Chapter 2

At first, I struggled with the idea that I would want to be more than friends with Charlotte. Even after quite some time, it still felt crazy to have even made one friend, much less finding someone that I loved like that. Even putting that aside, what 14 year-old knows how to navigate such things? In the end, I decided to do what I always did and simply force myself to do things even if they scared me. I decided that I would tell her my true feelings the next time we were in my room together, since it was one of the few places in the world where I knew that we would both be comfortable.

That, however, was easier said than done. I couldn’t help but think of all of the things that could go wrong. What if I made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t want anything to do with me? What if I made myself look like an idiot? What if I couldn’t bring myself to say my true feelings? Only being able to think of the worst outcome of a situation with is something that I would continue to struggle with for a long time thereafter.

And then, in what felt like no time at all, I found myself sitting in my room with Charlotte, watching a movie on a Mac that I had recently won in an eBay auction. As the end of the movie neared closer, I grew more and more anxious, knowing what I would have to do once the credits rolled. And when they finally did after what felt like an eternity, I stood up and said my piece that I had been rehearsing in my head for the past 2 hours, in the process mustering all the courage (and perhaps hubris) that a 14 year-old boy could have:

“Listen, Charlotte. I really like you, and I think we should be more than friends. If you don’t want to do that, that’s ok too. I just know how I feel about you, and I hope you feel the same way.”

I almost immediately felt a pit in my stomach. Did I sound too uptight? What if I creeped her out? What if I made her hate me and she never wanted to talk to me again? Luckily, there was nothing to worry about, as after what felt like an eternity of silence, she finally broke the it in a characteristically simple and quiet way:

“Of course.”

After that, we embraced in a long hug, and we sat there for a while, neither of us quite sure of what to do with ourselves. In the end, she broke the silence by asking me out to a local curry restaurant that we both enjoyed; our first official date. After that, not that much changed between us. We still did all of the things that we did together before, except that now we were a couple. We would still eat lunch together at school, find ways to entertain ourselves and each other once the school day came to an end, and indulge each other in our hobbies. Now, however, I found myself more able to notice Charlotte’s intricacies. Her cute smile, her beautiful hair, the way her face would light up when she could tell that I was enjoying a story she had written. If anything changed, it was that we both realized just how perfect we were for each other.

Over time, I started wishing that I had more money to spend on dates, and so I decided to leverage my electronics skills in order to get a bit of extra spending money. To do this, I signed up for a PayPal account, which gave me the ability to sell things on eBay even though I wasn’t old enough to get a credit card by myself. I could buy old electronics, (in most cases) get them working again, and sell them for a substantial profit in most cases. Although my initial goal was just to be able to take my girlfriend on better dates, I ended up making more money than I expected to. I was able to replace the cheap soldering iron that I had been using for years with a better one, and I even managed to upgrade my Mac away from being barely able to do much beyond going on the internet and playing Blu-Rays to being able to play relatively modern games. I remember at one point having the realization that I hadn’t thought about my mother in nearly a month. I was just having too much fun with Charlotte and with my new electronics repair business that I simply did not have time to be depressed about her, which I think is what she would have wanted. I think it was at this point that I fully accepted Japan as my new home. I had managed to take an awful situation that was unceremoniously thrust upon me and from it find both love and money, and I think there’s something beautiful about that.

It wasn’t perfect, however. I think my father finally realized that his life wasn’t getting any better, and so he started to become a far more angry person. As an example, there were a number of times that I would come home from school in the evening after spending the day with Charlotte, and he would get mad at me for staying out late, even though he never had a problem with it before. There were also a couple of times when he was in a particularly bad mood that he would get very angry with me for cooking for myself, calling me ungrateful and whatnot. He would insist he make me something instead, which wouldn’t have been so bad if he were any good at cooking.

There was also the issue of Charlotte’s mother. I think she was fine with her daughter being friends with an American, but as a result of her desire to get her daughter to connect with her heritage, would much rather have had her daughter date a Japanese boy instead. Ms. Anderson was never overtly hostile to me, but there was always a sense that she didn’t want me around, but that she knew that she wouldn’t be able to win a fight with her daughter over the issue. I could always see the look of disappointment on Ms. Anderson’s face when Charlotte and I would come home together, and she seemed to go out of her way to avoid talking to me, instead choosing to speak to Charlotte whenever we were together.

Overall, however, I did my best not to care. At the end of the day, I still had a wonderful girlfriend and a hobby that was making a good amount of money (especially as I continued to hone my skills), and so at the end of the day, the good significantly offset the bad. I felt pretty lucky to have what I had, and for what came next, I was going to need all of the luck I could get.