Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Katherine Webber

  And for what feels like the millionth time, my heart breaks for my sister. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever heal or just keep breaking and breaking.

  I pull her toward me. “Boyfriends are overrated,” I say. “You’re not missing out on anything. Now come here. I’ll braid your hair. Do you want fishtail or French braids?”

  She looks me straight in the eyes and smiles sadly. “I think I’m missing out on everything.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The next morning, I stay in my room with Mika. We watch YouTube beauty tutorials and I let her do my make-up. I stay in all day until it is time to help my dad with dinner, and then I leave Mika reading in my room.

  She isn’t there when I come up to grab a hair tie, but I know she’ll be back.

  She always is.

  I set the table for dinner with four bowls of salmon donburi − sliced salmon sashimi over white rice. In the middle of the table is a simple salad of cucumber, carrot, and daikon. Both of my parents like to cook, which means we always eat well at our house. My mom sits next to me at the table, her blonde curls piled on top of her head. She glances at me and then does a double take, raising a perfect eyebrow. “I haven’t seen you wear this much glitter and blue eyeshadow since you were about fourteen. I didn’t even know you still had that neon stuff.”

  I furtively wipe some of it off with a napkin. I can’t tell her that Mika did my make-up and that is why it looks so ridiculous.

  “You look like a clown,” says my brother, Koji, from across the table.

  I throw the balled-up napkin, now smeared with blue, at him.

  “Oi!” he says, but he’s laughing. He throws his own napkin back at me.

  I laugh too. And it hurts a little, laughing with Koji, because Mika used to laugh with us too and now she’s disappeared to wherever she goes when I can’t see her. Koji was only nine when Mika died. He’s fourteen now, so he’s the same age she was. I don’t know how much he remembers about her because I never talk about her with him, or with anyone. I wipe the rest of the blue make-up off, putting Mika out of my mind.

  “All right, settle down,” says my dad, sitting next to Koji. But he’s grinning too. Nothing makes him happier than seeing us happy as a family. We weren’t happy for a long time. And even now, it feels like a performance. At least it does for me.

  My dad doesn’t know that my happiness is like this blue eyeshadow, easy to put on and easy to wipe off and never lasting long. Koji’s happiness is real and bright and tattooed onto him in indelible ink that glows and makes the whole room shine.

  My mom passes me the plate of salad, smiling at me, smiling at my dad, smiling the smile that made her famous. I learned from my mother that no matter what is happening on the inside, you can always put on a good face, and always keep on smiling. Sometimes, I wish she didn’t smile so much. I never know if she’s smiling on the inside too. I know she misses Mika. She cried a lot, when it happened, and sometimes, I catch her sniffling now, but most of the time, she puts on her happy face. Her brave face. I hear her and my dad talking about Mika, in quiet voices, when they think I can’t hear them.

  “Dinner is delicious, thank you, sweetie,” she says now to my dad.

  He raises a wine glass in return.

  My parents are so perfectly matched, even if they came from such different places. My father grew up in a fishing village in Japan, and my mom has always lived here in Palm Springs, in the desert. Maybe that’s why my mother loves the desert, and my father loves the sea.

  My dad used to try to convert my mother to becoming a sea person. We used to go on family trips to the beach, to the coast of Japan, to Hawaii, to Maine, all along California.

  We actually aren’t too far from the sea. But you’d never know, since we haven’t been in years.

  The last time I saw the sea, I was twelve. I’m seventeen now. Five years is a long time. But the sea is a hard thing to forget. I still remember how it smells. How it’s everywhere. You can’t get away from it. And I still remember how the tide comes in and out, in and out, no matter what.

  But mostly what I remember is this:

  That the ocean is deep and dark and dangerous.

