Chapter Five Ren #2
“All right, so it might not be the worst thing ever, but you must admit it’s pretty bad—especially when we need to stay on track to graduate.
Unless you’ve done something worse?” Dread fills me.
For a girl like her, one who’s never skipped school or disobeyed her parents, bad grades alone would be a kiss of death—a criminal record wouldn’t even have a category, it’d be so repulsive. And I’ve got both. “Have you?”
“No,” I lie immediately, but it comes out choked. I should just leave while she still thinks I’m like her, a good kid from a good family. Surprisingly, she doesn’t look alarmed. In fact, if I’m reading her right, she almost seems excited.
“I told you what I’ve done, even if it wasn’t as impressive as I thought.” A giggle escapes her. “Tell me what you’ve done. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”
Damn, her tone is charmingly pleading. She even reaches out to brush the back of my hand.
Not because she’s trying to get away from someone.
Because she wants to. Her touch is brief, but the sensation lingers.
It spirals through me. Almost makes me shivery again.
Every thought drops clear out of my head and my tongue loosens.
“I’m going to check out a hole in the fence.” There, that will be enough. She’ll disapprove without me having to reveal just how inadequate I am. “Guys go under it to go fishing at night. I want to see it.”
Her eyebrow quirks up. “Really? Will you show me?”
“The hole in the fence?” I can’t lie—I’m surprised. There’s no way this girl with her pretty clothes and commitment to academics wants to see something that could get you shot down like a dog.
“No, an ice cream truck. Of course the fence.”
“Why do you want to see it?” I still don’t believe it.
“I’ve skipped school today,” she says. “I might as well compound my wrongs and hasten my descent into ill repute.”
“I don’t want to participate in your corruption,” I reply. The smile on her face grows. It makes her nose crinkle and her eyes dance, turning them from suns into sunbeams.
“But I want you to participate in my corruption,” she says.
At that, my heart, which has been jackrabbiting in my chest, simply stops.
Participate in her corruption? I mean…I’m not opposed.
She beams at me, as though this is all some funny joke.
Maybe it is and I’m playing right into it.
That makes more sense than the alternative.
“Sure.” The word comes out suspiciously. I still think she might scoff and say she’s pulling my leg.
“Good.” She nods as though we’ve jointly come to the right conclusion. “Let’s go.”
We walk side by side. I feel her presence keenly, even as hammering, drilling, and sawing surround us, as though we’re taking a stroll through a construction site.
People are everywhere around us. I couldn’t say what they were doing because I’m overly aware of an approximately five-foot-one boss at my side, who so far has seemed to enjoy giving me directions, flummoxing me, and interrogating me.
I wouldn’t mind if I wasn’t so suspicious of what it all means—and all too alert that it probably means nothing.
“You have a sister, right?” she asks. I glance at her and nod. The mention of Emi makes my stomach tighten. “Is she…” For once, she seems uncertain. “Is she all right? She seemed under the weather when our families met.”
Met is a stretch, considering Emi was in a feverish sleep, Mama was bristling like a rooster in a cockfight, and I was slumped against the wall like a loser, not even looking up till the last moment before Violet left and only because my fox nudged me to.
“My sister is fine,” I say, even though nothing could be further from the truth because Emi got a bad fever on the bus ride over and it hasn’t gone away. I’m not about to lay my life bare to her, though.
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” She sounds genuinely pleased, but she doesn’t even know us. Why does she care? She prattles on. “Did your family come here directly? Or did you stay at Santa Anita Racetrack? Most families I’ve met so far were at Santa Anita for a while.”
“We were there for a bit.” I keep my face impassive, but just the name of the godforsaken hellhole makes my flesh crawl, as though all those fleas are doing the two-step across my skin again.
“We were transferred there but only for a few hours,” Violet says reflectively. “Conditions seemed pretty bad.”
“Yeah.” The stall we stayed in had a sand floor mixed with some sort of gravel, and the enclosures didn’t reach the ceiling.
It smelled like hay, manure, and horse piss.
There were two rolls of toilet paper—it had to last two weeks per family—and cots.
Otherwise, it was a big box of nothing, aside from the flies buzzing around the ceiling and the fleas springing up.
