Freak (19 page)

Things I have:

A father

An uncle

A maybe boyfriend

A home

A future

Things I don't have:

Fear

A grandfather (at least not one I will ever acknowledge)

Psychos tracking my every move

Uncertainty

For once the scales have tipped in my favor. And life is good.

Life

Is

Good.

1

The flames surrounded us.

I shivered inside my coat and watched as my house—well, the house I'd been living in for the past month or so—spat and hissed in a mountain of fire and smoke. Fire engines rushed to the scene. Eight men tumbled out of the truck and started rolling the hose toward a fire hydrant.

“Everyone get back!” one of them yelled.

Hiro pulled on my arm. “We have to move back, Heaven,” he said.

I felt cemented to the ground. Cheryl, my housemate, was trapped inside.

Who set this fire?

Marcus?

I had left him back at the subway station. Cheryl had come home by herself in a cab. The driver had promised to
walk her to the door. Hiro and I were only minutes behind her in another cab.

Meaning . . . if I hadn't gone back to the club to get my bag . . . I would've been inside the house, too. The heat started to affect my skin. The smoke began to burn my eyes. I felt light-headed and woozy. My whole body ached.

“Come on,” Hiro said again. “We've got to get out of here.”

I stared up at my bedroom window and thought, fleetingly, of my sad assortment of personal belongings trapped inside. The jeans and sneakers I bought when I first got to L.A. My crumpled-up photograph of my brother, Ohiko, which I carried with me in my shiro-maku wedding kimono. Various clothes belonging to Hiro. I didn't have much—I hadn't saved enough money yet to really have many material possessions. But still, everything that was mine since I'd come to L.A. was turning to ash and fluttering away.

My eyes filled with tears.

“Heaven, we've got to move,” Hiro said, tugging on my arm. “Come on.”

A large piece of the roof cracked and fell mere inches from us. Hiro jumped back, but I stood and stared. The flames leapt and danced.

“You're acting foolish!” Hiro said, pulling on my sleeve.

“Wait,” I said softly. I saw my little bedroom window, behind the branches of the big cedar tree. Flames danced around the window frame. Was it possible that maybe Cheryl hadn't come home? Perhaps she'd gone somewhere
else . . . like to the diner or maybe to the hospital to get her ankle looked at. . . .

Hiro dragged me under a tree. “You're pale,” he said, moving his face close to mine. “Come on. We have to get a cab and get out of this neighborhood.” He pulled at me. “Heaven . . . you've been so strong so far.”

It was true—I
had
been completely strong up until this moment. I had just defended Cheryl from Marcus, who was more terrifying than I'd ever imagined. I'd narrowly avoided death, meeting a subway car head-on. Marcus had dragged Cheryl away from the club knowing I'd follow them. He
knew
that I'd been suspicious of him from the get-go. And he
knew
I'd defend Cheryl. He'd lured me down to that subway station. It had all been a plot to corner me.

And the fire. It was most likely for me as well.

I breathed in and out, trying to get a grip. The firemen worked on, spraying parts of the house to stop the flames. I stepped out from under the tree and moved toward the burning piece of roof again.

“Who wants me dead so badly?” I said aloud. Could it be the Yukemuras?

But it didn't make sense. The Yukemuras, dangerous as they were, didn't want me dead. Yoji, the head of the Yukemura clan, needed me to marry Teddy for the agreed-upon “booty.” They had to have me alive. At least for a little while longer.

“Surround and drown!” one of the firemen bellowed. “The inside's collapsing!”

No. It had to be someone else.

I crept up a little closer. My mind circled back to one person.
Mieko.

Mieko, my stepmother. I'd called her a couple of days ago. I needed to see how my father was doing—he'd been in a coma for almost a month. And when I heard her familiar voice come on the line, she sounded friendly—loving, almost.

And believe me, Mieko isn't the friendly type.

We didn't talk about our family. Instead Mieko grilled me about what I was doing. What was my address? she asked again and again.

“It looks like we've got a class B here,” one of the firemen shouted into his radio. “Send us some backup.”

Marcus had mentioned Mieko. In the subway station he'd said, “Your mother says hello.”

How did Mieko know Marcus?

More voices rang out. “Check the window! Is anyone still in there?”

Bricks crashed to the ground.

But I
hadn't
given her my address. I'd gotten off the phone before I gave away any important information.

But if she knew Marcus . . . who was kind of dating Cheryl . . . who lived with me . . .

My head spun.
Why
did Mieko know
Marcus?

I stared up at the burning house and my hands curled into fists. The heat made my eyes water. The photo of Ohiko up there was burning up, right now, possibly because of
Mieko or Marcus. Its sides were at that very moment curling and blackening. The fire would eat away Ohiko's face.

All at once, before I knew what I was doing, I ran to the house. The firemen had hosed down the front yard, and the grass squished under my feet. One of the men grabbed my arm with his thick glove as I rushed past.

“What are you
doing!”
he asked.

I shook free of his grip. I heard Hiro's screams from behind me. The smoke was overpowering, but I pushed my way in.

The inside of the house was like nothing I'd ever seen. Orange flames shot from the mantel, the couch, the floor. All of Cheryl's little knickknacks—and she had a lot of random stuff—were charred and blurred into a huge ball of fire.

I heard noises from upstairs.

“Cheryl?” I screamed. I ran to the stairway, but the whole thing was lit up in flames. All of a sudden a rush of air shot toward me, and I saw fingers of fire dance down the banister.

