by Camy Tang
“Wait a minute, where are you going?”
“We’re having dinner.”
“I know. We’ll join you.”
Lex lowered her voice to a hiss. “I don’t remember asking you.”
Richard chucked her under the chin as he breezed past her toward the restaurant doors. “I’m your brother. I don’t need to be asked.”
Lex stormed after them.
Hot Pot Town looked more like a warehouse than a restaurant. A mish-mash of tables packed every open space, and they managed to find a cafeteria-style table near the food buffets. The waiter started their tabletop burner topped by a steel kettle of chicken broth — the “hot pot” — and took their drink orders.
Lex wandered to the refrigerated raw meats and selected chicken and beef, sliced so thin she could almost see her white plate through them. Each of them would cook their own selections in the broth at the table. She had moved to the marinated seafood when she realized Gecko followed her.
“So, you’re Lex?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t get the message from her clipped tone. “I’m Hector.”
“I know.” And I don’t need to know anything more about you. Hmm, the marinated scallops or shrimp? She got a scoop of each.
Gecko hovered near her shoulder. She jerked away from his invasion of her personal space.
“So, Lex, what do you do?” Joviality so heartily false it sounded like a Barney movie.
She slammed him with a hard, direct glare. “Don’t even. I know Grandma told your mother — ”
“Aunt, actually.”
Lex shrugged and went back to the black bean sauce chicken.
“Well, then, since all the cards are on the table . . .” Gecko’s voice grew more forceful, less pleasant. “Let’s be honest here. I’d just like some game tickets.” Gecko smiled as if he’d said something intelligent.
“No.” Ohh, they had Chinese broccoli and bok choy.
“Aw, come on.” Slime coated his voice. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Since we’re being honest, Geck — Hector, I have to tell you that you’d be a pretty boring date.” Lex spooned some corn onto her plate.
“Who’s talking date? I can make it worth your while the other way. ”
His attempt at being subtle, she guessed. He’d make a lousy Yakuza. “You mean money?” She pitched her voice rather loud.
He sucked in his cheeks and flapped his hands at her. “Keep it down.”
“You mean money?” She said it even louder, if possible.
“Yes, yes, just shut up.”
She rescued a piece of fish before it rolled off the edge of her plate.
She had finished getting food for the hot pot. “The answer’s no.”
“I can pay as much as you want — ”
Lex turned toward their table, but Gecko stood in the way and laid a hand on her arm. She jolted away. “Listen, buddy, jailbait isn’t my first career choice.”
“Who’s to know?”
“What about the word ‘no’ do you not understand?”
“Oh, come on — ”
“Hey, Lex.”
She’d never been so glad to see Aiden. Yet again. “What are you doing here?”
Aiden lifted an eyebrow. “ ‘Why, hello, Aiden. How are you?’ ”
She smiled. “Hello, Aiden. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I’m here with my friend Spenser and his girlfriend.”
“I’m here to celebrate Wassamattayu tryouts.”
“Great! How’d they — ”
“Excuse me, Aiden, we’re having a conversation.” Gecko thrust his face in between them.
Aiden’s face became stone. “Sounded to me like you’d already finished.”
“Not by a long shot.”
“Excuse me?” Lex turned to Gecko and eyed his prominent Adam’s apple. A good hard blow right there would shut him up.
“Your grandma promised me those tickets.”
“Well, that’s just too bad.”
“I was counting on them.”
“Gee, you can count?”
Gecko’s bloodshot eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his skull. “Look, you — ”
Aiden’s whipcord figure slipped between them. “The lady said no.”
Lex backed away from them. Other people had started to notice their argument.
Gecko’s face twitched like a rabid rabbit. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Well, I’m talking to you.” The edge to Aiden’s voice had the ring of a sword being drawn. “She said no. Just leave it.”
“Get out of my way.”
“Let’s discuss this outside.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Gecko suddenly thrust at Aiden’s shoulders, making him stumble backward.
