The Night Parade
Authors: Kathryn Tanquary
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Copyright © 2016 by Kathryn Tanquary
Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration © Alexander Jansson
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsâexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewsâwithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
Source of Production: Worzolla, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA
Date of Production: November 2015
Run Number: 5005036
For grandparents, especially mine.
From the backseat, Saki sent another desperate message on her phone. The reception bars dipped lower, and her palms slicked with sweat as the Toyota turned around a bend. The green mountains rose outside the window, but Saki's eyes were fixed on the screen. The hum of the air conditioner muted her father's snores while her little brother played a video game. His button tapping had the same force as a small typhoon, each burst louder and more frantic than the last. Her mother halfheartedly hummed to a radio station that had been cutting out since the song began. The static drowned the buzz of Saki's phone when the reply came at last.
She opened the message with a swipe and skimmed Hana's text.
going 2 odaiba 2nite, ttyl (^o^)
Saki frowned at the screen. She hadn't waited almost an hour for reception to get a message like that. She flopped back against the seat with a glare that could have set fire to the trees outside. Back in Tokyo, her friends were out shopping, eating crepes, and talking to high school boys two years too old for them. But instead of the summer vacation she wanted, Saki was forced to spend a week at her grandmother's creaky house in the middle of nowhere.
Hana had only made it worse. Her so-called best friend had found a new punching bag in Kaori, another girl in their circle. Before the summer break, Kaori had been seen talking with a boy Hana liked. When the news got back to Hana, she had gone on the warpath. Of course, Hana acted normal while Kaori was around, but the messages she sent Saki and the other girls in private were anything but friendly.
Saki thought that Hana was being unfair to Kaori, who was on the student council and had to talk to everyone in class, but if Saki spoke up and tried to remind the other girls of this fact, she'd risk Hana being mad at her too. Saki just wanted the whole thing to be over. She didn't want to have to agree with Hana's tirades anymore or watch her trying to sabotage Kaori's student council projects. After thinking it over, Saki decided a boring message was better than the alternative.
She faked an enthusiastic response and punched the send key. Her reception bars flickered and died. Saki stiffened in her seat then launched herself toward the front seat.
“Mom, stop the car!”
The Toyota jerked as it took a curve in the road, half a meter away from a tumble down into the river below, but Saki's mother kept her hands firmly on the wheel. “Saki, sit down and stop shouting. Do you have your seat belt on?”
“What? What's the matter?” Her father yawned and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, stirred awake by the raised voices.
Saki leaned around the seat and showed him the red error message. “My signal is gone! We have to go back!”
“It's probably just the elevation.” Her mother turned off the radio, which had become more static than music. “Calm down and try sending it again at Grandma's house.”
“But that's, like, an hour. Hana's leaving
now
. If I don't answer, she's going to think I'm snubbing her on purpose!”
Her mother checked the time. “We passed Tatebayashi forty minutes ago. We'll be there sooner than you think. Hana can wait for a while, can't she?”
“Uh,
no
. She can't. You don't know what she's like,” said Saki. “Come on. It's really important.”
“Listen to your mother.” Her father angled the GPS mount. “And put your seat belt on.”
Saki slouched down and crossed her arms. She did not put her seat belt on but pulled her knees up and rested her feet on the edge of the seat. Her family was useless, as always. She'd expected that, but what really hurt was realizing that her friends didn't seem to care she'd be gone. Not one of them had bothered to ask when she'd be back. They had all of their adventures in the city planned out, and none of those plans included sparing time to think of her.
The car lurched around a hairpin turn on the narrow road. Saki drew in a breath through her nose to keep her carsickness at bay. Small, ragged shops began to appear on the edge of the forest.
“There it is!” Her father's voice broke her concentration as he shifted forward in his seat. “That's the last gas station. It's the next right.”
The next turn took them down a road only wide enough for one car at a time. If the tires veered too far on either side, they'd slide into the wet rows of a rice paddy or a muddy patch of garden. The houses were so far apart that the only other sights to interrupt the panorama were a smattering of persimmon trees and the aging community center. Their car passed it at a crawl, as if the family needed a better view of the water stains on the concrete.
“Look at how many people are getting ready for the festival.” Her mother leaned over the steering wheel to peer at the villagers putting up plastic tarps and hauling grills for their food stalls. “Doesn't that seem like fun?”
Neither Saki nor her brother responded. There was no phone signal, no shopping mall, and absolutely nothing to get excited about out here in the middle of nowhere. Not since Grandpa had died anyway.
Grandma was her father's mother. Her father's father had died three years ago, and now Grandma lived alone in a tiny village along the Watarase River. Both Saki and her brother should have been enjoying a month without homework and sleeping until noon. But instead of vacation, they'd had to wake up with the sun and drive out to the countryside to celebrate the Obon Festival, three full days of boring ceremonies to remember ancestors she hadn't even met, awkward talks with old people, and snail-pace traffic all over the KantÅ Plain.
