I tug at the green tie around my neck, trying to loosen the silk snake suffocating me. Sweat trickles down my back, my skin unused to the thick fabric of the button-down shirt and blazer layered over it. Airi stands next to me in an identical uniform, her skin miraculously dry despite the summer heat.
We wait in the shade of the Watanabe Orchard for the bus that would take us to St. Catherine’s International School. I skim through the pamphlet out of boredom. It’s an elite institution that Mr. Watanabe selected specifically to accommodate my American education to allow me to transition into Japanese society with ease. Once I graduate from the school within a year or two depending on how my credits transfer over, I would have the flexibility to choose between universities in Japan or the U.S., an education that he reassures me he would pay for.
Calling my stepfather generous would be an understatement. I eyeball the cost of tuition for St. Catherine’s, nearly fainting at the price. That didn’t even include the cost of the uniforms.
“It’s so expensive,” I mutter in English, hoping that Airi wouldn’t understand me.
Alas, my words didn’t get past her. “My previous school costs more,” she replies, her accent almost matching mine. Aside from a faint British lilt, I have no trouble understanding her. It was then that I remembered that Japanese students were often taught both English and Japanese, with wealthy students like Airi getting access to higher quality English instruction.
“More than $42,000 per year?”
She laughs, taking the pamphlet from my hands. “It’s 42,000 yen, not dollars. What kind of school costs that much?”
“Colleges in the U.S. charge way more than that per year if you don’t get a scholarship,” I inform her.
She shakes her head. “That’s crazy. It’s cheaper to attend university in France. I would much rather do that.”
Then she adds, “But if tuition were that expensive, Father would have no trouble paying for it.”
Money was the last thing the Watanabes worried about. They seemed to have an endless supply from a mixture of inheritance and business dealings. What sort of business, I couldn’t say, but I knew it was the kind that involved suitcases of money and rough-looking men.
My father had been involved in something similar, but he took care to keep me out of it. I wonder if it was the same for Airi or if she knew something I didn’t.
I’m tempted to ask her as we board the bus, but I wisely choose to keep my mouth shut. If I stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, I get the feeling that I would lose more than access to the family’s money.
And my mother certainly wouldn’t like that.
I peel off my blazer and sit as far away from Airi as I could without giving her the impression that I didn’t want to be seen with her, which really left a few feet of distance between us. Like me, she didn’t enjoy the uniforms we were given. But her solution to the cumbersome outfit was to accessorize it, pinning her favorite flowers from the mansion’s garden to her blazer and hair.
Pink roses and ribbons were deftly woven into the ivory strands on her head, no doubt my mother’s work. I recognize the hairstyle from my kindergarten days, the braids bringing back fond memories of playdough and beaded necklaces. On her blazer, pale violets peek out from the green fabric, holding hands with indigo ribbons.
I admire the creativity and curse the pollen, my eyes swollen despite the allergy medicine I had taken earlier in the day. I blow my nose with a handkerchief for the first time, surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Airi was carrying a florist’s shop on the upper half of her body. I have my epipen handy in case my proximity to her accidentally kills me.
Not that I would have minded dying, but having my allergies be the end of me was humiliating. My father didn’t pass heroically at sea for me to die like that. Between the heat and the flowers, I feel light-headed and float above the rest of the students in the bus.
A vision of you materializes in the seat across from me. Back in California, when my mother couldn’t drive us to school, you would sometimes let me bury my face into your neck on the bus when my symptoms were too strong. I would press my nose into your skin and drift away into a fevered vanilla-scented nap.
It was a shame I couldn’t do the same now. You were gone, whisked off to someplace far away where you couldn’t text or call me. That was the reality of it.
But in my head, reality is a flimsy layer of wax paper I need to peel away to get to what I actually want: you. I move to the seat across from mine and take my place next to you, my head resting on the curve of your shoulder like it was made for it. Instantly, my symptoms fade and I sigh, allowing myself to believe that we were finally reunited after all these months apart.
I close my eyes and sleep, wrapped in the arms of delusion. The air is sweet in this hallucination, the textures soft. My mind is a padded cell that I don’t want to leave. Everything is tailored neatly to my perception.
Alas, I’m not given a choice. The bus grinds to a halt and I wake up on the shoulder of another girl. I sit up quickly, ashamed of the intrusion.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter in English and Japanese. I’m not sure which language my seatmate is more familiar with, unable to discern her ethnicity.
“You were tired,” she shrugs. She pulls out a compact, applying a layer of gloss over her bow-shaped lips.
I drink her in, noticing first her cherry earrings and then the matching clips holding back strands of her chestnut-brown hair. Judging by how styled and shiny her hairdo was, she had recently been to the salon.
“Chiyo,” she says, sticking out a well-manicured hand. “Chiyo Tanaka.”
We shake hands and I spot little cherries on each of her nails. Chiyo the Cherry Girl, I say to myself. Alliteration to make her easy to remember.
She even smells like cherries too, but I can’t tell if it’s from her perfume or seeing all her accessories. Cherry pins litter her dark green blazer and I find myself craving the fruit.
Maybe I should have customized my blazer like Airi and Chiyo did. All around me, a decent chunk of the girls had added patches, charms, chains, and other accessories to their jackets. The only thing I want to do with mine is cut off the sleeves, which I doubt the headmaster would approve of.
The sleeves of my button down shirt were already shortened, the cuffs ending above my elbow instead of at my wrists. My pants were cut to bermuda length, ending slightly above my knees rather than pooling at my ankles. But wearing the summer uniform made no difference.
I hear the snap of a fan opening and a tepid breeze brushes my face. Cherry Girl waves the taut pink fabric over her body and the smell of her sakura perfume washes over me. The air is stifling even with the windows open. My armpits are uncomfortably damp.
We’re stuck in an assembly. Airi is a few seats away, pushed from me by the onslaught of students when we left the bus. Occasionally she looks back at me, her pale eyes scanning my face behind her shades. I stare back, memorizing the configuration of bows and flowers in her hair.
Chiyo flaps the fan faster and black strands of hair obscure my face. The sakura scent floods my nostrils as speakers take the stage. I hardly pay attention to who they are. Man or woman, student or teacher, they fill my ears with the same mush of moral platitudes and disciplinary proverbs.
St. Catherine’s is an all-girls Catholic school, but every adult who stood on that stage kept telling us that they knew we were just as much trouble as the boys.
“We won’t hesitate to punish you,” a stern woman with a gray bob says. “If you don’t act like proper young ladies, we won’t treat you as such.”
I restrain myself from letting out a groan. Being here was punishment enough. The heat of the room broils my skin. I feel like a frog in a pot of boiling water, slowly cooked with the other girl frogs in the assembly. I think my muscles are tenderized by the humidity and salted by my sweat. If I take my clothes off, I would be a cannibal’s delight.
The students around me blur in their foldable chairs. They bleed like watercolor paints on flimsy canvas, the beiges of their skin mixing with the greens of their uniform. The world turns sideways, the colors moving with it.
The last thing I hear before I faint is the school motto.
Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.
Out of shadows and phantasms into truth.
11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdW7GZrAFiA
