Chapter Six
Breakfast was scrambled eggs and bacon with toast and cantaloupe. I wolfed it down so fast that my stomach hurt. After breakfast and showers, Dad slapped his ball-cap and some sunscreen on me and dragged me out to the field behind the house. He introduced me to a grimy old lawnmower. He showed me how to attach a bag, fill it with gas, prime it, yank the cord, and where exactly he wanted me to dump the clippings.
"We need a big enough space that we can practice in," he said. "Mow up to the trees."
"But this place is huge!"
"Better get started, then," he said.
I glanced up at Shadow's room. I could barely see the black corner of her television hanging over the window. His gaze followed mine.
"Don't worry. I'll help you," he said. "There's a second machine that Don is repairing as we speak. I'll take the other side."
I don't know if you've ever tried to mow tall grass, but it is clearly a form of torture. The mower choked to death countless times, and I had to stop to unclog it so often that I developed a crick in my back. By ten, both of my hands were as green as Dad's. By noon, I had cleared a pathetically small, bruised, steaming square in the field. I slumped underneath a tree for a break, fanning myself with the cap. I hadn't gotten enough sunscreen on my face and there was a nasty bright pink spot growing right on my nose.
"Hey! Over here!" April gestured at me from the porch. She was sitting with a laptop and holding a glass pitcher aloft. It glittered like gold in the sunlight, bobbing with ice and lemons. I lunged to my feet and slogged to the porch.
"Here you go," she said, handing me a lemonade. "Why don't you sit a while? Ooh… you need sunscreen."
I forced myself to look at her in the eye. Her smile was genuine. I gave her one of mine, which I'm afraid was a bit crooked, and sat beside her on the bench. She had a tube of sunscreen sitting beside her and smeared it on my face and the top of my head with officious hands. For a while there was only silence between us as we looked out on the clearing, ice clinking in our glasses. April had turned on a fan, and the breeze was delicious in the muggy heat.
"It's nice to have everyone together again," she said at last.
"It's… nice to meet everyone," I said, a bit mechanically.
"Nothing but adventures with these guys," she said. "As I'm sure you've already noticed." She looked down at her keyboard and started typing. When I glanced over, I saw paragraphs full of nonsensical words and symbols.
"What are you doing?"
"Coding," she said. "Well. PHP, CSS, HTML. What we use for websites."
"Oh," I said slowly.
Mike stepped out onto the front porch, mopping his forehead with a hand towel.
"Gotta say, April," Mike said, "not crazy about this whole exercise thing."
"I can't say I blame you," April said. "What are you up to?"
"Walking, right now," Mike said. "And cutting back on the beer and butter. My heart!" He leaned back on the wall. "Do you think lemonade would be a no-no?"
"Probably."
"Whoops." He picked up a glass and topped it. "Don't tell Leo."
"Your secret is safe with me," April said.
Mike sank down on the porch floor next to me and stared out into the field. "You're doing a great job there, Saya," he said. "I'll bet Leo has us out there tomorrow morning at 5:30 sharp."
"I thought you had a deadline," I said.
"Yeah, I do. I told the publisher that I needed it extended. I can work in the evenings. Uh, if I can stay awake." He took a big swig of the lemonade. "Damn, I forgot how hard exercise was."
"Walking?" April asked.
"I'll have none of your sass," Mike said, shaking a finger at her.
"Well, honestly, Mike," April said, "I want you to come back in one piece. I mean that. If you can't get ready, don't go at all."
Mike took a deep breath and leaned back against the porch railing. "Honestly, April, I wish I didn't have to. I'm not looking forward to this. I'm not sorry about what I learned when I was a kid, but… you know, I did some things that I'm not proud of. I wish I could tell Leo 'no.'"
"If you can't, you can't," I said. "We've all got to be on the same page."
Mike laughed and patted me on the knee. "There are some things you gotta do because they're right."
"Like get yourself killed?" April said. "If you guys foul up, you'll have Elites on you. Elites!"
"Relax. Leo and Donnie are trying to think up some way we can do this without a big show. Like… I don't know. Putting the blame on a different criminal group or slipping some poison in a teabag or whatever. Maybe I won't have to fight at all."
"I'm sorry," I said. I turned my glass around in my hands. "Maybe I should turn myself in. Numbers, you know?"
"Numbers?" Mike asked.
"If I go back, maybe they'll leave all of you alone," I said. "Six happy people, and… just one person who has to… to…"
"No way, little burrito," Mike said. "I don't know if you've met Karai yet, but she's not going to forgive us that easy."
