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V
Life Isn't Enough
Chapter Five: The Notebook
VThere were no messages from the Yumes, so I was left to sit at my desk in my room, puzzling over math homework detachedly. I ended up pushing it away and staring out the window, having several daydreams of Riku running scared to the door and ringing the doorbell. I would leap up and run to the door, opening it long enough for him to slip through and then I'd slam it shut in the kidnapper's face. While he sat down on the couch, winded, I'd grab the poker by the fireplace and run back to deal with the kidnapper as I saw fit. Adrenaline rushed through my system even as I imagined smashing the creep in the face, stabbing it through his head until he lay still and Riku was safe and never left me again.
Of course, a missing person's case is different. I wasn't sure that Riku was kidnapped, I wasn't sure that he was alive—I just wasn't sure about anything. So there was no one to blame except the phantom kidnapper conjured by my own mind, and, according to Mr. Yume, there didn't look to be much evidence of his whereabouts. Things generally looked grim over there, but I expected everything to happen. I was going to get Riku back, and I was going to get answers. Then whatever happened would sort itself out, and whoever needed to would go to jail to meet his just desserts.
Coming out of the daze, I turned to look at the notebook that I'd left on my bed, wondering vaguely whether I should try to use it. A few of the first pages had been ripped out, obviously to keep Ms. Nakamura's secrets safe. Since I had nothing better to do, other than sit and wait, I climbed onto the bed and flipped it open, turning it right-side up so I could read the words on the first page.
Sora,
This notebook is for your use and your use alone. You don't have to show it to me or to anyone else, and you don't have to be Shakespeare or Thoreau. Just write whatever it is that comes to mind, whatever you feel, so you can release it onto the paper.
Well, that was a relief. I had thought she wanted me to write everything in the flowery words of a poet or experienced writer. But if I only had to write exactly what I felt, that made it easier. So I picked up a pencil and turned the page, feeling awkward as I looked at the blank paper. I had no idea what to put down at first, but I started with the simple things and the words began to flow.
Riku.
That was simple enough. That name alone could describe Riku to me in more words than any book or poem.
He's missing. The plane ride—the one to see his aunt. He didn't get back on the plane. He's missing. He's gone. Why can't they find him? I want them to
I stopped to flick away a tear that had fallen onto the paper.
find him. All I want is for him to come home and tell me everything's okay. I want to see him again. Maybe if I said something differently, or did something else, he'd still be here and I wouldn't have to write this. But I didn't, and now he's gone.
The pencil rolled away down the paper and I curled into a protective ball, shaking with sobs. He had to come back. Someday he would, because I needed him. But I needed him now, and he wasn't here.
VI met Kairi at the mall, and why? Because she told me to. It had been two more weeks already with no sign of Riku anywhere and no word from his parents. I had started watching the news, but they only mentioned him once when they rattled off a missing persons report and then concentrated on the case of a little girl who had gone missing during a camping trip. Riku was only another face in the crowd, important to no one but us here at home.
The straw to my banana smoothie was beginning to soften under my teeth as I thought about it. The picture shown on the news report had been one from just last summer when we went fishing. It only showed Riku's face, but I could recognize my hand in the background and I knew Mr. Yume had been shown close by, floppy fisher's cap tilted jauntily on his head.
"And that's why I told her no," Kairi was saying in some other world far away from me. "I mean, who in their right mind is going to pull a stunt like that just to get a moment in the spotlight? You saw Tidus walking around with his arm in a sling last year, so I definitely don't want to—Sora?"
I turned to her, jerking awake at the sound of my name, and frowned at the trinket dangling in front of my face by way of the strand of hair it was hanging from. "Yeah, Kairi?" I asked, pulling it off and letting it fall onto the table.
Kairi seized it after a moment of scrutiny, slipping it into her purse. "Were you listening to a word I just said?"
I shot her a sheepish look, trying my irresistable grin on her. "No. Sorry, Kairi, I'm just still thinking about Riku."
Her eyes, narrow slits by now, widened in understanding and she smiled softly, the tips of her eyebrows pointing upward sadly. "I know you're still upset about him, Sora, but you're going to have to let him go. He's been gone for more than three weeks, and the kidnappers would have made the call by now."
"It's easy for you to say, isn't it?" I asked her a bit harshly. "He wasn't your best friend. He didn't mean all that much to you, so what do you care if he dies and I have to live without him?"
She looked shocked. "Sora, I—"
"You don't know what I'm going through," I added bitingly. "You don't know what this is like, sitting there all by yourself and hoping that someone'll tell you where he is. Hoping he'll just turn up and then you won't have to be alone anymore. Waiting for someone to say, it's all gonna be okay. You just don't know!" It hurt to speak now, the tears hovering behind my eyes and just waiting to spill out. I glared at her, watching her expression change to a defensive one.
