Memory Lane

Part 1: Asleep

I hate myself. Even before I lost you, I hated myself.

I didn't like my body and the things it lacked. I look like a starving child, my flesh deprived of love and food. The hair that grew out of my head was never neat, curling at the ends like a dying plant.

My insecurities are endless. I won't bore you with them, but that was how November 17, 2016, started, with my usual inventory of flaws.

I wasn't born self-conscious. You were the one who made me realize that. But when you had a mother like mine, it was hard not to be.

Masako Yamashita was beautiful. She still is, but she no longer acts like it anymore.

Once, she was Masako Kanei, runner up for Miss Japan in 1994, with plans for a career in modeling. She had a face and body meant for the big screen, but her lack of acting talent confined her to the covers of magazines. There isn't a single photo that she looks bad in. She would have continued competing, but they got rid of the Miss Japan pageant in 1996.

She would have set her sights on the Miss Universe pageant instead had it not been for the fact that she met my father that same year. Some people would say that it's obvious what my father saw in her. My mother was glamorous and sought after by many men, flooded with bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolate. But she wasn't the sort of girl easily impressed by gifts.

My father liked that the most about her. He endured two years of courtship to earn her hand in marriage. He thought it was appropriate to go to great lengths to get a woman with high standards.

Now she was Marie at my parent-teacher conferences, "Nana's mom" to the few friends I had, and Okaasan at home. She still turns heads, but when I'm with her, people find it hard to believe we're related.

This morning, she's the one telling me to change my clothes and dress more ladylike. Doesn't she know that no matter what I wear I will never be another version of her?

I reluctantly shrug on a dress, making a mental note to change into more comfortable sweats later. She drives us to the front of your house, waiting to send us both off to school. When you never come out the door, we're forced to leave so I won't be late.

"Maybe she's sick."

I shake my head. You would've texted or better yet called. I knew then that something was wrong. Little did I know you were lost to me forever.

Foolishly, I try to ignore that uneasy feeling for the rest of the day. School drags along without your quips. If you were here, you would turn up your nose at the gross school lunch or joke about our homeroom teacher's awful new hair color. The fluorescent orange strands of Mrs. Jones's perm hurts to look at and someone keeps snickering about it, sending the class into fits of laughter.

It's the first time I've smiled all day. I still wish you were here, but I remind myself that you're probably unwell.

When I get to your house after the last bell rings, I discover that no one's home. Someone accidentally left the front door open so I walk in, that foreboding feeling multiplying as I take in the lack of furniture.

I go to your room, chilled by the empty space. It occurs to me that maybe I dreamed up our relationship. I entertain the idea until I see a drawing in the corner near the window. Scrawled in blue ink with your name beneath it was a doodle of a goldfish. It matched the one you drew beneath the table in my room last summer from the curve of its fins to the detail of its scales.

I trace the pen marks, feeling just how hard you pressed into the wall. Then I look around for a clue, hoping that even the slightest speck of dust could point to your whereabouts. Aside from the doodle, your room is scrubbed clean.