My God. If Cheryl was up there, she was definitely dead.

I looked around me. I'd never realized how
loud
fire was. The sound of the crackling and the growing flames was
deafening.
And it was surrounding me.

Ohiko's photo was up there. That was the only thing I had left of him. What if I forgot what he looked like? I windmilled my arms right and left, lifting my feet, trying to avoid the flames. A loud crash behind me made me flinch. I
wheeled around; the chimney had fallen off the far wall. The flames were devouring it.

Screw it. I had to get out of here. The smoke stung my eyes. I looked down at Cheryl's end table. Her grandmother's necklace, a gold chain with a large antique amethyst stone, was draped over the edge of a small bowl. Nothing was on fire yet.

Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed it, and rushed out the door. The smoke blinded me.

I shoved the necklace into my pocket. Firemen rushed around me. “Are you all right?” they screamed. Two men picked me up and carried me away from the house.

“Why the hell did you go in there?” one of the firemen yelled. “Are you out of your
mind?”

I coughed. Hiro ran up to me. “What were you
doing?”
he asked.

I didn't say anything. I felt deadened. My heart beat fast.

“We've got to get out of here,” Hiro said. “Fast. This isn't safe for us.” I could tell he was pissed. And worried. “Come on, try to stand up.”

I stood up, but my knees buckled. The smoke had made me dizzy.

“All right all right, sit down for a minute,” Hiro said. “I don't know why you went back in there—you could have been killed! The inhalation of smoke alone could have knocked you out!”

“I'm okay,” I said. I didn't want to tell him about Cheryl's
necklace. He'd ask me why I'd taken it. And I didn't know why myself.

I breathed in and out steadily, trying to remember my pranayama breath. I could hear the stream of water hitting the side of Cheryl's house.
Get a grip, Heaven,
I told myself.

I slowly pressed my palms to the ground and lifted myself up. I felt a little better. Hiro chased down a cab. He opened the door for me. “Come on, get in,” he said. “We're going to get far away from this.”

I fell onto the seat and could smell the smoke on my clothes. Hiro climbed in, too. The cabby idled, waiting for us to tell him where to go.

“Where are we going?” I asked. The fire lit up his face. The orange glow made him look more handsome than ever. His cheekbones seemed prominent; his eyes were deep-set and sensual. I even got turned on looking at the curve of his forearm. On the cab ride over here, I'd gotten butterflies from the way he looked at me. Our knees had gently touched. Hiro had grabbed my hand. Looked carefully and soulfully into my eyes.

Despite my delirium, chills ran up and down my spine just thinking about him.

“I don't know where we'll go,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the burning house.

“Where to?” the cabby grumbled.

“Wait just a second, please,” Hiro said, then turned to me. “Let's go back to my place.”

“No,” I said. “Your house is an obvious target. What if it's being watched right now? Maybe we should go to a diner or something to sit and figure this out.” I fumbled with the strap of my bag. I also didn't want to go to Hiro's because his girlfriend, Karen, might be there. I hadn't faced her since we'd had a huge fight about Hiro in the park a couple of days ago.

“I don't think we should be anywhere well lit right now. Nothing seems safe,” Hiro said, looking out the back window. “What about one of the empty warehouses we've done training sessions in? Like the one down on Winston?”

I thought of the abandoned warehouses in downtown L.A. Creepy. When the Yukemuras had kidnapped Karen (a big reason why Karen and I had been on the rocks lately—that and the fact that she wanted me to “stay away from Hiro”), the “exchange” had taken place at a decrepit parking garage somewhere downtown. It was beyond spooky. I had a feeling the Yukemuras frequented areas like that. Vibe was down there, too. I didn't really feel like going back into that mess.

“Nope,” I said. “No way.”

Great. We'd pretty much determined that I had nowhere left to go. Instantly I was homeless again. “We should just drive out of the city, far, far away,” I said, not very sarcastically. I felt completely drained of energy. Hiro had had to deal with this problem twice before—once when I'd showed up on his doorstep, blood spattered and terrified, and then when I'd had to move out due to a random attack right in front of his apartment building on Lily Place. I mean, he had
to be getting sick of shuttling me around so that I would always be safe. No wonder he wasn't into me.

“Really, getting out of the city would be the best thing to do,” Hiro murmured.

“You kids going anywhere or what?” the cabdriver bellowed. “This smoke is getting to me.”

“One moment, please. I'm realty sorry,” Hiro said.

“Maybe there
is
somewhere I could go that's not in the city,” I said softly. But it was such a long shot. I knew Hiro would say it was too dangerous.

“Where?” he asked.

“To see my friend Katie,” I said. I couldn't believe I was even telling him my idea. But I felt nervous sitting there in the cab, not moving. “My tutor, remember? She was my best friend in Japan. She moved to Vegas—that's where she's from—after my wedding. I mean, she wasn't
at
my wedding or anything. She moved back a couple of weeks before I got here.” I put my finger to my lips. “I wonder if she even knows what happened.”

“So you're saying . . . Las Vegas,” Hiro said slowly.

“I think that may be best,” I said.

“Do you know where Katie lives?”

“Well, no,” I said. I'd called information once before to track her down, but there was no listing for her. And I'd left her mother's number in the hotel room on the day of my wedding. “But . . . ”

Hiro didn't say anything. I would have loved to see Katie again. But I didn't know where she
lived
in Vegas, or where she worked, or if she was even still there or not.