Chapter Thirty-Seven
Berkeley
Marigold
In the middle of eighth grade, a new boy transferred to Marigold’s school. His name was Kenji Yamamoto, and he would ruin everything.
He was short and scrawny, with floppy hair cut around his forehead and ears like a bowl. To make friends, he told corny baseball jokes like “What did the baseball glove say to the ball?”
“What?”
“Catch you later!”
It baffled Marigold how her classmates found him funny or why the teachers liked him. He clowned around in class, reading comics behind his binder or doodling rockets in his notebook. Marigold didn’t think much of him. She was a rocket herself, but she wasn’t stopping at the moon.
While she’d been a good student before, lately she’d begun to shine.
Her teachers noticed her reading while she walked from class to class, and during lunch she was in the library learning shorthand so she could take notes as fast as her teachers talked.
At home, she was just as intense. She borrowed books on accounting and took over the bakery’s finances for her parents, effectively becoming a bookkeeper at age fourteen.
Sometimes the work took hours after school, but the minute she finished and ate dinner, she went up to the attic to study more.
“Bad enough you’ve got glasses, soon your hair will turn white from studying so hard,” Helen would cry.
“Go outside with your sisters,” Philip encouraged. Neither parent could believe they were telling their child not to study so hard.
“Maybe later,” Marigold would say. “I like my books.”
It was the truth. People were a tangle of moods and wants and emotions, and she was always one thin layer from being swept away into their memories.
Books, though, books were safe. Marigold had a soft spot for fantasies where she could travel beyond her little attic into castle keeps and goblin forests, where assistant pig keepers became high kings and oddball girls like her could train to become enchantresses.
Worlds like Prydain, Narnia, and Earthsea, where she could imagine herself fitting in, at least more than here.
It was thanks to books that Marigold didn’t mind being an outsider at school. Things were a bit more complicated, however, for Kenji Yamamoto.
Even in a town as bohemian and free-loving as “Berzerkley,” being Japanese in 1970 was still a thorny existence. Which was why Kenji went out of his way to be American.
Within a month, he shortened his name to Ken.
He went around the cafeteria dipping into his endless arsenal of baseball jokes and drawing caricatures of people in his notebook in an effort to charm them.
The jocks took him in, the nerds affectionately called him “A-minus Ken,” and everybody else adored him because he volunteered for everything—car wash fundraisers, bake sales, even traffic squad.
By February, he was running for class president.
One by one he won over everyone in their grade.
Except Marigold.
Because of the proximity of their last names, their lockers were side by side.
Most days, she managed to fetch her textbooks without any verbal exchange.
She wasn’t allowed to talk to him anyway; Philip had instilled in his daughters his own implacable rancor toward the Japanese.
Whenever they so much as passed by a sushi restaurant he invoked the air raid that had murdered his mother and sisters and cousins.
Just her luck, Kenji decided hers was the next vote to collect.
“What’s the skinny on the gloves?” he said, greeting her. “You’re always wearing them. Marjorie?”
That made her look up. “It’s Marigold.”
“I know.” Kenji put on a stupid grin.
“If you know, then why’d you call me Marjorie?”
“It got you to look at me.”
He was right, which irritated her. She swung open her locker door, effectively barricading herself from any more unwanted conversation.
A-minus Ken didn’t take the hint. “Alien or superhero?” he asked.
“What?”
“The gloves. Are you an alien like the Silver Surfer, or a superhero like—”
“Superman?” He was the only superhero she knew. “Neither. I’m a girl.”
“Technically, Superman’s both alien and superhero.” Kenji cleared his throat. “There’s girl superheroes, too.” He reached for the thick stack of comics crowding the top shelf of his locker, holding them out. “Look, Wonder Woman. Invisible Girl, Black Ca—”
Marigold startled. “Invisible what?”
“The Invisible Girl. Have you heard of the Fantastic Four?”
Marigold grabbed the comic, scanning every panel for Susan Storm, aka the Invisible Girl, who could disappear at will.
Disappear at will. Wasn’t that what her mother could do? Or was it something that came upon her involuntarily? Marigold realized she had no idea.
“How did Susan Storm get her power?” she asked.
Kenji’s face lit up. “She got caught in a cosmic storm. The rays hit her body, then after that, she could turn invisible.”
Cosmic storm? Marigold kept reading.
“You can borrow it if you want.”
Marigold was tempted, but she didn’t want to owe Kenji a favor. Anyway, what was she doing, resorting to a comic for clues about her mother? She closed its pages, noticing then a familiar pennant taped inside Kenji’s locker door.
“You want to go to Stanford?”
“It’s my dream school,” he admitted. “They just started a computer science department. I wanted to be a comic book artist, but my mom says I’m not good enough.” He scooped up his sketchbook, slipped it into his backpack. “So I’ll make games instead.”
“Games on a computer.”
“It’s the future.” He flashed her a grin. “Anyway, I’m A-minus Ken, I won’t get in. What about you, you got a dream school?”
Stanford, she thought. Because I want to be a doctor, not make silly games.
Instead of answering, she handed Kenji back the Fantastic Four issue. “I don’t read comics.”
Before she could start off, he placed a hand on her locker. “Say,” he said a little nervously, “a bunch of us are getting together at Central Library to study. Want to join? Friday’s math test is supposed to be a killer.”
“I’m busy today,” she lied.
“What about tomorrow?”
The bell rang, saving her from a response.
She shut her locker, leaving Kenji without saying goodbye.
It was a bad luck week. The next day, Kenji sat next to her in each of the four classes they shared. He didn’t try talking to her since he was too busy drawing, his Band-Aid–thick brows knit in concentration, but she just knew he was up to something.
