She plucked the eyeball from the paper towel and held it in her bare hands. I’d seen her boiling carcasses of small animals before, so this would be nothing for her.
“Definitely not human,” she said, turning it over so she could look at it from different angles. “Too small to be human, and the irises aren’t right.”
I felt a large weight fall from my shoulders.
“Do you mind if I cut it open?” she asked.
“Be my guest.”
Mrs. Kenton went to a cupboard and grabbed a dissecting tray and scalpel, which she set on the table closest to me. I took a seat on a stool.
She put the eyeball on a tray and stabbed it with a T-pin to hold it in place, then made a careful incision. “Interesting. A pecten. It’s avian, and probably a midsize bird. If it’s local, it could be something like a magpie, or a crow or raven,” she said. “If you find the sick kid who did this, please let me know, but I plan to speak to the principal, and you should go file a report with the front office.”
I opened my bag and held it out for her. She threw the eyeball back inside. “I hope you catch that son of a—” Mrs. Kenton shook her head. “Mutilating animals is the sign of a possible future serial killer.”
“Thank you.” I fought against the current of students coming into the lab for class.
The bell rang on my way to the front office, and I entered, knowing I would probably make sweet Mrs. Davis pass out. It was busier than I expected, so I sat in one of the chairs and waited for my turn with four other students, two girls and two boys.
Mrs. Davis spotted me and hopped to her feet. “Well speak of the devil, Claire. Mr. Tama was looking for you.” She motioned for me to come closer to the counter, so I stood and met her there. “He said he’d wanted to speak to you after class but was a little worried when you raced out of there. I was about to go chase you down and make sure you’re okay when you walked through our door.” She put her hands on her hips and leaned back, rolling her spine into a stretch. “It’s a good thing too because this old thing ain’t what it used to be.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really I am.” I brought my knuckle to my lips.
“Good to know.” She winked. “Run to the faculty lounge when we’re done here. He only needs a minute, and he isn’t teaching this period, so stop there on your way out. Where are you supposed to be right now? I’ll let your teacher know you’ll be late.”
“Study hall.”
Mrs. Davis nodded and said I could go sit back down. “How can I help you, Miss Granger?” She pointed to a petite girl with mousy brown hair, who looked too young to be in high school.
In an effort to have a little personal space, I chose a seat as far away from the other students as possible. Who would do this? It had to be someone from school. Probably the same person who had taken my pictures. No matter how many people I considered, Chase was the only one I could think of who would have motive to do something like this.
Ten minutes passed before my name was called. The office had emptied of other students. I warned Mrs. Davis before I even started that what I was about to say was disgusting.
When I told her the rest, she threw her hands in front of her face, even though I hadn’t shown her my backpack. “Oh good heavens! Let me get the officer on site.”
She went through a door behind the counter, and when she returned, Officer Clemmons was with her. Officer Clemmons was big and tall and the friendliest man on campus.
“Mrs. Davis says you received a present?” He set a form on the counter and pulled a pen from his front pocket.
I nodded and raised my open bag. “This is the box inside here. Mrs. Kenton says the eyeballs were from a bird.”
Mrs. Davis went back to her desk and sat down. Officer Clemmons wrote some notes down on the form and asked a lot of questions regarding where I was, what time I found them, and who I thought might have put them there and why. After he finished, he put his pen back in his pocket.
“This probably isn’t what you want to hear,” he said, “but it’s not going to be easy to find out who did this, so if you know or hear of anything, let us know because you’re our best lead. Even if we do find out who did this, be prepared because it might be hard to prove that a crime was committed to the birds. If the person took them from dead birds, it would be sick, but not an actual crime. And it’s probably harassment to leave them for you like this, but again, it’s hard to prove.”
“Are you serious?” I said, louder than I meant to. Mrs. Davis’s head jolted up.
Officer Clemmons nodded. “If the person tortured a live animal or killed it without privilege, it would be a Class A misdemeanor, but there’s no way for us to tell if these birds were alive or not.”
“Oh good heavens,” Mrs. Davis said again from her desk.
He walked around the counter, wincing. “I’m going to need to take the box and eyeballs so they can be submitted into evidence.” He pawed at the opening of my bag, barely touching the zipper. “Ew.”
My backpack still had some notes and pens along with the white box inside, but none of it was anything I needed. “Take the whole thing.” I slid the bag off my arm and gave it to him. If he hadn’t taken it, I’d have thrown it away anyway so I’d never have to see it again.
“I’m sorry this happened,” he said.
Thanks for nothing, I wanted to say, even though I knew the idea of them immediately finding the person who’d done this and taking them out of the school in handcuffs was asking a little much. “Well, thank you.”
“No problem,” he said. “That’s what I’m here for. Let me know if you think of anything that would help us find the kid who did this.”
“I will.” My lip stung—I must have bitten down on it. The muscles in my jaw wouldn’t relax.
“I’ll let Mr. Tama know you’re on your way to the lounge,” Mrs. Davis said over the top of her monitor.
