Ink

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I made it halfway across the courtyard before I realized I was still wearing my school slippers. No lie. I had to turn around and slink all the way back to the genkan, the stifled laughs from my classmates trailing me as I mustered what slippered dignity I could.

God, way to scream foreigner. You’d think after a couple of weeks I’d have the routine down, but no. I’d gone into that mode again, the one where I forgot everything for a minute and walked dazed through the sounds of the Japanese being spoken around me, not fully comprehending that it wasn’t English, that I was on the other side of the world, that Mom was…

“Katie!”

I looked up to see Yuki running toward me, breaking from a group of girls who stopped chatting, staring at us. Their stares weren’t unfriendly—they just weren’t exactly subtle.

I guess that’s expected when you’re the only Amerika-jin in the school.

Yuki grabbed my arms with her slender fingers. “You do not want to go in there,” she said in English, motioning at the school entrance behind us.

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