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“It’s none of your business,” I said and made
sure that I injected steel into my words. I was through playing,
dodging, and being on the defensive and was firmly entrenched in
what Maria always called my “mule stubborn” mode.

“If it has anything to do with
Oni
,
even if it’s just a dream, it certainly is my business,” was the
unexpected reply. I blinked, surprised.

“Why?” I demanded as my eyebrows crunched
together.

He opened his mouth, shut it, opened it
again, and I stifled a snort at his resemblance to a goldfish Maria
had once had.

“That’s classified,” he said instead.

“What the hell? Classified? Are you some sort
of Japanese equivalent of a CIA Agent?” I demanded. “Oh, wait,
you’re yakuza, aren’t you? I always knew there was something not
quite right about the whole foreign exchange student thingamajig,
there’s no real logical reason for someone from Japan to come all
the way out to a Podunk Tourist Mountain Town in North Carolina,
especially since we’re not known for anything other than apples, a
good softball team and a basketball team that’s slowly starting to
turn its way around.”

“I am not yakuza!” he snapped at me. He
puffed up and put me in mind of a raven that has fluffed its
feathers in an effort to appear larger than it actually is.

“Looks like I hit a nerve,” I said and folded
my arms across my chest.

Akira sighed and pinched the bridge of his
nose. He looked so put out that I felt a small semblance of pride
in my ability to hold him off in this strange verbal sparring that
had suddenly sprung up between us.

“Look,” he said, “I can’t tell you the
reason, but it’s extremely important that you tell me why you got
all upset and jittery when we were discussing
Oni
.”

“No.”

My blunt denial surprised him, and he lowered
his hand to stare at me.

“I . . .”

“Look,” I said flatly and moved so that one
foot was slightly behind the other and my weight was balanced on
the balls of my feet. “I barely know you, I don’t consider you a
friend and I certainly don’t trust you. I think there’s a lot more
to you than what you’re presenting to the school as a whole, and
while I might not always listen to it, my gut is usually right when
it tells me that something just isn’t adding up. You’ve been
probing me about my best friend when you can get information about
her disappearance from almost anyone else in the school. There’s no
reason to suddenly seek me out. Now, whether or not you’ll excuse
me, I have two younger brothers to pick up from soccer practice
before it gets much later and my mother calls.”

And all you’re doing by badgering me for
information is putting me further on the defensive and less likely
to respond favorably to your questions
.

Akira had stared at me throughout my whole
speech, and I couldn’t tell if it was shock at my words, shock over
the fact that I flat out said I didn’t trust him, surprise,
whatever, but he looked a little like someone had dropped a pile of
books on top of his head. I nodded once and made to shift away from
him and head down the hallway towards the parking lot. That snapped
him out of his daze, and he made a move as if he were going to
reach out and grab my arm again, which he should have known was not
a good idea by now.

I didn’t hesitate and shifted my balance to
one foot as I snapped my other out from behind me and gave him a
good, solid kick in the shin. He let out a cry of pain and reeled
backwards as he pulled his leg up and hopped around a little and
clutched it with both hands. I huffed, turned on my heel, and
walked off at a rapid pace.

“Damnit, Alexander!” he called after me, and
I felt a small spurt of guilt because I knew he was going to be a
little gimpy for an hour or two, skin kicks REALLY hurt, but I
quickly squashed it. “I need you to talk to me! What the hell is
all this ‘I don’t trust you’ crap?! I thought we were at least
friends! You’re going to trust me sooner or later, and I need it to
be sooner! Alexander!”

His voice faded as I walked out the front
doors and practically sprinted to my car. I quickly unlocked it,
yanked the driver side door open and dove into the seat. I slammed
and locked the door behind me. I took a deep, calming breath before
I started up the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. It took
me two tries before I could actually hold my phone without dropping
it; my hands shook so badly from both the adrenaline surge and the
confrontation that I was surprised that it only took two tries
before I successfully called Mom.

