“The bruises will mostly fade by next weekend, but I may still be limping. I got kicked pretty hard just below the knee. I’m going in for an x-ray Monday after school.” She turned to face him straddling the log. “But my lips don’t hurt.”
He leaned over to kiss her. When he put his arm around her waist for an embrace, she squealed in pain. He recoiled and she punched him in the chest.
“Sucker,” she giggled and threw her arms around his neck to kiss him again.
By the time they returned to the house, the others were ready to go. Wayne felt cheated by how little time he’d had with her. And the girls, too. But she promised to make it up to them in school.
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Chapter 27
Stone
Monday morning before school started Emily found herself in the principal’s office wearing a stylish pair of sunglasses with large rounded frames and Danny’s baseball cap. One glance and Mrs. Telford let her in so she could wait more comfortably. There was no way Mrs. Abernathy wouldn’t take an interest as soon as she saw her. It would be kindly meant, to be sure. But it just wasn’t clear how it could be helpful.
And there was the unfinished business concerning the incident with Miss Park and her “boyfriend” in the parking lot. The Sheriff had been called along with the EMTs, and even though the assailants were nowhere to be found, they still wanted to talk to her. She was going to have to tell them something sooner or later, and Mrs. Fredericks, the principal, would want to hear all about it, too. She just didn’t know what she could tell them.
Emily’s mind was elsewhere when she heard the two women in the front office.
~~~~~~~
The memorial ceremony for Jesse the day before claimed her attention. They sat in ten chairs arranged in a circle down by the pond. Ethan spoke, and then Michael and Andie, and finally Emily herself.
“I felt his care for all of us in every little attention he paid to our safety. He deserved better. The people who killed him are all dead,” she said, rather somberly. She stood silent for a moment, letting the depth and bitterness of that experience wash over her, and then out. She didn’t want it to infect her remembrance. “But as satisfying as that might be for the living, it means nothing to the dead. I remember him not as a spirit of vengeance, but as an angel of our better natures. We honor him by shaping our hopes and aspirations according to the respect and love he always showed us.”
She told them about the cameras he installed outside her studio, the comfort she took in knowing he was somehow there, even the funny text he sent her when she was inspecting his work. She already knew what it felt like to have a guardian angel watching over her. Ethan smiled as he heard this, and Emily smiled at him. She knew more than just duty drove Jesse to take such good care of her.
The children squirmed impatiently through the service until finally they were released. The little ones ran squealing into the woods. At a nod from Emily, Anthony trotted after them.
“They can’t understand any of it, I suppose, but children have a role to play even at a funeral,” Andie mused. “They shine a light on a dark mood and show the way out.”
“What are we gonna call him?” Ethan asked.
“Dol’s not good enough for you?”
“I don’t think he should go to school with that name,” he replied. “They’ll tease him too much.”
Emily picked up a rock lying at their feet and tossed it in a high arc into the pond. The splash subsided into concentric rings.
“It means “stone.” Let’s call him that.”
“I guess it suits him,” Ethan conceded. “Though he’s more of a pebble right now.”
~~~~~~~
“It’s good to see you, Miss Tenno,” Mrs. Fredericks said, when she finally walked in.
“You can still call me Emily. Everybody does.”
“Are you here about missing school last week?” She had a note from her mother offering a family emergency as an excuse. “Is this your mother? Mrs. Kagami? Is everything okay at home?” Mrs. Fredericks had lots of questions.
“It is now,” she replied cautiously. “My mom and I are doing fine.”
Then she removed her hat and glasses, as if to make a point. Or perhaps to show them up close what everyone in the school would be talking about soon. They’d been warned by Mrs. Telford to expect something like what they saw. But the visceral reality of her bruises, the swelling on her face, and even just the sight of her hair, was still shocking.
“My Lord,” exclaimed Mrs. Fredericks. “What happened to you, honey? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.”
Mrs. Abernathy wanted to ask her about who had done this to her, but Emily forestalled her.
“Have you heard from Miss Park?” she asked provocatively.
“No, not for over a week,” replied Mrs. Fredericks. “Does she have something to do with… this, with what’s happened to you?” she asked, gesturing to Emily’s face.
“She has everything to do with it. Do you know who she is?”
Both women looked exceedingly puzzled. It was an unexpected question.
“Does this have something to do with the incident in the parking lot? We have some questions for you about that.”
“I think the Sheriff has some questions too,” Mrs. Abernathy piped up.
“Do you have any of the security video from that day?”
They did. The Sheriff had looked it over, but wasn’t able to identify the men in the van or the “boyfriend.”
“Let’s take a look at it now,” Emily said. “I think there’s something you should see.”
It took a moment for Mrs. Fredericks to bring the old file up on her monitor. When it finally started playing, the video showed the events of that afternoon from the perspective of an overhead camera on one of the nearby light posts. They saw what looked like an assault on a teacher. A man in dark clothes was about to strike her when a large student burst onto the scene, knocking him to the ground. Two other students pull Miss Park out of harm’s way. The first student is stabbed. Both women cringed to see it again, even though they knew it turned out not to be as serious as it appeared in the video. He punches the man in the chest driving him back. Two girls enter the frame. One pulls the wounded boy away and the other fights off the man. A few deft moves leave him lying unconscious on the pavement with his own knife sticking out of his butt.
