The far garage door slid up with a minimum of clatter. The truck was heavy, but not too heavy for her to push, and the slight slope of the driveway would be in her favor. She didn’t want to alert anyone who might be watching until the last possible second. She paused a moment for the moon to pass behind a cloud. Everything grew much darker. One last heave got the truck rolling again and she jumped into the driver seat. With the ignition in the on position, she pulled the side mirror flush to the side of the truck and steered down the drive. So far she saw no obvious signs that an alarm had been triggered. The gate was closed, and probably locked. Either way, she didn’t want to risk stopping to open it. She knew a spot about twenty yards to the right of the gate where the hedge was thinner, no trunks, just small branches. It might just be wide enough for the truck to squeeze through. She eased the shifter into second gear, gave the gas pedal a tap and pulled back sharply on the clutch pedal. The engine lurched and then sprang to life. She turned off the pavement, put the gas pedal to the floor and plowed through the hedge. Branches snapped and screeched along the side of the truck, but she crashed through with no significant damage. There didn’t seem to be anybody waiting on the street side. She turned right and sped off without headlights.
She found her way around to the south end of the estate, far from the lawns, just thick woods and a stream culvert running under the road at this spot. It took only a moment to pull the truck off the road and out of sight. She entered the forest at a dead run, following the stream bed for a little over a mile, which led her directly to the base of Promontory Rock. A quick kick-start and the dirt bike sputtered back to life, and carried her down the stream bed back to the truck. The bike was a little too heavy for her to lift by herself, so she backed the truck up against the embankment and let the tailgate be her ramp. She secured it on its side in the bed.
Emily Hsiao spent the night in a motel in Warm Springs, having paid in cash. After a moment’s hesitation leaning on the bathroom sink, she worked up the nerve to cut her hair. Shoulder length, just long enough to be able still to gather it into a pony tail, but short enough to wear it loose without much annoyance. As she looked at the pile of black hair on the bathroom floor she thought of Yuki. Her mother would cry to see it. It was about eighteen inches worth of hair, all jet black and perfectly straight. Then she thought of what her father had said about how these people might be looking for a gene mutation in her. She swept up all the hair and put it in the dumpster behind the building.
She woke up Tuesday morning, rummaged through the duffle bags and put on some of Andie’s clothes. Just some cotton pants, a white cotton blouse and some light shoes. She barely noticed how they looked, but she was amazed by how they felt. The shoes were so light and comfortable, so unlike the sneakers or hiking boots she usually wore. The pants and blouse felt like half the weight of the blue jeans or cargo pants and t-shirts or sweat shirts she used to favor. The most striking thing, however, was the bra. She’d been wearing only sports bras for years, and this felt so much better. Andie had really great clothes!
She ate the continental breakfast in the lobby, loaded all her stuff into the truck and went to school.
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Chapter 8: School Days
Back in school, everything was normal, disturbingly normal. She’d only missed a day of school. She forged a note from her father to the effect that she had to miss school on Monday because of a family emergency over the weekend. It was sort of true. No extraordinary official notice was taken of her absence. Just another bit of ordinary school business. Bells rang, teachers yelled, kids shuffled from classroom to classroom, lockers opened and closed, big kids picked on little kids, everyone ate lunch. This was perhaps the most momentous weekend of her life. Earth-shattering events had shaken her to the very core of her being. She had emerged on the other side intact, whole, with new enemies of frightening dimensions, but also a new sense of her own identity, and stronger than she had ever felt before.
And no one seemed to notice. The girls who resented her, still resented her. But they were looking at her differently. In fact, they were staring.
“Whoa! You look different,” she heard Danny exclaim as she stood at her locker. She looked at him in puzzled silence. He looked like he was afraid he had offended her. She hadn’t ever invited him to talk to her like she was a girl before. Had he crossed a line? Should she call him on it? “Best to blunder on,” he must have concluded.
“No, I mean you look fantastic,” he tried again.
She blushed a little. He didn’t notice. She realized he was looking at the new her, at Michiko. An odd feeling rushed over her. She enjoyed his attention. His gaze felt to her like an appropriate analog to the way it felt to wear Andie’s clothes. She recovered herself.
“You know, I just felt like making a change,” she ventured nonchalantly. She hoped he would believe her show of indifference. He seemed to.
“Your hair looks cool. You goin’ to the dojo after school?”
She hesitated. It was strange enough hiding in the ordinariness of school. But at the dojo, she might have to tell something of what happened to Sensei, and she wasn’t certain she was ready to do that. What could she tell him, after all? The facts were so extravagant as to seem preposterous. As soon as she tried to imagine herself describing the events to him, she couldn’t help seeing how absurd it all sounded even to her. And she had been there, seen it all!
“I dunno. Maybe. See ya later, okay?” She turned away and walked to her next class. “I like your shoes, by the way,” he called after her. She smiled. Maybe he wasn’t so hopeless after all.
