Because It Is My Blood

by Gabrielle Zevin

  Not long after, the meeting was over. My abdication was brief and bloodless. As Mr. Beery might have said, The Merchant of Venice, and not Macbeth.

  XVII

  I HAVE DOUBTS

  JUST BEFORE EASTER, we heard news of Sophia and Mickey. They had landed in Belgium, where they planned to open a new branch of Bitter Schokolade. In the photo that Natty located, I noticed that their entourage included a one-handed giant. It seemed safe to assume that the man I’d maimed at Granja Mañana hadn’t bled to death in a Mexican rain forest. I did not yet have the black mark of murder on my soul.

  Easter Sunday, Natty and I went to church. Even for a semilapsed Catholic having a crisis of faith, Easter was too big a holiday to skip. Daisy Gogol had gone home for the weekend, but security hardly seemed necessary anyway with Sophia and Mickey in Belgium and Jacks still in prison. Natty and I were safe, if only because we were the last women standing. Hadn’t Daddy once said that “he who survives, wins”? Who cared what Daddy had said, though.

  I had always loved the Easter liturgy. I loved the candle lighting and that renewal was the theme of the day. But that year, I felt disconnected from the entire thing. I did not, could not, could no longer make myself believe. It was during the renewal of baptismal vows that I felt this most strongly. The priest asked the congregation, “Do you turn to Christ?” Easy enough. Yes, I thought, of course I did. Then the priest asked, “Do you repent of your sins?” This one was more difficult. My list of sins was long, and most of them I’d committed knowingly. For instance, could I honestly say I repented cutting off that man’s hand? If I hadn’t, he would have murdered Theo and me. Despite everything, I was glad to be alive. And I was definitely glad that Theo was alive. And, toward the end of the liturgy, when we were all meant to say “I believe and trust in Him” over and over again, I said it because everyone around me was saying it, but I could not honestly say that I did believe and trust in Him. I had prayed and been devout but where had that led me? Leo was dead. My parents were dead. Nana was dead. Imogen was dead. I wouldn’t be graduating. I had a criminal record. Sometimes it seemed as if my whole life had been decided from the moment of my birth, and if that was the case, why bother with religion or prayer or any of it? You might as well just do what you wanted. Sleep with whomever you wanted on Saturday. Sleep in on Sunday.

  At that moment, Natty looked at me. “I love you, Annie,” she said. “And I am so grateful for you. Please don’t be bitter.”

  I shook my head. “I love you, too,” I told her. That was about the only thing I knew to be true.

  * * *

  After church, we took our time walking back home. The late-March afternoon was humid and gray, though there was a lackluster patch of sun poking through a thin spot in the sky. I was warm in my spring coat so I unbuttoned it.

  “I want to go back to genius camp this summer,” Natty announced when we were about halfway home.

  “Good. You should go.”

  “But you seem…”—she searched for a word—“adrift, Anya, and angry, and I’m worried about leaving you alone.”

  “Natty!” Had I become Leo to her? Someone she felt she needed to watch? “Natty, I have friends. And interests. Go to your destiny. Go to genius camp.”

  “By interests, do you mean fulfilling various vendettas?” Natty asked.

  “No!”

  “Listen, Annie,” Natty said gently. “Leo is dead. And the people who planned it are gone. Win will be in college, and he’s the nicest boy in the world, but you have to be prepared that he might meet someone new. Scarlet is having this baby and she might even marry Gable Arsley. You’ve fired Mr. Kipling and Mr. Green. Everything is about to change, and you need to be ready to move on.”

  Of course my wise little sister was right. But what was I to do? I didn’t want to spend my whole life on the opposite side of the law—in and out of Liberty until I was too old to go there, then in and out of Rikers or whatever the age-eighteen-and-up equivalent was for female habitual criminals. I didn’t want to end up like Jacks or Daddy, which is why I had agreed to let Fats take over. Still, the truth was, I wasn’t suited for anything else. I knew a little bit about chocolate and a little bit about organized crime and I had an infamous last name. What did all these things add up to?

