Summer Haikus – Chapter 2

“Was this Plan B or Plan C?” Masa asks, dumping his bag on the table. The library is desolate, empty, only grad students sitting in the carrels because all the undergrads are either packing up and leaving or stuck in the last exams of the semester on the Friday of finals week.

“Plan B,” I say, bringing the purple pen to my mouth and humming over a messily-written kanji character. I flip to the first page of the exam and find “Emi” written in the name field. Aw. She always tries so hard. I can’t mark her down for this. “Plan A was you’d actually be here before me.” I write the correct kanji for fish (sakana, 魚 ) next to Emi’s butchered version and move on to the next question.

“Really? I’m flattered you still think I’m prompt after all this time.” Masa reaches into his bag and pulls out a stack of papers the same height as mine before sitting down across from me. I smile, relieved he didn’t try to sit beside me. This way I can watch the way he rubs at the short hair on the back of his head when he’s thinking, or the way he chews on his pen, or how he plays air drums when he finishes grading an exam. Every single time. Today he’s wearing his glasses which means he accidentally slept in his contacts last night and woke up with sandpaper eyeballs.

He leans across the table and glances at the paper I’m grading. “You should mark her down for that.”

“Who? Emi?” I pout and frown at the paper. “She’s so nice and tries so hard.”

Masa sighs as he sits down. “You’re right. She is nice, and she’s studying for the JLTP Level Four this summer.”

My frown deepens, jealous of Emi. How does Masa know anything about her?

“Did she tell you that?” I ask, moving on to the next question.

“No. I heard her gossiping about it.” Masa smooths out his Michigan State gray t-shirt before withdrawing a green pen from his bag and opening to the first exam on top. He uncaps the top and glances at my purple pen. “How’s that pen treating you?”

“Great, thanks. Still going strong.” I tip the pen up to the light and take note of the dwindling ink. The pen was a gift from Masa for my birthday last September, along with a few Japanese journals he picked up in Tokyo while he was there last summer. It didn’t escape my notice that he brought gifts back from Japan for me but none for his girlfriend-at-the-time, Toni. It didn’t escape her notice either. That was the beginning of the end for them. I thought maybe, once they were through, something might happen between Masa and me. I hoped it might. I’ve laid in bed every night and dreamed we would climb past this friendly limbo we’re stuck in.

Halley thinks we’re eternally cruising in the friend zone, though. She’s probably right.

“If it runs out, you can get more at Ito-ya when you’re in Tokyo this summer.”

I sigh and rest my head on my arms. “I can’t wait.”

“Stop rubbing it in,” he grumbles. “How were your last exams? Did you make it through unscathed?”

“I think I did well and only had half a panic attack around Wednesday.” I laugh even though I’m not kidding, and Masa laughs too, unaware I’m telling the truth. I like to keep my deep-rooted anxiety to myself. He only gets to see the surface stuff.

He kicks me under the table and my head shoots up. “Did you talk to Professor Fukuda this week?”

I shake my head, moving on to the next paper. “No. He wasn’t around when I picked up the exams.”

“He said he wants to see you. Be sure to hand in the papers straight to him.”

My freshman year last year was a complete blur. I met Professor Fukuda in my Japanese Intro 101 class, which I passed out of the first week. I was sent directly to level 201, where I smoked everyone in the class. Japanese was the only class I enjoyed my freshman year, and it was how I met Masa. We’re both teacher’s assistants for Fukuda now, and I’ll be taking graduate level classes next year when I return.

Keeping my Japanese fresh is important to me. When I call my mom and talk to her and my grandparents over FaceTime, I want to speak to them in Japanese. I could force them to speak English, but I’ve noticed how much longer they’ll stay online if I use Japanese. This is also why I started my own YouTube channel. I’m not popular like the fashion and beauty vlogs I follow, but my meager thirty subscribers, including my mom and grandparents, watch and comment on every video. Since Mom moved back to Japan, I’ve tried hard to keep in touch with her. Too many of my friends lost a parent after a divorce. I didn’t want to be one of them.

I zip through my stack of papers, often looking up to stare at Masa through the nose-level bangs I keep forgetting to trim. I love the way his tortoiseshell frames slide down his nose when he’s slanted over his work. His slim, calloused fingers push them up the bridge of his nose over and over. Those callouses come from hours of playing guitar when he’s not studying or reading. Some of my favorite memories are of lying in his bed, the scent of his sheets floating around my head, reading for one of my comm arts classes, while he played the guitar at his desk. His roommate, Shrikant, would call him Casanova, and Masa would blush before putting the guitar away. Whenever Masa wasn’t around, I kicked Shrikant hard in the leg. He deserved it.

I lean across the table and take five exams from Masa’s pile since he’s making negative progress at this point. “Thanks,” he mumbles, flourishing a percentage on the front of one exam and moving onto the next after playing a round of air drums.

