Tokyo Heist (5 page)

“It’s fine. I could use some sheets, though.” I try to sound casual, but inside, I’m smoldering. He hasn’t done one thing to prepare for me.

“Good idea. I’ll hunt some down. Then I’d better get cracking on some mural ideas.”

“You know what? Forget it. I’ll sleep without them. I’m going to turn in. I have to take two buses to get to the comic shop tomorrow, and my shift starts at nine. I’d better get up early.”

Then I notice something on the armrest of the hide-a-bed. A woman’s black sweater.

We both stare at it for a while, as it if might hiss and attack us.

There’s no sign of
my
existence in this house. No school photos, even though I’ve given him a picture every year. And yet. This sweater.

My dad picks it up, opens the door to the basement, and flings it down the stairs.

“Skye doesn’t live here, does she?” I ask.

His laugh comes out like a bark. “Nope.”

“Does she come over a lot?”

“I don’t think you’ll be crossing paths here. As of tonight, she’s not in the picture.”

“You guys broke up? Tonight?”

“We were on a collision course. It’s getting late. Sit tight. I’ll rustle up those sheets.”

I lie down. Springs creak beneath me. I’m relieved Skye’s out of the picture. But that also means finding out her connection to the art theft will be that much harder.

After my dad fails to come back with sheets, I get ready for bed, then dial Edge again.

No answer. I feel seriously sick.

I’ve never had a real boyfriend. But I’ve read a ton of
shojo
manga, and listened to Reika’s ups and downs with her Boyfriends of the Month, older guys from other schools.

I don’t have anyone else like Edge. He’s been there for me every day since we met in seventh-grade French class, on a day when I felt totally alone in the world. We had to write and perform a skit together, and he made me laugh so hard with his ideas I actually fell out of my chair. We’ve been best friends ever since. If I confessed I liked him as more than a friend, and he didn’t feel the same way, it could wreck the friendship.

That almost happened this fall. We were at Deluxe Junk in Fremont one Saturday, trying on vintage clothes for a short film Edge was working on. I came out of the dressing room in a flouncy gold prom dress from the eighties. He emerged in a powder-blue tuxedo with ruffles down the front. We cracked up, looking at ourselves in the mirror. “The seventies? Wrong decade,” I told him, since he usually dresses like he’s from a 1940s film—trousers, a waistcoat, the occasional gray fedora.

“It’s good to branch out now and then,” he replied.

An old Michael Jackson song came on the radio, and we danced. Edge did disco moves, his honey-brown hair falling into his face, and I tried out some robotic 1980s dance moves.

“There’s this homecoming dance next weekend,” he said while boogying my direction.

I walked like an Egyptian. “Yeah. It’d be so funny if we showed up in these clothes.”

“Together?” he asked. Suddenly, the mirror version of Edge stopped dancing and looked directly at the mirror version of me, and I stopped dancing, too.

For a moment, I could picture us walking boldly into the decorated Crestview High gym, to the center of a dance floor, hand in hand, not caring who looked at us. And suddenly, that gold dress felt too tight. “Of course not. We don’t go to lame school events, remember?” I laughed.

He looked down. “Right. No. Of course not. I was just kidding, too.”

Something had shifted, or the air had changed, and our mirror-selves didn’t look at each other. We didn’t dance anymore. We changed back into regular clothes. Things stayed weird for a whole week, until homecoming passed, and then we were fine.

That one weird week was enough to make me realize I had to keep my feelings for him bottled. I felt like I could lose him. I already know what it’s like to lose a great friend.

But right now, I just have to hear his voice. I call his house. Edge’s mom answers.

“Hi, Mrs. Downey, it’s Violet. Can I talk to Edge?”

“He’s still out. He’s not answering his cell?”

“No. I thought he was staying home to work on his video.”

“He was, but then he went over to help someone with a demo, someone who’s going to the same camp. Wait, I have their home number. Let me find it.” Paper rustles.

