“Why do you stay with him?” asked Buster.
Laura sighed. “I guess it’s always been tradition for the team captain of the basketball team to date the head cheerleader.” Her shoulders slumped.
Amy shook her head vigorously. “He wasn’t the captain when you got together last year.” She folded her arms. “And you weren’t the head cheerleader.”
“He was cute,” she smiled meekly.
“So are Dave and Buster,” commented Shawna’s cousin, bringing a deep blush from the young preacher. “But I don’t really picture them pounding on the girls that they date.”
Laura seated herself on the floor again. “When I was picked to be the head cheerleader this year, it was a surprise.” She looked up at the three. “This is the first year that our team has ever picked someone other than a senior for the position.” She wiped the tears from her good eye and continued. “Since we'd already been together since last year, I guess, maybe, I thought it was fate.”
“What?!” demanded Buster as he crouched down next to her, followed by the other two teens. “I don’t know what god you serve, but my God wouldn't want you to be beaten by your boyfriend! It is not His will for us to be punching bags!”
“I . . . I just need to be alone,” muttered Laura as she climbed back to her feet and headed back toward the side doors.
Chapter Seventeen
Saturday, 3:22 PM
Jamie leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window. He could see people moving about outside, goofing around, acting as though they were oblivious to the danger that was somewhere in this town.
Shawna was still rummaging through his tapes. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . . . Beverly Hills Cop II . . . Rocky IV . . . Top Gun . . . You have a thing for soundtracks, don’t you?”
He turned around to face her. “We don’t get MTV at our house, or anything, so I usually only get to hear songs in movies.”
“If you don’t have cable, then how do you see many movies?”
Jamie cracked a smile. “Well, once a munth, my pa and ma hitch up the horses to the wagin and we all go to the picture show . . ..”
She stared at him blankly. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, “I guess that was a pretty dumb question, huh?”
Jamie shook his head. “Not really. But we do have a VCR.”
Shawna smiled and continued to look through his tapes.
Jamie shook his head with a grin and turned to look back out the window. He could see Buster and Dave walking with Amy across the front of the school grounds. Now that would be something. One of God’s chosen ministers and the school flirt. Maybe he’d be good for her.
“Phil Collins!” exclaimed Shawna from her place at the front lab table. The young ninja turned around in time to see her pulling a tape from its case and inserting it into the tape deck of the stereo. She hit PLAY and, after a couple of seconds, the song Take a Look at Me Now began.
She approached Jamie and caught his eyes with her own. “I saved you that dance.”
He blushed and smiled. “You remembered?”
She put her right arm around his waist and took his right hand with her left and said, “How could I forget?”
The two moved to the music. Shawna was a good dancer and, compared to her, Jamie felt clumsy and uncoordinated. “I’m sorry,” he explained in embarrassment. “I don’t dance much.”
Shawna smiled at him, her brown eyes twinkling. “That’s okay. Do you want me to lead?”
The young ninja nodded. “That might be a good idea.”
The two of them moved around the front of the room, swaying to the music. As the seconds moved by, he found himself trapped in her gaze. Her eyes were the night sky and he could see each sparkle as if it were a star.
He hadn’t realized that he was moving his face closer to hers until their lips had already met. Her left hand slipped out of his right and both her arms moved up to encircle his neck as they kissed . . ..
Chapter Eighteen
Saturday, 3:24 PM
Dave, Buster and Amy walked along the sidewalk outside the school. Dave was uncharacteristically quiet, his hands shoved into the pockets of his camouflage pants and his eyes downcast. The beauty of the twilight-cloaked, tree-covered hill that led away from the western side of the school seemed to have no effect on him.
Buster, however, was enjoying Amy’s company. She was cheerful and full of life, even if she was a little too preoccupied with sex.
“So you mean to tell me that you’ve never . . .” she blushed, seemingly embarrassed to talk about this subject with Buster.
