Vicarious

by Paula Stokes

“At least someone is getting good sleep,” I mumble. “We can try him again in the morning.”

  “I’ll text him later.” Jesse reaches out for me. “But are you sure you don’t want to call 911? The guy might still be nearby. Or he might have gone to an ER for treatment of a stab wound.”

  I think again of the street cop Rose approached in L.A., of the way he pretended to be on our side and then used the information against us. “Detective Ehlers can access those records tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Jesse says. “But I’m not leaving you again. Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up and then you can tell me exactly what happened.” He supports me under the arm and I’m relieved to find I can bear weight on my left side now.

  I lead him into my bedroom where he flips on the light. Miso is curled up at the foot of my bed, sleeping peacefully as if nothing happened. If only that were true. There are streaks of blood in the center of my beige carpet. As I pull open my dresser drawer to get new clothes, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. A triangular bruise is spreading across the left side of my face and there’s a small cut above my eyebrow.

  Jesse lifts my throwing knife from the carpet. The black blade is soiled with blood. “Where did you stab him?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. Immediately I wish I could take back the words. I can’t tell Jesse I don’t remember stabbing the guy. Who stabs someone and forgets? This is another reason I don’t want to talk to the police tonight. My story sounds crazy.

  “What did you say?” Jesse fiddles with his hearing aid. It whistles sharply and then goes silent.

  “Um, I’m not sure. He was strangling me and I couldn’t really see. I just flailed out with my arm and hoped for the best.”

  “And then what?”

  “He ran off,” I say. “And then I guess I passed out.”

  Jesse bends down and touches the blood on the carpet with one finger. It comes back smudged with maroon. “It’s not a lot of blood,” he says. “Are you sure it’s not yours?”

  “You think I imagined all this?” I ask. “And that I cut myself and went outside and bled in the hallway?” Promise me you will never cut yourself again. I would never break a promise to my sister.

  He shakes his head quickly. “Of course not. But Gideon told me you sleepwalk sometimes and I know how dreams can seem a little too real.” He touches the cut above my eyebrow, his fingers making their way through my dark hair, looking for other injuries. I spy the grip of the intruder’s gun under the edge of my bed. I reach down and grab it, keeping the barrel pointed at the floor. “This real?”

  Jesse’s eyes widen. “Where did you get that?”

  “The guy left it behind.”

  “Let me see it.”

  I give Jesse the gun. Holding it in the fabric of his T-shirt, he flips it around so he can look at the handle. “The serial number’s been filed off.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we can’t trace the owner. Was he wearing gloves?”

  “I think so.”

  “So the only fingerprints on this gun are yours.” Jesse wipes it clean on his shirt. “Did he say anything to you? Did you get a good look at him? Would you recognize his voice?” His jaw goes tense as he waits for my reply to his barrage of questions.

  “He said he wanted all of the ViSE stuff. He had a mask on. I don’t know if I would recognize his voice. It didn’t sound familiar to me.”

  Jesse frowns. He slips the gun into the pocket of his sweatpants.

  “Can I keep that?” I ask.

  “The gun? Gideon is not going to—”

  I massage my knee with one hand. “Why does he even have to know? I’m eighteen, Jesse.”

  “Which is not old enough to legally own a gun.”

  “So? You were shooting at people before you were legally old enough to own a gun.”

  “It’s different in the military. It’s regulated.”

  “But what if the guy comes back? I could use it to protect myself.”

  “You shouldn’t have to protect yourself,” Jesse says. “Let’s get that blood off you and then I’ll stay up and keep watch so you can get some sleep.”

  The blood—right. It’s drying on my skin, becoming a part of me. With the clean clothes still clutched in my hands, I limp toward the bathroom.

  Jesse waits in the hallway while I trade the bloody dress and Rose’s leggings for a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Then I hold the blade of my knife under the gushing tap until the water runs clear. Finally, I splash water on my face and scrub my hands until I manage to get all of the blood out of the tiny grooves of my fingertips.