On Thursday, Mrs. Gibson was out sick. To Marigold’s dread, the sub was Coach Harkness.
He stopped her at the door. “No gloves in class, Yuen.”
“I have cold hands,” Marigold said. “Mrs. Gibson always—”
“Asthma in gym, now cold hands in world history? Do you have a doctor’s note for that too? Off with the gloves.”
“Mrs. Gibson lets her wear them,” said Kenji. He quickly added, “Coach.”
“Stay out of this, Yamamoto. Shut your trap or baseball gets extra drills this afternoon.”
Marigold didn’t need Kenji to stand up for her. She shed her gloves, setting them on the side of her desk.
“Read chapter fifteen and outline Napoleon Bonaparte’s contributions to France,” Coach Harkness read off Mrs. Gibson’s lesson plan. He dipped into her jar of candies, unwrapping a hard caramel. It jangled against his teeth as he spoke: “I’ll check on you all in twenty minutes.”
Once he left, Marigold pulled her sleeves down to her fingers and opened her pencil box. She took out two perfectly sharpened pencils, an eraser, and a slide rule. She was a quarter through her algebra homework when Kenji flew a paper airplane straight onto her desk.
Earth to Marigold, it read. This is world history.
Would he not leave her alone? She pushed her glasses up her nose bridge. “I did the assignment last week.”
“Sure you did.” He swiped the gloves off her desk. “How do you even write while wearing these?”
Marigold stiffened. “Give them back!”
“Wow, they’ve even got lace on the edges.” Kenji held the gloves up for everyone to see. “My grandma used to have a pair like these.”
Marigold’s face went hot. She snatched the gloves, her fingers accidentally brushing against Kenji’s.
With a jolt, her vision blurred and her breath caught in her throat.
She was outside, on a flat street of houses, each flanked by two palm trees.
LA, she guessed, where Kenji lived before moving to Berkeley.
Voices shouted in the distance. A man’s and a woman’s.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could feel Kenji’s hateful fury rise as he listened.
Her classmate came into view, younger and shorter. He was carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder and stalking toward a gray Datsun parked on the curb.
He glanced behind him. The voices were still yelling, and the bat was trembling in Kenji’s grasp. He folded his hands atop each other to steady his grip—then he swung.
The passenger window shattered. Glass flew onto the roadside, scattered across the pavement like broken stars.
Stop! Marigold tried to shout, but she never had voice in these visions.
All she could do was watch the past unfurl.
Again Kenji swung. He couldn’t think straight or see straight.
He was too angry, his blood too thick. He busted the windshields.
Lopped off one of the side mirrors. Then, as he was about to smash the headlights, Kenji suddenly dropped his bat and looked up—
In a blink, classroom A-13 came rushing into focus, and she was back in world history at her desk. When she looked up, Kenji Yamamoto was still grinning at her.
“You okay, Mari?” he asked.
Her fists were still clenched at her sides, her breaths rapid and shallow.
“My name’s Marigold,” she said. “Not Mari, not Mary. Not Marjorie or Margaret.”
Kenji’s smile faltered. “Hey, take it easy, Mari. I mean, Marigold. I didn’t mean to—”
“You can stop pretending to be nice,” she said harshly. “I know it’s an act.”
She could still feel his hate swelling inside her chest, her throat tight with his anger. What had happened after he’d smashed the car? she wondered. She supposed she’d never know.
Their classmates were still pointing at her and whispering. While he continued grinning as though he’d done nothing wrong.
She put the gloves back on. “Just leave me alone.”
As luck would have it, that was the precise moment Mr. Harkness returned to the classroom. “Yamamoto, why are you out of your seat?” he barked. “And you, Yuen. Do I need to confiscate those mittens?”
Marigold shrank. “No, sir.”
“Then why’re you wearing them? It’s eighty degrees, even the Eskimos are out in T-shirts.”
“Actually they wear caribou skin,” replied Marigold, against her better judgment. “And their proper name is the Inuits.”
“The innu-what?” Coach Harkness made a face. “Give the mittens here.”
Marigold wouldn’t. These gloves were the only armor she had that fully dampened the sparks. She had spares, yes, but these were her favorite. “I need them.”
“Need them?” Harkness repeated. “Class, do you hear that? Looks like Miss Smart Aleck here has a security blanket.”
Marigold’s cheeks burned, but she said nothing. She held her chin high.
“She said her hands get cold,” Kenji spoke up. “Let her keep them, Coach, I was the one disturbing the class while you were out—”
“Stay out of this, Ken, I’m not talking to you.” Harkness pointed at Marigold. “You, report to detention after school. Two hours for insubordination.”
Detention! Marigold’s head buzzed. She couldn’t believe it.
The bell rang, and she shot out of her seat, the first one out the door.
“Hey, Marigold!” Kenji cried, trailing her to their lockers. “Mr. Harkness was being a jerk, I’ll try talking to him after practice—”
“Don’t bother,” she said through her teeth. “I’ll just do my homework. It’s fine.”
“Then I’ll go too and stay with you.”
“Stay with me?” Now she stared at him. “Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble as it is?”
Kenji winced. “I was just teasing. Can’t we be friends?”
“I don’t make friends with people like you. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Now will you bug off?”
Never had she seen anyone look so taken aback.
“People like me,” he repeated. All of him tensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what that means, Kenji Yamamoto.”
It’d be days before Marigold realized that Kenji thought she was referring to his race, not to what he’d done to that car in LA. It didn’t matter though, she was too proud to correct any misunderstanding.
“Hai.” He swung his locker door shut and gave her the coldest salute. “Message received, loud and clear.”
From that day on, Marigold got what she wanted. Kenji stopped talking to her, stopped even acknowledging her existence. She had made an enemy out of him, and there would be no peace between them.