Why was this happening to me? Had I done something to deserve this? No. No one deserved this. Blood pounded in my head and my chest. Whoever was responsible for this truly was sick.
The halls had emptied, the students already absorbed into classrooms. I pushed open the door to the women’s restroom and washed my hands over and over again. I shut off the water and steadied both hands on the sink. Only twenty-five minutes of study hall remained and school would be out.
With thoughts ricocheting in a million directions, there was no point in staying. It was Friday, and after the day I had, I deserved an early weekend. Whatever Mr. Tama had to say, I’m sure it could wait until Monday since it was practically the weekend anyway. If I didn’t get away from school, I was going to combust.
I could go to the front office and check myself out of school, saying I wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Mrs. Davis said she wasn’t feeling well either after that. She would probably ask if I’d talked to Mr. Tama, though.
Forrest would have happily given me a ride home, but I had energy to burn, and our house was less than two miles away. I pushed open the school’s doors and walked into the sun. A light wind carried a mixture of smells: earth, decaying leaves, and wood. A few dark clouds gathered ahead with what I hoped was the promise of rain. I strolled along Franklin Avenue until I reached the first intersection.
As I waited to turn left and cross to Highland Drive, a black SUV crawled up the street. I hadn’t seen it when I left the school. I couldn’t see its license plates from here, so I told myself that it probably wasn’t the same one. There are black SUVs all over Utah, I told myself. You’re overreacting.
When the light turned green, I crossed at a steady pace. Highland Drive was always busy, and I would need to stay on the sidewalk near the road for a while if I wanted to get home as fast as possible. The SUV turned and pulled into the right lane. As it approached me, it slowed down, creeping behind me at a snail’s pace. Other cars behind began to honk and change lanes to pass.
Maybe I was right after all.
My pulse picked up spee
d. Every muscle lit with a new intensity, and I sprinted forward. To the right of me was a tall concrete wall that continued up a small hill. If I could make it just after the hill crested, I could run into Reams and hope the grocery store was a public enough place that he wouldn’t continue to follow me.
The car accelerated enough to keep up with me, allowing me to see into the front seat. Behind the driver’s wheel was the same hooded man with sunglasses.
I reached in my pocket for my phone. My fingers slipped as I tried to keep up my pace and dial at the same time.
I typed 911 and was about to hit Send when the car sped off, driving so far it disappeared from my line of vision. After pausing a moment to cancel the call and look around to be sure the car was gone, I decided I wasn’t going to wait for it to return. I sprinted the rest of the way, peeking over my shoulder every few seconds.
Running two miles was normally an easy jog, but I was desperate for air when I crossed through our back door. I threw off my shoes and wandered to the couch in the family room, where I collapsed. My heart continued to pound, so I rested until my breathing slowed to a regular pace. I stood and got myself a large glass of water. As I drank, I paced around the island, trying to put all the pieces together. So much had happened. I set the empty glass in the sink and fell back down on the couch.
The events at the school could possibly be connected. But what did the SUV have to do with all of this?
Somehow, during all of my questioning, I must have drifted off. When I opened my eyes, a shadow fell over me.
I gasped and looked up. My dad was standing above me.
“What are you doing home?” he asked.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Yes, we do,” he said. “Where were you? You missed your meeting with Principal Alvarez, and I’ve been trying to call your phone for the past half hour.”
Crap.
WE WALKED TO Dad’s office and my mind churned over where to start.
“Well?” Dad asked as we walked. “Where were you?”
“The short answer is I was running home.” I staggered my steps to make sure I trailed a little behind.
“And what’s the long answer?”
I crashed into one of the leather chairs in the office. Dad sat across from me behind his desk, arms folded.
“I think someone might be harassing me at school. I don’t know if all these events are connected, but it started with someone accusing me of cheating—”
“Which is why you were supposed to be at the principal’s office.”
Yes. We had established that already. “Anyway, someone broke into my locker last week and took all the pictures I had hanging up. And then today, someone put a box in my backpack with four eyeballs. Real eyeballs. Mrs. Kenton said they were from a bird, maybe something like a raven or a crow.”
As I described the box and how it was all packaged, Dad’s face grew dark, and he seemed more concerned than I expected him to be. “Do you still have the box?”
“No. I gave it to the officer at the school, and he said he would file a report and submit it into evidence.”
“Did your brothers get boxes too?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t see them after class.”
“Do you have any idea who would have done this?” he asked. The more he fired questions at me, the more it felt like my stomach was filling with sludge.
“Maybe Chase Phillips. I don’t know,” I said, my head in my hands. “I figure it has to be someone at school though, because I had my bag with me the whole morning. I never left the school. They must have slipped it in walking down the hall or something, and it would have been after fifth-period calculus, because I know it wasn’t there when I closed my bag, and before sixth period, which was history.”
Dad leaned forward, resting his weight on his elbows.
“Claire,” he said. “I need you to think hard. Is there anyone at school who would know a lot about Japanese culture?”
