Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) (22 page)

“What did they want,” Emily asked.
The girls just looked at her, speechless.

“Why do you tolerate such
behavior?” Again, they were silent. They understood her perfectly. They seemed
to have no idea how to respond.

Emily could see this inquiry was
going nowhere. She bent over until she was level with their faces, looked them
in the eyes and said, “You are on your own now. Stand up for yourselves.” She
smiled at them and walked away.

She took a train to Tokyo the next
day. The ride passed through the lake district near Kosai. Her mother’s family
came from that area, she knew, though it was likely she had no living relatives
there anymore. The thought occurred to her to get off and catch a later train.
But in the end she decided to stay in her seat and content herself with
watching the scenery pass by through the window.

Her mind returned to the scene at
the university. She found it hard to believe those girls could allow themselves
to be treated in such a way. How could they act as though they were helpless,
at the mercy of a bully? Why did no one else object? It was incomprehensible.
Even more puzzling to her was how isolated they seemed from their own inner
strength. They could resist, if they would only choose to do so. But somehow,
they had completely lost sight of that dimension of their own personalities.
They had made themselves into victims, waiting for the next bully to take them
up on their offer. They seemed doomed to spend their lives in a cringing
existence, hiding from their boyfriends, later their husbands. Certainly such
behavior was not particularly Japanese. Her own mother would never tolerate
such treatment, nor would she ever allow Emily to do so. It made her angry just
to think about it, and frustrated to realize there was nothing she could do to
help those girls in any lasting way.

She spent the night in a hotel in
Tokyo, and boarded a plane for Honolulu out of Narita airport the next day. It
was a long, uneventful flight. She slept most of the way. In Honolulu, she
entered the country as an American citizen of Japanese descent. The border
security agent asked a couple of perfunctory questions. She grunted a couple of
bland replies and passed on through. Almost no notice was taken of her first
official act as Michiko Tenno. She found the experience not a little
bewildering. It was, after all, exactly how she wanted to live, as an ordinary
citizen, the sort of person government agencies take no special notice of. But
as the pieces of her identity fell into place around her, she couldn’t help
feeling almost numb. As she walked away, she slapped her face lightly and
snapped into an alert mode. She needed the rest of her stay to be as uneventful
as her entry had been.

She made a quite circuitous journey
through the terminal, on the lookout for any suspicious looking people who
might have an unhealthy interest in her. She saw none. Eventually, she brought
her luggage to a ticket counter on the upper level of the terminal and checked
it through to Los Angeles, except for a small overnight bag. Her flight
departed the next evening, giving her a bit more than a day to spend in
Honolulu. She took a room in a motel near Kapiolani State Park, and found a
seafood stand around the corner where she had lunch. Later she rented a scooter
to explore the area around Diamond Head. Her parents had come to Oahu when she
was just an infant, though they probably lived further around the point, up
towards the Marine base at Kaneohe Bay. The scenery was spectacular, but it
didn’t seem especially familiar. It wasn’t home. That was in Virginia, for
better or worse.

She spent the next morning
wandering around the capital city. It was a melting pot of American, Asian and
Polynesian cultures. Here she could blend right in, among the Chinese, the
Vietnamese, the Koreans and the Japanese. They were all Americans, like her.
They shared her manners, her culture, even her gait. No one could imagine that
she looked out of place. And yet, she felt someone was watching her. She
couldn’t quite put her finger on it, couldn’t quite see who it was. But she
felt it. The problem with blending in was the danger could blend in too.

Emily made her
way back to the airport, looking over her shoulder the whole way. She could not
detect a tail, but thought the airport security might make it easier to spot
one. After she passed through the checkpoint, she went to a nearby restaurant
and took a seat where she could watch whoever came through after her. She
ordered a bagel and cream cheese and a glass of orange juice. She saw nothing
suspicious. After about twenty minutes, she walked to the gate and boarded her
flight a little later. Several hours later, she arrived in Los Angeles. Her
instincts seem to have been correct. If there were any Chinese operatives in
Honolulu, they hadn’t tracked her onto the plane. She left Los Angeles without
any further incident, and flew on to Charlottesville, arriving that evening.

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Chapter 18: Back Home at Last

Emily’s flight landed at
Charlottesville-Albemarle airport late, around 11:00. The last leg had been on
a regional carrier flying a small jet. The weather was a little choppy, so the
little plane bounced around quite a bit. It felt a little like riding a roller
coaster. A few passengers got sick, and the flight crew was kept busy tending
to them. Emily peered out her window and wondered at the amount of light
visible even at night. The country looked like a Christmas tree. She could make
out a jagged dark gash to the south that must have stretched for miles, like a
chasm amidst all the lights around it. She guessed that it must be the forests
around her home. It was one of those perspective paradoxes. Seen from above,
the dark mountains looked like a deep hole in the bright valleys. There was
something reassuring about that thought: a dark haven from all the lights. She
felt safest when she was in the woods, and exposed when she went into the
towns. Was she living in a hole? A buried life?

She made her way to the baggage
claim, and while she waited for her luggage she was reminded of those two girls
at the university in Kyoto. They thought of themselves as helpless, and that
became their reality. It was as if someone was hiring victims, and they couldn’t
help but apply for the job. The one girl had tried to stand up to those guys,
but crumpled at the first sign of aggression. The other one merely cried the
whole time. Were these just the lives they had ended up with by chance, or were
they an expression of who they really were? Were they merely living out some
eternal human type?

It was difficult for Emily not to
draw the obvious comparison to her own situation. She was living in hiding as
she tried to find a way to craft an identity she could use to live out in the
open. Was it really only temporary, or was she just finding another hole to
hide in? She saw her luggage tumble off the conveyor belt on to the carousel
and slowly circle towards her. She grabbed the biggest piece and hoisted it up.
Damn, it was heavy. She noticed the name tag hanging from the handle, but
couldn’t remember if she had written her information in it. Out of curiosity
she lifted the flap and noticed the curious double characters, kanji over
English letters. That certainly caught her attention. She had definitely not
written
that
. And then it struck her
like a thunderbolt. It was her mother’s handwriting. She had written her
daughter’s name:
Michiko
Tenno
!

Emily took it as a sign, a message
from her mother about who she should be. She scrambled to get the rest of her
luggage. This was the name her mother and father had wanted for her. They had
devised it on their own, without any input from Michael or any other outside
source. This is who they wanted her to be. She sat on the pile of her luggage
and pondered how she was going to get home. The last shuttle left in fifteen
minutes. It would drop her in Goshen, where she could get a taxi to Warm
Springs. But she really didn’t want to haul the luggage all the way to the
other end of the arrivals terminal to get to the shuttle stop. Just then she
saw some familiar faces. Wayne was walking towards her, bellowing her name,
with Danny and Billy trailing behind him.

“Hey, Em! Over here,” Wayne
hollered.

“And we’re just in the nick of
time, by the looks of it,” Billy piped up. They grabbed all her
bags—“Gee, Em, did you have all this with you when you left?”—and
hauled them to Billy’s parents’ SUV.

“How did you guys know when I was
coming in,” she asked incredulously.

“It’s just one of those “friend”
things, ya know. We just sensed your need, and leapt into action,” Wayne
asserted in his best mock-heroic tone. Billy snorted.

“We figured you had to be coming in
today or tomorrow, cuz school starts on Monday,” Danny asserted. “Wayne wanted
to stake out the terminal for the last few days.”

“Yeah, he just wouldn’t listen to
reason,” Billy laughed. “Thank God his mom’s car’s in the shop, or we would
have been practically living here!” Emily laughed along with him. She loved her
friends, and felt it tickle its way down her spine in the warm reflection on
the fact that they loved her.

“I’m starving, guys. Can we stop
and get something to eat on the way?”

“Now that’s what I’m talkin’
about,” Wayne roared. “The telepathy between friends. I’m ravenous!” Everybody
laughed. Danny hedged a little.

“I’m tapped out, guys,” he said
sheepishly.

“This one’s on me, everyone” Emily
trumpeted.

“See what I mean,” Wayne roared
again—he was in a mood. “It’s that ol’ psychic connection among friends!”
He was broke, too.

“I know a diner on the way that’s
probably open late,” Billy piped up.

“Step on it, my man,” Wayne
commanded imperiously. “My stomach growls hideously.” They all laughed as Billy
stomped on the gas pedal.

They sat in a large semi-circular
booth in the back of the diner. It was one of those places where the seats were
covered in lime green vinyl with hammered nickel upholstery nails. All the
tables and counters were edged in ribbed art-deco chrome. There was a drain in
the center of the checkerboard tile floor. Emily wondered if they hosed the
place out in the middle of the night. They picked out various forms of
breakfast from the menu, with Wayne getting about twice what anyone else
ordered. Emily got a fruit plate and a bagel with cream cheese. They all clamored
to know every detail of her trip. She had kept a pretty tight lid on her plans
beforehand, trying not to commit herself to stories that might have to change
later. But she decided this was probably as good a moment as any to open up to
her friends.

“I went to Japan,” she said,
figuring she should keep New Zealand to herself, in case Michael planned on
staying on there a little longer. “I spent the break with relatives.” That part
was true, though not exactly consonant with the way in which the first remark
was true.

“Japan,” Danny exclaimed. “I
thought your family was from China.” Wayne and Billy obviously shared his
perplexity, judging from their faces. Emily laughed. She didn’t know exactly
how it happened each time, but for some reason people always seemed to assume
that about her. She was tall for a Japanese, she supposed. But she also didn’t
usually give people much to go on to avoid that mistake.

“I’m sorry guys. There’s a lot I
have to tell you, stuff I’ve been keeping from you. But I’m sick of it.” She
paused to take a breath. The guys were all expectation.

“Here goes. My dad is dead.” She
had to stop right there. Her friends gasped, as if there were no more air in
the room. Emily fought back tears. It still hurt to say it, even in front of friends.
It just made it real again with all the same vivid, hideous pain. She took
another long breath, sighed it out and went on.

“He was killed in a crossfire at
the estate.” She tried to speak quickly, to get through it faster. The boys’
faces seemed frozen. “His boss was targeted by covert operatives in the
intelligence community. They invaded the estate one night in October and he was
killed trying to keep me safe.” This last was too much even for her. The image
of the scene broke over her once again and she wept openly.

“Oh my God, Emily,” Wayne cried
out, voicing what they all felt. “I’m so sorry.” He wanted to say so much more,
but the words just didn’t come to him. They sat in silence for a long moment,
as if they were observing a moment of silence for Emily’s father, though they
all thought only of her.

“There’s more, guys,” she said in a
tremulous voice. “My name is not really Emily. That’s just an informal family
name, Emily Kane. My legal name has always been Michiko.” The boys were now
utterly perplexed. “Don’t worry. You can still call me Em.” She smiled at them,
and they laughed nervously, no doubt relieved to find that she was open to
humor.

“Michiko,” they each said, almost
simultaneously, trying out the feel of it in their mouths. “That’s kind of cool
sounding,” Danny said.

“It means ‘the way’ or wisdom or a
whole lot of other stuff. I like to think of it as the way,” she added, trying
to normalize the name for them.

“So, do you, like, speak Japanese,”
Billy asked, with an odd look on his face.

“Yeah, I do,” she admitted, feeling
a little guilty that so much of her personality had been concealed from them.
“But don’t worry guys. It’s still the same me. I’m still the Emily you know
from the dojo and school. You know, the one who kicks your asses on a regular
basis.”

They all laughed, quite relieved
that she wanted to bring them close to her. She was sharing a deep, dark secret
with them, trusting them. They were each a little embarrassed to think they had
no secrets on this scale.