When You Were Here

friend, she had a lot going on too. Both of you did.”
    “Okay. So what of it?”
    “Danny, you have every right to be hurt. And every right to shut her out and say good-bye to her forever. So I’m not saying what she did didn’t hurt. But I am saying you can get over it. And more important, you can forgive.”
    “What if I don’t want to?”
    She reaches out a hand to ruffle my hair. “That is just all your walls talking. That is not your heart.”
    “And what does my heart say? Since you seem to think you know it so well.”
    She presses an ear against my chest. “Wait. I think I can hear it now.” She pretends to listen again. “Oh yes, I totally agree.” She jams her ear against me once more. “Definitely. That’s what I think too!”
    She pulls away.
    “What did my heart say?”
    “When you’re ready, you’ll listen to it, and you’ll know.”
    I laugh. “You know what it’s like hanging out with you?”
    “It’s like having someone call you on your BS all the time?” she asks with a kooky smile.
    “Something like that.”
    “Go see her tomorrow.”
    “No. Tomorrow Takahashi is back. Kana, will you come with me tomorrow?”
    “To Takahashi?” She looks bewildered by the request.
    “Yes. I mean, not the meeting itself. But will you go with me to his office? Like how you took my mom to some of her appointments?”
    “I would be honored,” she says, and I’m glad I will have her company tomorrow. I’m glad I won’t have to go alone.
    Then she finishes my soda and plunks the glass down hard. “Now I have something to ask you.”
    “Anything.”
    “I want you to walk me home, and I want you to narrate.”
    “Narrate?”
    She nods. “Yes. I want to see Tokyo through your eyes. I want you to tell me why you love it here.”
    It is the least I can do for her. To help her fall for the city where she’s always lived. The city I’ve always loved.
    We leave, and when we walk by a girl in the crosswalk whose heels fall out of her sky-high shoes with each step she takes, I say to Kana, “Welcome to the land of three sizes for shoes. Barely fits, hardly fits, and doesn’t fit at all.”
    Then a nightclub with red flashing signs three stories high and techno music seeping through the doors. “Tokyo, the real city that never sleeps.”
    Next a pack of girls our age suddenly picks up the pace and runs toward a pink wooden stand on the corner selling bubble tea. “ ‘This just in. There is a bubble-tea shortage in Tokyo tonight. Sue, teenagers in Roppongi are reportedly hoarding bubble tea.’ ‘Bob, when was the last time this happened?’ ‘Well, Sue, it reminds me of the great bubble-tea shortage of 1989…’ ”
    Kana laughs deeply, then we sidestep a too-cool-for-school guy, wearing a striped vest and variations-on-a-hipster jeans, so I slide into another riff, pretending I’m the hipster guy. “ ‘That girl in the rainbow socks totally wants me. She can’t resist me in my skintight jeans even if I. Can’t. Breathe. In. Them.’ ”
    I walk Kana the rest of the way home, and when we’re outside her building, I give her a hug, and she squeezes me tight. She holds on, and our bodies are close; we are connected in some way, and I feel something for her I haven’t felt in a long time. But it’s not a desire to touch her, to run my hands over her and press her against the wall, like I want to do with Holland. This may sound crazy or silly, but I feel like Kana is my sister too. Maybe she is the sister I was meant to have now. Maybe she is my second sister, for this fully orphaned phase of my life. Maybe a piece of Laini, the piece that shut me out long ago, has been reincarnated in Kana. Or maybe it’s the piece of Laini that still cares that is now carried on in Kana.
    And what I’m about to say to Kana has nothing to do with Jeremy or even Sandy Koufax. It is not meant to disrespect either of them or to knock them down. What I am about to say is this moment, this month, this summer. “This is going to sound totally crazy, but I kind of feel like you’re my best friend, Kana.”
    “I totally think of you as my BFF too.”
    I believe she is why I was drawn to Tokyo. I believe somehow that my mom, wherever she is, brought me hereso I could meet Kana Miyoshi. Because I know Kana is what I need and what I want.
    For a second I feel something like joy.
    I try to hold on to that feeling as I say good-bye and return to the Shibuya night.

Chapter Twenty-Four
    Kana waits for