Buster pulled his left hand from the pocket of his black and gold windbreaker. “I don’t have a ring on my hand.”
“You sound like Shawna,” commented Amy. “She’s always talking about how sex is for marriage and shouldn’t be given away so freely.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Isn’t that a little old-fashioned?”
He smiled warmly. “What's wrong with being old-fashioned?” He looked at her and said, “I just feel that there has to be something special about giving all of yourself . . . sexually speaking . . . to that special someone who God has planned for you.” He shrugged. “You really can’t do that if you give your virginity to someone else.”
Amy cast her eyes to the ground. “I’m still a virgin.”
Buster smiled. “Then why do you let your talk of sexuality mar so many of your conversations?”
She thought for a moment. “I guess it’s the only way I can get attention.”
Buster’s eyes narrowed in confusion.
She explained. “As Shawna and I were growing up, everybody always looked at her and said ‘Oh, she’s so smart,’ or ‘Oh, she’s an Einstein.’” She slumped her shoulders. “All I ever got was ‘Why can’t you be more like your cousin?’” She looked up at Buster and smiled meekly. “Problem is, I’d feel much better if I could hate her. If she were arrogant, then at least I’d see a flaw. But she treats me great. She's probably my best friend.”
Buster shoved his hand back into his pocket. “And you feel that the only thing going for you is your looks.”
She chuckled. “I guess that sounds pretty arrogant.”
The kensai shook his head. “Strangely enough, you’ll find that the best person for you is the one who won’t be pawing you constantly.”
She smiled and looked at him shyly. “Are you saying I should look for a preacher to date?”
He smiled back at her. “I think that you should accept that your emptiness can only be fulfilled properly in Jesus. Then wait for Him to send you His ideal person for you.” He shrugged with a blush, “And, if that person just happens to be a preacher . . ..”
“Dudes!”
Buster was startled by the big teen’s first words since they’d parted company with Laura. “What?”
“DUCK!!!” Dave knocked the two of them to the ground just as an arrow whizzed by and embedded itself into a tree.
Buster looked down and realized that he had unconsciously covered Amy with his body in order to use himself as a shield for her. He blushed and asked, “Are you okay?”
She smiled at him and nodded.
He climbed to his feet, helping her do so, as well. He looked around to find a dozen black-clad warriors surrounding them. He glanced back toward the school. He couldn’t even see it, as it was blocked from view by the shop building behind which they were standing. “Great, nobody can see us up here!” he grumbled as he pulled both pair of his nunchaku from their places on his belt and assumed a defensive stance.
“Dave seems happy,” commented Amy, noting the smiling bloodlust that filled the larger teen’s eyes.
“He just wants to take out his frustrations,” muttered Buster in response. Then, to Dave, he called out, “Why don’t you take up baseball card collecting?”
“Nah,” responded Jamie’s cousin. “I’d just as soon have the bats.” He popped his knuck
les in anticipation, eyeing the unmoving ninja with a wicked grin. “These dudes’ heads’d make really good baseballs.”
Buster risked a glance at his friend. “We need to have a talk.”
Dave inhaled a deep lung-full of air, then slowly exhaled. “Ahhhhhhh . . . IT’S A GOOD DAY T’DIE!!!”
The ninja looked around, meeting each other’s gazes, then one of them said to him, “It is good that you have accepted your fate.”
Dave’s eyes widened. “Me? I’z talkin’ bout you, dudes.” With that, his right fist shot up, slamming the ninja who’d spoken in the face and knocking him from his feet.
Buster caught a charging ninja in the gut with his right foot. As his opponent doubled over, the kensai smacked the ends of the shafts of his nunchaku into his back, knocking him to the ground. He spin-kicked another as he called out to Dave, “I don’t care how much fun you think this is! We’ve got to get Amy to safety!”
Dave lifted a ninja over his head and fell backward into a suplex. “She’ll be safe enough after we’ve slammed these dudes around a bit!” Another ninja leaped at the big teen, who was still prone. He caught the Warui attacker with both of his feet and sent him flying by.
