A Collection of Strange Circumstances

Mari Takes a Different Approach

Mari Hiromoto was in a good mood. The day was early, and early mornings were filled with promise--it was getting through the afternoon that was always tough, and so it would be with today. She had a to-do list: hang out with the friends, go out running with the dog, and get home in time for Dad's signature miso soup.

Mari didn't have a car, but instead of asking for a ride, she threw on her black polyester jacket with two thin red stripes onto her small shoulders, her best running shoes (a birthday gift from her boyfriend, Kim) and took off from home in the apartment blocks all the way to the place half way between the train station and the heart of the city. The trip on foot would take fifteen minutes running most of the way, but Mari didn't mind, because that's the kind of eighteen-year-old girl she was. She loved her friends, her dog, her boyfriend, and her family (in the order she was going to spend time with them today, otherwise the order of the list would look much different).

"Buh-bye, Okachan, Otouchan!"

"Be back at six! The neighbors are coming over!" her mother called.

"I HAVE MY WATCH!" Mari cried, bounding halfway down the lawn already.

Mari's dog, Miso, a small black terrier ran out of the house, too, but she turned around, scooped him up and put him back inside saying, "Hey! Back inside, Miso! I'll come home later!"

A white-haired man was in her immediate path and she swerved in front of him, rapidly dashing for the other side ot the street. He gave her a nasty scowl.

Man, what's his problem? Mari thought over her shoulder.

Mari kept track of the day by the sports watch on her arm: one, because it was faster to check while on the move (which she was nearly always on) and two, her mom, okachan, bought it for use during track meets, when it was crucial to know what time to be when and where.

Enough about that, because Mari was braking hard at the edge of the sidewalk where a car was passing by, after that, she bounded over a pothole large enough to swallow a child, filled to the brim with water left from last night's rain. She kept her heart rate pulsating with her limbs until at last she met up with her group of friends, sitting on the cement edge surrounding a small enclosure of shrivelled, weedy plants, part of the city's mission to beautify things, (which might have worked if anyone took care of it) but for the most part, it looked completely strange in the sea of beige lifeless black gum strewn sidewalk where working people were constantly passing, even though it was Saturday, and casting angry looks at the teens for loitering around and presumably polluting the city with whatever they were doing and the onlookers used to do when they were that age, etcetera.

They were in giddy spirits and a box of HoHo's was on the cement wall beside them.

"Hey, Mari!"

"Your face looks like a tomato!"

"Huh!" Mari slowed down. "I could say the same thing about you, Killian, but you never run, so what's your excuse?"

The excuse was the contents of the flask which he brandished from his inner coat pocket that flushed his face much more like that of a tomato than anyone Mari had ever seen hacking for air at the end of a 1600 race.

"Does the fellow tomato want a sip?"

"Don't call me a tomato," Mari said quietly, simmering with menace.

The other friends where sitting and standing nearby, munching on HoHo's, and one girl asked again, "You want some?! It's good."

Mari examined her friends closer. "Alison, don't tell me you've been sharing with that guy."