The Dragon Tree (3 page)

             
“Yeah, and a couple of skirts!”

             
“And a few pairs of jeans!”

             
“Yeah, and some shoes!”

             
“And some makeup!”

             
“Right, makeup!”

             
Eva was so focused on holding the door shut she didn’t have enough breath in her lungs to yell back. Besides, her mother Rosa would somehow manage to only hear Eva and blame her for the noise pollution. When it came to avoiding punishment, the twins’ identical “who me” smiles got them off the hook every time.

             
Anita snuck her foot between the door and the frame. Eva drew a deep breath, stomped on the foot, and slammed the door shut. She ignored her sister’s melodramatic howl and spun the lock. There were a few shrill protests from the hall but her sisters padded away giggling.

Eva flopped back on her bed and returned her nose to her history textbook. She was three sentences into a paragraph when a sudden tapping on her window startled her so badly she went tumbling off the bed. She rose to her knees and glared at Hiroki as he slid the unlocked window up, folded his dripping umbrella and climbed into the room.

              “You get scared every time,” he said with a smile. “It’s always me.”

             
“What can I say, Hiro? You’re pretty scary,” Eva said sarcastically. She flung one of her textbooks at him.

Hiroki caught the book with one hand and tossed it back on her bed. He kicked off his wet shoes, sat down on Eva’s bed and propped up her pillows behind his back.

Eva chuckled. “Make yourself at home. Please.” She wandered over to her window and peered out. “Is that your
grandpa
sitting in the car? Hiro, how can you just leave the sweet old guy out there in the rain?!”

“Trust me, he’s happier sitting in the car than sitting in his room at home.
Especially
when it’s raining. It’s a meditative thing for him, I think.” Hiroki wiggled to get comfortable, a coy smile on his face. “One of these days I’ll show up outside your window and Aidan will be the one looking out at me. Will he drag me inside and murder me here, or will he mind the carpet and just throw me off the roof?”

Eva covered her mouth to muffle a laugh. “He’s not that bad. My mom and sisters adore him. Every time he speaks they just gaze at him, like every word that comes out of his mouth is poetry.” She flopped backwards on the floor and swung her arms and legs to make a carpet angel.

“I’m sure them adoring him has got nothing to do with his rich father and the fact he looks like a catalog model,” Hiroki rolled his eyes even while he spoke, but made sure to force a smile too. “Give me one good reason why you’re wasting your time with that jerk.”

Eva draped her hair across her face. “He
does
have a rich father. And he
does
look like a catalog model.”

“Come on, be serious. You’re not impressed with any of that,” said Hiroki.

Eva uncovered her face and sighed. “I don’t know why I’m with him. It’s just… something to do. I guess he hasn’t given me a good enough reason to break up with him yet.”

“Yeah, that’s true. It’s not like he ever kicked the crap out of somebody in front of you.” Without taking the camera off his neck, Hiroki started clicking through his photos.

              “Get any good shots today?” asked Eva with a nervous smile.

             
“You’re not in
all
of them,” said Hiroki, anticipating her complaint. “Only like half.”

             
“I don’t want to be in
any
pictures! I look terrible all sweaty and making weird running faces. If you have to photograph the race—”

             
Hiroki scoffed. “Then you better stop
almost
winning races, because the
almost
winner is always going to be in the photo.”

Eva popped up and leaned over the edge of the bed, resting her chin on her arms. “All right, show me…
me
.” She jumped up on the bed and took up position beside Hiroki, leaning over his arm to look at the display window on his digital camera.

They flipped through the photos in silence for a few moments. Eva cringed when she started seeing her own face in photo after photo, but was also pleased with how imposing she looked as she closed the gap on the lead runner. Hiroki cringed when he got to the photos that featured nothing but Eva’s legs.

“My camera slipped,” he said.

Before long, Hiroki advanced all the way to the end of the photo series and arrived at pictures he took at the finish line. There were Aidan and his goons, leaning over a broad-shouldered teen who seemed to be smiling even while he got punched repeatedly.

“Oh my god, that’s him, huh?” asked Eva. She leaned in to get a closer look. “All I remember is the blood.”

The next photo in the series elicited a gasp from Eva. It was a close-up, perfectly framed, of Billy holding Eva close for a kiss. Without context, it seemed to depict two people who were passionately in love.

Eva leaned back, blushing a bright red.

“He was right. You two did hook up,” said Hiroki with a sigh.

“What do you mean, ‘he was right’?”

Hiroki cursed under his breath and dropped the camera to his chest. “I saw him later, at my mom’s clinic. I gave him a ride home.”

