Hiro Loves Kite

by Lauren Nicolle Taylor

  “I know.” She squeezes my arm gently. “You already told me, but you were half asleep.” Her squeeze is warm and always trying to bridge this gap I’ve installed between us. A solid shadow that presses its arms at our chests and pushes. She leans into the shadow, and I always lean away. Right now, I need to try not to lean away. She needs my support.

  “In my thoughts, you are always Hiro.”

  And I’m really gone. Snowed, as Kin would say. Sinking below the waves of an emotion I’m unsure of. In her thoughts. The idea that she’s made space for me in her mind lifts my feet a few atoms off the ground.

  Her grip tightens. A coil around my forearm. Maybe this is hurting her more than she lets on. My cap is low. Shadows of people pass under my eyes. Kite’s fingernails burrow into my skin, and I stop. The murky stain of a heavier shadow meets my feet. It wavers in with the clouds overhead.

  Kite murmurs, “Hiro.” Just a breath. A bruised breath. I feel her shrinking beside me. Her confidence dying like an unfed fire.

  I meet the eyes of something other than a man. Something dark and empty. Christopher Deere snarls, his lip curling under his dirty, blond moustache. His eyes just like Kite’s, except dead. Wooden and frozen in malice.

  I stand tall, pulling her with me. I’ll hold her up if she needs it, but I won’t let her crumple before him. I turn to my side. Her fingers have relaxed. Her eyes are clear. Her mouth straight and determined. Looks like I won’t have to.

  He leans over us, voice low, eyes alert to possible eavesdropping. “What have you done with Frances?” he hisses.

  Kite’s voice shakes steadily, like percussion. She’s punctuating this confrontation. She’s not backing away from it. “I’m not telling you.”

  His hand snaps and grabs like a trap, grasping her wrist and pulling it to his chest. She winces, and I move. “Hiro, no,” she begs, her mouth pulling down. Fear beginning to drip from the corners of her eyes.

  “Let her go,” I say, ready for a fight. My fists are clenched. Kin’s voice in the back of my head. Thumbs out. On your toes.

  The wind flurries around us. Rustling her skirts and covering our muttered threats. He laughs and pushes her hand back into her chest, hard and sharp. It makes a horrible thud, and she stumbles backward. Her eyes are wet. Her skin taut. She’s terrified, but she holds her ground. I stand between them.

  “I will find out where you’re staying and when I do, I’ll make sure he’s charged with kidnapping.” His eyes flick to me like I’m a cockroach and then back to Kite, whose chest is heaving fast. Color pooling in her cheeks and gone from the rest of her. “And you’ll be lucky if you ever see the light of day again. I’ll lock you and your sister up so tight you’ll be desperate for fresh air. You’ll be begging for the sting of my belt just so you can look out a window again.”

  Horror. Horror and violence.

  His words are hateful. Threatening. But he is powerless here in the street in front of witnesses. And we still have the photo.

  They step back further from each other. Both drained from the exchange. “You wouldn’t dare. What about the photo? Your reputation?” Kite says in a hurry of breath she can barely catch.

  His eyes turn dark. There’s a stretch of disappointment and failure to his voice. “I am no longer involved in the JA case.”

  Kite shakes her head, like she can’t believe it. Like she’s losing her will. “But… but your reputation,” she repeats.

  Christopher Deere flicks a switch inside. He lengthens. Strengthens. And seems to morph into a respectable man, brushing his coat with long fingers that have bruised and battered. Strangled and shook. “My reputation will survive. There’s always two sides to a story. Besides,” he says, over confident. “You don’t have the courage to fight me.”

  He turns and strides away. His shiny black shoes clipping the concrete like a battle drum.

  Kite dips her head and whispers, “You’re wrong,” before her knees buckle and she collapses to the ground.

  She stares at her hands. Her voice faraway. “He dropped out of the case,” she says slowly. She counts invisible crimes on her fingers. “Or was forced to…”

  I pull at her, but she’s turned to stone. “It doesn’t matter. Kite, we have to get out of here.” My eyes widen as two cops, several blocks away, walk unhurriedly in our direction. I don’t know if he’s told them. But I can’t risk it. “Get up. Get up.”