  It might sing you soft lullabies to lure you, to soothe you. But I know what it is really like—

  … water slamming me into the sand, tumbling me around like a sock in a washing machine, rolling me over and over…

  I’m a desert person, like my mom. Dad will never convert us now. Not after what happened. And even before that, I loved the sand and the sun of the desert, the dry air, the endless sky, and the electric colors. It’s funny because most people think that the desert is dead. Devoid of color. Ask a kid to draw the desert and they’ll just draw sand. But you’ll never see brighter colors than in the desert. The pink of bougainvillea and the yellow of a cactus bloom against the blue, blue sky.

  If you cut my father open he’d bleed saltwater. My mother would bleed desert sun. Like me. We’re for ever landlocked now.

  It’s a voluntary sentence.

  “I want to get a guitar,” Koji announces without preamble.

  I roll my eyes. Koji’s birthday was just last month and he got an Xbox, but of course now he wants a guitar.

  “Really?” says my mom. “Since when do you play the guitar?”

  There is a tendril of unease creeping up my spine. Mika had been the musical one in our family. I used to go to all of her piano recitals. I loved cheering for her and giving her a standing ovation at the end. What would she think about Koji getting into music, without her here?

  Koji takes a bite of salmon. “Well, I don’t play yet. But I’m going to. Ivan has been letting me practice on his. And” − he starts to grin − “I’m pretty good.”

  “Music does run in our family,” my mom says softly, looking down with a sad smile, and my unease sprouts wings and envelops me because I’m scared someone will mention Mika. How can we talk about music without mentioning her?

  And I don’t want to talk about her. I can’t talk about her being gone when she’s so very alive to me. My parents don’t know I still see her, but they know I don’t like to talk about her. The grief counsellors and therapists said to let me grieve in my own way. So, like in so many other things, they indulge me.

  I wonder if Koji remembers that Mika used to play the piano. He has to, he has to. How could he forget? But maybe he was too young. Maybe he’s blocked it out. And maybe it doesn’t matter: the piano and the guitar aren’t the same.

  But still. I feel like he’s somehow betraying Mika’s memory. That we’re all somehow betraying her.

  “You know, I used to play the guitar. I could show you a thing or two,” my dad goes on. He doesn’t say that he also plays the piano. He taught me and Mika both, but she took to it more than I did, till she was better than my dad and needed professional lessons.

  I’m angry at him for not mentioning it, and it isn’t fair because I know I’m the reason he won’t.

  My mom smiles, and I wonder if she’s smiling on the inside too or if she’s hiding the hurt the way I hide it. “It’s true. On our first date, your dad played the guitar for me.” Then she laughs, and it’s her real laugh, so I know she must mean it. “And he was terrible.”

  My dad puts his palm on his chest, mock affronted. “I was not terrible. Why did you kiss me then?”

  “Because you were handsome,” my mom says, leaning toward him and kissing him on the cheek.

  “Was handsome? Why the past tense?”

  My mom runs a hand through my dad’s dark hair and kisses him again. “Oh, quit fishing. You’re still handsome.”

  Koji groans. “You guys,” he says, covering his eyes like always when our parents are affectionate in front of us.

  My parents have the kind of love that burns so bright and strong that even Mika’s death couldn’t put it out. If anything, it made them more determined to love each other, to love us, all the harder.

  I know I’m lucky my parents are so in love, b
ut sometimes it puts them in an impenetrable glass bubble that only they live in. I can look inside, I can see all that warmth and joy, but I can’t feel it. I can’t get in.

  “Anyway,” I say loudly. “Why the sudden interest in the guitar, Koj?”

  “Because I’m destined to be a rock star, obviously,” he says. He’s being flippant, but he’s deflated, and I feel like it’s my fault, for not being more supportive. For not being the kind of big sister he deserves. For not being more like Mika.

  “How do we know you’ll practice?” says my mom. I don’t know why she’s pretending that Koji isn’t getting the guitar; of course he’s getting the guitar. Ever since Mika died, my parents have given us everything we’ve asked for. I got the red Jeep I wanted; Koji gets every video game he wants, and he’ll get the guitar. As if all the stuff could make up for a sister. Or maybe they wish that they’d never said no to Mika, that they’d given her everything she asked for while they could.

