The Last Leaves Falling (38 page)

99

My mother kisses me good-bye and waves us off as though this were any other afternoon.

The air feels strange. It crackles as it rubs against my skin.

“Are you okay?” asks Kaito.

“Yes. Are you?”

They nod.

“So where d’you want to go?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, man, anywhere. Your chariot awaits.”

It’s cold, and my friends look as though they haven’t slept and their brains need switching off, so I suggest the movies. Pure, traditional escapism.

The first movie I ever went to see was
Spirited Away
. I sat beside my mother and the whole way through the film I had to keep on checking she was there, that she had not been stolen by Yubaba and turned into a pig. I
knew
she hadn’t, because my mama was not a greedy, selfish thing like the little girl’s parents, but still I had to check.

I loved that movie. The colors and the sounds, the tiny, clackety soot sprites. But it gave me nightmares for a week.

Today I sit here in the dark, staring at the screen, but I’m not watching really. I let the pictures flash before my eyes as I inhale the dusty-seats-and-popcorn smell and listen to the people fidgeting around us.

And then the lights come on and it is time to go.

I have not eaten with my friends since I started to need help to get the food up to my lips, but today I want to taste everything, and so, when Mai suggests the food court, I happily agree.

“Your food, sir,” Mai says, bowing theatrically. She chooses a split-tailed shrimp sitting on a small pillow of rice as the first morsel, holding it out for me to bite. Except she is too far away, cautious, and when I stretch forward to reach it she realizes her mistake and moves her hand, and in one swift effort I am stabbed in the nostril with a pointy stick and showered in pearls of rice.

She laughs, one hand to her mouth in shocked apology. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay.”

“Let me try again,” she says, and this time she is slow and steady, and I bite down on the morsel without incident.

It’s fresh and sweet, and Mai grins at me sheepishly, and I wish that this could last forever.

“How is it?” she asks.

“Good.”

If anyone walked by our table, they would think us spoiled and greedy. We have salmon rolls, and tuna, and egg rolls soaked in sticky syrup. Seaweed and crab with avocado. My friends take it in turns to help, exclaiming, “Gosh, you have to try this!” and “Eat up!” with every bite. I eat until my stomach swells, and then Kaito looks up and says “noodles.” And orders us three bowls of ramen.

•  •  •  •

Predictably, we end up in the park, wandering the paths beneath the trees. So far, nobody has said a word about tonight, and I am glad. I want to give my friends this day, a parting gift, untainted.

But as we walk along, Mai asks, “Are you scared?”

“No.”

She nods, but she’s still frowning. “I’d be terrified.”

I’m not scared. Not of that, the what-comes-next part, but it isn’t quite true that I am not scared at all; there is a hollow pit inside me that should be squeezed out by all that sushi, but it’s not.

The sun sets early in December, and it is already growing dark around the edges of the sky.

“I love the way the branches hang there in the winter,” Mai says as I look up to see the winter canopy. “Like someone took a brush and ink and painted them all in.”

She’s right. And I imagine her going home tonight and painting half a dozen trees, each blacker than the last. “Me too. It looks so . . . deliberate.”

“I think nature is deliberate. Only we can’t see it because we are so used to chaos,” she says. “Like . . . that tree with the pin-straight trunk.” She points ahead of us. “You couldn’t build a thing that straight.”

And she moves around in front of me and stands on one leg, arms outstretched to greet the sky.

She wobbles, and Kai laughs. “You’d be straighter if you planted all your roots against the ground.” And he leaves my chair and walks behind her, takes her arms in his, stretching her farther upward, and they’re reaching, steadying each other. And as the half-light glows behind them so that they look like a painting too, I think that this is how I will remember them, for always. This is what life is; what makes the world so strong.

We settle here to watch the sunset, beneath the pin-straight tree. It seems as good a place as any. Kaito leans his back against the trunk, and Mai leans hers into his chest, and for a moment we are quiet.

The sky turns, the edges dimming while the center glows the brightest gold.

I tear my eyes away to look at them. “What will you both do?”

“Huh?”

“When the sun comes up tomorrow, and next week, next year . . . what do you think you’ll be doing?”

“I don’t know.” Kaito is the first to answer. “Tomorrow does not feel so real, right now.”

“No,” she agrees sadly. “But beyond that’s easier. I’m going to study art and become famous for my work. It will be beautiful.”

I smile. “What else?”

“I’ll live in a nice house. A proper house, with a garden gate. And I will let all the neighbor’s children pick plums from the trees.” She stops, and then: “And before that, I think I might go back and volunteer at the hospital.”

“With that crazy nurse?” Kaito frowns, pulling her closer.

“No! Yes. I don’t know. I don’t care, I just think it would be nice. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How about you, Kai?”

“I honestly don’t know. I want to do
something
, but I don’t really know what yet.”

Mai looks up at him, snuggling closer. “You’ll be taking over the whole Internet before you’re thirty, dork.”

“Oh! You’re right! How
awful
of me to forget the master plan!” he says, grinning.

“It is! I want a mansion to go with my garden fence.”

The sky deepens, and it’s almost time to go. And then I see it. “Hey look!” I say. “The first star!”

The first star of the last night.

We watch them blink on, one by one, and I’m reminded of that night with Ojiisan.

