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didn’t need it on the screen.
    “There’s a new Jason Statham flick at the theater down the block, I hear,” she says, throwing out the name of our favorite action star. “We could get popcorn and gummy bears.”
    That was where we saw movies last summer, when we were together.
    “What do you mean?” I ask as my heart pounds against my skin, trying to make a mutinous escape to land in her hands. Does she mean go to the movies like we did when we were friends, or when we were more ? Because she alone could give me my reason to stay in California, if she wanted more .
    “Want to go? You know, for old times’ sake.”
    Right. For old times’ sake. Because we should be buds again, not more.
    “I’m not really up for a movie.” Movies, lunch, graduation-morning pop-ins—I don’t need her pity. I don’t need her trying to resurrect our friendship because she feels sorry for me.
    “Do you want to take Sandy Koufax for a walk then? We could walk and talk.”
    “Talk?” That four-letter word sounds so alien, like she’s speaking another tongue now.
    “Sure. Talk ,” she repeats, all tentative, like she’s not even sure how she’s forming words either.
    “I’ve got plans with Trina,” I say as I walk away so she can’t see my face as I lie to her.
    “Danny.”
    I turn around, and she looks like a snapshot, like she’s been caught taking one step toward me.
    “What?”
    “Nothing,” she says quickly. “It’s just… I trimmed the boat orchids earlier today. They look better now.”

Chapter Six
    The next day I check the mail for the first time in a week. There are no more sympathy cards. They have all come and gone. The sorry s, the prayers, the my thoughts are with you s are over. Everyone has said what they need to say to the bereaved, and everyone has moved on to their happy, joyful, noisy, everyday lives.
    The mail brings only memories. Catalogs from gardening-tool makers. Order forms from bulb suppliers for tulips, calla lilies, dahlias. There is even some flyer from this environmentally friendly tree company offering my mom a lilac bush. She loved lilacs. They were her favorite. Wild lilacs on trees. She stopped and smelled every lilac bush she ever saw, I’m sure. Every now and then she’d cut off a branch and put it in a vase, but lilacs were best enjoyedin the wild, she said. Then she’d wink and add, The wilds of Los Angeles .
    For Mother’s Day when I was ten, I woke up early and left the house with a pair of garden clippers. We had a neighbor a few blocks down who had a huge lilac bush on the side of his house. He was one of those dudes who didn’t like kids, though, one of those get out of my yard, you whippersnapper types. But my mom coveted his lilacs. So I sneaked into his yard, snipped off a few branches, and ran back down the street to our house. I placed the lilacs in a glass and handed them to my mom when she woke up.
    “You little scofflaw,” she said when I told her the story.
    “Do you like them?”
    “Love them. They’re perfect.”
    The next few days she sniffed them every chance she had.
    I drop the catalogs and everything else from the mailbox into the green recycling bin at the end of the driveway. As the papers fall, I see Mrs. Callahan from across the street. She’s in her porch swing, drinking a glass of iced tea. She holds a book in her hand and waves to me. “Good afternoon, Daniel,” she shouts.
    I wave back and turn around to head inside. I glance once more at the green bin, and just by chance—by sheer, dumb, accidental luck—I see something that doesn’t look like a catalog. It’s a letter, a handwritten one, practically an ancient artifact these days.
    I reach for the envelope. It’s addressed to me, my name written like it’s calligraphy in some sort of felt-tip pen. Thepostmark is Japanese and the name in the return address— Kana Miyoshi —is so familiar. My brain is feeling pinpricks, like someone is tapping needles against my head, trying