Ink and Ashes

by Valynne E. Maetani

  He put the imaginary pencil behind his ear. “Let me try this again.” He held out his hand for me to shake, and I accepted. “Hi. My name is Calvin, and I brush my teeth.”

  Mumps had me laughing so hard that I forgot for a moment about the eyes, the cheating accusations, the dark SUV that could be following me. From the corner of my eye, I caught Forrest standing by the door. I didn’t know how long he’d been there, but the strained expression on his face gave my heartbeat a start. I pulled my hand from Mumps’s hand, which I’d continued to shake for far too long.

  Forrest motioned with his head for me to join him.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to Mumps. “Can you excuse me for a second?”

  Mumps grinned. “You sure make a guy work hard to keep your attention.”

  I smiled. Talking with him had been so easy. “I’ll be right back.” I stood and walked past Forrest into the house.

  Instead of going into the kitchen, I took a detour into the garage, where it was quieter. He closed the door behind him.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Chase is here,” he said. “I don’t know who invited him.”

  “He needs to leave.” Heat rose up my neck.

  “I agree,” Forrest said. “I just thought you should know.”

  I opened the door, marched inside, and started searching.

  Chase stood in the front door, arguing with Katie. He had one hand in the pocket of his khaki pants and was using the other to gesture. The white golf shirt made him look even more like an entitled brat.

  Katie stood blocking his entrance, both arms folded in front of her chest. She was as tall as Chase, and as our goalkeeper, she wasn’t afraid to face a challenge. I weaved through the crowd in the living room until I made it to Katie’s side.

  “I was telling him he needs to go,” she said.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why would you even want to be here?”

  “Look, all I need to do is talk to someone, and then I’ll leave.” Chase scanned the room.

  “Who?” I demanded. Forrest slid behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.

  Chase combed his hand through his hair with tense fingers. “One minute and I’ll go.” He looked to Forrest for support. “I was trying to explain to this Amazon that it’ll only take a minute, but she wasn’t listening.”

  I stepped closer to Chase. “What did you just call her?” I clenched my teeth together.

  “Get out,” Forrest said.

  Chase shook his head. He shifted his weight back and forth, shoving his hands in the front pockets of his pants and then taking them out again. “Give me one minute,” he said. “Just one.” He shoved his hands back in his pockets.

  “You have two options.” I took another step closer to him. “You can leave before I call the police, or you and I can throw down, and I can embarrass you in front of all these people.”

  Chase glared at me, but turned around and left. I slammed the door.

  “Throw down?” Forrest asked. He and Katie broke into laughter.

  “I was angry,” I said as the heart pounding faded. After a few seconds I laughed with them. I suppose it was a little dorky. I touched Katie’s arm. “Uh, thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

  She shrugged. “That’s what teammates do, girlfriend,” she said. “You pick a fight with one of us, you pick a fight with all of us.”

  With that, she bounced off and melted into the group in the living room as if nothing had happened. Something warm tugged at my heart.

  I maneuvered my way to the stairs and sat down on the third step. Forrest plunked himself next to me. “Who do you think he was here to see?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I tried to sort through everyone at our house, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would want to talk to Chase, let alone need to. He wasn’t on any of our sports teams, which made up most of the crowd here. Nicholas was on the debate team with him, but after the experience I’d had with Chase last year, there was no love lost between the two of them. Maybe he didn’t come to see anyone, but was using that as an excuse to get into the house. What was he trying to do?

  “So . . . you and Mumps seemed to be getting along pretty well,” Forrest said.

  “Mumps.” I jumped off the stairs. “I completely forgot about him.” I bobbed through more people. Before I got to the back door, I ran into Mom.

  Her eyes were sagging and tired, but there was no mistaking the tightness of her lips and her close-knit eyebrows. “I have just walked two blocks to get into my own house because there are cars in my driveway and in front of the house and across the street and all the way down the street on both sides.”

