The Waking (11 page)

Miss Aritomo had welcomed them all and seemed very pleased to see Kara, which made her feel good. She had spoken briefly about the origins of Noh theater and the respect that its greatest practitioners received, as well as the seriousness with which all those involved approached their work.

“In total,” Miss Aritomo told the gathered students, “there are only about two hundred and fifty Noh plays.”

Kara raised her hand. From the surprise on Miss Aritomo’s face, she realized she probably should have waited until the end of the presentation to ask questions, but her hand was already up.

“Yes, Kara?”

“I’m sorry, Aritomo-sensei, but didn’t you say that Noh theater had been performed for seven hundred years?”

Miss Aritomo nodded. “That’s right.”

“And there are only two hundred and fifty plays?” To her, it seemed like Noh theater could be no different from novels, with millions of stories to be told.

The teacher smiled. “It is a precise art form, not something that can be created quickly. But you are right to question the number. Over the centuries there were certainly many more, but still not as many as you might imagine. Only specific kinds of stories have ever been considered appropriate for Noh theater, so the number of works is naturally limited.”

Then she had shown them a long scene from a Noh play entitled “Aoi no Ue” on DVD, and Kara had watched, breathless. Like the limitations on form and story, the slow movements of the performers interested Kara a great deal. The skill involved impressed her as immense, similar to the discipline in ballet. What she had gleaned from a quick online search on Sunday morning did not begin to communicate the strange, dreamlike beauty of the actual performance, which in this case had something to do with exorcising the spirit of one woman from the body of another. It seemed most Noh plays had something to do with gods or monsters or spirits.

So weird
, she thought, watching that ten-minute scene.
In the U.S., ghost stories get no respect, but here, it’s high art.

While watching the DVD, though, Kara caught several members of the Noh club—boys and girls—sneaking dark looks in her direction. These weren’t soccer girls, obviously, since they were in the Noh club. It wasn’t Ume’s clique but other students Kara didn’t know yet.

She brushed it off, trying to ignore it, but the longer it went on, the more she began to feel unwelcome.

“One element of Noh theater that many find interesting is the solitary preparation of the performers,” Miss Aritomo explained toward the end of the presentation. “Unlike most theater, Noh performers work in private. The actors and singers practice independently, only joining all of their efforts together for the actual performance, which adds to the challenge but also introduces a spiritual, ritualistic element that we will discuss in future meetings.”

Something struck the back of Kara’s head. She grunted and turned around, even as she heard the ping of metal on the floor. A five-yen coin rolled a few feet and then fell over.

Someone had thrown it at her.

Several of the club members would not look at her. Others stared at her in curiosity or defiance, as if to say,
What are you going to do about it
?

“Kara?” Miss Aritomo asked, “Is something wrong?”

She considered speaking up but knew it would get her nowhere. Nobody would admit to having thrown the coin, and no one would tell on whoever had done it. She was an outsider.

“I’m sorry,” Kara said, bowing her head. “Something buzzed around my head. It must have been a fly.”

Miss Aritomo gave her an odd look. “All right. Let me know if any other flies trouble you.”

Again, Kara inclined her head.

When Miss Aritomo began to speak again, Kara risked a glance at Miho, who sat in the next row, one seat up. The quiet girl might not come to her own defense, but the glare she cast back toward the kids sitting behind Kara was withering. It made Kara feel a little better, but not much.

After the club meeting ended, she and Miho went downstairs and waited for Sakura outside in the rain. They hid in the arch of the doorway on the side of the building, where Sakura usually smoked. The rain had lightened, but still they were thankful for the overhang of the roof and the recessed door.

“What did you think?” Miho asked, in English.

Kara blinked, taking a moment to switch her brain back into English. “It’s cool.”

Miho smiled at the Western slang. “Cool, yes. Very cool.”

“But I don’t think it’s for me.”

“Don’t . . . ,” Miho started, and then switched back to Japanese. When she was upset, the effort it required for her to speak English made her impatient. “Don’t let them stop you from joining. You’ll enjoy it. And those idiots will leave you alone once they know you. They’ll get used to you.”

Kara leaned her head back against the door, staring out at the rain, wondering what was taking Sakura so long. She sighed and looked at Miho. Raindrops had beaded on the girl’s glasses, but Miho had not bothered to wipe them.

“I won’t get used to them. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think I can be a part of that group. I understand why you love Noh theater so much. I want to love it, too. The costumes and masks are amazing and it seems so . . .” She didn’t know the Japanese word for
ethereal
. “It feels almost like a dream. And I adore Miss Aritomo. She’s really sweet. But if I’m around those people, I don’t think I’ll be able to love it, Miho. It’s pretty clear I’m not welcome there, maybe because I’m a gaijin and Noh is such an ancient Japanese tradition. But the reason doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to stay where I’m not wanted.”

Maybe calligraphy was the way to go after all.

“I’m sorry,” Miho said. She looked disappointed but did not try to change Kara’s mind.

“Me too.”

The girls stood in the recession another few minutes, just listening to the sound of the rain.

“This is strange,” Miho said.

“What is?”

“Sakura never takes so long. She likes calligraphy, but that doesn’t stop her from being the first one out the door when the meeting is over.”

“Maybe it isn’t over,” Kara suggested.

Miho shook her head. “No. They never go on this long.”

The tone of her voice, even more than the words, told Kara that Miho was worried. The way Sakura had been behaving the day before, in the wake of the discovery of Jiro’s body—she might just be feeling oversensitive. Maybe Sakura had just wanted some time alone.

