So many things can die in just one month.
18
Mae
ISS Location: Low-Earth Orbit
Earth Date: 23 October
Earth Time (EST): 19:17
When I get off the train, I stand on Mass Ave and lean against a streetlamp, facing Harvard. A few decades ago, my dad was behind those wrought-iron gates, having no idea that someday I would be standing here, wishing him back from the bottom of an ocean across the world. Wishing I didn’t have to make the choice I think I have to make.
A gust of wind howls down the avenue like a Hollow from Bleach, a soul turned bad from unrest. Ichigo Kurosaki would have to defeat it.
Ben.
I didn’t think this sudden coldness inside me would ever go away, but the thought of him disproves that assumption.
I start walking up Mass Ave, past J.P. Licks, where people are eating ice cream and laughing and smiling and I wonder what that is like, because I don’t remember. It’s also very cold to be eating ice cream. Maybe that’s normal here.
Students run around with scarves wrapped up to their noses, on their way to Wednesday night study sessions or dinner, rushing past boutique windows filled with cobwebs and skeletons. That is my family now. Cobwebs and skeletons.
Cambridge is bricks and ivy and wrought-iron gates. You don’t even feel like you’re in America anymore. If someone told me I was in England, I’d believe them. I know Nah misses the sunshine and the palm trees, but I don’t. I like the cold. I like places you have to work a little harder to survive in.
Castaways is across from Harvard, tucked off a side street behind the Harvard Book Store and Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Mom’s favorite. I pass a guy and his dog hunched against a brick wall with a hand-lettered sign, and I drop a dollar into his hat before pushing through the metal door, which has a porthole in its center.
The coffeehouse is large and cozy, with a small anteroom for ordering your things and then an entryway that leads into the main room, which is filled with thrift furniture and Cambridge’s weirdo hippie types mixed in with students hunched over books and laptops. The chairs and tables are mismatched, and the whole place has a nautical theme: old paintings of ships, anchors, a mermaid masthead that looms from behind the bar. It feels lived in, the hardwood floors dark and splintery.
For a second, I just breathe in the heavy scent of coffee and let Vampire Weekend wash over me. It’s very strange, to feel, at the same time, both utterly devastated and totally relaxed. I’m not sure how that’s possible. I think I need to take more biology courses.
“Welcome to the Sanctuary of the Holy Bean.”
Ben’s standing behind the scarred wooden counter, watching me. I smile. He makes me smile. This is so many fantasies coming together at once: a coffeehouse in Boston filled with people who might have read the same books as me, a boy that looks like he stepped right out of Bleach, free caffeine at my fingertips …
I’ve been on planet Earth a long time, but this is the first place that’s felt like home. Maybe it’s a sign, the kind Mom is always talking about. A sign I’m not meant to leave Boston or Hannah any time soon.
Ben has texted several times since that night Hannah broke the bottle of bourbon. Save him from these Harvard Square douches. Rescue him from the boredom of a Monday-night closing shift. Come see the cool space-inspired latte art he’s been perfecting.
I’ve always said no.
I wanted to say yes.
But his eyes are the exact shade of brown as my mother’s.
This bothers me less tonight. I like seeing her eyes in his face. They fit together.
“And you’re the high priest of this establishment?” I say.
His lips turn up. “Merely a lowly altar boy.” He wipes the counter off with a towel, then throws the towel over his shoulder. “What’ll it be? Anything you want. Go crazy. It’s on me.” He grins. “Least I can do for someone who just spent the better part of their evening on the Green Line.”
The line my aunt and uncle live off of is notoriously slow, a trolley more than a metro of any kind. Once you transfer to the Red, you’re back in the modern world. It takes an hour, sometimes more, to get to the other side of the Charles River.
“Just coffee. Black.”
“This isn’t just coffee,” he says. “It’s organic free-trade earth magic made by genies.”
I laugh. He makes me smile and laugh. And that adds up to something, I know it does. I’m good at math.
“Well, then I’ll have a magical cup of coffee.”
“Coming right up.”
I glance over my shoulder at the large main room behind me. “Nate here yet?”
“He’s on his way. Got caught up in a lab.”
I slide off my backpack, then shrug off my wool coat—a recent gift from Aunt Nora, since there is no need for an Angeleno to ever own one. She took me to a vintage store here in Cambridge, and even though it smells like an old lady’s closet, I love it.
Ben turns around and sets the coffee down, then gives the thick striped turtleneck I got at the dollar sale in the Jet Rag parking lot in Hollywood an approving look.
“I like your style, Mae.”
I glance at his faded tee and fitted sweats. “Thanks. I appreciate your nod to disgruntled scholars everywhere.”
He laughs. “Usually I make more of an effort, but I was at the meditation center before my shift—can’t sit on a cushion in skinny jeans.”
“Meditation?”
My world tilts just a little, which I know isn’t possible because we’re spinning, which is an entirely different—my point is: Ben Tamura throws me off balance. For just a moment, I see Dad sitting on his cushion. He’d like Ben. I really wish they could have met each other.
“I’m not a Japanese American cliché, I promise.” He huffs out a laugh. “I don’t do karate. Or eat sushi.”
“Manga?”
“Okay, yeah, you got me there. You?”
He must know he looks like Ichigo. He must. “A little.”
He grins. “It’s actually pretty funny, messing with people’s heads. Like, I tell them I meditate and then they feel all weird because they don’t want to stereotype me as an Asian, so then I get this whole spectrum of awkward questions and I’m, like, dude, I learned how to meditate from a Mexican across the street from MIT.” He shakes his head. “When I told my parents I started meditating, they were kind of horrified. It was pretty adorable, actually. They’re Christian. As if it weren’t bad enough that I’m a scientist.”
“What kind of Christian?” I ask.
Gram is Catholic, but she believes in evolution—because she’s a rational human being—and she advises Nate on which celebrity men she would prefer as grandsons-in-law, because she understands that he was born the way he is and that there is nothing wrong with him. Simple biology. Science and faith, as Dad said, do not have to be mortal enemies. But sometimes they are.
He frowns. “They protest at abortion clinics.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah. Meditation helps with … that.” He rolls his eyes. “My ancestors were Shinto. I think I’m the only Buddhist in my family’s history on either side. Isn’t it funny? I’m third-generation, but still. My grandparents immigrate to America, and I wind up on the cushion.”