Girl Punches Out

by Jacques Antoine

  “Emily, can we talk for a minute before you head out?”

  The room he ushered her into looked like a study. A few chairs, an occasional table and a desk were placed here and there in what were probably not their final resting places. The room practically cried out for a sofa, or at least a stuffed chair. The shelves on three walls were mainly empty. They stood next to each other looking over the woods descending from the window.

  “I have to ask you something, you know, about my mom,” she said, effectively preempting whatever it was he had in mind.

  “Okay…,” he replied warily.

  “Has she told you about the blood tests Dr. Tarleton had done?” When he said he hadn’t heard, she filled him in. “There’s something strange about those tests,” she finished.

  “It doesn’t sound so strange to me. Just some elevated hormone levels. You’re a very active person. Couldn’t it just be because of that?”

  “I suppose. I mean, maybe that sounds reasonable. But my life has just been so unreasonable these last few months that I’m having a hard time accepting reasonable stories.”

  “What exactly do you want me to tell you?”

  “You were there, in Tokyo I mean. You saw what my grandfather was like, what my mom was like in those days. All these people think I’m some sort of experiment. My dad told me all about it. He said that the experiments never amounted to anything. But I really need to know if there’s any chance… you know, that there’s some truth to what these people think about me.”

  Michael paused for a long moment, weighing what he should say. Maybe he didn’t want to get between her and her mother.

  “That was such a strange, dangerous time. It’s hard even to put myself back there. Your grandfather was so determined, so stubborn. I guess he was also blind to what it meant to do what he was trying to do.”

  “I know,” she grunted in agreement.

  “Your mom was helping him, running the lab for him, working the data. But she was always against the project. She was constantly trying to get him to see what was wrong with it.”

  “Why didn’t she just leave him, then?”

  “I think she was worried the people around him would take advantage of him. He was so focused on his ideas, he wouldn’t be hard to manipulate. She loved him. And there were suspicious types hovering around the lab, even people like me and your father. I think it must have been really hard to know who to trust.”

  “How did she decide on you two?”

  “That was all about your father. There was no reason to trust me. But you remember that way your father had of looking at you with those blank eyes. I think your mom understood something about him almost from the beginning, just from looking into those eyes.”

  “Her eyes are pretty scary sometimes, too,” she added.

  “Yeah, I guess so. In fact, they’re a lot like yours,” he said with a smile. “But there’s no way she would have consented to experiment on herself, to let her father infect her with whatever virus they were working on. There’s just no way.”

  “Maybe some sort of accident…” she began hesitantly. He frowned.

  “Maybe… I suppose it’s not impossible. But I’m pretty sure they never developed a viable code in the first place. There wouldn’t have been anything to put in a virus.”

  Emily thought about this for a while. It was a relief to hear it from Michael. He had no reason to lie to her. She leaned her head against his shoulder and thanked him.

  “Jesse’s explained the electronics to you?”

  “Yeah, he showed me how to work it,” she said pulling the ‘phone’ out of her pocket absentmindedly.

  “Those cameras are included in the feed the team here looks at. They’ll buzz you if they see anything. But if there’s trouble anywhere, don’t hesitate to come straight here. You don’t have to face these people alone anymore.”

  -back to top-

  Chapter 16

  Skinny Dipping

  The glow of the weekend spent with her family still lingered in the corners of her mood the next morning. Little tasks occupied the morning: folding laundry, breakfast, preparing a lunch. She tracked herself walking around the yard on the ‘phone’ Jesse gave her, watching as she showed up on her screen and then locating each camera from it. They were indeed hard to spot, and quite silent. The ‘phone’ buzzed: a text from Jesse.

  “r u auditioning 4 the cameras?” She laughed and turned to face the camera trained on the garage. With a big smile she waved back at him, and imagined the smile on his face. The pleasure of this imaginary exchange was considerable.