"I'm only trying to help you get through this," she told me then. Funny how that hadn't seemed to be the case. "He's dead, Sora. Face it. You're going to have to let go, because this relationship isn't going to work if you're not contributing."
"Maybe this relationship just isn't going to work," I hissed, unconsciously clenching my fist around the smoothie. "Maybe I'm sick and tired of you just trying to dismiss Riku like he didn't mean anything at all. Maybe it's time you faced something yourself, Kairi, and that's the fact that we don't work. The whole 'us' thing doesn't work. I don't need a prissy Miss Shop to follow me around for the rest of my life." Smoothie slipped through the top in a volcano, sliding down my fingers and forming a puddle on the table.
The shock and defensiveness had become a cataclysmic rage. "This isn't over, Sora," she told me in a shaking voice, her nails digging into the pale skin of her hands. "We're not over."
"I'm afraid we are." I stood and threw the smoothie forcefully into the trash, turning my back on her for good. I no longer had any illusions about Kairi, and I certainly didn't need her in my life. Not like that, anyway.
But there was someone I did need. I thought it through as I sat on the bench by the park, watching my own illusions run about on the vast expanse of grass. I could hear my voice sailing above the wind, chest working swiftly as I ran and Riku followed, always faster than I was, until he seized me and we tumbled. Then I was It, and the game started again. Over and over, for hours. And to think that none of it was enough.
I pushed Mr. Yume's words away. No. Those words would echo themselves in my ears only when Riku was dead, and no sooner. He'd be coming back. After all, there was too much left for him to do. We had to finish school together, and go to college and be roommates. He had to talk to his parents so Mom and I could get out of debt, and I had to run my fingers through his hair and talk. Riku, I was so worried when you went missing. I thought you might've died.
It's okay now, he would assure me, hugging me tight because I'd still be upset. I'm here. I'll always be here, right here with you, because you need me. I know that. Someone's gotta take care of you.
My face was in my knees by now, my back trembling as I went over those last few moments with Kairi. Riku would know what to do, and he'd tell me once he got back. At the moment, I'd have to get through it by myself. I usually didn't have to because there was always someone to comfort me. But now Riku was gone, and his parents were away, and Mom was in debt, and Kairi was fighting with me. There was no one I could go to.
VAt least, that's what I thought before I told Mom I was feeling down. She scheduled a meeting with the school counselor, but she really had to battle with me to get me to go. Counselors were people who smiled at you and told you everything was going to be okay because the sun was shining and life was so great and wonderful. They didn't understand.
I took the notebook with me, writing things down quickly as I waited in the office for the counselor to see me. Riku. riku. RIKU. RikU. Come home, Riku. Get back here. The notebook had become something I was liable to carry about, because it was the listener. I could write my every secret and it wouldn't be able to judge me. Only I could judge me.
Mrs. Inoue was a short woman with curly brown hair, regarding me with a green-eyed smile that looked faintly forced. "Sora Hikari, is it?" she asked, gesturing to the chair across from her.
"Yes." I sat, waiting to hear what she was going to say.
"I've heard what happened to your friend, and I'm sorry. Death is a very hard thing to cope with."
"He's not dead."
She got that sad look on her face, the same one everyone gave me whenever I insisted he was still alive. "Sora, the first step in this process is to let go. You have to let go of everything about him, and then you can begin to heal."
Let go? Did she really expect me to just abandon Riku, and ignore the scar of living without him? What kind of person did she think I was?
"I would like you to tell me about him, this Riku Yume. What was he like?"
My fingers found their way to the edges of the paper in the notebook, and I suddenly felt the need to write. I wanted to write down how stupid Mrs. Inoue kept utilizing past-tense in order to convince me what I knew wasn't true. How I didn't even want her to say his name—she made it sound like a disease I was suffering from. "He's just…Riku," I managed, not entirely sure how to enunciate how much he meant to me and whether I wanted to in the first place.
Mrs. Inoue smiled patiently, but I noticed a muscle twitch in her cheek as she did. "Tell me—oh, what's that notebook?"
I clutched it to my chest protectively without realizing it. "It's something I use," I replied vaguely. "I write in it."
"Schoolwork?"
"No."
She eyed me, a hint of impatience in her posture. Nonetheless, she waited for me to get more specific. "What, then?" she asked finally, clearly unable to keep up the battle of wills.
"Riku."
She smiled again—she seemed to be doing that too much for comfort—and put out a hand. "May I see it?"
There was a pause as I shifted uncomfortably, my arms beginning to ache in their loyal protection of the notebook. "It's for me," I managed. "My feelings. I don't really…want to show it to anyone."
"Oh, come now," she continued, the muscle twitching in her cheek again. "I need to see it. If I'm going to help you, I need to know how you feel."
I hesitated. After all, she was the one running the show, and she knew what she was doing. With a strange feeling in my stomach, I handed her the notebook, almost wanting to reach back and grab it as I felt it slipping from my hands. I sat there as she read it, thumbing through it in my mind and trying to remember what all was in there. A few things made me rest my head on my hands and want to cry. Here I was before her, naked and open to her scrutiny and judgement. My deepest, darkest secrets were at her fingertips.
