Mike wasn't stupid. Okay, he was a kid and he didn't do too good in school sometimes, but he still wasn't stupid.
He knew what Yoshi wanted him to talk about. Yoshi said the same kind of stuff the doctors had said, and the cops. Nothing was his fault, he was great, he was perfect, and if someone else had hurt him they deserved to be put away.
Which, fine. Okay. He got it. Something happened to him that everyone in the world knew about. Something that probably had something to do with the nightmares he got sometimes, and the fact that he couldn't go to sleep unless he was curled up real tight with his back to the wall.
Mike didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about it. He hated it when he got upset, and how could talking about things like that help him be less upset?
He hated it when adults came to him with that big sad-eyed look on their face, and talked all quiet and serious about how other adults did bad bad things.
He liked Yoshi because he got away from all that stuff. Because he got to hang out with Leo and Donnie and Rafael, and he could play around with the punching bags and the weapons (though Yoshi would take them away from him if he ever said 'playing around' out loud).
Then suddenly every session Yoshi was coming at him with the same sad words about how awful adults could be and how none of it was ever Mikey's fault.
He still liked Yoshi, of course - he liked having a 'sensei', even after he found out sensei was just another word for a teacher. He liked the learning, the quiet sitting and clearing his mind, and meeting the kids there.
But he hated those sessions when Yoshi closed the door and asked him if he wanted to talk about anything.
He just acted like he didn't know what Yoshi was talking about.
Leo flipped the light on and grinned. "This is my room. Our room, I mean."
Mike grinned back and rolled his eyes. "I've been here before, Leo."
"Well, yeah, but just to visit. Not to live."
Mike went to the cot they had set up beside the wall. He sat, bounced up and down experimentally. He looked at the door.
Leo came over and sprawled on his bed. "Father says we might move soon. He says an apartment is too small for three of us, and he's got money saved and everything."
"Nice. I've lived in houses a few times. They're better than apartments." He tried to keep grinning, but his eyes flitted from Leo back to the door. Finally he just took a breath and asked. "Does your dad come in here at night? Ever?"
Leo sat up and blinked. His dark hair fell over his eyes, and he shoved it back with his hand. "At night? Like to tuck me in?"
Mike shrugged, awkward.
"Nah, not really. He used to. But he said…" Leo studied Mike, looking at him like he was a Rubik's cube he was trying to put together or something. "Dad said you might ask about nighttime. There's a lock on the door, and dad said we can lock it whenever we want so no one can come in."
"Really?" A lock on the door.
Wow.
Leo kept studying him. All serious, like he was a lot. "Why did he think you'd ask about--"
"Hey, how come there's no TVs in this place? We gotta go tell your dad to get a TV." Mike stood up and moved to the door fast. "Come on! We got work to do to make this place perfect!"
Rafael wasn't Spanish, but most people thought he was. He sounded like he was, and he used Spanish words, and he had real dark hair and dark eyes. But he wasn't really. He was just raised up by a Spanish family and learned to talk from them.
Don found him fascinating. He was really rude and angry and he knew all kinds of things about things Don had never even heard about. He knew what all the bad words his parents wouldn't let Don say meant. He knew about adult things, like sex and smoking.
And he was teaching Don Spanish.
"Por que es cansada," Don said to himself absently as he lay on his stomach in bed, staring at his notebook.
No. Wasn't right. "Por que somos cansada. Cansados."
Maybe. Conjugating words and thinking of the right tense was kind of hard in Spanish.
Still, it was close enough. Porque somos cansados, Don. That's why I can't listen to you go on about Yoshi or talk about school or ask about TV and work and something you saw on the street.
That's why you have to go to bed right after dinner and lay there though you can't sleep.
Don sighed, rolling onto his back. If he thought about it too long he'd get angry, and they'd get mad again. But it was so boring he didn't know what to do. Sometimes he even cried, just because he was bored.
He'd never tell anyone that, of course.
Just…he couldn't live with it. Every minute of every day his mind was just full of things, questions and facts and puzzles he hadn't solved yet. Every day he learned something, and learning something - knowing something one minute that you didn't know the minute before - was just so amazing he wanted to let everyone else learn it too.
