Love Charms and Other Catastrophes (13 page)

“That
is
a problem,” Ms. Ward said. “I can check with Mr. Drummond if there are any students willing to switch jobs in the program. I've tried before, of course, but they just love working in the front office.”

Fallon brightened. “What about you, Ken?”

Ken pointed at himself, bemused.

“You were telling me that you got the last open position in the program.”

“Working in the copy room,” he said.

“The library is more exciting than being crammed in a tiny room, getting paper cuts,” Fallon said.

“We have windows. With sunlight,” Ms. Ward said.

Hijiri didn't know whether to laugh or feel mystified. She hadn't known he had signed up for the office-experience program. Then again, she never asked him about orientation.

Ken sat back in his chair, his eyes crinkling with his smile. “Okay, okay. Save me from the copy room.”

Ms. Ward and Fallon exchanged victorious grins.

Hijiri asked him, “Why the copy room?”

“As much as I'm enjoying school, I can't stand sitting all day,” Ken said, sobering. Something sad flickered across his face. “Getting a little relief by helping around the school sounded like the perfect solution. Obviously, I'll get more exercise in the library.”

“Gotta keep that heart pumping,” Ms. Ward said.

Ken's hand leapt to his chest, as if he had forgotten the organ beating under his skin. He paled and said, “Yes. Very important.”

Hijiri narrowed her eyes. She mentally shelved his reaction in her head. The charm-boy was definitely suspicious sometimes.

While cleaning up, Ms. Ward pulled Ken off to the side. Hijiri pretended to keep busy drying the plates; she strained her ears to catch every word.

“Love made you,” Ms. Ward said, “so you must know what you're about. But just … take care of her, okay?”

Ken's expression softened. “My heart already belongs to her.”

“Love wouldn't have it any other way,” Ms. Ward said.

“
I
wouldn't either,” he stressed.

Ms. Ward ruffled his hair and grinned. “Yes, you
are
a storybook boy. Just checking. It's my duty as the adult around here.”

Hijiri's cheeks burned.

“That plate's already dry,” Fallon whispered.

Flustered, she handed the plate to Fallon and grabbed another. “I knew that.”

*   *   *

Hijiri hadn't heard from her parents all week, so she decided to call both of them Sunday night. Weekends weren't really vacations for the Kitamuras. Calling home would have been a waste of time. She tried her mother's work number first, twirling the phone cord around her wrist while she waited. Went straight to voicemail. She tried three more times, just in case her mother was at her desk, but she heard nothing. She didn't leave a message.

Her father picked up the second time she called him. “Hijiri, it's late. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Hijiri mumbled, tugging on the phone cord. “Just wanted to let you know I'm okay. At school. School is fine.”

“Of course you are. You've done this before, remember?” Mr. Kitamura said with a laugh.

She couldn't tell if he was joking or not, so she laughed anyway.

“Grimbaud hasn't changed?”

It has, in more ways than you can imagine
, she thought. The town was free. Chaotic and a little confused by the freedom, but it was a huge step forward. She doubted her parents would be able to tell if they came to visit though. “Same old hearts and chocolates,” she said.

The conversation ground to a halt then, silence punctuated by the typical office sounds of keyboards clicking, phones ringing, and wrappers crinkling and breaking—dinner for some of the employees. Probably from the snack machines.

“How is work?” Hijiri asked, tired of the quiet. Ever since she was a child, that question always worked in getting her parents to talk. Asking was like turning the key in windup dolls.

Her father launched into a full account of his day. He was an actuary, which meant he spent all day and occasionally late nights making predictions based on the data the company collected. Hijiri used to imagine him as a fortune-teller not unlike Zita, but in his case, he made predictions about mortality and accidents, rates and risk. It sounded like a morbid job to her, but Mr. Kitamura loved it. Her father's voice could be soothing when he wasn't stressed. She focused on the pitch of it rather than the words.

“What do you think I should do?” Mr. Kitamura asked.

“About what?”

His heavy sigh made static on the phone. “Weren't you listening?”