  Jesse knocks on the door. “Everything okay in there?”

  “Almost finished.” I dry my fingers on the hand towel and then grab my knife and head into the living room. Jesse trails behind me. Flopping down on the sofa, he grabs the remote and flips on the TV.

  I place my clean knife on the coffee table and lower myself to the cushion. I try to extend my left leg, wincing in pain as my knee struggles to lock in place. “He kicked me in the knee,” I grumble.

  Jesse kneels in front of me and takes my leg in his hands, bracing his fingertips on either side of my knee joint. Behind him, the Discovery Channel is playing a show all about the primates of Madagascar. “Extend,” he says.

  I raise my leg as high as I can.

  “Good. Back down.” I lower my foot to the floor, comforted by the pressure of Jesse’s hands. He gently manipulates my knee in different directions, taking note of when I wince. “I don’t think anything is torn or broken,” he says. “But I can take you to the ER if you want.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t like doctors. They’ll take one look at my bruises and think I’m an abuse victim. They’ll end up calling the cops or social services.”

  “So big deal. Just explain to the cops and social workers that you’re a martial arts badass and you always look like this,” Jesse strokes my bruised cheek.

  “I’d rather not,” I say. “Gideon was right. No cops, except for Detective Ehlers.”

  “Are you secretly on the FBI’s Most Wanted List or something?”

  “I’m an illegal alien,” I admit, staring straight ahead at the TV. “If anyone goes snooping through my papers, I could get deported and Gideon might get in trouble too.”

  “Oh shit, Winter. I didn’t know that.” Jesse rubs at his chin. “Not that it would help right this minute, but have you thought about applying for a legit visa?”

  “It’s complicated,” I say, staring straight ahead at the TV. “Winter Kim isn’t even my real name.” It’s probably not that complicated, but I haven’t thought about it, because doing it would mean going back to being the girl I used to be, at least temporarily.

  I watch as a lemur jumps from tree to tree. So free. So weightless.

  I don’t want to go back to being that girl, not even for a minute.

  I need for her to stay dead.

  CHAPTER 20

  Jesse props my injured leg up on the coffee table. He goes to the kitchen and returns a couple of minutes later with a Ziploc bag full of ice. He rests the ice pack on my knee and then sits next to me. Cocking his head to the side, he gives me a long look.

  Too long.

  “What?” I say sharply.

  “I was just wondering what your real name is.”

  “Ha Neul,” I say. “Ha Neul Song. Or how we say in Korea—Song Ha Neul.”

  “Song Ha Neul,” Jesse repeats. My name rolls off his tongue like something pleasing that he’s tasting for the first time. “That’s perfect.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it sounds both pretty and badass.”

  I look down at my knee and fidget with the ice pack so he won’t see my blush. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here talking about my name when I just stabbed someone.”

  “Would you rather talk about that?”

  I shrug. “It’s strange to think about. This is the first time I’ve really hurt s
omeone. All that training with Gideon, but I’ve never done worse than use the stun gun.”

  “Which hurts,” Jesse points out. “And you’ve knocked me around in Krav Maga pretty good.”

  “It’s not the same as cutting a person.”

  “What did it feel like to stab the guy?” he asks.

  I feel sick just thinking about it, and then more sick because I don’t remember doing it. What if this isn’t the first time? What other horrible things might I have pushed into the holes of my eroding memory?

  Jesse winces at the stricken look on my face. “Sorry. Inappropriate question.”

  I elbow him in the ribs. “Morbid, anyway.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” His turn to stare straight at the TV. Something called an aye-aye looks out from a dark tree with a pair of glowing eyes. It looks more like a cartoon character than a real animal.

  “Did you ever hurt anybody in the army?” I ask.

  “I never got a chance.” He looks down at his wrist, at the ring of letters inked there.