I’m not surprised his services are in demand. A few months ago, Edge shot this amazing, short film-noir spoof. It followed staff members at our school—the parking lot attendant, janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers. He made it seem like they were all up to something suspicious as they carried out day-to-day tasks. When he posted it online, it went viral. In the last month of school, our lunches at school were interrupted by people coming up to congratulate him. Suddenly, Edge was
visible
. I felt proud, sure, but scared. I wanted to grab his arm and yank him back into our circle of friends and never let him go. I wasn’t ready to share him.

“Here it is. He’s at Mardi Cooper’s house.” Mrs. Downey reads me the number, but I don’t write it down. That’s the last place in the world I’m going to call.

6

E
arly in the morning, I slip out of the house and catch a bus back to North Seattle while my dad’s still snoring away. I lean my throbbing head against the bus window. I barely slept last night. The paint fumes got to me, and I had to get up and open my window. Then I was thinking about the rock through the dining room window, and how now I was basically opening a portal for any aspiring robbers or vandals to enter through. And lacing through worries about my dad and the mystery were my new worries about Edge and Mardi.

Around midnight, I ended up turning on my laptop to distract myself. First, I emailed Reika about the mystery and my upcoming trip, so we could try to meet up in Tokyo. Then I did an Internet search on the Yamadas and the missing van Goghs. I read articles about them and watched video interviews of Kenji until almost two in the morning.

Now, unable to doze on the bus, I take my sketchbook out of my backpack and draw what I learned, in manga-style panels, to try to make sense of it all.

In a panel labeled
February
, Kenji Yamada sifts through a box in his Tokyo office. He finds the portfolio of drawings mixed in with old blueprints.

In the next scene, Kenji has the drawings appraised by a top art expert and a team of van Gogh scholars. “Congratulations,” the appraiser tells him. “Though unsigned, these are authentic van Gogh drawings, in good condition, worth two million dollars.”

Kenji appears on the
Today
show. “My brother, Tomonori, bought these drawings, with a corresponding painting, from a small art dealer in Paris, in April 1987.”

An incredulous Matt Lauer asks, “Are you saying you had van Goghs in your Tokyo office for
decades
? In a box of old construction blueprints?”

Kenji replies: “We didn’t know they were van Goghs until a few months ago. Back in 1987, appraisers told my brother that the unsigned drawings and painting were old, but imitations of van Gogh. Tomonori put them in storage—we didn’t know where—and when I found them a few months ago, I immediately had them reappraised.” A new panel, with Kenji’s voice floating above an appraiser with a magnifying glass. “Thanks to advanced technology and more knowledge of van Gogh’s style today, appraisers could now properly authenticate them and attribute them to the great Dutch master.”

Matt Lauer leans forward. “And there’s a painting that goes with these studies? If it’s a van Gogh, too, and in reasonable condition, it must be worth millions more.”

A close-up of Kenji, his eyes brimming with emotion. “Yes. My brother told me he had put the painting somewhere separate from the drawings, for safekeeping. I never had the chance to learn where. My brother took his own life just two weeks after returning from Paris in 1987.”

Flashback panel. The back view of a man in a suit on a Tokyo subway platform, one foot dangling over the edge. A bare foot. I know from a manga series I read that Japanese people usually remove their shoes and socks before committing suicide.

Last night, I also read an article that came out a few months before all this van Gogh business, about how the Yamada Corporation is in a ton of debt. And financial troubles aren’t the only thing that’s been plaguing them since February of this year. There’ve been accidents. Some real doozies. I turn to a fresh page and list them now:

1. Scaffolding collapsed on three building sites.

2. Equipment exploded in a tunnel.

3. A mini-excavator on an office park construction site went into reverse instead of forward, and the driver plunged into a ravine, narrowly escaping death.

4. Last month, a bridge the company is building in Kobe collapsed, killing two workers, injuring a dozen more.

I stare at my sketches and my list. Images and words swirl together but don’t form a picture that makes sense. Tomonori hid a painting that wasn’t known to be valuable. He separated the painting from the drawings. He didn’t tell anyone where the art was, not even his own brother. And he committed suicide just two weeks after buying this amazing art. Why?

I’m so lost in thought that I miss my bus stop and have to run back four blocks.

