The Waking Read Online Free Page A

breath, reminding herself that not everyone would be like Ume. Japanese, her father had taught her, often consisted of saying things that were the precise opposite of what you actually meant.
    She followed the flow of students into the genkan —a large, square, functional room lined with lockers. With so many voices speaking Japanese at one time, she found it impossible to interpret what anyone said. But that was all right. Since none of them were talking to her, she’d only have been eavesdropping.
    All of the students were taking off their street shoes and stashing them in the lockers. From their backpacks, they all retrieved uwabaki —which meant “inside shoes,” though they were really more like slippers.
    A smile touched Kara’s lips. Ever since her father had first told her about this custom, she’d thought it so strange, but sort of fun, too. The idea of all of the students wearing slippers made her think cozy thoughts of home—though there was nothing cozy about the genkan. The boys wore blue slippers and the girls pink. If there’d been even a single other American at the school, she could’ve made a joke about wearing pajamas to school, or carrying the dusty old teddy bear that sat in a box somewhere in storage back home. But she couldn’t be sure the kids at Monju-no-Chie School would get the joke, or would think it was funny even if they did get it.
    Still, it amused her enough. She had a smile on her face when she looked up and caught two boys watching her intently. Kara gave them a nod of recognition, and they grinned, one of them waving at her.
    She let out a breath. All right, so not every kid here is going to be nasty or bizarre.
    Bizarre meant Sakura.
    Kara felt badly that she’d let herself start thinking negatively of the girl. She glanced around but saw no sign of her. With her hairstyle and attitude, the cigarettes and the patches and pins, Sakura was working hard to give off a rebel vibe. She might as well have tattooed Tough Chick on her forehead. But she’d been cool and accepting to Kara without putting up the walls that everyone else seemed to have built around themselves. So what if she seemed like trouble? Sakura’s sister had been murdered. Grief could cause a person to do all kinds of things they’d never have done before.
    Stashing her shoes in an empty locker, Kara leaned against it to put on her slippers. Now that the initial surprise of her arrival had rippled through the room and everyone had gotten a good look at the gaijin girl, they seemed to have gone back to their preparations for the start of the school year. She felt herself begin to exhale.
    As strange as it all felt—Kara couldn’t imagine any of her friends from home making it through an hour at this school without totally freaking out—an odd happiness began to spread through her. She and her father had talked about this adventure for years. It had taken her mother’s death to make it more than a dream, and so the feeling was bittersweet. But Kara had vowed to herself that she would make her father proud, and be the girl her mother had always told her she could be.
    I can do this.
    Live and learn.
    Someone bumped shoulders with her. She opened her eyes in time to catch the pained, embarrassed expression on the face of a tall, stocky boy with unruly hair.
    “Excuse me,” he said with a quick bow. “I’m very clumsy.”
    “We have that in common.”
    She’d said it only to make him feel better. The typical boy at Monju-no-Chie School was slender, even petite, compared to the guys Kara had gone to school with back home. To his schoolmates, the one who’d bumped her would seem like some kind of giant. She liked his face, and there was a sweetness in his eyes, but when he smiled, she felt a little tremor in her chest.
    “My name is Hachiro,” he said.
    She smiled in return. “I’m Kara.”
    Hachiro nodded. “Yes,” he said, in English. “It’s nice to meet you.”
    Kara smiled. Most of the students