“You’re the only one I’ll tell, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun. You’re the only one who can give me reality and normalcy. The doctors can only offer me reality. My family overreacts to everything I say, and they can barely, desperately hold on to a thin
veneer of normalcy. If my friends knew, I think they’d be the same way. You’re the only one who’s able to know the truth and still let me be normal. I can enjoy being with you.”
I felt a sting of pain, like a needle driven into the back of my heart. What hurt was knowing I could give her no such thing. If I had anything to offer her at all, it was an escape, and I wasn’t sure I even gave her that.
I said, “Like I told you before, I’m not that special.”
“Whatever,” she said. “Don’t you think we must look like a couple?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m just saying.” She cheerfully put a forkful of chocolate cake into her mouth. She really didn’t look like someone who was going to die soon.
That’s when I realized—
Nobody outside a terminal ward looks like they’re going to die. Me, her, that person who got killed the day before—we were all alive yesterday. We were living our lives, not behaving as if we were going to die. Maybe that’s what it meant to value every day the same.
I was lost in my thoughts when she scolded me, “Don’t look so serious. You’re going to die, too. We’ll meet again in heaven.”
“You’re right,” I said.
Getting emotional over her life was conceited. I’d been arrogant to believe I was guaranteed to outlive her.
She said, “So you’d better be like me and stock up on good deeds.”
“Maybe I’ll take up Buddhism after you die.”
“And just because I’m dead, don’t think I’ll let you get away being with another girl!”
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re just a casual fling.”
She roared that delighted laugh.
We stuffed ourselves with all the food we wanted, then paid separately, left the restaurant, and decided to go home for the day. Dessert Paradise was a bit of a walk from our school; typically, I’d have covered that distance by bike, but going to our respective homes to retrieve our bikes would have taken too much time and effort, and she had suggested we walk straight to the restaurant, still in our school uniforms.
On our way back, we walked briskly on the sidewalk along the main road together. The sun was out, though no longer directly overhead.
“Hot weather can be nice sometimes,” she said. “This could be my last summer, so I’d better enjoy it to the fullest. I wonder what we should do next… When you hear summer, what’s the first thing you picture?”
“Watermelon popsicles,” I replied.
She laughed. I was getting the idea she laughed a lot.
“Besides watermelon,” she said. “What else?”
“Shaved ice.”
“That’s, like, the same thing!”
“All right,” I said, “when you hear summer, what do you think?”
“The usual things, I guess: the seaside, fireworks, festivals. A summer’s aventure!” The accent was back, although this time it was French.
“Are we going hunting for gold?”
“Gold? What are you talking about?”
I explained, “Aventure—that’s French for ‘adventure,’ isn’t it?”
She affected a sigh and turned both palms to the sky as she shook her head. Making a display of being disgusted with me was one thing, but what an annoying way of doing it.
“Not that kind of adventure,” she said. “Come on. Summer, adventure; you know what I’m talking about.”
“Waking up early and going bug catching?”
“That settles it. You’re an idiot.”
I replied, “I think it’s a bigger idiot who gets romance in her head just because the season changed.”
“So you did know what I was talking about! Agh!”
She glared at me. I was sweating enough already, so I reflexively looked away.
She said, “Can you stop being so difficult and quit dragging this out longer than it has to be? It’s too hot out.”
“I thought you said the heat was nice.”
She pushed past my remark. “A summer’s fleeting romance. A summer’s mistake. I’m a teenage girl, so I figure I ought to have one or two of those, right?”
Fleeting or not, a mistake didn’t sound like a very good idea to me.
“As long as I’m still alive,” she said, “I should experience love.”
“You’ve had three boyfriends already. Haven’t you experienced it enough?”
“The heart isn’t measured by a number,” she said.
“That’s one of those things that sounds deep at first, but if you think about it a while, it doesn’t make any sense. What you really mean is, you want another boyfriend.”
I’d said that lightly enough, but if I expected her to respond with another joke, I was wrong.
She stopped walking and stood still, as if struck by a thought. Since she’d done so without warning, my momentum carried me another five steps before I turned to see why she had stopped. I wondered if maybe she saw a hundred-yen coin on the ground or something, but no, her eyes were locked on me. She’d moved her arms behind her back, and her long hair fluttered in the breeze.
“What is it?” I asked.
“If I said I really did want another boyfriend, how far would you go to help me?”
She looked as if she was testing me, like she was trying to make her expression deeply meaningful.
As for what that expression meant, or what her words meant, I was too unaccustomed to being around other people to know.
“How far would I go?”
“Never mind,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s all right.”
She started walking again. When we were side-by-side, I glanced over to see her expression, but it had reset to her usual happy face, which left me even further away from any understanding.
“Was that a joke?” I asked. “Like, were you going to ask if I could set you up with one of my nonexistent friends?”
“No, that wasn’t it,” she said, flatly refuting the only explanation I could think of.
“Well, what did you mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Life isn’t a novel—if you think everything I say has to mean something, you’re seriously mistaken. It didn’t mean anything. You should really spend some more time around people, you know.”
“Oh, okay.”
Apparently, I was supposed to accept that, but it didn’t make sense to me. If her question didn’t mean anything, then why did she say my guess was wrong? But the boat of reeds didn’t raise the point. Something about her manner signaled we were finished talking about the matter, though with my inexperience, I couldn’t be sure if I was picking up on the right message.
When we parted ways outside our school, she waved goodbye to me and called, “I’ll let you know when I’ve come up with the next plan.”
I didn’t bother asking when I’d lost any say in the matter. Instead, I waved back and turned to go. If you’ve already eaten the poison, you may as well lick the plate.
All the way back home, I thought about our bewildering exchange, but I came no closer to understanding what she’d meant.
I figured I’d be dead before I understood.