I wanted to kill someone for making Emi stay in such a place in her condition without so much as a chair to sit in.
“You’re not very forthcoming, are you?”
I glance sidelong at Violet, thrown off guard once again. She seems to do that to me, over and over. It’s like she’s paying close attention to everything I say. I’m not used to it, not at all.
“I say what I need to say.” I’m relieved that the spot appears up ahead, delivering me from her scrutiny. “There it is.”
I bring us to a halt several feet away, so we won’t draw attention to ourselves, and nod toward it.
The fence is made from wood posts and five strands of barbed wire.
It razors its way around the camp. In some areas, the beams stand straight up, like soldiers at attention.
In others, they’re crossed to make X’s and the barbed wire runs in a grid across them.
X marks the spot. See the X’s, see the trapped Japs.
One of the lowest strands of barbed wire is twisted back so you can pass underneath, a quirk among the fiercely straight and angry lines.
You’d think someone might hightail it from the fishing spots and just leave.
Escape. Run away and never look back. But we’re in the middle of the desert, most have families here, and, at the end of the day, there isn’t anywhere to go.
Even if you survived and made it back to Los Angeles, you’d be on the run.
I heard about one guy who holed up in the Silverado hills and another who even got plastic surgery to look Caucasian.
The FBI netted both. The G-men have long arms. They always get you in the end.
Violet’s eyes trail over the fence and the bent barbed wire. I wonder if seeing it makes her understand she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I brace for the inevitable and tell myself I won’t care when it comes.
“When were you planning on going under it?” she asks.
“Go under? Who says I wanted to go under?” Her gaze takes on the sharpness of the barbed wire. A coy smile pulls at the side of her mouth. I’ve underestimated her, I realize.
“You don’t seem like someone who would be worried about a little danger,” she says.
“I am. I don’t like anything dangerous,” I say. “I love rules. In fact, I wish there were more rules. You can never have enough.”
“Oh, come on,” she says. “There’s no need to pretend.”
Somehow that makes me break. Because I’m not trying to pretend. I’m not trying to make her think I’m someone better than I am.
“Tonight,” I say coldly.
She doesn’t miss a beat. “What time?”
“Around midnight.”
I think that’ll put an end to it, but then I notice the smile is still on her face. She says, “I’ll see you then.”
“No.” Putting myself at risk is one thing. Putting this girl whose greatest crime is skipping school—and only because it was the first day of being put in a military prison camp—is something I won’t do. “You don’t get it. You can’t go.”
“Can’t?” Brightness flashes in her eyes again, but this time it’s made of something more like firelight than sunlight. “I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me what to do.”
“You’re right,” I say. And it’s true. I’m not her protector or guardian or anything like that. I’m not anything to her other than a guy she used to help her get away from an official. “But I’m also not going to get you in trouble. It was nice meeting you. I gotta go.”
At that, I leave. Biggest lesson I’ve learned in life is that you got to know your weaknesses, and God knows I’ve had a lot of time to get acquainted with mine.
If I stay, I’ll cave or start believing this girl might actually like me.
Probably both, which won’t be good. As I walk away, everything inside me wants to glance over my shoulder at her. I know she’s watching me go.
But I don’t stop, and I don’t look back.
Later that day, I’m in the administration building. I clutch the fox in my good hand with all my might. I’ve taken it off so Mama can’t see it. I wonder if the damn thing worked for once.
When I got back to the barrack after my encounter with Violet, Emi wasn’t doing well.
She was shiny and slick with sweat, all pink heat.
The sight made me nauseous with fear. It wiped away thoughts of Violet and made me silently grip my fox and beg it for help.
We were told a doctor would come but none did—because guess what?
There are ten camp doctors and ten thousand residents.
We only have Mr. Nomura, who was placed in our barrack because God is punishing me, and Nurse Rose, the nurse from the bus, who keeps stopping by between her rounds poking everyone with typhoid shots.
Then Mama and I were summoned to the newly renamed WRA administration offices, where I now stand, wondering if the fox worked and answered my prayer.
We wait in the hallway. My neck aches where the sling digs into it like a noose, and my shoulder throbs.
Underneath it all is a heap of fear and rage that’s so intense, it might as well be physical pain, too.