1
Several months had passed by since the incident. It was not five-thirty that early august morning when Sakura left the house by the back porch steps. In her dress pocket she carried two lumps of sugar; in her right arm she carried her favorite doll, Pooh. The severe change in the light from the interior of the house to the brilliant glare to the yard blinded her.
Hugging Pooh, she shielded her eyes, stepping into the cooler house shadow. She followed the walk parallel to the house until it ended, then hurried across the wet grass. At the hedge, she ducked into the tunnel made by the thick branches of the privet hedge and adjoining iron fence.
All but hidden from view, she crawled down the length of the iron fence, dragging her dolly with her to the end of the yard, where she emerged in the thicket of ragweed and the goldenrod and wild crape myrtles. She stood and dusted her knees.
She crossed the weedy right-of-way.
She could hear Kisame before she saw him -a low, throbbing, nerve-numbing growl. The pen was constructed with two high fences, on set aside the other, because when he was mad enough to break his chain, Kisame could chew through one layer of the fence in nothing flat. The back of the pen faced the right-of-way; its front and gate were flushed with the neighbor's backyard, which meant she would have to skirt the fence and enter their yard in order to reach the gate.
Picking her way carefully, she started down the sloping embankment alongside the fence. The low throb of the dog's growl neither quickened nor faltered.
More then halfway down the side of the pen, the weeds gapped and she saw him; the ruff of his blue hair framing his pug face, the slanting Chinese eyes with no irises, just black holes to see through, the muzzle of his blue mouth drawn back on long slashing teeth, saliva hanging from his jowls.
It was the face of absolute rage and, as always, for the moment she found herself mesmerized by it, unable to move. He must have sensed her fear -the low, guttural growl rose an octave. Slowly he came to his feet, the chain attached to his collar clinking as he stood.
His matted tail curled up and back on his hindquarters. His dust-mottled coat fell at odds with itself alongside his shabby length, clotted with chunks of dirt. He was no longer growling; his navy blue lips were stretched thin, his nose ridged. Then he sprang, hurtling through the air, his growl twice as loud as it had been, teeth snapping, cracking together on empty air, till the chain caught , whipping him backwards.
He hardly touched the ground before he flew at Sakura again, his massive black muzzle ripping though the air only two feet away.
Frightened, she fumbled in her pocket for the sugar. The first lump crumbled to powder in her hand, and she quickly pulled out the second one. She reached through the outer fence and tossed the lump into the pen, underhanded.
As often as she'd come here with Itachi to bring the dog some sugar, these first minute never became any less terrifying.
"Kisame," she said, but her voice sounded shaky. She tried again, forcing a firmer voice. "Kisame, you stop."
He stepped over his chain and backed away, eyeing her.
"There's your sugar. There it is." Sakura pointed to where it had disintegrated on the ground.
His pug face came up tilted and quizzical.
"There." she said, pointed again. "You know me, don't cha? I'm going to come see you now. You better be a good boy. Don't you bite me."
His growls were mellowing to short, snorty grumps and groans. He barked at her once, ran sideways a few steps, dragging his chain, and barked again, then he ambled towards the sugar, sniffing the ground.
Itachi said it was no wonder the dog was mean, because his owner beat him, and their father said that was his privilege; it was his dog. But Itachi pitied him enough to start bringing him sugar. He said they understood each other.
When Sakura opened the gate to his pen, she stepped directly into the bare circumference of his chain length and allowed Kisame to sniff her from the bottom. After his inspection, he nuzzled her and licked her with his black tongue.
First he licked her face, then he licked her sugar-dusted palm, and finally, while she held it open, he licked the inside of her sugary pocket. Sakura petted his face and told him Itachi was hurt. The rolled-back tail twitched.
She talked to him. She told him he was a good boy.
Afterwards, she patted Kisame once more, slipped from the pen, and went home the way she had come, down the tunnel of the hedges to the walk and into the kitchen, catching the screen door.
2
Her parents never spoke of Itachi's injury. To them, it was no longer a question whether he was going to live or die, but when he would get well, as if his condition were a disease they could conquer together.
Several days passed from the incident, then weeks, turning into months before slowly a year had passed. Itachi's thirteenth birthday came and went, still trapped in a coma, while Sasuke's birthday passed as well.
On Tuesday evening, November eighteenth, Sakura took a bath by herself, sweetening the bathwater with splashes of perfume and a cake of L'Eau de Paree.
Sitting before her mother's vanity with a powder puff in one hand and the atomizer in the other, she dampened and patted her face and with still another coat of perfume. She cut her hair, using the fingernail scissors, until it looked worse than when she had started, but she still liked it.
