Senbazuru

“Hey, you guys finished your ‘peace cranes’ thing yet?” Rose called in greeting as she strode down the hallway toward Lisa and Steven.

“No…” Lisa admitted, more to her locker than to Rose. She almost slammed the locker shut in her haste to depart, Steven noted. The two girls had been best friends forever, as far as he could tell, but since the beginning of their sophomore year they had rarely exchanged more than a sentence. He was still trying to figure out why.

“Well, I guess the fact that the war’s still going on is your fault then, huh?” Rose teased when she reached Steven.

“Guess so,” he shrugged. “I mean, we’ll be done with the Senbazuru soon. Only about a hundred and fifty more cranes to fold.”

Rose gave a low whistle. “That many? I thought you guys were working on it like, all summer. And it’s almost Christmas.”

“Yea, well, we haven’t had many chances to work on it since school started back. It’s hard to get together, you know? And when we do have time we tend to be at bigger group get-togethers with the rest of you guys. So…”

“Eh, whatever, I don’t really care,” Rose dismissed his squirming and excuses with a smirk, “I just think it’s funny that you guys went from like, barely knowing each other to being pretty much inseparable over the course of the summer. I blame that silly crane project.” Rose smirked again, but Steven didn’t think her heart was really in that one.

“Well, even if we haven’t stopped the war, is strengthening a friendship necessarily a bad thing for a bunch of paper cranes to accomplish?”

Rose squirmed at that one. “No, I guess not,” she conceded. “C’mon, let’s get to history.”

Steven was still grappling with the morning’s conversation when he got to lunch. The girls were at a Science Olympiad club meeting, so it was just the four guys, which offered a perfect opportunity for him to ask why they thought the girls were barely speaking.

“I think it’s a fight over you, dude,” Joe offered as soon as Steven asked.

“That still doesn’t make any sense,” Steven rebutted. Joe had brought up his theory a number of times before, often volunteered at more awkward points in time.

“They’ve both been openly flirting with you since day one, come on. How could it not be about you?” Much as that theory appealed to Steven’s ego… besides, he hated to think he could be the cause of such a split.

“It’s probably just carryover from finding themselves in a new situation. I mean, really. They used to be the two nerd girls, from what I can gather, at their old school. They’re both still nerds, but at least at this magnet high school,” Evan demonstrated with a sweep of his arm, exaggeratedly pompous, “there’s lots of groups of nerds! Lisa’s like us – brainy enough, but she mostly uses that to goof off. Rose is really one of those intellectuals. Haven’t you noticed her hanging out with those polysci types more and more this year?”

There was a pause as they all contemplated Evan’s theory, munching at their lunches.

“I don’t think either of them know, honestly,” Brady threw in.

Three days before Christmas all six of them gathered at Amante, a cheap but cozy hole-in-the-wall pizza place they frequented. When they ate there they often tripled or quadrupled the number of people in the joint.

School had just gotten out two days before, and they would all be holed up with family for the next week or so. Steven thought of the gathering as a last gasp for air. Everyone pushed presents at everyone else as they waited for their pizzas. Steven and Brady started tearing at the edges of theirs, and Lisa interrupted with a cough.

“Umm, why don’t we wait to open these until Christmas?”

“Yea. Let’s, um, wait,” Rose agreed. Steven quickly stashed his partially open gift under the non-offending ones.

“What? Why? Then it’s not fun,” Joe countered. “I want to see you guys’ reactions. And I want to see what I got!”

Steven glanced annoyed at Joe.

“Yea, you girls can do what you want, but I’m opening my stuff now!” Brady announced, and continued happily ripping paper.

Steven gave up with a shrug and retrieved the package he’d started opening. “Hey, I’ve got this thing half-open already.”

Lisa and Rose glanced at each other awkwardly before going at their own collections, with somewhat less enthusiasm than Brady. Rose almost seemed lethargic, but Lisa seemed to get into it after a bit. But they saved one another’s for last; the guys were all done by the time their pizzas arrived, but those two packages were left. They shoved them under the table, relieved.

“You aren’t going to get out if it this quickly,” Evan teased them. “We all want to see what you got each other, too.”

Steven openly glared at him for that. Lisa and Rose didn’t noticed, because they were both staring at the table. Steven later counted himself lucky for that.

But the girls were coerced into opening the problematic presents in Amante, after everyone finished eating. Lisa had given Rose a robotic pig toy with multicolored fur, that walked and oinked when it was turned on. Brady, Joe and Evan were all over it as soon as it was revealed, and barely noticed what Rose had given Lisa: a mobile with a label from a classy uptown store. Ten multicolored paper cranes were strung on black thread, hanging from thin grey metal cross-pieces.

“Wow, thanks Rose!”

“Wow, thanks Lisa!”

