First Days

  “What?”

  I heard the spoon getting picked up behind me. I twisted against Gabriel’s hold in time to see Kota dip the spoon into the soup and taking a sip.

  “Kota!”

  He smiled, putting the spoon down into the pot again. “It smells good. It’s making me hungry.”

  I groaned and wrenched my hands from Gabriel, playfully pointing a finger in the direction of Kota’s bedroom. “Alright guys, out of the kitchen. Let’s go get homework done before you eat it all.”

  It took more coaxing but I managed to get the guys back up the stairs. I set the stove on low so the soup could simmer for a while.

  We gathered back in Kota’s room and got to work. I was on my stomach on the floor, writing in a notebook for the English assignment. Kota was at his computer desk and Gabriel was half asleep on Kota’s bed.

  Thudding footfalls came from the stairs. Victor popped his head up. His cheeks flushed when he spotted me on the floor, but it didn’t distract me from the bright bruise on his face or the gash at this cheek.

  “Victor!” I jumped up off the floor in probably an undignified manner. I crossed the room as he stood by the stairs. The closer I got, the worse his injuries looked. “What happened?”

  “Training,” he said quietly.

  My fingers hovered in the air close to his face, only I was too afraid to touch him as it looked painful. The gash at his cheek had already started to crust over. The bruise was a purple mess, splotching across the side of his face and along the start of his jaw by his ear. “With what? A bear?”

  He shook his head. He turned to Kota. “I didn’t think she would be here.”

  Kota nodded, standing up. “It’s not important. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. His fire eyes settled on me, a quiet smolder. “I’m sorry, Sang.”

  I swallowed my heart in my throat and my eyebrows nearly popped off the top of my forehead. “Sorry? For what?”

  “I yelled at you earlier before I left. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean it.”

  My mouth fell open. I had nearly forgotten about it. “How could you think that? You get into a fight and the only thing you can think to say is you’re sorry about something that doesn’t matter?”

  He flinched, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Fine. Next time I won’t apolo--.”

  I realized I’d snapped and it broke my heart. I wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t find the words as to why I did it or what I was feeling. He’d disappeared and I had been worried about him. Seeing him injured like that forced me to think of every bad thing that was out there and I kept picturing it all happening to him. It was everything my mother said would happen to me if I wandered away from home. Friends hug when they want to support one another, right?

  “Ooof,” Victor choked out. “Sang, I...” His hands settled behind my back and he pressed himself to me. His fingers traced along my ribs. He pressed his cheek to mine and I wondered if that was the proper way to hug someone and I’d done it wrong. “I am sorry,” he whispered in my ear, his warm breath teasing my lobe.

  I sighed, regrouping myself and stepping back. After I had hugged him, I felt so awkward, and my face felt hot. I hid my shaking fingers behind my back as I looked over his injuries again. “We need to clean you up.”

  Kota disappeared into his bathroom and grabbed his medical kit. He brought it out to me. “Where’s Nathan?” he asked as I took the medical kit and opened it up.

  Victor looked at me and then lowered his gaze. “He’s still training.”

  “Where?” I asked, pulling out the peroxide and a gob of cotton and knelt to the carpet. When my knees knocked against the floor, pain from the bruises radiated into my thighs. I steeled myself, and shifted to sitting on my heels to lessen the pressure. I hoped no one noticed.

  Victor followed me, sitting cross legged on the floor next to me. Kota and Gabriel joined us on the floor.

  “It’s just at the Academy,” Victor said.

  I frowned. It was obviously not this simple or he would have said it before. “Did Nathan beat you up?” I asked.

  Victor attempted a smile but he pursed his lips to stop himself and shook his head. “No.”

  I applied some peroxide to a cotton swab and cupped his chin in my hand to steady him. I dabbed the cotton against his cheek. The liquid started to sizzle at the cut.

  He thrust his head back, grabbing at my wrist that held the swab and yanked it away from his face. He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Easy, Sang.”

  “I barely touched you.” I fished out a clean swab of cotton, holding it to the bottle to absorb more peroxide.

  I did my best to clean his cheek but Victor fought it at every step, sensitive to every touch. I kept waiting for Kota or Gabriel to start asking questions but it felt like they already knew what they needed to know, or they couldn’t ask because I was there. I chewed on my cheek as I applied bandages to Victor’s face.

  “Does this happen a lot?” I asked in a quiet voice. “To all of you? Do you get called out of school to go do ‘training’?”

  There was a lengthy silence before Kota spoke up. “One of the stipulations for us being there is that Mr. Blackbourne would have full control over our schedules. If we ever needed to be called up for something that was Academy business, we would be allowed to leave class to deal with it.”

  “Does it always involve fighting?”

  Kota’s lips lightly curled up at the corner. “No.”

  “Am I allowed to ask what kind of business at the Academy makes Victor’s face look like he got mauled by a baseball bat?”

  Looks were exchanged by all three of them but lips remained closed. I sighed, crumpling the wrappers from the bandages in my hand, putting the kit back together and standing, heading to Kota’s bathroom to replace it all.