Just realizing that every word Raf taught him was a way to say something to thousands of people who wouldn't understand it in English, it was so cool. How could his parents not care what porque somos cansados meant?
Oh, he knew he was lucky. He'd been with this mom and dad for almost two years, and he knew a lot of other kids weren't like that. He knew Raf and Mike didn't even have homes - though Master Yoshi was maybe adopting Mike for a while.
Leo was lucky with Master Yoshi. Don was lucky with his new parents.
Sometimes he didn't remember that, though. Sometimes, especially lately with his dad working a job at night and not even being there to listen to Don like he used to, it just felt like he wasn't lucky at all.
Konichiwa meant hello in Japanese, Master Yoshi had told him.
Hola meant hello in Spanish.
There were a ton more languages out there that Don didn't know, and sometimes it bugged him. What if he met some guy from Russia or something? How would he know how to say hi to him?
How could he go to bed right after dinner when there were languages he couldn't say hello in?
Master Yoshi asked him once what the worst emotion was to feel. Don had said sadness back then, but sensei told him that wasn't good enough, and that something deeper would come to him.
He wondered sometimes if 'bored' wasn't the right answer. It was the worst emotion he ever felt, anyway. When he couldn't ever make his mind shut up for ten seconds, but there was nothing to distract it with. When he was bored, that was when he got angry, and got into trouble.
That was why they sent him to Master Yoshi in the first place.
Maybe he'd tell sensei and see if it was the right answer.
Raf knew he was trouble.
They told him all the time. They said if he acted out and got demerits on his record it would follow him forever. They said how he acted would affect his whole life. If he was a bad kid, he'd be a bad adult.
He said fine. He didn't know any other kind of adult.
He hated adults. He hated them 'cause they had all the power and all the control and they were just as rotten as kids. Worse.
Raf had known a lot of good kids. He never knew one good adult.
Well.
Master Yoshi was alright. He was doing right by Mikey, anyway, which was something. Kind of surprising, really, but maybe not.
The first family he was sent to, when he was too young to remember much, had a son of their own named Oswaldo. Oswaldo was older than all the kids from the foster home, and he always went out with friends and made himself dinner and never got punished, and he hated all the other kids.
But Rafael remembered one day when Oswaldo sat with him and a couple of the girls who were kind of his sisters for a little while before the state took them all away from each other.
And Oswaldo said that the reason their parents never had food for them was because they were poor, and that poor people never got anything. He said they were Mexican and Mexican people could scrub toilets but couldn't get rich.
He said rich was for white people, and people who didn't speak with accents. He said if you saw a white person on the street they were probably rich. Especially if they were pretty.
Maybe that went for foster kids, too. Maybe Mike was pretty and white and people liked helping him. He was rich 'cause he had someone who would help him.
Oswaldo used to tell them, when he was tired of hearing them say they were hungry or cold or something, that he wouldn't help them. No one would ever help them.
"Because you're dirty and you're poor and you're even worse than my parents, because not even your own families want you."
Sometimes it made Raf happy to think that Oswaldo's parents were in jail and he was a foster kid himself now.
Sometimes the only thing that made Raf happy was seeing someone hurting worse than he was.
"I'm not using this."
Yoshi sighed and picked up the bo from the mat. "You're quite correct. If you insist on treating these weapons with disrespect you will use none of them."
Raf glared at him, his thin arms folded over his chest like a petulant adult. "The thing's bigger than I am. How'm I supposed to use it?"
The boy was arrogant, rude. Completely without discipline. As crass as the worst boys in the foster system.
But for some reason, even before Yoshi knew that Rafael was his own, he had a strange weakness for him.
Perhaps because he was so small.
"The weapon is designed to extend your reach. To allow you to grow, in a sense, when fighting an enemy."
"I don't need reach. I can take down anyone I want. I already got two good weapons." His small hands curled into fists.
It might have been amusing, but Yoshi knew those fists had hurt other children before.
Yoshi crouched, using the bo as staff to balance him. "Rafael, are these lessons designed to teach you to 'take down' anyone?"
Raf rolled his eyes. "No."
"What are they designed for?"