“No one besides Fed.” Up until this point, I had only been angry, but I began to wonder if there was something I had missed. “Why?”
“Nothing.” Dad closed his eyes and massaged his forehead.
“You can’t do that,” I said. “You know I’m going to go crazy and try to figure out what everything means.”
He glanced up and sighed. “Yes, I know.” His shoulders dropped. “The Japanese are very superstitious people. They never give anyone anything in a group of four because the number four, shi, is a homophone for the word death.”
“You’re worried because there were four of them?” That could have been a coincidence. I still didn’t understand why he was so concerned.
Dad shook his head. “Your name was written in red, which they don’t do because red is the color used for names on graves. My guess is that the eyeballs were from a crow, not a raven or other bird. Japanese people believe if you catch a crow’s eye, something bad is going to happen—although I would guess the saying refers to crows that are alive.”
“So this is really bad.” I shrank in the chair. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions yet, but I need you to be careful and make sure you call for help,” he said. “If anything like this happens again, you need to let me know immediately.”
I nodded. Because the eyeball incident had happened at school, I’d assumed another student had done it. But if there really were Japanese ties behind the present, I had to think it was possible that everything was connected somehow. The cheating, the stolen pictures, the eyeballs, and the black SUV. It felt like rocks had collected in the pit of my stomach. Any frustration or fear I had about the isolated events now added on top of each other, forming one big pile.
He rotated his chair, and I noticed he had changed the lock to the drawer I had broken into. The wafer lock had been replaced with what looked like a disk tumbler lock, which was a lot harder to pick, but he had completely underestimated my skills.
It occurred to me, and had on many occasions in the past few weeks, that I knew very little about the man in front of me—the man whom I had called “Dad” for over a decade. When he married Mom, I don’t think I was old enough to understand what was going on or care where he had come from because I knew he was meant to be part of our family. But now I wasn’t sure what he did or where he went for work. I didn’t know how long he had known my father or how he had really ended up with Mom.
Something heavy took root in my stomach. Dad didn’t seem to be letting on how serious he thought the situation was. And I hadn’t even told him about the car yet. If there were a chance he had been involved in my father’s death, could he also have been involved somehow with what was going on now? I didn’t want to believe that, but too many things had been kept from us.
I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders. “Why didn’t you and Mom ever tell us that you knew my father so well?” I stretched my toes to the burgundy carpet.
Dad’s eyebrows scrunched up, and he leaned forward. “Why do you ask?” His voice had an edge, and I knew I had to tread carefully, but I also needed answers.
“I saw the picture of you at my father’s funeral holding a bone with your chopsticks. Grandpa said family members put the bones in the urn.”
He nodded but didn’t say a word. After a few moments, he straightened some papers on his desk and pushed them aside. “You remember how my father, your grandpa, was a Buddhist reverend?”
I nodded.
Dad steadied his arms on the desk. “Well, when your father came over from Japan, he literally had only the clothes on his back. I remember walking home one night after watching one of the high school football games. Henry, your father, was huddled in the alley next to the temple where Grandpa served. At that time your father was still Hideki Kawakami. I invited him into the temple and introduced him to my father, who gave him some food and a place to sleep. Grandpa always tried to help as many people as he could, but there was something different
about your father. Perhaps it was that your father looked to be about the same age as I was at the time. Grandpa took him in and got him a job at the local diner.”
How could they not tell us this before? There was only one reason I could think of and even then, I still didn’t understand how all the secrets were related. “Did he . . . know my father was in the yakuza?”
Dad raised his eyebrows, blinking. “How did you find out?” His voice was low and serious, with a flat tone that unnerved me.
Why did it matter if we knew about our father?
I dropped my head and stared at a loose thread on my shorts. “I found a letter written to you by my father, and in a part that we translated, it sounded like he might have known he was going to die, but he couldn’t have known he was going to die of a heart attack. Unless that wasn’t how he really died.”
To get a good read on his expression, I glanced up. Dad’s eyes opened a little wider but only for a second. “Go on.”
“I knew there were things you guys weren’t telling us, so I thought maybe he hadn’t really died that way, and I ordered a copy of his autopsy report. That’s when I found out about all the tattoos. And then I found some pictures in the attic. One second. I’ll be right back.”
I ran to my room and gathered the pictures we’d been poring over from the middle drawer of my desk.
Back downstairs, I handed him the pictures of my father with Osamu Sekiguchi and sat back down in the leather chair.
He lowered his brow. “You found the letter and funeral pictures in my office, and then these pictures were in the attic?”
“Actually, I found the letter in one of those boxes in the garage with my father’s old stuff.” Well, I had. Just in a journal that I’d found years ago.
His chair creaked as he shifted and massaged the back of his neck. “And you didn’t think it might be important to give the letter to us before Avery ate it?”
My parents had been lying to us, so it seemed reasonable to me that we wouldn’t have given it to them, but the tense muscles in Dad’s face suggested otherwise. “I guess I didn’t know what to think when I found out you were hiding this from us, and I didn’t know if there might be more we didn’t know.”
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