Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail Read Online Free PDF Page A

in—photo included— didn’t get caught until right before press.
    A few days ago I tried logging into Rooey’s email and got the password on the first guess. (It was “Miyazaki,” his favorite animator. Rooey was obsessed with Japan. When we tagged our suitcases for Hawaii, he’d spelled his name “Rui.” He’d even figured how to write his name in Japanese using the characters for “drifting” and “majesty.”) Now I check his email all the time. I’ve just logged in when Myra, the assistant editor, comes by my cubicle. She’s wearing the same man’s button-down shirt as always.
    “Hi, hon.” Even when she smiles she keeps her lips pressed tightly together. I’ve never seen her teeth.
    “Hi.”
    She opens her mouth and closes it like she’s changed her mind about something. “Maxine, how are you doing?”
    “Oh, you know. It’s good to keep busy with real challenging tasks at work, like typing up wedding announcements.”
    She sighs and looks at me pityingly. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
    I stare at the screen.
    She lowers her voice. “I got your point with themonkey thing, OK? I thought it would be best to lighten your workload, but obviously that’s not working. So, Maxine, how about a cover story?”
    “Great.” I empty Rooey’s spam folder. The screen looks clean and expectant.
    “Really?”
    “Sure.” My phone chimes, announcing the arrival of a text message.
    She nods harder than necessary and says, “Well, great then! Why don’t you think it over this week and we can chat about it on Friday? I’m sure you’re full of ideas. Sound good?”
    “Sounds great, thank you,” I say, because that’s what the old Maxine would’ve said. But now I guess I’ve just lost interest.
    Here’s a story: two people are in trouble and the wrong one dies. There’s been a cosmic mix-up, but there’s nothing anyone can do about it, and they all live sadly ever after. The end.
    I snap open my phone and read Felix’s message. It says: “Uijoljoh pg zpv.”
    He’s used this code before. The trick is that each letter is really the one before it. It says, “Thinking of you.”
    I write back “V 3” for “U 2,” close the phone, and go back to my email.
    I WALK TO FELIX’S AFTER WORK. He rents a garden apartment, which means he lives half-underground and there’s not much light, but it’s cheap. When we saveenough, we’re supposed to get a place together, somewhere up high.
    Back before Rooey started high school, our family lived near here, across from the tracks on Burlington in a house with an aboveground pool and a pop-up camper that never moved from the backyard. Mom said she and Dad had used it all the time and that I’d taken a few trips in it too, but I don’t remember them, and by the time Rooey came along, Dad was gone and I didn’t remember him, either.
    There was a small door we could use to squeeze into the camper even when it wasn’t popped up, and we’d take turns locking one another inside. The object was to see how long we could stay in before getting scared and knocking to come out. We called the game Coffin. It was pitch-black inside the camper, and the air was stuffy and smelled of hot wool.
    I was five years older and generally humane, but once—I think I was mad because Mom had let Rooey get away with something, again—I didn’t let him out when he gave the triple-knock. He tried again. There was a moment of silence that I took to be him getting pissed, and I laughed.
    Then he started pounding and, after a few seconds, screaming. I fumbled with the lock while the door shuddered. “LEEEET MEEEE OOUUUUT !”
    “Hang on!”
    When the door finally swung open, my little brother fell out onto his side, his face white save for two spots of color on his cheeks. He stared at me in disbelief, his brown eyes watery.
    When he stood and came at me, I didn’t fight back. I let him flail his fists and scream himself hoarse. Eventually we played something else.