Never Alone

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

We sat around an old picnic table and ate our barbequed hot dogs as we listened to the younger kids in the camp splash in the pool. The boys had changed out of their wet clothes and Dr. Crimm had told us she had some work to do in the motor home, so it was just the six of us again. I hadn't been disconnected from my phone for this long since I was five years old. My hand felt bare, but my soul felt light. No social media, no texts, no expectations that I should be calling someone or texting, no need to tell the world what I was eating or who I was spending time with. I could just eat my dinner and talk without reporting it to a single person. It felt private and intimate.

"So spill, Shima," Marco insisted from across the table. "Where did you learn to skip rocks like that?"

"And where did you learn to hustle like that?" Damien added.

Aideen laughed and nearly snorted her soda out of her nose.

Shima smiled around a big mouthful of her macaroni salad. Camp food was so much better than hospital food. The people who worked in the gift shop were a bit out of touch with city people, but they made a mean mac salad. "My dad is a geologist. When we lived in Japan he studied Mt. Fuji and he used to take me there sometimes to gather rocks and minerals. When I was bored, he would show me how to find good rocks and I'd try to skip them while he did his work. As I got older, I got better. There's an art to it. You want to pick rocks that are smooth and round at the edges, not too light, but not too heavy. You want them to have a flat surface but sometimes it's easier if they have a ridge on one side so your finger can grip it when you throw it."

"Wow. That sounds really cool. What does your dad study here in the US?" Marco asked.

"He doesn't study anymore. He took a job at the University of Washington teaching Geology to get my mom better doctors. He thought maybe she'd be happier in the US." Shima reached for her soda, her fingers tearing at the label absently.

"Was she?" Aideen asked.

"She was." Shima nodded and smiled. "He was right. It's crazy and unfair."

"What do you mean?" Aideen asked, resting her elbow on the table.

"My mom's family has a long, dark history with one of the forests in Japan. I think that's why it came up when I took the pill Dr. Crimm gave us." As Shima spoke, I remembered the bright green leaves and thick mossy trunks that had grown at the edges of the screen and then quickly fallen as her world formed in front of us. "But that forest sits at the base of Mt. Fuji, my father's favorite place in the whole world. To study it properly, he had to walk through Aokigahara many times. He grew to love it."

"He must have loved your mom more than he loved that forest if he was willing to give it up for her happiness." Marco pushed his empty plate away and folded his hands so he could rest his chin on them as he perched his elbows on the table and listened.

"Without question. But now she's gone and he doesn't have either of them. I've tried to get him to go back to Japan, but he won't go." Shima sighed as she slid her finger along the edge of her soda bottle. A few kids ran past our table, squealing and wet from the pool.

"Why won't he go back?" I asked.

"He's worried about me. He thinks I'll fall victim to the same fate as all the women in my mother's family. He helped her to get away and he doesn't want to risk taking me back over there." Shima lifted the bottle to her lips and took a sip.

"What does that mean?" Damien asked the same question I'd been thinking.

"Aokigahara is known as the Suicide Forest. It's second only to the Golden Gate Bridge in the number of suicides every year. The Japanese government stopped reporting the number of suicides there because they believed it was attracting people and increasing the deaths. Some Japanese believe that yurei are in Aokigahara and those who wander in there will be lured deeper inside and convinced to kill themselves.