A deep sigh. "To teach skill and coordination and discipline."
"Very good." Yoshi straightened, satisfied. "Your friends are already several lessons along with their own weapons."
"No me importa dos cajones."
Yoshi raised an eyebrow. "What have I told you about using Spanish in my dojo?"
Raf glared at him.
Yoshi waited.
Raf growled. "That it's a sign of disrespect since I know you don't understand what I'm saying."
"Very good. Now, are you trying to be disrespectful?"
"Yeah."
Yoshi had to fight back a smile. The boy was honest, if nothing else. "Will you tell me why?"
"Why not?"
"That is evasion, not answer."
"Why'm I here anyway? Prentiss says if I keep getting into fights I'm going to jail. Why're you teaching me to fight? You want me to be in prison?"
"I don't think they send nine year olds to prison for fighting, Rafael."
"Detention center's as good as jail. My friend Hector said kids go right from one to the other anyway."
"You are neither place yet."
"I might as well be."
Yoshi hesitated then.
Perhaps Rafael's anger came from an absence of hope. It certainly seemed as if he had people on all sides making him think he would never be anything. That seemed to be the case with a good many of these children. There was no hope in them, because no one had any hope for them.
Nine years old was far too young to be without hope. Yoshi spoke accordingly. "Perhaps you might end up in a detention center, and perhaps prison might follow, if you keep on your course of violence. But Rafael." He reached out, put a hand on the slight boy's shoulder. "I think you can be more than that. I think you can prove everyone wrong."
Raf tensed and jerked away from his hand. "I won't do it by learning how to fight, will I? Are we done yet?"
Obviously if there were magic words to fix Rafael, Yoshi hadn't found them yet. He sighed. "We still have ten minutes remaining to--"
"I don't care how much time! I'm done! I'm not fighting with anyone or with any stupid stick you gave me 'cause you thought I want to be taller or something. I don't even know what I'm doing here!"
He stormed off without waiting to be dismissed. Red-faced, furious. Stomping his feet though the mats carried no sound either way.
Yoshi looked after him and frowned to himself, wondering why he didn't punish the boy the way he would any other student. Why he let him get away with such an attitude. Sometimes, he had to admit, he wondered why he bothered teaching Raf at all.
Then came times when he knew.
Mike had a particularly rough session one day. Since moving in with Yoshi and Leo his mood got better, and his lows were more rare. But when they hit, they still hit like a sonic wave, flattening everything Mike could get his hands on.
Yoshi, for all he was coming to know his sunny, cheerful Mike, didn't know how to get through to him when those moods hit.
But he watched this one day, shortly after Mike's tenth birthday, when Mike came out of a session with the punching bag and still had enough anger to throw open the dojo door and glower at anyone who might be outside.
He saw Rafael, waiting for his practice to start.
And he stood in the doorway as Rafael didn't hesitate. He just went up to Mike and took him by the shoulders and pushed him against the wall.
He spoke, low and accented but loud enough to reach Yoshi's ears.
"To hell with them, Mikey. They don't have to live with it. You do. You don't have to give them anything."
Mike glared at him, breathing hard, still red-faced and shining with sweat from his attack on the bag.
Raf grinned suddenly, sharp as his smiles always were. "You remember that pinche ojete David? Who cleaned the floors at night in the dorms?"
Mike focused on his face, but didn't respond in any way.
Raf bared his teeth. "I broke his fingers a few months ago. He couldn't tell anyone who did it, either, so he just said he fell and left and never came back."
Mike blinked.
"If anyone ever tries to hurt you, you tell me, and I'll break their fingers too. That's all you have to remember when these cabron keep making you talk about the stuff they don't have any right to know."
Mike smiled.
Yoshi figured it out easily enough. Someone at the state home had hurt Mike in some way - this David person. And Raf had hurt him in revenge.
It went against more than a few of the principles Yoshi taught, yet that side of him that was so strangely fond of Raf felt pride in the little boy. And at that moment it was easy to remember why he tried so hard to reach Raf.
Of course it was also a good reminder that if he didn't find the right way to reach him soon, Rafael would very possibly fulfill the prophecies others had made for him, and be in detention and prison before he really had a chance at life.