best friend, Andrea, says after fourth period, nudging me with her hip.
“Just tired,” I say, giving an exaggerated yawn that quickly turns into a real one. It’s true. I am tired. I haven’t been sleeping well (but that’s nothing new) and I didn’t have time to go to Starbucks this morning. “I’m going to grab a Diet Coke before class.”
Dre nods and I head toward the vending machine on the other side of campus, keeping an eye out for Seth as I do.
Of course the vending machine is out of Diet Coke. “How is there none left?” I mutter.
Someone taps my shoulder. It’s a girl in my grade. At least, I think she’s in my grade. I’m not sure − she might be a year below me. I recognize her face but don’t know her name.
“I actually just got the last one. Do you want it?” She holds out a bottle of Diet Coke.
“Are you sure?” I really do want it.
“Yeah, absolutely,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it.
“You’re welcome,” she says. And then she just kind of stands there. Like she’s waiting for something.
“I should probably get to class,” I say, my smile stretching into something more awkward.
“We’re in the same class?” she says, and it comes out like a question.
Is she asking me?
Only Love Can Break Your Heart Page 1
