Collide (8 page)

“Why are you surprised?” he asked. “We have
work to do, and I haven’t eaten dinner yet.”

“Sorry, for some reason I didn’t think you
were planning on eating with me. No idea why, it’s only logical
that you would,” I said as I pulled a menu over and glanced at it,
even though I knew exactly what I was going to get. “Brain fart, I
guess.”

“Brain farts aside, I’ve never eaten here.
What would you recommend?”

“Really?” I asked. “I figured one of your
teammates or f-friends would have brought you here before now, it’s
practically a historical monument to all that’s greasy and good and
is extremely popular.”

I flushed a little over my stutter at the
word “friends”. I had almost said “fangirls”, and I’m not too sure
how well that would have gone over, because he really did seem
unaware of the groupies even if he wasn’t oblivious to his affect
on the female populace. It was a never-ending oxymoron, though I
suspected that his unawareness of the situation was carefully
cultivated and not quite as genuine as he’d like the rest of the
student body to believe.

“No, at least half of the team are major
health nuts and the rest of them don’t hang around much once
practice is over. They’re too interested in catching up to their
girlfriends for quality time.”

He wagged his eyebrows a little at “quality
time”, and I made a face in response.

“Well, I always get the mushroom Swiss burger
with a chocolate shake, which, as far as I’m concerned, is nothing
less than the most heavenly ambrosia you could ask for. Toss in
Joe’s famous seasoned steak fries and oh maaaaaan,” I moaned. I
immediately started to drool from the thought of all that goodness
soon to be sitting in front of me.

Akira stared at me, and for a moment it
almost looked like his cheeks had taken on a light pink hue, but he
turned his attention back to the menu before I could really study
his face. A few more minutes of silence passed between us before a
waitress came, and I grinned when Akira ordered the same thing that
I did, only he went for a strawberry shake instead of
chocolate.

“What have you found?” he asked once the
waitress left to put our orders in. “Mr . . Baker? Said that you
had borrowed three books and asked if they were for the project I
had mentioned.”

Excited about my finds, I pulled out the
three books and spread them out on the table after making sure that
the surface was good and clean. Joe’s had never been dirty before,
but I wasn’t taking any chances with the precious cargo from the
store. I didn’t want to lose Mr. Baker’s trust in me, and the only
way to do that, short of robbing the man blind, would have been to
damage one of his books. I shuddered at the thought of his
wrath.

Akira was silent as he went
through the books, and commented about how odd it was that the one
book lacked any input on the
Oni
, since, according to him,
they’re some of the best-known legends in Japan.

“Though the
Tengu
give them a run
for their money,” he said as our food arrived and I shuffled the
books back into my bag. “Most people think they have encountered
either an
Oni
or
a
Tengu
at least
once in their lives, though they don’t remember most of the nitty
gritty details. The thing is,
Oni
tend to be better drinking buddies while
the
Tengu
are
more stuck up about things like rules and honor and such. You
almost never see a
Tengu
hanging out in a bar, but
Oni
? They hate to miss a
party.”

It was my turn to stare at him.

“What?”

“You just started talking about these legends
like they’re real and about to walk through the door, sit down and
order a drink.”

He reached out and flicked my nose, but
pulled back when I growled and took a swipe at him.

“Every story,” he said, his face suddenly the
most serious I had ever seen it, “has a grain of truth. Compare it
to your own alien abduction stories, if you will. They’re doing
more studies into them, but everything that’s been documented leads
people to believe that something happened, even if the original
person who had the experience can’t remember all of it.”

I shuddered a little, and thought of Maria
and her lack of memory. Something had happened, it was painfully
obvious that that was a fact, but she either didn’t want to
remember, or she remembered and didn’t want to talk about it, which
made all of her claims of amnesia one big, fat lie. I was inclined
to give her the benefit of doubt in that regards, though, because
along with being more level headed than I, Maria was extremely
honest. She once dragged me all the way back to a gas station when
she realized she had accidentally walked out with a candy bar that
she thought I had paid for in order to confess to the clerk. She
then gave him twice what the candy had originally cost to both pay
for the original and cover any extra expenses it’s removal had
caused.

