Kami Cursed (Dragon and Phoenix)

by Julianne Price

  “Well, let’s see what we can do,” he said, closing the door.

  I dropped my book bag on the floor with a thud and took out the baseball bat. “Are you sure you want to try this in here?” It was such a cramped space, and filled with precious objects- that I would probably end up destroying.

  Fumio shrugged. “Better to do it away from prying eyes, I think.”

  I nodded. He set the coin on the floor and we stood staring down at it. I tuned out the whispers that rose from it. “Walloping it didn’t seem to work last time. But that’s what I did to the book and it worked just fine.”

  Fumio took a deep breath and frowned, thinking. “What were you thinking when you picked up the bat and hit the book?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing really. I just saw the book and heard that noise it was making and my body moved all on its own.”

  He studied me for a moment. “Maybe you need to have intent for it to work.”

  I shifted the bat in my hands. “Intent?” I just wanted to get this over with and go home. The thing was giving me a headache with all its babbling and hissing.

  “Sure. You had a lot of emotion connected to that book. You hated it. It cost you years of your life. Maybe you need to feel that passionately about destroying the object for it to work?”

  “Okay.”

  He sighed. “I’d really feel better about this if Ryuu were here. His presence may offer some protection…”

  Screw Ryuu. I lifted the bat and thought about how much I wanted that coin to shut up. Spinning, I brought the bat down with a crack. The coin yelled at me. There was some sort of angry backlash and the bat bounced back. Right into the glass case containing Fumio’s scrolls.

  The monk straightened his clothes and stepped away from the door, where he had been pressed back out of the way. Shaking his head, he glanced at the glass littering the floor. “Next time, bring Ryuu.”

  *****

  I slipped into my seat at the back of the classroom just as the final bell rang. The teacher wasn’t there yet, so groups of kids were still clustered around, and their chatter filled the room. I had a sneaking suspicion I had somehow made the stupid coin stronger again. On top of that, I’d been scolded by the monks; this time for being too loud. Apparently, I had let out a yell at some point. Like I was supposed to take the kickback from a cursed object a little more quietly. Excuuuuus me. I stared down at my unopened book, wondering what new torture the day held for me.

  A loud laugh drew my attention and I looked up to see a pretty, blond girl staring at me. She averted her big, wide-set blue eyes and continued talking to the other girls that had gathered around her desk, her hand reaching up to touch the old locket she wore around her neck. Vanessa and her friends were acidic. Corrosive. Today they were all in matching uniforms- long sleeved shirts and absurdly short pleated skirts. A babbling flock of cheerleaders. I turned my attention back to my book, pretending that they weren’t laughing at me. Even though I was pretty much one hundred percent sure they were.

  I recognized several of the girls from the Ryuu fan club table at lunch. I was surprised that they were in my class, but then I reminded myself that they were probably a year or two younger than me. I could feel eyes on me now and then. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, staring at my notebook, but not really seeing anything written there. I was actually relieved when class finally started.

  After class, I stuffed my things into my bag and slid out of my seat, wanting to get out of there and meet up with Ryuu, even if he was bound to still be sulky over the whole Wyatt thing. One of the girls stuck out her foot as I passed and I narrowly avoided falling on my can.

  “Thanks,” I muttered sarcastically as I passed.

  I kept moving, but I heard the word crazy. It barely bothered me anymore. I’d heard that word so much that it really didn’t have much meaning to me. But my palms were sweaty, and my shoulders ached.

  Andrea was standing at her locker as I walked by. She waved me over with a smile that seemed genuine enough. Apparently, my spilling to her yesterday had cemented our bond. I changed course and headed over to meet her. She closed her locker and gestured down the hall. “Want to walk together?”

  “Sure.” I wasn’t sure how to react. After my hour spent with the acid squad, I was convinced that I would never be able to interact with another human being ever again.

  Andrea nudged my shoulder, and I was reminded of the times we had spent together when we were kids. “What’s up?”

