You Will Call Me Drog (18 page)

I went around in back of the dojo and up the outside stairs that led to Sensei’s apartment. I kept hesitating, but my Drog hand reached up and knocked for me.

The door opened right away, as though Sensei had been standing there, waiting.

“Sensei, I ... I need a place—”

He looked me over and nodded. “You are here,” he said.

“It’s about my dad—”

“Come in.”

I took off my jacket and shoes just inside the door. Sensei’s apartment reminded me of the dojo. It did have some furniture, but not much. There was a feeling of space and everything belonging. I calmed down just being there.

“Please,” said Sensei. He motioned me over to a corner of the room that had a square of straw mats on the floor and two floor pillows. “I was about to have some tea. Will you join me?”

Mom drinks tea at the kitchen table with Nicole. I tried it once and couldn’t see much to like about it. But right then it sounded like just what I wanted. I sat on one of the pillows.

Sensei knelt on the other one. He took two rough brown bowls from a small chest and set them down on the mat as carefully as if they were jewels. He tapped some light green powder into each bowl with a little scooper, then lifted the lid of an iron pot, dipped a wooden ladle into the steaming water, and poured a ladleful slowly into one bowl. He shook a small bamboo whisk back and forth in the bowl until the liquid got all foamy, then he turned the bowl around in his hands, placed it on the mat in front of me, bowed, and said something like
doze-o
. He made another bowl for himself and nodded for us to drink.

Green tea? Tea from a bowl you hold in your hands? I lifted the bowl to my mouth, but before I could taste it, the bright green smell surrounded me. Like grass in the sunshine after a summer rain. And it tasted wonderful.

Sensei put down his bowl. “There is always time for tea,” he said. “Now tell me, what’s troubling you?”

I set my bowl down too and told him my dad didn’t seem to think Mom was doing a good job taking care of me, and he wanted me to go away to military school.

“What am I going to do, Sensei?”

“Yes, of course, that is the question. Parker, you are how old?”

“Eleven. Almost eleven and a half.”

“Eleven and a half. At your age, other people are responsible for deciding where you will live and go to school. You don’t control your circumstances. But you do control your center. If you strengthen your center, you will be all right wherever you are.”

“Even ... in military school?”

He picked up one of the tea bowls and gazed at it. “Yes.”

“This bowl is old. It comes from the Mount Takatori area of Japan. Like every tea bowl, it has a most beautiful side, you see here? You look at the beautiful side while you make the tea, then you turn it toward the guest to serve him. If you like, I will show you how to make this tea sometime.”

I nodded.

“Parker, do you know what you want more than anything in the world? Not just this moment but always?”

“I’m not sure.”

“If you know what that something is, you will find your strength. In the same way, if you know what your opponent wants most, you can find a way to join him. To lead him.”

He began to rinse and wipe the tea bowls. I reached out to help, but he raised his hand. “You are my guest.”

He tucked the wiping cloth into his belt.

“Are you ready to let someone know you’re here?”

I nodded.

Sensei went over to a low table, scooting on his knees like we do in the dojo, and brought back a phone.

“Mom?”

“Parker! Thank goodness. I was getting worried. Weren’t you supposed to—”

“I know. I’m sorry. Mom, listen. It’s that Dennis Master-son. I saw him tonight. He’s still following me.”

“Where are you?!”

“I’m at Sensei’s. Upstairs behind the dojo. Can you come get me?”

“I’ll be right there!”

“Mom? He’s driving an old white Toyota.”

While we were waiting for her, Sensei told me he’d been thinking that if we liked doing the upcoming retreat, he would invite members of our class to travel to Japan with him this summer, to a place in the mountains where people from his old dojo hold a retreat every August. We could have fundraisers in the spring to pay for our airfare, and the
aikidoki
in Japan would invite us to stay in their homes and feed us. People who practice aikido are friends all over the world, he said.

Wren and Big Boy and me traveling to Japan? With Sensei? What an amazing thing to think about. If only everything else would just settle down.

Sensei paused a minute and smiled. “In Japan there are some ancient Bunraku puppets that are almost life-sized. It takes three people to operate each one. Maybe you would like to see them perform?”

“Thank you, no,” Drog whispered.

“Do you miss Japan?” I said.

He placed the two tea bowls back in the chest and fastened the latch. “No,” he said. “I am happy when I am there, and I am also happy to be here.”

Mom knocked on the door, and I went with Sensei to answer.

“Ah, Mrs. Lockwood. From the library! Welcome!” He held out his hand.

“I’m so sorry to impose on you this way,” Mom said. “I’m embarrassed.”

“No imposition,” Sensei replied, “and no need for embarrassment.”

Sure enough, she relaxed a bit while I was putting on my shoes. The Sensei effect. Sensei wished us well, said he was confident things would work out.

On the way home I told Mom what happened.

