Summer Fades
You know about Tomoe Mami? No? Well, that's not surprising. I've asked around, and it seems like barely anyone knows her. She just sort of faded away, backed down off the stage. It's hard; just finding anyone who knows that name is hard.
She's gone now. Mami hasn't shown up to school in more than a week; her desk is empty and gathering dust. Our homeroom teacher has stopped calling her name when attendance is taken. Her name is never spoken now, and aside from that empty desk, there's no evidence that she ever existed at all; that existence has been expunged from the records.
But I do remember her.
I was friend once. I know, that seems hard to believe. Even if no one knows Tomoe Mami, anyone who has ever heard of her knows at least one thing about her: Tomoe Mami has no friends. No friends at all.
There's no small amount of speculation as to why, since no one knows her well enough to say for sure. Some people suppose that she must have a really unpleasant disposition. Some think that her parents bar her from having any friends, or that they don't think anyone's good enough to be their daughter's friend. Others think she's too shy to seek people out. Still more suspect that she has so many after-school activities to have time for friends.
None of it's true.
I was her friend once, and I can tell you that none of it was true. Mami was neither shy nor unfriendly. Her parents were doting and indulgent; she had no after-school activities that would have kept her from making friends.
We were good friends. Not "beg to sleep over at her house every Friday" sort of friends, nor "do absolutely everything together" friends, but good friends nonetheless. We would go to movies, study for tests together. I'd eat over at her house occasionally; she'd eat over at mine about as much. We giggled over magazines and gasped over decadent cakes in the pastry shop together. She and I, and a couple of other girls, we moved in the same crowd, and we called ourselves friends.
"Ayumu-chan, come look at this!" Mami calls from across the store.
I run over to see what she's spotted. When my eyes fall on her, she's holding in her hands the cutest yellow dress I've ever seen and wearing beaming smile. "You think I should get it?" she asks with a giggle.
"Yeah, definitely."
That's how we were once. She was a great friend, always knew when to ask you to do things and when not to. Always there with a kind shoulder if you needed a good cry. You could just tell that she was striving to be the perfect friend and the kindest person, even to people she barely knew or had no reason to love.
Mami was like summer. She was warm and sunny, with barely a cloud on the horizon in any direction. She was accommodating and knew how to be the best-liked of anyone's friends, just like summer is the best-beloved season of the year.
Of course, for us to be having this conversation now, all of that had to change.
Mami lost her parents. There… There was a horrible car wreck; I think the headlines said there were at least six people killed. Mami was the only survivor. She escaped miraculously unharmed, but came out drenched in her parents' blood. I can only imagine what that must have been like for her.
At the wake, she would look no one in the eye and would acknowledge no word of consolation. She sat in a chair in front of the caskets, slim figure, all in black, and kept her head bowed. After a while, no one dared speak to her anymore. No one came near. I did not dare approach her.
Mami didn't say a word during the wake. She kept her silence as her parents' ashes were interred beneath the earth. She looked like nothing so much as she did a porcelain doll with glassy, staring eyes. Too devoid of life to scream, wail or even cry. She walked home alone after it was all over, back to a too-spacious apartment that was now hers alone.
During all this time, my mother kept a hand on my shoulder to keep me where I was, but I could have gone up and spoken to her if I'd found the nerve. Could have hugged her, tried to whisper comforting things in her ear. Though she gave no sign of being alive in those days, I tell myself that she would have appreciated the effort. Mami was always so caring; then would have been the perfect time to try to repay her for all the times she had comforted me when I was frustrated or sad.
But I already told you: I didn't. I didn't dare go near her. On that day, I was terrified of her. Imagine that, being terrified of sweet, kind Tomoe Mami! But I was. She didn't seem human, seemed like a hard, cold porcelain doll, and I was terrified of her.
Maybe she sensed the fear I had of her in those days. Maybe that was the reason for what happened later.
By the time Mami started going to school again, she had recovered her smile. Only I, our teachers, and a handful of others had any idea why she had been absent; no one else was very curious. She had stood up at the beginning of class with a sweet smile on her face, apologizing for having been gone and asking if she could have the work she'd missed, and it was like no tragedy had ever occurred in her life. She certainly didn't do anything to make others curious.
I tried to act like nothing had happened, like the reason she had been absent for a week was nothing more serious than a bout of flu. I had thought that she would appreciate that. I had thought she would appreciate being given the chance to behave as though her parents were still alive and her life was still an untroubled one.
She nodded to me when I ran up to her, said my name, but her eyes were distant, and she stared right through me. Mami said a few absent words, smiling vaguely, but after less than a minute of talking about things that don't matter anymore, she gave a few flimsy excuses, and walked away.
It was like a stranger had robbed her of her flesh and was wearing it as a coat. The rosy flush was gone from her now-waxen cheeks, and her once-bright eyes were now dull as hundred-year-old marbles. She seemed many shades faded from the vivid color she once had, and she treated me with only a little more familiarity than you would afford a stranger.
It hurts, you know? It hurts when one of your friends suddenly starts treating you like that. As the days and weeks wore on, it only got worse, and it hurt even more. It hurts when your friend starts to pull away from you. It hurts when no matter how much you apologize, plead, and beg, she won't even tell you what it is you did that was so bad that she won't talk to you anymore.
The other girls Mami had been friends with were bothered by it too, but not nearly as much as I was. They just shrugged their shoulders and said that Mami had experienced a terrible loss; it was perfectly natural for her to detach herself from everything. She'll staring hanging out with us again eventually, they said. Until then, you should give her some space; she'll come back eventually.
But you know what? She never did. She never got any friendlier with us, only more distant. Eventually, she stopped talking to us altogether.
Tomoe Mami isn't here anymore. Her desk sits empty, and the teacher doesn't call her name when taking attendance. I look over at that empty place, but to the rest of the world, she may as well have never existed at all. Just finding someone who knows her name is a struggle.
Let's be honest. Mami had to have had friends once.
