Part One

1

The bullet entered Itachi's head slightly above and behind his left ear, and the air pocketed with the report. The shot jarred him off balance and his tense face hurtled sideways, blurred like a swiftly unwinding bobbin of thread.

Thrown out loose by the recoil, his upturned hand wavered daintily in the air, his fingers bent back twitching under the weight of the dangling revolver. Suddenly he slumped, his head bending forward as if to curtsy, then bolted erect. Itachi staggered forward a step or two, swaying from side to side; the revolver jiggled from the end of his thumb and he fell headlong in the high grass.

His adopted sister Sakura, who was almost eight and the youngest of the Uchiha children, watched him go down. She was standing less then a feet from him when it happened, close enough for the resounding shock of the noise to hurt her ears. Clutching the tin pail with the nine berries in it, which she had picked and counted, she hurried to reach him. Small for her age, she squatted beside him, peering him. "Itachi," she said, leaning down through her spread knees. But if he saw her or heard her or knew who she was, he didn't respond.

He burrowed among the yellow stalks of the grass, lurching and rocking up and down, as if he were trying to lift himself and crawl. Spasm flew through his body like tiny flickering fish. Then he stopped moving. Slowly his head settled on the crook of his unbuttoned sleeve shirt. The hurt side of his face was bone white and it was blood-pocked and embedded with grit, like a knee scraped on gravel. His eyes were half shut and red. In the cheesy-white skin above his ear, the ruptured carbuncle of the wound was crusted with black dust. A rising puddle of bright blood filled his ear and broke down across his cheek.

Again Sakura spoke to him, a nudging worry in her voice. "Itachi," she said, "you better get up." But she didn't comprehend the terror of what had been done or the gravity of the pain it could cause; she couldn't believe it was real until she touched him.

Irresistibly, even as the dread knotted tight inside her, she lowered her fingertips to the side of his face. Ever so lightly and gently. And the skin where there was a cool-hot and clammy like a fever.

"Itachi," she whispered, "what'd you do?" She was about to pull away when something happened: she lost her footing or her hand shook of itself, and her fingers smeared across the sticky blood drying on his cheek. At first she couldn't breathe; when at last she caught her breath, a shriek rode out of her body so high-pitched it snapped in and out of frequency. It was like a corrugated sound she couldn't stop. She jerked back, kicked back, flinging out her hand. Sakura turned to her feet and turned, and turned, stumbling in an aimless zigzag, her cry continuing as shrill and piercing as a chalk squeak.

She ambled in loops, unable to get her bearings. Again and again, she found herself coming upon him. She wanted to pick him up, impossible as it was. She kept thinking, I should pick him up and take him home. But she knew she couldn't lift him -he was nearly twice her size. Each time she saw her blood dirtied fingers, she screamed. With the air almost gone from her lung, she finally gasped, "Itachi….Itachi…Oh, Itachi," so frightened she couldn't call for help. She kept her bloodied finger extended before her. She didn't know what to do -she couldn't dirty her dress, put blood on it. Suddenly Sakura dropped to her knees, wiping her hand viciously on the grass, pulling out clumps of the grass and scrubbing it across the palm of the bloodied hand. Again, inadvertently, she touched him, his arm this time.

She sat back on her haunches. Breathing hard and moaning, she wiped her face on her hunched-up shoulders. She couldn't bear to look at him but she did look and the blood was trickling out now in pink foams -from his nose and mouth. Quickly, she squeezed her eyes shut; she put her hands on top of her head, one on top of another, and just sat there, still and numb. "Oh, Itachi," she babbled in her desperation, "I wish you wouldn't do things like this to me." After she said it, she thought it sounded something their mother might say. She sat there beside him on her haunches, unable to help him, afraid to touch him. And she covered her eyes with her hands but she couldn't stop the tears from running through them. At last, shivering uncontrollably, she pushed to her feet and whirled away, running for home.

2

The ambulance rushed Itachi towards the nearest hospital that day while people around the neighborhood stopped by to share their concerns.

Sakura sat halfway up the stairs, clutching the varnished railing, peering down at the commotion. Above her, on the dark landing of the stairs, Sasuke Uchiha, who'd just turned nine, stood motionless in his pajamas as if by being quiet he could hide. He'd stay in bed that afternoon and evening with a croupy summer cold. They listened as the mother franticly spoke, explaining how her husband was alongside Itachi through the ride while she watched the children at home, her spouse refusing to allow the children to see their wounded brother. Finally, sobbing as she spoke, she blurted out what she wanted most. "If he has to die," she said, "at least his family would be together to see him one last time."

3

By the time their father arrived still dressed in his work clothes, the neighbors had long left. His proud figure was stressed with fatigue that revealed his age by the deep wrinkles that drew under his eyes. He stumbled through the door, saw their mother and turned towards her, unsteady on his feet. And their expressions were so tender and full of longing they were painful to watch. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she kept saying over and over again. They stood less then two feet apart, unable somehow to touch each other, their eyes full of tears. She said to him, "All my life I've been afraid of something like this."

