The Gatekeeper's Son (13 page)

Shoko said it was too dark inside and she wanted to enjoy the sun. She walked out and sat on the bottom step of an old iron staircase. I followed and stopped in front of her. “Why did you pretend you couldn’t speak English at the library?”

She looked up from her sundae and licked fudge off her spoon, her eyes expressionless. “I think it worked out better.”

“So that’s twice you’ve lied to me. What else aren’t you telling me?”

She eyed me with curiosity. “Do you like hot chocolate?”

I stared at her, holding my cup. “What does that—”

She smirked. “You liar, you never told me that. And you certainly never told me you could do
that
.” She pointed her spoon toward the gates.

I dropped onto the step next to her and put a hand to my head. “I’ve got a brain tumor, I know it.”

“You have
something
.” Then she held out her spoon and offered me a taste of her sundae. The ice cream sent a chill through me and I wrapped my hands around my cup of hot chocolate and tried to soak up its warmth.

“You are cold?” She put her hands over mine around the cup. “I will return the favor from last night.” Her hands were warm and soft. I stared at them, studied the color, the curves, every line. Then I looked into her dark brown eyes. My heart fluttered along with my brain.

I gave myself a mental shake and pulled my hands away, spilling hot chocolate onto the step. I jerked my thumb toward the gates. “That’s the same thing you did the first time I saw you!”

“You are right.” It seemed to be the first time it had occurred to her. “You struck me with energy like nothing I have felt before.”

I cringed. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “How can I explain this?” She paused, eyebrows together. “To me, it was like a great noise, deep and vibrating. It overcame me.”

I looked down at the step. “But why is this happening? These messages, this energy—I don’t want any of it.”

“Does a landslide ask our opinion before it sweeps us away?” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you regret hearing the message to help me last night?”

“No,” I said without hesitation. “But I’d rather this stuff wasn’t happening to me.”

“Once awareness comes to you, it changes everything. Just as when we climb to a mountaintop and view the full majesty of a landscape, we can never be content to live in the valley again.”

“But how did I become
aware
?”

She looked a bit guilty. “I think that when our eyes met that first day, you
awakened
. Now you must decide whether to treat it as fate or live it as your destiny.”

I frowned. “What’s the difference?”

“We make choices that change our lives every day.” The edges of her mouth curled up. “You could have ignored me—twice—but you did not. Why?”

I probably should have. “I guess it was my fate?”

She shook a finger at me. “Fate is a passive response. Destiny is something in which we play an active role.” She looked into my eyes as she continued. “To do otherwise is to view your life as a spectator and let fate carry you downstream like a twig.”

I closed my eyes and tried to understand.

“You are not the same person you were that day,” she said, “and you will never be again. You must accept that. It was the same with me.”

I looked up in surprise. “You’ve been through this, too?”

She nodded and took another spoonful of ice cream. “I was eight. I woke up earlier than usual one morning and went outside. A thin fog hung over the grass and I felt the air ripple. Suddenly, all sorts of new sounds surrounded me—it was amazing. Every blade of grass whispered a message to me.”

“Were you scared?”

She thought that over for a while. “I think knowing eliminates fear. It brings a new confidence. But it was frightening to realize something had changed
inside
me.” She wiped her face with a napkin and smiled at me. “But it is not something to fear.”

“So you hear messages, too?”

“Yes, but not here. The noise here overwhelms me, as if my head is under a waterfall. I have to block everything out, but that leaves me deaf, like last night. And I do not like that.”

“But you can hear when you’re in other places?”

She nodded.

“What causes that wave of energy?”

She frowned. “You ask answers for things I have never questioned.” Then she held her hands toward the sky. “Can you feel that?”

I glanced around. I didn’t feel a thing.

She giggled. “Actually, I cannot right now either, but it is the earth’s energy. It is all around us, speaking to us, and if our energy is strong enough, we can disrupt the earth’s energy field and make it shift, somewhat like a strong ocean wave.” She paused and looked at me, eyebrows together. “And your energy is strong enough to do that.”

She concentrated on her sundae until she’d cleaned the cup of every drop.

I sighed. “Do you ever get a tingly feeling in the back of your neck?”

“Sometimes when I eat ice cream then drink hot chocolate my head hurts,” she said, still working her spoon into the edges.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not talking about brain freeze.” I hesitated, unsure how to explain myself. “I get this … this tingling sensation before something bad happens—which is pretty much every time I’m with you.”

She laughed. “Did you feel it last night?”

“Yeah, right before the guy hit me with the wood.”

“Any time today?”

I nodded. “On the cable car.”

She stood up and glanced toward the wastebasket. Then she threw her empty cups and they both went in, two perfect shots from eight feet away. She turned back to me. “There are many ways to sense things,” she said, her eyes serious. “I suppose this tingle you feel may be a form of intuition. I have heard of such things, but intuition is a woman’s gift. At least where I come from.”

That’s what Okaasan had told me. “And you come from Japan, right?”

She paused. “Yes.”

“And you’re not a crazy assassin or anything?”

She laughed as she shouldered her pack. “No.”

I nodded and threw my cup toward the wastebasket. It missed by a mile.

We left Ghirardelli’s and walked down to the beach, past artists under white umbrellas, their crafts on display. We stopped to look at a tall sailing ship docked at the pier, and Shoko pointed at the Golden Gate Bridge arching toward the low hills far across the bay. Cyclists, joggers, and couples holding hands passed by, everyone enjoying the warm weather. Three teenage girls wearing bikinis lay sunbathing on the thin strip of sand.

