Chapter 2: September 8th, 1978

The school bus came to a halt as it pulled up on the street next to Gary’s home. He wore blue jeans, a buttoned red shirt, and old sneakers that barely fit him along with a small backpack with his lunch and essential school gear. He watched the door of the bus open as the sound of the brakes engaged, making its classical auditory squeak that filled the surrounding environment.

The bus driver, a quiet older man with a smirk on his face, looked at the child as he took note of him.

“You are the new one,” the driver told him. “Have a seat where you want ... ehm ... what’s your name again?”

“Gary Lee,” the child replied.

“Right. Go and have a seat, and don’t be causing any trouble on my bus now you hear me?”

“I understand.”

Gary’s eyes looked at the bus. There were a couple of students that filled the interior of the bus. Boys and Girls lined the rows of seats. Everyone looked like a stranger, and most of the eyes befell him. He knew this was the beginning of the day, and getting a chance to meet everyone was set with both wonder and possibly danger.

He noticed that most of the students had a pale complexion compared to his. While his skin color was barely different, his facial features were. He was being born from a man that was Chinese. It didn’t seem to bother the students, though, as most of the kids simply looked at their friends. They appeared more distracted with each other rather than giving a damn about the new kid. That was a good sign, at least. If they didn’t have a problem, then all he had to do was reach out, and they would want to make friends.

As he was about to have a seat, he could see a little girl run out of the neighbor’s house next door. Gary found an empty seat as he plopped his butt down onto the hard vinyl cushioned furniture. He could see the bus driver was just about to disengage the brake but saw a running girl. The girl seeing the bus was not going anywhere slowed down her run. Gary could take note of what he saw.

He noticed that it was the same girl from the previous day. She was not wearing that kimono as she did before, but a pink and white long dress that covered her body. She had a backpack that she wore on her shoulders. Her hair danced in the wind as she reached the bus quickly. Gary could notice from the front door of the home, a woman in her thirties that was in a kimono that she wore. Perhaps she was the mother of the girl?

The girl reached the steps of the bus as she walked inside. The bus driver gave her a scornful look.

“I almost left you behind! Next time I will leave you behind,” the driver said.

“I am sorry. Thank you for waiting for me.”

The bus driver shoed her away as the girl looked at the interior of the bus. She wondered down the aisle to find a seat. She went and sat in front of Gary, almost ignoring him.

Gary was tempted to go and ask the girl about her. He was rudely interrupted by a plop next to his seat. A kid that was larger than he was, went and moved from his previous seat to his.

The kid was not only bigger than him but might have been an eighth-grader. He had a jock shirt and pants. He might have been a football player of some sort.

“Hello, new kid. You just moved in?” the young teen asked.

Gary’s eyes went to the kid that sat next to him as the bus began to take off. The other kids took no notice of the new kid. He was bigger than him, and he had a blonde buzz cut on his forehead. He had a pale complexion to him. Gary felt a slight bit nervous with the teen, but he kept calm as he looked at him.

“Yes. I just moved in a couple of days ago,” Gary replied to him.

The older kid looked at him and smiled. “My name is Jacob. What is yours?”

“Gary ... Gary Lee,” he replied to him.

“Heh ... you have a last name that is Chinese, and you look ... like you are Asian.”

“No, I was born here. My father was Chinese. My mom was born here.”

“I see, I see,” the teen replied to him. “I was born in Nevada and moved to California five years ago.”

Gary noticed that the girl’s head turned a little bit from behind the seat. He wanted to focus on her, but this Jacob was persistent. He decided to appease the teen for just this once. “Nice to meet you, Jacob.”

“Good,” Jacob replied. They could hear a snicker come from behind them. On the seat adjacent next to them were other jocks wearing the same clothing that Jacob wore. Jacob turned his head and gave them an angry look. “Do you have a problem!?”

“No,” the other jocks said. They seemed to laugh and snicker at him.

“Good,” Jacob replied again. Gary was noticing the snickering too, but it seemed this Jacob was asserting his control over them. He calmed down a little bit as he saw the teen talk to him. “Now ... where were we. So Gary ... how long have you lived here in California?”

“I come from San Francisco. I lived there since I was born.”

“Hmmm ... I see. So Gary, do you like football?” Jacob asked.