“Is that what you wanted us to see,” asked Mrs. Abernathy. “Because that’s pretty impressive. Did you learn to do that in your dojo?”
“You saw how Wayne punched him in the chest? And I kicked him there, too? Keep watching. Here’s the important part.”
The video showed the side of a dark van as it pulled up to the curb. Men jump out and pull the wounded man away. One of them tries to grab Emily.
“Pause it there. Do you see what he’s doing?”
“He’s trying to grab you,” Mrs. Abernathy observed.
“Why is he trying to grab you?” demanded Mrs. Fredericks. “I didn’t even notice that when we looked at this with the Sheriff. I guess we were preoccupied with trying to identify them.”
“What did those men want?” asked Mrs. Abernathy.
“What do you really know about Miss Park?” Emily asked pointedly.
Mrs. Fredericks was taken aback by the resolute expression on Emily’s face.
“She came to us from West Virginia, with a recommendation from the Morgantown Superintendent of Schools. She taught at one of their high schools. We heard she needed a new start, away from an abusive boyfriend.”
“Did you check her out?”
“We ran the usual background check. Nothing was out of the ordinary.”
“I bet if you call the principal of her former high school you’ll find they’ve never heard of her.”
Mrs. Fredericks was irritated by the implication of this remark.
“You can get all that from the video we just saw?” Mrs. Abernathy asked incredulously.
“No. I get that from having kicked that guy in the chest. He was wearing body armor. You can ask Wayne. He felt it when he hit him.”
“Body armor? You mean like a bullet proof vest? What does that mean?”
“It means what you just saw was not a domestic dispute. I don’t think an abusive boyfriend typically wears body armor to beat up his girlfriend. Do you?”
The question had a sharp edge neither woman wanted to face.
“What exactly do you expect us to do?” Mrs. Fredericks asked.
“There’s almost nothing you can do for me. But I don’t want you to think I’m somehow being abused. I know Mrs. Abernathy was worried about that. Danny Rincon is definitely not an abusive boyfriend. I haven’t told you everything about my life, in part because some of it is hard to believe. But maybe it’s about time I showed you this.”
With that she got Mrs. Fredericks to type a search phrase into the web browser on her computer. A few seconds later the video of the finals from the Norfolk tournament came up. She let them watch it and draw their own conclusions. They were flabbergasted.
“That was for real?”
“And it was really you?”
“Yes, it was definitely for real. I had a nasty bruise on my jaw from that one punch you saw. But I think you can see I don’t need protecting… certainly not from Danny.”
“You won that tournament, right? Who were those guys competing against you?”
“They were mainly Marines. One of them is the karate coach at the Naval Academy.”
“Well, I can see you know how to take care of yourself. But what’s all this got to do with Miss Park, or whoever she is? And what’s it got to do with your new bruises?”
“There’s lots more I could tell you about Miss Park and these bruises. But I don’t think you’d be able to believe most of it. It seems pretty incredible to me sometimes. One thing I’m pretty sure of—we won’t be hearing from her again.”
“That sounds pretty cryptic,” observed Mrs. Fredericks. “Who do you think she is?”
“The video should tell you everything you need to know. Asian men in body armor, feigning domestic abuse, but really interested in getting me into their van. I’d say they’re all covert operatives, Korean maybe.”
“Cloak and dagger stuff,” retorted Mrs. Abernathy with a snort.
“I know. It sounds preposterous. You can draw your own conclusions. I just came in to let you know there’s no need to worry about me or my bruises.”
“Thank you, Emily,” replied Mrs. Fredericks nervously.
After she left, the two women stared speechlessly at each other for a long moment. The references Miss Park provided turned out to be false, as a couple of phone calls quickly revealed. This gave an unnerving confirmation to Emily’s surmises and raised several disturbing questions. Who were those people and what sort of interest did they have in her? How much danger was she in? What did it mean for the other students at the school? There was only a month or so left in the school year, and she was one of the best students in the senior class. They earnestly wished to let her be, let her graduate without getting in her way.
~~~~~~~
Andie and Yuki had given her a trim the night before to shape her hair, soften the rough edges from the quick buzz Danny gave her with the clippers. Now she looked pert instead of just thatched. The swelling on her jaw had gone down a bit, but the shiner still looked alarming. She kept the dark glasses on for the rest of the day.
“I think it looks pretty good,” said Wendy at lunch. “Makes you look cute.”
“Gee, thanks. Cute.”
“You gonna grow it out again?” asked Wayne.
~~~~~~~
“What the hell happened to her?” Amanda asked on the other side of the room.
Her animosity was unabated, but the bruises were unnerving. Even if in her mind Emily deserved whatever had happened—at least she would have liked to think so. But her resentment paled next to the natural sympathy her appearance summoned in everyone else. “Did she get in a fight or something?”
“That’s a pretty safe bet,” replied Melanie.
“I guess she’ll skip the prom now.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. She’s pretty tough.”
