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 and (oh God why) the Class Rep, sitting chatting with Magical Girl Kari.
Sakura, pushing her boobs in Mai-chan’s face as she leaned over her, asked, “Hey-hey, who do you like?”
Mai looked back at her with those spaceship eyes. “Like?”
“Yeah, like!”
“Like, how?”
Sakura cupped her mouth and whispered, “Rabu-rabu.”
That love-love feeling. I sort of wondered when the language we used had come into being. So much of it was English, what had they called it before the English?
“Oh,” said Mai, “I like everyone.”
“Minna?” Sakura laughed. “It’s fine to like everyone, but you can’t feel rabu-rabu about everyone!”
“Why not?”
“Rabu-rabu is …” Sakura brushed her chin with one finger, “a special connection between two people …”
“Oh, I want a special connection with everyone, though.”
“But special is special!”
Sure, Cow-Boobs, you should talk about boys, when they never leave you alone.
“I want to know if we’re ever gonna see this stupid gorge,” I said. “I can’t believe we’re driving two hours just to look at some hole in the ground.”
Of course, if I was sitting six rows up where Chizu Sato was sitting now, next to the ponytail, the bus ride wouldn’t have been a minute too long.
“I wanna see the gorge,” said Mai. “I like lookin’ at big things; it makes me feel small.”
The thing about Mai was, too, she came from out in the country—rice farmers—and she had this real hick accent.
“You like that?” I said.
I hated it.
I tugged on one of Taeko’s earbuds. “Hey, Maeda. What’re you listening to?”
“Oh—hi, Michi! Did you want something?”
“I said what’re you listening to?”
All of a sudden I looked around and my blood froze. Standing there, with his pop-star looks: Class Rep Tohru Maruyama. It was like a mirage.
He scratched his neck. “Eh … Kamakiri.”
“Y-yes?”
God had answered my prayers! He was out there after all! All those nights I’d knelt down and begged for breasts and hips—not caring if it was the Christian God or the Jewish God or the Buddha; I’d strike my bargains with whoever would hear me, thanks—he’d done one better! Go on, laugh at me. Everyone laugh.
“Mr. Tanaka says stay in your seat while the bus is driving,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Oh.” I put on my best smile. “Ha-a-ai, Class Rep–san!”
He slouched gorgeously away. I fell back in my seat.
Sakura was giggling.
“Shut up,” I muttered, scrunched down, and crossed my arms. Bug’s Game Boy was beeping. Up at the front, Seiji-kun was probably saying to Chizu, “Oh, you like blah-blah-blah?—so do I!”
“We should be getting close.”
I looked around crazily. It took a minute to realize it was Bug who’d said it, without even looking up from his Game Boy.
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
I guess … I felt like if I could get a nice boyfriend, all the things about me would kind of—snap into place. My face and my hair and the clarinet. All of a sudden they’d mean something—to him. He’d tell me things about myself I’d never known.
But … at the gorge Mr. Tanaka couldn’t keep an eye on everyone. We might spread out. Have some time to ourselves …
Chansu!
But they didn’t let us off the bus. It kept driving right through the gorge, so close to the railing that I was sure it was going right over the side. Taeko curled up in her seat and shut her eyes while Sakura pressed herself to the windows on the other side, going, “Wah sugo-o-oi!” Mai leaning over her shoulder, her eyes all bugged out.
Tohru came back again to beg us all to sit down. He was too softhearted to be a good Class Rep. I wondered what he and Kari were talking about up there—maybe she was busy converting him to her crazy religion. Bingo, that was it. Leave it to a girl like Kari to waste a golden chance like this.
Okay, I didn’t really hate Kari; she was just so weird. And the weirdest thing was that everyone loved her. It’s funny because her full name was Hikari, which means “light,” and that totally crazy New Religion she belonged to was called Mahikari, which means like “absolute light.” I don’t know if her parents belonged to it and named her that on purpose. Mahikari is the weirdest religion ever. Going to church, praying, I can understand that (and for a second I thought it had really paid off), but in Mahikari they do this thing called okiyome. You’re not even going to believe this if I tell you. They hold up their hands like they’re saying hello and healing magic rays are supposed to come out of their hands. Okay, all religions have weird stuff, but the people in them—people who were in Ms. Kazan’s stupid science class—don’t really believe that, right? But Kari believed it. She would give you okiyome if you asked her. She’d just smile and hold her hand over you. It might have been more convincing, I don’t know, if she’d actually touched you.
And of course sometimes it worked. That’s just the law of averages, right? One time the projector broke in Mr. Okada’s class and Kari walked right up and did okiyome on the projector. It started working again a minute later. Everyone was like, sugee na! and sassuga Kari-chan! When someone got a scratched knee they’d put their foot on a chair and have Kari do okiyome on it. They didn’t believe in it but they didn’t not believe