water.
Drowning.
The whole of Miyazu Bay seemed comprised of her tears. Even the sky wept as she died.
For a boy she did not love.
1
They’re going to love you.”
Kara glanced up from tying her shoes to see her father standing in the open doorway of her bedroom. He had always been tall and thin, so much so that her mother had sometimes called him “the stork,” but dressed in a suit and tie, he had somehow lost his usual awkwardness.
“You look nice,” Kara offered.
“Nice? That’s the best you can do? I think I look dashingly handsome.”
She smiled, arching an eyebrow. “Don’t push your luck.”
He stepped into the room, his expression turning serious. “Are you nervous?”
Kara rolled her eyes.
“Stupid question, huh?” her father asked.
“Very,” she said, and then she relented, letting him see just how anxious she really was. “I’m going to screw it up. I know I am. I’m going to insult someone without even knowing it, or embarrass myself so badly I’ll have to hide in the bathroom.”
“So, pretty much like any other school year, huh?”
Kara launched herself off the bed to punch him in the arm. “That’s not nice.”
“No. But it’s funny.”
“It isn’t a day for funny. It isn’t a year for funny. Everyone in Japan is so serious all the time,” she lamented.
“Not all the time. Just most.”
Professor Rob Harper reached out to take his daughter’s hands. Kara took comfort in his touch and looked up into his kind blue eyes. There were small laugh lines all around them- lines he’d earned-but it had been a long time since her father had really laughed. A long time for both of them. Come July, it would be two years since the car accident that had taken her mother’s life and changed everything for the husband and daughter she had left behind.
“They’re going to love you,” he said again, more emphatically.
Kara sighed. “They’re going to be polite. That’s what Japanese people do.”
A look of uncertainty swept across his face. He cupped her chin in his hands. “Hey. Tell me you’re just having first-day jitters. Otherwise-if you’ve really changed your mind-we’ll go home. Nobody says we have to do this.”
Butterflies had been flitting around inside her since they had arrived in Japan and moved into the small house in Kyoto Prefecture, both of excitement and panic, but they had never been as bad as they had gotten this morning.
“First-day jitters,” she said. “I promise. Massive, gigantic jitters, but they’ll pass. I feel like Alice in Wonderland. But I’ve been dreaming about this all my life, Dad, and I know it means a lot to you, too. I’m good. I’m going to be fine. You just have to promise me one thing.”
Her father smiled. “What’s that, honey?”
“Stop talking to me in English. You promised we’d only speak Japanese.”
He slapped himself in the forehead. “D’oh!”
Then he stood a bit straighter. “My apologies, daughter. We’ve worked so hard, how stupid of me to forget.”
“You have many things on your mind.”
With a smile, he reached out and tucked an errant lock of her hair behind her ear. “See? You are ready. They’re going to-”
She fluttered her hand dismissively. “Love me. I know. So you say.”
“I need to get to school for the teachers’ meeting. Are you sure you don’t want to walk with me?”
“I’m sure. I want to arrive just the way the other students do, and that means without my father, the professor.”
The new professor, she thought. English language and American Studies. The gaijin professor.
He bent to kiss her forehead. Some girls might have recoiled from such parental affection, especially at Kara’s age.
But she knew how fragile her father’s heart was-just as fragile as her own-and she would never spurn him in that way. Kara might be sixteen years old, an age when a lot of her friends back home were doing everything in their power to get away from their parents, but all she wanted was to stay close to him. She only had one parent left, and she had vowed not to lose him.
“Enjoy the day,” he said. “Live and learn.”
Kara smiled. To most people, the phrase “live and learn” represented a rueful acknowledgement of mistakes they had made and the lessons that resulted. But Kara and her father had turned “live and learn” into their private mantra. The words held no regret for them. They were a philosophy. A way of life.
“Live and learn,” she replied.
Her father gave her one final glance in which she could see his concern for her breaking through the hopeful, encouraging air he had put on for her benefit, and then he went out.
She listened for the front doors to slide open and closed, and then went into the small kitchen. They had cleaned up together after breakfast. Kara poured herself a small glass of water and sipped it as she tried to slow her frantic pulse. She breathed evenly, almost meditating, and found that it helped. For ten long minutes she paced the small house, rearranging items in the obsessive neatness they had achieved for the sake of local culture.
In front of the mirror, she unleashed her ponytail and then swept her blond hair up again, tying it back with a red elastic. Any time she caught sight of her reflection while wearing her uniform, she got a giddy feeling. Her school insisted girls still wear the sailor fuku, a navy blue sailor suit with white trim. The skirt came down to just above her knees and she wore a white blouse with a red ribbon tie underneath the jacket. Memories of Sailor Moon cartoons came to mind, making her smile.
Kara took her bento -the lunch box all the students used- and slipped it into her book bag, then went to the door. Taking a deep breath, she stepped outside.
A shiver went through her and goosebumps formed on her skin. If the school had been any further away, she would have gone back inside to put a heavy coat over her uniform. On the first of April-first day of a new school year-Kyoto Prefecture was still quite cold. Even so, the day was beautiful. The sunlight shone brightly on the small houses along the street. Miyazu Bay reflected back the blue sky with a purity that made her catch her breath. Kara had loved the house she had grown up in back in Massachusetts, but leaving an American suburb behind for natural beauty such as this was like waking up in some magical kingdom. She would endure almost anything to be able to wake up to this view of the bay every morning.
Taking solace from the day and from the view, she found a calm place within herself and started down the street toward the school, whose grounds sprawled beside the bay. Monju-no-Chie School looked more like a temple than any school Kara had ever seen. More than anything, it reminded her of the fortresses of warlords in the movies she’d seen about feudal Japan. Imposing, but it was much cooler than the almost industrial-looking schools they had seen in Tokyo and Kyoto City. Inside the walls of Monju-no-Chie, though, things weren’t much different. Strict rules. Japanese propriety. Hard work.
Kara could live with that.
Actually, she’d been dreaming about it for years, romanticizing the country’s history and mythology and spirituality at the same time as she ate up the new pop culture spreading across the world from Japan. Coming here had been a huge decision for both Kara and her father, a new beginning in a place they’d always talked about living, speaking a language they both loved. Nothing could make her forget her mother or loosen the tight knot of grief that her heart had become, but that loss had made Kara and her father realize that dreams should not be