  “So,” Natty continued, “if you want me to stay and help you out this summer, I will—”

  “Natty, I want you to go! Of course I want you to go.”

  Natty looked me in the eyes, and then she nodded. “Maybe you should go see Dr. Lau?”

  I shook my head.

  “She asks about you every time I see her.”

  I shook my head again. “She’s just being nice.”

  Natty and I rode up in the elevator. When we got to our floor, the door was slightly ajar.

  I held out my arm. “Stay,” I told Natty. I took my machete out from under my coat.

  Natty’s eyes grew wide. “Maybe we should run?” she whispered.

  I was not a person who ran. I ordered her to stay in the hallway, in the area where the fire escape was. “If you hear me scream, I want you to go down the stairs as fast as you can. Run to Win’s house. Don’t talk to anyone until you get there.”

  Natty nodded.

  At that moment, the front door swung wide open.

  Standing there was a ghost.

  I felt like I was losing my mind.

  “Annie,” the ghost said, and then he put his arms around me.

  The ghost was made of flesh and bone.

  “Leo,” I said. “Leo, Leo.” My head began to throb, and I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed at his cheeks and his arms, pinching and poking him to make sure he was real. “But how?” I mumbled. “How?” I looked into Leo’s light blue eyes. I pulled his wavy black hair. I buried my face in his chest to smell him.

  “I faked my death so I could come back to New York,” Leo said.

  “You what?” It was such an extraordinary thing for him to say.

  “I was so homesick, Annie. I missed you and Natty so much. And I was bored, too. I couldn’t stay there anymore. Please don’t be mad.”

  I was really having trouble breathing. I was on the verge of passing out.

  “Oh, Leo, you shouldn’t have.” This was going to cause more problems for me than I could even begin to imagine, but still my heart was full. “Natty!” I yelled. “Come here!”

  Natty emerged from the fire-stairs door. “Leo?” she asked. And then Natty fainted.

  Leo and I picked her up and brought her inside.

  In the living room were Simon Green and a Japanese girl I didn’t recognize.

  I glowered at Simon. “What are you doing here?”

  “He helped me plan everything,” Leo said. “I contacted Simon Green in the fall after Yuji Ono said you were going away. I didn’t want Natty to be all alone.”

  That meant that the hit on Leo had been a fake? And yet I knew that the hits on Natty and me had been real. Why coordinate a fake hit on the same day as two real hits? What did this mean?

  I sat down on our couch. “Simon, why didn’t you tell me that Leo was alive?”

  Simon took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. “I suppose because I didn’t think you’d believe me. Not with the awful coincidence of the attempted murders of you and Natty. I realized that Sophia had somehow become aware of Leo’s and my plan and had used that fact to her advantage.”

  The Japanese girl smiled pleasantly at me. Though she was clearly a woman, she was about the size of a child, with no breasts to speak of and limbs like twigs. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “This is Noriko,” Leo said. “She doesn’t speak much English yet but she’s learning. She is Yuji Ono’s niece. And she is also my wife.”

  “You’re married?” This was too much to process. “Leo?”

  Noriko held out her hand. On it was a single silver band.

  Natty woke up. “Leo?” she asked. “Leo?” Natty had begun to cry.

 
; “Oh, Natty, please don’t.” Leo wiped her tears on his sleeve. He sat down next to her on the couch, and they held each other for the longest time.

  I stood to give them some space. Although I was overjoyed to find that Leo was still alive, I could not afford to be overcome in this moment. I had too many things to figure out. I walked to the balcony, and Simon Green sidled up next to me. “You must see, Anya, that I never could have planned anything that would have hurt you or Natty or Leo.”

  “Sophia Bitter says that you helped her plan the poisonings,” I told him.

  “I did not!”

  “Why would she say that if it weren’t true?”

  “She’s a liar, Anya, and I suppose she was just trying to cover her bases. Point fingers at whomever she thought was vulnerable.”

  I looked into Simon Green’s eyes, eyes like Leo’s and Daddy’s. “Who are you?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know for sure, Annie. But I can tell you what I have come to believe.” He took my hand. “I believe that I am your half brother. I believe that is why your father provided for my care.”