I tap my fingers on the exams and hate on myself for a moment. This is another reason why Masa and I have never been romantic. I treat him like a best friend or a brother, not like someone I want to strip naked and push into my bed. My mouth runs dry as I remember last summer, when I drove up to Novi for the day and spent the hot summer afternoon lounging around Masa’s family pool while his parents were in Tokyo, before he left to join them. I was half naked in a bikini and Masa wore board trunks. I was so sexually frustrated, I lay on the couch all night staring at the ceiling, only falling asleep once. I had dreams of slipping into his room and his bed but chided myself for being creepy. Who does that shit anyway? People in romance novels maybe.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been hung up on a guy who considered me nothing more than a friend. In fact, this is the fourth guy in a string of heartaches from middle school straight to college. I was in love with Tom for both freshman and sophomore years of high school. He was nice enough to turn me down gently when I confessed my crush after a school football game. His rejection came with a “sorry” and a pat on the shoulder, then he never spoke to me again.

It was Ethan that ruined my confidence completely. I should have known better since he was one of the popular crew, but I fell for his smile and his sense of humor. We were easy friends in all our joint classes, so I thought I might have a chance. I wish his rejection had been as simple as Tom’s. Instead, I confessed I was into him when we chaperoned the fifth grade camping trip, and he told every boy in the school what a loser I was. My life was awful for months. The situation eventually died down when Halley stood up for me, and then his family moved to South Africa of all places, but the damage was done. At least my senior year was quiet and fairly uneventful, but no other guy would look at me, and I went to prom with a bunch of girls instead of a date. I was strong enough not to cry, but I wanted to. I really wanted to.

I know Masa well enough to realize he’d never be as cruel as Ethan was to me, but there’s no way I’m going down that road again. Masa and I are friends, no matter how in love with him I am.

We work for another thirty minutes, pack up, and head outside. The sun is bright, the grass green, and people whiz by us on bikes. I dig in my backpack for my sunglasses so I don’t have to squint the entire walk home.

“Are you heading back to Brody? I’m going to take the bus from Wells,” Masa says, running his hand through his hair. It stands up in a hundred different directions, and I quash the desire to reach out and put it in order.

“Yeah. I’m having dinner with Halley and the dorm crew tonight, but I have to pack this afternoon.”

Masa smiles a winning, straight-white-teeth smile that knocks me dead every time. His father is a dentist. “Let’s walk through the gardens. It’s a shame the school year is mostly during the winter when the gardens are dead.”

I roll my eyes at him. “Will you write a poem about the coming of spring and summer?”

“I’m thinking about it, and don’t roll your eyes at me. I’m a sensitive artist. You might ruin my ego.” He laughs. His ego is fine. I doubt anything I could ever say would shake him. “Come on, Isanooooooooooo. Walk through the gardens with me one last time before summer comes and we’re separated for months.” He takes my hand for a moment and tugs, but I pull it away from him as my skin prickles where his fingers met mine. I wish he wouldn’t play these games with me. Every time he touches me, I can’t help the flood of hope that crashes over me and drowns out my good sense.

“Call me Isa, for fuck’s sake. Only my mom and grandparents call me Isano.”

“Oops,” he says, falling into step next to me as I lead us towards the botanical gardens. “Whenever you swear, I’m in trouble.”

“I just don’t want to be reminded that I won’t see you this summer.”

He glances at me then at the ground in front of us as we round the corner around the main library.

“Let’s just skirt the edge along the river and then we can double-back to Wells on the other side.”

“I’m in no rush, Isa, and I just changed my mind. I’ll take the bus from IM West instead.”

We walk in silence and I take a deep breath, enjoying the summer air. I can’t believe that I chose to stay in state and go to a school that’s covered in snow most of the year. I hate winter. This is much better.

“So, you’re gonna miss me this summer?” Masa asks.

I study him, trying not to read too much into his question or the hesitant way he asked it. Is it possible he knows just how much I’ll miss him? I don’t want to let myself get carried away with what-ifs, so I just respond with a typical Isa flippant response.

“Of course, asshole. Who else will I spend my time with?”

“Halley and all of Tokyo.” He kicks at a stone and sends it flying into the grass.

“Halley and I will spend time running together and that’s about it.” I shove my hands down into my low-slung jeans. “She has appointments for interviews with every news agency on the planet, plus time at the gym, and a million other things to do.”

Masa frowns. “Then what are you going to do while you’re there?”

“I have plans made,” I scoff. “I put together a list of places I want to go see, the temples and shops. I have a queue of books on my Kindle a million deep I haven’t been able to read all year. Plus I need to visit my mom and the ryokan. I’ll be plenty busy. My planner is booked.”

“Of course it is. That’s what I love about you. You have plans for everything. Your planner is chock full of appointments and ideas. How many plans did you come up with for today?”

I count them in my head. “There were four possible outcomes.”

Masa has never faulted me for my planning anxiety, even though Halley’s had enough of it. I’ve planned out everything since my parents’ divorce — how I would tackle my homework, where I would go for holidays, what I would buy at the store. I even planned out losing my own virginity, which was an entirely, one-hundred-percent successful plan. My seminal work. I doubt I’ll ever be able to top it.