  I shrugged. Vanessa tossed her honey colored hair and snickered as she passed us. I clenched my teeth and kept my eyes forward, pretending I hadn’t heard her.

  Andrea glared. “They’re still at it?”

  I sighed. “It’s not like I didn’t expect to get teased.”

  “Still, to keep it going this long….” I was surprised at how mad she seemed. “I don’t get it,” she said finally. “I mean, I know people change, but Vanessa’s like a totally different person this year.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “You mean she hasn’t always been a pain in the butt?”

  Andrea laughed. “Well, okay, maybe a little. But she’s way worse now. She used to be okay, no worse than the rest of the sheep.” She waved her hand dismissively. “But this year she’s so…I don’t know…”

  “Mean?” I suggested. “Snide? Petty? Acidic?”

  She laughed and nodded. “Yeah, that. She’s always looking down on people. Like she’s suddenly too good for everyone. She’s always telling people how her dad buys her stuff, and if someone in her little crowd doesn’t worship her, then they get shunned.”

  “Mmm…weird.” I tried. But really, I couldn’t care less about the snotty little rich girl. I had enough crap of my own to deal with.

  Andrea nodded, all wide-eyed, like she’d just shared a conspiracy with me. “Well, I gotta go.” She looked down at her feet for a minute, hesitating. “Um… hey, we should go do something together sometime!” Then she waved at me and went to stand in line with her friends. I breathed a sigh of relief when I looked around and saw Ryuu sitting in the corner brooding over some moldy old book. One of the cheerleader girls from the fan club pranced over and stood next to him, twirling her hair and blushing while she babbled at the speed of light. I rolled my eyes and took a lunch tray, wishing I hadn’t overslept this morning. I hated school lunches. I watched the little drama while I waited in line.

  All of the girl’s friends pretended they weren’t watching her, but it was obvious they were hanging on her every word. Ryuu kept staring at his book. He flipped a page and kept reading, not even acknowledging that she was there, and I smiled at her expense. Finally, he pulled his eyes away from the book and looked up at her. He seemed surprised to find her standing there. She smiled tentatively, the expression melting into anger in response to whatever he said to her.

  By the time I got my institutional square of pizza and went to sit by Ryuu, the girl was gone. I slipped my tray onto the table and glanced at the book. “What are you reading now?”

  He looked up immediately, smiling. “Hey Kit. Just some old stories.” He slid the book toward me, leaning over to show me the title. Cursed Objects.

  I raised my eyebrows. “So that’s why you were ignoring the cheerleader.”

  He frowned at me. “What? Oh, that girl.” He said the word like you’d say sweaty gym sock. He looked at her table and she put her nose in the air and pretended to ignore him. “The sound of her voice was giving me a headache.”

  He went back to reading and I braced myself and took a bite of the pizza. It wasn’t too bad, I suppose… if you didn’t mind cardboard as a meal replacer. I washed it down with apple juice, feeling like a little kid with my juice box.

  “So, other people see these objects?” I was surprised that there was actually a whole book devoted to the subject.

  Ryuu shook his head, his dark eyes regarding me seriously. “No. Not the same way I do. But you’d be surprised how many things are just accepte
d as cursed.”

  “Huh.” I abandoned the pizza for my apple.

  “Look,” he scooted closer, pushing my tray out of the way, and showed me the table of contents. “The Hope diamond, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the Delphi purple sapphire, the Crying Boy painting- that one’s really creepy, the mummy that sank the Titanic…”

  “Wait- a mummy sank the Titanic?” I shook my head.

  Ryuu shrugged. “Who knows?”

  I flipped through the book, glancing at the pictures. “So, all these things just randomly cause bad stuff to happen?”

  He brushed his dark hair out his eyes and I swear one to the girls at the next table sighed. I narrowed my eyes at them but they all seemed to be studying their food. It was all I could do not to laugh. It was seriously ridiculous.

  “Well, I don’t know.” He said, oblivious as usual. “But what I think happens is that somewhere along the way some kind of negative energy attaches itself to the thing- a Kami, or something like that- then something bad happens and the object gets passed on to a different owner. Every time some misfortune happens around the thing, it picks up more negative energy.”