Eva almost gasped, but managed to keep her voice calm. “What’s his name?”

“Billy Rasmussen. From Hudson, obviously.”

Eva reached for Hiroki’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I want to meet him.”

***

              The place where Hiroki kicked him out of the car had not actually been Billy’s neighborhood. He was still a couple of miles away from home, and it was pouring rain. Nothing he could do about that now. So he jammed his hands in his pockets again and started jogging.

             
It was almost 10pm when he saw his trailer at the end of the row. It was blue once, but the cheap paint had cracked and flaked for so many years that there wasn’t much color left. A green cloth awning extended over what passed for the trailer’s porch, and the space beneath it was dimly illuminated – through the open door – by light from inside.

             
Billy slowed to a walk as he approached his home. Even in the dim light, he could see his father sitting on a folding chair. Even from a distance, he could see the can of beer in his hand.

             
“How’s the weather out there?” asked William Rasmussen with a boozy drawl. He leaned forward in his chair to get a better look at the son who shared his name. Like Billy, his shoulders were broad and thick. His hair may have been blond as well, but it was buzzed so short that its color wasn’t apparent. “You look like a drowned alley cat.”

             
“Can I go inside, sir?”

             
William Rasmussen downed the rest of his beer then took his time opening another can. He had half that can down his throat before he answered Billy’s question. “Of course you can go inside.”

             
Billy took a shivering step toward the open door.

             
“But not yet,” said William as he rose from his rickety lawn chair and polished off the beer in one gulp. “Not until you earn it.”

             
Billy stood in the rain and stared at his father, hoping for some sign that he was joking. But William had positioned himself between Billy and the door to the trailer, and his thick frame was an obstacle Billy knew better than to challenge.

             
“You’re not good, Billy,” he rumbled. “You get in fights. Fights you can’t win. Think that’s okay? Getting in fights? You know the rules, but you don’t
follow
the rules… Thought I wouldn’t find out you got yourself suspended? Thought the school wouldn’t call me and tell me that my son got suspended
again
?”

“The suspension is for sleeping in class, sir. The fight happened later—”

William shook his head, indifferent to the specifics. “It’s a week this time Billy. And next time it’s an expulsion.”

             
“I’m sorry I disappoint you, sir,” said Billy with a hint of defiance in his voice.

             
“You disappoint yourself,” said William with enough rolling thunder to snuff out Billy’s defiance. “What kind of father would I be if I just let it happen? What kind of father would I be if I didn’t try to teach you better? How to be a man.”

             
“I’m trying to learn, sir,” said Billy, struggling to keep his voice steady.

             
William studied his son for a long beat, his thick arms folded across his chest. His jaw was jutting out, his teeth grinding. “You know the drill. Full regimen.”

             
“Yes sir,” said Billy.

             
Billy looked for a patch of dry ground, but the trailer was at a low point in the RV park and the grass was saturated with rainwater. He lowered himself to the wet ground, dug his fists into the mud and extended his legs behind him. He had done many push-ups under his father’s watchful eye.

             
“I want thirty good ones, or you start over.”

             
“Yes sir,” answered Billy with a grunt.

             
The rain seemed to fall harder each time he lowered his body to the muck, brown drops of fluid landing on his lip and running inside his mouth. But Billy kept pumping, kept pushing.

             
He knew the drill.

CHAPTER THREE

             
After school the next day, Eva squealed with disgust as she sat in the passenger seat of Hiroki’s car. It was still soaked from the previous night, so she had to sit on her jacket to keep her pants dry.

             
“This is where I dropped him off,” said Hiroki. He was still unsure hunting for Billy was a good idea, but Eva had done that thing with her eyes – with her eyelashes – that made any request seem very reasonable. “He said this is his neighborhood.”

             
The neighborhood in question wasn’t up to Alpine standards, but it was the nicest in all of Hudson. It was near the river, which meant harbor access for boat owners. The homes that lined its manicured streets were all two-story and the cars parked in driveways were all nicer than Hiroki’s prized Buick.

             
“How are we supposed to find his house? How did I not think to ask you that
before
we left school?” Hiroki massaged the steering wheel with nervous hands. “Even if I can think of a way, I’m not saying. This was your idea.”

             
“You wouldn’t dare just sit there and not help,” said Eva.

             
Hiroki tried to protest, but she was right. With a quiet growl of disappointment in himself, he put the car in park and unfastened his seatbelt. “Come on. We’re walking.”

              They went door-to-door, knocking and waiting patiently for homeowners just returned from work to answer. When someone did come to the door, Eva did the talking.

