“There was something on the news today about three men badly beaten, one of them stabbed, not far from here.” She looked into my eyes.
I gave her my most sarcastic look. “Yeah, we beat up three men and stabbed them.” I rolled my eyes again and sighed. “Give me a break.”
She made a face, but it looked like she believed me.
“Can we talk about Grandpa now?” I said.
“This isn’t over, Junya.”
“Yeah, but this is way more important.”
She didn’t look convinced. I pointed to her chair and she sat down across from me.
“Grandpa was acting weird last night,” I said.
“How was he different?”
I told her what he said about Lin and what I saw.
“I know about them,” she said, although I sensed a bit of apprehension. “He shouldn’t have to play the lonely widower so he can be the ideal grandfather.”
“No, I agree.”
“But I am surprised they acted that way in front of you.”
“Yeah, it kind of shocked me when he put his hand halfway up Lin’s thigh.” I laughed, trying not to blush and failing.
“‘Lin’?”
I cringed again. “She said I could call her that.”
“Your world is changing rather quickly.”
That was an understatement. “There’s more.” I told her about seeing Walter Roacks and Mr. Müller and about Grandpa’s reaction.
She was silent.
“What’s wrong?”
She forced a smile. “I worry about all this. After what happened with your dad on Saturday …” Her words trailed off.
“Yeah, what’s with that?”
“It’s not my place to tell you.”
I scowled. “There are a lot of secrets in this family.”
“You should talk,” she said, an edge in her voice now. “What’s happening to you? Your energy is unusual—it wavers and disappears.”
I stared back, trying hard to avoid thinking about today. “That stream you talked about is getting stronger. Way stronger. That’s how I knew Shoko was in trouble—I sensed it somehow.”
“Really?” She looked amazed.
I nodded. “And Shoko’s a bit … odd.”
She scowled. “How so?”
“She’s a lot like you.”
I got a look. “Don’t stereotype. Japanese society is completely different from American. She probably thinks you’re weird, too.”
“It’s not that. She said she came from a small village, far from any city. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
She rolled her eyes. “Half the population of Japan lives outside the cities.”
“And she can fight like you wouldn’t believe.”
She looked suspicious now. “Then why did you have to protect her?”
My eyes dropped to the tabletop. “I thought she needed help—I didn’t know she could fight like that until after I got out of the car … Maybe I didn’t hear the stream right.” I put my head in my hands. “It’s really confusing.”
When I looked back up, Okaasan was staring off into space. When our eyes met, there was something strange in them.
“You’ve had an overwhelming few days, with your grandpa getting sick and this new intuition—”
“Don’t forget becoming the heir to a multibillion-dollar business that’s going broke.”
“Being emotionally drained is sometimes worse than being physically sick. You should take it easy the next few days. I’m worried about you.”
Maybe she was right, but … “I’m going to the Giants game tonight with Mack,” I said. “I’ll take it easy after that.”
CHAPTER
14
I found Mack at our dining-room table, his thick forearms resting on either side of an empty but crumb-covered plate. He didn’t notice me come in as he stared out the glass wall toward the teahouse.
“Hey, buddy.” I plopped down beside him.
He sighed as Okaasan came in from the kitchen carrying a tray of drinks.
“I never get tired of that view,” he said.
“The garden or the food?”
Okaasan saw Mack’s empty plate and rushed back to the kitchen for more.
“Stop feeding him,” I called after her. “He’s like those bears in Yellowstone Park. They become habituated and you can’t get rid of them.”
“I’m always hungry and your mom never stops feeding me,” Mack said. “It’s the perfect relationship.” He grinned. “In fact, I think she likes me more than you.”
“Even if she hated you she’d still feed you. It’s her culture.”
“Perhaps.” He winked at me as she came back into the room. “But in my case she really does.”
She placed a large plate with melted cheese and crackers on the table.
“What are you two talking about?”
“Mack wants you to adopt him.”
Mack dug something out of his pocket. “Ah, Mrs. Thompson, would you mind looking at this?” He handed her a piece of paper with a Chinese character drawn on it.
She made a face. “What’s this?”
“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,” he said. “The guy in the tattoo shop said it means ‘strong,’ like the newest tough guy in town.” He flexed his sizable biceps. “I thought it was appropriate.”
Okaasan was smiling now.
Mack looked up at her in mid-flex. “What?”
Okaasan burst out laughing.
“What, what does it mean?”
When she regained her composure, she patted his arm. “I’m sorry Mack, but this means ‘porcupine’!” She started laughing again.
“I’m gonna kill that guy!”
She waved a hand. “That’s nothing. Last week I saw a guy who had stupid foreigner across the back of his neck!”
I looked at my watch and stood. “Come on, we’re gonna be late.” I was up and out the front door before he even got his shoes on.
“Why’re you acting so stressed, man,” Mack said as we walked up Arbutus Street to catch the bus downtown. “I’m the one who nearly got a rodent tattooed on his arm.”
“What?” I had my hands shoved into my jacket pockets. “Oh, yeah, I’m stressed all right.”
“Because of your grandpa?”
