Chapter Seven: Motives
The next morning, Leigh was woken with a start. Kata was shaking her furiously; the expression on her face matched the way Leigh was being shaken. Leigh, groggy, mumbled something and looked around wondering what had caused all of the alarm. Keiji had turned deep purple with fury like when Kata had insulted him, and was clenching his fists, as if on the verge of shattering something.
"I told you I didn't trust her! She's just a rubbish thief!" Kata yelled, tearing things out of Leigh's backpack. Leigh stared blankly at Kata; it was too early for her to reason what was happening. Soon Keiji leapt off of his bed and began to help Kata go through the older girl's things. Travis was still sleeping soundly, while the other trainers had given up on asking what had happened and were pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was going on although actually listening in.
Kata's blue eyes glimmered threateningly. "Where did you put it, you rotten girl; where!" Kata asked after she had obviously not found what she was looking for. Leigh tilted her head in confusion, only now beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together. They thought that she had stolen something of theirs.
"What are you talking about?" Leigh asked. Keiji scowled. Kata picked up the package wrapped in brown paper that Leigh had said she had to deliver when she first asked to accompany them from the large mound of Leigh's possessions that she had made. Her hand trembled as she held it in front of Leigh, and then began to tear it open.
"I'll bet you anything there is a load of nothing in here!" the angered twelve-year-old yelled. Leigh opened her mouth to speak, but no words escaped her. Inside of the package there was a black velvet jewelry case. Kata, convinced that it was empty, opened it. Inside she saw a silver heart-shaped locket with a note wrapped around it. Leigh sighed and decided not to stop her. They were bound to find out anyway. Kata took the note and began to read it aloud, with Keiji's head wrapped around her shoulder so that he could see.
"Dear Mom," Kata began, "I know that I was never the person that you had wanted me to be. Dad, Tom, me – we all betrayed you. And I don't blame you for running away, who wouldn't have? But Mom, please don't forget the good times that we had. Perhaps Dad's identity was a lie, but our love wasn't. I am no longer the person that I used to be. I have dug up my conscience from a grave that it was placed in long ago, and I am only now learning just how horrendous I have been.
I had always wished that I could change my past so that I could be just like everyone else. But now I realize that if I had the chance, I wouldn't change the past. It has shaped the person that I am today, and now I see that I don't have to keep my head stuck in the sand. I can't change the person that I was yesterday, but I can change the person that I am today and the person that I will be tomorrow. And I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me, and to never forget the life that you once had, even if there were more bad parts than good. I know I won't."
"I love you, Leigh," Keiji ended. The anger had disappeared from both of their faces, and they both looked solemn. Kata picked up the silver locket and opened it. Inside was a picture of a family. There was a man and a woman with their arms around each other. The man had tanned skin and dark hair, and his eyes were dark brown. The woman had long, curly auburn hair and olive green eyes. Her smile was bright and the twins could sense her kindness even though it was only a photograph. Standing in front of them was a boy about their age. He looked very much like his father, and had a mischievous grin. The boy's shoulder was placed on a much younger Leigh, with her auburn hair long and with pink ribbons in it. Her eyes weren't their usual piercing yellow, but a warm chocolate brown. She was wearing a flowery green and pink dress. Admittedly, neither Kata nor Keiji had ever imagined Leigh looking like this as a child.
"You… you wanted to take this to your mom?" Kata asked nervously. Leigh inclined her head and took the locket, note, and its case out of the girl's hands. She kept her head down, wrapping the note back around the locket's silvery chain and closing the case. She then dropped it into her now empty backpack.
Leigh sighed. "I suppose you want to ask questions?" she asked. The twins quickly shook their heads, which wasn't what Leigh had expected at all. She was pleasantly surprised. Then she remembered why they had opened her package to her mother in the first place; something of theirs had been stolen; but what?
"Why were you—?" Leigh began, but there was no need to finish her question as Kata and Keiji had already begun to explain.
"His Rattata was stolen," Kata said sadly, "and I, of course, thought that you had stolen it. I was suspicious of you from the start. We met you in a scummy part of town next to a dead guy. You then gave us what I thought was a dumb excuse to travel with us. So, you know, I just figured that that was why you had come along when Keiji told me about Contremo." Keiji blushed to show that he had agreed with Kata. There were other trainers had stopped pretending to be ignoring them now and were listening intently, but the twins and Leigh neither noticed nor cared.