I always used to think that the stars lived forever, that I would too. And I can’t believe it’s over.

One, two, three . . . I count the shining, distant lights, and Ojiisan’s voice sits inside my head. Heavy. Worried. “So many of them will be burned and gone before we even notice them.” I know exactly what he meant, now, but it’s not the way he thinks. The sky is different here. I can count the stars we see upon my fingers. And as I sit beside my friends, I know I’ll not be cast aside unseen.

100

As we approach my apartment block I start to get nervous. My friends have not stayed after our days out before. Will I have to beg? Come up with a reason that they have to stay? Will my mother be suspicious?

But I needn’t have worried. My mother greets us with a smile, and rather than her usual “thank you and good-bye” she turns to my friends and says, “Would you come in for some tea?”

Does she know?

Does she suspect?

But as she bustles around the kitchen, boiling water, setting out the teacups, scooping tea into the pot, she hums. An old tune I have not heard for years, a song about the cherry blossoms hailing spring, filling up the air.

I wish that I could tell her just how right she is; that tomorrow, everything will be completely different. New.

We sit, the four of us, and sip our honey-colored tea as though it is the most ordinary thing. And when the tea is drained, we shuffle off toward my room. We stop in the doorway and I look back. I need to see her, at the sink or clearing dishes, unaware that eyes are watching her. I need to see her one last time.

But she has not yet turned away. She smiles at me and says, “Just an hour, okay? It’s getting late.”

“Yes, Mama.” I can’t believe that this will be almost our last conversation, and the silence hurts my heart, but I don’t know what to say.

I have to do this, and I hope she understands.

101

Kaito slides the door closed, and we look at one another with nervous grins. They might be grimaces; I can’t tell.

“All right,” I say, and as I hear the words, adrenaline rips through my veins. “Let’s do this.”

Mai pushes air out of her cheeks and stares at me. “You’re sure? We’re really doing this?”

Not now. Please not now. I cannot
not
go through with this.

“Yes.”

“Well then.” Shaking slightly, Kaito reaches down into his bag and pulls out a large, clear bottle, “I brought you this.”

Sake.

“I read about it. It’s supposed to help depress the central nervous system.”

“Yes.” I nod, tasting the saltiness of nerves upon my tongue.

“It’s not all for you, though,” he adds, unscrewing the lid and lifting the neck to his lips. He swigs. “For courage!”

He passes it to Mai, who does the same. “For courage!”

And she holds it out for me.

I expect it to be smooth and bitter, but it’s not. It’s rough and woody, and my lips and tongue buzz underneath it. I swallow, and my throat does too.

“Wow!” I say, and then, “For friendship!”

We pass the bottle around once more, and then I say, “The pills are in a pot beside my bed.”

“Wait.” Kai stops me.

“I have to, Kai.”

“No. It isn’t that. We . . . we have a surprise for you. A parting gift.”

I imagine rice balls drenched in syrup, incense, or a dagger to protect me from the evil dead; something that will send me on my way with a full stomach and stout heart.

But Kaito moves across to my computer, and he turns it on.

“It’s not . . . I hope . . .” He swallows, starts again. “We made something. There’s so much that Professor Crane and his friends never got to do, and . . . well . . .”

“You made both of us
dream
,” Mai finishes.

The desktop loads, he opens up the browser, and types in something that I cannot see.

And then it loads.

A perfect tree, all twisted bark and tiny golden leaves. And hanging there, swaying to the sound of rustling canopies, are dozens of . . . what? What are they?

“It’s a virtual wishing tree,” says Mai. “You click here . . .” She clicks, and a parchment scroll pops up in the middle of the screen. “And you type your wish. And when you’re done”—she clicks the finished button and the tiny scroll rolls up—“you choose a branch and hang it in the tree.”

“At first we made it just for us. For you. We were going to input all the things we want to do, so that you could see. But then . . . It was Mai’s idea.”

“I just . . . it could help so many people, don’t you think?”

“What?” I look at them, their faces filled with desperate enthusiasm, but I do not understand.

And then he shows me.

HI, EVERYONE,

I MADE A LITTLE THING:

WWW.THEWISHTREE.NET

WE ALL HAVE TROUBLES. ALL OF US. AND WE ALL HAVE WISHES, THINGS WE HOPE TO HAVE OR BE. SOMETIMES, THESE THINGS SEEM FAR TOO HARD AND FAR AWAY, AND THEN THE TROUBLES AND DUTIES START TO RULE OUR LIVES.

TODAY I LEARNED THAT LIFE’S TOO SHORT AND PRECIOUS TO BE WASTED. WISHES ARE IMPORTANT. AND IT IS MY WISH THAT WE SPREAD THIS NEWS.

WISH. DOING IS BORN IN DREAMS.

“We went live last night,” he says excitedly, “and I told the forum and look, there are already people taking part!” He takes hold of the mouse, hovers over a tiny copper wish, and it expands, revealing “PEACE.” He finds another, hovers, and I read
See the sun rise from above the world.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“Mai did all the art. I just made it work.”

“It’s wonderful. Can we read some more?”

There’s:
Please let my mother come back home. I miss her.

And:
No More War.

And:
I wish to be understood.

New bike. New car. Laptop. Skates. Guitar.

Love.

Good grades.