They were barely heard over the delighted banter of the three guys still playing with the pig, but Steven didn’t think the wide smiles matched their eyes.

When they returned to school, Rose stopped eating lunch with their crew, eating exclusively with the polysci group, but still talking to the guys between classes or at other free times. Steven and Rose started dating the end of January. Lisa and Steven finished their Senbazuru over spring break, and talked their school into hanging it up in the library. They were less than thrilled with the “explanatory” plaque that was tacked onto it, though:

Senbazuru

Donated by Lisa Meiring and Steven Whiter, Class of 2005

In honor of Sadako Sasaki, and all those impacted by the Hiroshima bombing, whose story they heard of in Mr. Russell’s 9th grade History class.

Two weeks before graduation, Steven was hanging out at Lisa’s house, reminiscing about the four years that they’d known each other, when Lisa bumped her head into the mobile, which she still had hanging off of the ceiling fan in her room.

“Confound it,” she muttered.

Steven knew that she ran into it on a fairly regular basis – she seemed to do so at least once every time he was over. She had to spend a lot of time untangling them, too, because they seemed to jump to the most tangled state possible given the slightest provocation.

“Really, Lisa, I’ll take the mobile,” he offered for probably the twentieth time. She never had anything good to say about it.

“No, no. I couldn’t do that to Rose.”

Steven sighed.

“Look, I know you don’t understand, but can’t you at least grasp the fact that we were friends for eight years? Even if she can’t stand me any more –”

“That’s not true,” he muttered. He knew his protest wouldn’t have any more effect than it usually did. He still really had no idea what had happened between them, but in the past several months he had come to suspect that Brady’s suggestion of years before was right; that they didn’t know, either.

“Yea, yea, I know she’s your girlfriend so you have to defend her and all, but she’s made it pretty damn clear she wants nothing to do with me anymore. Ahh, screw it. I don’t feel like having this argument again. Let’s talk about something else.”

That was how it always went. Rose still had the robotic pig in a prominent position on her bookshelf, and would occasionally take it down and set it wandering when he was hanging out in her room.

“Haha, that thing is tickling my leg,” was the most Steven ever commented on it, after it made a beeline for him one time. He knew if he tried to say anything about the pig’s history, Rose would insist that she just found the pig amusing, that her preoccupation with it had nothing to do with who gave it to her.

The clock was ticking. In two weeks, they were going to be handed their diplomas, tickets to new lives. He had to do something. He really wished he hadn’t found himself in the middle. That the two girls that mattered most to him were still best friends. He had to try harder.

But how to provoke Lisa?

“Something else? Hmm. Hey, you might find this funny, but umm – did you ever have a crush on me?” he hazarded.

“What? Where did that come from? Don’t you have a girlfriend? Who you’ve been dating like two and a half years?” she panicked.

“Yea, I was just… wondering. Conversation I had with the guys a while back.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Yes or no?”

“Steven… yes, I did. But that was a long time ago. A really long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! It was like three and a half years ago! Not to mention your status. Or my status of ‘leaving on a jet plane’ in a couple months. How on earth could it matter at all?”

Steven knew he was being a jerk, knew he should just stop and leave well enough alone. But… it wasn’t well enough, that two girls who had defined most of primary and secondary school for one another wouldn’t be speaking at graduation.

“I’m trying to get you and Rose back together,” he admitted in another mutter, another direction to try. “I’ve been trying to for years, I just…” He’d just never had the guts to risk so much before.

“What the -- ! Are you daring to suggest I’m so petty as to have dumped my best friend of eight years over you? Sorry to dump on your ego, Mr. Rock Star, but I was certainly never that interested in you. Not to mention, she stopped talking to me, it wasn’t the other way around! Go ask your precious muffin what made her feel like ditching me, if you actually want to accomplish anything and aren’t just screwing with me because I don’t matter anymore because I’m leaving! I hate you! Get out of my room!”

“Lisa, I’m sorry, I –”

“I don’t care. Please leave.” Steven could hear the tears beginning to crack her voice. Maybe something had gotten through, maybe he hadn’t just pissed her off.

“Okay, Lis,” he whispered. “Please be okay.” He worked his arms around her in an awkward attempt at a hug. She remained tense, but at least she didn’t pull away, which was really the most he had hoped for.

Lisa stood motionless, ignoring the wet streaks that formed down both sides of her face, until she heard the motor of Steven’s car roar to life. She collapsed onto her bed and heaved sobs into her pillow until she passed out.

Her sleep was restless, and when she woke up she could not concentrate on anything until she gave in. She had to know.

She tore the mobile from the ceiling – Lisa had always thought that Rose had been mocking the futility of the Senbazuru project with it; kept it as a reminder that she was no longer good enough for Rose, but… - and, not bothering to untangle the helpless cranes, stuffed it into the garbage can. Then she found the phone and dialed the first number she’d ever memorized.