  The week started hopefully. No sign of the Koreans anywhere. If only they had given up on her. Jiang’s desperate schemes for his niece drifted to the back of her mind. She was so far from being able to do anything to help that it just wasn’t possible to focus any steady attention on her. The little girl drifted into abstraction.

  The prom committee was cranking up the machinery of school spirit in anticipation of the event three weeks hence. When Emily walked through the front doors it was impossible not to notice. A new poster campaign adorned the hallways: variations of a kid in top hat and tails and a long white beard pointing at the camera. The slogan read “Uncle Prom Wants You.” Everyone on the committee was featured in at least one poster. The one with Amanda looked particularly good, as even Emily had to admit.

  The rest of the semester looked like an easy ride. She had already finished the last of the big projects that would be assigned. There would be a few quizzes and tests in Calculus and Physics, probably also in History, and an impromptu literary essay or two in English. But those were just a matter of ordinary business. The homework load would be correspondingly light from now on.

  At lunch on Wednesday Wayne was feeling much better. His shoulder was on the mend. Billy and Wendy wanted to do something to let off steam. Emily could see that the pressures she felt had taken a toll on her friends too.

  “We could go down to Covington,” Billy suggested.

  “What’s there to do down there,” Wayne asked.

  “I dunno. We could go see a movie or something.”

  “We could go over to the lake,” Melanie suggested. “You know, to Coles Point or maybe Bolar Beach.”

  “I dunno,” Wayne said. “It’s pretty empty there this time of year. What are we gonna do?”

  “Who knows. We could pick up a couple of pizzas at that place in Barcova and just hang out,” Wendy proposed. Wayne’s view of this scheme became more optimistic once food was included. “What do you think, Em?”

  “I’m in. Maybe we could go for a swim if it stays warm.”

  “The water’ll be freezing even if it is warm,” said Danny with a mock shiver. It was settled.

  “Let’s meet up at my house around five,” Billy said. “We can probably take my dad’s SUV.”

  Emily ran a couple of errands after school, checked her mail, stopped at the grocery store, etc. She put a few towels in the truck in case they did end up in the water. Danny met her in the driveway and they headed over to Billy’s house.

  There were too many people to fit comfortably in the SUV with Melanie coming along, so Danny rode with Emily. She called ahead to order a couple of pizzas. Billy brought a cooler with some sodas and water on ice. By the time they arrived, just before sunset, no one else was in sight. All the campsites they passed along the mountain road were empty. They had the place to themselves and about a dozen picnic tables along the beach to choose from.

  Lake Moomaw shone dark silver under the moonrise. It was almost full, and the sky was clear and still. The evening star contributed its little spoonful of reflected light to the scene. Wendy’s little boom box filled the air. From where they sat, it sounded like it must have been audible all they way to the little islands opposite the beach, across about two thousand feet of open water. But this was just an illusion. It could barely be heard a hundred feet away.

  They talked about the prom mainly. Danny wasn’t nearly as
oppressed by the topic as he had been just a few days earlier, even though he’d still gotten no answer from Emily. Wayne was having difficulty finding a tuxedo in his size. Wendy and her mom were going shopping for a dress in Charlottesville on Saturday.

  “You got a dress yet, Mel?” Wendy asked.

  “Sort of, I guess. It’s a hand-me-down from my cousin. She wore it to her prom last year.”

  “What’s it look like?” Emily asked, genuinely curious. She knew nothing about prom dress fashions.

  “It’s a pale blue ‘messenger bag’ dress, you know, only one shoulder strap, and it’s straight to the knees, a little untraditional I suppose.”

  “I know where you can get blue shoes to go with that,” said Wendy excitedly. “Everyone should have at least one pair of blue shoes, I think.”

  Naturally, the boys found this conversation a little less than scintillating. They were more interested in discussing prom transport and began to wander off through the trees down to the beach. None of them could afford a limo, but that’s what they all wanted to provide. It looked like they were going to have to settle for a family car or, in Danny’s case, his dad’s beat up old pickup.