Her mother's parents lived west of Tokyo and thankfully never did much for Obon, but her grandmother who lived in the country believed in tradition. It wasn't fair. None of her friend's parents had forced them to go anywhere to celebrate Obon. It was true that most of their families had been born and raised in Tokyo for generations, but that didn't mean it was
fair
. Saki made a tortured face out the window as familiar landmarks appeared along the road.
Fewer than a thousand people lived in the mountain village. There was one convenience store, two noodle shops, and no karaoke parlor. The junior high school had a grand total of forty-two students, and the high school students had to commute almost an hour to the town down through the valley. Saki couldn't imagine growing up in a place so dull. She watched a patch of sunflowers sway as the car continued east and the road shrank to little more than a dirt trail.
Grandma lived in a house halfway up the mountain, a fifteen-minute hike from the village. There was a deserted Shinto shrine up near the top, and Grandma's house overlooked the only Buddhist temple in the village. An old graveyard took up most of the temple grounds, where the ancestral gravesites of every family in the village rested.
When Grandpa was still alive, he had taken care of all the temple chores and even a few at the small, forgotten Shinto shrine. As a priest, he officiated ceremonies for births and deaths, always complaining that there were fewer of the former every year. He also kept the grounds, including the vast graveyard. Grandpa knew every corner of the temple and every crevice of the shrine on the mountain. He kept the paths swept, the buildings in good repair, and the offerings fresh and neat. After he died, another priest from a nearby village would come down once a week to tidy up, rake the leaves, and take care of official business, but it had never been the same.
From the window, the tall stone monuments of the graveyard poked out from behind the trees. Saki's mother pulled up to the side of the huge thatched-roof house. Her father opened his door, and a rush of sticky heat from outside spoiled the breezy chill of the air-conditioning. Her mother turned off the engine and pushed back from the wheel.
“Well, we're here. How's your phone?”
Saki didn't move from her slouch. She had checked the signal on the way up the road. “Why do we have to leave
every
year? Everyone else I know is still in Tokyo.” Saki's last visit to the village was the first Obon they'd spent without Grandpa. Obon was supposed to be a time to celebrate the spirits of the dead, but spending the three days of the festival in a place so close to his memory only made the loss sharper and more painful.
“That's not true. And you didn't complain last year.”
“Last year we weren't in the middle of nowhere!” said Saki. “At least
your
hometown has entered the modern era.”
Her mother leaned over and pulled off her brother's headphones. “Jun, we're here. You both can help your father with the luggage.”
“Mom, I don't want to do Grandma's laundry again,” Jun said with a whine. “Why do we always have to do chores?”
“Grandma doesn't even have a computer,” Saki joined in. “How am I supposed to keep up with everyone else?”
“I had to touch her underwear.” Her brother emphasized the point with a stab of his finger.
“I can't even send messages to my friends!”
“Her
underwear
, Mom.”
Their father rapped his knuckles against the back window. Saki and Jun both snapped their mouths shut.
“Out. Now.”
Grandma appeared to greet them in a gray yukata with a pale-blue flower print, her smile wrinkling the sides of her face. On a vacation in Hawaii, Saki's parents had bought Grandma a souvenir T-shirt. But Saki had never seen her wear anything except a yukata or kimono outside the house. They were all old and had been worn so many times that the fabric was soft like velvet.
“Saki, Junnosuke, look how big you've gotten!” Grandma gave each of them a sesame candy and hurried them inside. “This weather is so hot. Even when the sun goes down, I feel like I'm going to melt. You should leave your things here and cool off for a while.”
Saki and her brother exchanged looks behind their parent's backs.
Grandma's house had no air conditioner. It was more than a hundred years old, built before electricity. All of the wires and plugs stuck out from the walls like sagging veins. The house stood above ground level, lined with vaulted wooden walkways. The inner floors were covered in tatami mats, except the kitchen, which had been remodeled with hideous orange linoleum four decades earlier. The sliding doors were screened with shoji paper that was peeling at the corners, and the thatched roof gave off a musty smell. It probably hadn't been changed since before Grandpa died.
Saki and her brother dragged their bags to the little room near the back corner. At least they were together in their misery. Saki slid the door open with her foot, heaving a heavy sigh. Jun took off like a shot.
“I'm taking the futon by the fan!”
“Uh, no. I'm older, so I get to choose first.”
“I'll play you for it.” He turned and held out his fist for a round of janken. With a roll of her eyes, Saki did the same. She threw rock, but Jun had his hand stretched out for paper. With a crow of victory, he flung his duffel atop the nearest stack of bedding.
Saki ignored him and put her bag next to the pile by the outer wall. The sliding doors to the outside had been opened wide to let the room air out. Only a few steps from the house, the forest rose up all around them. The trees were so thick that it was hard to tell one from another. Saki thought she could make out a path winding toward the mountaintop, but when she blinked, she saw nothing but a cluster of trees. A summer breeze stirred against her cheek before she slid the door closed and followed the sound of Grandma's aging radio back for tea.
