Chapter 3
Despite the rocky start, it turned out to be a pretty nice visit home. We talked for a while during the morning, and Angie showed us all her prom pictures. She looked stunning in her dress. Her canes were nowhere in sight, and unless you knew about them, you would never notice that none of the photos actually showed her standing by herself. She was always leaning against a tree or sitting on a bench or standing with her arm around her date, a big blond kid named Derrick whom I recognized from Grandmaster Park's studio. Speaking of guys who were sweet on my sister . . . I'm sure he didn't mind one little bit having Angie hanging onto him their entire evening out.
As the morning wore on, I decided to demonstrate what a good and responsible son I was by offering to help my mom make lunch. She set me to work cooking the rice; I guess she figured that was something I couldn't possibly mess up, especially since she was hovering over me the entire time. Angie sat on a tall stool at the kitchen counter chopping vegetables while my mom worked on the sauces.
"So, Son," my mother said a little too casually as she added a handful of this and a pinch of that, "why has that delightful girl not come home with you for a visit yet?" She was speaking Mandarin, since it was just the three of us. "Are you hiding her from us?"
"Which delightful girl is that, Mother?" I asked. "I know so many. I have already brought Padma for a visit; she is the one from India. Trina is the blonde one from Russia . . ."
"I mean the other one . . . the Japanese. The one who always looks at you as if she wants you to kiss her."
My eyebrows shot up at that. "Mayumi? She does not --"
"I told Mother that I thought she was your other fish to cook," Angie piped up. Then she frowned. "Hmm. That does not sound right. Your other fish to . . . roast? To . . . broil?" She switched to English. "Mom, what's the word for 'fry'? Not like stir-fry, but like frying fish in oil?"
"Zha," my mother said with a smile.
"Oh, that's right!" Angie exclaimed. "Duh!"
My mother added in English, "But you wouldn't say 'I have other fish to fry' in Mandarin, dear. You would probably say something like 'Lin u kao jiu.'"
"'I have greener pastures to mow'?" Angie translated. She nodded. "You're right, I think I've heard you or Dad say that before."
"You and this Mayumi girl certainly make a cute couple, Trevor," my mother went on. "Is she this 'other fish to fry' that Padma mentioned?"
That's my mom, not afraid to be nosy and always on the lookout for girls for me to date. I think it's her way to make sure she has lots of grandchildren. When I had brought Padma home to visit, my mother was convinced that I was about to propose to her. Padma explained that no, each of us had "other fish to fry", a phrase she had picked up from me. Padma's "other fish" was Nicolai, of course. Mine was . . . .
I sighed and turned down the heat under the water, which was beginning to boil. I carefully measured out the rice and added it to the pan. Despite what my mom thinks, I do know how to cook rice. "Mayumi is very friendly, but she doesn't mean anything by it," I explained. "She likes to flirt."
"It seems to me that she flirts with you more than anyone else," Angie teased.
"That's because it embarrasses me more than anyone else," I said. Already I could feel my face start to turn red. "Mayumi is married and has two kids, Angie. And she's way older than me."
"Well, sure, by a couple of years, but . . ."
"Try 'practically old enough to be my mother.' Don't tell her I told you, but she turned forty just a couple weeks ago."
Now it was time for my mother's eyebrows to shoot up. "No! Really? She looks so young."
I shrugged. "I know. It seems to be a side-effect of using a force shield. All the ex-Primes are that way."
"So, who is your 'other fish', big brother?" Angie asked eagerly. "You've never told us."
I set the lid on the rice pan, deliberately taking my time. I had been hoping not to get into this. Glancing through the open doorway into the other room, I saw that Toby was sitting on the floor make funny faces at Joy's baby, who was sitting on her lap. He's a pushover for kids. I moved over and quietly closed the door.
"Angie," I said, "do you remember Lily Lee?"
"Sure. She was that Chinese girl that I helped Shelley capture that one time. But she was Enclave, wasn't she?"
I nodded somberly. "Six or seven years ago, she was a fifteen-year-old girl from eastern China named Li Lin-fa. Her family sold her to Enclave, and one of their operatives, a skinny little red hedgehog that we nicknamed JB Swift, turned her into this thing that he called the attack doll. That's who you saw, this attack doll."
"She did seem awfully strange . . ."
"That was the result of what JB Swift did to her. Remember how you asked me once whether she was a robot? Well, the answer is, sort of. Part of her was like a living robot, anyway. There was another part of her that was still Li Lin-fa, though, and a third part that . . . if I could only have gotten her away from them, I think she would have come around."
My mother was watching me intently, her sauces forgotten. "Why don't you?" she asked me. "Why don't you get her away from them, if you care so much about her?"
"Believe me, I tried," I said with a grimace. Then I shrugged and looked down. "But it's too late now; she's dead."
Angela gasped.
"See, that day that Angie got hurt," I continued, "Bill and I fought Lily on a deserted beach somewhere near Hawaii. I knocked her unconscious, and then we had to teleport right away to fight another monster, that thunderbird you helped us with, little sis. The tide was coming in, and by the time I was able to get back to check on her, she had been underwater for . . . well, for long enough. I don't think she ever woke up."
I looked up to see my sister and my mother watching me with sympathetic eyes. "I'm so sorry, big brother," Angie said softly. "I didn't know."
"My poor Trevor," my mother murmured. She came over and put her arms around me.
I returned her hug more fiercely than I had expected. When I finally let go, I was surprised to discover that I had to wipe a few tears from my eyes. "It's okay," I muttered. "I'm mostly over it. It's what you'd call it an occupational hazard. She isn't the first friend I've lost."
