I Fell in Love with Hope(7)

Yellow.

Her hair is yellow. Not blonde or flaxen, yellow. Like dandelions and lemons. The color crowds dark roots just enough that you know it’s a choice, framing her face with the glasses perched on her nose. The eyes behind them flicker and I can hardly breathe when they land on me.

“Eric!” Sony spreads her arms and legs out as if it’s possible to conceal foaming beer bottles and cigarette stench by puffing her feathers. “Would it help if I told you your shoes are just stunning!”

While still holding the door open, Eric makes a throat-cutting motion across his neck. Sony promptly shuts up in response.

“Hikari,” Eric sighs, “This is Neo, Sony, C, and Sam.”

Hikari.

Does Hikari know she has suns in her eyes?

“Hey there!” Sony yells, waving with an open mouth while C waves more subtly, and Neo just nods his chin.

“Hi,” Hikari says. Her voice is liquid, streaming, sultry and cool like shade spooling over the edge of her mouth on a hot day.

“Wow,” Sony says, making her way into Hikari’s personal space. “You’re pretty.”

“Sony,” Eric scolds.

“It’s fine,” Hikari says, like she’s amused, enchanted even by Sony’s enchantment with her.

“Are you fun?” Sony asks. “You seem fun.”

“I like to think so.”

“Hikari,” Neo says, pensive over the syllables as he rolls his chair deliberately in front of Sony. “Are you from Japan?”

“My parents are,” Hikari says. “I’m from the suburbs.”

“I’m from the suburbs too,” Sony coos.

Neo rolls his eyes. “Didn’t know the suburbs were in hell.” He deservedly gets flicked on the temple for that statement. “Hey!”

“That’s Neo,” Sony says, patting his head. “He’s our baby.”

“Your captive is what I am!” Neo smacks her hand off. “Hikari, you’ve got legs. Run for it.”

“Oh dear God,” Eric sighs into his hands, and I now wonder if they teach babysitting in nursing school.

“That’s C.” Sony points. “His name is big, and French like him, so we just call him C.”

“Hi, Hikari. Do you need any help to get settled?” C leans over Neo’s handles, propping his upper body weight on them. The wheelchair tips back, Neo nearly falling out of it. He hits C’s arm with his notebook till the wheels reconcile with the ground.

“I’ll help!” Sony offers.

“No, you will not.” Eric grabs her and C by the sleeves, using his foot to keep Neo in line.

“But–”

“I don’t wanna hear it. And cigarettes? Really? Have some class.” He starts pulling them toward the door held open by a cinder block. “Go to your rooms.”

“But Erriicccc–” Sony whines, trying in vain to return to her newcomer. “What about initiation? I haven’t even told her my jokes–”

“Get downstairs– Hikari!” Eric’s face changes instantly, chin hooked on his shoulder, welcoming grin beaming. “Sam will show you back to your room. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Bye Hikari!” Sony says, waving her arm straight out over her head. “We’ll find you when we escape!”

“Keep walking!”

The door shuts, locking my friends’ and their captor’s voices behind its creak. Hikari stays put, only turning once there’s nothing else to face but me.

I can’t move. Because for the split second that she turns her head, I catch someone else’s shadow in her place, someone else’s expression, someone with the same eyes and the same voice from a different lifetime.

“You’re Sam,” Hikari says, half a question balanced on her lips.

“Yes,” I breathe, half enthralled, half stunned, fully terrified.

Hikari cocks her head to the side, gaze traveling about me as if I’m wearing a map for clothes and she’s reading the landmarks. She smiles with a crooked edge. “Are you shy, Sam?”

“I–uh.” My voice stutter–treacherous thing. “I’m not shy–I don’t think. I’m just bad at existing.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s just–I guess this body never felt like mine.”

Hikari’s smile stretches rather than fades, that earlier amusement playing with her features.

“Did you steal it?”

Hikari is a patient, and from the glossy white band on her wrist, she’s going to be here for a while. This can only go one way: We keep exchanging these pleasantries. I offer to help however she may need. She accepts a bit and declines most. Then we part ways and become backgrounds to each other. That’s how it always goes. That’s how the part of me that’s terrified of her needs it to go.

“Would you like me to show you around?” I ask, recoiling, trying to stare at the ground instead of at her. “I could show you the cafeteria or the gardens?”

Hikari laughs, three beats worth, roaming the roof with a slow, coquettish step.

“No,” she says.

“No?”

“No, I’m not a fan of small talk,” she says. Her baggy white t-shirt doesn’t quite fit, and the skirt that bares her legs flows with the wind as her hair trickles like liquid gold down to her forearms. There, bandages conceal her from wrist to elbow, and though I want to ask what led her to the hospital, Hikari has other plans.