Melanie turned to go. Amanda wished she could pull her friend back from the other table. But she said nothing, not wishing to initiate a contest she feared to lose. The friends at her table seemed cold comfort. Perhaps that was Emily’s fault too.
News of her injuries spread quickly through the school, aided by the inference provided by a supposed connection to her recent absences. Everyone thought they knew something the others didn’t, that they were in on a secret. Each new sighting of her triggered a new frisson of curiosity. But rumors did not flourish, perhaps due to the depth of the enigma.
The teachers found themselves in a quandary. They keenly felt an obligation to protect a student, but the air of self-confidence she exuded held them at bay. Mrs. Fredericks would clarify the situation for them with the very limited information at her disposal at the end of the day. The bruises became just another element in an obscure puzzle.
~~~~~~~
“I don’t know, maybe I’ll keep it short for a little longer. Whaddya think, Danny?”
He just smiled back at her, riding a wave of elation unabated since her return. Wendy took one look at the idiot grin on his face and snorted soda out her nose. Wayne punched him in the shoulder and they all started laughing, except Wendy who was busy blotting a spill.
Emily was not nearly as disturbed by Danny’s ridiculous infatuation as she expected, or as she would have been before Kamchatka. Now it felt somehow gratifying, even comforting. The dangers were, as always, present to her mind. But what was the point of braving them if she shared in none of the joys of social life? And she did enjoy this moment. This is progress, she thought. Did she love him? Absolutely not! But his attentions were certainly welcome, especially now.
“I love your hair,” Melanie gushed, hugging her from behind and kissing her on the side of the head. “It looks like you touched it up a bit.”
“Yeah. Andie fixed it. No offense, Danny. She’s pretty good with scissors.” He just nodded starry eyed. “You think it’ll do for the prom?”
“I think we’ve got some shopping to do, Em,” Melanie said.
Wendy’s eye’s lit up at these words.
“Me, too. I’m coming.”
“We’ll make a day of it! The good stores are in Charlottesville. We can go Wednesday, after school.”
~~~~~~~
Dr. Tarleton looked again at the films of Emily’s leg. The radiologist’s note indicated the location of the fracture, a stress fracture of the tibial shaft, and the evidence of remodeling on the bone was clear. She didn’t need him to tell her any of that. It looked like a well-aligned repair of an injury sustained about a month earlier. But she had reason to believe it had been sustained in the last few days. Perhaps she had really been injured much earlier, at that karate tournament, and only just noticed it now. The pattern of the remodeling didn’t quite fit that time frame either, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“Yup, you’ve got a little fracture of the tibia just below the knee.”
“Ouch. Will I need a cast?” Emily asked.
“I don’t think so. It’s almost fully healed. I’d be surprised if you even felt the need to favor it after tomorrow.”
“What do you mean? Did I break it or not?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. See this line here?” she said pointing to the x-ray. “That’s the fracture. The rounded over part, that’s the remodeling. It’s almost complete.”
“Are these things supposed to heal in three days?
“Are you sure you didn’t injure it earlier and only notice the twinge three days ago?”
“I dunno. I suppose that’s possible,” she said unconvincingly. There was no doubt in her mind about when this injury happened. “Jan, do me a favor and make sure that’s what a
ny records say about it. Okay?”
This would have to be one more thing to take up with her mom.
~~~~~~~
The next couple of days sped along at roughly the pace of the remodeling of her tibia. Her bruises faded, especially the ones on her face. The twinge in her leg faded into a dull ache. She didn’t do any running, and used what remained of her bruises to supply an ongoing excuse to avoid PE. She’d had enough of substitute teachers.
Wednesday afternoon they left school early, since the last two periods were just “study hall” for the three girls. They arrived at the big mall in downtown Charlottesville just before three. The next few hours were an orgy of accessory shopping: shoes, bags, etc. Emily’s dress was light cyan blue. She and Wendy picked variations on blue to go with Melanie’s dress. That meant some shade of blue shoes became their main target again. Emily also wanted to find a stylish sweater to cover her shoulders in case the last bruises hadn’t fully faded by the weekend. The shiner was almost completely gone even now.
They sat on the edge of a large fountain in the center of the mall, near the main escalators, when Melanie heard a commotion coming from a shoe store off to their left. A loud shriek sounded familiar, the impossibly high pitch of a child, followed by the deeper tones of some angry, frustrated adults. She tapped Emily on the shoulder.
“Look what’s headed this way.”
Emily turned just in time to see Stone streaking toward them, slipping along in his new socks, Li Li close on his heels, shrieking with delight. She stood and caught the eyes of Andie and Yuki, exasperated, trotting after them. When they saw Emily materialize out of nowhere, it was like a miracle. They stopped to catch their breath and let younger powers take over. She scooped up Stone as he tried to squirt by and held him up above her head. He let out a loud squawk until he recognized her. Li Li shrieked “Emmy!” and threw her arms around her legs.
“That young man is a handful,” said Andie. “He’s like a Tasmanian Devil in a store. The two of them left a path of destruction in their wake.”
She was at the end of her rope and Emily saw it.
“Maybe I’ll come home with you guys. Mel, can you and Wendy get back without me?”
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