Sour Demands and Sour Typewriters

The hope didn't last long.

Lesson of the day: never leave your phone on silent when ditching school. Why, you ask? Both my parents had called me fourteen times. Picking up one of those calls couldn't have earned me a reward, but it could have lightened my punishment.

"You can sit down now," my mom said. "I'm almost done with the snacks."

She ushered me into a seat at the table and poured me a cup of tea. Soon after, she placed a platter of sliced apples in front of my dad. He stood opposite me.

"Would you sit down, honey?" she asked.

He didn't sit.

"The school called. You left in the morning to get that Arakawa girl," my dad said.

"Yeah. The principal was happy that I did," I said.

"They mentioned the little speech she wrote up too."

"I didn't get in trouble, you know."

"Did you sneak into your school last night?"

"No." Something thumped inside my chest.

"If you weren't helping with her little stunt, why'd you sneak out?"

I busied my mouth with a gulp of tea.

"We know we can be a little harsh on you sometimes," my mom said.

"But there's no way in hell I can accept our kid sneaking out of the house and breaking into his school to spread some girl's propaganda," my dad said.

"Good thing I didn't." My heart threatened to explode.

They shared a glance as if I didn't know exactly what it meant.

"You know we love you," my mom said.

"But if you're not taking your education seriously, we can't guarantee you a place to sleep under this roof," my dad said.

"I know. I'm taking it seriously."

My mom began, "We think we've come to the conclusion—"

"Stop talking to that girl," my dad cut her off.

"What?" My chest pounded.

"If you're taking your school so serious, stop seeing that Arakawa girl. She's a bad influence. Find some kid who's good at math and hang around him instead."

"I already have a friend who—"

"Good, it won't be so hard to tell that girl to leave you alone."

"It's good to have friends. Friends are important," my mom interjected.

Not helping.

"You don't wanna know what'll happen if we hear about another incident involving the both of you." My dad grabbed the entire plate of apple slices. "Pick careful."

He stomped off. My mom chased after him, leaving me alone at the table to drink my tea. It tasted like dirt. The thought of "accidentally" spilling it crossed my mind before I poured it down the drain.

My parents left me alone for the rest of the evening. Their quiet expectation was more suffocating than my dad's clear-cut demands, and I guess it short-circuited my brain because I spent the night in bed, not sleeping.

At school, things only got worse.

The ever-familiar front entrance was crowded with kids kicking off their shoes and exchanging weekend plans. Despite the noise, Haruko's name next to the words "pick careful" kept repeating in my head. I hadn't yet heard her mentioned in the general chatter, but knowing the shitstorm that led to her school-wide celebrity status, it wouldn't be long before someone decided to double dip in the weekly drama.

My expectations were surmounted in the most puzzling way possible. Before I stepped up from the entranceway, Haruko's name flooded the space, in the form of Haruko herself. The energetic girl rushed down the hall, utterly oblivious to my presence. She stopped a group of three students and shook each of their hands before launching into a campaigning speech. Is that really a good idea?

I was about to insert myself before she got in trouble, but the echo of my dad's ultimatum stopped me first. I could only stand and listen.

"Remember to cast your votes! And not just because I'm God, but…" She kept talking, but it all sounded like gibberish after that one word: God. Because she's God. Didn't she tell me… I shook my head and tried not to think too hard about it.

Class was my next stop, and it felt as if the judging glare of classmates had subsided. Seems they'd all lost interest in me after one day. Everyone was too focused on their weekend plans to pay me mind. But there was someone else who still drew everyone's attention.

When Haruko walked into the room, she ignored the sudden quieting of voices and perked up at my bleary self. I was lying on my desk and looking vaguely in her direction. She skipped over and sat in her seat.

"Why do you always look so cranky?" she asked.

Like a tongue stuck to a frost-covered, metal, street lamp, my face was fused to the chill of my desk. The effort to sit up and turn around was unreasonably high for a task I'd repeated so many times before. Her silent waiting dragged a pair of defibrillators onto my chest.

Both my hands came up to the table and I pushed with the strength to revive a human heart. But it was barely enough to peel my cheek from the table below. I slowly turned to face Haruko, sitting behind me. She looked the same as always. Actually, she looked more similar to herself than usual. As if she'd taken out a pair of coloured contacts and I could see her flaming stare, unrestricted.

"How is it that I'm the weird one?" she asked.

There was a pair of barber's scissors on her desk. I focused on them.

"Hello? Earth to Naru?" My glare widened, fixed on the scissors. She waved her hand in front of my face. "Naru?"

That's my name. That's the first time she's used my name. It came as a bitter-sweet shock. My heart was pounding, I tried not to speak but this time the spider didn't keep me still.

"I can't talk to you anymore," my parents said so. I was too embarrassed to voice the second part out loud.

"Oh."

I turned to the front of the class and ignored her for the rest of the day.

By the time lunch rolled around, I couldn't stand Haruko staring at the back of my head anymore, so I got up and left. Mindlessly, I escaped to the club room. When I got there, the door was already open. I peeked inside to double-check that a rogue Haruko hadn't arrived before me. The room was filled with everything but a person.

The interior was as I remembered, except now, a rusted typewriter sat on top of the fancy table in the middle. I headed straight for it, tapping at a few keys. Some still working, but most wouldn't budge.

"It'd be best for you not to touch that."

The voice came from the entrance, it was Sato. Bumbling into the room while hefting up a massive container filled with liquid, she nearly spilled the whole thing onto the floor. A waft of air blew in through the door behind her, filling my nose with a sour scent. I squinted involuntarily.

"Ugh. What is that, vinegar?"

Sato nodded overtop a huge tub of white vinegar, teetering against the step into the clubroom. I rushed over to support the weight, helping her hoist the thing up onto the table.

"Thank you," she said.

"What's this for, salad?"

"Actually, I'm restoring that antique you were playing with."

Right.

She dipped outside and carried in a bucket of cleaning tools. A few different kinds of scrub brushes, hand towels, dishwashing gloves, and a couple of other things I couldn't recognize.

"What are you doing in the clubroom?" she asked.

My gaze fell gently to the ground. I stared at the wooden floorboards and then looked back to the typewriter. "I'm here to join?"

Sato raised an eyebrow. "Do no other clubs interest you?"

"Uhm… It's more like I've been disallowed from joining the ones I'm interested in."

"By whom? The principal?" She brought a finger to her cheek. "That's a strange thing to do."

"Yeah… Always a bit scary to be denied what you'd like to pursue."

"Scary? But he's usually so calm…"

This misunderstanding was getting out of hand. While clarifying the dumb metaphor for my dad's ultimatum, Sato solicited my help in submerging the writing machine.

"On top of that, I think I figured out what you were trying to tell me the other night," I said, "but now that I've finally made up my mind, my parents went ahead and forced a change. It's like I've been a passenger my whole life, and when I finally grab hold of the wheel, they come along and tell me I'm going the wrong way."

"Are you?" she asked.

"I don't know. Do you?"

Sato looked like she was about to say something for a long minute, before dropping her shoulders and leaving me with an: "I do not."

A dull, piercing wound opened in my chest. We sat there in silence for a while. The bubbling chunk of metal holding our attention.

"Did Haruko mention something to you about not being God?" I asked.

Sato looked up. "She did not."

"Well, she did to me. Any idea why?"

The girl tilted her head side to side as if to allow the thought time to marinate. "I might have an inkling."