Flying the Dragon (9 page)

“Tsuki-san, please count the number of animals in the picture.”

“Yes, Sensei.” Skye still couldn’t get used to being called by her last name. She breathed in, then let her cheeks puff as she blew the air out. The dramatic sigh didn’t buy her enough time—if she were to take as many deep breaths as she needed to think of the right answer, she’d hyperventilate before getting a word out. Come to think of it, hyperventilation wouldn’t be too bad. If Skye passed out on the floor, Kumamoto Sensei would naturally have to move on to the next student, right?

Kumamoto Sensei waited, her frown deepening as each second ticked by.

Skye rose and stood beside her desk.
Think. Numbers. Animals.

Why couldn’t the Japanese have come up with one system of numbers, like in English? It wasn’t fair to have different sets of numbers for counting different things. Skye had memorized the numbers she needed to count money. And soccer goals. And even long objects, like pencils or forks. But counting animals was a whole different matter.

She stared hard at the picture of rabbits at the front of the room. They were cute. But those cute fluffy tails and pink noses seemed to taunt her in little singsong voices:
You can’t count us! You can’t count us!

Skye imagined kicking a soccer ball right at them. Not hard enough to hurt them, just enough to scatter them so they’d run and hide in the bushes and she wouldn’t have to count them. Bowling for bunnies.

She took another breath. Small animals. That had to be the number set she needed.

“
Ip-piki, ni-hiki, san-biki, yon … yon-biki?
“

Kumamoto Sensei held up her hand, like it was too painful to hear anymore.

Then Skye realized her mistake. “
Yon-hiki!
Not
biki.
That’s it—
yon-hiki.
“

“
Hai,
” said Kumamoto Sensei. “Yes, that is correct if you are counting small animals.”

Okay,
thought Skye.
Rabbits are small animals.
She continued counting: “
Go-hiki, rok-piki—
“

Kumamoto Sensei was nodding, but held up her hand again. “I am afraid that is incorrect, Tsuki-san. You may be seated.”

It was the nodding that always threw Skye off. Whenever an answer was right, there was nodding. When an answer was wrong—more nodding. Talk about confusing.

“Who knows the number set we must use when counting birds and rabbits?”

Everyone’s hands shot up. Birds and rabbits? So there was
another
set of numbers for birds and rabbits? But they were small animals, weren’t they? Unless Japan had mutant strains of rabbits and birds. Maybe they were huge in Japan, and people rode them around.

Kumamoto Sensei called on another kid two years younger than Skye. Figured. Most of the kids were younger than Skye by at least a year.

“Kurahone-san?”

A petite girl with a shiny braid down her back stood beside her desk. In a clear voice, she recited: “
Ichi-wa, ni-wa, san-wa …
“

So it was
wa.
Who knew? Not Skye, obviously.

With each syllable, Kumamoto Sensei’s smile widened, and the nodding kept getting faster. “
Hai!
Well done, Kurahone-san.”

Maya Kurahone—the third grader—sat down, somehow managing to look smug and humble at the same time. One of those “I can’t believe I got all the answers right!” looks, when she must have known all along that she’d said the right thing.

Oh, please.

Kumamoto Sensei flashed another picture on the screen, this time of a group of people. Skye raised her hand—she knew this one! But Kumamoto Sensei’s gaze skipped over her and on to the next student. Skye felt like slumping in her seat, but that wasn’t allowed. So she slumped in her mind instead.

Skye wanted to blame her dad for not speaking to her more in Japanese—but she knew it was her fault, too. She and her dad used to have fun playing games and watching movies in Japanese. But then she kept slipping more and more English words into Japanese sentences whenever she couldn’t remember words or rules. Or numbers for birds and rabbits.

These other kids all studied a bazillion hours a week, like learning Japanese was the most important thing on earth. Most of them had come from Japan a year or two before, and their parents wanted them to keep up their Japanese.

Skye’s Japanese hadn’t been “up” since she was little. She felt like she was climbing a huge hill, and already she was out of breath. She’d never catch up. She probably should have been with the first-grade class, but the school’s director must have figured that Skye wouldn’t fit in those tiny desks. So there she was, stuck with a bunch of third and fourth graders who knew way more Japanese than she did.

Skye tapped her pencil eraser on her paper, thinking. She had to get out of this class. But to get out, she had to pass the exams.

One on grammar.
Tap, tap,
went her pencil.

One on Japanese history.
Tap.

One on calligraphy.
Tap, tap, tap.
She actually didn’t mind calligraphy.
Tap, tap.

One on reading.
Tap.

And one on speaking. The dreaded oral exam.
Taptaptaptaptap …

Skye realized the room had fallen silent. Except, of course, for her tapping pencil. Keeping her chin lowered, she looked up. Everyone was staring at her. At her pencil.

“
Gomen nasai.
” Her shoulders drooped as she mumbled her apology, and she set her pencil on her desk. Kumamoto Sensei gave a quick nod, then moved on. Skye breathed again. If nothing else, Japanese class was good for learning how to take deep breaths. Too bad there wouldn’t be a test on that.

Kumamoto Sensei announced the break, then left the room. The other kids all pulled out their
o-bento
containers. Skye took hers out of her desk. Her dad had bought this one for her online. He’d said it was like the ones the kids had in Japan. Maybe it was, but Japanese school was the only place where she’d dare show her face with this
o-bento
box. She’d been hoping for one with soccer balls on it or something. But no. It was pink. With Hello Kitty grinning at her.

