Chapter 2: Margaret

Sunday, June 8th, 2005

Oh my god. Florida is really, really bright. This is why old people start to lose their sight. They all go to Florida and burn their eyes out. It's so hot! Japan had generally a pretty cool climate, even in the summer. I tear off my jacket and it doesn't help a thing. Why didn't I just keep wearing my Jun school uniform? That had a really short red skirt and a thin short sleeve orange shirt. But no. I changed into a pair of normal blue jeans and a heavy dark blue tee shirt. And now I'm baking in this environment. Serves me right for hoping that it wouldn't be hot. I'm seriously not focusing. Florida in Julyhot. How did I not figure that stupid little thing out? What is with me? How can my acute unhappiness disorder syndrome thingy be this severe? I swear, my case will write the medical books.

I tentatively leave the non-air-conditioned airport, never looking back, dragging my bright red and yellow suitcase behind me. Thank god it has wheels, or I'd just melt clear off the earth, I'd be so tired. My mom follows me out, keeping her free hand on my shoulder so as not to lose me in the throng of people. Man, all of these people have amazing tans, and they're all really wrinkly and old. And those bums over there are wearing shorts and skirts. Maybe if I gave them 10 cents they'd give them to me.

I pause and wait for my mom. "Mom? What are you doing?"

She hurries up to me, dragging a crumpled map out of her tiny pink pocketbook. It's about big enough to hold two boxes of Tic-Tacs. How did she even fit that entire map in there? "Kat, read this. We're looking for Sun Terrace. We're in Palmetto right now. It's a town within walking distance."

I stare at her incredulously. "You're kidding. We're going to walk there? I'll melt! And then I'll melt again! I HATE THIS TOWN!"

"Of course not. We'll be getting a cab."

A cab? Those horrible little shoeboxes? We'll never fit all of our stuff in 5 of them, let alone 1! I can feel an even worse bad mood spreading across me (if that's even possible at this point). "IT'S NOT FAIR!" I yell. I start looking across the map. No…no…there it is. Tiny little Sun Terrace. But it's all the way up there—

"What town are we in now?" I ask angrily, staring at the distance on the map. I must have heard her wrong.

"I just said, Palmetto. Don't you listen?"

That's what I thought. I stare, speechless. "Sun Terrace is a bit outside walking distance. Just a little. Mom, it is nowhere near Palmetto. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"

"What are you talking about, Kat?" She takes the map from me, and angles it to fit her view. A frown crosses her face. "But I was—well, look at that."

"Yes, look at that. MOM, YOU'RE SO STUPID!"

This time, she gives me a death glare to make Hiei proud. "Don't call me names, Katrina. Last chance." She blinks. "How strange. I was almost sure—"

I shake my head, and try to get my bad mood away, and fail. "ALMOST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH! Sun Terrace is way north of here. It'll take us, like, three days. And by a taxicab…you'd better become a surgeon real fast to pay the entire fare. COME ON, MOM! WE'RE LIKE 90 MILES AWAY!"

She starts thinking, resting a hand on her hip. Someone shoves behind me hard, almost catching me off balance, and I whirl around to see a huge woman with at least ten little kids rustling by. She glares at me and shushes one child that is begging for candy. "Excuse you." I hiss at her angrily.

"What?" She says in a screechy whiny voice. She turns and I can see that she has a huge wart on her chin, like a witch. One of her blonde girls of about 5 yelps at the top of her lungs, "Miss Margy, I want that pony over there!" She points towards a sweating horse pulling a carriage. The horse just snorts.

"Hush! And it's not Margy—" 'Miss Margy' hisses at the girl, then turns back to me. "You think I care if I bump some snobby little rich girl like you? I don't! You want one hell of time? Take one of them." She grabs the little girl's hand and yanks her toward me. "Hope here wants a mom, don't you, Hope? Wouldn't you like a kid, girl?"

"Back off." I growl at her, pushing away the child. "My mood's ten times worse than yours, bitch, so for your safety, get on your way." I can feel the panther blood pounding in my veins.

The woman gasps, and this time, my mom smacks the back of my head and pulls me back towards her. "You are not to say that word here! Okay?" She grabs my shoulder and shakes me a little, to shock me.

"Stop it! STOP IT!" I scream at my mom and yank her off me. I glare at her, and she glares right back. Passerby mutter to each other about us, no doubt. I stare Mom down easily.

"Lose the attitude, Katrina, I'm warning you for the last time." She growls, staring at the ground, unable to look at me.

I just sulk. I turn around to find the woman has taken my advice and scrammed. Mom simply continues to stare at the map, looking for routes to Sun Terrace. "Katrina…Katrina, look at me. All right. I picked the wrong airport. We're about 30 miles south of where we need to be. I think we need to get Miss Sherm over here herself to drive us there. I hate to impose, but…"

"Is there no concept of calling her in your head?" I snap at her viciously.

"I don't have her number. She knows mine, but I never asked for hers. And lose that tone."

"Then how are we supposed to get her? How long has it been since you've seen Margaret? HOW LONG?"