Lex turned to get out of the way.
Aiden’s arm reached out to break his fall. His shoulder hit Lex right at the knee joint.
She felt and heard a sickening pop.
Pain like a vice grip exploded around her kneecap, in the soft area under the knee, along the inside edge of her leg. She fell to the ground, raw meat and vegetables landing on her stomach, her legs, her hair. She grabbed her right knee.
No. Oh, God, no.
Swelling rushed into the joint like a scalding river. Sharp stabbing in her joint, in cacophony with the hard pulsing of the pain, trying to break out of her skin.
No, please, no.
She lifted her leg, and her shin dangled at a slightly odd angle from her thigh.
No, not now. No.
“Shhh, Lex, it’ll be okay.” Venus’s face appeared in front of her. Lex hadn’t realized she’d been screaming.
TWENTY-TWO
Aiden held open the front door as Lex hopped inside, one arm hooked over Venus’s neck. Poor Venus bent over like an old woman to make up for the height difference.
Lex didn’t say anything. She collapsed on the sagging couch, breathing hard, trying not to grimace too much from the pain. Jennifer rushed into the living room with a couple pillows she’d snagged from Lex’s bedroom, easing them under Lex’s knee.
She stared at her knee, ballooned out to twice its normal size. She started crying again.
Venus shielded her, while Jennifer whispered something to Aiden. Venus turned to wave at him as he left. “Thanks, Aiden.”
Lex still hadn’t said anything. She couldn’t open her mouth. Her brain ordered her to say something — at least thank him for driving her home — but her throat had closed shut with Crazy-Glue. He had checked her knee at the restaurant, but his grim look and firm command to see a doctor ASAP had crushed her hopes.
Venus’s face had a sad, calm cast to it, like a pale Noh mask. Jennifer’s eyes glistened with tears as she sat at the other end of the couch. Venus sank down onto the sturdy coffee table. “When does your dad get back?”
“Tnnm.” Lex cleared her throat. “Ten.” Saying the word exhausted her.
They sat in silence, listening to the familiar ticking of the old cuckoo clock. Fog filled Lex’s head. But the mist cleared a little, and she realized who was missing.
“Where’s Trish?” Her voice had a soft, plaintive tone she didn’t recognize as her own.
Venus glanced at Jenn, who bit her lip. Venus touched Lex’s shoulder. She jumped.
“Trish . . . had to go.”
Lex didn’t remember seeing Trish at all — inside or outside —after the — She swallowed. “When? Where did she have to go?”
Venus’s eyes darted away. Jenn fiddled with a loose thread from the couch.
“One of you has to tell me.” Her sentence ended on a sob.
Venus sighed. It sounded frustrated. “Trish — ” Venus bit her name out — “decided to meet up with her boyfriend.”
The news struck Lex like a slap to her face. She exhaled sharply but couldn’t breathe back in. She pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling.
“It’s not you, Lex. It’s her
.” Venus’s eyes had narrowed into black goma seeds, dead and dangerous in her face. Her fingers curled as if around Trish’s neck.
It didn’t make the emptiness right below Lex’s rib cage somehow fill up again.
“Do you . . . uh . . . want to watch SportsCenter?” Jennifer reached for the remote control.
“No!” Lex’s hand snapped out to grab at her. A knife chopped into her knee. She winced and gingerly touched her kneecap.
She couldn’t watch people doing athletic things. Not now. Not when her own body had failed her like this.
She’d seen several people tear their ACL — the ligament connecting the tibia bone to the femur. She’d watched them on crutches both before and after the surgery, the long recovery. Some of them never played volleyball again . . .
No, don’t think that way! Lots of people came back just as strong from ACL surgery.
However, lots of people didn’t tear their ACL right after nailing Wassamattayu tryouts. Right after finding a room on the second floor of a town house.