  “Does he know?” I indicated Leo.

  Simon Green shook his head. “No. You are the head of this family, and it is your decision when to tell Leo and Natty.”

  I told him I appreciated that. “So why did Leo know to go to you about faking his own death?”

  “He didn’t come to me.” Simon Green said that he had started making plans to get Leo out of Japan as soon as he had found out that I had refused Yuji Ono’s proposal. “I didn’t think it would be safe for him there anymore.”

  I wondered if I had somehow misunderstood what Leo had said to me—Leo had explicitly stated that he had decided to fake his own death, hadn’t he?

  I asked Simon if Mr. Kipling had known.

  Simon Green shook his head no.

  “Why didn’t Daddy ever tell us about you?”

  “Think of it, Anya. I’m eight years older than Leo. I don’t think your father even knew about me until my mother died.”

  Daddy should have told us.

  “Your father was a good man,” Simon Green continued. “But he was just a man.”

  I turned away from the city and looked back through the glass doors into the living room, where Leo was introducing Natty to his wife. Wife!

  Simon Green took my hand. “I want you to trust me, Anya. I want to be your partner. I want to be the brother that Leo doesn’t have the ability to be. I want you to feel free to lay some of your burden on my shoulders.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not? Can’t you see that I’ve risked everything to save Leo? You must know that I did that for you.”

  “It’s just a lot for me to take in right now. Give me a little time,” I pleaded. “We’ll have to do something about Leo’s legal situation,” I told him. “It won’t work to hide him in this apartment. And we certainly can’t leave him as a fugitive forever.”

  Simon Green agreed. “I’ll go to Bertha Sinclair as soon as the Easter holiday is over.”

  “Maybe Mr. Kipling could help?” I suggested.

  “Yes, I think that could be arranged.”

  * * *

  After Simon Green had left and everyone else had gone to bed, I went into the kitchen. I could not sleep. It was too late to call Win (he had been in Connecticut visiting a college with his mother), and even if it hadn’t been, I could not begin to explain about the events of the day.

  I got a glass of water from the tap and sat down at the table. The kitchen seemed oddly bright. The room was different than it had been that morning. There were more colors somehow, and my mind felt overwhelmed with sensation. There were so many things for me to solve now that Leo had returned.

  I clasped my hands and bowed my head. Thank you, God, for returning my brother to me. Thank you. “I believe and trust in Him,” I whispered.

  At that moment, Leo came into the kitchen, wearing his pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt.

  “Annie,” Leo said. “I thought you were up.” He sat down across from me at the table.

  I told him that I hoped I hadn’t woken him.

  “You always wake me,” Leo said. “Just like that night with Gable Arsley. I always listen for you.”

  I smiled at him. “Leo, how did you and Noriko get back to America?”

  “By plane,” Leo answered. “Simon Green came to get us.”

  I still had so many questions but I didn’t want to overwhelm Leo with them. “Leo, can you explain something for me? Yuji Ono told me that your wife was from a fishing village and that she had been killed along with you. He never said that she was his niece.”

  Leo shrugged. “Noriko is from a fishing village,” Leo said. “I went to stay with her family around October after Yuji Ono said it wasn’t safe for me with the monks anymore. Noriko is the daughter of Yuji Ono’s half brother.”

  Yuji Ono had had Leo moved? He had certainly never mentioned anything about that. And if that were true, it didn’t necessarily make sense with Simon Green’s depiction of Yuji Ono, i.e., that Leo had been unsafe in Japan once I’d refused Yuji Ono’s proposal. And whose ashes had we been sent? And why had Yuji Ono lied about seeing Noriko’s dead body? I shook my head. I needed to talk to Yuji Ono but he was still unreachable, and he hadn’t tried to contact me.

  I took my brother’s head in my hands and kissed him on both cheeks. “Leo, let me ask you something. Do you think Yuji Ono is a good man?”

  “Yes,” Leo said. “But I haven’t seen him in a very long time. Around January, he went into seclusion. Noriko thinks he might have caught a sickness during his travels. No one in his family knows, and Yuji Ono is very private.”

