She took his hands in her own and sat with him. In jeans and an old green sweater, he ought to have looked right at home, just Dad. But the lines around his eyes had started to deepen and he looked tired. The worry etched into his face didn’t help. He looked older to her.
Kara nudged against him and he put an arm around her. She pushed her face to his chest, listening to his heart. Perhaps two minutes went by, but they felt like forever to Kara. At last, she spoke up again.
“They call me ‘bonsai.’ ”
Her father blinked. “What?”
“Bonsai. Like the tree. Cut away from where it belongs and planted someplace else.”
“Who calls you that?”
Kara shrugged. “Some of the girls. But it doesn’t really bother me. I kind of like it, really. Not the girls. There are some real bitches, but you find them everywhere. It’s almost comical how stereotypical they are, thinking they’re special when they’re just like a million other girls. I mean, I’ve kind of taken the ‘bonsai’ thing to heart. That’s me. I’m a bonsai. But bonsai grow, and people think they’re beautiful and special and they take them into their homes. I have been cut away from where I came from and planted someplace else. And sometimes that means I’m going to be awkward or uncomfortable and feel like I don’t belong-”
“Kara,” he started.
She held up a hand to forestall any interruption. “But that doesn’t mean I want to leave. If anything, it makes me want to work harder, not at fitting in but at just living, at-what’s the word?- thriving, in my own way. It’s important to stay and see this through.”
Her father shifted, studying her as though seeing her for the first time. “A boy died, Kara. And there was another-a girl back in the fall. The school administration won’t talk about it, but Miss Aritomo says she was murdered.”
Kara nodded. “I know. Her name was Akane. She was my friend Sakura’s older sister. But, Dad, think about what you’re saying. We’re going to run home because of this? It creeps me out, yeah. I feel a little sick, actually. But would we have moved out of Medford if the same thing happened back home?”
“Of course not, but-”
“What? What’s different?” The question silenced him, and Kara knew what he was thinking. “I know you want to take care of me.”
“That’s my job.”
Kara took a breath. There were so many things she could have said: that he couldn’t have prevented her mother’s death, that life didn’t work that way, that he could not be with her every second. But they’d had many such conversations after the accident that killed her mother.
“We’re supposed to take care of each other, remember? That was the deal,” she said.
His smile was weak, but it was there.
“This has nothing to do with me,” she told him. “And we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It’s terrible, but Jiro could have killed himself. Or it could’ve been an accident. Don’t panic just yet.”
He took a deep breath, then pulled her toward him, kissing the top of her head.
“Okay,” he said. “But no wandering by yourself for a while. Honestly, honey, I’ve been a little worried about you anyway. You haven’t been eating much, and you’ve been looking kind of tired.”
“I am tired. But I’m a teenager. We’re supposed to sleep twenty-three hours a day.”
He chuckled. “All right. But I’m going to keep an eye on you.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She stands on the shore of the bay, the lights along Ama-no-Hashidate like stars against the darkness of the water and the black pines on that spit of land. The bay ripples and Kara steps into the water, unable to resist. Something brushes against her ankle and she looks down.
The corpse that drifts there stares up at her with her mother’s face.
Kara doesn’t run. Her chest aches with grief, a physical pain that is all she’s ever known of sorrow. Her throat closes and she feels tears burn the edges of her eyes, but when she reaches up to wipe them away, she finds only smooth skin.
No eyes. No mouth. Once again, she has no face.
Under the water, her mother’s corpse begins to move, but this time it is not the wind-driven ebb and flow of the bay that shifts the cadaver’s arms and legs. No, the body moves under its own power, rolling over onto its knees, naked back rising, slick and wet and gleaming in the moonlight.
Mom? she says, but has no mouth to speak the word.
The corpse rises, but the long hair is too black and the body too thin. She lifts her head and the face has now changed. Her mother’s features are gone, replaced by brown eyes and high cheekbones that could almost be Sakura’s. Yet it isn’t Sakura, either.
Which is when Kara realizes that Akane has risen from the bay. She has never seen the girl, but it can only be her. The resemblance to Sakura is too strong. Kara reaches out a shaking hand, thinking of the horror Akane had endured here on the shore of the bay, but the dead girl arches her back and hisses, baring sharp, tiny teeth. Her eyes have changed. They have the slit cruelty of a cat’s eyes.
And she starts out of the water.
Kara cannot scream, but she can run. She turns back toward the school and catches sight of something moving over by the trees… by the shrine the other students have built to remember Akane. In amongst the photos and flowers and messages prowl a dozen cats. As Kara glances at them, they freeze and turn toward her.
Look at her. Notice her.
Again she turns to run, but abruptly she is no longer by the bay. Instead she runs along the corridor inside the girls’ wing of the dormitory. A door stands open on the left side of the hall, just ahead, and a terrible knowing fills her, for she recognizes immediately whose room this is.
She only sees the blood as she begins to slip, and then she falls, scrambling along the floor of the corridor in a long puddle of blood that smears her hands and face, mats her hair, and stains her clothes. When at last she stops sliding, trying to get up, knees and hands slipping in the sticky blood, nose full of the terrible stench, she raises her head and finds that she is right outside Sakura and Miho’s room.
The door hangs wide open.
Sakura lays on the floor on bloodstained rice mats, a thousand tiny claw marks slashed into her face and chest, arms and legs and throat. She stares at Kara with a single, blind, dead eye. The other is missing, leaving a dark crater behind, claw marks around the edges.
Sitting atop Sakura’s corpse is a cat with copper and red fur.
It purrs happily.
Kara woke with a scream, then lay in the dark, heart pounding, waiting for the sounds of her father rising. But the house remained quiet, and after a few moments she rose and went out into the hall, opened his door, and peeked inside. He lay in his bed, sound asleep. She tried to tell herself that her scream had been short and not as loud as she’d imagined. Or that it had been part of her dream, and she’d not screamed at all upon waking.
The alternative, that he’d slept right through her terror, was too awful to consider.
6
I t rained all morning that Monday.
Kara tried her best to shake off the trauma of the weekend, but the whole school remained haunted by Jiro’s death. In the breaks between classes, students talked in low tones. A couple of girls in Kara’s class even cried after Japanese History. But when there were teachers in the room, no one had an opportunity to ruminate on death. Maybe the teachers worked them extra hard on purpose that day, or maybe it was simply that, now that the first full week of school had arrived, it would always be like this. The teachers were merciless.
Kara had to work hard to keep focused. As grim as the day was, nobody could help Jiro now. The rain let up for about half an hour, and she thought the sun might actually make an appearance. Then it began to pour harder than ever, the rain pelting down with such force that the noise of it hitting windows and walls and the roof of the school made Yuasa-sensei raise his voice. The sensei asked Ume to turn on the lights in the classroom. Outside it had grown dark as night.