They began to run. Sakura dropped her cigarette and vanished her lighter into a pocket. The girls hurried around to the front of the school to see other students rushing toward the bay shore.
Kara felt an unpleasant twist in her stomach and the back of her neck prickled with dread. People were gathering at the edge of the water, not far from the trees-not far from the shrine to Akane. A few of them had cell phones out, frantic conversations merging into a low buzz of chatter.
When the girls reached the shore, all they could do was join the crowd milling about the edge. Kara tried to listen to the mutterings of the other students, and she heard the Japanese word for “body” before an opening appeared in the mob and she saw two girls comforting a third, who wiped tears from her eyes. A pair of boys had taken off their shoes and waded knee-deep into the bay, peering down into the water.
Shouts and footfalls came from behind them now, and Kara glanced back to see other students coming around from the rear of the school, boys in their baseball caps and spectators from the game. Someone must have gone to get them, or else they’d been on the receiving end of cell phone calls. Word was spreading fast.
One of the boys in the water closed his eyes and took a step back from whatever they’d found.
“Stop that,” the other boy said. “Help me.”
He bent and reached down into the water, grabbing hold of something heavy. The other boy hesitated, but then a young teacher, Fujimori-sensei, pushed his way through the students, calling out “ doite ” as he made his way to the water’s edge. He didn’t pause to take off his shoes, and Kara felt sure someone must already have told him what was happening. Kara wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t seem to manage it.
Mr. Fujimori reached into the water and helped the boy drag the body onto the shore. The dead boy’s face was bloated and pale, and his clothes squished as they set him down. He wore no shoes, and for some reason that detail was the thing that snapped Kara out of her mesmerized state. She swallowed hard, covered her mouth with a hand, and turned away.
As she did, she saw Sakura’s face, etched with horror and a kind of panic.
“Jiro?” Sakura said.
Kara blinked. Jiro? She knew that name. Pale and puffy, she had not recognized the dead boy, but if it was the same Jiro, he was a friend of Hachiro’s.
Miho stepped up to Sakura and took both the girl’s hands in her own. “Are you all right?”
Sakura shook her head. “I dreamed it,” she whispered, eyes wide with shock. “I dreamed he was dead.”
Mr. Fujimori had his cell phone out now and was calling the police. A voice rose above all of the mutterings and questions and crying.
“Jiro! No!”
The crowd parted to let Ume through. Hachiro followed a few feet behind her, looking numb and lost. But Ume clutched at her clothing and twisted her hair as she stood a few feet away from the dead boy. Then she screamed, tears spilling down her cheeks. Several of the soccer girls tried to pull her away and Ume slapped the one nearest her, screaming at her to get away. The girls backed off, but Mr. Fujimori moved to block her view of Jiro’s corpse.
Ume shook her head from side to side, sobbing in her grief. Her whole body trembled as she tried to get by the teacher. Mr. Fujimori attempted to hold her, but Ume brushed him off and fell to her knees. The bay water gently lapped the shore. The corpse’s legs were still in the water, and it shifted slightly with the ebb and flow.
Kara could never have predicted something so horrible, but she found herself regretting her exchange with Ume. The girl was so distraught, so inconsolable, that she wished she could take the words back.
But then Ume exploded. She leaped up and turned on the crowd.
“Sakura!” she screamed, running into a cluster of students. She pushed her way through half a dozen others. “This is your fault, somehow. You did this!”
Miho and Kara put their hands up to stop Ume, but the girl stopped short. She shook as she pointed an accusatory finger at Sakura, who stunned Kara by beginning to weep.
Mr. Fujimori grabbed Ume by the shoulders and physically moved her away from the crowd, along the shore to a place where he could try to calm her, speaking in kind, quiet tones.
“Why would she say that?” Kara asked, turning to Sakura. “What’s she talking about?”
But Sakura could only shake her head, unable to reply. After a moment she stepped away from them and fled back toward the dorm.
Miho looked at Kara, hesitated a moment, and then opened her hands in apology and went in pursuit of her roommate.
Kara could only glance around at the other students, lost for any explanation. No one paid any attention to her, and she felt more than ever like the bonsai Ume had named her. Hachiro stood by Jiro’s body, looking stricken, but Kara didn’t know what to say to him. Though her books were still in the dorm, the only place she wanted to be now was at home.
She didn’t belong here.
“We should never have come.”
Rob Harper sat on the small sofa in the living room, holding his head in his hands. With a sigh, he leaned back and stared at his daughter, eyes wide with a dawning realization.
“I should get you out of here.”
Kara’s mouth dropped open. “No, Dad,” she said, sitting next to him.
“Seriously, honey. This is starting to seem like a very bad idea.” They were speaking English tonight. The things they were discussing, what they were feeling, were too raw to take the time to translate.
She took his hands in her own and sat with him. In jeans and an old green sweater, he ought to have looked right at home, just Dad. But the lines around his eyes had started to deepen and he looked tired. The worry etched into his face didn’t help. He looked older to her.
Kara nudged against him and he put an arm around her. She pushed her face to his chest, listening to his heart. Perhaps two minutes went by, but they felt like forever to Kara. At last, she spoke up again.
“They call me ‘bonsai.’ ”
Her father blinked. “What?”
“Bonsai. Like the tree. Cut away from where it belongs and planted someplace else.”
“Who calls you that?”
Kara shrugged. “Some of the girls. But it doesn’t really bother me. I kind of like it, really. Not the girls. There are some real bitches, but you find them everywhere. It’s almost comical how stereotypical they are, thinking they’re special when they’re just like a million other girls. I mean, I’ve kind of taken the ‘bonsai’ thing to heart. That’s me. I’m a bonsai. But bonsai grow, and people think they’re beautiful and special and they take them into their homes. I have been cut away from where I came from and planted someplace else. And sometimes that means I’m going to be awkward or uncomfortable and feel like I don’t belong-”
“Kara,” he started.
She held up a hand to forestall any interruption. “But that doesn’t mean I want to leave. If anything, it makes me want to work harder, not at fitting in but at just living, at-what’s the word?- thriving, in my own way. It’s important to stay and see this through.”
Her father shifted, studying her as though seeing her for the first time. “A boy died, Kara. And there was another-a girl back in the fall. The school administration won’t talk about it, but Miss Aritomo says she was murdered.”
Kara nodded. “I know. Her name was Akane. She was my friend Sakura’s older sister. But, Dad, think about what you’re saying. We’re going to run home because of this? It creeps me out, yeah. I feel a little sick, actually. But would we have moved out of Medford if the same thing happened back home?”
“Of course not, but-”
“What? What’s different?” The question silenced him, and Kara knew what he was thinking. “I know you want to take care of me.”
“That’s my job.”
Kara took a breath. There were so many things she could have said: that he couldn’t have prevented her mother’s death, that life didn’t work that way, that he could not be with her every second. But they’d had many such conversations after the accident that killed her mother.
“We’re supposed to take care of each other, remember? That was the deal,” she said.
His smile was weak, but it was there.