  “People should really carpool more,” I said, but she wasn’t amused.

  “Do you want to tell my why all these people are in my house?” she asked.

  “Dad said we could,” I said. “And it’s Avery’s fault.”

  Mom lifted her purse higher on her shoulder. “I’m going to my room, and if I find anyone in there using my bed, none of you will see the light of day again. Get these people out of here.”

  EVERYONE WAS SLOW to leave, but my brothers and I were able to clear the house and get everything cleaned up. By the time I checked the patio, Mumps had gone. I’d have to apologize to him on Monday.

  I said good-bye to Nicholas and Forrest at the back door. Parker and Avery had already crashed on the couches in the family room.

  Fed tugged on the back of my shirt before he left. “Hey,” he said, his face puffed as if it might burst with jubilation. “I have a date to the Halloween dance.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “Is it Ashley?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “I knew you could do it.” I pictured Fed’s lanky, tall body next to Ashley, who probably wasn’t even five feet in heels, and it made me smile. Seeing Fed happy made the world seem lighter.

  I closed and locked the door behind them and headed up the stairs to my room. Halfway up, I heard music, a slow and haunting melody that sounded familiar. The sound was faint, but grew louder the closer I got to my room. I flipped on my light and found my stereo had been moved to my desk. Someone from the party? Why would they move it?

  A Japanese song I recognized from my childhood was playing on the stereo. The English version was called “Sukiyaki,” but my parents had always sung the Japanese words to me. This was neither—the version playing was wordless and featured a stringed instrument, the tempo much slower than I had heard before.

  My curtain fluttered, carried by a breeze floating through my open window. I was pretty sure I had closed it. Had I left it open by mistake? Had Chase snuck in here when he couldn’t get through the front door? Maybe someone else from the party had been in my room. I surveyed my bed. Maybe two someones from the party had been in my room. Ugh. I didn’t really want to think about that one. Why didn’t I put a sign on my door like I had my parents’ bedroom and the study?

  I slid the window shut and paced around the room, inspecting. I’d noticed the big things first, but those weren’t the only things wrong. The closet door was open, with clothes about to fall off their hangers and a small pile already on the floor. There was an overturned garbage can by my desk. The books from my shelf were scattered on the floor. As I looked closer, I saw smudge marks on my carpet, a small tear in the curtain. A shiver rippled through me. Who would do something like this?

  “Mom,” I shouted into the hallway. “Someone broke into my room.”

  Mom hurried up the stairs. She looked around. “Is anything missing?”

  My laptop was still on my desk. I checked the top drawer of my dresser. My wallet was there. My phone was in my pocket. Nothing else I owned would be valuable to anyone but me. My mouth went dry, and the muscles in my neck and shoulders tightened. What was going on?

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But they moved the stereo and made a mess.”

  “Are you sure?” She walked over to the stereo. For a minute
she closed her eyes and listened to the music, then turned it off. “Was this was here when you got to your room?”

  I nodded. Chase had come to the house, but he’d barely made it inside. Maybe the person had climbed up the tree and come through the window. I’d done it enough times to know it was possible. Had someone played a prank on me after hearing about the cheating scandal? I couldn’t see any of our teammates as people who might come up to my room and violate my personal space to mess with me. They were all good people. Weren’t they? But if it wasn’t a stupid joke, someone had really broken into my room. Like someone who was a real criminal. What if I had been in here when the person came through the window?

  “I’ve always loved that song,” she said.

  I had too, even though I had no idea what the lyrics meant. The melody brought back so many good memories, memories I hoped wouldn’t be tainted by the bristle running beneath my skin. I scanned the room again but couldn’t think of anything that was gone.

  “Nothing’s missing, but they left a CD playing on your stereo,” Mom said. “I don’t know if there’s much the police can do with that, especially when you guys were the ones who invited a houseful of people over.” She sighed. “Let’s at least file a report.”