  I think back to our conversation in the bathroom and realize his tattoo is a list of initials, memorials to fallen comrades. “Jesse…” Our eyes meet, and a channel of pain opens wide. For a moment, I want to spill everything out right there onto the living room sofa. Every hurt. Every horrible memory. I want him to know he’s not alone.

  “I wanted to go back, you know? But they medically discharged me because they said I couldn’t serve in combat zones anymore,” Jesse says. “I hear fine with the hearing aid, but I’m not fit for missions because it could malfunction. The same goes for my cornea transplant. I have to be extra careful not to injure my eye, and there’s always a chance I’ll reject the graft and lose part of my sight.”

  “Do you really miss it that much?”

  “Yeah. I mean, most days were pretty boring, but the work felt meaningful. I wish I had made at least one arrest or intercepted some explosives or something. Maybe then it would be easier to face my parents. They think I’m just some dumb kid who was brainwashed by the promise of machine guns and adventures.”

  “What does it feel like?” I ask. “Shooting a gun.” Gideon started training me in martial arts when I was sixteen. I have studied Aikido, Taekwondo, Kendo, and Krav Maga. I’ve learned to fight with a staff and a bamboo sword, but Gideon has never been allowed anywhere near a gun. And for me, forbidden is usually synonymous with desired.

  “It’s a powerful feeling, knowing you can incapacitate someone with the pull of a trigger. The actual gun going off is a mix of jarring and exhilarating,” Jesse says. “I can make a ViSE for you next time I go to the range if you want to know what it feels like for me.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “Sure.” Tugging his sleeve down over his hand, Jesse picks up the intruder’s gun and looks thoughtfully at it. Then he sets it on the floor and pulls his own gun from beneath his shirt. It’s black, blunt nosed, a lot like the Phantasm security guard’s weapon. Jesse flips a lever on it and ejects the magazine. Popping out one of the small, shiny bullets, he says, “They don’t look like much, but they can do a lot of damage.”

  I twirl the bullet around in my fingers, thinking about what it would feel like tearing through flesh at high velocity.

  “People say it feels like getting hit by a sledgehammer,” he says.

  I take the clip from Jesse’s hand and fumble the bullet back into it. I gesture at the gun he’s still holding. “Show me how it works.”

  “Winter,” he warns.

  “I’m not going to go buy one on the street,” I say. “I’m just curious. I mean, this is twice now in two days someone’s pointed a gun at me. It makes sense for me to know how to use one. Knowledge is power, right?”

  Jesse frowns but hands the gun to me, being sure to keep the barrel pointed away from us. He shows me how to hold it, how to flip the safety on and off, how to extract the clip. I practice a few times until the gun feels less scary. I imagine myself at a gun range, like on TV, like when the detective’s girlfriend hits the center circle with every shot and then smiles mysteriously before crediting her skill to video games. Gideon would never let me have a gun, but somehow just holding one makes it seem like less of a big deal.

  I return the gun to Jesse and he slips it back into his waistband. For a while neither of us says anything. A sweet kind of drowsiness settles over me as I rest my head against Jesse’s shoulder. I could fall asleep like this.

  But then he nudges me. “So, I showed you mine. You going to show me yours?”

  “My what?” At first I think he’s talking about my weapon. There’s not a lot of demonstration involved with a knife.

  “Your tragic history, Ms. Kim. Or should I say Ms. Song?”

  Talk about ruining the moment. I scoot away from him on the sofa, pulling my legs up between us as a barrier, wincing as I flex my injured knee. “What makes you think I have a—”

  Jesse rolls his eyes. “Because Gideon collects shattered youth, right? It’s a solid hiring strategy.”

  “Not just youth,” I murmur. Adebayo is close to fifty and Baz is probably at least a few years older than Gideon.

  “I’m sure the desperate and downtrodden make faithful employees,” Jesse continues. “What was it with you? Drugs? Gambling? Prostitution?” At my look he continues. “Oh, come on. Don’t get offended. The way you act around men sometimes—”

  “How exactly do I act around men?” My hands curl into fists.

