Chapter 20

When you were twelve, you couldn't do anything. You didn't think about it, really, because no one expected you to. But at some point in the years where middle school met high school, people started looking at you as if to ask, so who are you, anyway? And you started looking around, maybe panicking, for what you had to give, maybe something that was just lying around that you'd never given much thought to, and for you it was all those afternoons playing catch in the yard until the sky grew purple and the fireflies started firing off, your dad telling you to put more spin on it, to give it a little more hustle, throwing until the ball was just another shape in the gloom. Those afternoons when Edward was there too, giving a clumsy toss that your dad had to stoop down and step to the right to catch in his glove but that nonetheless elicited an encouraging, "Good throw!" After which he'd throw to you, and when you threw back, there was no encouraging, just a flat note of criticism, because with you it wasn't just fooling around. Nothing casual about it. Things were expected from you.

You always had the ball. Maybe you didn't think about it, but you always had it, whether it was one you bought for a few bucks at the drugstore or the one, the ball your dad had plucked out of the air as an engineering student in Tirana on that magical day when the '88 Yankees had been on a goodwill tour across Communist Europe and Don Mattingly had nailed one right into the left field stands where Zeqir Tanush happened to be sitting. You had it because baseball was our game, baseball was America, and you, from the time you were five, are American boy now.

Edward was the first boy in school not to make fun of your accent. Edward was the first one to say, "Sure," when you shyly asked at recess, "You want to baseball?" And when he dropped the ball, which he usually did, and said, "Sorry," you said, "You baseball worse than I English," and you both laughed, and in that moment, became friends.

While you were still learning the language, there was a gulf between you, but the two of you worked through it. You came up with hand signals to express things you both understood but couldn't say to each other. Even later, at ten, when you spoke English like you were born here but Tommy Walden smacked your bookbag out of your hands on the way to lunch, Edward looked over at you and cranked his fist down, thumb out, and you heard as if he'd spoken it aloud: Asshole.

You couldn't figure out why you were doing this. In the early dawn light coming in through the seams of the tent, all you could trace it back to was that baseball was all you had to give when other people started demanding you give something, and Takaki was smart, Caddy was quick, and Edward was kind and caring, could cook, and had Bella. And when the time had come and you had nothing, Edward was, for the first time, nowhere to be found, except when he needed an alibi. But you had the guys, some of whom you'd been playing Little League with since the third grade, starting to sharpen up and go through the same panic you were, to cling onto baseball with that same desperation as you, and when you felt like you had to choose between their team and no team, you made the choice.

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You were born here, that was the funny thing. There are the pictures on the wall going upstairs: your parents showered in rice on their wedding day; your dad fishing in a rusted rowboat in Osaka Bay, caught in the act of throwing his line; your mother full on beaming with the traffic blazing by in some anonymous ramen hole-in-the-wall; both of them looking ruffled and exhausted but deliriously happy after coming through customs at JFK, your mom's belly huge with you. But you were born here, although somehow, you never quite feel like it.

You're a ham. You love hamming it up, playing it up as much as you can, because when they laugh, you feel seen. Your therapist calls it a defense mechanism. You were surprised, and you said back to her, "But people love me. My friends love me," and she just made a noise in her throat and scribbled something on her notepad.

Therapy was your parents' idea. You said, "What are you talking about, I'm fine," and mostly believed it, even though in the depths of your heart you felt estranged even when you were comfortable. The kids at recess pulling their eyes down into slants, the teachers who struggled over your name to muffled snickers from the class, the difference. But you were fine, weren't you? You were fine getting a laugh, being the clown, not having to be taken seriously, because if other people took you seriously, sooner or later you'd have to start doing so yourself.

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He was the best thing that ever happened to you.

You figured it out once, that you'd only lived in any one place for at most a year-and-a-half until the time you were eleven, at which point your mom had put her foot down and said, "You need to go, Frank, you go. But we're not picking up and going with you again. Look at her. She needs roots. She needs friends."

And, against your wishes, you had them, almost without wanting them. At first there was just one kid who wouldn't leave you alone until he got you to smile, and you were old enough to think, Ech, boys, but it turned out not to be like that. He just saw how much you needed to smile, and, thinking now, under the stars, you understand that he needed you more than anything.

And he had friends. You were never big on friends, whatever your mom thought, but Takaki told you, "No, no, they're cool, trust me. Takaki no never lie!" and bowed dramatically, and of course you laughed and said, "Oh my god, stop, you loser, okay, we'll hang out."

Billy was like your dad. You liked that about him, and hated it. He was never mean, but he was full of himself, and you noticed how whenever the group couldn't decide what they wanted to do, the other boys tended to bend to his ideas. You were used to pushing back, though, and whatever he'd suggest, even if the others agreed, even if you agreed, you'd scoff and say, "That sounds lame."

The first time you met Edward he couldn't meet your eyes. You always held people's eyes, even as a gawky kid, but his always darted up for a second and then slipped away to his shoes.

You have only started to like like Edward in the past six months. You don't know where it comes from, or why. In the past you felt like there was something missing in him, like he needed to be taken care of, and you were happy to do it. You had never looked after anyone before.

Lately you've started to notice the smallest things about him, from the way he nervously messes with his hair when he doesn't know what to say to the way he sometimes looks off into space when he's walking and trips over his own feet. The most enticing thing that he does is when lunch is being prepared, when he crinkles his brow and goes into deep concentration and somehow knows exactly when and how to do everything, like despite everything, he's in control.

No, that's not true. The most enticing thing he does, you think, sleepless in your sleeping bag, is say your name.