  He picked up my pizza and took a bite, then frowned and dropped it back on my tray. “Next thing you know, you’ve got people committing suicide, or going crazy- doing things that aren’t like them at all.” He shrugged. “Who knows, maybe once the thing gets tainted enough, it even attracts bad people. Then you’ve got someone who’s already got a lot of negative energy now being influenced by this evil object.”

  I nodded slowly. “So you think it snowballs?”

  He tapped the book. “It seems to. A lot of these stories get worse over time.”

  I flipped through the book. “So if you saw these things in real life- not just a picture- you could tell if all this stuff is real?” It was an intriguing idea.

  Ryuu jiggled his legs under the table. “I think so.” His expression was excited and a bit panicked at the same time. “The Hope is in Washington D.C.”

  I stared at him. “Where we take our senior trips.”

  He grinned. “Yep.”

  Chapter 7

  I settled into my seat and pulled out my history book with a heavy, resigned feeling. As usual, I felt like everyone was watching me. It was mostly paranoia, I think. But the group of girls behind me kept giggling. I usually sat in the way back, but I’d been too late today and a group of Vanessa-ites had taken up residence there. There was a particularly loud burst of poorly disguised laughter and I gritted my teeth, staring at my notebook.

  It’s sick how relieved I was when class actually started and the drone of the teacher’s voice blotted out the whispers. I still felt scrutinized, and I felt a tug on my hair once, but I ignored it and focused furiously on class. Science and math were hard for me, but history I could do. It was all like an elaborate novel, filled with kings and wars and natural disasters.

  When the bell finally rang, I stood and hurried out of the room, wanting to get away from the back row. They followed me out the door at a distance, but I continued to pretend to ignore them. As I reached the door, one of the boys from class rushed by me. He reached out and ruffled my hair in passing, tangling it and messing it up.

  “Hey!”

  The acid squad laughed, and I grumbled to myself as I made my way out into the hallway. I reached up to straighten my hair, only to feel the unmistakable sensation of gum mashed into the strands. I stopped in the middle of the hallway, fuming. My fingers felt around the back of my head, finding a complete rat’s nest. The boy probably hadn’t put the gum there, but he made sure it wasn’t coming out.

  Other kids in the hallway had started to stare. I turned and glared at the girls behind me and they walked on by as if they had no idea what I was mad about, though I saw Vanessa smirk as she passed. People were pointing and murmuring by this time, half of them laughing, and half of them looking like they pitied the poor crazy girl.

  Suddenly it was just all too much to handle. My ears rang with anger, but tears cascaded down my cheeks. I felt surrounded by people, all of them hostile or uncaring. I kept my head down as I ran to the bathroom, my cheeks flaming. Once I was in the bathroom, I threw my bag on the floor and stood in front of the mirror, staring at my red face and ruined hair through a watery veil of tears. I closed my eyes, wishing with all my heart that when I opened them I would be fourteen again. That this whole mess would prove to be just a dream.

  It wasn’t a dream. The door creaked open and a noisy bunch of girls came in. They got quiet when they saw me standing there. They did their thing and left in a chattering herd, darting glances my way as I tried to pick the huge wad of gum out of my hair. The long strands were a knotted mess, and all I seemed to be doing was making it worse. I kept at it, anger and tears warring for dominance, my scalp stinging from the angry, ruthless force with which I was tugging on my hair. I couldn’t spend the rest of the day like this. It wasn’t just one little piece of gum. All of my long hair was knotted up in the back, sticking out in gooey spikes. God what had they done, chewed up a whole pack?

  The door creaked open again and I clenched my teeth, refusing to look at whoever had come to gawk at me now. My eyes widened in the mirror as I glanced into it and saw a boy standing there next to me.

  “Ryuu, you can’t just come strolling into the girl’s bathroom whenever you feel like it.” My voice held no heat. I couldn’t care less, really.

