I am a trembling, leaky faucet. I can hardly see the screen as I type this. For once, I’m not just stuck in a memory of you. I have decided to put my feelings into words on a screen. To see them. I think.
I blow my nose with the last tissue in the box. The wastebin overflows with countless crumpled snot-filled napkins, a neverending landslide of despair. I wipe the rest of my tears with the sleeve of my shirt, afraid to leave my room to grab more tissues.
My mother didn’t like it when I cried over anything that wasn’t related to my father. The possibility of her seeing me like this is humiliating.
I miss you today more than I miss you on any other day. It’s the start of summer.
Summer was our season. Summer was when the sun shone and you smiled. Summer was when I first fell in love with you.
It wasn’t in the same way that you fell for me. My feelings grew gradually, blossoming from the seeds that were planted when you moved in next door.
I remember the cardboard boxes on the sidewalk and the bright red sofa carried by the movers. I remember the way you casually stuck your long, tanned legs outside the car door, carrying a cardboard box of your own. And I remember the way your eyes lit up when you saw me staring from the porch.
No one was ever that happy to see me. I didn’t know what to make of your effortless joy. But when you sat down on the porch next to me, I tried to pretend that people smiled at me like that my entire life.
You thought I had friends. While most people decided that I was a mystery they could never figure out, you fabricated a whole life for me before you said your first hello. You imagined a brighter existence than the one I lived and I told you just as much.
“I don’t believe you. How can someone have no friends?”
Technically, I had acquaintances in the form of a few people in class that I occasionally talked to. Whenever Tiffany seemed amiable, I chatted with her. But beyond that, I didn’t have a deep enough connection with anyone to call them a proper friend.
“I’m a loner,” I admitted. “People don’t stick around for long.”
And I never blamed them. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with me. Well, aside from my obvious insecurity, no one hated me. But anyone seen with me was subjected to the same teasing from Evan and his friends. I would get tired of the heckling, too, if I were them.
“I’m going to be here for a while,” you said. “So don’t get sick of me yet.”
I remember laughing in disbelief. Who would chase you away? You were so happy and beautiful that I couldn’t help but smile in your presence.
Life before you was miserable, but I hadn’t known it was so until we spent all of our time together. Not that I minded the solitude or the hours I spent staring at the wall out of sheer boredom, but life was so much richer after you entered it.
If I listen closely, I can almost hear the cicadas buzzing outside my window, an echo of our first summer together. In the distance, your feet slap against the pavement as you run to my door. Your voice overlaps with my mother’s as you ask if you can see me for the third consecutive day so that we can bike around the neighborhood.
You were always coming up with things for us to do. There were so many lists and activities that it made my head spin seeing all of them, color-coded and highlighted in a fuzzy pink notebook.
My mother liked you. Not that your pestering didn’t annoy her, but she liked that there was someone bothering me who fit her definition of what it meant to be a regular teenage girl. She approved of your bright floral dresses with the hems beneath your knees and your long blond hair pulled back with a bow clip.
To her, you were a good influence. She hoped that you might convert me from my baggy hoodie and jeans into something more pleasing. She was tired of my ironic mustache t-shirts, weird hats, and dangly owl necklaces, positively exhausted by my insistence to keep my hair short.
She would be disappointed to know that you never tried to change me. I think you even stole one of those necklaces because it matched one of your dresses. You were the first person to simply accept me as I was.
The tears come back, streaming down my cheeks in endless waves. Your absence hurts more than usual because I’m acutely aware of what I lost when you disappeared. Try as I might, I cannot simply will for you to come back.
I imagine I would be just as successful as that time we tried to summon ghosts with an Ouija board. You suggested that activity for my sake when you heard about my father’s death.
We marched ourselves to the novelty shop the same afternoon I told you about it, armed with my Hello Kitty piggy bank and your flower purse, barely able to afford the thing with our pile of coins and crumpled dollar bills. Then, when the time was right, we snuck out of our houses and walked to the cemetery together.
You held my hand as the cool night air kissed my skin. I didn’t know if I believed in spirits, but if they were real, I wanted a chance to speak to my father again.
We knelt by his grave and I half expected to see his specter appear. It was darker than normal that night, our flashlights hardly piercing the inky black haze.
I placed white candles on the ground, lighting them in quick succession. You read the prayers and we each placed a finger on the planchette.
“We call upon the spirit world and welcome Nana’s dad to come speak with us. Is anyone there?”
The planchette moved across the board, landing on three different letters.
Yes.
“Spirit, what is your name?”
I kept the letters in my head as the planchette moved again, spelling out Smith. I shook my head. That was definitely not my father’s name, but eerily enough, it matched the one on the grave next to his.
“Smith,” you said. “Could you pass a message along to Nana’s father?”
In the candlelight, I made out my father’s name, Yuta Yamashita, etched on the stone. Wherever he was, he couldn’t reach me.
The planchette told us that the spirit said yes. I took a minute to think of what I wanted to say to him.
“Could you tell my dad that I’m sorry? For that day on the beach?”
He did what any good father would do by trying to save me, but back then, I still felt as though his death was my fault. If only I swam better. If only that lifeguard had been awake or those waves less dangerous.
I wanted to apologize for being weak that day because all of the misery that followed from that moment suffocated me. It was more than the bullying and isolation. That I could endure. My mother’s depression was another matter.
Sometimes she wished that I was the one who disappeared beneath the waves. She didn’t need to say it, but I saw it in the way she looked at me. The world took away the love of her life and left her with an ugly child.
The spirit agreed to pass along my message and we slid the planchette over the word Goodbye. The guide that came with the board claimed that it would close the portal to the spirit world.
On the way back to my house, it felt as though every sound we heard was a ghost coming to haunt us. I couldn’t help but imagine murderers with bloody knives or dead children walking the same road, all trying to have us join them in our unmarked graves.
You snuck into my room with me, holding me as I cried. Everything about that night unsettled me even though I knew you had done this to make me feel better.
“It’s not your fault.”
Two years would pass before I fully believed those words. You stayed with me as long as you could, allowing me to cry into your shoulder.
I’m at his grave tonight, alone and without a shred of your comfort. This time, instead of saying sorry, I’ve come to say goodbye.
I place a white rose on the headstone. Thankfully, the tears from earlier have stopped. I don’t have the energy to cry anymore, not when I’m leaving so soon.
In a few days, I will be in Japan, with my mother’s new boyfriend and his family. I’ve been in California my whole life, but neither of us is happy here anymore. My father has been gone for years and I see no sign of you coming back.
I bid you and my father a quiet farewell on that grave, with only the crickets for company. For now, the memory of your presence is enough to soothe me.
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