Thomas Randall - The Waking

Kara could never have predicted something so horrible, but she found herself regretting her exchange with Ume. The girl was so distraught, so inconsolable, that she wished she could take the words back.

But then Ume exploded. She leaped up and turned on the crowd.

“Sakura!” she screamed, running into a cluster of students. She pushed her way through half a dozen others. “This is your fault, somehow. You did this!”

Miho and Kara put their hands up to stop Ume, but the girl stopped short. She shook as she pointed an accusatory finger at Sakura, who stunned Kara by beginning to weep.

Mr. Fujimori grabbed Ume by the shoulders and physically moved her away from the crowd, along the shore to a place where he could try to calm her, speaking in kind, quiet tones.

“Why would she say that?” Kara asked, turning to Sakura. “What’s she talking about?”

But Sakura could only shake her head, unable to reply. After a moment she stepped away from them and fled back toward the dorm.

Miho looked at Kara, hesitated a moment, and then opened her hands in apology and went in pursuit of her roommate.

Kara could only glance around at the other students, lost for any explanation. No one paid any attention to her, and she felt more than ever like the bonsai Ume had named her. Hachiro stood by Jiro’s body, looking stricken, but Kara didn’t know what to say to him. Though her books were still in the dorm, the only place she wanted to be now was at home.

She didn’t belong here.

“We should never have come.”

Rob Harper sat on the small sofa in the living room, holding his head in his hands. With a sigh, he leaned back and stared at his daughter, eyes wide with a dawning realization.

“I should get you out of here.”

Kara’s mouth dropped open. “No, Dad,” she said, sitting next to him.

“Seriously, honey. This is starting to seem like a very bad idea.” They were speaking English tonight. The things they were discussing, what they were feeling, were too raw to take the time to translate.

She took his hands in her own and sat with him. In jeans and an old green sweater, he ought to have looked right at home, just Dad. But the lines around his eyes had started to deepen and he looked tired. The worry etched into his face didn’t help. He looked older to her.

Kara nudged against him and he put an arm around her. She pushed her face to his chest, listening to his heart. Perhaps two minutes went by, but they felt like forever to Kara. At last, she spoke up again.

“They call me ‘bonsai.’ ”

Her father blinked. “What?”

“Bonsai. Like the tree. Cut away from where it belongs and planted someplace else.”

“Who calls you that?”

Kara shrugged. “Some of the girls. But it doesn’t really bother me. I kind of like it, really. Not the girls. There are some real bitches, but you find them everywhere. It’s almost comical how stereotypical they are, thinking they’re special when they’re just like a million other girls. I mean, I’ve kind of taken the ‘bonsai’ thing to heart. That’s me. I’m a bonsai. But bonsai grow, and people think they’re beautiful and special and they take them into their homes. I have been cut away from where I came from and planted someplace else. And sometimes that means I’m going to be awkward or uncomfortable and feel like I don’t belong-”

“Kara,” he started.

She held up a hand to forestall any interruption. “But that doesn’t mean I want to leave. If anything, it makes me want to work harder, not at fitting in but at just living, at-what’s the word?- thriving, in my own way. It’s important to stay and see this through.”

Her father shifted, studying her as though seeing her for the first time. “A boy died, Kara. And there was another-a girl back in the fall. The school administration won’t talk about it, but Miss Aritomo says she was murdered.”

Kara nodded. “I know. Her name was Akane. She was my friend Sakura’s older sister. But, Dad, think about what you’re saying. We’re going to run home because of this? It creeps me out, yeah. I feel a little sick, actually. But would we have moved out of Medford if the same thing happened back home?”

“Of course not, but-”

“What? What’s different?” The question silenced him, and Kara knew what he was thinking. “I know you want to take care of me.”

“That’s my job.”

Kara took a breath. There were so many things she could have said: that he couldn’t have prevented her mother’s death, that life didn’t work that way, that he could not be with her every second. But they’d had many such conversations after the accident that killed her mother.

“We’re supposed to take care of each other, remember? That was the deal,” she said.

His smile was weak, but it was there.

“This has nothing to do with me,” she told him. “And we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. It’s terrible, but Jiro could have killed himself. Or it could’ve been an accident. Don’t panic just yet.”

He took a deep breath, then pulled her toward him, kissing the top of her head.

“Okay,” he said. “But no wandering by yourself for a while. Honestly, honey, I’ve been a little worried about you anyway. You haven’t been eating much, and you’ve been looking kind of tired.”

“I am tired. But I’m a teenager. We’re supposed to sleep twenty-three hours a day.”

He chuckled. “All right. But I’m going to keep an eye on you.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She stands on the shore of the bay, the lights along Ama-no-Hashidate like stars against the darkness of the water and the black pines on that spit of land. The bay ripples and Kara steps into the water, unable to resist. Something brushes against her ankle and she looks down.

The corpse that drifts there stares up at her with her mother’s face.

Kara doesn’t run. Her chest aches with grief, a physical pain that is all she’s ever known of sorrow. Her throat closes and she feels tears burn the edges of her eyes, but when she reaches up to wipe them away, she finds only smooth skin.

No eyes. No mouth. Once again, she has no face.

Under the water, her mother’s corpse begins to move, but this time it is not the wind-driven ebb and flow of the bay that shifts the cadaver’s arms and legs. No, the body moves under its own power, rolling over onto its knees, naked back rising, slick and wet and gleaming in the moonlight.

Mom? she says, but has no mouth to speak the word.

The corpse rises, but the long hair is too black and the body too thin. She lifts her head and the face has now changed. Her mother’s features are gone, replaced by brown eyes and high cheekbones that could almost be Sakura’s. Yet it isn’t Sakura, either.

Which is when Kara realizes that Akane has risen from the bay. She has never seen the girl, but it can only be her. The resemblance to Sakura is too strong. Kara reaches out a shaking hand, thinking of the horror Akane had endured here on the shore of the bay, but the dead girl arches her back and hisses, baring sharp, tiny teeth. Her eyes have changed. They have the slit cruelty of a cat’s eyes.

And she starts out of the water.

Kara cannot scream, but she can run. She turns back toward the school and catches sight of something moving over by the trees… by the shrine the other students have built to remember Akane. In amongst the photos and flowers and messages prowl a dozen cats. As Kara glances at them, they freeze and turn toward her.

Look at her. Notice her.

Again she turns to run, but abruptly she is no longer by the bay. Instead she runs along the corridor inside the girls’ wing of the dormitory. A door stands open on the left side of the hall, just ahead, and a terrible knowing fills her, for she recognizes immediately whose room this is.