"This is my first time. You know that. I've read TV interviews with her and she seems nice, but that's all I know about her."

"Mom, you have to be nice in TV interviews. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT!"

"You never know, youmight like her."

"IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE I'M EVEN GOING TO MEET HER!" I screech.

"Don't yell at me! I'm warning you. What are our options?"

"Do you know what she looks like? DO YOU?"

"No. The interview article only gave a picture of her when she was younger, because it was written when she was younger. Here, this is it." She roots through her purse and pulls out a crumpled scrap of paper. It shows a woman of about twenty-five in a grainy photograph standing next to a white table loaded with instruments. She's rather plain and she's holding up doctor organ scissors for the camera and smiling with pearly baby teeth.

I blink for a little while and we just stand in silence. Part of my bad mood floats away slowly. Mood swing time. "There's…there's no hope. This interview was from 40 years ago. What if she's dead? You don't know, do you?"

"Katrina!" She says, in a don't-say-stuff-like-that voice. "Let's think of our options, help me out! We could hitchhike up there."

I just stare at her. "That's a stupid idea." I stick the paper in my pocket. I growl to myself.

"KATRINA! We could rent a place here."

"With what money?"

"I brought money!" She says indignantly. "We could stay for two nights in any inn here!"

"Oh, wow. Be still, my heart. And what then? Come on. Another idea."

"We could go back home."

"Mom, the plane to home took off already. And it's…" I consult my watch. "Noon already. The airport is going to be packed at this time. We'll be waiting for 6 hours for another flight to Sacramento."

"I see what you're saying. Well, how about…we could search the yellow pages for Grandma's name and number."

"Your first good idea. Where's the nearest phone booth?" I look around, and my mother walks over to a Mexican immigrant, or at least someone that looks Mexican. He's talking in Spanish to a stunning darkly-tanned girl that looks like she was ejected from a magazine cover. "Donde esta un telefono circa de aqui?" She asks him, sounding very forced and fake. Her pronunciation is terrible. Like me and the Japanese language.

The man glares at her for interrupting them, then grudgingly nods and points to something near me, then continues on his way with the girl. I follow his point, and my eyes (sadly) rest on that huge woman again. And she's in the only phone booth around.

This is just not happening. There is no way life is like this for anyone else.

The woman's butt completely blocks all view of the phone. At least her gang of munchkins all have pacifiers in their mouths and are completely quiet, but they're due to start screaming any minute. And you can't really call them a gang, per say. There's actually only 4, now that I can see them when they aren't screaming. But why am I analyzing this? I need to get her out of there so we can get in one. But I can't.

"Mom, are we going to die?" I ask her forlornly.

"No. We'll just wait for her to get out. We won't bother her or anything." She freezes. "Isn't that that woman you bothered?"

"She bumped into me!"

"That doesn't excuse calling her a…you know. When she comes out, you apologize to her."

The woman waits like ten minutes. When I'm ready to stab her to get her out, my mom's cell phone begins to ring. She digs through her purse and answers it. "Hello?…Miss Sherm! Oh, this is great!…You're around here? A pay phone! Amazing! I was just waiting for a woman to…" Then, my mom just stares at the whale—excuse me, the woman. "Please hold on for one second."

She leaves my side, dragging her suitcase, and goes up to the woman in the phone booth and taps her on the shoulder, almost tripping over a munchkin, who screams for some reason when she sees Mom. Maybe it was because Mom stepped on her foot.

Sherm stiffens and turns around with difficulty. All that fat must be hard on moving at all. When she faces my mom, all 600 pounds of her, I can see that she can't be the woman in the photograph. Either that or she's gone very much to seed. I pull the old photo out of my pocket, and compare the faces. I can't see any resemblance. The woman then had a slim figure and curly brown hair and small teeth, and this one's teeth look a lot like a rabbit's, her hair is gray and she's had a little too many Twinkies over the years.

"Yes, Miss?" She asks, with all the charm of a gator. "What do you want? Get it over with, I'm in a hurry to meet someone…"

Ooh. Now that is at least one point against her. She's rude. Mom was wrong. "Margaret? Margaret Sherm the surgeon?" My mom asks her, as though it's a title or something.

She blinks, and pulls up some glasses hanging on a chain around her neck. She squints through them at my mom. "Shiori Minamino? Are you the one who made the appointment? The Chinese one?"

No. No, this cannot be. Not her! There is no way in hell she was once a great doctor! I was only comparing the faces for fun, not because I thought it was really true!

"Ma'am, I am Japanese." She corrects her. "But it's an honor to meet you." She does a little half bow.

"You too." She says flatly. "You're late. I'm very glad you made it at all." Margaret tells my mom, flat out without looking at her. Then, she sees me, and from that moment on never stops looking at me. My brain feels kind of funny looking into those cold black eyes. The eyes try to suck me in, but I look away. She definitely has some powerful eyes.

"It's great to be here." My mother replies.

Silence. Staring eyes on me. I can feel them.

"Um…how are things here?" My mom asks in a very forced voice.

"They are fine. Thank you for asking."

"No problem."