By the time I get to work, I’m ten minutes late. Still, I dash into the 7-Eleven next to Jet City Comics, buy some yogurt and a bagel for breakfast, and pour myself a huge cup of coffee. I’m feeling a bit low on
chikara
today. It will take a major caffeine hit to give me the strength to tell Jerry, my boss, I’m quitting at the end of the week.

Three girls come in, their flip-flops flapping. “Hey, isn’t that one of the Manga-loids?” one of them says, just loud enough so I can hear. Giggling ensues.

Through the curved security mirror, I see them in more detail. There’s a beach club on Lake Washington that the rich kids belong to. That’s probably where they are heading, since it’s a rare Seattle day of milky sunlight. I see Kelly Morgan and Emily Woodside loading up on celebrity rags while the third girl makes a beeline for the candy aisle. Guess they’re planning some intellectual stimulation while they rot their teeth and get skin cancer. Good times.

And who’s the girl in the candy aisle? She turns. It’s Mardi freaking Cooper.

If I’m with my friends at school, lost in our fantasy worlds of comics and anime and role-playing games, we don’t have to deal with these idiots. But if I’m not with my friends, I’m visible. Someone to laugh at.

“I don’t know.” Mardi sighs. “Starbursts or Kit Kats?”

“Are you in a chocolatey mood or a fruity mood?” Emily asks.

“Do they make a candy that’s fruity in the middle and chocolatey on the outside?”

Through the security mirror, I steal another look at Mardi. Would Edge
like
her? She’s pretty, with emerald eyes and long, red hair, both of which I once envied. But she’s not Edge’s type. She’s in honors classes with us, but smart in a memorize-the-textbook way. In junior high, she turned into one of those people who is endlessly painting and hanging signs in the halls promoting School Spirit Day, or Alcohol Awareness Day, or Pajama Day, or the Homecoming Dance. It’s like her dedication to school spirit sucked away her soul.

I know there used to be more to Mardi, and I know this because we used to be friends. Years ago, when she, too, lived with a single mom in the Hunters Run condos. In grade school, we rode our bikes together in the parking lot and made fairy wings out of crepe paper. We walked to and from school together. We swapped books and
Sailor Moon
anime DVDs. We memorized
Kiki’s Delivery Service
and pretended that we, too, were witches in training. We shared our deepest secrets and our wildest dreams.

Then her mom got remarried. Mardi and her mom moved into the guy’s fancy house near Sheridan Beach. That’s where her shape-shifting began. She tossed all her
Sailor Moon
s and declared herself too old for Kiki. She got herself some trendy clothes, followed by rich, snobby friends. She joined a bunch of sports teams and got too busy to hang out. One day in seventh grade, she just stopped talking to me. She erased our whole friendship with one blank stare.

These days, she still ignores me, except when her friends call me Manga-loid, and she laughs along with them. And this month, the yearbook came out with a caption by my only extracurricular picture.
VIOLET ROSSI, NATIONAL FART HONOR SOCIETY
. I found out that Mardi, a yearbook staffer, was responsible for proofreading the National Art Honor Society page. She’d let the joke slide all the way to the printer.

Edge knows all this. So why would he hang with her now? Maybe he can see glimmers of the Mardi I once knew. Or maybe Mardi in her new form has bewitched him.

I hurry to the register and throw ten dollars down on the counter.

“So Mardi, what happened with you and Steven Spielberg last night?” Emily asks.

I can’t hear her whole answer. The cashier loudly counts back my change.

“. . . was really, really good. And then, after that, just totally crashed,” Mardi finishes.

Crashed?
He
crashed
at her house? And he was
good.
At what?

“You know, he hangs out with the Manga-loids,” Kelly says.

“Yeah, but he’s not really one of them. He’s a serious film buff, not just into cartoons.”

Cartoons!
I grip my coffee cup. How can she lump anime in with Scooby-Doo?

“And he could be soooo much better,” Mardi goes on. “Some new clothes, the right hairstyle, maybe ten minutes of crunches a day to tone up. I see a lot of potential. He’s my special summer project. Come September, people are not going to recognize Edgerton Downey.”

I can’t listen to this. I bolt from the 7-Eleven, spilled coffee burning my hand.

7