  “Didn’t someone say something about swimming earlier?” he called back to the girls.

  “I didn’t bring a suit,” said Billy. “Besides the water’s gonna be like ice.

  “Chicken,” Wayne retorted.

  “Whaddya say, shall we go in?” Wendy said to Melanie.

  Emily was already walking to the truck.

  “I brought a few towels,” she said and dumped them on the picnic table.

  “Mel, you got a suit?” Wendy asked, though she had nothing that would fit her. But she had brought the extra suit her mother picked out, a skimpy bikini she was embarrassed to wear. Fortunately Melanie had brought her own, a one-piece racing suit.

  “What about you, Em. You bring a suit?” Melanie asked.

  “A suit? No. I don’t own one.”

  “What? Are you planning on skinny dipping,” she asked incredulously. Emily shrugged.

  “Here, Em, you can wear this one,” Wendy said, holding out the bikini. Emily started stripping down to change into the suit.

  “Emily,” Melanie shrieked out. “The guys are just over there.”

  “Don’t worry, Mel. They’re not looking this way. Let’s just change and run into the water.”

  After they had all changed, Melanie gazed at Emily in the bikini. Despite seeing her in PE on a daily basis, this was the first time she really just looked at her. It was a relief to see the bruises were almost gone. Also, the girl was lean and strong, like nothing she’d seen before. And she was used to hanging out with the girls on the basketball team. Those girls were in shape, but not on this scale.

  “OMG, Emily. You look fantastic,” she said in awe.

  “You look pretty good yourself, Mel.”

  They locked everything in the truck, grabbed the towels and ran down the path to the beach screaming and giggling. Before the boys knew what happened the girls were in the lake. Wayne and Danny stripped down to the suits they had remembered to wear under their jeans. Billy was the last one on the beach, in a quandary about what to do: go commando, or swim in his underwear. But they were just boxer shorts that would turn see-through as soon as they got wet. His friends hooted at him until he finally ran into the water.

  The air was much warmer than the water. As long as they kept moving it didn’t seem to matter. The girls swam out to a floating swim dock fifty yards out and the boys soon followed. They could all stand on it, but there wasn’t enough room if the girls lounged across it. As, of course, they did. Naturally a frantic game of king-of-the-dock ensued. It would have been pretty much impossible for anyone to force Emily off. But she let Wayne push her off a couple of times. It was more fun to be in the water anyway, even if it was cold.

  After a while, Wayne’s shoulder began to tighten up. Melanie swam in with him. A few minutes later, Wendy swam back to make sure he was doing okay, and Billy followed after her. Danny was alone on the dock. Emily floated on her back a few yards further out. The stillness of the lake lapping against her ears covered the world in a starry robe of delicious silence. Venus had already set, the moon was halfway up the other side of the sky.

  She listened as each breath filled her lungs, lifting her chest to the surface of the water. She sank back down as it left her body. In and out, up and down. Slowly. The hum of the world grew quiet. Her breathing filled the lake, pressing against the bottom beneath her. It reached out to the islands and beyond, to the opposite shore, and up and down the long fingers reaching north and south. She felt for a brief moment that her breath could follow the reflection of the sky upwards. The aspirations of her lungs were practically limitless.

  She realized she wasn’t alone. Danny was treading water next to her. He reached out to touch her shoulder.

  “Aren’t you getting cold, Em?”

  “A little, I suppose.”

  “Wanna go back?”

  “Float with me for a bit, okay?”

