Thomas Randall - The Waking

“You draw?”

“She draws manga,” Miho said. “She’s really good.”

“I’m not. I’m awful,” Sakura mumbled.

Kara dropped down onto another cushion beside her. “I’m sure you’re not. I’d love to see some of your art. But I understand if you don’t want to show me today.”

They were friends now, but they were new friends. Sakura’s art clearly meant a great deal to her, particularly since she kept it mostly secret. She only shared it with people she trusted.

After a moment, she nodded and went to her bed, sliding out the drawer built into its wooden base. She withdrew a thick sketchbook and handed it over. Kara felt honored that Sakura would share this with her but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

The three girls spent twenty minutes just flipping through pages and then looking at other drawings Sakura pulled from her drawer. To Kara’s delight, she was really talented.

“Wow. Between this and Miho’s Noh theater stuff, I feel like I have nothing to contribute. I don’t do anything special.”

Miho sprawled on her belly on the bed, ankles crossed, and poked her face between Kara and Sakura, hair falling across her glasses. “Don’t say that. You are a photographer. And you told me you play guitar.”

“Yeah,” Kara said, “but you guys haven’t heard me play or seen any of my pictures.”

“We will,” Miho promised. “And I’m sure you’re very talented.”

“And if you’re not, we just won’t be friends with you anymore,” Sakura said.

Kara blinked, hurt, and then Sakura laughed. Miho whacked the top of her head and Sakura turned to attack her. Despite their obvious differences in personality and style, the two girls had become like sisters. Perhaps the way their families had cast them aside had made them closer. They didn’t really have anyone but each other.

Sakura pinned Miho in about six seconds.

“I surrender,” Miho said, and Sakura got up, pretending to react to nonexistent cheering from a nonexistent crowd.

“You watch too much television,” Miho told her.

Sakura went to sit in front of the window. “You listen to too much bad music.”

“Rock’s been dead since before I was alive,” Miho countered.

“I’d rather have resurrected rock rot my brain than pop candy so sweet it can rot your teeth.”

Kara watched this back and forth like a tennis match, grinning in amazement. Miho had such a quiet demeanor during school, but here in her own room, she obviously enjoyed sparring.

“What do you think, Kara?” Sakura asked. “Rock or pop?”

Kara shook her head. “Oh, no. You aren’t getting me in the middle of this. Besides, there are a thousand definitions for rock and pop. You’d have to play me some music to compare.”

As Miho started for the laptop-presumably to play music- Kara held up a hand. “No, no. That wasn’t an invitation.”

Sakura laughed. “Okay. We’ll leave you out of it, this time. But you’ll have to play your guitar for us soon.”

“That’s a deal. Next time we’ll study at my house. There’s a lot more room there anyway.”

Miho looked concerned. “You don’t think your father would mind?”

“He’d be happy to have us there,” Kara said.

Sakura sighed.

“You don’t want to come to my house?” Kara asked.

“It’s not that. You just said a terrible word,” Sakura said.

Kara reviewed what she’d just said, fearing that she had somehow offended her friends. “What word?”

Miho threw a small cushion at Sakura. “ Study. That is what we’re supposed to be doing today.”

“Right,” Kara said. “I was doing my best to forget.”

Reluctantly, the three girls dove into their studies. Most of their assignments for the weekend involved reading, and Kara still had math homework she had been avoiding.

They spent a contentedly quiet hour in one another’s company, until finally Sakura let out a groan and stood. She walked to the window again and gazed outside.

“I need a cigarette. Can we go for a walk?”

Miho tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I ought to read these last few pages.”

Sakura smirked. “The boys are outside playing baseball.”

For a moment, Miho hesitated. Then she slipped a marker into her book. “I can finish later.”

Kara laughed. “I thought you were only interested in American boys.”

Miho glanced away, perhaps even blushing a bit. “That depends on what you mean by ‘interested.’ My curiosity is like a-” She said a word that Kara didn’t understand.

“What?”

Sakura kicked off her pajama pants and slid into a pleated skirt much shorter than the one she wore with her school uniform. She looked up. “A scientist who studies people.”

“A sociologist?” Kara said in English.

Miho repeated the Japanese word and Kara stored it away.

“It’s like watching animals in their natural habitat,” Miho explained.

Kara smiled. “Then by all means, let’s go watch the animals.”

Sakura untucked her T-shirt, searched around for her cigarettes and lighter, and then went to the door.

“Miho, you’re not coming?” Kara asked.

“She’s coming,” Sakura said. “She’s just more proper than I am.”

Kara smiled. At home, she and her girlfriends changed in front of one another all the time. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder, but now she realized that things might be different in Japan. Probably were. Or maybe Miho was just shy.

They waited for her in the hall, but a minute later Miho appeared in a cute blue dress from the downtown shop she’d taken them into the day before. She and Sakura put on light jackets, and they all went downstairs and out the back door.

On a secondary field behind the dorm, a group of boys had put together a baseball game. They were wisely batting away from the building, toward the tree line at the distant edge of the school property, but Kara still thought they were risking knocking out some windows. One foul ball spun backward off a bat could easily end the game with the shattering of glass. But she wasn’t about to volunteer her opinion.

“Baseball club?” she asked.

Sakura nodded. “They’re not good enough to be on a team.”

But for Kara, it was nice just to see the game played. She had never been much of a baseball fan, despite the two World Series the Red Sox had won in recent years. Earlier in the week, Hachiro had been very disappointed when she didn’t show as much enthusiasm for her hometown team as he did. He seemed to know everything about American baseball, so she wasn’t surprised to see him playing the outfield.

Most of the boys wore caps with the school insignia, which she assumed was some sort of official baseball club thing. Hachiro wore a Red Sox cap. It surprised her. Sakura’s hairstyle was one thing, but she didn’t dare wear her pins or patches on the outside of her uniform or show her art to other students. As much as they might talk about their talents to Kara, her friends were no different from most Japanese students. They were taught that it was bad manners to stand out, except through academic achievement, and even that was frowned upon by some. But Hachiro grinned broadly out there on the field, proud of his Red Sox cap. It reminded her how much she liked his smile.

The guy up at bat hit one straight at the third baseman’s head. The kid playing third barely had time to raise his glove but somehow managed to catch the ball. The batter was out and Kara cheered.

Miho and Sakura looked at her.

“You picked sides already?”

Kara shrugged. “Hachiro’s team is on the field. I have to cheer for them.”

The two girls shared a knowing look and mischievous smiles.

“So you like Hachiro?” Miho asked.