             
“Hello. We’re from Alpine High School and we’re working with the Red Cross to collect clothing for the victims of the recent Earthquake in South America. Do you have any clothes that you would like to donate?”

             
They fully expected to have every door politely slammed in their faces, but as it turned out the good people of Hudson were moved by the plight of the South American earthquake victims – despite the fact that there had been no earthquake and their were no victims. Since they had left Hiroki’s car behind, the only option for dealing with dozens of donated clothing items was to carry them. Hiroki had the honor, and was soon weighed down by a stack of clothes so high he could barely see over them.

             
Eva remained focused on the task at hand. At every door, whether the homeowner donated clothing or not, she made sure to ask, “Is this the Rasmussen residence? Is your son Billy home?”

             
They received the answer “no” nearly twenty times before someone finally responded with useful information. “You mean William Rasmussen? I think he and his son live in the RV park up the road.”

***

              It was the first day of Billy’s suspension, and he spent the whole day chopping wood.

             
His father brought the wood home from his work up in the mountains. Years after his military career came to an end, he worked for a sizable logging operation. He spent sixteen hours a day up in the hills with a team of twenty other men. At the end of each day, he filled the bed of his truck with scrap stumps and brought them home for Billy to manually convert into a few dollars.

             
The grass was still wet from the previous night’s rain, but the afternoon sun was warm and the work was hard. Billy stripped off his shirt and tossed it on the porch, ignoring the pain as the shirt collar scraped his bruised face. He resumed chipping away at a particularly stubborn stump, but stopped short when he noticed four feet standing nearby.

             
“Does every jerk in Alpine know every other jerk, or is this just a coincidence?” asked Billy without looking up.

             
Eva cleared her throat. “First, let me apologize again about what happened yesterday. My boyfriend Aidan had no right—”

             
“Your boyfriend Aidan has crabs, probably,” Billy interrupted. “More than most since his dad is the seafood king.”

             
“Huh?” asked Hiroki. “What does that mean?”

             
Billy rested the head of the axe on his shoulder and turned to Hiroki. “Crabs live in the ocean and people eat them sometimes. Crabs are also these little bugs that live in your—”

             
“Okay!” Eva interrupted. “We get it!”

             
“I’m sure you do, sweet-lips,” Billy smirked.

             
“Do
not
call her that,” said Hiroki, a harder edge to his voice. He turned to Eva. “I forgot to tell you. He’s a prick.”

             
Billy started laughing. “If you don’t want to talk about her boyfriend’s crabs, we could talk about your hot mother some more. Whatever you prefer, my man.”

             
Hiroki shook his head and reached for Eva’s elbow as if to drag her away. But Eva slipped away from him and took a step toward Billy. She waited patiently for him to stop chopping the stump and look up at her.

             
“We’re going out to the cliffs,” said Eva.

             
“What for?” Billy asked.

             
“So Hiro can take some photos. Come with us.”

             
Billy turned to Hiroki. “Is your creepy grandpa coming along?”

             
“He’s not creepy,” Hiroki answered, annoyed. “And no.”

             
“Okay then.” Billy tossed his axe across the yard. “Let’s hit it.”

***

              The town of Alpine was built at the easternmost edge of Grays Harbor, where the bay narrowed and became the Cordalia River. The harbor was once a major commercial hub for the region, but was set aside decades earlier as a nature preserve.

             
Hiroki piloted his Buick beyond the preserve grounds and up into the cliffs, where the bay opened wide and joined the vast Pacific Ocean. The roads leading up to the cliffs were brutal on his suspension, every rut and divot rocking the car’s frame like an earthquake. Both sides of the road were heavily wooded, masking the view of the ocean until they cleared the forest and left the road behind altogether.

             
Ten minutes more of very bumpy driving and Hiroki at last parked his car on the uneven rocky plateau. The three teens stepped out of the car and tested the slick rock beneath their feet. After the previous night’s rain, staying upright was no easy feat.

             
Hiroki had a camera around his neck, as always. He took a few cautious steps closer to the edge of the cliff and raised the camera to start snapping shots.

             
“You know you’re a walking cliché, right?” asked Billy with a laugh. “Japanese people and cameras.”

             
“That’s
almost
racist,” answered Hiroki. “You’re a walking cliché, too, anyway. Redneck trailer trash asshole.”

             
Billy laughed and held up his hands in a falsely apologetic gesture.

             
Eva lingered longest at the side of Hiroki’s car. She kept one hand on the hood in case she suddenly started sliding uncontrollably toward the edge of the continent. “It’s beautiful here.”