“A little bit ... I read books, though more than anything.”

“Do you still play sports?”

“If I have to.”

“Hey, Jacob!” one of the teens from across the aisle called to him again. “You have to come check this out!”

“Ugh ... fine,” the teen replied. He got up and walked to the seat across and next to him. Gary could notice that the jocks were all sitting together and sharing what looked like a magazine with women on it. The women seemed to be scantily dressed as Gary focused straight ahead of him again.

The bus was making a few stops along the trip. Gary would feel the bus go forward and stop along the way. Children were all talking with each other and ignored him, all except one...

Gary was looking out the window when he noticed the girl. She was in front of him, looking at him through the reflection in the window. It took him by surprise as he didn’t know that he was being watched the whole time.

The little girl put her two fingers next to her chin as she was smiling at him. Gary responded to the girl by waving to her through the reflection. She was waiting for him to look at her, and he finally did. She turned her head around and looked at him. Her same cute and adorable smile she had was hypnotic to him.

The girl seemed to know what she was doing. She quickly got out of her seat and practically plopped to his position next to him.

Both the kids were almost waiting for the other to say something. Finally, the girl was the first to say something to him.

“Hello,” her voice said to him. Her voice had an accent to it, but Gary did not recognize it yet.

“Hello, my name is...”

“Gary Lee,” she interrupted him before he answered it thoroughly. “My name is Fumi Yuki.”

“Oh ... I recognize that accent now. You are Japanese?”

The girl nodded her head to him. She was his height and size as Gary quickly looked at her appearance. She was cute, that was for sure.

“So I guess you know where I come from, right? I mean, you must have heard what I told Jacob, right?”

“Yes. You come from San Francisco. Why did you move here? This place is not as big as that city.”

“Oh, that. Umm ... some of it is personal ... some of it though has to deal with my mom. She had to move here because of her job. Our home is not far from her workplace.”

“Do you know how long you will live here in Mira Mesa?”

“I don’t know. My mom does not want to move away from here if she can. She wants me to grow up here in this neighborhood if she had that power.”

“Ok,” the girl replied. She smiled as she looked at him.

“Heh...” Gary smiled back. “I saw you were wearing that ... kimono yesterday.”

“You liked that?”

“Yes, you seemed pretty in it. It made you stand out so much when I saw you.”

“My mother ordered them. I will let her know that you liked it.”

“So tell me about yourself, Fumi. Where do you come from?”

Fumi brushed her long hair away from her ear. “I was born here. I was born near Los Angeles before moving here with my mother.”

“Just your mom? What happened to your father?”

“He...” she tried to reply to him. “He...”

Gary could see she was struggling to say it. Instead, he decided to fill the words for her. “I am sorry. I lost my dad two months ago.”

Fumi looked down a little bit. “Yeah ... it’s alright. I ... never met my dad.”

“Oh ... I am so sorry,” he shrugged. “At least we have something in common.”

“Yes,” Fumi nodded. “What is your mom’s name?”

“Stephanie. What about your mom?”

“My mom’s name is Eshima.”

Gary nodded his head. “How do you have such a strong accent for somebody that was born here?”

“Well ... I grew up in a Japanese neighborhood here in Los Angeles.”

“Hmmm, interesting. I guess that makes sense. I wouldn’t be surprised people would think I was Chinese even though my mother was born here.”

“My mom was born in Japan. She moved here before I was ever born.”

The bus began to pull up to his middle school. Gary briefly could see the name of his school. The name Wangenheim Middle School was displayed on the billboard.

“I guess we will have to continue our talk later,” Gary told her.

Fumi looked bummed for a second. “Alright.”

There was a pause as Gary very briefly noticed that Fumi was looking at him thoroughly. She was checking his body before she turned her eyes away from him towards the bus parking ramp. One by one, the busses were all pulling in and unloading their students to the school. Staff and attendees were all there, guiding the students that we’re walking into the campus. There was a brief moment as he looked over to Fumi. He wanted to spend more time talking to her. She seemed nice. Too bad school was there to get in the way.

As the bus pulled in, Gary was about to get out of his seat. He looked over to Fumi that was already standing up. They looked at each other again and then proceeded with the other students as the bus pulled to a stop and began to unload the students onboard.

