Taroko Gorge. Jacob Ritari

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СКАЧАТЬ I got caught lying, I was in third grade and I took a pair of scissors and cut the heads off all my mother’s sunflowers. I think it just got on my nerves: Where did they get off looking so happy? But I told her I saw our neighbor Mrs. Nomura doing it because there was always a war over who had the nicer yard. Well, the war got a whole lot worse, and they were yelling at each other all day. Finally I felt so bad I started crying and told my mother everything, but I couldn’t tell her why I did it. I know why I lied—because I couldn’t tell her why I did it. She slapped me and told me I wasn’t a human being. Then later she felt bad and let me eat some roll cake.

      Okay. Here goes.

      I didn’t want to go on the stupid trip anyway. To make matters worse, they stuck me on the bus next to that creepy Bug. I was lucky, though, because I didn’t have to be the one to ask if we could change seats: Chizu Sato asked first. But she’d gotten the seat next to Seiji Sumiregawa, and everyone thought she was crazy because everyone knew Seiji-kun was a total hunk—one of the top three in class A—but I knew she was just using reverse psychology because she liked him but wanted him to know that she didn’t want him to know that she liked him. Someday I’m going to write the psy-ops book for junior high girls because God knows, just telling someone you like them, you might as well be committing suicide.

      No, said Mr. Tanaka. No changing seats. Make a new friend.

      Mr. Tanaka is such a loser. Who’s actually named Tanaka? You never hear about any Americans named John Smith.

      What did he mean, make a new friend? It was the stupid senior trip. In a month we’d all graduate and go to high school. If we were going to make friends, we’d already made them. And nobody, at least no girl, was ever going to be friends with Bug.

      I guess his name was Keiichi Hirata, but he collected bugs and he looked like a giant bug himself: so, Bug. It started back in sixth grade, when we each had to collect twenty of them for the science project. Twenty was too many for stupid downtown Morioka, but Ms. Kazan was a mean old slave driver. All you got were cicadas, cockroaches, and a few weird flies—no spiders because spiders aren’t bugs, but that didn’t stop a few kids from bringing them anyway. If you brought eighteen, that was an A-minus; fifteen was a C; and so on. If you brought ten or less you failed. But Bug brought in nine, and the one he was most proud of he kept in a little paper bag so no one could see. Taeko Maeda, that happy girl, begged him and begged him until he finally showed her. But he would show Taeko-chan because even then he liked her. He probably kept it in that bag just so she would beg him to show her, since she sat next to him. But when she saw it she started crying. I’m not kidding: real, superbig tears.

      Everyone crowded over: Taeko-chan doushita no?

      It was a rhino beetle as long as your finger, glossy, like a stone. There was a green pin stuck in it where the wings met the body.

      Taeko kept crying and asking him how he could kill something so beautiful.

      You’d think that squirt would’ve learned his lesson that bug collecting wasn’t something that made girls like you, but it got worse. I only know because he brought his box into class sometimes and the teacher would yell at him. Okay, I admit it was sort of interesting, and I’d take a peek over his shoulder. He had moths in there, beetles in all kinds of colors like designer stuff, spiders as big as your face.

      Okay, I didn’t hate him. Maybe I even liked him better than other girls did. I mean, I don’t think bugs are gross or anything, although I don’t like the idea of sticking a pin through one any more than Taeko did. It’s just that this was the senior trip and this was the last chance to do a love confession before we’d all go to high school and work ourselves to death—on a senior trip the success rate for love confession has got to be like 95 percent—and that bus ride was something precious, you understand; it was a whole two hours you could spend with anyone … getting to know them.

      Tohru Maruyama, the Class Rep. Rank: A-plus.

      Tall, handsome, kind. The perfect gentleman. Maybe too perfect a gentleman. I don’t think he’d ever even been on a date because we all would have known. Probably the kind of guy who would never figure out when no meant yes. In the final analysis a big No Way. There were at least six girls after him, and I’d have to take my place in line, and besides, everyone knew he liked that weird witch-girl, Kari Hiraoka.

      Jin Sul-Kim: the Korean athlete. Rank: A-minus.

      He’d transferred in in the ninth grade. There’s a lot of prejudice against Koreans and I don’t think it’s right, but no one was prejudiced against Jin-kun. He had more muscles than he knew what do to with; first in track and a soccer player, and not stupid, either. Not as nice as Class Rep but not exactly mean, just kind of standoffish. The kind of thing some girls like. But stupid Cow-Boobs Sakura was going for the push with her stupid breasts—where did she get those; I think she must be Hawaiian—and she’d landed the seat next to Jin-kun on the bus from the airport to the hotel in Taipei, so she’d pulled a huge tactical lead. I think in such cases a strategic retreat is called for.

      Seiji Sumiregawa: brains and a ponytail. Rank: B-plus.

      They didn’t like long hair at the school, and if Sumiregawa hadn’t been the top male student in class A, I doubt he could have gotten away with it. He wasn’t much in the rest of the looks department—his chin was too small—but the ponytail turned girls’ knees to jelly. Also he told jokes and seemed experienced (although I don’t think he was exactly, if you know what I mean).

      Outside the top three, the prospects weren’t good. There were a lot of losers in our class, and a lot more cool girls than guys, which was, tactically speaking, Bad News.

      Michiko Kamakiri: the nondescript. Rank: C-plus.

      No matter how much I eat, I’m skinny as a pencil. I guess some girls would kill for that, but I’m turning sixteen in two months and I want a stupid figure already. My grades are average and all I can do is play the stupid clarinet. You see? I’m honest. Maybe that’s my good point. I do think my face is okay, though, and I’m tall, which means legs.

      No question: it was Seiji Sumiregawa or bust. I’d push him down if I had to—there were still two days left—but I was stuck on the bus next to Bug with his huge glasses and his stubby little legs, and I didn’t even want to go to Taiwan in the first place. Class A always goes to Taiwan, never Hawaii or Okinawa. There’s nothing fun in Taiwan, no diving or coconuts or anything. All we’d done so far was go to some temple and some museum where the prize of the collection was a cabbage made out of jade. Just this cabbage sitting there. Mr. Tanaka said it was one of the great treuares of Chinese art, but I think he was making fun of us. What are we, stupid?

      The senior trip: the oh-so-brief mating season of the junior high class. Like those flies that only live for one day.

      Bug was playing his Game Boy. He’d gotten the window seat. I was leaning over the back of my seat, ignoring him, talking to Mai Mori, who was sitting next to Taeko.

      Mai-chan was boh—spacey—but nice. She was no competition: like they say, nice girls finish last. Mai-chan was short, had long hair and big eyes.

      Taeko was in her own little world, too, listening to music and nodding her head. She looked just like a kitten. Girls like that will make great wives someday, but it’s girls like me who seize the day while we’re young. We were talking—me, Mai, and (ugh) Cow-Boobs Sakura, who was behind her in the very last seat of the bus, about boys we liked, but not any who happened to be in earshot, which included of course Jin-kun СКАЧАТЬ