  Putting my hands under her arms, I lift her to her feet. Her eyes are so sad and cracked with remembered pain that it breaks my heart. “What are we going to do?” she says, voice as delicate and fragile as a feather. Her eyes are amber pools of dismay and disarray. “Oh my God, Hiro, what are we going to do?”

  I don’t have time to be gentle with her. “I dunno, Kite, but we’ll figure it out, okay?” She stares blankly. “Just not here. We can’t figure it out here.”

  She takes a step. Wobbling like a newborn deer. Voice breathless. Not quite her own. “Not here. No.”

  She takes another step, and it’s stronger. I get it. He startled her. He threw her backward. Sadly, we don’t have a lot of time for her to get herself together, so I grab her hand and lead her away.

  There’s a diner ahead. Shiny silver with red wrap around neon lights that make it look like it’s from another planet. Like it’s actively traveling to a better place. The cops aren’t rushing. Just doing their usual beat. My guess is Mr. Deere is not quite ready to risk exposing himself. He seemed like he was biding his time.

  We duck into the diner and I push her carefully into the booth, shoving a menu at her and showing her how I hold it in front my face. She copies me, and we wait for the cops to pass.

  A waitress humphs at us from the other side of the menus, and we both glance up. Her surprise is not surprising. It’s more of a shock when they don’t act that way. “What can I get you, honey?” she asks Kite.

  Kite just blinks dumbly at her.

  “We’ll have two sodas, thanks,” I answer for her.

  The waitress sighs, pencil abandoned at our poor order. But at least I didn’t just ask for water. I wave a hand in front of Kite’s face. “Kite. Nora… Wendy…”

  “Huh?” Her brows knot in confusion. “Wendy?”

  “Just thought I’d throw any old name out there to try to get your attention.” I smirk, but she doesn’t reciprocate.

  Pursing her lips, she looks at me. “The photo isn’t enough anymore. Hiro,” she whispers, face falling into her hands. “We’re so screwed.”

  I almost choke on a cough. I’ve never heard her talk that way. Curse. I take her hands in mine, the menu’s falling to the table. “We have to believe it will be okay.”

  She laughs bitterly, lifting our hands up and then pushing them into the salmon-pink Formica table. “He’ll never give up. You know that, right? It will never end.”

  “We won’t either.” I reach out and touch her cheek, feeling the beat of blood beneath her skin. The strength she’s just learning has always been there. “You hear me, Kite? We will never stop fighting.”

  She clutches at my words with hungry fingers. “Never?”

  I swallow, trying to be what I promise. Trying to believe. “Never.”

  And as we sit sipping our sodas, pretending we’re just a normal couple taking a break from the cold, the first snowflakes begin to spiral and fall.

  16

  KITE

  I watch him savor the soda, and I savor this rare time we have together. His dark brows rest softly over his eyes for a short, relaxed moment. I breathe in and sigh. Tough and soft things. Everything is so hard for us. Everything is a struggle. But I believe him when he says never. I want to be with him in that never. I want him to believe me, too, and that’s the difficult part.

  I think of my father, touching my chest. There’s a bruise spreading there. It feels like it always does. It’s a reminder not to get too comfortable.

  Suddenly, Hiro reaches over the table, takes my drink, and presses it to my sternum. His ey
es darken with worry. He presses it there gently. “Does it hurt?” I nod. He stays like that, holding the drink against my heart for what could be minutes, what I wish were hours. I don’t think I breathe in that time as he just watches me and I just watch him, and we share the hurt. I feel it leech from my bones slowly. Soothingly.

  I take the glass from him slowly, brushing his fingers deliberately, and place it back on the table. I stir the drink with my straw, letting the ice cubes clink against each other. “Tell me something good,” I say.

  His skin is paler than it was. As the sun has moved further from the earth, his tan has faded. He stares at me with blue-ringed irises. Like the rings of Saturn. Beautiful, mysterious. Out of reach. His eyes crinkle when he thinks, and he rubs his thumb under his jaw. I throw a napkin at him. “Oh, it can’t take that long!”

