"Cicadas"
Chapter 1: "Lost and Found"
When she closes her eyes, she returns to him.
She returns to the world ending, over and over again. She closes her eyes and she sees the stream of lights blinking past her as Twelve's motorcycle zooms down the highway. She listens to the din of the police sirens fading into nothing. In that space, in that infinite tunnel of time and wind and the dim glow of the city lights, there is only the two of them. Just their heat. Just their breathing and the sound of their laughter echoing and the feeling of fullness. Of being full of life, of being full of mournful joy, as if she was the end and he was the beginning and now that they were together they never needed another story other than their own ever again.
Twelve is right in front of her now and that is all she needs. The summer is gone along with all of her hurt. There is only wind and the sound of his laughter. His laughter is real and the tighter she holds on the more he laughs.
"Are you going to destroy it?" when she hears her own voice, it sounds foreign to her. Suddenly she is aware that she is watching the scene pan out as if she was behind a thin film. She is floating away from the motorcycle and her feet have found the ground behind it. She tries to grab at the two in front of her but they pass through her hands like ghosts.
"Hmm?" his voice finds its way to her and it breaks her heart, slowly.
"Are you going to destroy the whole world?" again the stranger speaks and Lisa realizes the world is spinning. The boy and the girl on the motorcycle are leaving her behind on the road and the darkness she thought she left behind begins to roar. She cannot say a word. She stays only paralyzed as the darkness grows heavier and heavier on her back and the sound of Twelve's laughter grows more distant.
As the last of the light disappears and the highway lights recede into the distance, Lisa allows the darkness to have her. She falls onto her knees and closes her eyes. When she does she hears a voice, even stranger than her own. It is a whisper at first, but it gets louder and louder even when she tries to shake it off. She didn't want the voice with its buzzing persistence, she wanted silence and darkness..to go to where Twelve was waiting for her.
But the voice only gets louder.
"…isa."
"Lisa."
"LISA!"
Lisa's eyes flew open. Her vision is blurry at first, but slowly, she remembers where she is. The morning sun has poured itself all over her bed and it hurts to look at it but this has been her reality for months now.
The starched white sheets. An egg-shell colored popcorn ceiling. The sound of the IV drip and the buzz of cicadas outside her windows.
This was her father's house and the voice that broke the silence of her dream was..
Hana. Her half-sister. An eight year old girl with black hair, light brown eyes.
Hana looked at Lisa impatiently. "Lisa, get up! It's already 9 am and you said you'd take me to the amusement park today!"
When Lisa made no sound, Hana stamped her foot and pouted.
"You promised Lisa. It's the first day the park has been open since the Oedipus Bombing! I want to ride on the big rollercoaster. The biggest one! The one that falls from really, really high up!"
Lisa still said nothing. She only looked at the popcorn ceiling and counted silently in her head. This was her morning ritual. The doctor said she could count whenever she felt scared.
One. She only counted the pieces that stood out more prominently from the rest.
Two. Otherwise, she'd be counting forever.
Three. Four.
Next to her, Hana began to throw a tantrum. But Lisa couldn't hear her.
"Lisa!" she said. "No one else will take me, Dad's too busy and Peter has school!"
Five. Lisa paused for a second, and the image of black nail polish flashed in her head briefly. Six. Seven. Eight.
"DAD! Lisa won't get up!" helplessly, Hana flopped onto the bed.
Nine. The sound of music flooded her ears. Music from a cold land. Cold eyes. Von. The symphony of hope and the sound of two bodies dropping to the ground as if it was part of the score.
Nine. Nine. Nine. She could not unhear the sound of him.
"DAD!" The door opened and Hana stood back up. An elderly man, one with hair and eyes the same shade as Lisa's, walked in.
"Hana," he said calmly. "What is the matter?"
"Lisa won't take me to the park even though she said she would."
The man was surprised. "Lisa said she would?"
Hana hesitated. "Well, she didn't really say she would, just when I talked about it she smiled! After two months, she smiled, Dad!"
He paused and rubbed his chin. "Well, that is something."
He looked at his daughter kindly, even though Lisa herself was still looking attentively at the ceiling. Every morning since she collapsed and was brought home by Detective Shibazaki, it's been the same. No matter what anybody says, his daughter remains silent and unresponsive. But as a doctor, he knew that the shock needed time to pass out of her system.
Nine. Nine. What came after nine?
"Lisa, how about it? Want to go to the amusement part today?"
Lisa said nothing. She was trying to remember what came after nine.
Dr. Mishima turned to Hana, who was waiting expectantly. "It's a plan then. We'll go to the park as a family today."
Hana pouted. "With Peter too?"
He pretended to think about it. "No, Peter has prep classes today. We'll go with just the three of us."
Hana laughed out of delight. "I'll go get ready!"
Dr. Mishima chuckled and got up. "We'll leave at ten."