Shoko started laughing. “They are almost naked!”

I blushed.

After that, we walked along the shoreline in silence. The more I processed my thoughts, the more restless I became. The silence thickened and became uncomfortable.

“Shoko, what the hell is going on?”

She walked past me and stopped in the shade of a large concrete sculpture. It took a while for her to reply, and when she did, her uncertain tone surprised me. “I do not know how I can explain this.” She kicked a dandelion head, sending its seeds off with the breeze.

“I’m ready to hear anything.”

She gave me a tiny nod. “Junya, I was not supposed to come here, but I heard about Edward from my mother and became curious. I wanted to know more about him, so I watched his house for a while, wondering how I could get inside. Then I saw you.”

I let out a deep sigh. “And you zapped me and woke me up—somehow.”

She nodded. “Yes, but I did not know that until later. After I saw you, I followed you to the library and …” She smiled. “I knew how to get you to help me.”

Judging by the way she laughed, I must have turned eighteen shades of red.

“Boys are easy to manipulate.”

“You think this is funny?” I felt like such an idiot. “I let you into my grandpa’s house! I let you steal his journal! Do you know how much trouble I’m in?”

She stared at me through squinted eyes, her face blank now, perhaps confused.

“I told you, I did not steal it—”

“There you go again! One minute you’re this … this overbearing bitch, and the next you’re all sweet and cute and …” I rubbed my hands through my hair. “Everything you do is an act.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she looked hurt.

“I bet you didn’t even bring the journal!”

Now she looked sad. “I said I would,” she whispered as she pulled the leather book from her backpack and handed it to me. “I told you at his house that I would return it.” She dropped her pack to the grass and sat down beside it, landing with a thump. “I am sorry I tricked you. I am sorry I took the journal. I am sorry I did not tell you I could speak English. And I am sorry for whatever I have done or will do in the future that will make you angry.”

“Give me a break,” I said.

“I said last night I wanted to talk and get to know you better,” she said without looking up. “I did not come here to argue.”

I wanted to say more, but I was emotionally exhausted, my brain too overwhelmed to keep up. I looked away. I wanted to run—from her, from all of this.

The message was soft but clear, like a bell in the distance. The grass at my feet, the rustle of the trees, even the air whispered to me and told me to stay and listen to her. Surprised, I turned and when my eyes met Shoko’s, I saw a girl who looked as confused and sad as I was.

I sat on the grass near her and stared out at the water. A tugboat chugged by the pier. It swayed from side to side, rocked by its own wake. I felt like that tugboat.

I turned to Shoko and stared into her eyes, but they were like pools, too deep to see the bottom. “I need to know which Shoko is the real Shoko.”

“I am always me.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face. “Perhaps I have more pride than I should—my mother says that—but I am the best at whatever I do, a leader of my classmates. I am not like people here, who act so proud but are nothing, like a golden temple with no foundation beneath it. They are too dependent, self-loving, and deluded, and yet they are oblivious to the evil all around us.” She swept her arm to take in the whole city. “Emotions are a weakness.”

I let out a grunt. “That explains a lot.”

She scowled. “I thought you disliked lies. Is the truth too painful?”

“Brutal truth is my mother’s specialty.”

Instead of responding, Shoko gave a small shrug and looked at the water. I stared at the side of her face, the outline of her jaw. She was so strong-willed, so sure of herself. I wished I could be more like that.

“You’ve got that whole emotional weakness thing wrong,” I said after a while. “We fight the hardest for the things we care about the most. What else is worth fighting for?”

She looked at me. “Duty and honor. There is nothing else.”

“I think it’s sort of the same thing.”

She eyed me with suspicion. “Which one sent you into the dark streets last night?”

I hesitated. “I saw a girl in danger. I had to go.”

She stared at me. “But you had no duty toward this girl, and certainly no emotional attachment.” She shook her head. “I would not have done the same thing.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you glad I did?”

She rolled her eyes and leaned back.

“How come I can’t feel you now?” I felt myself flush. “I mean, feel anything from you.”

She didn’t react. “I hide my presence here.”

“How—?”

“I do not want my presence to be known here,” she said, a small smile on her lips now. “But I do not mind if you feel me.”

I swallowed hard. “You mean—”

“My energy,” she said and I looked away, glad her eyes remained closed so she couldn’t see me blush. After a while, she rolled onto her side and started picking at the clover. Sometimes she looked so young.

“How old are you?”

She thought for a moment, apparently having to concentrate. “It depends on how you calculate it, but … about fifteen.”

I nodded, pleased and confused at the same time. I noticed the journal lying on the grass beside her leg. I reached over and picked it up. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” she said as she leaned up on one elbow and watched a floatplane rise off the water and soar over the bridge.

“That is so awesome!” she said in English. I laughed at her enthusiasm about such simple things. Then she turned her attention back to me. “It was interesting but also sad.”

“Why?”

“Edward had one small moment to act that day in the desert, but my mother has no such excuse. She could have sought him out, but she was not brave enough. And I understand. Such a decision would take a will of iron.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I thought emotions were a weakness.”

Her eyes narrowed.

I held up my hand. “Never mind. What does the desert—and your mom and my Grandpa—have to do with you and me and this weird energy?”

She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and swept it over her ear. “What do you think is happening?”

“I … I don’t know. I keep searching for a reasonable explanation. I hate this and love it at the same time. There’s so much …” I squeezed my eyes shut. “All of this is too much.”

“Do you think you are an ordinary person, that all this is normal?”

I didn’t look at her. “I’m an ordinary guy,” I said. “And no, this ain’t normal.”