She dressed herself in her very best Sunday clothes -her taffeta dress, her white shoes and socks -and she carried her pink plastic purse with thirty-one cents in it. She waited that evening on the stairs and on the settee and at the dusty dining-room table.
Her mother went and patted her head. When her father, who had recently visited Itachi, came home at seven-thirty, he told her to go change out of her play clothes and come help him get ready for supper.
Sakura laid across her bed and cried. On that day, she was nine years old.
Somehow, Sasuke realized what had happened. When they were getting ready for bed, he gave her a present. "It's for your birthday," he said, and handed her the old cuff-link box, unwrapped. "Go ahead. Open it." Inside was his skull ring, like the Phantom's. A while ago, he'd sold his small knife and saved box tops and sent away for it; it had one red eye and one green eye.
The ring was just like the Phantom's ring in the funny papers; it could dent your jaws and leave its mark forever.
"But Sasuke," Sakura said, "I can't take this! That's your ring you sent off for."
"You have to." he said. "I don't have nothing else you'd want." The back of the ring was adjustable and he bent it to fit tighter on her finger. He told her it would probably turn her finger green, but in that moment it became her most favorite of all her favorite things. She wore it to bed.
3
A few nights into February, as Sasuke set the supper table and Sakura laid out the plates, their father came from the living room, his face was contorted and alive. He tried to speak, but his mouth just worked and his eyes open wide. Sasuke said, "Dad, what's wrong?"
"He talked to me." he stammered. "Just now he talked to me before in the hospital. Our prayers have been answered. Just then, he said, 'I'm hungry.' That's it-it exactly."
Their mother ran to embrace her spouse while Sakura did the same to her brother, laughter filling the room.
"Just you wait, you'll see." her father said. "You'll see."
The following afternoon their father ordered them into the car and drove all the way to the hospital. When they arrived, he rushed them into Itachi's room and made the children stand with him besides the makeshift bed. "I want you all to feel how much heavier his arm is. He's getting stronger. Really, he is. So much stronger. I can see it."
The arm placed first in the upturned hands of Sasuke, then in Sakura's, seemed heavy, but they didn't know how to gauge it.
It was another three weeks before the end on February, before Itachi opened his eyes. According to their father, this time he said, "Dad, I'm so tired." The doctor was called and their father spent the night over there.
"You can see him tomorrow. There's plenty soon enough." he explained over the telephone.
"Do you think he'll remember us?" Sasuke asked. Sakura only shrugged.
4
It was after school when the children had walked home together when they saw their father's car parked outside the driveway. He drove them over to the hospital to visit their eldest brother.
The purity of the winter light magnified Itachi's room, making it appear vast and sparsely furnished. The patients bed was pushed in the corner near one winder, allowing for them to soak in the light from the sun.
Charged with anticipation, but not knowing what to expect, Sakura lagged behind Sasuke. She kept her eyes fastened on the lounger as they went to join their father on the far side. She leaned forward as she walked, trying to peer around her mother's shoulder; after a few more steps she could see Itachi propped up on pillows, his head pitched slightly upward. She moistened her lips and swallowed hard.
All this time, her father was speaking to Itachi in a soft voice. "He's doing fine. Yes, he is. Just fine, but look how tired he is. He's slept so long he wore himself out. So tired…"
Vaguely nodding and swaying, Itachi's head lifted by slow degrees.
It was as if everything disappeared. Only his incredible red eyes looked up from below his eyelashes, and the room began to slide around Sakura. The smart-alecky, devil-may-care glint that had been so much a part of him was gone; in its place was something hard, cruel, and blunt.
She wanted to scream, NO! he's not all right. He's not just fine. His eyes are wrong. Can't you see? It's all wrong!
As for as long as the moment lasted, it was like a horrible dream that wouldn't go away.
Then, as if moving through heavy air, Itachi lifted his hand towards her and her mother's voice broke though that stricken impression.
"Sakura, don't be bashful," she said. "Take hold of his hand and tell him who you are, because he remembers you, really he does, but he's kind of confused. Everything seems so brand new to him. You'll have to help me watch out for him. Will you do that? Help me take care of him?"
Deliberately, Sakura nodded. She wanted to take his hand and help him, and then she did take it and she knew she must never tell them that he wasn't fine, because he was her brother who watched over her and taken her out and played.
For now he couldn't be anything but fine, because now that he was coming back, he was really all she had.
Oh yea. R&R. Thanks for those who did, yo.