Amy screamed.
Buster turned around to see a throwing star embedded in her shoulder. She was kneeling on the ground, her teeth clenched in pain. The young kensai yelled, “She’s hurt! We’ve got to get her out of here!”
* * *
Yoshi and George had been admiring the works in progress of the shop students. “We have a Shop Fair in the Spring every year,” explained George.
Yoshi was examining what was starting to look like a table as he continued, “Sometimes, people who come to the fair buy the crafts from the students.” He chuckled. “Last year, one guy built a chair with fake buffalo horns and fur all over it and sold it for five hundred dollars.”
Yoshi glanced up at him and smiled. “Why didn’t you take shop?”
He rolled his eyes. “They have this dumb board that you have to get current shop students to sign. You have to get twenty signatures and the students can make you do just about anything to get their signature.”
Yoshi narrowed her eyes as something across the room caught her attention. “Anything?” she asked absently as she approached it.
“As long as it’s not indecent or dangerous.” He laughed. “Our freshman year, one girl had to crawl around the math classroom, cooing like a baby.”
He now noticed what she was looking at. It was a well-crafted bo staff. “Jim Chapper must have made that last year. His dad teaches karate lessons in the cafeteria twice a week. Jim graduated last year, though.”
She gently ran her hand along the carved dragons on the weapon. “It is beautiful.”
He smiled shyly. “I guess you know a lot about beauty, huh?”
She turned to him and smiled. Then, looking past him and out the window, her eyes widened. “NINJA!” She pulled her two ninja-tos from their sheaths and ran past him and out of the building.
As the door closed, he caught a glimpse of Buster and Dave fighting a dozen of the Warui warriors on the wooded hill behind the building. Amy was with them and she looked hurt. Clenching his teeth, he grabbed the staff from the rack on the wall and followed Yoshi . . ..
* * *
Buster worked his nunchaku fluidly creating a shield for his body. The ninja weren’t getting through to him, but that didn’t lessen his concern for Amy’s safety. She sat on the ground, holding her bleeding shoulder and trusting in the big teen and the preacher to protect her. What if it’s poisoned? He shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t think about that now. He would just trust God.
A shout from the direction of the shop building pulled some of the ninja away from the two boys as the shadow-warriors moved to meet this new challenge. Buster looked to his left to see Yoshi, her twin ninja-tos working in flawless unison, cutting a path through the enemies. Following close behind was George, swinging a bo staff with practiced ease.
The young preacher looked skyward. “Lord, You are AWESOME!!!”
Yoshi performed a flip between Buster and Amy, landing to the kensai’s right. “Perhaps you should pray for sword-proof hides,” she suggested helpfully as she kicked a ninja.
George set himself in a crouch and caught a charging ninja with the end of the staff, flipping him effortlessly over and away from him. He then joined the defense to Buster’s left, effecting a protective box around Amy.
Yoshi smashed the end of the hilt of her right ninja-to into an enemy’s face as she instructed Buster, “Remind me to ask him where he learned to use that staff.”
“Lord willing,” replied the young kensai as he ducked a sword swipe to his head. In retaliation, he smacked the ninja in his split-toed boot with the shaft of his nunchaku, causing him to drop to the ground and cradle his injured foot.
* * *
Jamie sat on the floor of the science room, his right arm holding Shawna close. Her head rested on his shoulder.
“I can’t believe that you’re an uncle,” she was commenting. “I thought you were an only child.”
Jamie smiled. “My youngest brother is almost eleven years older than me, so I was practically raised as an only child.”
“Are any of them being trained by Uncle Jamie to be little ninja?”
Jamie shook his head. “No. I don’t think I’d be much of a teacher.” He rubbed his eyes with his left hand, for the first time realizing just how tired he was. He continued, “Elizabeth takes tae kwon do lessons with Max Adams, but the other two aren’t martial artists.”