At lunch, she had to go through the line. There hadn’t been any time to prepare something to bring with her from the motel. She was beginning to see all sorts of domestic tasks that were about to devolve to her: meals, laundry, driving, shopping, etc. No one else in Virginia would or could do them for her. She could see that a motel was not an adequate solution. Neither was camping in the woods. She needed to find a regular abode.
She got the rice and succotash, refried beans and a cheese enchilada. It was an uninspiring meal, to say the least. Usually she brought a bento box from home, something Yuki cooked up for her. Rice and curried lentils, maybe, or tofu, some pickled ginger on the side, maybe some daikon, or some kim chee. It was all very strongly flavored, and probably a lot healthier. At least, it was a lot less greasy than the repast that lay before her today.
She sat alone at a table in the corner and looked down at her tray. She ate the rice and beans, and idly poked at the enchilada with her fork. Danny came and sat at her table a moment later. He usually sat with her at lunch these last few weeks. No one else had the temerity to approach her on most days. If it was raining and the patio was unusable, it would be more crowded and other kids would have to squeeze in at her table. But today, for some reason, Billy Codrow plumped down across from her, and Wayne Turley came in right behind him. She knew them all from the dojo. But Billy and Wayne had never sat with her before.
“Hey, Em. Nice look. It’s like a whole new you,” Billy offered. He wasn’t certain how it would be received. But she smiled at him graciously. Billy was also on the football team, one of the cornerbacks on defense. He wasn’t very big as football players go, not even much taller than her. But he was very speedy, and quite agile. In the dojo, he was only a mediocre student. His legs weren’t very limber, so he did everything quite stiffly compared to the rest of the class. As a result, he ended up focusing too much on the strength and speed exercises, since these came easiest to him. His dad was a dentist and his mom managed the office for him. They were pretty well off.
“Thanks, I’m trying something new,” she replied graciously.
“Mrmmph,” grunted Wayne as he tried to stuff two tacos in his mouth at once.
“Whajya say?” asked Danny.
“You using that pudding?” Wayne demanded.
“What the hell, man. I was savin’ that,” Danny shot back, half in jest.
“It’s goddam tapioca. You hate that. And it came with your pizza for free,” Wayne roared. “Give it here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Danny slid it across the table. Wayne made as if to devour it in one huge gulp. Then he shifted rhetorical gears and pretended to savor each tiny spoonful he took, pinky pointing skyward. “Exquisite. Velvet lumps, good nose, vanilla aroma with just a hint of cinnamon,” Wayne diagnosed. “Savorous!”
They all laughed. Even Emily. She had never really paid any attention to what boys said to each other before. Her previous experience, narrow as it was, had led her to believe they never said anything worth listening to. But here she was laughing along with these three. They were probably her closest friends, and she felt she hardly knew them. Of course, they were totally captivated by this new Emily. Until now, she had always been an intimidating figure for them, even a little scary. She was friendly enough, but her conversation was always very clipped, measured. They never felt close to her. But here she was, sitting with them, laughing at their jokes, and beautiful. Every other guy in the cafeteria was staring at their table and wondering why she was sitting with them. At least that’s how it must have felt to them.
Wayne was a large, chubby kid. Probably six foot six, and over two hundred fifty pounds. He wasn’t very fast and didn’t have much stamina. But he always seemed to be a little more limber than people expected him to be. And his katas were among the best in the class. He was really good at all the precision aspects of shotokan. When he first started coming to the dojo he was enormously overweight. He’d been at it for about a year and a half now and had probably lost some sixty or seventy pounds. As he lost weight and his stamina improved, the other kids began to realize he was really strong, too. His nickname in the dojo was the Rock.
Everyone liked sparring with him. He was very good about not hitting too hard, and he was a big target, so it was hard to miss him. Of course, those little touch strikes that score points didn’t reflect what the reality of an actual fight with him would be like. He could take a punch, and it was really hard to make a dent in him with just fists. That’s exactly why Emily didn’t like sparring with Wayne. She didn’t do touch strikes. She would knock you down, knock the wind out of you, make you take it seriously when you threw a punch or a kick her way. She didn’t hurt anyone in the dojo. But her opponents knew what it felt like to hit the mat. Once, sparring with Wayne, she snuck a reverse punch past his guard and nailed him right on the solar plexus. He hardly noticed. Anyone else would have been gasping for breath. That opened her eyes. Two moves later he was lying flat on his back tapping the mat. That was an important lesson for her about the relative density of her opponents. But she was always worried about really hurting him, that his joints wouldn’t be able to sustain the pressure of moving the rest of his bulk if she applied a joint lock. He was very sweet tempered, and she wanted to let him know she thought of him as a real opponent. But she always looked for ways to take it easy on him, and hoped he didn’t notice.
Hey, Em, you goin’ to the dojo after school?” Wayne asked. “We missed you yesterday.”
“I dunno, Wayne,” she replied. “I got a lot of stuff to take care of this afternoon. My dad had to go to the Philippines with his boss. That’s why I wasn’t there yesterday,” she lied.