The situation would be different if Riku were there. Sora doesn't want you to read it, he'd say to her in a harsh voice, those beautiful eyes narrowing. Leave him alone. He doesn't have to show it to you if he doesn't want to. But Riku wasn't there, and I felt that the strength to tell her no was drained out of me without knowing he was at my side or nearby.
After an eternity of waiting and hoping she wouldn't make a comment, or laugh, even, I felt the notebook replaced in my hands. "I see," she said quietly, a faint smile on her lips as she looked down at her hands, deep in thought to absorb everything she'd just read. "It's a very sad story, Sora. I'm sorry you have to go through all this, and I want you to know that you can trust me. I want you to tell me everything." Her voice sounded genuine, but the understanding smile she turned on me didn't seem to reach her eyes. "I think that," and she extended a hand toward the notebook, "you should keep writing in this. I can see you once a week, after school, and then I'd like to see how you're doing."
That was the last thing I wanted to hear. The thought that she was going to be reading through everything I wrote made me want to throw it away and start anew. Just the thought of her dirty little eyes taking in every repetition of Riku's name, every expression of pain and distress. "Okay," I said quietly, still feeling drained. I just couldn't refuse. She had so much power over me for some reason.
The smile didn't leave her face and started looking as though it hurt. "Well, I think we made progress today, Sora. I'm sure we can count you completely healed in a matter of weeks. Losing a best friend is hard, but I know you can get through it."
I nodded numbly as she escorted me to the door. A delicious feeling of relief passed through me when she said goodbye and left, and I was free to return home.
VRiku was sitting next to me. I could feel him there, his body pressed up to mine as his fingers stroked my hair comfortingly. It's okay, Sora, he'd tell me over and over, like he always did. Everything's going to be okay. Just you wait.
But then I opened my eyes and he wasn't there. No one had told me it would be okay, so I still wasn't sure. There was too much on my mind. Riku, Mrs. Inoue, Mom and the debt, Mr. and Mrs. Yume so far away. The anxiety made me want to laugh, cry, and explode all at once. If only Riku really had been there to tell me it was going to be okay.
The notebook was lying on the bed beside me, and my arm slung over it looked pale and thin. The arm of a sick and dying child. This time next week, Mrs. Inoue would have read it again and I wouldn't want to keep it any longer. Not if I had to bare my heart to her every week. So, I decided, I wouldn't show her. I would put down fake entries and keep my true feelings to myself.
With this thought in mind, I proceeded downstairs in time to meet Mom as she came home. Her face was pale and drawn, not at all like the Mom I was used to seeing. "What happened?" I asked, wondering whether someone in the family had died, or had something terrible happened to the Yumes.
"I-it's nothing," she stated quickly, putting a hand to her face. "I'll be all right in just a moment, honey."
A cold feeling of dread ran down my arms, raising the hairs on them. "Is this about the debt?"
She looked up, eyes widening. "Sora—!"
"I couldn't help it," I told her, feeling guilty. I rested my hands against the back of my head and watched my shoe scuff across the floor. "I was gonna call Riku, and…"
Her lower lip was turning white under the lipstick as her teeth bit into it, but she sighed and sat down. "Yes, it's about the debt. See, Sora, your father and I are divorced—I'm not sure if I ever told you that. He was paying for child support up until earlier this year, when he arranged with the court to stop the payments because he didn't have custody of you, or even visitational rights. I did that much to keep you away from that man." Her eyes were filled with fire and her nostrils flared defiantly. Something awful must have happened between them. "The truth is, we were really dependent on those payments. They served to pay most of the taxes, so when they stopped coming…" The thin shoulders rose and fell helplessly.
"But—we can get help, right?" I asked as I approached her, continuing quickly when I saw her start to reply. "I know you want us to live without it, but it's not gonna work if we can't hold out without one lousy payment. If we just ask a debt solutions agency, we could recover."
She nodded, still biting her lip. "I know, Sora, and I've already made the call. But there's still money needed that we don't have, so I've decided…" There was a moment of hesitation, during which she sighed raggedly. "I've decided to sell the house, Sora."
My jaw dropped open, a terrible feeling passing through me and making me dizzy. Sell the house? Our house? The house where I grew up—where I made every single scar and dent in its walls and on its floors and ceilings? This house held so much for me, and so much for Riku. What would he say when he got back and it was gone?
I think that was the only time I ever hit my mother. It was a senseless act of violence, hinging primarily on everything that had happened up until this moment. When I hit her, I hit the kidnapper, and Mrs. Inoue, and Kairi, and everyone else who made me miserable. My world was crashing down around my ears. Not listening to the sounds of her growing anger with me, I ran to my room and barricaded the door, collapsing on my bed in a fit of sobs.