I looked up at him. “Do you think a person who’s going crazy knows it, or would they be oblivious?”
He was quiet for a minute. “Ignoring the implications of that statement,” he finally said, “I think if someone—you, for example—were going crazy, I don’t think you’d know it. So, if you think you’re going crazy, then I would have to assume—despite all evidence to the contrary—that you’re not.”
I stopped and stared at him. “Man, where did you get that?”
He shook his head sadly. “I,” he said with a hand on his chest, “am far deeper than you’ll ever know.”
We started to walk again, but after a moment I gave him a mischievous grin.
He frowned, “Now what?”
“I went on a date today.”
“You went on a date?” He grabbed my arm. “That’s it, let’s get you to the nuthouse!”
I pulled away, laughing.
“Let me ask you this,” he said. “Did the girl involved know it was a date?” Then, before I could answer, he continued. “There was a real girl involved, right?”
“It was that girl from the library on Saturday, the one you said was cute?”
“A cute girl at the library,” he said. “There were so many.”
“The one in the school uniform,” I said. “She smiled at me, remember?”
“Ah, the girl who allegedly smiled at you.” He nodded. “She’s not my type.”
“Well, she’s my type.”
He glared down at me. “What are you saying? You landed a date with her?”
I grinned.
“Get out of here!” He gave me a slap on the back that knocked me off the sidewalk. Then he rubbed his chin. “So
did you lose your innocence?”
“My innocence is none of your business.” To my surprise, I didn’t blush.
“That means no.” He smirked. “But James’s got himself a woman. Unbelievable.” Then he frowned at me. “You’re different from the last time I saw you.” He looked puzzled for a minute. “You sure you didn’t get laid?”
I laughed. “Pretty sure. It’s just been … an amazing few days.”
We got off the bus on Market Street not far from Grandpa’s building. It was busy downtown, and for a while I almost forgot about my problems. I was busy just trying not to get run over or trampled by tourists.
“Gimme a minute,” Mack said as he turned toward a deli on the corner. “I need a snack before the game.”
“I think you’ve got a tapeworm, man.” The deli looked packed, so I squatted against the building. “I’ll wait out here.”
I watched the restored streetcars rumble by. An orange Milan tram passed going north, followed by my favorite streetcar, number 1007, painted in the red and white motif of the Philadelphia Red Arrow Line. I fought the urge to run and climb on.
I glanced toward the deli. Mack was still far from the counter. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and began to pace in the shadow of the towers, at the bottom of a vast canyon. The crowds flowing past me made me feel like a stone in a stream. Energy seeped from every person. Excitement, indecision, fear, insecurity—so much negativity that it started to overwhelm me. I wished I could tune it all out.
I wandered over to the front doors of Grandpa’s building and leaned against a newspaper box, thinking of Shoko. Okaasan and Mack were right: there was something different about me, and it had all started with Shoko. She was amazing—the things she could do, the things she understood. And she got me thinking about those stories Grandpa told me when I was young, about female warriors guarding the shrines of the gods. It had been only a few hours, but I already felt like I needed to see her again. I had so much more I wanted to ask her.
I glanced at the deli again. Mack was up next. I checked the time. There was only a half-hour until game time. It was when I started banging my toe against the newspaper box that I saw the headline: “THOMPSON GROUP ANNOUNCES LAYOFF OF 1600 EMPLOYEES AMID GROWING FINANCIAL CRISIS.”
I skimmed the long story underneath. Walter Roacks spoke for the chairman, who was away due to “health issues,” but I was positive this wasn’t what Grandpa had in mind when he told Walter to fix things.
I’d blamed Shoko for starting this, but she was only a player, a small part of a much larger whole. Tomi and Grandpa had started something with that gold, but what? Seeing Grandpa with the machine gun had scared the hell out of me, but that didn’t make the gold evil. Shoko said it had changed him, but how would she know? None of us knew what he’d been like before that trip to the desert.
I turned to face the crowd that flowed toward me. No one met my eyes or bumped me. Energy did though, a thousand voices blurring into one loud roar like the fans at a ballgame.
I clamped my hands over my ears and backed against the wall. The buildings around me started to feel like massive walls blocking out the sun—a trap slowly locking into place around me. I looked up and down the street, frantic.
I spotted the clock tower of the San Francisco Ferry Building. Behind it, the water and the bright open sky beckoned to me. I sucked in a long, slow breath.
“What are you doing?”
I spun, ready to fight, and then saw that it was Mack.
“Easy, man. What’s up?”
“I had this weird … Oh, boy.”
“Are you OK? You’re sweating.”
“I’m …” My head came up as a gust of wind blew past me and sent a newspaper page twirling down Market Street. It floated, aimless, carried by the wind of fate, and for some reason, ignoring Mack’s protests, I followed it.
The wind carried the paper into the alley behind the Thompson Building. I turned the corner in time to see it flatten against the windshield of a white cube van backed up to the loading bay. Then, its message delivered, the newspaper carried on its journey down the alley.
Anthony Roacks leaned against the van, his back to me. Walter Roacks stood by the loading door, flanked by two tough-looking guys. The four of them watched two men in green uniforms load a huge stack of white legal boxes into the back of the van.