“Do they know about you?”
“That I’m a ninja?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “They know. They’re pretty good with secrets, though.”
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “No pressure, but if you ever DID want to tell me about Simon . . ..”
He sighed. “When we lived in Jameston, our little club was larger. We had the same people that we have now, but we also had some other friends. Four other friends, actually. There was Simon Wilson . . . the one that was with us the day Yoshi’s parents were killed. There was Simon’s brother, Sean. There was Mike Noddingham, who was really more Dave’s friend. And then there was Ben Shalley.”
“What happened to them?” asked the girl.
“Yoshi found out that Sean, Mike and Ben were selling drugs,” explained the young ninja. “When we confronted them about it, they didn’t deny it at all.” He ran his fingers through his light brown hair. “Ben even tried to write it off as being no big deal . . . a ‘natural progression’ in their lives. We kicked them out of the club that day.”
He leaned his head back against the wall. “I was fourteen years old and had just been accepted into the Funakoshi clan. I suppose the idea of being in a club like the one that we had started when I was nine was kind of dumb to us by then, but most of us realized that Ben’s vision for our future was wrong. So Ben, Mike and Sean started a new club.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Actually it was a street gang. While Simon wasn’t involved in the drugs, he was loyal to his brother, so he quit Adventure and joined them. Even Dave’s girlfriend, Tracy Bundy, joined them, causing them to break up because he took my side.”
“Your side?”
Jamie thought back to his last summer in Jameston. “Ben wanted us to join them. He’d really thought the thing out. These kids were running through a town that never had to deal with any big crime and they caused all sorts of havoc. They were selling drugs, extorting money, organizing robberies . . . you name it, they did it.” He shook his head. “I refused to join him, and all of the guys who are with me this weekend stuck with me.”
“So, what happened?”
“They kept trying to provoke us.” He rested his head on hers. “They wanted us to fight them pretty badly. They’d pick at us at school, home and in town. They even waited for Buster outsi
de of his church one Sunday morning and cussed him out when he was leaving with his dad.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “That took a lot of nerve, since Buster’s dad’s the police chief.
“Anyway, they finally crossed the line when they lured another of our non-martial artist friends, Jack, behind the grocery store in town and beat him to a pulp.” He narrowed his eyes in remembered anger. “We went after them and fought them near their meeting place in the City Park. I found out from Ben that day that the ones who had attacked Jack were supposed to have killed him. Ben was shocked when he found out they’d failed.”
Shawna took his free hand in her right. “Who won the fight?”
Jamie sighed. "We survived long enough for Buster’s dad to show up with a bunch of his deputies. They found a bunch of guns and drugs hidden in the dugouts of the baseball field. I guess we won, if you could call it a victory. It was hollow, though. Jack’s dad left a job where he’d worked for fifteen years to move his family to Texas and get Jack as far away from all of us as he could.”
“So what happened to the four who used to be in your club?”
“Simon was never really arrested, since he was basically a good person and only a Renegade in name.”
“A Renegade?”
“That’s what they called their gang,” explained Jamie.
He continued, “Ben, Mike and Sean were sent to a juvenile detention center in the Bluff.”
“Are they still there?”
“No, they’ve been shuffled around to different foster homes all over Missouri. I’m not sure how long this will go on, though. Dave’s dad is a teacher for the Missouri Police Academy now and, as I’d mentioned, Buster’s dad is the police chief in Jameston and even they couldn’t find out how long the guys had been sentenced. Due to the red tape dealing with the fact that they were minors, I’m surprised we learned what we do know.”
“Do you think they’d come after you when they get back?”
Jamie flashed another mirthless smile. “I think that’s the biggest factor in my parent’s decision to move here. We’d lived here from the time that I was three until I was almost eight and my parents still owned the land up here. My dad can’t work anymore and they had to find a way to lower our cost of living. But they never really discussed moving back here until they found out that three very angry members of a street gang could come looking for me at any time."
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