Chapter Fourteen

Sachie

"See? Even your crippled bird prefers me to you," Saki hissed quietly. "He told me, you know? He told me how boring it was hanging out with you, how he hated it, but had to stick to it because no one else was there. You should've heard how he thanked me for keeping you away—"

"Don't say that! It's not true!"

Words after my own heart, except I never said them. Takahashi had come to my rescue, and for the first time since I'd met her, she looked angry.

Saki ignored her. "Chiko too. How she complained to me every time she came over to my house! How she wished she hadn't wasted all those years--"

"Shut up! Don't talk to her like that!" Takahashi intervened again, a snap in her voice.

"Don't talk to me like that," said Saki, very disdainfully. Once again I saw the icy scorn in her eyes, as she showed her true colors underneath all the niceness she covered herself with. It was this side of her, I was sure, that had withheld from her the captaincy of the girls' tennis club, despite her superior skills. "But it doesn't matter. Who would waste time listening to anything you've got to say?" Her would-be casual tone made it sound all the more insulting. "Why the coach let you come when you're obviously not fit to pick up balls with the seventh graders..."

"Stop it!" This time I was the one who spoke. "If you've got any more cheap shots to spit out, say them to me. Leave Takahashi out of it. This is between the two of us." Saki really had a knack for making people fire up.

"What is?" she asked smoothly. "We don't need to argue the point, Tezumi, since it's so obvious that I've won." Her leer made me sick to the stomach.

The whole of her made me want to throw up, I decided, watching her snuggled up between Chiko and Fuji around the barbecue fire. The way she was using them disgusted me. How long would it be until she decided that she had made her point and pushed them away like the unwanted pieces of junk she thought they were?

But it really amazed me all the same how someone could go to such lengths just to prove herself right.

"Tezumi?" Takahashi tapped my shoulder.

"Huh?" I said distractedly, tearing my eyes from the figures around the adjacent fire.

"You're burning your sausage."

I looked down to see a crumbling mass of charcoal on the end of my barbecue stick. Giving a short growl of annoyance, I tossed it into the flames.

"Tezumi! How's it going?" Another voice blared into my ear.

"Not now, Ishizaki," I groaned, praying that I could stop myself from punching him.

"Tezumi, Tezumi, Tezumi." He faked a saintly tone. "How can you be so mean to someone who only came to offer you a can of Coke?" I felt him wrap an arm around me from behind and sure enough, he was holding a can of the long awaited soft drink.

"And here's yours," he said, tossing one to Takahashi and dropping down onto the bench next to me, wasting no time in spearing another sausage onto my abandoned fork. "You may not know this, Tezumi, but food is meant to be eaten, not burnt. We have charcoal for that, see? Now watch the master at work."

Too preoccupied to give him a smart comeback, I simply took a sip of the coke and went on with my absent-minded staring at Saki. I debated whether I should just tell Fuji the whole story, starting from my argument with her. But was there proof? Would he believe me? Technically, Saki wasn't even doing anything wrong, except make a few new friends, albeit a little aggressively. And of course she'd deny everything.

"Here's your dinner," I vaguely heard Ishizaki say. Realizing that he was trying to get me to hold the barbecue fork, I took it and bit into the sausage, which turned out to be a bad idea, since it was still very hot.

"Thanks," I said grudgingly.

"Oh, sorry, I've forgotten the honey." Gently pulling the fork away from my face, he brushed on the sticky substance.

At that moment, I happened to look up...and found Fuji looking in my direction with narrowed eyes. The flame flickering in front of him was just enough to illuminate his face, revealing an obvious frown. When our eyes met, he turned back to Saki and engaged her determinedly into conversation.

"Hmm, you'll need a napkin. Where are they?" Ishizaki looked around once I had finished.

"Fuji's holding them," Takahashi told him.

Sauntering over, Ishizaki asked Fuji to hand over the napkins. The two of them weren't very far away, and even I could hear him clearly. But apparently Fuji couldn't. He continued talking to Saki like he couldn't feel Ishizaki rapping him persistently on the shoulder.

"Fuji? Excuse me? Fuji!"

"Momo, could you pass the honey?" Fuji seemed to see right through the guy who was now almost yelling into his ear.

I couldn't think what his problem was. The only other person that Fuji had ignored like that was the manager of St. Rudolph's tennis club, and that was because the curly-haired individual had done something to harm Yuuta. That I could understand. But as far as I knew, Ishizaki had never even met Fuji's little brother.

What's up with him?

"It's fine," I called out to Ishizaki at last. "Just forget it."

My mind still whirling over everything that had happened, I shifted my position and with a swipe of my hand knocked my can of Coke to the floor. "Oh no—" I bent down to clean it up, but remembered that I had no napkins. "Ok..."

"Leave it," Takahashi commanded. Before I had gotten over the initial shock, she had steered me back to our tent. It was dark inside, and neither of us spoke for a while. There was too much to think about, in my case.

"You don't really want to be with me or Ishizaki, right?" Takahashi suddenly said.

I instinctively denied it. "No, of course I want to. Ok, Ishizaki not so much—"

"Tezumi," she said gently. "You can lie to me but please don't lie to yourself."

That shut me up at once.

"I've tried to be as nice as possible, but I guess I'm just not Fuji or Chiko." She sounded a little sad. "You know you miss them. Why don't you go talk to them?"

I sighed dejectedly. "What's the point? You heard Saki. She won already."

"Tezumi," Takahashi said sternly. "We're talking about friendship here. No one 'wins' or 'loses' in her sense. Has it ever occurred to you that someone can be the friend of more than one person at a time?"

"She'd never let me. She'd get between us—"

"Quit being so weak."

I froze, and not just because it was totally out of character for Takahashi to say something so harsh.

"You want them back beside you, and you want it so badly that you can't think of anything else, but you won't even try to talk to them. What's gotten into you, Tezumi? You tried to protect me from Saki just now, so why can't you protect yourself? Why won't you fight for what you want?"

Her words were ringing, over and over again in my head.

"Quit being so weak."

"What's gotten into you, Tezumi?"

"Why won't you fight for what you want?"

Coward...

"Takahashi," I whimpered. "Takahashi..."