I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I
didn’t notice our food had arrived, much less Akira reaching across
the table again until his fingertip lightly brushed against my
bruised jaw. I snapped away from him and the strange tingle so fast
that I cracked the back of my head against the booth.

“Oooooowwwww,” I moaned as I gingerly rubbed
my head. I was extremely grateful that Joe’s had decided to
renovate a few years ago and put in new booths with padded backs
instead of the plain wooden ones that had been there since the
place had first been built. It still hurt, though, and I shot a
glare at him.

“Sorry,” Akira said and glanced down. “I keep
forgetting that you don’t like me touching you.”

It’s not
that
,
I wanted to
say,
It’s the fact that whenever you touch
me I get a feeling of ‘wrong’ so strong that it takes everything I
have to not bolt out the door
.

“It’s all right, you just surprised me,” I
said instead.

“Is this normal for her?” he asked. “The
random shoving, that is.”

“Huh?”

“Your friend Maria, is she usually the type
to shove someone during an argument?”

“How do you know about that?”

“One of my teammate’s girlfriend’s saw what
happened,” he said.

I was quiet for a moment as I finished off my
burger and started on my shake. “No,” I finally said. “Maria isn’t,
or wasn’t, the type to get physically violent, no matter how
deserving the other individual may be. Heaven knows I’ve deserved a
good slapping more than once over the years, but she’s never been
the type to raise her hand in anger. That’s more my area of
expertise.”

“Has something happened between you two?”

“No, other than her missing week,” I
replied.

“She missed a week of school?” he asked and
his eyebrows rocketed to his hairline. “Was she sick?”

I blinked at him. “Noooooo, she was missing
for a week and doesn’t remember what happened. Vanished one night
and was gone for about seven days, then walked into her parents
house claiming no memory of what had happened.”

“When was this?”

“You’re serious,” I said. He honestly had no
idea what I was talking about, it was plain on his face that he was
completely baffled by what I was saying.

“I’m very serious, when was this?”

“It was about four weeks ago . . .,” I
trailed off when he nodded.

“Ah, I wasn’t here then, I had gone to visit
my brother, who was looking to transfer into Boston University next
year.”

Oh, that’s right. I remembered now that he
had been absent that week, as well, some kind of special permission
from the school since he wasn’t going to be able to travel back to
Japan for the holidays due to timing and flight schedules and other
things that tended to make my head hurt.

“So, she changed after this ‘missing week’ of
hers?”

“Yeah, she did,” I said and furrowed my
eyebrows as the skin between them began to prickle slightly. It
felt like ants were crawling over my forehead. Weird.

“How did she change?”

“She just did,” I said, angry at his
intrusion into something that he should have been told about when
he returned. I really didn’t want to go another round with my own
suspicions about Maria’s change. Besides, it really was none of his
business. “Why are you so interested anyway?”

“Because you’ve also changed in the last few
weeks.”

Ok, that one derailed me.

“Huh?”

“You’ve become more . . . what’s the word,
pulling back? Oh, withdrawn and you don’t smile as much,
either.”

I stared at him and couldn’t decide what
emotion to settle on. There was annoyance over his interest in
Maria, irritation at myself for being so obvious about my own
stress levels, or the strange, happy, bubbly feeling at the thought
that he had been paying close enough attention to notice that I was
stressed. I quickly popped that one and settled on irritated.

“Look,” I said and pulled out my wallet to
plunk enough money down to cover my meal plus tip next to my plate.
“Whatever is going on with Maria is between her and me and doesn’t
require outside interference.”

He held up his hands in the universal
placating gesture and inclined his head slightly. “All right, all
right, just wondered if her disappearance might have something to
do with her suddenly shoving someone who was supposed to be her
best friend, no need to get so defensive.”