Ten. Lisa turned to look at her father suddenly, but along with Hana he had already gone.
xxx
"It's pretty cold today, don't you think?"
"You're a freak, Sky. It's one of the hottest days of the year so we're lucking we got dismissed early. It is really weird though, this heat. It's gonna be fall soon."
"You're right Peter. It's like your bike tires are gonna melt on the cement, so you better hurry and get home before they do!"
Sky laughed and broke into a run ahead of Peter.
"W-Wait! Come back here! How do you think that you're gonna get in the house without me?"
Sky laughed at Peter struggling to push his bike uphill after him, "I dunno! Maybe I'll climb and break a window? Or maybe I'll ask Lisa to open the door? Maybe she'll finally talk then?"
Peter stopped.
"That's not funny, Sky," he said, his tone suddenly serious.
Sensing his friend's apprehension, Sky stopped and looked back at Peter.
"Hey, hey. I was kidding. Kidding. No hard feelings, I know your family is going through a lot right now trying to get Lisa better."
Panting, Peter caught up with Sky at the top of the hill. He doubled over, his hands on his knees as he regained his breath. At times like these, he regretted living in his neighborhood, a hilly suburb that overlooked Tokyo in the near distance. Every afternoon after school, he and Sky would have to climb the tallest hill in the neighborhood, where the Mishima family lived and ran their clinic.
"Don't make jokes like that anymore. Okay?" he said.
Sky smiled widely and put his hands up in mock surrender. "Got it, captain," he said.
"Good."
Peter glanced up at him. And looked again in confusion.
For a second in the heat wave, Sky seemed to disappear into the cerulean blue behind him. It felt for a second like if he just closed his eyes for a few seconds longer than necessary, when he opened them, his friend would be gone as if he had never been there at all…as if he was nothing more than dissolved sunlight.
"Peter?"
Peter rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"You okay? You need help taking your bike back the rest of the way?"
He blinked, and Sky's concerned face came back into view. His friend extended a hand out to him.
What was he thinking? That Sky would disappear?
"I'm fine," he said as he pushed away Sky's hand.
They were approaching his house, a typical gray two story home with a gate out front and a mailbox lettered with their family name.
"Whatever happened to your bike anyway?" Peter asked.
Sky smiled.
"I sold it."
"What?! Why? How are you gonna get around?"
"I needed the money for something. And I think I'll be fine getting around without it."
Peter frowned as he parked his bike and then unlocked the gate. "I hope you don't think I'm gonna give you rides from now on."
"Aw, I can't even ride on the back?" Sky joked.
"No, not even if you were a cute girl," replied Peter.
The two took off their shoes in the foyer and walked into the living room.
"How cruel. Not even if I looked like — "
Sky stopped half way when he noticed Peter's silence.
Peter's face, usually an impasse, had softened.
"Lisa," he said.
The owner of the name, who sat at in a wheel chair at the dinner table next to Hana, looked up. She didn't say anything but she offered a slight nod.
"Peter!" Hana jumped off her chair. "Dad said you weren't going to be home today because of prep classes."
He ignored Hana's question. "Why is Lisa out of her room today? Is she going somewhere?"
For two months now since Lisa had come into their home, she had stayed in her room and done nothing more than look at the ceiling or outside the window.
"I don't want to tell you," said Hana. "You're not even supposed to be home today."
Sky looked at Peter's discomfort and replied for him.
"Oh come on, Hana. Not even for me?" he teased.
"Welll," said Hana.
"We're going to the amusement park." Dr. Mishima cut in as he walked into the room.
Sky greeted him with a slight bow. "Good afternoon, Dr. Mishima!"
"The amusement park?" Peter asked with trepidation.
"Yes, Peter. As a family."
"Is Lisa ready for that?" he said.
The silence grew tense as Dr. Mishima and Peter looked at each other, one calmly and the other suspicion.
Peter, although it had already been a decade, did not trust his adoptive father. Strangely enough, he was most attached to Lisa, who moved in around two months ago. When he watched Lisa stare outside, it looked like she was looking for something but couldn't quite find it. It reminded him of himself.
But when he looked at Dr. Mishima, as he did in that moment, he found only a stranger.
What was Lisa looking for? What was he? Something that his "father" already found?
Suddenly, a shout broke the silence. "The AMUSEMENT PARK! Sounds like a fun trip."
Sky clapped his hands together. "I've never been to the one in Tokyo, and god knows that this past summer ruined all my plans to go."
He walked past the surprised Dr. Mishima and Peter to Lisa. He put his hands on the handles of her wheelchair.
"I think we're going to have loads of fun. Isn't that right Lisa?"
They all looked at him warily. He stood in the bright window with his hands on Lisa's wheelchair, their shadows looming out together on the floor in front of them.
"Now then, why don't we get going?"