His mom was not a very good cook, though. The cake tasted bitter, almost soapy, and left a strange coating on his tongue. He tried to mash it around his plate so his mom wouldn’t notice he wasn’t eating it, but she watched him until he finished.
Lee was starting to feel tired, so he went upstairs to nap before his dad got home. They were supposed to go out to Lee’s favorite pizza place for dinner.
When he woke, the light had shifted, darkness cast jaggedly through his blinds, and his stomach was on fire.
It was as if someone had stabbed a screwdriver into his belly and popped him like a balloon. His insides felt blown open and ruined. He tried to call for his mom, but vomit surged up his throat instead of words, burning down his sheets, and the world went dark.
The next time he woke, his dad was shaking him back and forth. The floral wallpaper sloshed around inside his skull and bile was dripping out of his mouth and his tongue felt like it was made of wool. His dad shouted something, but he couldn’t hear it, and he slid off the edge of the earth again.
Later, he woke up in a hospital with a needle in his arm and his dad looking down at him. He could barely hold his eyes open, and his mouth tasted like dust and the light stung his eyes. His dad looked like he’d been crying.
“What happened?” Lee asked.
His dad inhaled a shaky breath and forced a smile onto his face. “You just got a little sick,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine. Everything is back to normal.”
Lee swallowed, even though his throat felt like it was full of broken glass. “Where’s Mom?”
His dad’s smile twitched. “She got a little sick too. She’ll see you soon.”
Lee wasn’t allowed home for three days. His dad brought him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sat by his side and never once mentioned his mom. When Lee saw her on discharge day, she looked so pale that he could see blue veins under her eyes.
“My baby,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Mommy’s here now.”
The three of them drove home together, his dad’s posture as stiff as wood while his mom talked about ways to make it up to Lee for his birthday.
Lee went straight upstairs. It was late, and he wanted to sleep. When he went to draw the shades, he noticed something strange in the backyard.
His mother’s garden had been destroyed.
She used to have a rainbow of flowers, but someone had dug them all up, leaving a gaping hole in the earth.
Lee pulled down the shades, went to bed, and never thought of the garden again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sen
Lee’s father packed all of Hina’s food into plastic boxes and gave it to Sen. She took it to be polite, and because she understood being ashamed of one’s family, and because she couldn’t say that she would be dead in two days and had no use for this much food when she could never explain to her father where it had come from.
Lee’s father said something to him in English that Sen didn’t understand, but Lee’s frigid expression told her he wasn’t pleased. He turned back to Sen.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said.
“Come back anytime!” Lee’s father called, waving to Sen, his expression strained.
They left through the front door, then snuck around the house and sat on the porch, waiting for Lee’s father to go to bed.
“I’m sorry,” Lee said. “I never thought Hina would do something like that.”
Sen shook her head. “It’s fine. My family has done worse.”
This seemed to be the wrong thing to say, because Lee tore his gaze from the moon and looked sadly at Sen instead. Maybe it was because she’d never seen anyone else with eyes the colorof sword ferns, but his gaze unmade her every time, like he was cataloging the colors of her soul. No matter how carefully he controlled his expression, his eyes told Sen his secrets. In that moment, they were balanced on the knife’s edge of something very important.
After a moment, Lee dropped his gaze and held out his hand. “There isn’t much time left,” he said, the unsaidfor youhanging in the air. “I still need to find my mother.”
“Right,” Sen said, ignoring the way her chest ached at his words, like all her ribs were spearing through her lungs. “Of course.”
She held her breath and slowly set her hand in Lee’s. His fingers closed around hers—tight, as if bracing for pain.
