The Last Leaves Falling (2 page)

TAGLINE

AGE
   
GENDER

INTERESTS

Anything?

My mother’s voice interrupts my thoughts, calling, “Coming!” as she shuffles down the hallway. I hear the latch and the soft creak of the door, polite voices, too quiet for me to recognize.

Who
is
it?

I glance at the clock, as if that will hold the answers, even though neither my mother nor I have very many visitors these days. It’s . . . difficult. Embarrassing. No one wants to be around us anymore.

I listen for any sign of who the visitor might be; a cough, a laugh, the rhythm of familiar steps. Nothing. I can’t tell.

I wish they’d go away.

Holding my breath at every sign of company has become almost a ritual. Every time I hear the door, the telephone, a stranger’s voice, I wonder, who else is going to know my shame? Who else will stare, not knowing what to say?

Finally, the door closes and my mother’s gentle footsteps move back along the hall. I rest my head against the monitor of my computer and breathe a long sigh of relief as the cool glass spreads its calm across my skin. They’ve gone. I’m safe.

“Sora?” Mother knocks at my door.

“Uhh.” I groan, turning my face toward the door. The cool of the glass shifts a little. I imagine that the cold is an iceberg, that I’m alone in a desert of ice where everything is clear and fresh and quiet. But I am not; my mother speaks again.

“Sora, your friends are here. Can we come in?”

“We?” I panic, sitting upright and pushing away from my desk, suddenly aware of how small my room is, how intrusive the large wheels of my chair are in this little space. There is nowhere to hide.

Who would visit unannounced? I never really had friends at school, more acquaintances. People you could joke with in the classroom, but no one special. I preferred my own company and the quiet of the library, especially in the last months.

“Sora?”

I grunt, and the door slides open. My mother smiles at me and steps aside, ushering in the school’s baseball captain, Tomo, and a girl I think I might have seen in the corridors of school, hunched below a cello case. I squint at her. Yes. Just before I left she caused a ruckus, leaving her first chair in the orchestra to start a rock band. They look odd together, short and tall, gutsy and clean-cut, the musician and the jock, but she’s clinging to him tightly.

What are they
doing
here? Neither of them has ever been to my home before. We’re not friends; we’ve barely even spoken.

They stand in the doorway for a moment, exchange glances. And I know; someone
made
them come. And neither of them wants to be alone with me. The cripple. The sick. The dying.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi,” they say in unison, still not stepping over the threshold.

For a moment we just stare at each other, until I cannot stand it any longer.

“Come in, make yourselves at home.” I force myself to smile as I speak.

They step forward, one step, two.

“This is Reiko.” Tomo shrugs himself from her grip.

I gesture to the bed, with its neatly turned sheets. She sits, fiddling nervously with her plaits, but Tomo paces, swinging his arm like he’s warming up to pitch a ball.

He stops and stares at the wall above my bed, the poster of Katsuhiro Maekawa, pitcher for the Tigers in the 2004 match against the Yankees. Below that, the shelf with my catcher’s mitt, my limited-edition silver bat, the ball signed by half the current team. And my baseball cards. Most of them are kept neatly in folders, organized by team and season. One, however, showing the face of Yoshio Yoshida, sits alone on the shelf looking out at me. It is a duplicate; he’s safely stored away with the rest of his team as well, but I like to think that he is watching over me.

“Wow!” Tomo nods toward the ball that takes pride of place beside Yoshio. “Is that Tomoaki’s signature in the middle there?”

I nod. The signature is barely recognizable; wonky and left-handed. Tomoaki Kanemoto had smiled at me and signed the ball even after playing through the game with torn cartilage. That day, every boy in the bleachers learned about determination.

He frowns at it for a moment, squinting. “Is this from 2004?
That
game?” he asks, eyes wide.

I nod again.

Games like that are not forgotten. Every pair of eyes is glued to the action, every heart longing to be down there on that green, soaking up the glory.

Tomo might actually make it there one day. He’s good. I always wished that I could pitch like him.

“Awesome!” he says. “You know, you should come to a ga—” He stops, his eyes now on my chair. “Well, y’know. If you find the time.”

“Yeah, maybe. Thanks.” I have no intention of watching the high school games, the team I should be on. I will never step onto the field or sit in the bleachers and cheer again. I know it, and Tomo knows it, and an awkward silence eats up all the air again.

“Actually, that’s why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Coach wants to dedicate the season to you.”

“To
me
?” I was only ever a B-team, after-school-club player.

“Uh-huh. He thinks, er . . . he thinks it might inspire people. Remind them what they have . . . Sorry.”

I’m glad he has the decency to look ashamed.

“Anyway. He sent me to tell you, and to invite you to the last game of the season. If you want. He thought you might do a speech. To motivate the others.”

What does one say to that? I am not a circus lion.

I can feel an angry heat rising up my neck. It should not matter what the people of my past think. But it does.

I am nothing but the sick boy.

The unfortunate.

A puppet.

It is always like this. And suddenly a hundred awkward pity-moments flood my synapses, hit me all at once. Tomo and his girlfriend need to leave now; I need my room back. But as the seconds tick by, neither of them moves, they just stare, and suddenly there is not enough air in here for three of us and I want them to leave
right now
.

I swallow hard, try not to sound desperate as I say, “I’m sorry, I am very tired.”

“Oh. Of course.” Tomo nods curtly and shuffles to the door. Reiko gets up to follow, but she stops halfway. “We’ve missed you in class.” Her eyes shine too brightly, as though she’s going to cry. “All of us. Hayashi-san is organizing everyone to sign a card.” She falters. “We’d have brought it today, but a few people were absent and we know they’d want to send their thoughts.”

I do not want to think about my classmates, sitting at their desks as though everything is normal. Has someone taken up my seat, or is it empty, a reminder that last term there was one more eager student? I look away from Reiko’s heavy gaze, tap the mouse pad so my computer whirrs to life. “Thank you. I’m okay.”

She stays just for a second, then sighs and follows Tomo out. I hear them walk down the hallway, and thank my mother. As the door clicks shut behind them, I breathe.

Slowly, the air clears, and after a few minutes alone I turn back to the boxes on my screen.

I imagine myself passing Tomo in the hallway, sliding clumsily into home plate, sitting in a classroom without thirty-five sets of eyes on me.