Right before she passed out, Grace Kimura whispered one word.
It was my name.
FOUR
How does Grace Kimura know my name?
And why did she look at me like she’d seen an onryo—an extra-terrifying kind of Japanese ghost?
The whole thing is just too weird.
I replay the beyond-bizarre sequence from the parade as I make my way down the street to Suehiro, one of the prime sources of Japanese comfort food in Little Tokyo. My family’s decided they want takeout (or, to be more precise, Auntie Och decided, waving a commanding hand at the rest of us and declaring, “I make katsu all day for parade-goers and then what happen? Bananas Hollywood lady make a scene, everyone lose their appetite. Someone else cook tonight, ne?”). I volunteered to go get it. I was kind of trying to get away from Auntie Suzy, who was not happy about the fact that I’d totally disobeyed her and gotten myself wrapped up in some sort of disruptive parade drama on top of it all. Definitely not “respectable.” Definitely calling the wrong kind of attention to myself and rocking the boat.
If there’s one thing Auntie Suzy hates, it’s rocking the boat.
After Grace and Bodyguard Guy were swarmed by security, the parade was cut unceremoniously short. I’d thought Belle might sulk about her reign as queen getting overshadowed. Instead she’d been overly worried about me, attaching herself to my side and making concerned clucking sounds about how I needed to go to the hospital. I kept saying I was fine. I’d just have some bruises in really interesting places.
Because the judo demonstration never actually happened, Auntie Suzy never found out about my ruse—she bought my lie that I’d had a change of heart about being a princess. I’m disappointed to have missed my chance to impress the UCLA scout, and if this were an ordinary day, I’d be obsessing over it.
But it’s not an ordinary day, and I have other things to obsess over.
I can’t stop thinking of that moment when Grace locked eyes with me, her movie star persona giving way to something less polished. She’d looked almost . . . feral. And then she’d uttered those two syllables.
Rika.
I rewind the scene further in my mind, going back to the Belle-instigated flash mob. Grace turning to look at us: impressed with Belle, charmed by Rory. Her gaze finding me.
I frown, homing in on those brief few seconds. That’s when her whole expression changed. When her dazzling smile vanished. It was when she saw me. She leapt from her car, bulldozed her way through an entire dance troupe, and ruined the whole parade because she was trying to get to me.
Why?
My brain simply can’t wrap itself around what this could possibly mean.
I arrive at the restaurant and push the door open, the bell jangling in what usually sounds like a friendly greeting. Tonight it sounds different. Almost . . . creepy? Maybe because Suehiro is uncharacteristically deserted. It’s usually packed on weekends. But everyone seems to have fled Little Tokyo post-parade.
I nod at the Auntie behind the counter. She recognizes me, gives me a curt nod back, and bustles to the kitchen to retrieve my order. I instinctively pull my phone out of my pocket, but realize I don’t want to look at it. Eliza’s been texting me all day—she, of course, saw all the social media pics with Grace crashing into me and is demanding to know what’s going on. Sensei Mary has also been texting me, wanting to know if I’m okay and if I’ll be at practice tomorrow.
I don’t know what to text back. For some reason, when I think of anything involving the dojo, I feel so guilty. Like I was part of ruining the parade and am therefore responsible for the demonstration not happening, which was probably embarrassing for Sensei Mary and may have ruined . . . well, not just my chance to be seen by the UCLA scout but also Eliza’s chance.
I also don’t want to look at my phone because the Grace Kimura Incident has blown all the way up on social media, shaky phone-camera footage of her leaping from the car playing its way across all platforms. Someone managed to zoom in and get a close-up of her distressed face, mouth half open, hair flying everywhere. Her reps haven’t commented yet, but of course everyone’s speculating about what caused her to fling herself into the chaos of an in-progress parade.
Does the squeaky-clean rom-com queen have a secret drug problem?
Is she cracking under the pressure of the new movie?
Was it just, like, heatstroke?
Seeing the images from today juxtaposed against so much breathless #discourse . . . I don’t want to look at that. Weirdly, when I replay what happened in my mind, it feels private. Like Grace Kimura and I were suddenly the only two people in the world and experienced a brief moment of pure mind-meld. Even with the mob around us, I was the only one who heard her whisper my name.
I haven’t told anyone about that part. What would I say? Grace Kimura knows my name and looked completely freaked out at the mere sight of me! Yay!
It’s even weirder since, you know, I’ve never really cared about any of her movies. She should have had that mind-meld moment with Belle or Rory.
But Grace said “Rika.”
I stuff the phone back in my pocket and cross the room to Suehiro’s massive photo collage. Through the years, the restaurant’s owners have taped a wide assortment of Little Tokyo snapshots to one wall. No frames, no explanatory text, and no discernable organizational system involved. The photos go back so far, however, that the wall has ended up being a kind of unofficial historical chronicle of the
