Free Lost Girls and Love Hotels by Catherine Hanrahan

girls in fifties-style cafeteria uniforms handed me strange morsels on toothpicks. Gifts for the weary traveler. There was always a crowd to be swept up into. I imagined being lifted off my feet, dragged by the shoulders of salarymen and schoolgirls to somewhere I couldn’t fathom.
    I walk along the outside at street level. Two levels of pedestrian walkways hug the side of the building. Commuters and students, shoppers and girls handing out packets of tissues emblazoned with adverts— Hai! Dozo, onegaishimasu! I’m in a daze. Freshly fucked. Happy and buzzing.
    On the second level of walkways, I see her. She stands out from the other walkers. She’s tall. Her blond hair catching the sun. Her profile. The nose. Something else. Something that tells me it’s her. She’s moving fast. I start to run. Look ahead half a block to the staircase to her level. I’m running. I seem to have a sense. How to get through the people traffic. Like I’m in a video game and I’m winning.
    I look up again. It’s her. I know it’s her. The dead girl. Alive.
    I keep running. Faster. The moment closing in on me. Like sex. Running toward something and away from something simultaneously. I make it to the staircase. Take the steps two by two. I want to look at her. Hold her by the shoulders and have a look at her. The eyebrows. Thewicked arch of them. The light spray of freckles. The eyes that have watched me in all my dark moments. I make it to the top. My legs hurt. They won’t cooperate. When I stumble, catching the edge of the last step with the heel of my palm—concrete against skin—the gaggle of schoolgirls appears. Sailor tops and blue skirts. In front of me, like a wall. Making noises like birds or machines, or machines meant to sound like birds. I lose sight of the lost girl. Gone into the station or down the stairs. Gone.

 
    I’m fourteen. Frank’s sixteen. Frank is slowly retreating from the world. I’m growing boobs. And getting skinny. It happens over the summer vacation before grade ten. I grow two inches. There’s a heat wave. Maybe I sweat the fat off. My chest swells like bread in an oven. I lie in bed, survey my body under the tent of the cotton sheet. I can see the outline of my ribs. It makes me think of greyhounds.
    Sometimes I lock the bathroom door and strike poses. Sometimes I wink at myself. Lean into the mirror, lips parted for a kiss. Mom says I’m blooming. I smell funny. Like fruit going bad.
     
    In phys-ed class the next year, the girls eye me suspiciously. I feel like I’ve broken some code of conduct. We’re learning to dive, but I can’t do it. It seems wrong to leap intothe hands of gravity that way. For amusement. For course credit.
    The boys start to notice me, too.
    I’m kept after school to learn to dive.
    “Keep your chin tucked in,” barks the teacher. “Keep your legs together.”
     
    In science class, we make little models of DNA molecules. It’s like a map, the teacher tells us. Everything we are is mapped out in our genes. He has the gene for red hair. That’s recessive. It’s rare. It’s why family members share traits. It’s why some diseases run in families.
    I wonder what’s mapped in me. The crazy gene. The loser gene. My hair is the color of straw. I wonder if that gene is rare.
    I get paired up with Tony Varda. I was taller than he last year, but he’s grown. At first, I’m nervous. Each movement, each facial expression seems forced and awkward. Then I begin to watch him. The thin layer of sweat on his forehead. The jerkiness of his hands. The way he can’t look at me. I let my eyelids go heavy. Look out from under them and curl my mouth up into a half-smile. He fumbles with the little plastic sticks and balls. “Here. Let me,” I say.
    It happens like that. Like instinct. I know how to torture boys. Exquisitely. Maybe it’s mapped in me.

 
    W e go up in one of the little elevators in one of the hundreds of narrow buildings in Asakusa. These entertainment