As I drove to my brother’s school I replayed
the confrontation with Akira over and over in my head, trying to
see if I could figure out what his motives were, but I kept coming
up blank. It didn’t help that felt more than a little guilty for
kicking him, and I kept hearing him shout “I thought we were
friends!” in my head. I knew I was right about his ulterior
motives, and I couldn’t afford to let myself be manipulated by him,
even if I did kind of wish that we were friends of a sort. Strange
sparks and uneasiness aside, I had enjoyed his company, and found
him to be an intelligent conversationalist and wondered what his
interests were beyond basketball.

I shook my head and blew out another breath.
Guess I had learned my lesson about stereotyping, even if there
were
individuals who fit the stereotype to a T. They didn’t
exist for just any reason, after all.

I grimaced when I thought about how I had
conveniently forgotten in the heat of battle that I couldn’t just
ignore him or blow him off forever the way I could some people. For
one thing, his personality wouldn’t allow it. For another, we still
had to work together for our project. And then there was the fact
that he knew where I worked. I sighed. Stubborn and determined as I
was, I knew I couldn’t continue to verbally dance around him
forever. The problem was, I just couldn’t tell him what was really
bothering me about the whole
Oni
thing because I didn’t
really have an answer that sounded sane. Not to mention it was
majorly embarrassing and hadn’t been my smartest move or decision.
Then there was the whole trust thing. While I didn’t trust him any
further than I could toss a salad without making a mess, a small
part of me whispered that it would be nice to open up to someone
else about everything that was going on. Maybe, I thought, I’ll
tell him a little about the change in Maria. It would be nice to
get an outsider’s perspective.

I wasn’t 100% happy with that thought,
because it could possibly open up the discussion to other unwanted
territory, but I pushed it out of my mind because all I was doing
was giving myself a headache. As the saying went, I’d cross that
bridge when I got to it. I just hoped said bridge was sturdy and
not one of those scary ass narrow swinging bridges that you always
see in advertisements for romantic tropical getaways. Sorry, but
dangling over a gorge with just a narrow band of wood and ropes
between a potentially lethal drop and my extremely breakable body
was not my idea of a romantic time.

I arrived at my brother’s school just as
their soccer practice finished up, and they were full of chatter
about their up coming scrimmage against their rival school in a few
weeks. I had all sorts of soccer statistics, positions, and
potential plays thrown at me and my head reeled with so much
information that I had to stop paying attention just so I could
continue to concentrate on the road. I did promise them that I’d go
to watch the scrimmage, and I couldn’t help but be touched by them
asking me. Usually they didn’t care one way or the other if their
big sister watched them play, but every now and then they could
pull out the “cute little brothers” card and melt my heart.

I took a few minutes and called Maria after I
got home. I wanted to see how she was feeling and if she was up for
a visit. My stomach clenched with nerves and my phone almost slid
out of my palm as I dialed her cell phone, only to be kicked
directly into voice mail. Confused, I left a voice message saying
that I hoped she felt better soon and to let me know if she needed
anything from school. I hung up and called her mother, who
reassured me that Maria was all right, still fluish and laying low,
which was why she had cut off her cell phone. I repeated my message
for her to feel better and to let me know if I needed to get
anything from school, but Mrs. Dupree said that the teachers had
already sent home the assignments and Maria would be working on
them all weekend.

I hung up and stared at my phone for a moment
before I slowly set it down on my desk. I hated the relief I felt
that my confrontation with Maria was going to be pushed back
another day or two. I didn’t mind the fact that I was also relieved
that I wouldn’t have to see Mrs. Dupree for a while, either. I had
never really been close to Maria’s parents despite their
relationship with my own and the amount of time Maria and I had
spent with each other over the years, but she had become even
stranger ever since the separation and upcoming divorce. Shortly
before Maria’s disappearance she had walked into Maria’s room while
we were studying for Chemistry, sat down on Maria’s bed and
proceeded to pull out the latest copy of Seventeen from a bag she
had with her and started asking us if we thought certain fashions
would suite her. This quickly devolved into her asking prying
questions about if there were any boys that we liked and other
leading things that just made me extremely uncomfortable at the
time. Maria had apologized for an hour over the phone after I had
managed to extract myself from the sheer awkward by stating that
Mom had needed me at home. I felt bad about leaving Maria behind to
deal with her mother, but, well, there hadn’t been anything I could
do about it other than listen to her apologize and vent
afterwards.