"But there's loads of people, anyone could have stolen him," Leigh reasoned. Keiji shook his head, and then pulled out what seemed to be some sort of portable safe.
"I'm kind of paranoid about these things, so I bought a safe to keep my pokeballs in at night. No one could have figured out the combination unless they watched me open it – and I waited until I thought everyone was asleep to do so. And even if another trainer had watched me open it, how could they have been observant enough to see it after only seeing me do it once?" Keiji explained. Leigh agreed, this was quite fishy; and if someone was going to steal a Pokemon, why a Rattata? And why didn't they take Fern, too?
"Travis," Leigh concluded. Kata pursed her lips and shook her head. Could she possibly be accusing Travis of theft?
"Rubbish!" Kata said, "Travis wouldn't do something like that! Besides, how could he get away with it? If he stole the Rattata he would have had to run before we woke up, or we would've noticed eventually! Rattatas don't just come out of nowhere." Leigh nodded – what Kata was saying made sense. Any logical person would have wanted to make a clean getaway. But then, this was Travis that they were talking about.
"Since when has Travis applied logic to anything?" Leigh thought aloud, and Keiji agreed. "Well, I don't know—" Kata began. Then suddenly, someone approached them. It was the same woman that Leigh had seen pacing in front of the front desk in the Pokemon Center yesterday, looking worried. She was wearing a white, chiffon nightgown and had her hands on her hips. It was obvious that the woman had been listening in and wasn't afraid to admit so.
"Well then, why don't we just ask this Travis boy?" she asked in a sharp voice, and walked over to Travis' bedside. Leigh, Kata and Keiji were so surprised at her boldness that they didn't stop her.
Travis' eyes came into focus upon a woman whom he had never met. She looked stern, and agitated. This woman vaguely reminded him of his mother, and he had initially wanted to be a Pokemon trainer to get away from his parents, so he didn't take to her. Of course, he had also wanted some glory, which he hadn't gotten, not yet at least.
"Done any stealing lately?" the woman asked Travis. She didn't sound angry, but she did sound serious. Travis slid out of his covers, leaning his back against the headboard of his bed. He was tired of looking up at her face. He stretched out his arms and his legs, looking casual, waiting for the woman's anticipation to build before he answered. He liked the idea of her depending upon him to answer before she would relax.
"No," he said in a smart-aleck kind of way. He looked across the room and saw Keiji and Leigh glowering him, and Kata was looking disappointed. Travis looked uneasy at Kata's look. He didn't care what Keiji and Leigh thought of him, but Kata looking like that at him was a prick in the side. He was trying to be cool, he had read about the glory of people in gangs like Team Paradise. Why wasn't Kata impressed? He wanted to be admired; he wanted to show that he could protect Kata better than Keiji could. Travis was counting on them accusing Leigh. He should have put the pokeball in her backpack. Why didn't he do that? Failing to do that was something a twelve-year-old would do! Then Travis remembered that he was twelve years old.
"You did it, didn't you?" Leigh asked from across the room. Travis clenched his teeth. His plan had been poorly done, how could he have been so stupid? There was no wriggling out of it now, he had blown it. They would not let him travel with them anymore, and he would never see Kata again. Then he got an idea.
"Yes… but… I can explain!" Travis gasped as anger shadowed Leigh, Kata and Keiji's faces.
And so he made up a reason why he had stolen Contremo, returning him to his rightful owner. He somehow managed to convince Kata that he hadn't intended on keeping the Rattata, although Keiji and Leigh couldn't believe what a rotten scoundrel he was. Only by Kata and Travis' begging did he get to stay in the company, and Keiji vowed that he would never sleep through the night again.
"The things people do for crushes," Leigh mumbled once he had finished. The twins hadn't heard what she had said, but Travis had. He shot her a disapproving look. How could she have seen right through his explanation? He thought that it was so well-constructed that he would have believed it himself had he not known it was a lie. Travis decided not to comment on what Leigh had said. Then Leigh, Kata, Keiji and Travis left the Pokemon Center, feeling just a little more uncomfortable than they had when they had entered it.