Chapter 36 – Stand By Me (2)

Eppie had spent the better part of ten weeks wondering where Mio had gone, and now that the girl was right there, she felt suddenly lost for words.

Were they friends?
Did friends abandon friends to the wolves?
She had no answers, because Lana didn’t have friends in the Merrian-Webster sense. Lana had the company of associates and sycophants.

The two of them sat on the long stone benches opposite the inner wall, under the orange tree and its citrus scent. They faced each other, but not symmetrically. Eppie wore her casual minimalism, and Mio wore Sunday clothes appropriate for church, which in their rural community meant an oversized floral blouse and a long brown woollen skirt.

The oranges, Eppie noted, were a little overripe.

Mio sat with both hands on her lap, staring at her fingers. The girl was prettier than in her pictures. She was a picture of heartache.

“Sorry, Eppie. I didn’t know what else to do.” Her voice drifted between them like a breeze. “I didn’t know… that you fell, after I left. I should have come to the hospital. I should have…”

Eppie said nothing. There was a time for talking, and a time for listening. She could be a very good listener if she wanted.

“I thought that if I left, they would leave you alone. I… I was dumb. So dumb…”

Mio started. Mio stopped. Mio started again.

“Did… did you get the message I sent you?”

“I don’t know,” Eppie leaned in so that Mio was forced to meet her eyes. “I don’t remember anything after I fell. The only memory I have is of waking up in the hospital.”

Mio’s complexion paled, yet Eppie wasn’t angry.

The Eppie of the present could not possess true bitterness, because she has no memory of that changing room stall. Of Lim. Of her hands on Mio’s slippery body, mopping down her blood with a towel. She doesn’t recall the weight of Mio’s body on her shoulders. She hasn’t suffered the days, weeks, and months that followed when Simone turned traitor, and Mio became her only friend. Without that memory, how could Eppie be genuinely angry? All she felt for Mio was sympathy, and for the former Eppie, a little sadistic pleasure in seeing Mio squirm.

“Yet, you look amazing.” Mio’s eyes darted back and forth between her face and the floor. The girl’s amber eyes were so very pretty, like jewels. “You’re so different. So confident.”

“Dying does that to a gal,” Eppie didn’t cut corners when it came to spitting facts. “But none of that matters now.”

“After I left…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Eppie repeated. “I am not accusing you of anything, Mio. Instead, I want justice, in whatever form I can get it. I understand you were frightened, and you made a choice. Not a great choice for me, but it was the best you could do under the circumstances. How have you been?”

Mio stared at her. The girl’s face, Eppie noted, was truly unique. It wasn’t perfect like Eppie’s [System] sculpt, but it possessed something that stirred her maternal instincts. When Mio’s lips trembled, she felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to embrace the girl, to hold her close and say that everything was going to be okay.

“Are… are you really Eppie?” Mio’s eyes grew visibly timid as both hands wrung her skirt for dear life. “You don’t talk like her at all. You were so quiet. Shy. You never spoke up.”

Eppie pointed at the side of her skull. “I had a swelling here, about the size of a walnut. It came and went, after which the girl who woke up was no longer the girl you knew, but I am still Euphemia Fontaine.”

“So the song on YouTube…”

“Yeah, that’s me.” Eppie nodded. “What doesn’t kill you makes music, I guess? So er… you know Lim?”

“I do.”

“Did you know that… he’s on our side?”

Mio smiled. “You told me. I believe you now, though I didn’t believe you then.”
Perhaps thinking of Lim, of the man who might have loved her, yet did not help her, her smile grew wane.

“I’m glad you’re famous now. You made it,” Mio changed the subject, her expression heart-breakingly kind. “The old Eppie could not even dream of it.”

“For what it’s worth,” Eppie said. “I needed the fame to live.”

The wind blew, the sun shone. The sound of children playing ball and families laughing and speaking too loudly in Spanish blew over the wall.

Mio shifted her body. She was no longer hunched. She sat with her hands on the edge, her body long and languishing, her legs at an angle against the mulch.

Eppie admired the sight, this stretching out of a cloistered soul, until she began to see. The way Mio sat, the way the dress fell. The way the fabric folded. The geometry of the girl’s silhouette was no longer that of a girl.

Her mouth grew suddenly dry.
Her tongue felt instantly parched.
Guilt, with a viscosity she had ever experienced, filled her soul with a depth that she could not fathom.

“Oh God…” Eppie moaned. She was falling, her head was in free fall. “Oh God, Mio… Oh my God…”

Her fingers clenched and unclenched, grasping at the threads of possibilties as if to change their course.
She didn’t know what to do. What to say.

Mio cocked her head.
She did not look away from Eppie, but gave that same, wry smile.

The legal case in Eppie’s mind—the one she had been teasing herself with since the Maneki Café, the recording, the chain of custody, the DA’s office, the civil restitution, all of it fell to hell.

“How… how long…?” Eppie heard herself stammer. “Is it…?”

“Twenty-eight weeks, give or take,” Mio’s voice was steady. It was the voice of someone who was already at peace.

May, June, July, August, September, October, November. Eppie hated her [Arithmetic]. She hated how she instantly believed it. She hated all there was no more doubt. She hated it all.

“Everyone knows?”

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“Father Parson knows,” Mio said. “Father and mother thinks its some irresponsible boy at school who I won’t name. Everyone in church thinks the same. They’re very nice to me. They think the city is the devil’s domain. They know what happens to naive Nikkei girls who chase foolish dreams in LA. If they have an opinion, they don’t talk about it, at least not to our faces.”

The wind turned cold. The gravid fruit of the navel tree hung above them, diffusing a sweet, sickly scent of citrus. Across the cloister, she saw Paco, Zara and Eric looking at the floor while father Parson spoke. Zara held the giant box of food like a talisman; she was crying.

“I didn’t know until I ran, so… it’s not why I left you,” Mio continued. “I found out later, too late. I was given a choice. I made it.”