  She made a phone call and two policemen showed up at our house. I expected them to wear rubber gloves and have their kits ready to dust for fingerprints on the stereo and CD or sample the dirt smudges on the floor. All they did was walk around my room. They checked the window for forced entry, but didn’t find anything peculiar.

  One of the officers, a woman with an athletic build and light brown hair, introduced herself as Officer Rodriguez. Officer Schwartz, a short, round man, took me aside. His belt was cinched tight and had probably seen better days.

  “I think that it’s good to be careful,” he said, “and it’s better to be safe than sorry, so calling us was the right thing to do.” He leaned closer. “Would you feel more comfortable if we asked your mom to leave, so you can tell us what really happened?” The way he glanced down at me with his pudgy face made me feel smaller.

  “No. That’s what really happened,” I said.

  He shifted his focus to my mom. “Sometimes teens do stuff like this to make it look like something expensive has been stolen when really they’ve sold it because they needed money.” He held up his chubby arm and glanced at his watch. “It’s only eleven p.m., so it’s pretty unlikely someone would have attempted to break in.”

  “I told you nothing was missing,” I said.

  He put his hands on his hips. “I can’t find any real evidence of anything, but it’s probably a good idea to keep your windows closed.”

  “I did have the window closed.”

  “Sure. Well, if you see anything suspicious, you can call us again, okay, sweetheart?”

  He patted my head like I was a small child or a dog. Obviously he didn’t believe a word I said, and it was all I could do not to punch him. My social graces kicked in, though, when I saw Mom’s warning expression, reminding me it wasn’t the best idea to give a police officer the middle-finger salute.

  Officer Rodriguez sealed the CD into a plastic baggie for evidence, and Mom and I followed the officers to the door, where Mom thanked them and apologized if we had wasted their time. They reassured her, rather insincerely in my opinion, and left.

  “I’m going to go call your dad,” she said.

  I walked up the stairs. Even the slightest creaks made me jump. I scoured every inch of my room, determined to find something the police had missed.

  It took me a good half hour of searching, but eventually I found something. On the floor right underneath my open window, I noticed a business card and picked it up. At the top was the name of a place called the Waiawa Circle of Friends. Below that was their website address, their mailing address in Waipahu, Hawaii, and a phone number. At the bottom was written, “Healing by exploring forgiveness and repairing harm.” I’d never heard of the place, and I had no idea what that phrase meant, but it sounded like a place for free-spirited granola lovers.

  I wasn’t sure where it’d come from, but it must have fallen from my father’s notebook a few weeks ago. Rather than taking the effort to put it back in the box in my closet, I set the card in my desk drawer. I closed my window and climbed into bed. For all I knew, Dad could be halfway around the world, but I wished he were home instead.

  COLD AIR WOKE me only a few hours later, the clock glowing 3:34 A.M. Twisting the covers tighter, I curled in my blanket and shut my eyes.

  Leaves crackled in the trees. I flopped to the other side to get more comfortable. The wind swept past the house, growing from a faint whimper to a hum. As a light sleeper, even hushed whispers woke me, so trying to lull myself back to sleep was going to be next to impossible. I smashed a pillow around my head, but the noises outside my window grew louder.

  And then I heard music.

  The sound was weak. I told myself it was just my imagination. At first the music hovered as if outside my window. And then the eerie melody echoed from downstairs.

  Ue o muite arukou

  I could barely hear it, but I knew it was the same song that had played over my stereo, only this time a man was singing, his voice low and gravelly. The tempo was still slower than what I’d remembered as a child, the tone somber.

  I dragged myself out of bed, hoping someone else had woken and for some reason turned on the stereo in the living room. But the chances were small. I was the only one who woke so easily.

  Each step was a step away from going back to sleep. I got to the top of the stairs and froze. Mom’s bedroom was only yards away below me. I sucked in a deep breath and willed myself forward, but my feet moved the opposite direction, backward, and didn’t stop until I stumbled into Parker’s room.

