far from the freestanding arch that marked the entrance to the school’s grounds.
A furious Ume had her hands balled into fists at her sides as she menaced Maiko, one of the soccer girls in her clique. As nasty as Ume was, one thing she had said was true: the girl was a mouse in comparison.
The argument accelerated until Kara couldn’t understand more than a few words of their rapid-fire Japanese. They were simply speaking too fast for her to translate. Then Ume glanced up and saw her watching, and it stopped abruptly.
“You! Ugly gaijin witch, what are you looking at?”
Kara flinched, not in fear but in astonishment. Ume had been a total bitch from day one, but she had been calm and collected, vicious in that quietly devastating way popular girls had perfected all over the world. This behavior went way beyond that. Her father referred to loss of temper on this scale as “going apeshit,” and Ume had definitely reached that point.
Eyes front, ignoring the two girls now, she picked up her pace and hurried toward school. As she walked away, she heard one last snippet of the argument.
“We both just need to sleep,” Maiko said.
Ume practically snarled her reply. “I don’t want to sleep,” she said. Her voice cracked on the last word, brittle and almost hysterical.
The words echoed in Kara’s mind as she lined up outside of school and then went inside. In the genkan, she put her street shoes into her cubby and slipped on her uwabaki, lost in thought.
Shuffling to the morning meeting, she started looking around at the other students. Sakura had been looking exhausted and frayed the past couple of days, but under the circumstances that was no surprise. And Kara herself looked like hell in the mirror this morning. Good thing that-dreams about Hachiro notwithstanding-she wasn’t really searching for a boyfriend.
But Ume and Maiko had both looked frazzled this morning as well. Ume’s hair had been perfect last week. The girl had the poise and skin and bone structure of a porcelain doll. But Kara remembered thinking recently that Ume looked tired, and today the girl looked like she was unraveling. Her clothes needed ironing and her shoulder- length hair had been put up in twin clips, as though she couldn’t be bothered to do anything else with it. Maiko didn’t look much better.
As Kara glanced around the gym while Principal Yamato talked, she saw other students who looked ragged around the edges. Ume and Maiko hurried into the back of the room, almost late, but Kara spotted other members of their clique. As a group, the soccer girls did not smile. Most had dark circles under their eyes. A couple of the boys looked equally tired.
Hachiro leaned out of his line and caught her eye, offering a smile. Kara could muster only a halfhearted grin in return, but she felt a strange sense of relief to see that he looked happy and alert. Whatever sickness had begun to affect so many of the students-it had to be a sickness, didn’t it?- Hachiro seemed not to have caught the bug.
Maybe they’re just not sleeping, Kara thought.
She frowned. Could it be that simple? All of them, just not sleeping?
All of them having nightmares.
Troubled by this thought, she studied them again, more carefully this time. Several of the soccer girls caught her staring and made unpleasant faces, but no one said anything or made rude gestures. They didn’t want to get in trouble.
When they were dismissed, and Mr. Matsui was leading them to the classroom, Miho caught up with her.
“Are you all right? What was going on in there?”
“I’m okay,” Kara said, brow still furrowed in thought. “Just more bad dreams. And I’m starting to think they’re…”
She couldn’t think of the word in Japanese.
Miho supplied it. “Contagious?”
Kara shot her a look as they walked up the stairs. “Exactly. How did you know that’s what I was going to say?”
Adjusting her glasses, Miho shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m fine. The only reason I haven’t been sleeping that well is because of the bad dreams Sakura’s been having. But I’ve heard other people talking about it in the dorm.”
“That’s weird.”
“You’ve been having them, too?” Miho asked.
Kara nodded. “I wonder what they’re all dreaming about?”
But then they were walking into class, and Mr. Matsui cast an admonishing glance at them and they had to drop the conversation. Kara took her seat. Ren said good morning to her again and she waved. When he wished Miho a good morning as well, she blushed so hard her whole face went a shade of deep pink. As much as she talked about only liking American boys, Kara thought the bronze-haired Ren was a definite exception.
Ume’s friend Maiko sat in the front left corner of the room, beside the windows. Mr. Matsui called on her for toban, the morning attendance and announcements. The girl pursed her lips, as though she might be thinking about telling him off, but she obviously thought better of it. She stood and took the notebook from him and went to the front of the class.
Barely lifting her eyes from the book, Maiko took attendance.
When she got to Kara’s name, she paused and looked up. Again, she seemed about to speak, but then shook her head and returned to her task. Kara had no idea what the girl had on her mind, but something was troubling Maiko deeply.
For the rest of the day, Kara tried her best to focus. By early afternoon, she had to accept that her best would not be good enough. Even the breaks between classes, when she could get up and chat with Miho and get a breath of fresh air by an open window, didn’t seem to help. Half of what she’d heard today had gone in one ear and out the other. Her notes were a mess. Between the distracting thoughts that kept popping up in her mind and the way her whole body seemed to just hang wrongly on her bones, exhaustion dragging her down, she felt that if she had to spend one more minute sitting on the hard wooden chair, she would scream.
When her father came in to teach his class, Kara wanted to run up and hug him. But he was Harper-sensei in the classroom, not her dad. Still, he smiled at her, and a few times he gave her looks of parental concern, obviously noticing that something was wrong. That alone was enough to restore her spirits a little. Besides, just because she was American didn’t mean she would automatically pass American Studies.
As the clock ticked away the afternoon-the end of the school day still seemed far away-she glanced out the window. An old cypress tree grew near the school, thriving and alive. The wintry cast to the sky had receded and now only pure blue remained.
Her father was discussing the three branches of American government, and she forced herself to pay attention. But as she pulled her gaze away from the window, she saw that Maiko had her head down. Exhausted as she was, Kara’s first reaction was envy. The thought made no sense. The moment her father saw that the girl had fallen asleep on her desk, she would be in big-time trouble. He had explained to Kara that the code of conduct at the school was very strict. At home, he might have let something like that slide, but he would have no choice but to punish her in some way. Harper-sensei would give her an extra assignment rather than make her sit on her knees in the hallway as some teachers would do.
At her desk, Maiko began to shiver, as though she was cold. Still asleep, head on her arms, she gave a tiny gasp, then a low murmur. Kara narrowed her eyes, staring at the girl. Then Maiko began to whimper in her sleep, and she understood.
Maiko was having a nightmare, right there in class.
Kara trembled, skin prickling with goose flesh. Just the thought of her own nightmares made her pulse quicken.
Most of the class was looking at Maiko now. Kara’s father had ignored her as long as he could, but now, at last, he started walking toward the sleeping girl’s desk. All Kara could think about was that whimpering-what was Maiko dreaming about to cause her to make that sound?
Her father tried to shake the girl awake. Kara couldn’t watch. She looked away, glancing toward the door to the hall.