My mother smiled and patted my arm. "I'm sure you'll find someone."
After lunch, I asked my mom to give me a piano lesson. She brought Joy in to listen to me play because Joy is studying piano pedagogy at Oberlin. They clucked and fussed together over my "inadequate" technique, and Joy made some suggestions, but eventually the two of them decided that I was playing the Gershwin pieces as well as could be expected. My mom then gave me a copy of Gottschalk's "The Dying Poet" to work on, and Joy told me to begin learning the F-sharp Minor fugue from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier as well.
Toby and I finally got a chance to spend some time alone with Angela later that afternoon when she went out on her daily walk. Wizzit had warned her not to let her muscles atrophy while she was disabled, so she had made it a practice to spend an hour or so each day walking in our back yard.
It was a pitiful thing to watch her shuffling along, supporting herself with a cane in each hand. I could understand why Joy was so upset; heck, if I didn't know that Wizzit was going to induce a healing coma just as soon as Angela had been wearing her Prime belt for twenty-four hours, I would have been upset myself.
"But I don't understand why he can't just do one of those healing things right now," Angie was saying. I could detect a hint of a whine creeping into her voice, but I couldn't really blame her for that. It was because of the Primes that she mostly lost the use of her legs, and she had been bearing up pretty bravely these past couple of months.
"Patience, little sis," I said soothingly. "It's just a little while longer. Your body is still getting used to the belt. Now, Wizzit usually insists that you activate your force shield yourself befo
re he'll do a healing coma on you, but he might be willing to make an exception in this case."
"Ya damn betcha!" Wizzit drawled in that atrocious west-Texas accent he sometimes affects. "If it's okay with you, li'l darlin', I can start it up just as ding-dang soon as your body is ready for it, even if you're still a-sawin' logs."
"Of course it's okay with me!" Angie exclaimed. "Do you think I like being like this? I want to be able to walk up on stage tomorrow when I get my . . ." Her voice trailed off when she saw that my attention was elsewhere. "What is it, big brother?" she asked anxiously.
"Hm? Oh, probably nothing. I just thought I saw something, that's all. Looked like somebody was moving around back there in the trees."
"I bet it was a squirrel, or maybe a raccoon. We've seeing 'coons around here a lot lately."
"I'm going to go check it out." What I had seen was definitely too big to be a squirrel, and raccoons wouldn't be wandering around in broad daylight. I moved towards the far end of our property, back by the wooded area. It might have been a deer; it was heavily-forested enough back there that one of them might dare to come out and take a peek at us.
Somehow, though, I didn't think it was a deer. The shadowy figure I had glimpsed had had a human shape to it, I thought. A feminine shape, and moving with a kind of fluid grace that I had seen before in only one person . . . .
"Find anything?" Toby called to me,.
I shook my head, trying to dispel my ridiculous flight of fancy. "Nope, not a thing," I called out. I trotted back to the two of them. "Sorry, little sis. I guess I got everybody worried for no reason." Toby snorted softly. I looked up at him. "Something wrong?"
"Not really," he replied. "It's just that . . . well, there's something I've been meaning to ask the two of you."
"What do you want to know?" Angie said.
"I suppose it's kind of stupid, but I'm curious: What is it with all this 'big sis, little sis, big brother, little brother' stuff I keep hearing?" he said. "I mean, I've got an older sister, but I don't call her 'big sis'. I call her 'Maude' because that's her name. But Angie usually calls you 'big brother', Trev, and you call her 'little sis', and you both call Joy 'big sis'. It's just . . . weird."
Angie grinned over at me. "Do you want me to tell him, big brother?"
"Nah," I replied. "I'll tell him, little sis." Toby growled, and all three of us burst out laughing. "It's a Chinese cultural thing," I explained. "In China, one wouldn't call one's siblings by name any more than you would call your parents by their first names in your family. It's always 'Younger Brother' or 'Older Sister' or whatever. So that's how our parents raised us."
"Oh." Toby looked thoughtful. "But you don't always do it. You call her 'Angie' a lot, too."
"Dude, give me a break!" I said, laughing. "I'm an American boy, born and raised here in Ohio, and I do try to fit in. Now, with Joy, it's different. She's definitely more serious about it than the rest of us. For Jerome, Nick, Angie, and me, it's more a habit than anything else, but Joy would not be happy if I suddenly started calling her by name."
"It comes from being the oldest, I think," Angie said. "She wants to keep the traditions alive. I tried calling her 'Joy' once, and she acted like she didn't even hear me." Suddenly she stopped walking and looked at me. "Big brother, are you sure that this healing coma is going to work? Because 'Older Sister' has been getting in my face about my seeing a doctor."
"Well, nothing's ever certain," I replied, "but Wizzit's brought me back from some pretty bad stuff. He's pretty confident that it will work. Personally, I think you'll be back doing jumping roundhouse kicks in no time." I winked at her. "And if you're a good girl, I'll start teaching you how to do 540-backwheels so you can impress Grandmaster Park."
"That sounds good," she said with a wan smile. She glanced over at the back door to the house and sighed. "Guys, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it back to the house on my own. Can we sit down and rest for a while?"
"I'll carry you back if you want," Toby volunteered.
"No, I wouldn't want you to have to go all that trouble . . . ."
"No trouble. You're as light as a feather." He reached out a hand to steady her as she handed me her canes, then squatted down so that she could ride piggyback. "In fact," he went on as he straightened up with her clinging to his back, "I bet that even carrying you, I can still beat Trevor back to the house."
I grinned and started running. "You're on!"
Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee Page 3
