“How have you been sleeping?” Sakura asked.
Kara turned to her, studied her face. “Fine. Really well, actually. No more bad dreams.”
Sakura smiled. “See? No restless nights. No nightmares.”
“You’re trying to get me to stay.”
“Of course. I’ll miss you if you go.”
Kara sighed. “I have to go. It’s all arranged.”
Sakura raised her eyebrows. “You don’t really want to live with your aunt.”
No, she didn’t. But her father had a contract to teach for the school year and could not leave without fulfilling that contract. At first he had planned to do just that, uproot them and take his daughter home. But the school board had expressed their extreme displeasure with the merest mention of that plan, and friends in the U.S. had warned that it could damage his career. So they had decided that Kara would live with her Aunt Julie-her mother’s sister-in Maine until her father completed his contract.
“You know I don’t,” Kara said. “The school year’s almost over back home. In the fall I’ll probably have to repeat this whole year. I won’t even be home with my friends. I’ll be at a high school in the middle of nowhere in Maine, starting all over again.”
“So why are you going?”
Kara watched a sailboat slice the water out on Miyazu Bay and breathed in the cool, pure spring air.
“Because I’m afraid. And my father’s afraid for me.”
“You don’t even know if there’s anything to be afraid of!” Sakura said, stubbing out her cigarette on the top of the stone wall.
Kara glanced at her sharply. “Don’t we?”
“Kyuketsuki’s gone. Look, we’ve been over this. As far as your father’s concerned, whatever danger you might have been in is over now. There’s no way he wants to send you back to America while he stays here. He was so worried about being able to keep you out of trouble-to keep you safe- here! How’s he going to do it when you’re seven thousand miles away?”
The words hung between them. Kara felt angry with Sakura but knew it was only because she was right. About all of it. The terror of that awful night felt fresh to Kara, and though she had pleasant dreams when she slept, when she was awake, the fear often came back. Like Sakura, she didn’t want to be out alone after dark, and shadows made her nervous.
Like Sakura.
Kara looked at her. “You think I want to leave? I don’t. I’ll miss you guys, and I’ll miss Japan. My dad and I dreamed about doing this for so long and when my mother died… It was supposed to be our new beginning. We knew she’d have been so proud of us. We both promised her we would take care of each other. And now I’m supposed to leave my dad behind? I’m scared to stay, but I don’t want to leave without him.”
Her eyes burned a little and she felt them welling up with emotion, but she blinked and wiped at them, refusing to cry.
“So why do you think he’s sending you home, then?” Sakura asked, her voice gentle.
Kara swallowed hard. “Because he thinks it’s what I want.”
Sakura lit another cigarette. She glanced away, as though the conversation meant nothing to her.
“But it isn’t?”
Hiding the truth about what had happened from her father had seemed the only sensible thing to do. He would never have believed her, and if he did, it could have gotten him killed. And now that it was over, telling him the truth served no purpose except to make him think she was crazy, or make others think he was crazy, and get them all in trouble. But keeping secrets from her father had put distance between them that had never been there before, and she hated it.
She couldn’t tell him the truth, but if she left now, they might never be as close again. And she’d never forgive herself.
“I just told you I don’t want to go,” she said.
A family walked by on the path in front of them, two little girls racing ahead of their parents, laughing.
Sakura blew a smoke ring and turned to Kara. “You should probably tell him that, don’t you think?”
Kara strummed her guitar, another song emerging from her fingertips unplanned. “One more thing I’m afraid of.”
“Are you afraid he’ll still make you go, or afraid he’ll let you stay?”
It occurred to Kara that she had started playing “When Your Mind’s Made Up” again, and the irony made her laugh. She thought Sakura might ask what Kara found funny, but instead she just looked at her, waiting for an answer.
“A little of both, I guess.”
Frustrated, Sakura sighed. “So what are you going to do?”
Kara slid off the wall, a smile stealing over her face. She slipped her guitar around behind her so it hung there from its strap like a hunting rifle.
“I’m going to do what I promised my mom I would do-look after my dad.”
Sakura brightened. “So you’re going to stay?”
Kara shrugged. “I’m going to talk to him. And then we’ll see.”
The girls said their good-byes and Kara headed for home, leaving Sakura sitting on the stone wall smoking. She’d be fine there on her own. Night was a long way off.
Kara sang softly to herself as she walked, her spirits lifted. She didn’t have to tell her father the truth about Akane’s shrine and Kyuketsuki in order to be honest with him about how she felt. They had both made promises to her mother, and those vows had to be kept.
As for Kyuketsuki’s curse, Sakura was right. Nothing had happened yet. On a day such as today, with the sky so blue and the bay calm and clear and the distant sound of a little bell ringing on a child’s bicycle, the curse held little power over her-and far less magic than did the music of her guitar or the shyness in Hachiro’s eyes when she caught him looking at her.
When the sun set, she knew she might feel differently. A curse had more power then. After dark, the edges of the world seemed to blur, so that anything might be possible. Nowhere felt safe then, and nothing could be trusted.
The thought made Kara pick up her pace. She needed to have a conversation with her father, and it would be best if they could have it while the sun still shone. Once night fell, fear might get the better of her, and she couldn’t allow that.
She had promises to keep.
