canyon—way too big for anyone to have a use for—or that little piece of jade, carved like a cabbage, that we’d seen in the museum. I guess all they had in common was being things. Maybe I just don’t like things.
The temple had a gift shop, like they all do, and a collection box, like they all do. I saw a boy named Takeda drop in a coin and pray. I went over, dug a ten-yen coin out of my pocket—what did Buddha care? I thought—chucked it in, and put my hands together.
Dear Buddha, please let me have a good time today.
It was kind of a milder prayer than the one I’d been forming in my head.
I looked over, and Mr. Tanaka was sitting on a railing smoking with the bus driver. He was sort of smiling.
I went into the main hall. It was just a square building like the school cafeteria. There was a gold statue of the Buddha, and on either side of him scary-looking Chinese guys with swords, and one of them had a red face. I’m pretty sure I don’t remember that part from when we studied Buddhism in the ninth grade. I went out again.
Taeko and some other girl were holding up little knickknacks at the gift shop like they were precious treasures and squealing over them.
I noticed something scary: the only one who looked as out of place, as squinty, as irritated to be there as me was … Keiichi “Bug” Hirata.
I started looking around for Sumiregawa. Points were scored when I saw Chizu with some of her friends at the soft-drink machines, and I went past them to where a little path went up the mountain. At the top of it was a funny tower, painted red, eight stories tall, and at the top of the tower, on the balcony leaning over, were three girls, including Ms. Big-Guns Sakura.
Jin-kun was standing at the bottom calling up (in his kind of broken Japanese), “Come down! Is dangerous!”
Sakura laughed and her boobs swung over the railing, like they might come loose and hit us. Feeling sick, I turned away—and there, right next to me, was Sumiregawa.
“Ever seen Vertigo?” he said.
There was no mistake. Ponytail was talking to me.
“I, I, I—”
Of course I hadn’t seen Vertigo.
“Yes,” I said.
He was squinting up at the tower. With his eyes closed like that he looked sort of amused, like a gentleman, like an English gentleman with a cane and a hat. I didn’t care if his chin was too small. I melted.
“I went up in there,” he said. “There’s a big spiral staircase. You know.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah.” I nodded.
Then he laughed, so I laughed.
Chansu.
Sumiregawa was smart. What could I talk to him about that was smart? The only book I had practically ever read was Musashi.
“Sumiregawa-san. So—you like this place?”
“I’m not sure.” He linked his hands behind his head. “I think all this—kitsch kind of represents a corruption of real Buddhism. Don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I didn’t even know what kitsch meant.
Then he added, smiling, “Hey, call me Seiji-kun. We’ve been classmates what, three years?”
“Sure—Seiji-kun.”
“Michiko-san—that okay?”
I nodded quickly.
“My friends just call me Michi. Or Mii-chan.”
“Am I your friend?”
I smiled. “Sure, if you want to be.”
“I think I’d like that,” he said in his sleepy way.
Thank you! Thank you! The power of just ten yen! And maybe, I thought then in the bright light, okiyome worked, and didn’t everything work …?
“Three years,” he said.
“And now it’s all gonna be over,” I said, proud of myself for actually saying something. “But I mean, we can still see each other—I don’t mean you and me, I mean—everyone.”
“I guess that’s right.”
Then a voice called, “Seiji-kun!”
It was like the sun went out. I turned around and saw Chizu at the corner of the main hall beckoning him. Beckoning.
“Ah. What’s up, Sato?”
“Just come here already!”
“’Kay. Hey, catch you later, Mii-chan.”
“Catch you later,” I said, standing and waving helplessly.
I stood there for a little while. All I could think of, to keep from dying, was that he’d still called her by her last name. Ha!
I didn’t know what to make of it, or of anything else, so I started walking back to the bus.
But on the bridge I looked down and couldn’t believe my eyes. There were people down there. And that wasn’t all: our people. The Class Rep was down there! Tohru Maruyama was standing in the water with his pants rolled up to his ankles, hands in his pockets, like a model in an ad. And I could see Kari’s stupid yellow hair band.
For another second magic seemed possible. It must have been thirty feet down to the river; there were no stairs or anything by the temple. Then I realized they had gotten down on the other side of the bridge, where the rocks sloped—and the world was boring again.
They saw me and started waving. I heard them calling my name. But they looked too happy down there. Kari with the light all in her hair. Stupid Magical Girl. It was like they were in heaven or something, and they wanted me to come, but I didn’t want to go to heaven … it was too bright outside. I should have stayed on the bus.
But I went down anyway, clawing my way down the rocks. I almost lost a shoe. How could they all be so crazy—and the Class Rep? Kari must have gotten to him. That was just the thing she would do, climbing down a cliff onto a riverbank. I walked on the bank of white stone, and I could feel the heat through my socks. There were big rocks jutting into the river. Okay, it looked different here, like on some other world. Like the moon, only there was water—like there was life, all of a sudden, on the moon. It was cooler, too. They were all sitting or standing on a flat rock, right out in the river, and they had all taken off their shoes and most of them had taken off their socks.
It looked like heaven, but then it looked like some kind of Buddhist hell, a Hell for the Lazy. Mai Mori was lying on her back with her socks off, her bare feet just baking there in the sun. And Taeko was there, too (not Sakura, thank God), still with those stupid cute