She was quiet for a while. The coming-up-with-a-plan kind of quiet I knew better than to interrupt.

Finally she said, “Parker, I’m going to get you a phone. I want you to carry it everywhere. And I’m going to report this.”

“Report it? Who to?”

“To the police. We can get a court order to stop Dennis Masterson from following you. And if your father knows anything about this latest incident, he could have some explaining to do, too.”

One-point one-point one-point
. “Please, Mom, don’t get Dad in trouble. Just get me the phone and I’ll try to be more ... aware.”

“This should
not
be happening, Parker.”

“Mom, I’m so tired. Don’t do anything until tomorrow, okay? Talk to Dad first?”

“Oh, I’m definitely going to talk with your father about this!” she said.

No sign of the white Toyota on the way home.

As I undressed for bed, I tried to remember what Mom used to call Dad before he became “your father.” I thought they just called each other “Mom” and “Dad” in front of me, but I couldn’t be sure.

Drog was tired too, but he was in a good mood. Probably he thought the whole thing was an adventure. He started snoring as soon as we hit the pillow.

“Oops. We’ve got mail.” Drog was first to notice the fat envelope addressed to Mom sitting on the table in the hall. Unopened. The return address said Bradley Military Academy.

One-point one-point one-point one-point one-point.

I got the milk carton out and put it on the kitchen table, but my hand was shaking too much to pour.

“Mom,” I said, “Dad can’t make me go to B.M.—er, Bradley Military, can he?”

She sipped her coffee. “No, Parker. Not without my consent.”

“You won’t give your consent, will you? You can’t!”

“Don’t worry, Darling. I wasn’t planning to.”

“But that envelope—”

Mom sighed and set down her coffee cup. “Oh, that. Dad just asked them to send me information. Apparently that fight you got into at school gave him the idea you could hold your own at Bradley.”

Now I really felt sick. Before, when I didn’t fight, Dad thought I was a wimp who needed to take boxing lessons and go to military school. But when I did fight, that meant I was tough and would fit right in there. I couldn’t win.

“He thinks it would be just the thing for you. Says he has his reasons.”

“Because I’ve still got Drog on?”

“That. And because he thinks you’d study harder, and that the academy might make a man out of you.”

“But I’m a
boy
, Mom. Can’t I just be that for a while?”

“Believe me, Parker, the last thing I want to do is send you off to military school.” She stopped buttering her toast for a minute. “But maybe you should tell me why
you
don’t want to go. Picture yourself there in the fall. Tell me what you see,” she said.

I closed my eyes. My stomach was going up way too fast in a tall elevator and pushing against my throat, just thinking about it. I closed my eyes.

“They’ve cut off almost all my hair,” I said. “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see myself. And I can barely breathe in the uniform. Drawing is against the secret rules there, but I’m doing everything I’m supposed to: marching, going to class, playing sports, answering ‘Yes, sir!’ And everybody’s saying it’s a good thing. Inside, though, I’m nobody, and I can’t go home. I feel like being mean.”

“And Drog?” Mom said, almost in a whisper. “Where is he?”

“Well, he’s not on my hand. Maybe they did surgery or something. But I can still hear him inside, and he’s yelling at me.”

Mom pulled me over to her and held on. “Nothing like that is going to happen to you,” she said into my hair. “And you will not go to Bradley. Not if I can help it.”

The funny thing was, Drog never said a word. Didn’t even tell me to quit crying.

Mom told me I could stay home from school that morning because of all that had happened, but I wanted to go. She had to go to work, and I didn’t want to be home alone. As I left the house, I heard her calling Dad.

“Brian, you and I need to talk—”

I bolted out the door and down the sidewalk. I felt like I was trying to breathe through a bank of packed gray snow. The whole B.M. thing would probably end in a huge argument. But what could I do?

A long trickle of fear went through me. Fear that I would agree to give B.M. a try, maybe even fake wanting to go, just to keep the peace. Just to keep ... If I did that, I was pretty sure an iceberg would form inside of me. Not the day I went to B.M., but before. The day I agreed to go.

And if I didn’t do it? War between Mom and Dad. If Dad won and sent me to Bradley, Mom would never forgive him and the fighting would never end. But if Mom won out, Dad might just say goodbye and give up being my dad.

If I
chose
to go to Bradley on my own, though, nobody would be the winner, exactly. Dad would be happy and feel like a good dad. Mom would be hurt and lonely and that would be awful. But at least she would try to understand. Mom would never give up on me.

I ran back to the house, grabbed the B.M. envelope, and stuck it inside my jacket.

I saw Wren up ahead walking our old way to school, so I tucked Drog away and hurried to catch up with her. Didn’t say anything, just started walking beside her.

“You okay?” she said after a few minutes.

“Got to bed late.”

“Oh.”