  I watched his dark eyes in the mirror as they studied the mess, a pained look on his face. “Your pretty hair…” he sighed and held out his hooded sweatshirt. “You can borrow this until school gets out. Then maybe Dawn can help you.”

  I took the sweatshirt. “Thanks.”

  The door creaked open again and a couple of girls stopped just inside, staring at Ryuu. “Uh… maybe you should leave.” I stooped to pick up my bag. “Thanks for the sweatshirt.”

  Ryuu shrugged. “No problem.” He turned a black glare on the girls as he made his way out. They looked scared and I suppressed a laugh. Ryuu in that mode was intimidating, no matter who you were.

  I spent the last hour of the day with my ruined hair hidden under the hood. When the bell rang, Ryuu was waiting for me at the exit. We walked back to his house in silence. He was glowering, practically radiating bad mojo.

  I sighed. “It’s just hair,” I said finally. “Chill out.”

  He turned that black glare on me and I decided not to comment anymore.

  Luckily, Dawn was there when we got home. “Oh no, honey!” She was horrified when she saw the damage. She ran her fingers through the one untouched chunk of hair near the front of my head, looking like someone had just kicked a kitten.

  I sighed. “Can you help me get it out?”

  She sat me down in one of the kitchen chairs and went to work. Ryuu settled in at the island and surfed the internet on his laptop, throwing out suggestions from time to time. Otherwise he was silent. Dawn tried peanut butter, cooking oil, and ice to try to get it out, but it was just so tangled that it wasn’t working. My scalp was getting sore, and I was tired of sitting in the hard wooden chair while she performed cooking experiments on my head. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Just cut it!”

  Dawn looked resigned. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. Ryuu stood up and left the room. I looked after him in surprise. “What’s his problem anyway?”

  Dawn stared at the doorway for a minute, a bit of a smile playing about the corner of her lips. “He’s just upset for you, that’s all.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s just hair.”

  She got the scissors, then stood looking down at me uncertainly. “Are you sure you want me to do this? You should probably go to the salon.”

  I shook my head emphatically. “I don’t have money for that, and besides, I have to make dinner and study tonight. I don’t have time to waste on something so stupid.” I didn’t want to let them win- the girls that did this.

  Surprisingly, Dawn seemed
to get it. “How do you want me to cut it?”

  I gestured straight across. “Just hack it off. I’ll pin it back if it’s too ugly.”

  Cutting my hair was so much easier than sitting there picking at it had been. Dawn was done in a matter of minutes. I glanced down at the long strands of hair lying on the floor. My hair had always been long ever since I could remember. I hadn’t had anything more than a trim before. We washed what hair was left in the sink to get the home remedies out, then dried it roughly with a fluffy towel. I shook my head, making my hair bounce around my shoulders. It felt light.

  Dawn grinned down at me. “You look really cute this way! Really mature. You should look in the mirror.”

  I shrugged and pushed my hair back out of my eyes. It felt odd when my fingers ran out of hair much faster than usual. “I’m sure it’s fine.” I was tired of the whole mess.

  Ryuu was in the living room looking sullen. I leaned over the back of the couch, startling him out of glaring at the TV. The short tips of my hair swung forward and I blew them out of my face. “Hey. Are you going to study with me today?”

  He turned and looked at me and his eyes widened. He looked so startled that I laughed and put a hand to my hair. “What? Does it look that weird?”

  Ryuu’s cheeks took on the slightest hint of pink. Then he started laughing. I waited patiently until he was done. “If you’re just going to laugh at me, I’m going home. I’ve had enough of being laughed at for today.”

  His expression immediately sobered, but he just kept staring at me. Exasperated, I went to straighten up and leave. Ryuu grabbed my arm, halting my motion. I froze in surprise when he turned to kneel on the couch, running his slender hands through my hair. “It’s really pretty.” He gifted me with a soft, secret smile, then disappeared into the kitchen to find a snack. “Remind me to thank Vanessa tomorrow,” he tossed over his shoulder.