Lex crumpled her face, trying not to cry again. She sniffled. Jenn handed her the box of Kleenex from the end table.
Venus took a tissue too. “One good thing has come out of this.”
“What?” Lex blew her nose.
“Mariko is going to be fuming.”
Lex wasn’t supposed to do this alone. Trish had let her down again, right after her apologies and protests that she wanted to help her injured cousin.
Lex took a shaky breath at the entrance to the MRI center. You can do this, even alone. She had to do a sideways hop to both pull open the glass door and manage her crutches, but in the past week, she’d gotten pretty savvy on her crutches from navigating the cubicles at work. Behind her, the taxi sped away to a duet of honks from the two cars it cut off.
She hobbled up to the receptionist’s counter. “Lex Sakai. I have an MRI scheduled for two.”
The sour-faced woman checked her computer. “You’re late.”
“I’m sorry. My ride never showed up — ”
“You’re lucky. We don’t have anyone after you, so we can still work you in.”
“Gee, thank you.” Her voice didn’t quite have a meek, grateful tone. The woman glanced up at her. Lex gave a weak smile.
“Have a seat until the tech calls you.”
As if it weren’t bad enough her heart pounded in her chest, she had to deal with snippy people. Lex hobbled around the arrangement of chairs in the waiting area. She finally managed to get into position to sink into one when a door opened at the far end of the room.
“Lex Sakai?”
Anakin Skywalker stood in the doorway. After he turned bad, and sans cape. Glorious golden curls contrasted with his bloodshot eyes and fanatical “world domination” expression. His head looked like it floated in midair until he gestured with his black-clad arm. Then she saw that his all-black ensemble had blended into the background.
“You’re late.” His voice rumbled deep and menacing.
“I’m sorry, I — ”
“Just follow me.” He turned down the hallway behind the door.
Gee, that’s not creepy at all. She had a surreal sensation of following Luke into the cave.
She maneuvered back around the chairs, but just before she reached the doorway, it closed in her face. Brilliant technician hadn’t even stayed to hold it open for her.
She turned the knob. Locked.
Frustration overtook the nervous twitching in her limbs. She pounded on the door and almost lost her balance on the crutches. As she righted herself, the door swung open to Mr. Dark Side’s dour face.
He gave her a set of scrubs and showed her a closet-sized changing room. The room didn’t even have a chair for her to sit on. She had to balance on one leg while she unstrapped herself from the Velcro-and-metal brace her sports doctor had given to her at her appointment a few days ago. It made her feel like a cyborg. The brace crashed to the ground.
She shed her warm-up pants and hopped into the flimsy paper shorts Anakin had given to her. The cotton top followed.
She left her brace and her clothes on the floor. Getting out of the changing room reminded her of her office at work. She backed up, pulled open the door, and then stepped out. Anakin sat in a hallway chair waiting for her, foot jiggling. Another frown when she appeared.
He led her into a small, sterile room crammed with the biggest toilet paper roll she’d ever seen. Except it was made of hard plastic instead of toilet paper. A table was attached to the roll, and he stabbed a black-painted fingernail at it. “Hop up.”
The cold temperature and complex machinery made her shiver. Too much like a hospital. She took small steps to turn around —quite difficult with two extra “legs” — and sat down. “What about my shoes?”
He loosed a frustrated grunt as he turned around and exited. He returned with a plastic bag. “Dump your stuff in here.”
She shed her shoes. “I left my clothes back in the changing room.”
He looked like she’d asked him to give her his firstborn child.
“Fine, I’ll get them.” He pointed at her leg. “Put that in the holster.”
Like a gun about to go off? Sounded like her temper. She lifted her knee gently to drop it into the plastic thingy that looked like a big stalk of celery.
Anakin came around the other side and grabbed her leg.
“Ow! What are you doing?”
“Just positioning it correctly.”
He pulled and pushed. Lex gritted her teeth, wincing with each rough movement. Her knee started to feel warm again, like a fever in the joint. “Watch it! You’re going to injure it more.”
