Three Days
by Kaitlin Drake
They weren’t at school again.
“Miya, Hisoka?”
No answer.
“Miya, Kane?”
No answer.
“Saito, Yume?”
“Yes,” I said.
My voice shook in my ears once again. Our classmates didn’t appear to notice, and our teacher made another mark in her book.
Three days.
Kane’s desk was still a mess. It was always that way, but for three days there were the same scraps of paper littering it. He had been sketching something and I didn’t know what the finished thing would look like. The soccer ball stayed motionless where he always kept it underneath the desk. The desktop was dirty, smudged with ink and there was dirt around the floor. He had forgotten to wear a clean uniform the other day, and the teacher had given him such a glare.
Hisoka’s desk was the opposite. Everything in its proper place and with a desktop that shone. He had left his gym bag where he stored his baseball cleats. I had asked him about it once.
“Mother doesn’t want them in the house.”
He had been so quiet and then refused to talk. I learned not to ask some questions.
I could see the candies he always hid in his desk peeking out. He had promised me one when we came back to school. That was three days ago and neither of the twins had come back.
I had met the twins the year before when they first moved to our town. They hadn’t been too talkative. The teacher had taken them to the front of the class. They had stood there like matching shop mannequins in their uniforms. Their introductions had been like a memorization, perfect and in sync with each other. Then the teacher had asked them when their birthdays were.
“October 17,” they had chimed in perfect unison.
My classmates often forget I am there until there is an activity that we all must do. My little sister Arisa was the loud one and my brother Shin the serious one. I was just Yume, the quiet one. Mama and Daddy had tried not to make those distinctions, but whenever anyone met us, they knew.
But at the announcement of their birthday, I gasped slightly.
Two pairs of golden-brown eyes narrowed in on me questioning.
“It’s my birthday too,” I admitted.
“Really?” asked the twin who had a blue band on his uniform.
“What hospital?” asked the one who had a red band.
I named the hospital and saw their eyes brighten.
“We were born there too,” they said excitedly.
And that was how it started. I learned later that Hisoka always wore blue and Kane always wore red. The twins often made sure that they acted similarly to outsiders but to me they were so different. Over the last year, we had done everything together at school. I had never had many friends and now…
Three days.
I felt my stomach churn. My hands got clammy, and the beginning of a shiver went down my spine.
Three days.
They sometimes missed school, but not like this, and never both at once. Besides Kane was on the soccer team, and hated to miss practice. He was convinced that he would be a great all-star.
Hisoka played baseball like my brother Shin. Shin often said that my friend was one of the best first basemen on the team. That meant something coming from Shin who had the fastest pitch in our prefecture.
Three days.
Sometimes the world’s axis shifts, and there is nothing you can do.
It was at dinner that Shin asked me.
“Have you seen Hisoka? Coach hasn’t heard from him.”
The sounds of eating stopped at the table. My parents looked at me expectantly. I felt myself shrink further.
“No,” I said.
I rushed to clear my plate and tried not think so hard.
Three days.
Three days.
Three days.
My parents kept their office clean. They both had desks that they used to keep up with the day-to-day business of the farm and Mama’s photography business. It was to mama’s desk I went.
Celebrations by Ame for all your celebratory needs. Mama took pictures at birthday parties, weddings, and even funerals.
“Sometimes a funeral came be a celebration,” Mama had said.
My palms sweated as I pulled down the phone receiver. I put my fingers in to dial the number. It a number I knew by heart from a thousand nighttime calls.
I listened to the dial tone and waited for familiar voices. I was sure they would answer. They would call me silly and tell me that they just had a cold. Or maybe they had gone to the ocean. Hisoka always wanted to go to the ocean. He loved to fish and swim.
“The number you have reached as been disconnected,” a mechanical voice says instead.
The receiver slips from my fingers. I can feel the need to cry grip me. Walking back into the main part of the house, I pulled myself together. Something was wrong. I knew it when it had become three days and that voice had confirmed it.
“Yume,” Mama said. “Is everything ok?”
My Mama is beautiful. Not in the way all mamas are beautiful but in a way that let’s me know that she is my mama. She was sitting on the floor watching a movie as Daddy braided back her long dark hair. In front of her was a cup of tea and I could see the bottle of migraine medicine.
“I’m just tired,” I said.
“Get some rest,” Daddy said. “Tomorrow is a new day.”
When I woke, I woke scared and afraid with the shadows of dreams in my memory. The sun was shining through the window, and I could feel warmth but inside me everything was cold. I couldn’t continue this way.
“Tomorrow is a new day,” Daddy had said.
I packed my lunch layering multiple rolled omelets, triple the amount of rice, two sliced up pork cutlets and additional vegetables.
“Feeding the twins again?” Mama asked.
She had on her field clothes. She wasn’t doing her photography business today but working in the kitchen garden. Daddy was working the fields and Mama would help him once she had the gardening done.
I shrugged.
Mama eyed me but added over some pickled plums.
“Those are Hisoka’s favorites, right?”
I gave her a smile and nodded.
“Yume,” Mama said as I prepared to walk to school. “Is everything ok? You’ve been quieter than normal. You haven’t been on the phone at night lately.”
Daddy was worried that the crop wouldn’t be planted in time. The weather had failed to cooperate. Arisa had gotten into a fight with a girl at school and had been suspended last week. Shin was helping in the fields a lot more but he was struggling slightly with school work. I heard him tell Mama that he was afraid he would no longer be in the top of his class. Grandma had a slight cold and Mama had a client cancel at the last minute.
It was a busy time for the family and my concerns were small. My friends hadn’t been in school for three days.
“It’s fine Mama,” I said.