“How long’s he gone for,” Danny butted in.
“Until spring. He might be back for graduation.” The lie was starting to get sticky.
“Em, that’s like six months, man. Whatcha gonna do for six months?”
“I know. It kinda sucks. They’ve pretty much closed down the estate. I’m all alone out there, ‘cept for the gardeners. I’m looking for a place to stay in town. I’m eighteen now, so it’s all legal,” she lied again. Fortunately none of them had the slightest notion when her birthday actually was.
“Hey, Danny. Don’t your mom need someone to rent out the room above your garage?” Billy asked.
“Hey, yeah! Em, that would be perfect for you. It’s got its own laundry and a little kitchen type area.... Yeah, but she probably wants too much for it,” Danny added dejectedly. Anyone could see what the prospect of Emily living closer than next door would mean to him. It could hardly be less than rapturous, especially this new, non-intimidating Emily. So there was obviously no way in the universe he could imagine this working out.
Emily’s ears perked up. “What’s she want for it, dya think?”
“I think it’s two fifty a month, but utilities are included. Can you swing that much?” This could hardly seem like less than an astronomical sum to him, as they all knew, since he rarely had even fifteen bucks in his pocket at any one time.
“That’s just about right, actually. My dad gave me a bit more than that to live on while he’s a way,” she said, almost truthfully. “Dya think I could come by later to look at it with your mom?”
“I can call her after school, if you want. Or you can see her when she picks me up at the dojo,” he offered, hoping to lock her into coming to class tonight.
“I’ve got my dad’s truck while he’s gone. I can give you a ride home.”
Danny called his mother at the hospital the first chance he got to ask her about Emily. She could almost hear her son’s heart pounding in his voice. She suspected he could barely hear what she was saying, much less the reservation in her voice. “Another teenager,” she thought. “Oy.”
But she had already met Emily, on the night of the concert, thought she looked responsible, no nonsense, if a little withdrawn. She couldn’t help being struck by this exotic-looking girl. Maybe she would even be beautiful, if only she didn’t dress like a commando. She knew Danny was smitten. That in itself made her wary. And she knew nothing about her family. But she might as well talk to her. The studio had been empty for several months now and she could really use the extra money.
The rest of the school day passed uneventfully. Emily could see her new look was drawing attention, more than she wanted. It might be a good idea to tone it down a bit tomorrow. If only she had some idea how to accomplish that, other than returning to her usual camo. In fact, she had no idea what she was doing to attract even this much attention. This new life was going to take some getting used to.
Going to the dojo turned out to be a relief. Sensei shot her a knowing look, but he made no inquiries. He was obviously curious about her new look. She went to the back to change clothes before class; that was unusual right there. Ordinarily, her street clothes were what she wore in class. Today, she dug a t-shirt and running pants out of a duffle bag in her truck and wore those. And she changed back into her new clothes after class.
It was one of Sensei’s meditation classes this evening. She had been really looking forward to it, and for the first twenty minutes or so she found a profound relief from just losing herself in her breathing. She began to see the extremity to which the stress of the last few days had brought her. She felt herself breathing it out and away. The noise of her mind gradually died down, her thoughts slowed. She was able to approach each one separately, turn it over in her mind, contemplate it.
She began to feel once again her connection to the person she always was. Emily Kane and Michiko Tenno really were the same person. Only external circumstances had changed. She could go forward as Michiko and still retain everything Emily had achieved. She would continue to go by Emily in school, so as not to create a public connection in the minds of her teachers and classmates between her dangerous identity and her safe one. She would have to figure out how to change her school records to reflect her new name before graduation, so she could use those records to enter college as Michiko. She would cross that bridge at the appropriate time. For now, she would remain Emily.
Her mind drifted through memories of her childhood, playing with her dad and Yuki, no, her mom. That last thought was like a sunburst in her mind, blindingly bright. She almost laughed. It upset her breathing. She had to regain her composure. She caught a glimpse of Wayne in the corner, sweating profusely, completely a
t a loss as to the meaning of this exercise. He flashed her a look, smiled his big, goofy smile at her. She snorted, almost burst out laughing again. The rest of the dojo caught it, too. Soon everyone was laughing.
Sensei came storming in from the back room to see what was going on. He usually let Emily run exercises like this one. But as soon as he saw her face, he knew she was at the center of it all. There was no point going on. He tried to hide a smile and barked at them: “Okay, fine. Floor exercises, then sparring.” He had them marching back and forth across the dojo, practicing punches and kicks, combinations and evasions. Finally, knife sparring. Not real knives, of course. Rubber knives. A punch or kick landed counted for one point, knife contact counted for two, as did disarming your opponent.
Emily was paired with Billy. He was pretty good at this game. He had quick hands and good balance. Emily kept her knife in her belt. She never used it in knife sparring. Her father always said it was better not to have a weapon in your hands, not even a blade. The best weapon is the one in your opponent’s hand. Obviously, this didn’t apply to guns, unless you could get close enough.
Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 7