How many times had she wished she could ask him the same question? Hijiri worked at unraveling the phone cord. “Tell me again.”

Back when her parents had time to notice her behavior, Mr. and Mrs. Kitamura scolded Hijiri for her inattentiveness.

“Look at me when I'm speaking to you,” Mrs. Kitamura had said after catching her daughter reading a charm theory book at six years old. She had to pry the book from Hijiri's hands before getting her attention.

Hijiri didn't learn how to navigate her own city until middle school, when she was responsible for filling the empty fridge with food and running other errands for her parents when she came home from school. Before then, she had used her time in the backseat of the family car absorbed in her own brainstorming.

One night when Hijiri had woken thirsty, she tiptoed down the stairs and stopped when she heard her parents talking in the kitchen. Their voices were low but hardly hushed.

“She's oblivious,” Mr. Kitamura said. His back was to the hallway as he dried the dishes dripping in the rack. “Her teachers say she doesn't participate in group work and can't remember her classmates' names when asked. Do you think it's a memory problem?”

“Of course not,” came Mrs. Kitamura's tired voice. “She just can't be bothered to learn their names. You know Hijiri.”

Do they?
Hijiri had thought, squeezing the railing's bars.
Do they really know me?

As she grew, her memories of spending time with them faded, and sometimes she wasn't sure if her parents had actually taken her to the park or out for pizza until she consulted the family photo albums: a sad collection of thin books sharing space with her father's old business textbooks from college.

If her parents could put their jobs before her every day, why shouldn't she do the same with her passion for love charm-making?

After Hijiri finished talking (listening, really) to her father, she hung up the phone and sighed. Her hands itched to start crafting like she always did, but with her supplies in shambles and no surface to work on, she didn't have that option.

She tossed and turned in her bed. Kicked the sheets off. Drank three glasses of water. Her mind was a restless machine, begging her to make charms. She counted her friends like sheep. Over and over.

*   *   *

The card catalog was scheduled to arrive on Thursday. “Four days,” Hijiri muttered, crawling out of bed on Monday morning.

No love charm-making until then.

Hijiri tossed two slices of bread into the toaster and spilled a few drops of orange juice on the kitchen counter.
When was the last time I couldn't make charms?
she asked herself, tapping her fingers on the counter.

She couldn't remember.

By the time Hijiri had entered first grade, she had taken over the guest room with love charms. Her own little laboratory where she made messes her parents had no time to notice. She taught herself the fundamentals of love charm-making there. Just her mind, heart, library books, and the silent house.

The memory warmed her somewhat as she buttoned her blouse and gave an extra tug on her knee-high socks.

Since she hadn't slept well, and therefore woke before dawn, Hijiri decided to be productive with her extra time. When the card catalog arrived, she wanted to be ready to stock it with her materials. Hijiri tore a sheet of paper out of her history notebook and made a list of everything she had to replace.

Of the broken bottles, Hijiri needed to buy rosewater, powdered milk, and a few specialty items like love letters melted down into a papery perfume and good intentions that smelled like cherry-flavored medicine when uncorked. Luckily she had kept putting off unpacking her suitcase; all the materials in there were still okay.

Hijiri sat cross-legged in front of her suitcase and checked each item. The one she'd spent the most money on that summer was a swan-shaped glass vial of tears. She gingerly turned it in her hands, watching the light catch on the swan's elegant neck.

When she was young, she thought that good love charms were comprised of happy thoughts and syrupy ingredients. But then she learned that love had a darker side. To ignore it would mean limiting yourself as a love charm-maker.
To change lives and get to the root of love, there must be tears. There must be anger, jealousy, and hopelessness
, she thought.
Use them sparingly, but use them. Those are the feelings that invite change, whether we like them or not.

During an art fair in Lejeune, Hijiri had found a sharp-dressed man selling preserved tears. After searching the shelves, she chose the swan one since it held a woman's tears that she had cried for months after a breakup. Tears of a broken heart.