The school was relatively small for the large town. It consisted of a couple of large buildings, and that was it. It was just after lunch, and Gary was getting through class after class being introduced to everyone, learning the courses, meeting the teacher, and adjusting to the new school. However, he had one class left, and that was the hardest one that he had to get through in his life in school ... math.

Gary walked into the classroom with a folder, pen, and paper as he heard the bell ring to indicate the changing class period was over. He reached the classroom to see a room filled with over twenty students.

“Ah ... yes, I received the notification that I would get a new student today,” a friendly female teacher called out to him as he entered the room. “Gary Lee, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied as the students were getting comfortable in their seats.

“My name is Mrs. Cassada. Welcome to my classroom. Go and have a seat by the rear window there. We are getting through basic review before we start to delve deeper into math. You came at the right time when school got started, so you haven’t missed too much.”

She went and opened up her desk. She pulled out a spare math textbook to give to him. Gary received it with open arms.

Gary saw the class in front of him. All the students’ faces were looking at them. He had recognized a few of the students from some of the other classes throughout the day. This class was different, though. He identified two students that he had seen in the morning, though, and that was on the bus. One was Jacob, the big jock that was sitting on the other side of the classroom from his seat. He was busy trying to look at his math book. The other student that Gary recognized was Fumi. She was not far from his seat.

For a fleeting moment, Gary smiled a little bit when he saw Fumi. She was a happy sight to behold for him, even though he had only seen her a few times so far. The little girl saw him, and she even lightly smacked her desk with happiness at seeing him.

Gary went and had a seat at his desk. He had a good position in the room. He was near the back and away from any students that seemed threatening to him. Fumi sat two seats ahead of him, but at least he could see her.

“Alright, everyone,” Mrs. Cassada said. “Today, we will be reviewing Chapter 2, Section 3, in our general review section. From yesterday’s class, who can tell me what is 14 times 28?”

A few students went and started to write it down on their scrap sheets of paper. They started doing the math. Gary went and pulled out a sheet of paper from his folder. He already had his pencil ready, and even if he didn’t have the answer, it was a wakeup call to him to try his best with getting started.

Fumi wrote a few things on her paper, but she raised her hand in which the teacher called her name.

“392 ma’am,” Fumi answered.

“Very good,” the math teacher replied with a look of content. “Now,” she said, looking at the rest of the classroom. “Who can tell me what is 392 divided by 16?”

Gary watched his paper closely as he started going through the process of writing down the numbers and doing the process of breaking down the math problem so he could solve it. He momentarily looked at the classroom. He saw many pencils at work as the students were trying to solve the problem on the board. He was struggling, and he knew the students would have the answer before him.

“Yes, Joseph,” the teacher called out the student in the front seat.

“24.5,” he replied.

“Correct. Thank you, Joseph,” she told him.

Joseph put his pencil down as Gary stopped and put his hand to his head.

The teacher went and put her hands together. “That was just the warm-up for today’s classroom. We will be going through the end of the chapter review and get started with your homework. After we finish up with that, in twenty minutes, we will go and review your work. I will be walking around, so feel free to ask me if there is anything that you don’t understand. I want you to turn to pages 45 to 46 and do problems one through fifteen. Change that...” She said as she was flipping through the pages of her math book. “Don’t worry about problem number 4. We have not had a chance to go through it thoroughly. Skip that one. If you wish, you may partner up with someone so that you can help one another out.”

With that, the classroom got started with their work. All the students began eyeing each other. Some were already getting out of their seats to try to sit close to somebody that they already knew. Fumi turned her head to look at Gary, and his eyes naturally went to her. He was just about to get out of his seat when a limbering kid walked next to him.

The student that walked up to him was Jacob. He went and grabbed the one empty seat and sat close to Gary. Gary was almost annoyed at seeing the big kid come to him as he was about to go towards Fumi. The little girl simply looked at Jacob and shook her head as she went back and looked at her paper once again.

“Hey, ... looks like I got help,” Jacob told him. “Mind if we tackle problems one through three?”

Gary was bummed out a little bit but looked at the kid and answered his question. “Sure...”

Gary watched Jacob as he took his notebook and pulled out his pencil. It had chewed marks on the wood as if he had some lousy habit as he started writing on his paper.

“Hey, what’s the answer to number two?” Jacob asked him.