  “It’s better if you don’t know, Sang,” Kota said. “I don’t want to keep you in the dark but if you knew...”

  I tossed the wrappers in his trash and put the kit back in the drawer. “Are you worried that I’d be scared for you? I’m freaking out now. How is knowing worse than not knowing?”

  They exchanged looks again. Their silent communication irked me.

  “Do your parents know?” I asked. “I mean what if Kota walked in one day and his poor mom saw him with bruises all over his face?”

  “She...” Gabriel started to say but I caught Kota shooting him a look. Gabriel blushed, looking down at the floor.

  What else could I say? Who was I to say anything to them? I had just as many secrets, didn’t I? I didn’t tell them about my knees, about North on the roof, and so much more. I wanted to find out what they were up to, but asking them wasn’t going to work. I sighed, biting back the questions. It might not be up to them to tell me about it. I thought of Mr. Blackbourne. He was in charge. Maybe I could ask him without revealing what I knew of Kota and the others. No, the truth was that I’d agreed to not ask questions. It was harder to do now that I saw Victor’s bruised face.

  I calmed myself and walked back out of the bathroom. The guys looked uncomfortable for a moment but I sat at the foot of Kota’s bed, crossing my ankles.

  “Are we done with homework yet?” I asked. I hoped the others understood. It was too frustrating talking to them about an Academy that was so full of secrets. I thought it was best that I kept listening and catching these hints when I could. Maybe next time I’d follow Victor and see where he disappeared to. Right now I knew for certain that the Academy was more than a secret. It was true what Kota had warned me about. It could be dangerous.

  They exchanged another set of looks but Kota gave the slightest shaking of his head to the others. He smiled weakly at me. “It’s time for a break.”

  “What smells like tacos?” Victor asked.

  D eeper

  I left Kota’s house an hour later. I wanted to make sure I got back before Marie did to avoid any more trouble. Making an appearance at
home was important. I was still sensitive to how my mom reacted yesterday when she found out I was at Kota’s. Before I met the guys, I could go for a couple of days without seeing anyone in my family, locked away in my room without any interaction from any of them. Right now seemed a critical time and I couldn’t be too reckless. After I figured out how our lives would be different with the new school, I’d be better prepared to spend more time with the others. A routine would eventually settle in.

  I was crossing through the woods, taking a path that lead behind Nathan’s house. A voice bellowed with a slight echo.

  “Fuck... fuck, ouch, fuck me, fuck.”

  I recognized Nathan’s voice and stopped, looking toward his house. It wasn’t quite dark yet but through the fence of his back yard, the light was on in his shed.

  I took the wood plank bridge across the ditch and opened up the gate to his fence. The door to the shed was open and I crept over to peek inside.

  Nathan knelt on the wood floor, clutching at the ground. His shoulders shook. His shirt was off and he was wearing green camouflage shorts. His back was layered with bruises and cuts.

  “Nathan!”

  He straightened onto his knees and twisted to look at me. There were more bruises along his arms and chest. One of his cheeks was swollen. His blue eyes squinted at me. “Sang?”

  I climbed into the shed and crossed the room to him. I dropped down to sit on my heels to look closer at his back. “Victor made it sound like you were fine. Why did he lie to me?”

  Nathan groaned. He slipped and crashed back against the cabinet. “You know you shouldn’t trust boys,” he said. He was breathing heavily and yet through it he grinned. “We’re... um... something bad that I can’t think of right now. Remind me to tell you about it later.”

  “You’re all driving me crazy,” I said. There was another medical kit on a tray nearby, the bandages and containers of creams spilled out around him. I reached for the creams that had rolled out on to the floor and checked the labels. “Which one did you want?”

  He pointed to one. His ring finger on his right hand was in a splint and taped. I took his hand, pulling it to examine it closer and he winced.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  “Is it broken? Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

  “I saw a doctor,” he said. “That’s where I got the bandage thing.”

  I reached for the tube he had pointed to and read the label, recognizing the bruising cream. “Is this all you need?”

  He nodded.

  “Come on,” I said. I stood up and clutched his arm to help him up. “Let’s get you to inside so you can lay down. You look terrible.”

  He laughed. “Are you calling me ugly?” He picked himself up and started limping for the door. I tucked myself under his arm. It wasn’t that I could pick him up if he fell, but I could at least serve as a minor crutch. He looked a little relieved and he leaned against me as he moved forward.

  It was slow progress back to his house. Nathan kept stopping to take in a breath. I opened the door for him and he hobbled in.

  “Where do you want to lay down?” I asked.

  “In my bed,” he said. “Once I’m down, I don’t think I’m getting back up.”

  I gritted my teeth and got under his arm again, letting him guide the way through the living room and down a dim hallway until we faced a door at the end. I opened it and he hopped in.

  There was a low dresser pressed up against the wall and a standard double bed in the middle of the room, no headboard. The bed was draped in a dark brown blanket, maroon sheets and two pillows stuffed in the middle, unmade. There were karate movie and jujitsu poses posters along the walls. There was a walk-in closet completely filled with clothes, boxes and some broken workout equipment. A workout bench had been pushed to the corner, dumbbells sat on a box next to it. There was a window on the other side, the wood slat blinds were drawn.