  “I swear I’ll practice,” says Koji. “You can trust me.”

  “We’ll see,” says my mom.

  “Sweet!” Koji says with a fist pump in the air. “Oh, and by the way, I want an electric guitar.”

  “Let’s start with acoustic and go from there,” my dad says. “Maybe for Christmas you can upgrade to an electric guitar. Speaking of,” he goes on, in his extra-loud extra-jovial voice that means he’s got some sort of “announcement”, “I was thinking, this Christmas, we could go to Japan! What do you think? Go visit Obaachan?”

  I choke on my rice. I can’t believe my dad is just casually dropping this suggestion in over dinner.

  My mother downs her glass of white wine. “Obaachan will visit us,” she replies, without looking at him.

  “I want them to know Japan,” my dad says, almost pleading. “Just think about it. It’s time … isn’t it?”

  It will never be time.

  My mom sighs, a long, raw sound that makes my own throat ache. She doesn’t want to go to Japan either, not without Mika.

  “We can talk about it later,” she says, pouring herself another glass of wine. And even this is a concession too much for me. This isn’t something that can even be considered.

  “Reiko?” says my dad, reaching out and taking my hand. “What do you think?”

  “Ken,” my mom says, a warning in her voice.

  I can’t talk about this. I push my chair back and stand, my chopsticks clattering to the table. Koji’s eyes are wide.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I say. “Please excuse me.”

  I hurry up the stairs, back into my room, and collapse into bed. I’m shaking.

  There is a knock at my locked door. “Reiko?” says my mom from outside my room. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I call back. “I just need to lie down for a minute. I’ll come back in a little bit.”

  My mom hesitates. “OK,” she says. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

  But my mom can’t give me what I need. She can’t bring Mika back, and she can’t make me forget. She can’t fix this.

  She can’t fix me.

  Later Mika crawls into bed with me.

  “I can’t go to Japan,” she says.

  “I know,” I say. “I know.”

  And that means I can’t go either. How can I leave my sister behind?

  “You’re all doing stuff without me,” she says. Her eyes are huge. “And what if he’s better than me? Koji? What if he’s better than me at music and everyone forgets me? He’ll do concerts like I used to.”

  I stroke her hair. “Mika, that would never happen. Nobody would ever forget about you.”

  “Then why doesn’t anybody talk about me?”

  I take a breath. “Mom and Dad do. But I … I don’t think I can talk about you, and still talk to you, like we are now, at the same time, you know?” I don’t tell her my deep fear is that if I start talking out loud about her in the past tense, she’ll disappear and I’ll never see her ever again. This is better.

  She nods, like she understands.

  “I’m here now, here with you,” I say.

  “I don’t want you to go away,” she says, voice trembling. “Ever. Not to Japan, not anywhere. I want you to stay with me.”

  “But Mika… I—”

  “Please,” she says. “Please stay with me.”

  I can’t say no to her. I can never say no to her.

  So I stay. I stay and play chess with my sister and I let her win. Like always.

  CHAPTER 8

  I’m on my way to the kitchen the next morning when my dad calls out to me. “Reiko, can you come in my office for a second?”

  My dad’s office looks like an engineer’s studio crossed with a library. It’s got big tables covered in notes, whiteboards with equations scrawled all over them, huge monitors hooked up to computers that he’s built himself, and wall-to-wall bookshelves.

  Then there are the dioramas. My dad loves dioramas. He loves the real ones the most − the professional ones at the natural history museum in New York − but he loves making small ones too. He makes them the way some people make model planes. All along the bookshelves are dioramas he’s made throughout the years, from different eras. He even has the first ones me, Mika and Koji made as kids. They are proudly displayed the way some people would display their kids’ artwork. I guess to my dad, it is art.