  He smiles. Teeth white because I know he takes dental hygiene very seriously. “Something good…” he muses. His smiles are so dashing. So infrequent. They’re like the touch of a bird’s claw to a wire as it takes flight. A brief steadying motion that’s invaluable.

  I play with a coin, rolling it between my fingers. The way he looks at me sometimes, it feels. It feels. It feels… Like he’s burning the air around me. Making clouds I can land on if I fall. I put the coin in the jukebox and pick a song.

  “Once they brought us fudgsicles.” His mouth softens around the memory. And his eyes wander outside. Snow is starting to pile up on the mailbox on the corner, icing it like a cake. His gaze returns to me, vulnerability sitting uneasily over his shoulders. His eyes drop. “It was so damn hot out there in the desert. Extreme. Hot as the surface of the sun during the day and freezing cold at night.”

  I rest my foot against his leg under the table. Carefully. Like I’m scared I’ll frighten him away. The connection is deliciously new. “I love fudgsicles.” I lick my lips.

  He cheeks redden as he says, “Yeah, well, I’d never had one before, but on this day, one of the guards went out and got them. It must have been a real pain to do it. He had to buy a block of ice and keep them in an icebox until he got back. But I’ll always remember the look on his face when he handed them out, like he was Santa. Like this was the most rewarding thing he’d ever done.”

  I smile, watching his expression warm around the memory. Good memories twist together to form the rope ladder out of sadness. They are the most important. “So, they weren’t all bad?”

  Shaking his head, he takes another sip of his drink. “No. Not all of them.”

  “I’m glad there were nice moments. Even in the worst of circumstances, you found some good, Hiro.” I stare down at my drink, thinking of black puddles and the way darkness can swallow a person. And how he’s always there, with a flashlight and a warm blanket. A hand to hold. It’s what he does. “I think that’s kind of what you do. You’re hope. You find the good in people.”

  Hiro shakes his head again. “Not everyone has good to find.”

  “No,” I reply. “Some people are just lost.”

  He sweeps the glasses to one side and takes my hand. My heart stumbles. Heat is growing between us as we start to open up. Offering our wounds and scars. Understanding that’s part of what makes us beautiful. He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it tenderly. It’s a warm breeze coursing through my body. It’s accelerated spring. “Your good was easy to find, Kite.”

  I want to lean across the table and kiss him. I want to tell him more. Tell him everything that’s broken and splintered inside me. Not so he can fix it, but so he can know it. Know me. Know me completely. But then the waitress slams a bill down on the table, and taps the total with her chipped, red fingernail.

  Hiro places my hand back on the table slowly, and his eyes rise to the judgment hovering over us. “I think you two kids should get going. Your parents must be wondering where you got to.” She aims that last sentence at me.

  I laugh. Sprinkling a tip on the table as we leave. “Oh, I’m sure he is!” I say to the confused woman, and even Hiro laughs at that one.

  17

  HIRO

  I’m trying to find the good in this weather and failing. The waitress ruined something that was building between us. And the good there is that it’s probably for the best. This is what will happen. Everywhere we go. She needs to understand that. I kick the piles of snow, mounded on the sidewalk, mixed with dirt and oil. Its purity lost. This early winter does the opposite to my mood that it does to Kite. She blinks with snowflake-shaped stars in her eyes. She turns in a circle with her palms upward. She thinks of Christmas and hot cocoa. Fur-lined coats and the park decorated like a fairy tale. But I understand why she’s doing it. She needs to find some good right now. She needs to forget her father just punched her in the chest and threatened her. Even if it’s just for a moment.

  She hugs her coat close, smiling as she gazes up. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I grunt. The snow is thickening. I told everyone to stay in, but I’m eager to get home and do a headcount. Kids get lost in the snow. They get buried. “How far are we from the station?” This neighborhood is unfamiliar to me. Kite’s lawyer was in a part of town I don’t know well, and I turn in a circle anxiously.