“Look, I gotta get back to work. I’m going to
keep these books for a few days, but if you want to borrow the
Cherokee mythology one, let me know and I can work out something
with Mr. Baker.”

“All right.” He stood with me, set his own
money down next to his plate and followed me out the door. I didn’t
think anything about it until he started following me back up the
path through the park.

I whirled around to face him and asked, “Why
are you following me again?”

“You clobbered me earlier thinking that I was
trying to scare you,” he said easily and thrust his hands into his
jeans pockets. “I’m not going to take the chance of you clobbering
someone else for the same reason. I would like to get an A on our
project, after all, and that’s kind of hard to do if you’re in jail
for assault with a deadly weapon.”

“My book bag is not a deadly weapon,” I
huffed at him as we resumed walking. I was actually grateful that
he was walking back to the store with me now that the sun had fully
set, but a whole herd of elephants would never pry that information
out of me.

“It most certainly is,” he said in all
seriousness and rubbed his arm a little. A small twinge of guilt
settled in my stomach. “It’s heavier than a sledgehammer and twice
as broad, and when you swing it like that you could very easily
take off someone’s head. I don’t know how you walk around with it
all the time like that.”

“Practice, and it really isn’t that bad,” I
grumbled and shrugged to shift said “deadly weapon” on my shoulders
a little to a more comfortable position.

“Hmmmm,” he hummed, but I ignored him.

I peered into the darkness nervously. Even
with Akira’s presence chilly skitters ran up and down my arms and
my jaw tensed and relaxed. Every now and then I thought I heard the
sound of wings flapping, but when I glanced up nothing but darkened
branches met my eyes.

I kept my silence and Akira didn’t seem to
feel the need to fill up our walk back to the bookstore with
meaningless chatter. He appeared content to just walk along as he
hummed some kind of tune under his breath that I thought I should
recognize, but it seemed to dance just out of the reach of my
understanding.

We rounded the final turn on our walk and
Baker’s Bookstore’s lights blazed through the darkness. I motioned
for Akira to follow me into the store, and within moments he walked
back out with a grin and the Cherokee book tucked under his arm and
tossed a brief “See you tomorrow” over his shoulder. Mr. Baker bid
me a good evening, and within a few minutes I was once again alone
in the bookstore, surrounded by possibilities.

The rest of the night was uneventful, and I
closed out the register and locked the store down at 10:30. Count
out was smooth, the deposit was written out and with a happy sigh
for a job well done I walked out and locked the back door behind
me. All Mr. Baker would need to do is run to the bank in the
morning and then he’d be ready to go.

My phone rang as soon as I got behind the
wheel of my car, and with an internal sigh I answered and informed
my mom that I was on the way home and I would see her in a little
bit. I know that she’s justified in checking up on me, but I
couldn’t help but wonder if Dad were home if she wouldn’t be a
little more lenient.

The drive home was quiet as I wasn’t really
in the mood for music so I left my radio off, and within a few
minutes I pulled up into our driveway. I sighed, gathered up my
belongings and got out. I had hoped that Mom had gone to sleep, but
my hopes were dashed when she came out of the kitchen wiping her
hands on a towel.

“What took you so long?” she asked, her tone
sharp.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“I know it doesn’t take thirty minutes to
drive from Baker’s to here. What were you doing?”

My hands began to tremble
at the heavy suspicion in her voice. I clenched my fingers in an
effort to still the shaking and barely felt my fingernails bite
into my palms. My whole body started to shiver as Mom stared at me
and all I could think was how unfair it was that she was judging me
when she
knew
I
tried to be a little more careful coming home at night this time of
year because the deer are out in droves and the number of accidents
involving them always skyrocketed. My teeth chattered as I opened
my mouth and a torrent of words exploded forth, my voice high and
shrill as I fought to regain control of my body and my
mind.