He gave a last tug. “Okay, lie back.”
He left the room — thankfully — but then the table started to move her toward the toilet paper roll.
“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” His voice shot out over the ceiling speaker as loud as a rock concert.
“Turn it down. Are you trying to give me hearing problems too?”
“How’s this.”
It was a statement, not a question, but she answered anyway. “It’s fi — ”
“Okay, now keep perfectly still or else the MRI won’t work.”
Bam! Bam! Bam! At first Lex thought they were gunshots. Then she realized the sound came from the machine.
Wait a minute. How long was this going to take? She didn’t know how long she could stand the firecrackers from the toilet paper roll . . .
It seemed like forever. Luckily, the machine didn’t snap, crackle, and pop the entire time. Finally, his voice blasted over the loudspeaker, making it vibrate. “Okay, you’re done.”
Praise God.
She got her clothes back on, although pulling up the warm-up pants was like threading a wet noodle into a keyhole.
As she left, the tech handed her the MRI photos.
“Th — ” Thanks for what? The second worst day of her life?
He didn’t notice her hesitation. He just shook his head.
“What is it?”
“You’ll need to verify with your doctor, but it looks like you tore your ACL. You’ll need surgery.”
Even before her dad handed her the plain white envelope, Lex’s heart cracked — a deafening sharp sound like a glacier splitting in two and sliding into the cold Sea of Japan.
You have been accepted into the Wassamattayu sports club for the coed and women’s volleyball teams . . .
She folded the letter up precisely, sharpening the folds, sliding it back into the envelope. She laid it on the coffee table next to the couch where she lay with her knee propped up.
Darren had called earlier that day to tell her of her acceptance.
“Darren . . . I tore my ACL last week.” Her voice cracked. Her nails dug into the phone, making her cuticles ache.
“Are you sure?”
“I had an MRI and saw my doctor today. I have surgery scheduled for a couple weeks from now.”
“Lex . . .” A heavy whoosh over the p
hone as he sighed. “We have an Injured Reserve list, but it’s usually as long a wait as the wait list.”
Tears stung her eyes. She snapped her jaw shut and bit her tongue.
“I’m sorry, Lex. I’ll put you on the IR list. Maybe in a few years.”
Click.
The severing of all her hopes.
She swallowed as she stared at the envelope. Insult to injury. Insult to ACL injury.
She picked up the envelope and tore it neatly in two. Then again.
And again. Tiny pieces rained into her lap like white tears.
“I can’t do it again, Lex.” Trish’s bloodshot eyes darted toward Lex, then out the living room window. Her shaking hand picked at the fuzz on her sweatshirt.
“Do what again, Trish? I’ve never torn my ACL before.” Lex had hoped Trish’s arrival at her house meant she’d drive Lex back to work, but no way would she get into a car with Trish in her condition. “Did you call in sick to work? I’ve never seen you this hungover since college.”
“I’m not hungover.” Trish answered too quickly, too emphatically. She scrubbed at her cheeks, which only turned them from pale bags to pink bags.
“No, you were just too tired to pick me up for my MRI. Which was at 11:00 a.m.”
“I already said I was sorry.” Trish didn’t sound like it.
“You know what? You can make it up to me if you’ll help me the few days after my surgery.”
“That’s just it, Lex. I can’t do it again. This is just like the last time.”
“What last time? My sprained ankles?”
“No . . . you know . . . after the rape.”
Arctic winter flash-froze her heart. Lex had never spoken the word. Trish hadn’t either, until now. The ugly sound settled in the room like dirty snow on a roadway. “I don’t understand.”
“You were so depressed afterward.”
Lex didn’t clearly remember the days, even weeks after the attack. She remembered feeling like weights were on her legs, her arms. She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t speak about it.
Trish kept talking. “I understand the trauma for you and all that, but being with you drained me emotionally.”