             
Hiroki’s gaze drifted from the stunning ocean vista to Eva’s face. He lifted his camera and backed away from her a step to find a better angle. “Don’t freak out or you’ll fall over.”

             
“Hiro—”

             
“Just a couple, I promise.” Hiroki squatted so he could photograph Eva from a low angle. In his viewfinder, her raven hair and her olive skin gave her the appearance of a young Greek goddess looking over her oceanic dominion.

             
She’s regal.

             
Billy wandered around the plateau on his own, determined not to take much notice of Hiroki and Eva. But the sight of Hiroki lining up a shot was too intriguing to resist, and he meandered that direction.

             
“Let me take a photo,” said Billy.

             
“Absolutely not,” said Hiroki with a hint of anger. “This isn’t the cheap digital I used at the track meet. I’m using film.”

             
“Oh, how impressive. You’re using film.” Billy edged closer, one arm extended to receive the camera from Hiroki. “Anybody can take a dumb photo, man. Watch, I’ll show you.”

             
Eva had been staring out at the ocean and lost in her thoughts, but she sensed Hiroki’s agitation and turned to intervene. Both boys had one hand on the camera, and both were on slippery soles.

             
“Let go, asshole!” screamed Hiroki.

             
“I’ll give it back, dude!”

             
“Billy—” Eva said, knowing it was already too late. Her voice trailed off even as his name left her mouth.

             
The camera slipped from both their hands in the same instant. Hiroki reached for it, desperate to snatch it out of thin air before it hit the ground and broke. He bobbled the camera, slipping to his knees and lunging forward as it bounced from one hand to the other. It landed on the slick rock relatively softly… but it slid.

             
And it plunged over the precipice.

             
“No!” Hiroki screamed. “My camera!”

             
Hiroki glared hatefully at Billy, then turned to Eva with tears in his eyes. Billy was standing a few feet behind Hiroki and wearing an expression she had not yet seen from him – genuine distress. He was staring at his hands as if they had betrayed him.

             
“I’m… I’m sorry,” said Billy, his voice wavering. “I didn’t mean to—”

             
“You’re awful,” said Eva. “You’re just awful.”

             
Billy inhaled a deep, painful breath. Then he lowered himself to the wet rocks and crawled toward the edge of the cliff. He pulled himself forward on his chest and leaned out over the edge. “Hey! I can see it! It’s hanging on a branch!”

             
Hiroki’s eyes went wide with fresh hope, but Eva placed a hand on his shoulder. “No, Hiro. There’s no way. It’s impossible.”

             
“It’s
not
impossible,” said Billy with raw determination. “I can see a way down. I can get it back!

             
Before either Hiroki or Eva could summon the words to stop him, Billy had spun around on the wet rock and disappeared.

***

              “If this is supposed to impress me, I want you both to know I am
not
impressed!” Eva was too frightened by the prospect of Billy falling to his death to watch his descent. She locked herself in Hiroki’s car to protest the male idiocy on display.

Hiroki remained on his stomach at the cliff edge, mouth agape.

              Billy had underestimated how much the water on the rocks would interfere with his grip. The cliff face wasn’t sheer – there were plenty of places for foot and handholds – but the dampness made every surface feel like a bar of soap in the shower. More than once, he thought he had a secure grip only to feel his fingers or shoes slip.

             
He didn’t dare look down more often than he needed to. When he did look, he was surprised to realize that he couldn’t see the camera or the branch on which it was hanging.

             
Did I imagine it? Am I climbing down to get something that’s not even there?

             
There was no turning back now. Whether the camera had slipped off the branch or was never there to begin with, he needed to find a place to rest and let the blood flow back into his hands or he stood no chance of making the climb back up. As soon as he slipped over the cliff edge, he spotted what looked like a ledge just above the phantom tree branch. It looked like it might be flat and large enough for him to lie down.

             
And then he felt it. Solid ground beneath his feet. He risked a look down and saw that sure enough, he had reached the ledge! It was much larger than he thought when he saw it from above. It must have been ten feet wide and twenty feet long. With great relief, he relinquished his handhold and shook his pained arms.

             
“You okay down there?” Hiroki yelled.

             
“Yeah, I’m good! Can’t see your camera yet, though!”

             
Billy crept out toward the edge of the shelf, concerned it might be as slick as the plateau up above. But there was a rocky curtain directly in front of the shelf that shielded it from the ocean – a wall that hid this shelf from the water. Somehow this was enough to keep the shelf relatively dry.