  He leaned back and let his legs drift down.

  ~~~~~~~

  When your body is almost entirely submerged in water, listening to the work of your chest is difficult to avoid. Even Danny could hardly miss it. He heard it in his nostrils first, and in his ears. After a while he could feel it moving down his back, tingling as it passed along his spine. As his lungs expanded and contracted he could feel the level of the lake change. Perhaps it was an illusion, he thought. Still, his breath had carried him outside of himself and this was a new experience. No great revelation, nothing of profound significance presented itself in that tiny, transcendent moment. At least it showed him there was indeed something to hear inside of him, and that thought echoed as if in a cavern somewhere deep in his cerebellum.

  He was shivering. He realized she was holding his hand as they floated side by side. The sound of distant voices warbled confusedly through the water and into his ears. Their friends were calling to them from the shore. How long had they been floating? He righted himself and moved his arms and legs to stay afloat.

  “C’mon, Em. Let’s go back. They’re getting impatient.”

  Reluctantly, she rolled over and swam lazily toward the shore. Their friends had already toweled off and mostly changed back into street clothes. Danny found the bottom with his toes before she did. When he straightened up to stand, she noticed and pulled herself in front of him. With her arms draped loosely around his neck, she looked into his eyes. He put his arms around her waist, his heart thumping against his ribs. She let him hold her for a moment, enjoying the warmth of his embrace in the cold water. She kissed him.

  “Thanks for not pressing me about the prom.”

  She pushed out of his arms and swam the last few yards until she could walk on to the beach. Danny just stood there in water up to his chest gazing at her as she stood on the beach with his friends. At last he found the will to move his legs and join them. By the time he made it to the beach she was up by the truck getting dressed with Wendy and Melanie.

  ~~~~~~~

  Emily heard the rumbling a couple of minutes before they pulled in to the parking lot. A dozen or so bikers rounded the corner of the entrance and pulled up into a loose semi-circle around her truck. The boys also heard the noise and came running up. Emily eyed them carefully. They wore gang insignia: “Sons of Fire” in red letters over a flaming skull. They must have ridden over from just across the border near Sulphur Springs. A few of them were quite large and very muscular. They wore sleeveless denim jackets to show off their biceps. Most of the others were lean and wiry. They stared at her and the others with a hungry, resentful look. Two rather stout women were along for the ride. She didn’t see any guns, but some knives and clubs were visible.

  Before anyone moved toward them, a chorus of cat calls came their way. Most of it was empty, lurid sarcasm. Some of it was cynical taunting with an implicit threat, or perhaps a challenge. The two lar
gest men remained silent, watching sullenly from the back of their bikes. Some of the others were on their feet and beginning to approach. One other man remained on his bike, between the other two large men, saying nothing. He was smaller, but his eyes looked contemptuously at everyone, her friends as well as the gang. She recognized in that look the sort of leader appropriate to a criminal gang.

  “Mel, keep Wayne back. Wendy, help her,” she said over her shoulder. The girls corralled the boys between the trucks for the time being. But Danny wasn’t having any of it. He worked his way around the back of Emily’s pickup. Seeing the movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned to look at him with one finger in the air, as if to say “Give me a minute.”

  “So you’re the boss, honey?” one man said as he put his arm on her shoulder.

  When she turned back to him, he pulled his hand away, without saying a word, as if he had accidentally touched a hot stove. She pushed past him and stepped directly in front of the quiet one she took to be the leader, still seated on his bike. They stared at each other for a long moment, some of the others closing the circle behind her. That effectively focused all of the gang’s attention on her. Her friends watched with alarm. She could feel their fear, even as she heard Wendy and Melanie pleading with the boys to stay back with them.

  “Looky what we got here, boys. This one’s got some fire in her eyes,” he said at last with a sneer. “What should we do with this saucy wench and her timid friends?”

  “I don’t want any trouble from you boys,” Emily said darkly.

  “Well, trouble may just have found you, honey, whether you want it or not,” he replied with a sneer accompanied by more catcalls and jeering from behind her.

  “Bring it on, then,” she growled. “But I keep the bikes if you make me fight.”

  That was absolutely not what anyone expected to hear just then. The leader stood up, swung a leg over the gas tank and walked up to her. They eyed each other warily, each uncertain what the other would do. The rest seemed transfixed by what they were seeing, like that odd stillness in the air just before an impact. It was a suspension of the power to will diffused among them all.