  Nathan plopped onto his stomach on the bed. He landed halfway, with his legs hanging off the edge. “Fuck.”

  I climbed up onto his bed. “Scoot up.”

  He did a push up and crawled further onto the bed until he smashed his face against the pillows and he collapsed again. His broad shoulders shook as he took in a heavy breath.

  I crawled on my knees next to him, opened the tube and squished the bottle in the middle to get the white cream onto my fingers. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what happened,” I said. I spread the cream over the bruises on his back.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, his words were half slurred by the pillow in his face.

  I sighed. “Are you in trouble with the mob? Do you owe them money?”

  He barked a laugh. “Not at the moment.”

  I used the cream over the bruises along his back, rubbing it in. I worked silently, not knowing what to ask, knowing there was nothing I could probably say to him to get the truth from him. When I was done with his back, I patted his arm. “Let me see the front.”

  When he flipped over, there was another layer of bruises along his ribs and down his stomach. I squeezed at the bottom of the tube to get more of the cream out. Touching his back had been one thing. Now that I was looking at his muscular bare chest, my fingers trembled. I pressed my fingers to the bruises, trying to calm myself as much as to help his injuries.

  I felt his eyes on my face but I couldn’t look at him when I was touching him in such a way. I focused only on rubbing the cream in. My cheeks started to heat up when I realized what I thought had been shorts were only a pair of boxers. I’d been too preoccupied that he was hurt to notice. I was in a bedroom with a half-naked boy.

  “What were you doing out there?” he asked, punching at the pillows under his head to fluff them up.

  “I was going home from Kota’s.”

  “I didn’t know you were allowed out yet. Aren’t you grounded or something?”

  “Weren’t you supposed to be in gym class today?”

  He smirked. “I had something to do.”

  “Huh.” I finished rubbing the cream in and then replaced the cap on the tube.

  He reached out to me, grabbing my wrist. “It had to be done,” he said. His face was stern, getting that serious look I recognized, his blue eyes going dark. “If it wasn’t important, I would have been there with you in class. I wouldn't leave you alone.”

  Why was I that important to him? It seemed ludicrous. “I’m not worried about being alone,” I said softly. “I’ve been alone for a long time. I can handle myself. What I’m worried about is the next time you’re gone from class and I’m wondering which hospital you may end up in.”

  Nathan’s mouth opened as if he wanted to say something but he promptly closed his lips again. He held on to my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze but said nothing.

  I noticed the light in the window going dim. “I have to get going,” I said. “Do you need anything?”

  “I took a pain killer before you got here,” he said. He let go of my hand. “Don’t worry about me. Go home before you get into more trouble.” He turned slightly as if he wanted to move onto his stomach. Groans escaped his lips and he gave up, falling on his back again. “I might not get to school tomorrow.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll miss taco soup.”

  I crossed the room, flicked the light off and shut his door, ignoring the questions he was asking as I left.

  Victor: “You need a violin for class tomorrow, right? Did you get one?”

  Sang: “It’s okay. I’ll explain it to Mr. Blackbourne.”

  Victor: “I can go get you one.”

  Sang: “Don’t do that!”

  Victor: “Why not?”

  Sang: “Don’t spend money on me. It’s bad enough you pay for this phone.”

  Victor: “Please?”

  Sang: “Goodnight, Victor. Stop worrying about me.”

  W ednesday

  N o L onger I nvisible

  I dr
eamed I was trapped inside a car. I didn’t know how to drive and I was turning the wheel, pushing the breaks. The car careened down a hill and the ground was tilting. Cars raced around me. I was going to crash.

  I woke with a start, jumping out of bed and running for the bathroom. I ran the cold water in the sink, splashing it across my face to erase the nightmare. It wasn’t helping. The memory stuck. When my heart settled, I stumbled back to my room, flicking on the light, grabbing my diary to write in until it was time to get going.

  Marie and I walked the short distance between our house and Kota’s before the bus came. Danielle and her brother were already out there, standing on the very edge of Kota’s driveway. Kota stood alone, his head down and scuffing his shoes at the concrete.

  “Kota,” I said, walking up to him.

  His head lifted and his face lit up. “Hi.”

  “No Nathan?”

  His lips pursed and he shook his head. Marie walked around us and headed straight to Danielle, waving to her. Danielle greeted her with a smirk and they tucked their heads together, talking.

  “I saw him last night,” I said quietly, not wanting the others to overhear. “I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t show.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “How is he?”

  He didn’t know about this? Or was he surprised to hear I went over there? “I think he broke one of his fingers. There were bruises all over his body.”

  He blanched. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

  Was that the truth? Did Nathan or Victor not keep him informed? Did he not go see him? “What’s going to happen? The principal was asking about him yesterday when he didn’t show up for gym class and now he’s going to miss the second day of school.”

  “Mr. Blackbourne is telling us to redirect any questions from teachers to him.”