  “Parker,” I whispered, shoving his arm. “Wake up.” He didn’t budge. I shook him harder. “Wake up. There’s something at the front door.”

  He grunted. Slobber trickled down the side of his mouth. “I don’t want to go to the dentist. Dentist. Don’t do that to me, dentist.” He rolled away.

  I whacked him on the chest with my fist. He bolted up, his arms in karate-chop position. He stared at me, blinking for a couple of seconds before he really woke, then let his hands fall to the bed. “What are you doing in here?”

  I grabbed his arm. “I think someone’s on the porch.”

  Normally he would have thrown me out of his room while yelling a few choice words. But he must have seen the fear in my eyes. Without any questions, he reached under his bed and pulled out a wooden bat. “Let’s go,” he said.

  I crept behind him, hunched as if we were thieves robbing the house. At the bottom of the stairs, Parker and I tiptoed toward the front door, but I took a detour into the living room, where I crept to the picture window and peeked outside.

  It was too dark to see anything but black shapes, which could just as easily have been porch furniture as a person. “I can’t tell if anyone is there.”

  Parker lifted the bat, ready to swing, and pushed his cheek closer to the door’s crack. He flipped on the porch light. “Who’s there?”

  The voice continued to sing, the muffled melody sneaking through the cracks around the door. As far as I could tell, nothing was on the porch, but beyond the lit area, it was now pitch black.

  Parker moved from the door. “Okay, you keep talking to distract him. I’ll go out the back door, sneak around the house, and launch a surprise attack,” he whispered.

  “On what? We don’t even know what’s out there,” I said. “I’m going to get Mom.”

  “Coward,” he muttered.

  I raced into my parents’ room to wake her and found Dad there as well. He must have come home late, after we were all asleep.

  Dad woke with little effort and came out to the living room with me. “Stay behind me.” He stuck out his arm and herded me and Parker to the side.

  Parker clung to my back with both hands as if I were a human sh
ield. “Get off me,” I said, wriggling away.

  Dad removed a gun from the back of his pajama pants, the kind you see on cop shows that have a clip that goes in the handle. Parker’s eyes went as wide as mine must have been. When did he get a gun?

  Dad pressed his bare back flush against the wall next to the door’s frame. He checked the chain lock to make sure it was in place before he cracked open the door.

  A ball of fire exploded out in the yard, lighting up the window. Heat rushed into the house as Dad slammed the door.

  “Parker, call 911!” Dad yelled. He rushed to the window and inspected the fire outside. “Give them our address, and tell them we might have a burn victim in the front yard.”

  My heart dropped to my stomach. A burn victim? Who? Through the living-room window I could see a fire blazing in the front part of our oak tree. My hands shook.

  At the same time, Mom screamed behind me and ran into the room. “What was that?”

  Dad waved her back toward Parker, who was on the phone giving our address to the dispatcher. “Claire, go get Avery and meet me at the back door. Parker, take Mom and wait for me. Don’t leave the house until I get there.”

  Parker nodded. I unfroze enough to sprint up the stairs, tripping and catching myself all the way up. Avery was sitting up when I got there, dazed and half-asleep. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a fire,” I screamed. “We’ve got to go.”

  The sleep disappeared from his eyes. He jumped to his feet and followed me down the stairs to the back door, where the rest of our family waited. Dad waved us down. “Stay out of sight.”

  Mom huddled us around her, and we crouched on the floor.

  Dad motioned for us to stay where we were. Mom’s eyes were wide and focused intensely on Dad, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes. He nodded at her, acknowledging her unspoken plea, then lifted his gun, cracked open the door to peek through, and ran outside, shirtless and barefoot.

  My stomach dropped to the floor watching him go. I couldn’t see the fire from here, but I could hear it crackle. What if it reached the house? It had been a dry fall with burn bans up the canyon. Would we be able to escape the house, or was someone out there waiting for us, someone who set the fire? Would Dad be okay out there all alone?