School reopened during the first week of October. When third hour ended the next day, Shimizu-sensei set down his chalk and excused us from homeroom. The rest of the students filed downstairs to change for gym class, but I stayed behind. What was an arrowhead memory anyway? And what made a new girl from “Mountain Street” think I could steal it? The last time I’d tried to steal something was when I was eight. It was a pack of strawberry Hi-Chew. I dropped it down my pants when my father was at the register at Lawson’s. The candy slipped right down my leg and hit the floor. Everyone turned around. “I’ll take that as well,” my father said, shaking his head. The cashier raised an eyebrow and added it to the receipt. That was the beginning and end of my grand criminal endeavors. I’m thinking Moya might have me mixed up with some other teenage thief from Kusaka.
“Hurry, Koda, go,” Shimizu-sensei said.
I got up from my desk. I started to walk out of the room, but something stopped me. It was Shimizu-sensei. He was just staring out the window. It wasn’t like he was bored or even sad. It was something else. He looked afraid.
I almost minded my own business and left the room, but then I remembered Aiko and turned around. “Daijōbu desu ka?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”
Shimizu-sensei reached out and touched the windowpane. “Do you ever feel like someone could be watching you?”
Yes. She has a name, wears a gray hoodie, and is sometimes on fire.
“Um, no,” I quickly said.
“I mean, a ghost, Koda. Do you ever feel like a ghost is watching you?” He turned and smiled. Not a normal smile. More like a my-house-just-burned-down-and-all-I’ve-got-left-is-this-smile smile. “I’m kidding,” he said. “Totally kidding. But seriously, we make these shrines and pray to our ancestors hoping they’ll hear us, right? But what if they really are listening? What if they’re watching us back? That isn’t comforting, Koda. That isn’t comforting at all. It’s terrifying.”
Interesting point. Hadn’t thought of that before. I wanted to say something intelligent, but instead I just opened my mouth and said, “Uh.”
“Go on to gym class, Koda.” Shimizu-sensei turned to the window again.
“Are you going to be all right?”
He didn’t look back.
I stepped out of the room and walked down the hall. People were definitely not feeling safe. Students, teachers, office ladies—it didn’t matter. The two suicides had broken each of us in different ways. Sometimes you caught people crying in the halls. Sometimes teachers took smoke breaks too far from the school. Other people, like the headmaster, stayed in their office all day with the door shut. Shimizu-sensei was afraid of ghosts. That’s not so strange, right? Just another kind of fracture.
I stopped in front of the glass door to the mathematics room. That was where they’d found Ichiro last week. Inside. Alone. Twisted at the foot of Ikeda-sensei’s desk.
I reached out to try the door. It was unlocked. The room was empty and the lights were off. The windows should have lit up the walls, but they didn’t. It was hard to see. The room was deeply dark and deeply empty.
I walked inside the math room and closed the door. Stupid? Maybe. Creepier than dead ancestors? Probably. Better than doing basketball drills in gym class? Definitely.
The smell of the room stung my eyes. No one had been in here since they’d cleaned it. The chairs were still piled in the corner. The teacher’s desk was pushed back against the wall. Near the front of the room, Ichiro’s last word was rubbed raw into the floor.
I knelt down over the faded lines. I could almost feel Ichiro in the strokes he’d left behind. The floor was cold beneath my feet. I reached out to touch the last place Ichiro had touched.
The searing freeze shot up my fingers and under my sleeves. It wrapped around my neck and mouth and eyes. The entire universe was suddenly frosty and still as the carvings on a grave.
Then the chairs in the corner shifted. I knew I’d fallen asleep, but knowing you’re dreaming somehow doesn’t stop the panic. I heard someone straining to tear apart a piece of fabric. I tried to say something. Tried to ask who was there. But when I opened my mouth, only cold air came out.
I stood up, turned, and reached for the door, but then the moaning came. Softly. A whisper of a moan, really. A voice lost in a winter’s fog. “Don’t go,” it said. “Please. Don’t leave me here with them.”
The voices of a hundred crows filled the room, drowning out the floating voice. I let go of the door but didn’t turn around. I could feel a shadow swaying back and forth behind me, rising up from the pile of chairs. “They told me it was my fault,” the voice cried. “They told me I could have stopped it.” The voice was now screaming to be heard over the wings and the screeching. “How would the birds know that? How would cutting myself bring my parents home?”
Through the reflection in the glass door, I recognized his face. The birds fell silent.
“Crows fly.
A traveler on the road
Is lost.”
Ichiro recited the words. The bloody knife fell from his fingers, clanging to the floor.