Read Kira-Kira for Free Online Page B

proud of. Lynn got straight A’s. She loved school.
    The next day, however, she didn’t even go to school. Even when she was sick, she usually begged our mother to let her go to school. This was the first time I’d ever seen her happy to stay home. When I got home, a doctor was just leaving. Mrs. Kanagawa was there. She said the doctor had put Lynn on iron pills.
    At dinner that night my father said he thought maybe Lynn just took after our mother, who also used to get tired a lot. In fact, my mother said that once when she was a child, she had spent almost the whole year in bed from fatigue, and nobody knew why. So I figured Lynn was just going through a phase, the same as my mother had.
    One night, though, she woke up crying. I couldn’t remember Lynn crying since the day we left Iowa. When she woke up, she said she’d dreamed that she was swimming happily in the ocean.
    She sobbed. “The sun was shining. Everything was beautiful.”
    “Why did that dream make you cry?”
    “Because it was only my spirit swimming in the ocean, and not really me.”
    “What’s a spirit?”
    “It’s the invisible part of me.”
    I didn’t understand her reasoning at all. First of all, I didn’t understand what she meant by “invisible part of me.” Second of all, her dream sounded happy to me. But I also knew that Lynn was always right, so I was a little worried. Suddenly, she said, “Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m okay. Go to bed.”
    So I went to bed.
    The next day was Saturday. She lay in bed all day. She didn’t want to be bothered or talked to or anything.
    I said, “Do you all want me to go get you some candy?”
    She said, “No.”
    I said, “Do you all want an apple?”
    She said, “No.”
    I said, “Do you all want some company?”
    And she said, “No.”
    Even with her occasional fatigue, Lynn still managed to help me a lot. The truth was, without Lynn, I probably would have gotten some D’s. I didn’t understand the point of school. You sat in a chair all day and read words andadded numbers and followed directions. You weren’t allowed to chew gum. You weren’t allowed to write notes—not that I had anybody to write notes to. But, still. And you weren’t allowed to talk unless you knew the answers to the teacher’s questions.
    Lynn actually liked reading stories and adding numbers. And she actually knew the answers to the teacher’s questions. She was fourteen. She had gotten so pretty that the other girls had to take notice of her, if only to be jealous. Of course, Lynn had always been very pretty. Her skin and eyes were radiant, and her hair was strong and shiny. Even though all the other girls curled their hair, she had started to wear hers straight and so long that it touched the middle of her butt. Gregg, the most popular boy in her class, liked her. Finally, one of the popular girls, Amber, broke ranks and became Lynn’s first best friend. That is, I felt I was still Lynn’s best friend, but Amber was maybe her second best friend. Amber becoming Lynn’s second best friend was the other big event that winter.
    It did get to be a little annoying. Amber came with us everywhere. She was one of those really girlie girls who paint their fingernails and even their toes. She said she was going to be a model someday, and she walked very upright. All winter and spring she and Lynn walked back and forth in the living room with books on their heads. Amber said, “This is the way models walk.”
    I said, “Seems pretty ridiculous to me!” I looked to Lynn for agreement, but she frowned at me.
    Amber had brown hair, which she said she was going to dye blond when she turned sixteen. She had brown eyes instead of blue, which was a tremendous disappointment to her. She stuck out her pinkie when she held a cup. And, worst of all, she was making Lynn weird. For instance, Lynn had started to wear lipstick when our parents weren’t around.
    Many days Lynn tried to get me to spend time with her and Amber as