I noticed we were walking exactly in step without trying to. Her energy felt friendly.

“So, do you like aikido now?” I said to keep the feeling going.

She turned to me with shining eyes that just burned that gray snow of mine away.

“Parker, I love it,” she said. “All day in school I think about going to the dojo. And I think Sensei is really nice.”

We stopped at the corner. “Me too,” I said.

“And you know what? I’m getting used to falling. I like it now. It feels like flying.”

“Yeah.”

We stood there grinning for a while. Then she said she had to go look over her spelling words in case there was a quiz. Good old Wren.

“Well, if you get stuck,” I said, “you can always ask your one-point.”

She laughed.

Once we got to Mrs. Belcher’s room and I slipped into my seat, though, the grayness settled in on me again. I propped up my social studies book so I could open the B.M. envelope behind it. Inside was a booklet for students called “Are You Bradley?” Apparently you were Bradley if you were highly motivated, physically fit, academically excellent, responsible and drug-free, and if you paid attention to detail and always did your best, no excuses. And you had to be a boy. Bradley was one of the few military schools that still didn’t give girls an equal chance to be miserable.

You weren’t sent to Bradley, you had to
qualify
, and it was a privilege to be accepted. What? The booklet was full of pictures of grinning boys in uniforms and even happier parents with their arms around their sons (what about the
parents’
responsibility?). I knew better, thanks to Wade, but who would believe me?

I stuffed the booklet back in the envelope and put my head down on my desk. Me go to Bradley? There had to be another way.

Everything went back to the impossible. Drog. Drog, Drog. I was going to have to take care of the Drog problem. Fast. Myself. Then maybe everybody would stop worrying about me and getting so drastic. But how? I felt like a train was rushing toward me and my foot was wedged in the track and I couldn’t figure out how to get it free.

I kept thinking there was something I needed to consider, something just on the outside edge of my mind that I couldn’t quite picture.

Then, right in the middle of social studies, it came to me.

Know what your opponent wants more than anything else, Sensei had said. All this time I’d been thinking about how bad I wanted Drog off and what I could do to get him off. But I never asked myself, what about Drog? Why does he want to stay
on
?

It didn’t make sense. He had to be bored hanging out with me, going to bed at ten, to school, to aikido, back home. And he sure didn’t stick to me because he liked me.

What if he held onto me because of something worse he
didn’t
want?

I waited around after aikido that day. Sensei watched me tie my shoes one-handed, the way I’d I learned to do from a one-armed woman’s website, and then stick Drog in my jacket pocket.

“Sensei,” I said, “do you think I’ll ever solve my puppet problem?”

“I don’t know, Parker.”

“I mean, it’s not just because of Dad and military school. I’ve been thinking about my hand. It’s still in there and I want it back. I want to be able to tie my shoes and make things and throw and fall better in aikido. How can I get my hand back?”

“Parker, I believe you can.”

“But how?”

“Until you know, no one knows.”

“Then why do you think I can?”

“Because before you just wanted to get rid of Drog. Now you want your hand back.”

“Same thing.”

“Is it?”

“Please don’t make me think, Sensei. Just tell me what to do.”

“Practice, Parker. Center yourself and practice. That’s the only thing I know.”

That night Mom gave me my new phone with her number preset.

“The good news is your dad didn’t have anything to do with that business last night,” she said. “You’re absolutely sure you saw Dennis Masterson downtown ...?”

I realized then that I hadn’t actually seen him, I ran so fast. “I saw the white Toyota,” I said.

“... because your dad said he spoke to Dennis early in the evening. In Moline. So that probably wasn’t him.”

“Oh.”

“He also said he’s sorry he ever got Dennis involved in the first place. He made it sound like the whole thing was mostly Dennis’s idea from the beginning and things just got way out of hand. Does that seem likely? Can you believe your father would let anyone talk him into doing something he thought was a bad idea?”

“Maybe, Mom,” I said. Before Drog I would have said no. But what about the Titanium Club? I never would have gone there on my own. “Maybe.”

She studied me for quite a while. I didn’t look away.

“Well, anyway, he says he’s sure Dennis won’t bother us anymore. Oh, and he hasn’t actually applied to Bradley for you.”

Not yet, anyway. Whew.

“Ask her the bad news,” Drog said.

Mom closed her eyes. “The bad news is that he wants to review our custody arrangement after Christmas.”

“Oh.”
One-point one-point one-point.

“
What for
, Parker?” she said, but she wasn’t really talking to me. “Custody? If he wants more time with you, I’m all for that and he knows it. He can come see you any time as it is, but does he? If you ask me, he just wants to make anything that’s happened when he’s not around officially my fault. Well, I hope his socks rot!”

“Mom!”

She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, Parker. You shouldn’t have to listen to that. Please don’t worry—things will work out.”

Custody. I wasn’t even going to think about it. Out of my control.