She wasn’t the only one with Hello Kitty—half the girls had
o-bento
boxes like hers, or with some other equally cutesy designs. The boys had boxes with superheroes—always Japanese, and always looking like they’d just stepped out of some manga comic book.

But there was one difference between Skye’s
o-bento
box and the others’—the contents. She lifted the lid, revealing four inner compartments just like the others. Not like the others, hers were filled with pretzels, chunks of pineapple, and a Fruit Roll-Up. The other kids had things like sushi rolls, rice rolls, hard-boiled eggs, and some unidentifiable stuff.

It wasn’t like Skye hated Japanese food. Not all of it, anyway. She used to eat it all the time when she was little. Back then her dad cooked a lot more often. But that was when he’d worked from home as a consultant. Now he didn’t consult the recipe books anymore—he worked in an office. So her mom did most of the cooking, and it wasn’t Japanese food. Mom’s specialties were the regular stuff—American food.

Skye watched the other kids with their chopsticks and listened to their chatter—all of it in Japanese, of course. Most of them spoke pretty good English, but if Kumamoto Sensei overheard them speaking it, they’d get marked down for their daily participation grade.

“Sorano?” It was Maya, the one-braid wonder who could talk circles around her any day.

“Mmm?” Skye was thankful that her mouth was full. She couldn’t make any grammar blunders while she was chewing, could she?

“Do you want to join our study group? We meet at my house this afternoon, then we rotate so each week we will be at a different person’s house.”

A study group? Skye and Lucy used to do homework together sometimes. They’d usually end up doing more talking than studying. But sitting around speaking in Japanese with Maya and the others was not Skye’s idea of a good time.

Skye forced a bite of pineapple down her throat. “Um,
arigato,
Maya.” Skye was about to shake her head before remembering that was a no-no. So she nodded like she was about to say, “Why, yes. A study group would be just lovely.” Nodding felt unnatural, like she was lying or something. Actually, she was about to lie; nodding was the least of it. “You see, my cousin just moved here, from Japan.”

Maya looked at Skye blankly.

Skye kept going. “So we’re going to be studying together. I mean, he’ll be helping me out, you know. I won’t be helping him, since he already knows Japanese. Being that he is Japanese.” She laughed at her own lame joke, but Maya apparently didn’t see the humor.

“We are Japanese, too.” Maya looked confused.

“Right, I know that. But he just came from Japan. And we live in the same neighborhood and everything.”
Couldn’t this girl just take no for an answer?

“Yes, okay.” With that Maya turned to another kid. They started chatting, and Maya scratched something off a list she had on her desk. It was official, then—Skye was off the A-list. Not that she cared.

As she finished the rest of her snack, Skye wished Amber were there. Or one of her other teammates. Then she could laugh and joke about the mere idea of having a Japanese study group right after class. They could talk soccer instead of
kanji.

Skye thought of Hiroshi.
This must be how he feels at school.
At least Skye understood most of the conversation around her, even if she couldn’t speak as well as the others. Or write. Or count, apparently. But what would it be like not to understand at all? And to not be able to say even the basic stuff?

Skye thought of Hiroshi’s book that had fallen from his backpack the other day at the bus stop—
Tim Gets Dressed.
Ugh. Skye’s Japanese book was hard to read, but at least she had the same book as everyone else. Then again, she
was
in a class with mostly third graders. No, she decided Hiroshi’s situation was a million times worse. He needed to learn real English, and she would be the one to teach him.

As Skye packed up her
o-bento
box and Kumamoto Sensei came back into the room, an idea began to grow inside of Skye. By the time she walked out the door at dismissal, she had a plan in place. A plan to help Hiroshi.

Hiroshi discovered the folded-up paper sticking out of his pencil box on Monday morning before the first bell. He scanned the room to see if anyone was watching him, but no one was.

Hiroshi unfolded the paper and was surprised to see Japanese writing mixed with English:

Hiroshi blinked.
Sucks
would definitely be useful. In fact, it was the perfect word to describe what was coming—Grandfather’s first treatment. Hiroshi glanced at the clock. In twenty-five hours and thirty-seven minutes, Grandfather would be waiting in the hospital, probably wearing one of those thin gowns, not knowing what was going to happen. Would he be scared? Hiroshi had never seen Grandfather scared.

In twenty-five hours and thirty-six minutes, Hiroshi would be scared, sitting here in school, thinking of Grandfather.
Skye has it wrong—missing out on a soccer team doesn’t suck. Cancer is what totally sucks.

The bell rang, and Skye took her seat. He glanced at her, smiling his thanks, and she nodded.

Hiroshi made his way through the math worksheet, waiting for nine o’clock. But at 9:05 Mr. Jacobs still hadn’t come through the door to pick him up for ESL. Hiroshi double-checked his math. 9:10. Still no Mr. Jacobs.

“Mrs. Garcia?” a voice filtered through a loudspeaker in the ceiling.

“Yes?” Mrs. Garcia answered.

“Mr. Jacobs will be late today. He’ll pick up his students when he arrives.”

“Thank you, Ms. Baca.” Mrs. Garcia stopped by Hiroshi’s desk and leaned down. “Did you understand, Hiroshi? Mr. Jacobs will be here soon.” Hiroshi nodded. Mrs. Garcia glanced at the paper on his desk. “Do you have an ESL assignment to work on while you wait?”

“Yes, Teacher.” Actually, Hiroshi had finished his assignments the night before, but he couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. There was no way he was going to pull out his first-grade books in front of everyone.