That morning the twins were not in class. When lunchtime came, I made my move. Today was a new day. It didn’t need to be the same as the past three days. I could change it.
My legs trembled as I walked to the front of the class.
“Miss Sayori.”
Our teacher was at her desk. In her hands was a new novel and she was eating a pale peach. Her eyes had narrowed for a moment when she saw me. Her fingers brushing away some of the juice and the look she gave me was enough to make me shake.
But the twins were more important. They always would be.
“Saito?”
“I’m feeling sick Miss Sayori.”
Miss Sayori sighed.
“Alright, Miss Saito. You can go home. Do I need to call your parents to come get you?”
I shook my head before explaining that my parents were working the fields. We were one of many farming families in the area and the teacher just nodded. I packed my things and made for the open road.
I knew where the twins lived because Daddy had taken them home one afternoon when it had rained hard. I walked the mile from school with my backpack and lunch pail.
I was scared but they mattered more. I kept walking one foot in front of another. I do not know how long I walked. Nor do I remember the feeling of anything other than the rocks underneath my feet. I barely heard the car pull up beside me.
“Yume Siato!”
Mama’s face was pinched, and her eyes were narrowed. I froze.
“Mama, I got sick and was headed home.”
“In the opposite direction?”
There was bite to Mama’s words.
“I was taking the scenic route,” I said.
“Get in the car Yume,” Mama ordered.
The neighborhood I had been walking in had been quiet but now I could see people staring. I could hear whispers and I felt the walls of the natural world constrict around me. I closed the door behind me as I sat in the car.
“What is going on Yume?”
I told Mama about the three days and the mechanized voice. I told her how no one seemed to care. I told her that I was scared, and it wasn’t like my twins to disappear.
Mama listened and then she drove to the house. She looked tired with the dirt on her coveralls. She told me that Miss Sayori had called to let her know that I was walking home. Mama had been worried because it wasn’t like me to get sick, and Miss Sayori should always call and not just let me leave.
When we reached the twins’ house the air in the car became heavier. Mama’s face was more lined and there was something in her eyes I didn’t know. She looked for a moment like an old samurai putting on armor. There were no lights on in the house but there were marks towards the door showing that someone had closed it hard.
“Yume, stay in the car. Let me see what’s happened.”
I sat there in silence for what felt like hours. My heart beating in a frantic rhythm as I whispered prayers.
“Please,” I prayed. “Let me them be ok. I promise to be good.”
I don’t know how long it was before Mama came back. She held each of my twins’ hands as she walked them to the car.
Mama loaded us up in the back of her old Datsun 510. The car was a 1973 and the paint was bright blue. Daddy had repainted it for Mama a year ago. We sat in backseat. Me in the middle, Kane to my right and Hisoka to my left. Our hands gripped tight, and I could feel circles being traced on my palms.
The boys smelled something foul. They had been in the shed for the last three days since their parents had left. They told me so when I asked.
“They leave sometimes,” Kane said.
Hisoka stayed quiet.
Mama would not let me go into the shed. Later I would hear her tell Daddy.
“There was some water in there Sosuke, and the boys have been eating convenience food. They went to the bathroom outside, but the house is locked clear up. It couldn’t have been warm. When I found them, they were huddled together.”
Mama never called anyone an unkind world but for the twins’ parents she had plenty. But that was later. Now was the car and the sound of the radio on low as Mama drove.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Kane asked.
Kane was the bravest boy I knew. He jumped off the cliff into the ocean below when our class had taken a trip to the beach. He had gone three whole minutes with a slimy frog in his mouth. He had told the girls bullying me that he claimed me as his twin.
“She’s my sister,” he had said in a clear voice. “The hospital made a mistake and put me in the wrong room.”
When Chiyo had pointed out that Hisoka looked exactly like him, Kane scoffed.
“Hisoka’s a clone. Or maybe he had plastic surgery. One day I’ll get the money together to prove that Yume’s my twin.”
In Mama’s car though he wasn’t any of those things. Instead, he was a scared boy and Hisoka was quietly shaking. He wasn’t the boy who would swim in the ocean waves or who taught me how to catch fish with my hands in the pond.
“See Yume,” Hisoka said.
He had expertly gutted the fish in front of me and was teaching me how to cook it.
“It’s not hard and there’s nothing to be scared of.”
I had nodded. Learning for the first time that I could be brave.
I’ll never forget what Mama did. Mama pulled over to the side of the road near one of the old kitsune shrines. Her hands found each of the twins’ cheeks. Cheeks marked with dirt and tears. Golden eyes looked at her in wonder.
“You don’t have to worry. No one is ever hurting my boys again.”
It took time. More time than it should’ve but the twins became themselves again. Mama and Daddy fed them and bathed them that night. Mama sang them lullabies and Daddy told them they were brave.
Later, we would learn that the twins had been abandoned. Their parents had been located three towns over and had no intention of coming back for them. Mama never said what those people had said. She only called them heartless.
When the twins were told we were all at home having dinner. Arisa was silent and passed her food around. Shin was searching for words of comfort. I had gripped both twins’ hands. Hisoka was looking at the floor but there was anger radiating off Kane. Daddy and Grandma only remained silent watching.
And then Mama slammed her fist down on the table.
“That woman took my babies from me. I don’t know how she did it, but she took them right out of the hospital room.”
Daddy got a strange look on his face.
“Ame, there was only one baby when Yume was born.”
Mama looked at the twins and then back at Daddy.
“I’m telling you Sosuke, there were three.”
I could see the gears turning in Daddy’s brain. He gave Mama an amused look but nodded.
The adoption papers were started that night.
The End
Leonardo Magazine 