Silence. Are conversations usually this awkward? Margaret just keeps gazing at me. I shift from my right foot to my left awkwardly.

"I have a schedule, and you're keeping me from it. What did you schedule an appointment? What is your business?"

"OH! Um, uh, um, I am a huge fan of your work." She says, getting all worked up. "I was hoping that you would have some tips that could help me practice being a doctor better. I just finished medical school, and I'd like to do my job to the best of my ability."

"Ah, a demonstration? You wish to see a demonstration?"

"OH! Well…yes, that would be nice."

"I'm so glad I came in here to find you. I feel very honored." She has a strange accent. It sounds familiar…wait, it's Japanese. No duh. She was probably studying over there or something. And now she's over here in her retirement.

Wait. How did Margaret know we were here, a zillion miles away from her house? I don't think Mom told her…so how did she know where to find us?

"Uh…uh…" My mom casts around for a subject, and then she whirls around to me. I flinch. "Miss Sherm, I don't think you've ever met my little Katrina, have you? You can call her Catty."

Catty? Since when have I been Catty?

Her evil black eyes sweep over me, appraising me. "Catty, was it? No, we've met."

"Yes." I agree coldly. The six-year-olds cower at my gaze, and completely obscure themselves behind her.

Mom rolls her eyes at me, telling me to apologize, but I pretend not to see it. The witch goes over to me, closer and closer, her long purple skirt sweeping the pavement. "Isn't she a good-looking one? Those are some prominent cheekbones. Very elegant. And arm muscles to boot."

I'm just waiting for her to ask how much I cost.

"Yes. Yes, she is." My mom finally smiles. She hopes they have something in common. I smile at the woman too, hoping I don't look overly sadistic. Maybe…

"But gracious, Shiori. Look at those green eyes. Unusual for an Asian, right?"

I blink, and feel a ripple of anger. True, it's really a medical wonder I have green eyes, with two Japanese parents. Although I guess it's because I'm half demon that the normal laws of genes don't apply. But that doesn't mean she has to actually say it! My mom also bristles at her rude comment, but before she can say anything—

"How old are you, Catty?"

"Uh—ah— just turned 15…in May…"

"That's old enough not to slump! Stand up straight!"

She's—she's so—intimidating. I stand up straight. And I have this whole thing where I turn to jelly if I get yelled at. But there's also something weird about her. I can't place it. I turn up my nose slightly. A big mistake. She looks under my chin and seizes her opportunity.

"And…oh my lord. Catty, dear…" She squints and lifts up my face. Oh no. She can't look there. "Look at this scar!"

She smiles, as though she sees something there. "I knew it." She whispers. I hiss at her in response. Knew what?

Oh no. She found it. The one wound that Yukina couldn't heal. It's a long slash, tucked right under my chin when Sensu grabbed my neck (his claws dug into my skin). And now this hag has found it. Oh no. I can't let this go.

My mother goes over, and I yank my chin away. I can't let her see too, or I'll be getting myself a nasty interrogation. "Do you mind?" I half-yell at her, my insides coiling up out of fear of her. "Stop looking at me like I'm a painting or something!"

As soon as it comes out, I regret it. "I—I—" Now she'll kill me. Who could have thought I can face down demons and not this horrid old woman.

"Such cheek. Shiori, make her show some respect."

"MISS SHERM! Uh…uh…uh…if you don't mind, I—I have a question about the upper-rightmost tendon suspending the liver…if you could clear that up for me…?" My mother's voice comes out as a plea. Margaret gives me a severe look and allows Mom to lead her away.

I glare at her retreating back. Jeez. What is wrong with her?

I find a nearby bench in the shade near me, and I happily go under and watch the two talk. Margaret has a very high-and-mighty way of talking. The way she tosses her head at every word. I hate that. Sensu was in that habit as well as Spinacheli. It's so common.

Mom and Bitch walk back after 20 minutes. I don't think they were discussing livers that whole time. And it becomes apparent right away. "Catty, darling, there's been a change of plans." Bitch says.

"What?"

Mom interjects, "Miss Sherm has agreed to take us to an inn to help me learn chiropractics, rather than traveling all the way up to her house. I'll need her lesson to become a pediatric nurse specializing in physical therapy, and as of now, I'm not very good at it."

"How is that a demonstration? It sounds like a lesson." Margaret watches me as Mom traps me in a big hug. I avoid Margaret's potent gaze. She is too weird. There's something…again, there's just something strange about her. A kind of odd aura.

Why is Mom hugging me, and why does it fill me with dread?

"Oh, you didn't know? It is a demonstration! I'll watch Margaret practice on you!" My mom grins and hugs me tighter, a little too quickly. "It'll be fun, right!"

My bad mood, almost gone, returns in a millisecond, along with the words, "WHAT…THE…HELL?"

555555555555555

Author's Note: Review please! I'm sorry, both 1 and 2 were kind of short for me, but I tried to make them both one long chapter and it was too long…MUCH too long, so I decided to split them. So, go on, read chapter 3! And for the record, I like you to review every chapter if possible. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside!