The Gods Will Sing Our Song

Chapter One Ren

Chapter One

Ren

The story was that Papa left for Japan when I was four. The reasons changed all the time. He left to help a family member. He left to bring over some stuff. He left for a job. Soon, he’ll be back. No one ever said who the family member was, what stuff, or which job.

That’s because the story was a lie.

Well, a half lie. The first part is true.

He left.

But he won’t be back soon. Sometimes, though, my stupid brain believes he will.

I can’t remember the guy’s face, yet I’m always waiting for him.

When you hear something long enough, it gets inside you.

Mama told me the stories about Papa leaving the same way she told me every other factual thing growing up, so maybe that’s why I assumed they were true.

Your name is Ren, after Papa. Emi is older, so you need to listen to her.

Papa is in Osaka. Or maybe Tokyo now. Or Hiroshima.

He misses us and he will come back, so be good and don’t get on my last nerve.

I’ll be hauling crates of waxy oranges and pinky-red strawberries off the Santa Ana delivery trucks before school and think, When Papa gets back, we’ll—Or I’ll be home after class, thumbing through our bills, and think, We just have to hang on until Papa—

Then I’ll remember Mama bent over the dining room table, a bottle of Chinese rice wine half empty by her hand, dull words tumbling from her mouth.

“Of course he’s never coming back, baka.

” I’ll see the image of crusty lipstick smeared around Mama’s lips like blood, marking the back of her wrist where she must have dragged her hand across her mouth. And I feel it. Not pain but panic.

I’ve been trying my hardest to unlearn the story. I keep failing and having to remember the truth and experience it again, like a cartoon character stuck in a spin-dryer. It’s stupid. Tiring. Never-ending.

It’s happening now, as I walk home to shower off the sweat from work and get ready for school, the clash of insecticide and fresh citrus hanging in my nose.

All the guys at work gathered around one of those colorful Uncle Sam posters that have popped up everywhere—this one showing him in a workman’s shirt and cap beneath the words DEFEND AMERICAN FREEDOM, IT’S EVERYONE’S JOB—and talked about signing up and kicking Hitler and Hirohito’s collective ass.

At first, I hung back. Japanese Americans can’t even enlist since Hirohito bombed Pearl Harbor three months ago.

But as I started walking home, my mind wandered into some dumb fantasy where I don’t head off to Santa Fe when I turn eighteen like I’ve planned and instead I join up.

I think about Papa seeing me in a uniform and being proud.

The daydream pops like bubble gum when the figurine hanging around my neck on a cord zings my skin.

The thing is old as hell. It’s not much more than a bit of wood in the shape of a sacred fox.

It’s my only scrap from Papa, and that’s pretty much what it is: a splinter, a big nothing from the guy who didn’t stick around to tell me what it is or how to use it.

I don’t even remember him giving it to me.

The only memories I have are clinging to his legs at Obon like a grain of sticky rice to a pair of chopsticks, skipping rocks with him at Westlake Park, and hearing him and Mama fighting—though I’m not even certain whether it was him or one of her other guys.

When I touch the fox, something inside it pulses.

It’s like a heartbeat. Or the ticktock of a clock or the rhythmic purr of a cat.

It’s quiet, old magic. It doesn’t belong here.

Los Angeles is a place of bushes studded with jasmine stars and people who don’t own heavy coats and grandmotherly palm trees nodding over us.

Magic, in this city of oranges and opportunity, is like that big black dot you see after looking at the sun.

It’s the aftereffect of something brilliant, a negative image that’s dwindled over time.

It talks to me. The fox. It’s sort of like that Jiminy Cricket guy from Pinocchio, only without any words.

Last time I sensed it, it urged me to tell Mrs. Bell that her dress was pretty.

She had spent the entire semester telling me to stop slacking off, but at that compliment, she extended the due date on my math homework.

It didn’t matter, of course. Mama was in one of her reigns of terror; in between hiding our rent money so she wouldn’t spend it all on booze and ducking around the water glasses she launched at my head because she couldn’t find said money, I didn’t finish it.

You’d think having a magical pendant might turn your world around, but it doesn’t do jack beyond small favors.

Sometimes it doesn’t even do those. When I was ten, Mama stumbled home with her beau of that month, some prick who was more beer belly than anything else.

They reeked like they’d bathed in liquor, and they were already hoarse from shouting.

Porcelain exploded against the wall as the man started smashing our plates.

I held the fox, begging it to tell me what to do.

The damn thing was silent. I couldn’t even feel its beat.

So I let it go.

I ended up running into the living room, pushing the man against the wall. He was so drunk that he collapsed like the centers of Mama’s perpetually undercooked cakes. Only thing the fox gave me that night was a red mark on my palm from clutching it and begging it for help.

I’m not sure why it’s pulsing right now.

Can magic break? Does it go on the fritz like our shoddy fridge?

I’ve never understood the relic. I glance ahead and see the truant officer, Mr. Bowerstone, stalking down the street.

I duck through an alley before he can see me.

Technically, I’m not late for school yet, but he has a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach when it comes to me.

A few blocks later, someone calls my name.

“Ren!”

It nearly makes me jump out of my skin. I glance warily over my shoulder, ready to haul ass if I need to. Then I see who it is.

“Oh, hey,” I say as Kai Suzuki, my best friend, jogs over to me.

He’s headed in the direction of school, his satchel slung over his shoulder.

Maybe I shouldn’t even bother going to class today, because I still need to shower, and even if I hurry, I’ll be late for the first bell.

It’ll mean hassle from the teachers, and they’ll call in Mr. Bowerstone, who will hassle me even more.

“You look like a swamp monster,” he says with a grin. I push my sweaty hair off my forehead.

“And you look like an insurance salesman,” I taunt back.

His grin only widens as he adjusts his letterman jacket.

His mother is Mexican, so his middle name is Rodrigo, and he has green eyes and brown hair.

He always plays up whichever side he thinks will get him further with the girls, despite not speaking any Japanese or Spanish aside from a few cuss words.

“Insurance salesman? Nah, I look like Dr. Suzuki Jr.” His father is a surgeon at a private hospital and makes so much money that his mother doesn’t have to work.

They even have housekeepers, a rarity for our working-class neighborhood.

Instead of hightailing it for Bel Air, they added onto their home, turning it into a palatial estate amid the apartment buildings and tiny single-family bungalows.

One day, Kai and his little brother, Lio, will inherit the Hacienda Suzuki, as the neighbors call it.

They got lucky because Mr. Suzuki isn’t legally allowed to own property but he was able to put the title in his wife’s name.

Not that Kai or Lio will need it. They are both going to be doctors, like their father—whether they want to or not.

“If you’re lucky, I’ll give you a job as a janitor at my hospital. ”

“A job?” I snort, noting that he’s on foot today. “You can’t even give me a ride. The point of having a Cadillac is to drive it.”

“Delilah is a temperamental creature.” Last summer, Kai joined me unloading delivery crates to save enough money to buy his first car, since his father wouldn’t cover the cost. Once he had enough, he immediately abandoned the job, and I didn’t blame him.

I’ve gotten enough splinters from those crates to start my own toothpick company. “She needs her beauty rest.”

“You can just admit you bought a lemon.”

Kai glances up the street in horror as though his beloved red Cadillac, barely visible where it’s parked in front of his home, can hear me.

“She’s not a lemon. She’s just…a little unpredictable.” I arch an eyebrow at him. Contrary to what he’s saying, Delilah is very predictable. She predictably won’t start. “Hey, think maybe you can use your relic to fix her?”

“That’s not how it works,” I say, absentmindedly touching my fox. “God knows I wish it actually did something helpful.”

“I know,” he sighs mournfully, as though my priority for any working magic would be his car problems and not my rent.

He lightly socks me on the shoulder. “So, you actually going to come to school today? You know, I can try to get you back on the team to pitch. We don’t stand a chance against Hollywood High. We need the Dragon.”

Ever since childhood, Kai has called me the Dragon, for my zodiac. Even though we were born the same year and are the same age, he dubbed himself Tiger because he says it’s luckier. Lately, though, I haven’t felt like anything other than a stray mutt meant for kicking.

“I haven’t been on the team for years, Kai,” I point out. “Not since…” I trail off, and Kai mercifully doesn’t fill in the rest. I clear my throat. “Even if you could get me on, I wouldn’t have time.”

“Make the time,” Kai demands with the ease of someone whose biggest life responsibility is homework.

“Can’t.” I try not to sound stressed, but it’s hard. “My family is going to need all the money I can make. Might even get an after-school job, too.”