“Only four? What if a meteor fell out of the sky and obliterated the library? Did you consider that?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Masa. Events like that fall under my end-of-the-world plans. I keep those written on special paper in a vault with a key code only I, and the President of the United States, know.” I blink my eyes at him seriously, but he laughs anyway. I have a weak moment, where I want to reach out and squeeze his hand, come clean about how nervous I am about the whole summer, how I hyperventilate every night thinking of all the things that could go wrong, but I push the urge away. Masa is the last person I want to introduce to my brand of crazy. I’ve done a good job of hiding everything but the planning. Don’t ruin it now, Isa.

I pull out my iPhone and crouch down next to some pretty white flowers with bees on them, snap a photo, and upload to Instagram. Immediately, Halley favorites the photo. She’s always on her phone when she’s not in class or running.

From my left, Masa darts out and grabs my iPhone. “Hey!” I lunge and try to turn it off before he can access anything.

“One last pic before the year is up,” he says, turning the camera around. He mugs for the shot, but I stare at him, swept up in his carefree attitude and easygoing ways. He coasts through life, not a plan in sight. I could never do that.

Click. A moment of my life frozen in time, a moment with Masa. An eternity if you look at it long enough.

Masa stares hard at my phone, the photo of the two of us immortalized and ready for the Internet. Shit. Anyone with two eyes and a brain can see I’m totally in love with him. He quickly opens it in Instagram then pauses, his thumbs poised over the keyboard, ready to make a description as I watch the screen over his shoulder.

—-

“The open garden

Walking along the river — 

Selfie of two friends.” 

—-

He types and hits “Share.” Masa’s haikus — he creates them when he’s posting a description or leaving a comment. I keep telling him he needs his own Tumblr for them, but he always brushes me off.

A second later, Halley favorites and comments with a red heart. My hand shakes as I pry my phone out of his fingers, turn it off, and slip it into my pocket. Masa keeps walking, oblivious to my rapid breathing and sweating upper lip. I take a deep breath, count to ten, and catch up to him.

We make it all the way along the river and up to Sparty before Masa clears his throat.

“You’re gonna update your YouTube channel while you’re gone, right?”

“Sure. I can think of a bunch of different lessons I could do just walking down the streets of Tokyo. We can Skype too, if you want.”

He nods, not looking at me, studying the cracks in the sidewalk as we make our way to IM West. “Won’t you be lonely and disoriented in Tokyo all summer?”

“It’s not like I don’t speak the language. I’ll be fine.” But my heart beats with another rush of doubt. What if I can’t handle being away? What if my plans fail and I hate Tokyo? I haven’t been there in years and that trip was a disaster. Mom was so nervous the whole time, worried she ruined me with the divorce (which is far from the truth), and my grandparents were busy. I spent the entire trip glued to my iPad or practicing my Japanese with random people in the shops around the ryokan. Mom kept asking about school, Dad, the people back on Grosse Ile, and I kept telling her everything was fine. It was. Everyone understood why she left, including me. Her own sense of guilt was sky high, though. She couldn’t be convinced.

“Besides,” I say, bumping shoulders with him, “the city will be Olympified. Events everywhere. Tourists overrunning everything. I’m sure it’ll be a blast. I wish you were coming, though.”

“Me too. My dad mentioned going to Tokyo for the summer a few months ago but then decided to go to Chicago instead. I’ll keep busy, though. I have lots of plans to get caught up on my art this summer, drawing, painting, music. You know, the stuff I can’t do at school.” He frowns and clutches at his backpack. “My dad’s still angry I never lined up an internship for this summer, so I’ve gotta live with that. It’s a good thing my mom buys the art supplies.”

Poor Masa. His parents love him, but it’s a challenge to keep them happy.

“Well, if something changes, you know how to get ahold of me.” I pat my iPhone in my jeans pocket. I love that the new phones work on every network around the world. My parents are paying for my NTT Docomo plan while I’m in Tokyo so I can always be reached. I just hope the network can handle the extra people. I step away and back towards my path to Brody Neighborhood, but Masa reaches out and grabs my arm.

“Hey, wanna drop off exams tomorrow and get lunch together? One last time before we go?” Masa pushes his glasses up to rub at his eyes, and I’m stopped by how sad he looks. Is he worried he’ll miss me this summer? My heartbeat drums in my ear, deafening me with hope, hope that he feels more than he’s let on these last two years.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, edging closer to him. “Did something happen?” He shakes his head. “Exams?”

He laughs. “No. It’s nothing. Text me tomorrow, and we’ll make those plans you’re so fond of.”

The hope drains out the bottom of my feet and leaves me cold and empty. Why do I continually ride this stormy sea of doomed, unrequited love in such a tiny, rickety boat with no life vest?

A bus cruises past us and he waves to me as he runs off. I stand like a loser in the sidewalk with my hand raised until he’s boarded and the bus heads towards south campus. How will I survive the summer without him?