Then she turns and shuffles out of the room.
I feel Rory squeezing my hand, Belle messing with my hair. I love them and I know they mean well—but they’re trying to soothe something that can never be soothed, to slap a coating of princess over the messy remnants of my snarling monster.
I feel the distance growing between us—and there’s that twinge again.
The one that says no matter what, I will never belong here.
And I will never belong to my family as fully as they belong to each other.
TWO
I escape to the closest thing I can find to a comforting dark corner—the floor of Auntie Suzy’s dusty walk-in closet.
The closet is the only room in our apartment that feels big, even though it’s stuffed to the brim with Auntie Suzy’s collection of vintage dresses and kimono. As the story goes, Auntie Och—Auntie Suzy’s wife—used her handyperson skills to knock down a wall between two smaller closets and make one giant one, back when they first got married and spent all their time being hopelessly in love.
Sitting on the cool floorboards, shrouded in a rainbow of crammed-together patterns and colors, you can almost feel the soft sweetness Auntie Suzy used to possess, before she was just tired all the time.
Also before she was so into crushing the dreams of her only niece.
I take a deep breath and worry the silky hem of a bright orange yukata between my fingers, trying to get my temper under control. I glance over at the mirror hanging on the closet’s door, nearly hidden by all the kimono. Whenever I look in the mirror, I see the nure-onna staring back at me: bloody fangs, flashing red eyes, unadulterated rage. Ready to take down her enemies. I find it comforting, to be honest. It tells me the armor I’ve worked so hard to build up is firmly in place. That I can get through anything.
Although I don’t quite feel like that right now.
I should be getting ready for my newly acquired shift at the restaurant, but my mind is stuck on the dojo, working furiously to figure out how I can still do the demonstration at the parade.
I love the parade, because it’s the one day a year when all the magic bubbling under the surface of Little Tokyo comes out to play, amplified by the wonderstruck crowd of locals and tourists. The cavalcade of bright colors is more vibrant, the creepy hidden-away nooks and crannies are even darker, and the juxtapositions of things that shouldn’t go together are just more. That crumbling, overstuffed souvenir shop crammed next to the modern swoop of the most elegant hotel in the city looks even more beautifully improbable. The blazing sun shines even brighter, illuminating the crimson and ivory lanterns strung through the air and making for a cheery facade—but that facade gives way to shadows lurking in grubby alleyways and abandoned warehouses.
Those soft, comforting shadows are what I sink into when my temper’s about to explode.
It was at the dojo where I found the shadows. It happened the day I finally beat Natalie Ito for the very first time, when we were both nine. She usually won every single match, but that day, I somehow managed to get her into a kata-gatame hold and willed myself to stay put, staring resolutely at one of the shadowy spots where Sensei Mary always forgets to clean, little pockets of space populated by spiders and dust and wilting, discarded hand-wraps. These corners seem in direct contrast to the rest of the dojo, with its big, bright open space, its soft mats to catch your falls, its high ceiling with skylights that soften the relentless Little Tokyo sun. It’s that juxtaposition of things that shouldn’t go together but do. That characteristic that defines so much of the neighborhood.
Those dark corners are my favorite. As a kid, they always seemed to me like doors to other worlds.
I always thought that maybe if I stared hard enough at one of the dark corners, the nure-onna would emerge. She’d kick ass at judo.
My discovery inspired me to search out other magical dark corners in Little Tokyo. Whenever I felt my kaiju-temper flaring, I’d find one—I’d go hide under the biggest tree in the garden behind the community center or retreat to the back of Uncle Hikaru’s ancient mochi shop on First. I’d crouch among the wild assemblages of plants and flowers or the unwieldy stacks of packaged mochi and dusty snack boxes and random trinkets. And I’d read one of my Japanese monster books until I felt better. Slowly, I’d be soothed and held by the shadows. I’d feel like I was home.
I sometimes wonder if my mother was like me, gravitating away from #TeamPrincess and toward tales of monstrous snake-women and hopelessly sad endings. Sometimes the whispers about me drift to the mysterious nature of her death. How there was no funeral, even—it was like she simply ceased to exist. Vanished into the ether. Some say it’s because Auntie Suzy was ashamed, but I don’t see how that could be. Auntie Suzy seems too exhausted and dreamy for that kind of shame—I think she was just sad. And still is, to some degree. Whenever I try to talk to her about my mother, she says the same stuff everyone says about how beautiful and charming Mom was, then changes the subject or finds some chore for me to do.
So I guess I’ll never know.
I freeze in place as the closet door creaks open and light spills in, startling me from my thoughts. I try to make myself smaller, huddling more fully underneath the canopy of kimono. A pair of feet wearing mismatched socks—one has a stripy pattern, the other is covered in bright yellow cartoon Minions—shuffles in my direction.
“Rika-chan!” a voice bellows, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I should
