Free Silent Honor by Danielle Steel

Even Hiroko had enjoyed it, although she didn't know anyone, and everything she touched or tasted or encountered was so different from everything she knew and everything she had expected.
    “Did you have fun?” Reiko asked as Hiroko came down to help in the kitchen again, after putting Tami to bed. They had invited several students her age, but she had been too shy to speak to them. She had spent most of her time alone, or with Tami. Peter Jenkins was the only adult guest she had actually talked to. But that had been his doing and not hers. It had been difficult for her to speak to anyone, even him. She was just too shy, but she had found the evening interesting and the guests friendly.
    “I have fun,” she confirmed, and Reiko smiled at her. She knew that Tami would take cafe of Hiroko's English. Lassie was lying on the floor wagging her tail as they spoke, waiting for scraps from the party. Ken and Tak were outside cleaning up the barbecue, and collecting abandoned glasses. Only Sally seemed not to be helping. She was in the downstairs closet, on the phone with a friend, and had promised half an hour before that she'd be off in a minute, but there was something she had to tell her.
    “You were a big success,” Reiko said, and meant it. “Everyone loved meeting you, Hiroko. And I'm sure it wasn't easy.” The young girl blushed, and went on helping with the dishes in silence. She was so shy that it still surprised all of them, and yet Reiko had seen her talking to Peter. He had come to the party tonight with his new girlfriend. She was a model in San Francisco, and she had noticed Ken eyeing her with approval.
    “Did everyone have a good time?” Tak inquired as he came in from the patio with a tray full of glasses. “I thought it was a really nice evening,” he complimented his wife, and smiled at Hiroko.
    “I too,” she said softly. “Hamburgers are great,” she paraphrased Tami, and they all laughed, as Ken helped himself to some leftover chicken. He ate constantly, but he was the right age for that, and he was going to start football practice for school at the end of August. “Thank you for a very nice party,” Hiroko added politely, and a little while later they all went upstairs to their respective bedrooms.
    Sally and Hiroko undressed quietly, and then slipped into bed in their nightgowns. And as they lay there, Hiroko thought of how far she had come, the long journey she'd had, the people she'd met, and the warm welcome she'd had from her cousins. Even if they weren't Japanese anymore, she liked all of them. She liked Ken, with his mischief and his long limbs, and his insatiable appetite, and Sally with her fascination with clothes and boys and telephones and secrets, and especially little Tami with her remarkable doll-house and determination to make Hiroko American, and their parents who had been so kind to her, and even given her a party. She liked their friends too …and even Lassie. She just wished, as she lay there, thinking about all of it and what an adventure it had been, that her parents and Yuji could have been there too. And maybe then she wouldn't have been so homesick.
    She turned on her side, with her long black hair fanned out behind her on the pillow, and she could hear Sally already snoring softly. But Hiroko couldn't sleep. Too much had happened to her. She had spent her first day in America. And she had more than eleven months ahead of her, before she could go home to her parents.
    As she drifted off to sleep, she first counted the months, and then the weeks …and finally the moments…. She was counting in Japanese as she began to dream, thinking that she was home again, with them…. Soon, she whispered as she slept…. Soon …home …And in the distance she heard a young man say sayonara. …she didn't know who he was, or what it meant, but she sighed as she turned over and put an arm around Sally.

Chapter 5
    H IROKO SPENT her second day in America pleasantly with her cousins.