So I figured one confrontation a day was
enough for anyone to have to deal with, and with that bracing
thought I headed up stairs for a shower and to get started on my
homework. It might be Friday, but I was going to be working all
weekend and preferred to at least have the worst of it finished
before hand.

Chapter Six

Hands grabbed my shoulders and shoved me
painfully against the chips stand face first. The shelving dug into
my chest as my breath left my lungs with a pain filled whimper. One
hand wrapped around me and whirled me so that I faced my attacker.
He was large, bigger than anyone I had ever seen, and looked to be
made of solid muscle. His broad face was flushed with anger, and
his nose looked like it had met the wrong end of a fist more than
once. Panic rose in my throat and threatened to choke me as I
stared into beady black eyes.

“
Tryin’ to steal from me, eh, little
girl?” he asked, his voice an angry growl. He shook me, then spun
me around again and shoved me back into the shelving. Bruises
popped up on top of bruises.

“
N-no sir,” I cried and clenched my teeth
in an effort to keep another cry of pain from escaping me.

“
Lyin’ on top of stealin’, and you’re a
pretty thing, too. Welp, no help for it, girlie, I saw you slip
this here candy bar in your bag,” he wagged the offending chocolate
in front of my face, “and that there is a crime. Which means the
cops get to be called.”

“
Wait, please no!” I cried as I felt him
shift against me, my voice shrill. “No, don’t, please! I can’t have
a record!”

“
You shoulda thought of that before you
tried to rob me,” he said, his voice flat and so cold that a
chilled wind skittered down my back.

“
Please, surely there’s something I can
do,” I said, desperate.

“
Hmmmm.”

He spun me around again so that I faced him
and stared. I stared back, silently pleading with him. For a moment
he paused and then my eyes widened as his form changed in front of
me. His face broadened out as his mouth stretched to accommodate
huge massive teeth that looked like tusks as opposed to fangs, and
hair began to sprout out from underneath his baseball cap. A hand
closed over my chest and my breath wheezed as I watched his eyes
shrink, beady black narrowed even more and turned a vibrant yellow
with a vertical pupil that shocked me out of my stupor and I
started to scream.

I bolted upright so fast that I over balanced
and fell off the side onto the floor with enough force that a few
of my knickknacks rattled on the shelves. My scream of fear tapered
off to a moan of pain as I rubbed my bruised elbow. Damn that
Akira, putting thoughts into my head that didn’t belong there only
to have them come out in my dreams. So what if the store clerk at
the gas station I got caught shop lifting at had been huge, kind of
ugly and wearing a baseball cap that he hadn’t taken off once. That
didn’t mean a thing, a lot of people wore baseball caps to protect
their heads, hide their baldness, or just because they liked them.
It didn’t mean that he was some kind of supernatural creature out
of Japanese mythology.

That didn’t stop my stomach from cramping so
violently that for a moment I thought I was going to be sick all
over my floor. I took a few deep breaths to try and settle my
roiling guts and rubbed lightly at the almost fully healed bruises
on my chest as they gave a faint throb of remembered pain. I hauled
myself to my feet and gathered up the blankets I had dragged over
the side with me, then glanced at my clock and groaned. No point in
going back to sleep since I’d just have to get up in an hour to get
ready for work.

I huffed out an irritated breath. It was bad
enough that I had morning shift on a Saturday, but waking up two
hours earlier then I absolutely had to because of a stupid
nightmare just put icing on an already craptastic cake. I muttered
all the way to the bathroom and through my morning rituals about
how today was going to suck. Not even the warmth of my shower could
banish the irritation, so I resigned myself to just surviving for
the day.