  Kite puts her hands on my shoulders, and I tense. “Hiro, what’s the matter?”

  “It’s just very cold,” I answer, blowing air from my lips and watching it float away steamy.

  She blinks, not comprehending. Still so much she doesn’t appreciate about this life. “Button your coat then, silly.”

  Small fragments of anger peel away from my mind and land in my mouth. “You don’t understand. You’ve never had to do this before.”

  “I understand plenty.” Her mouth sets grimly, and she crosses her arms over her chest. “But tell me, oh wise man of the street. What am I missing?”

  I take a step toward her, and she steps back. This dance we do. I have to remember that she doesn’t know the street life as well as I do, but she knows a hard life. And when she steps back from me like that when I’m angry, it’s because that hard life has set her bones in concrete to react like I’m a threat. Like I’ll hurt her.

  Sighing, I give her space. “The snow is just dangerous, okay? Kids can get lost in the snow. They…”

  She stands still, flakes gathering on her shoulders and in her hair. Strange confetti for an unlikely bride. “They what?”

  “They disappear.”

  I scan the tunnel counting the Kings. “Where’s Krow?”

  Kane shrugs, and Kelpie and Frankie wave. I stomp toward Kane, pulling the magazine from his grasp and holding it above his head. “Where’s Krow?” I ask again.

  Kane frowns and snatches at the magazine, missing. “How should I know? He left early this mornin’. Haven’t seen him all day.”

  Something sharp and cold pounds at my chest. A deep dread.

  Kite pats my arm. “He’s probably on his way home from work. Don’t worry.”

  I place a palm over my heart. I feel like something is off. Something’s wrong. After I grab a scarf and some too-big gloves, I head for the door. Kite is wrapping herself back up and following me. I put a hand up. “No. You stay here, in case he does come back. You should keep an eye on the others.”

  She nods reluctantly.

  I swing open the door, feeling that dread get thicker and thicker like smoke from a diesel engine. Taking fast strides down the dark passageway, I listen for noise. My hand on the knob, I get ready to slip out. I push.

  I push, but the door won’t budge. Someone is pressing on it from the outside. I hear Krow curse as he shoves the door, and I step back. Relief showers me like rain in the desert. “Where’re you goin’, Kettle?” he asks, dark brows pulled in.

  Smiling, I shake my head. “Nowhere, man.” I clap a hand on his shoulder, and we head back toward the tunnel.

  18

  KITE

  Frankie wheezes, a cold, rough sound to her breath like the old school radiator. Though if I hit her with a spanner, I’m sure that woul
d make her worse, not better. Kelpie kicks my feet, grumbling in his sleep. Clutching her shivering shoulder, I whisper, “It’s snowing outside.”

  Her body shudders. She may not see the snow, but she can feel it. I fold the blanket over so she gets double, and I get none. I’m worried she’s going to get sick. I’m worried we won’t be able to stay here much longer, and I don’t know where else we can go.

  A shuffle and a shift on the other side of the curtain. Non-shadows in the dark. They fly to the edges; they search for light. Without it, they are groundless. Endless. The curtain moves, and Hiro’s voice is soft and nervous. “Are you coming to bed?” he asks.

  I touch Frankie’s face. It has warmed with the extra covering, and I exhale with marble-sized relief. A hand knocks my face as he searches for me in the dark. “Kite, come to bed, please.”

  I take his hand and he pulls me from the room, moving across to his side, making no sound and no footprints. “Hiro, wait.” I pull his hand backward, and he turns to face me. The dark whispers secrets in our ears. Safety in the black. Heat in the ink.

  Ice bites into my feet, and I rise to my tiptoes to expose less of my skin to the ground. It leans me closer like a bending branch that can’t take the weight of its climber. Hiro’s hand is still in mine and I place it on my hip, my hands finding his neck and clasping around it like a mending fissure. I want. I want. I want… Something bigger than me. Something closer, too. I want Hiro. Kettle. Both and all.

  Slowly his hands overlap, bringing me closer. He breathes small, uneasy breaths. His arms are strong and safe. Young oak searching for the sky.