They set off together, walking around the front of the school. Most of the juku students and those who didn’t live on campus would have left immediately after their club meetings. Half a dozen guys and girls gathered a short way down the front walk, standing under umbrellas, probably talking about whatever meeting they’d just come from.

Kara glanced down toward the bay but didn’t see anyone near the water. With the storm, she couldn’t even make out the location of the shrine that had been created for Akane.

“Let’s try inside,” Miho said.

But none of the students they encountered had seen Sakura. Kara spotted Mr. Matsui and asked him, but he also shook his head.

They walked to the room in the eastern wing, at the farthest, rear corner of the first floor, where the calligraphy club had its meetings. Two girls remained in the room, though no teacher was present. They worked quietly on a large piece of parchment, practicing the sweep of the brush over paper, one girl seeming to guide the other.

“Reiko?” Miho asked.

Both girls looked up. The older one reacted, lowering her gaze a moment before focusing on them again.

“You’re looking for Sakura?” Reiko asked.

Miho nodded.

“Do you know where she is?” Kara asked.

The girl shook her head. “Not exactly. In one of the classrooms, I think. But I don’t think you should interrupt them.”

“Them?”

Reiko’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought you knew. It’s really creepy. The police are here. They took her out of our meeting to talk to her about Jiro.”

Kara knew her mouth was hanging open and how foolish it must have looked, but she couldn’t get it to close. Her heart began to pound and she felt her face flush. She and Miho turned to each other, but it was obvious that neither of them had any idea what to say.

The police were here. What did that mean? Had somebody listened to the accusations Ume had made the day before? Did they have a reason to? Kara hated the questions, but she hated not having the answers even more.

“Poor Sakura,” Miho said, at last.

“Yeah,” Kara agreed. But in the back of her mind, she was also thinking,
Poor Jiro.

That night, Kara sat at the small desk in her bedroom, staring at her computer screen. The rain had stopped but the clouds had never gone away, and now—long after dark—the air still felt chilly and damp. She wore a hooded woolen sweater, the sleeves pulled down over her hands, leaving only her fingers uncovered.

Her doubts had returned full force. She hated the emotional seesaw she’d been on the past few days; that just wasn’t the kind of girl she wanted to be, some emo drama queen. But she didn’t know how else she was expected to react to the ugliness moving to Japan had brought into her life.

Had she made the wrong friends? It seemed so. At first she’d felt such sympathy for Sakura, but now all of this death and brutality had come too close.

A lot of the guys she knew at home listened to Led Zeppelin, though the band had broken up when their parents were little kids. Still, they wore the T-shirts and scribbled lyrics on their notebooks. She knew plenty of the songs herself, and most of her guy friends were torn between whether “Stairway to Heaven” was the best or worst rock song ever written. Kara was on the fence, but the lyrics came to her now.

There’s still time to change the road you’re on.

Could she switch gears now—switch friends, even? Would others accept her?

That’s not the question, Kara
, she thought.
The question is, do you want to?

She didn’t.

Weird as all of this stuff with Sakura was, the girl had been the first person under the age of thirty to be nice to her in Japan. Kara liked her, and she liked Miho as well. Maybe they hadn’t known each other long, but no way was Sakura capable of killing someone, even by accident. Kara felt guilty for even considering such a thing. She couldn’t turn her back on a friend just because things were getting weird and nasty.

Feeling lonely and far from home, she’d replied to a bunch of e-mails that had been sitting in her in-box from her friends back in Boston, and then surfed the net for a while, reading about new movies and new music. She downloaded some tunes and browsed the Facebook and MySpace blogs of some of her friends.

She’d lulled herself into such a state of online oblivion that when the little Instant Messenger window popped up on the left side of the screen, she blinked stupidly at it a second before registering who the message was from.

Hi. You’re up late,
Sakura had written, in Japanese.

Kara had been typing and reading in English, and her skill with written Japanese was not in the same league as her talent with speaking the language. She did her best.

So are you.

Can’t sleep.

Neither can I. Are you okay?

Not really. But I will be.

Kara paused before she replied, pushing up the sleeves of the sweater she’d put on to warm her against the chilly spring night. She didn’t want to intrude if Sakura didn’t want to talk about it. But there was no way the girl would have IMed her this late without expecting her to ask.

What happened with the police?

It sucked. And Miho said you were upset. Do you think I’m a freak now?

Kara stared at the screen, fingers paused over the keyboard, cheeks flushed with guilt.

No. I’ve just been worried about you.

J
Thank you. The past two days have been hard enough without having friends turn on me. Ume, that bitch, told the police they should talk to me about Jiro’s death. Some of her friends said the same thing.

Why would they believe that?
Kara wrote.

I don’t know if they did. But it’s their job to check it out, right?

So what now?
Kara asked.
Are your parents going to come?

Are you kidding? The police called them, and all they wanted to know was if I was being charged with a crime. I guess that’s what it would take to get them to pay me a visit.

Kara felt sick with anger at the callousness of Sakura’s parents. Their older daughter had been murdered, and they’d abandoned their youngest child to grieve on her own. She wondered if Sakura had always dressed and acted like such a rebel, or if it had all come about after Akane’s death. The wild child thing was really a facade—no matter what attitude she presented to the world, it wasn’t like she was some party girl, drinking and doing drugs—and Kara would have bet that Sakura had put that persona on like a mask after her sister’s death.

As she was typing a reply, another message came in from Sakura.

I’ve got to get some sleep. Thanks for not thinking I’m some serial killer.