At the time, she had been working on a charm that would help someone give advice to a broken-hearted friend. When she included two drops of the tears into the mix, it finally worked: her neighbor, Yumi, had never been skilled at soothing her sensitive niece, but after wearing Hijiri's locket sealed with the tears, good intentions, and flecks of silver for smoothness, she was able to speak from her heart.

Like sought like sometimes.

Her best charm to date was True Love's Kiss, but that had only worked with Love's direct help. She had made some changes to the charm's formula but hadn't gotten a chance yet to see if it worked on its own. The charm had the consistency of lip balm, hopefully providing a miraculous spark once the wearer's lips touched his or her beloved. Just like in fairy tales. Using the True Love's Kiss charm in the competition would have been tempting if she had figured out how to make it work again. But for now, it was another puzzle to solve, just like Ken.

Love gave her Ken. He was another challenge. If she couldn't work on her charms, she would spend the next few days focused on him.

 

Chapter 9

SKIN AND SIGNATURES

Hijiri peppered Ken with questions on the walk to school—anything she could think of. She fired them quickly, disappointed when he gave her answers each time.

“Favorite color?” she asked.

“Brown,” he said, “like wood.”

“Favorite food?”

“Probably the waffles,” Ken said, smiling. “Drizzled with chocolate
and
caramel sauce. The vendors always look at me sideways when I ask for that, as if I were ruining the chocolate.”

“Favorite sport?”

“Archery. Haven't gotten to do that yet in gym class though.”

Then she thought about what the twins had said about Ken's coughing. Changing her tactic, she asked, “When did you first realize you loved archery?”

Ken hesitated. The streets were crowded that morning, fellow Grimbaud High students waiting with them on the corner to cross the street. His eyes flickered to hers, his eyebrows furrowed. But the moment he tried to answer, his throat failed him. His voice turned into a wheeze. He covered his mouth with his hand and coughed.

Hijiri wanted to pat him on the back, to dislodge whatever he'd swallowed. But there was nothing. “Come on, tell me,” she pressed.

He coughed harder. His shoulders slumped and he sighed after catching his breath. “I'm good at it, naturally.”

“How did you know you were good at it?”

“I hit the targets.”

“That's only a piece of the truth,” she said, grabbing his sweater sleeve as they crossed traffic. “You're not telling me everything.”

Ken peeled her fingers off his sleeve, only to wrap his own hand around her wrist when they reached the sidewalk. His skin was clammy, but that could have been from the sweltering morning heat. He was the only person in town wearing a sweater, after all.

“Love didn't want to make it easy on you,” he said, keeping his voice low. His grip on her wrist tightened. “Before he sent me to Grimbaud, Love planted a kind of silencing charm in my throat. If you ask me something that could possibly help you solve me, my throat closes up. I can't answer you. I wish I could, Hijiri.”

Hijiri groaned. “Why didn't you tell me this from the beginning? It would have saved us both so much time!”

“It's kind of embarrassing,” Ken admitted, blushing. “Besides, I'm serious about wanting you to treat me like a person. I want to
feel real
, Hijiri, and a charmed throat isn't doing me any favors.”

“Doesn't mean I'm going to stop asking you questions,” Hijiri said after a moment. “I need to test the boundaries.”
A crude silencing charm won't stop me.
It
was
a crude charm. Obviously, Love couldn't trust his charm-boy to keep secrets. If Ken was really in love with her, he'd want to tell her everything. The silencing charm solved that problem.

Ken squeezed her hand. “Look at that.”

Across the street, they saw a familiar face: Ryker from Heartwrench. Far from his store, the young man drew a crowd.

What was the strange love charm-maker doing out so early in the morning? She needed a closer look. Ken obliged her, curiosity written all over his face, as they joined the crowd.

Ryker wore overalls and gloves, his hair especially oily and smooth against his skull. He told the crowd that Heartwrench was offering evening classes in mechanical love charm-making—discounted price for high school students. “Who knows? If you take enough classes, you just may learn how to make something as impressive as this.”