  He sits at his desk and motions for me to sit down next to him in his big leather armchair. He’s nervous about something. I can tell because he keeps toying with his glasses. “I wanted to ask you something, but” − he looks down at his hands, folded in his lap − “I need it to just be between us. OK? It might upset your mom.”

  Since my father’s primary goal in life is to make my mom happy, I can’t imagine him wanting to say or do anything that would upset her.

  He’s also a terrible secret-keeper.

  “OK,” I say, suspicious but intrigued.

  “I want you to apply to the University of Tokyo,” he says.

  I’m stunned. I don’t know what I thought he was going to say, but it wasn’t this.

  “But it’s in Japan,” I say, stating the obvious.

  And I was supposed to go there with Mika.

  He nods like he understands, but I know he doesn’t. “I just don’t want you to miss out on the opportunity. After all” − he points up at his diploma mounted on the wall − “I’m an alumni. You’ll be a legacy applicant. But you could also … perhaps consider Temple University too.” He pushes a Temple University brochure toward me. I do not believe he’s gotten brochures sent in. Without my mom noticing. This is the sneakiest he’s ever been.

  “But, Daddy … they are both in Japan,” I repeat, in case he hadn’t understood. “Across an ocean. And you know I want to go to UCLA. With Andrea.”

  “I know, I know, sweetie. He looks up at me, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Could you at least just apply, for me?” His eyes dart to a picture on his desk that I know is of me and Mika. “I think it might be good for you. Just to … consider it.”

  He reaches across his desk and takes my hand in his own. “I just want you to have all the best opportunities and options, Reiko. I don’t think you should shut yourself off from anything. You used to love Japan.” He looks so hopeful. “Remember your scrapbook?”

  He’s teetering very close to talking about Mika. My mom wouldn’t have let this conversation get so far. No wonder he didn’t want her to be a part of this discussion.

  I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “OK,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Wonderful!” My dad beams. “Thank you, Reiko.”

  “I just said I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s the first step!”

  A step toward a future I’ll never want. But I don’t want to disappoint my dad.

  CHAPTER 9

  I’ve been lying in bed, looking at the brochures and considering downloading application forms for the University of Tokyo and
Temple, when headlights illuminate my driveway. I sit up, wondering for a wild moment if it’s Seth. If he’s shown up at my house unexpectedly, just like I did at his.

  It’s not him. Of course it isn’t. Why would it have been?

  “Reiko! Andrea’s here.” My mom’s muffled shout comes through my closed door. I hear Dre coming up the stairs and stuff the brochures under my pillow just as she bursts in. She flops down next to me on my bed. “Move over,” she says, and I roll my eyes, but I do.

  Andrea bosses me around in a way that nobody else does. Not even my parents. The only person who used to boss me about like this was Mika.

  Dre and I go way back. We have been best friends since we were four. She knows almost everything about me.

  But the gap between almost and everything is a wide one.

  Dre knew Mika too, of course. She’d loved her like a sister. Dre’s older sister, Tori, had even been Mika’s best friend.

  Sometimes, I see Tori, and I imagine Mika next to her. Not Mika how I see her now, for ever fourteen in her yellow dress, but Mika at seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.

  Dre knows what losing Mika did to me, even if we never talk about it. But sometimes I wish she didn’t know so much because when I get that suffocating feeling, Dre is wrapped up in it too.

  My whole friendship group knows what happened, even if they didn’t know me at the time, even if they never knew Mika. Having a dead sibling is the kind of thing that one friend whispers to another, not in a malicious way, but still. Then they know. And then when they look at me, they aren’t just seeing me, they’re seeing Mika too.

  Since she died, Seth is the first person I’ve met who is completely separate from Mika.

  “Where have you been all weekend?” Dre asks. “You’ve been MIA! Last weekend too! And don’t you dare” − she waggles her finger at me − “try and tell me it is because you have so much homework. I picked up your homework for you, remember, so I know exactly how much you have.”

  “Oh, I still haven’t been feeling that great,” I say.