Kara nodded, hoping her totally freaked-out, you’ve-gotta-be-kidding me smile would come off as sheer enthusiasm.
“ Kyuketsuki. Yes, sir?”
Mr. Yamato hesitated. He swallowed, contemplating, and glanced at her father, which made Kara realize that the principal might have told him some of what Mai had said, but not all of it.
“Miss Genji claims that you and Miss Murakami based your manga on real events that took place here, at this school, several months ago.”
Rob Harper apparently couldn’t help himself, for he scoffed a little, then tried to cover by pretending to be clearing his throat.
Kara reached up to tuck a loose strand of her blond hair behind one ear. She’d been in a hurry this morning, and hadn’t gotten the elastic quite right for her ponytail. For some reason, her sailor fuku uniform itched awfully today.
“That’s true,” she said.
Mr. Yamato’s serenity broke then. Astonishment was the first real expression she’d ever seen on his face.
“What?” he demanded.
“We weren’t trying to do anything in poor taste,” Kara said quickly. “But when those students died during the last term, and then we ran across the old Noh story about Kyuketsuki, we sort of had an inspiration. I think it really helped Sakura to draw the story, too. After her sister was murdered, she had been having a really hard time, and doing the manga was…”
Kara glanced at her confused father and switched to English. “Dad, what’s the Japanese word for therapeutic?”
Rob Harper supplied something Kara only barely caught. Her mind was awhirl as she spun out this alternate version of the truth. None of it was really a lie except for her pretending not to know what Mai was talking about. She had also committed major sins of omission, but she was on solid ground now. These were lies she and Sakura had told before.
“Aritomo-sensei made sure we were very careful to follow the original Noh play,” Kara went on. “The manga is very faithful.”
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Yamato said. “But it isn’t…”
He let the question trail off, looking at a loss. Kara felt sure he had been about to say real. But how could he ask that question without implying that he believed such things were possible, and that Mai’s story was something more than either delusion or spite toward a rival. After the odd deaths in the spring, he might well believe-no matter how he conspired with the police to explain the unexplainable-but he did not dare admit it.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Kara said. “It isn’t what?”
Mr. Yamato took off his glasses and tiredly massaged the bridge of his nose. He set the glasses on his desk and waved the question away.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said, standing. He nodded to her. “You’re dismissed, Miss Harper.” The principal turned to her father. “Thank you, Harper-sensei.”
Mai didn’t attend classes that day. When Sora-the cute guy with nice eyes who sat to her right-got up to do toban, taking attendance, Mr. Sato did not address the silence that followed the calling of Mai’s name. Sora exchanged a glance with the girl who sat in front of Kara-also, and confusingly, named Sora. Kara had often thought that if the two of them ever dated, their lives would be chaos.
As with Daisuke’s disappearance, everyone already seemed to know about Wakana going missing the night before. In the breaks between classes, Kara overheard their mutterings and realized that in some ways, rather than making them more anxious, Wakana’s vanishing had soothed the fears of many of her classmates. The two missing kids had been, if not boyfriend and girlfriend, at least “together.” With Wakana now gone, it seemed much easier to accept that they had run away together, though no one could supply anything that sounded like a reasonable explanation as to why they might want to do so.
Kara herself said little about it, except to Miho, to whom she spoke softly during each break, telling the tale of her morning meeting with Mr. Yamato in pieces. It wasn’t until lunch that they were able to discuss it at length. They retreated to a corner of the room, back by the lockers, having barely picked at the lunch in their bento boxes. Even then, they had to whisper much of their conversation. It had not occurred to Kara that Mr. Yamato might actually believe any of what Mai had told him, that the deaths caused by the ketsuki in the spring might have been mysterious enough to force him to consider a supernatural cause. Now that this seemed to be the case, should they bring what they knew to the principal?
“We have to talk to Sakura and Hachiro about it,” Miho told her, glancing around to see that no one was close enough to eavesdrop. “But I don’t know why you would want to discuss it with Yamato-sensei now. If there is no sign of anything… strange, then why should we bring it up at all?”
Kara let out a breath, nodding. “You’re right. I guess I just hate carrying this around like it’s some big secret.” A frown creased her brow as she thought of her father the previous night, telling Miss Aritomo that he was falling in love with her. “Secrets only end up hurting people eventually, and I don’t want it to hurt us.”
Miho paused in the midst of unfastening a clip in her hair. She drew it out and let her hair fall in a curtain across her face, then stared at Kara, one eye entirely hidden.
“This isn’t just about the curse, or about Yamato-sensei, is it?” Miho asked. “What’s wrong?”
Kara nearly told her right then, but though no one seemed to be listening, she did not feel comfortable talking about her father’s love life where any of his students might overhear.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” she said in English. “Just stuff with my dad.”
The look on Miho’s face made Kara wince inwardly. She assumed that Sakura and Hachiro would react the same way. Kara had always had such a good relationship with her father, and her anger obviously came as a surprise, especially since Miho and Sakura seemed to look at her and her father as proof that parents and their kids could actually like each other.
Once again, Miss Aritomo canceled the post-Noh club meeting. Apparently, progress had been made on the set by the club members, and the performers were still practicing on their own, as they were intended to. But the volunteers were told that they wouldn’t be needed until the following Tuesday, which was just fine with Kara. She had been doing her homework later and later, and wanted to get an early start. More than that, however, she just wanted a little time for herself, when she didn’t have to think about classes or curses or her father’s feelings for her art teacher.
During o-soji, Kara and Miho had talked to Hachiro and Sakura, but the two of them had only echoed the conversation they’d had earlier. Still, as she walked the short distance home from school, Kara could not prevent curiosity from tickling at the back of her mind. Why had Daisuke and Wakana run away, and where had they gone? Where could a pair of high school kids go in Japan, without a bundle of cash, where they wouldn’t be reported or discovered? The mountains? Could they have gone camping? Were they holed up in some seedy Miyazu City hotel?
Either way, their situation would turn ugly soon enough. They’d run out of money, and roughing it would lose its appeal fast. Kara’s friend Paige Traficante had run away for three days freshman year to escape her parents’ constant alcohol-fueled battles, but even that had not been enough to keep Paige away when her money ran out. Prostitution and drugs had seemed like things that only happened to runaways who weren’t smart about their plans, and it had turned out that Paige had not been as smart as she believed.
Daisuke and Wakana would be back.
Unless, of course, something bad happened to them. With runaways, it was always a risk. Walking home in the fading heat of the August day, Kara shuddered a little, but didn’t allow herself to consider what other dangers the runaways might face in Miyazu City. A chill rippled up her spine but she ignored it, and told herself she had nothing to be afraid of.
Still, she shifted her backpack from one shoulder to the other and picked up her pace, and in another minute she reached her front door. In that afternoon time of long shadows, with evening not far off, the windows seemed very dark. It would be a little while yet before her father came home, and Kara felt a tightness in her chest as she let herself in, turned on a lamp in spite of the soft light coming through the windows, and locked the door behind her.
For a moment, she considered making dinner, but there were no messages on the answering machine, and