Mack came up beside me. “James—”
“Shhh.”
Anthony turned, saw us, and tapped the shoulder of the big man in front of him. The guy started toward us.
Mack yanked my sleeve. “Let’s get out of here!”
The man broke into a jog as we turned and ran. We spotted a bus and hopped on. As we pulled away toward the stadium, I used my cell phone to call the security office at Grandpa’s building and told the duty officer—some guy named Johnny—what I’d seen.
“Mr. Roacks is down there, so there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, his voice all business. “As a matter of fact, he called a minute ago to say there were a couple of punks hanging around the alley. Was that you?”
“Yeah. Never mind,” I said.
Mack was staring at me. “I take it back,” he said. “Maybe you are going crazy.”
CHAPTER
15
I went to bed thinking of Shoko, so it’s not surprising I dreamed of her. It was the same as the last dream: the same long staircase leading up to the same shrine, the same house surrounded by a meadow, the same girl standing in the doorway—but this time she’s wearing a uniform. I wave to her and she waves back.
Grandpa shows up and gives me the same speech: “It’s time for you to follow your destiny.”
And again, his shoulders slouch and his face grows haggard. His eyes lose their shine. Then he begins to fade away until he’s gone. In his place, the elderly man appears—it’s definitely the old man from the restaurant bathroom. His forked tongue flicks out at me. I tense up.
Ms. Lin’s up next.
But when I turn around, there’s no Ms. Lin waiting for me. It’s Okaasan with her katana, its handle revealing accents of gold beneath the well-worn black cord. Her energy overwhelms me. I drop to my knees and touch my forehead to the wooden boards at her feet. She speaks softly but sternly to me in Japanese, in a voice that sounds far away.
“Junya, you must get up.” She glares down at me. Then, with a look of disgust, she raises her katana. Sunlight glints off polished steel as it swings up over her head. She steps forward and I squeeze my eyes shut as the blade begins its descent.
I struggled to free my mind but couldn’t. I felt the air move beside me, heard the rustle of fabric, and the darkness began to recede. When a hand touched my shoulder, my eyes opened.
Okaasan was leaning over me!
“Yaaa!” I yelled and rolled away from her, knowing I’d die if I landed at the bottom of the shrine, but I hit the ground a second later.
I looked around. There was no wooden shrine towering above me, just the familiar wood ceiling of my bedroom.
Okaasan rushed around the bed and dropped to the floor beside me. I was on my back, one foot still up on the bed, my pajama pants falling down, cartoon boxers exposed. I looked up at her, eyes wide. I panted for air, my heart about to explode out of my chest.
“You had a nightmare.” She laughed as she patted my arm. “Relax, Junya, breathe. You’re safe.”
I nodded but still couldn’t speak. Her words and the swish of her katana stayed with me.
“I’m sorry I startled you,” she said. “I came to tell you it’s time to get up.”
Still I lay there and stared. It was just a dream, but my intuition was screaming at me, insisting it was real.
Her smile faded and a worried furrow appeared between her brown eyes. “What is it, Junya?” She reached out to touch my face, but I swatted her hand away. She pulled back, surprised. “What’s gotten into you?”
I lay there panting, “You tried to … tried to …”
“To do what?”
>
“You wanted to kill me!” I pushed myself up and glared at her. “I saw it in your eyes!”
Her hand moved to cover her mouth. “You were dreaming, Junya.”
“Why do we have to live like this?” I was yelling now. “The stream, the training—I’m so tired of all this crap!” I punctuated my rant with a fist slammed against the floor.
Her expression changed, first to shock, then to anger. She pulled herself up straighter.
I knew I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry, Okaasan,” I said. “I dreamed you were raising your katana to cut me down. Then you came in here and woke me up.” I spoke to her in Japanese, hoping to make up for my outburst. But it was halfhearted and we both knew it.
“Once spoken, words can’t be taken back,” she said. “I’m sorry I scared you, but I didn’t create your dream.” She stared down at me as she had on the staircase. “And if you don’t like your life here, then leave!”
We stared at each other, both of us angry.
After a while her face broke into a crooked little smile. “I don’t live like this to punish you. This is how my mother raised me and her mother raised her. I didn’t know how to live here or what to do with a son. Both were beyond my experience. And I had no one to help me.”
I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry Okaasan.” I meant it that time.
She rolled off her knees and stood up again. “Get ready for school,” she said as she brushed her hair back. “You don’t want to be late.”
I threw on a T�shirt and pulled a worn sweater over it, one of my favorites. It was my dad’s, but he’d never asked for it back, so it had become a regular part of my wardrobe.
I heard pots and dishes banging in the kitchen when I left my room, which was a good sign. If Okaasan were mad at me, the only breakfast I’d get was whatever I made myself. Okaasan was easy to understand that way: either she was mad or she wasn’t.
Tama lay in the hallway in her favorite place, near the windows. I stopped to rub her soft coat. She closed her eyes and purred and then raised her chin to let me scratch there.
“What do you think of all this?” I asked her.
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