When You Were Here

is sumimasen .”
    “I know a few more words.”
    “Saying arigato doesn’t count.”
    “Fine. It’s a sin,” I admit, deliberately choosing to keep the mood light, so she’ll like me, so she’ll keep talking, keep sharing, though it feels like playacting and it’s taking all my concentration to remember my lines, to volley like this, a foreign activity for me after so many months. But the last thing I need is for her—the keeper of information—to shut down as I have. So I opt to make fun of myself. “Especially since I’ve been here so many times. It’s totally embarrassing.”
    “I’m almost, like, so embarrassed to be seen with youright now,” she teases as she points to a side street for us to head down. We pass a pachinko parlor, where middle-aged guys in suits and young dudes in tight jeans feed coins into the Japanese slot machines.
    “Anyway, I don’t know how long I’m staying, so…” My voice trails off, because the truth is what difference does the length of my trip have to do with whether or not I learn the language? I know enough to handle the most basic of transactions, but that’s all.
    Kana shakes a finger at me and rattles off a torrent of Japanese words that make no sense. Then she laughs, her mouth wide open. I wish I knew what she said.
    “I bet you wish you knew Japanese now,” she says, and pokes me a few times in the chest. I think she is half-imp, half-elf.
    “And I think you might be a mind reader,” I say as we reach a candy-yellow door next to a window display with a pyramid full of springy cakes. Small chocolates in all shapes and sizes cascade down the sides.
    But she’s more than a mind reader. She’s the girl who’s been privy to stories, maybe even to secrets. And even though I soon learn that sponge cake drenched in blueberry jam and soaked in chocolate sauce is officially awesome, what tastes even better is that Kana says yes when I ask her if she’ll take me to the Tatsuma Teahouse right now.

Chapter Thirteen
    I try to ignore the nerves inside me as Kana guides me through streets I never knew existed. I try to swat away a nagging worry in the back of my mind. What if, after all this, after five thousand miles, after leaving California to search for what’s left of my family, I find no more than I came with? What if my mom wasn’t going for some Hail Mary Pass? What if there’s nothing at the teahouse, and all I learn is that my mom just liked to drink tea? End of story. Case closed.
    Then I’ll be as empty-handed as when I left Takahashi’s.
    I make myself focus on Kana and what she’s saying about Tokyo as she slides into the role of tour guide, chattering as we dart across a busy intersection, then down another side street. This one is quieter and filled with homesrather than shops and arcades. It’s weird because I feel like I know Tokyo. I can get around town on any subway, making the right connections, getting off at the right stops, finding the restaurants, stores, museums, and all that stuff. But now I feel blind, like it’s my first time here. Because I realize I’ve never really explored the tiny, twisty roads and lanes that jut off the main drags and take you to places you’d never find with just an address, a number on a piece of paper. They say Tokyo is laid out this way because of the wars—that the Japanese built zigzag streets that crisscross haphazardly to make it tough for invaders to march straight through the city and seize it.
    At the end of one street that’s more like a narrow stone path, we reach a wrought-iron fence. Kana opens the gate. I follow her, and she closes the gate behind us. We’re inside a small fenced-in garden. Kana guides me down a winding path, past trees and bushes. Behind the largest tree is a small teahouse, perched at the edge of a pond.
    Kana declares, “Ta-da!” with a flourish of her arm. We’ve reached an ancient-looking door with traditional Japanese writing across the front. “This is Tatsuma Teahouse,” Kana whispers, reverence in her voice. “There’s a legend that the tea leaves are not ordinary tea leaves. That they have mystical powers.”
    Mystical powers. That must be it. That must be what my mom believed. That’s got to be the reason she came here. She was going for broke, just like I thought when I read Kana’s letter.
    “Tell me everything,” I say.
    Kana straightens herself, spreads her arms as if summoning an ancient spirit, and then begins.
    “There’s a legend