  I grabbed Leo’s hand. I was still surprised to see the silver band around his ring finger. “Leo, are you very much in love with Noriko?”

  “Yes!” Leo said. “I love her more than anyone I ever met except for you and Natty.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I think she is the prettiest girl in the world except for you and—”

  I interrupted him. “Me and Natty, I know. And I agree. She is very pretty. What else, Leo?”

  Leo’s face grew solemn. “The thing is, Annie, she doesn’t treat me like I am stupid. You probably won’t believe this but she thinks I’m really smart.” There were tears in the corners of Leo’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Annie. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused you last spring. I know everything you did for me. Yuji Ono said you even went to jail for me.”

  I told him that I’d do it again. He was my brother and I’d do anything for him. “Leo, Yuri’s dead now and Mickey’s gone. But we’ll need to arrange something with the authorities so that you and Noriko can live here in peace.”

  Leo nodded.

  “You might even have to go to jail for a little bit yourself.”

  “Okay,” Leo said with such equanimity that I could not help but wonder if he’d understood what I’d said. “As long as Noriko can stay here with you and Natty. You’ll have to take care of her.”

  “Of course, Leo. She’s my sister now,” I said.

  The world was a remarkable place, really. I had started the day with one sister, and I had ended the day with a sister, a sister-in-law, a brother, and a half brother.

  I had started the day with no faith and now my heart was full.

  XVIII

  I ATTEND A SCHOOL DANCE; NO ONE GETS SHOT

  IN EXCHANGE FOR ANOTHER modestly sized bribe to the Campaign to Reelect Bertha Sinclair, Leo was given a seven-month sentence to the Hudson River Psychiatric Facility and two years of probation. He’d be out in time for Thanksgiving.

  The third Saturday in April, Mr. Kipling, Daisy Gogol, Noriko, and I drove Leo there. He kissed his wife (wife!), waved to the rest of us, and that was that. Noriko cried the whole three-hour trip back. We tried to comfort her but she spoke almost no English, and we spoke no Japanese, so I doubt we were much help.

  Coincidentally, that evening was prom. I hadn’t want
ed to go, but Win had convinced me that we should, if only to redeem the previous year’s disaster. “Do you think they’ll even let me on campus?” I had asked him. He reminded me that technically I had not been expelled this last time.

  I had not bothered to shop for a dress so I went digging around in Nana’s and my mother’s old clothes. I picked out a navy blue dress with capped sleeves, a high neckline, and a low back. I thought the dress fit well, but upon seeing me, Noriko screamed, “No!”

  “No?” I asked.

  “Bad,” she said as she unzipped the back. “Old lady.”

  Noriko went into Leo’s room and returned with a white dress. The dress was covered in lace and might have been a decent length on Noriko, but would be short on me. I would look like an insane bride. “You wear this,” Noriko said. She was smiling. It was the first time she had smiled all day, and I thought of my promise to Leo to take care of his wife. I really didn’t care about the matter anyway so I agreed to put on the dress.

  I looked in the mirror. The dress was a bit tight on top, but otherwise, it fit surprisingly well.

  Noriko came up behind me to adjust the sash, which tied in the back. “So pretty,” Noriko said.

  I shook my head. Natty came out of her room to examine me. “You look…”—Natty paused—“mad but attractive. Attractive mad.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Win’s going to love it.”

  Win met me at the apartment. He attached an orchid corsage to my wrist. I waited for him to make a joke about my crazy dress but he didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss. “You look beautiful,” Win said. “Let’s hope no one gets shot this year. It’ll be hard to get blood out of that dress.”

  “Technically, I think it’s still too soon for that kind of joke,” I told him.

  “Oh.” He asked, “When will be the right time?”

  “Probably never,” I told him. “Interesting jacket choice, by the way.” The jacket was white with black piping. Summery. Tacky.

  “By ‘interesting,’ you mean you don’t approve? Because people in glass houses, by which I mean people going to prom dressed like brides, shouldn’t—”