When he could speak, their father said, "I plan on staying overnight with him, and I'll come back tomorrow at noon to bring the children." Their mother nodded and rushed towards the kitchen to prepare her spouse lunch while he followed, failing to notice his children still sitting on the stairs. They overheard their parents soft conversation with large words such hemorrhage, condition, critical.

Sasuke came down the stairs to sit next to Sakura, who could feel the head radiating from his body; when he bumped against her, she cringed from him. Clasping his arms around his shin, he said, "Can I stay down here with you?" he was trembling all over like a rabbit. She couldn't begin to tell him how awful she felt; her skin seemed to draw tighter and tighter, and the ache of dread and regret sank deeper within her. Without looking around, she said, "Sasuke, he was dead, I think. He's really dead. I reached down…" she began to sob.

As her voice shriveled, he let out a shuddering sigh. "He can't die, Sakura. He just can't, y'know. He can't die and you can't die and I can't die, because we're all brand-new people. Him and us."

The weird logic of what he was saying escaped her.

Downstairs their father dispersed, muttering an awkward goodbye to his wife. Afterwards, their mother spotted both her children on the stairs and sat alongside them, embracing them each with both arms.

"He was such a good boy in school," she said quietly. "He aced right through school without any of our help. Imagine, raising such a genius." she went on talking calmly about his ups and downs for quite a while. "I really don't get it, he lived in a perfect house, had a perfect life with a perfect family, and now….this!" Struggling for breath she cried out again, more easily then before now that no one but her children were there.

4

Sakura heard her mother across the hall. She went to Sasuke first. Drifting in and out of sleep, Sakura heard the soft rumble of her voice. A drawer squealed open, the shut.

Through the open window came the distant funnel-like shouts of the children playing in the yards below. Despite the residue in her distress and the mood of strife that had descended on the house that night, the cheerful noises beckoned her like a slow, enticing music. Her eyelids wobbled; she dozed. Immediately it seemed, although it could have been longer, an angry uproar erupted in the gray distance-the neighborhood's dog lashed out, growling and barking. Sakura thought, those boys are tormenting him again. IN her imagination, she could see them sneaking along the right-of-way behind their house to throw rocks into the dogs pen. All hackles and teeth, the dog would lunge at them, his snapping chain flipping him crosswise in the air. He was a crazy-mean dog with scary eyes, and the bet was to see it they could goad him into breaking his chain. Once in a while he did break it, his teeth slashing at the fence wire.

"Oh Kisame," she muttered. Sakura wanted to get up, poke her head out the window, and yell at them to stop it. She reached for the bedpost to pull herself up, but in the air her fingers bumped across a scratchy face. Her entire body flinched. She lurched crablike on the bed to escape it. The room was full of sunshine to see clearly. With her pulse pounding, she rubbed her eyes and squinted. "Oh, Mommy," she gasped. "You scared the daylights out of me." Her mother was seated on the small chair by her bed.

"Sakura," she said, so softly, and her face turned pale like a foggy image of herself. "I want you to tell me some things." Again Sakura wiped her fist across her closed eyes, and when she looked once more, her mother stared back.

Sakura scooted up the pillow, but stammered, said nothing.

Flattening her hands on her knee, her mother asked where the gun came from; did she know where Itachi got it?

He's dead, Sakura thought and, slipping out from the twisted quilt, remembered the detail earlier that day.

"He had no business with that gun," her mother said. "Somebody's just as responsible for this as he is. I mean to find out who that is."

This time he's dead, Sakura thought, and they won't tell me. And the sickening ache that stayed with her though the night spread vividly along her nerves.

"I'll find out," her mother continued, "one way or another. So you better tell me. Sakura, do you know where he got that gun?"

She shook her head. She wanted to tell her without lying that Itachi lied all the time, that e told her different made-up stories about how and where he got the gun, but she shook her head.

"Let me hear you say it."

She muttered, "Dunno." and asked was he dead. Her mother glanced toward the elm twig tree scratching at the windowpane. "Maybe he will be." she sighed. For a moment, her eyes glazed. "probably." She's lying to me, Sakura thought. Itachi's already dead. Her mother cleared her throat.

"Sakura, do you know anything about this?"

Matching the cadence of her words, she again shook her head, five, six times.

"Why'd he shoot himself, Sakura?" her mother pressed on, studying her face. "His life was perfect, so why would he want to end it? I just can't see. Why would he do such a thing? You were around him all the time. If anybody knows about this, you do. You're the one. You have to.

"I really like him." Sakura said and nodded, without looking up.

With a defeated sigh, her mother left the room, quietly closing the door behind her while Sakura continued to listen Kisame's barking in the distance.

Yeah, I made shark-face into a dog. I have my reasons. Yo.