“Mr. Who?” Henry says.
“Mr. Sherman!” I say, my grin reinstating itself. “He’s this ancient cat who’s guarded one of the neighborhood boutiques forever. No one knows exactly where he came from or how he’s lived this long or why he has eyes that legit look like human eyes. But he’s always there. Flopped in the doorway and shooting haughty cat glares at everyone who passes by. Tell me that’s not magic.”
“It absolutely is,” Henry says, nodding vigorously. “All right, fine. Between Mr. Sherman and the tacos, you’ve convinced me: LA is an enchanted wonderland!”
“Thank you,” I say. “But how have you been out here this long and not had good tacos?”
“I’ve really only been out here for work,” he says with a shrug. “The kids’ show I was on—the one with the choir?—filmed in New York. Dance! Off! and the movie with Grace were here, but I’m working so much, I don’t really eat anything except the very sensible salads production orders for me.”
“Gotta maintain that hot-guy physique,” I say, cocking an eyebrow.
I expect him to laugh, but his smile gets more forced. “Yeah, well . . . when you’re known for something . . .” He shrugs again—but that seems forced, too. And for some reason, I feel bad.
“But now you have the chance to be known for something else, right?” I say, trying to sound encouraging. “This movie with Grace—if we can find Grace.”
“As you so helpfully pointed out to me during our first meal together,” he says, giving me a slight smile.
Shit. Now I feel really bad. The nure-onna isn’t supposed to feel bad about anything.
“It’s true, though, there are a lot of layers to this role,” he says, his demeanor going back to perfectly smooth—like he’s being interviewed on the red carpet or something. This bothers me, and I can’t quite articulate why. “I get to be funny, I get to be serious. I get to have a really emotional sibling-bonding scene with Grace. And I’m grateful they cast me, period. I’m usually too brown or not brown enough or people just don’t know what’s going on here.” He gestures to his face. “They always ask—”
“‘What are you?’” I finish, smiling slightly. “I’m very familiar.”
“Like we’re trying to trick people or something,” he says, shaking his head. “’Cause, y’know, Guess the Ambiguously Ethnic Person’s True Background is a fun game to play.”
“For everyone except the Ambiguously Ethnic Person. Man, you’d think, in this day and age . . .” I realize I don’t even know where I’m going with that. Or how I can complete that thought and actually believe it. I’m trying to make some grand statement, but my own experience doesn’t back it up.
“You have your own stuff, too, right? About not fitting in?” he says, as if reading my mind. Something more genuine sparks in his eyes, and I can’t help it—I feel warmed.
“I mean, it’s not weird to be a half-Japanese girl in Los Angeles these days,” I say slowly. “But it is weird to be a half-Japanese girl with mysterious, scandalous parentage living with her full-Japanese relatives and not totally looking like them. There are a lot of stares. A lot of . . . questions.” I self-consciously tuck that strand of red hair into my baseball cap. His eyes follow my every move, lingering a little on the hair.
“And you don’t talk about this with anyone—this not fitting in,” he says. Not as a question. He just knows.
I open my mouth to tell him that of course I don’t talk to anyone about that. I’m the freaking nure-onna, goddammit. I retreat to the shadows. I plot my revenge. I don’t think about feelings.
But . . . he’s looking at me so earnestly and openly.
And suddenly I find myself saying a bunch of other stuff instead. Stuff I don’t usually say out loud.
“My Aunties have it tough anyway,” I begin. “They haven’t always been accepted by the community either. I don’t need to be complaining to them. About my, um, feelings. My temper gets the best of me enough as it is—I almost got kicked out of judo once because of it.” He smiles a little at that. “And anyway, even if I did talk to them—or my sisters—they wouldn’t . . .” I trail off, something catching in my throat.
His smile turns gentle. “They wouldn’t understand,” he says.
I look down at my food, blinking back the tears that want to spill out and fuck up our tacos.
“I get it,” he says. “The mixed-kid thing—it’s both totally weird and totally normal. I’m an only child, but people never believe I belong to either of my parents—”
“Wait, you’re an only child?” I say. “My family’s small by most Asian American standards, but—”
“My family’s tiny,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger mere millimeters apart to illustrate. “My grandparents—both sides—weren’t super keen on my parents’ marriage, and my mom and dad are both only children, too. So. It’s really just us.” His expression turns wistful. “It’s cool that you have Little Tokyo, that community—the way you talk about it is so . . .” The corners of his mouth lift. “. . . joyful. I wish I had something like that—my parents kinda kept to themselves after dealing with all that disapproval. And then I started working so young, I sometimes feel like, I dunno, I don’t have those connections?” He shrugs, trying to play it off, but I can tell this bothers him. How could it not? “But do you ever feel . . . well, not quite part of it? ’Cause when I think about my experiences with communities that should be mine, I also feel like maybe I’m not welcome. Like I’m not enough, y’know?”
“There are certainly people who want me to feel that way,” I say. Craig Shimizu’s smug face floats through my brain. “I guess it is weird sometimes. There are definitely Japanese people who think I’m just, like, white with a little sprinkle of soy sauce. Or some kind