  Jesse glances down at my white knuckles. “Like you want to beat the shit out of them, even the ones who care about you … like me. Like you find us all repulsive.”

  “I don’t find you that repulsive.” I try to joke my way out of the question, but all Jesse does is tilt his head to the side and let out an exasperated sigh. I pick up my throwing knife and consider its blade. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Which is why I’m asking,” he says. “I want to know more. The past is the past. Why does it have to be a secret?”

  I twirl the hilt of the knife between my palms. “It’s a hard thing for a girl to talk about. Maybe I don’t want you to think less of me.”

  Jesse reaches for the knife in my hands. He sets it on the table and then twines his fingers in mine. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want, but nothing you say would make me think less of you. I don’t give a shit about the person you used to be, except she can’t have been all that bad or I probably wouldn’t like you so much now.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “I’m not,” Jesse says. “Besides, look at me. I went into the army thinking I was going to kill me some bad guys, be a big shot, prove to everyone I was someone who mattered. And I came home a year later, used up, spent, with the initials of four guys who died because of me inked onto my arm. The government doesn’t even think I’m good enough to be cannon fodder. Who am I to judge?”

  Used up. Spent. Words I know well.

  Maybe it’s because he already seems to know half the story anyway, or maybe after the day I’ve had, I just don’t have the energy to build any more walls. Whatever it is, it gets me talking. “Rose and I grew up in an orphanage in Seoul. When I was twelve and she was fourteen, we learned we were going to be adopted by Americans.” I pause. “Adoption doesn’t happen much in Korea. Bloodlines are too important and no one wants to raise someone else’s child. Even being adopted by foreigners seemed odd for girls our age. Usually people want tiny babies. But the staff told us we were going to a Korean-American family who had lost their teenage daughters in a car accident. Rose had forced me to study English from the time I learned to read, insisting that we’d have more opportunities as bilinguals. I remember thinking how that moment proved her right. We were so excited about coming to the States. Only when we got here, the adoption turned out to be fake. Our adoptive parents immediately turned us over to a businessman named Kyung.”

  “Kyung.” Jesse stretches the word out to two syllables—key young. “He
dealt in girls?”

  “Among other things. I think we were just a hobby for him, a way to keep his clients and staff happy,” I say bitterly. “We should have tried to run away. We talked about it a couple of times. But there were two other girls. They told us stories about how runaways ended up in gangs—branded, beaten, addicted to drugs. They made it sound like working for Kyung wasn’t that terrible compared to the alternatives. And with no money and no papers, in a strange place, I guess we let ourselves believe it.” I stare down at my lap. “And then with each passing day, running away just felt like more of a dream, not something that could actually happen. Eventually Gideon came along and fell in love with my sister. He got us out. He saved us.”

  Jesse reaches out and turns my head so I’m forced to meet his gaze. I never knew eyes could hold so much pity.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I snap. “I’m fine. Rose and I got through it together. She took the brunt of it. Men always seemed to prefer her.”

  “So that’s why you’re afraid to be touched, and she seemed to crave it? Just different ways to deal with the same shit?”

  “I’m not afraid to be touched. I just don’t like it. And Rose, I think for her it’s about taking back control.” I swallow hard. “Or it was, anyway.”

  Jesse nods. “Well, that’s a horrible story and I wish it hadn’t happened to you, but I’m glad you told me. It explains why you’re kind of—” He pauses, searching for the right word.

  “Cold?” I suggest.

  “Guarded,” he says softly.

  The primate special ends and a show about snipers replaces it. As the men don complex disguises laced with actual vegetation, I jump at the chance to change the subject. “They always say combat changes people, makes things less black and white. Did it change you?”

  “Nothing has ever been black and white to me,” Jesse says. “I’m more of an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of guy.”

  “So right and wrong are fluid? Dependent upon the outcome?”

  “Basically.”

  “So you would do something terrible to get something you really wanted?”

  Jesse’s jaw goes tight. “I have done terrible things.”