"Besides, we have no idea what they'll do to you," April said. "You're part of our family now, Saya. We're going to do our best to make sure you're safe."
"But you only just met me."
"What are you talking about? I liked you the first time I met you." Mike popped an ice cube in his mouth. "You know what I was angry about, though? Your dad just taking off like that. Damn, he is dramatic. Always trying to take one for the team, even when he doesn't need to."
I thought of the swords and ground my teeth together.
"Sorry, sorry," Mike said, pushing himself to his feet. "You need a break from the mowing, kiddo? I can take over for a while. Gimme that." He stole my ball-cap and jumped out into the grass.
"Wait!" I said. "I wasn't…"
Mike stuck his fingers in his ears and shrilled a hideous rendition of "Barbie Girl" all of the way to the lawnmower.
April poured me another glass of lemonade. "Don't leave just yet. He'll probably be back in five minutes."
April was not even halfway right. Dad pushed the fixed lawnmower up to the back porch only to see Mike chugging away and me sipping at my fourth glass of lemonade. He pointed at me, then at the mower. I groaned and went back to work. Mike wadded up my ball-cap and threw it at me, but it fell halfway and we lost it in the grass. I found it two hours later when I ran over it and shot chunks of red plastic all over the yard.
We finished our work just as the sun touched the horizon. Mike met me halfway and raised his hand.
"High three!" he said.
I slapped his open palm and he pumped his fist in the air. My cheeks ached all the way up to the house—it took me that long to realize that I was smiling.
We collapsed in the kitchen and leaned into each other. April was cooking hamburgers, and set ice water in front of us. We were a silent, droopy-eyed pair, stinking of sweat and cut grass and gasoline. Not long afterward, Dad and Don stepped in. I didn't know what they had been doing, but they smelled like dust, and during dinner they read printouts. Don was examining building schematics, and he was so engrossed that at one point he missed his mouth and spooned baked beans all over his chest.
"So," April said. "What are you guys planning for tomorrow?"
"We start training," Dad said.
Mike groaned.
"Lightly!" Dad said.
Mike leaned into me and moaned like a dying cow. I thrust my head beneath my arms so nobody could see me grinning.
April got up and rinsed her plate. "Well, don't wait up for me. I'm definitely sleeping in tomorrow. Remember to eat, Donatello."
Donatello waved at her without looking and flipped a page.
Shadow ran into the kitchen, slapped a hamburger together on a plate, stuck a wad of french fries in her mouth, and dashed out again.
"Hey!" April shouted. "Not in your room!"
"Hrrrmff!" Shadow said from the stairs, and was gone.
"Can I go?" I asked, standing up. "I need to take a shower."
"Sure," Dad said idly.
I slipped up the stairs for my clean clothes and stopped at Dad's bed. The three-ring binder lay next to his pillow. All of the photographs had been carefully arranged on the mattress in columns and rows according to size. Staring up at me from the center was the good photo of Mom, her expression unreadable in the fading light. There was no hesitation. I picked it up, slipped it into my pocket, and ran to Shadow's room. She was sitting cross-legged at her desk, hovering over a textbook, her cell lying in the crease. I shook her by the arm.
"Yeah?" Shadow asked, pushing her headphones off onto her shoulders. "What is it?"
"I need to hide a picture," I said. "Do you have any good ideas?"
"What picture?"
I drew out the photo of Mom. "This one."
"Oh." Shadow took it from me, carefully cupping the corners. "Is this your mom?"
"Dad is destroying everything that has anything to do with her," I said. "I want to keep at least one thing of hers."
Shadow bit her bottom lip. "Wow. Who's she looking at, do you think?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I think it's Dad."
"She looks like they're telling her a bad joke," Shadow said.
I couldn't help it; I smiled. "Maybe they are."
"Well, I have got just the place!" Shadow said.
She took a piece of double-sided tape and slapped Mom's photo behind one of the poster frames in her room, the one with a TARDIS haloed by disembodied Doctor Who heads.
After my shower, I spent the evening cross-legged in Shadow's room, one eye on the TV and the other on the hallway. I thought I saw Dad enter the room, then come back out and stand at our door for a second, but he didn't stand there long. Soon he was gone.
The binder filled with text and blueprints, and Mom's pictures disappeared. When I slipped into bed that evening, Dad wished me goodnight. He never asked me about the photo.
It seemed like I hadn't been asleep for very long at all before Dad shook me awake. We bumped shoulders with Mike on the way down the stairs, trooped through the kitchen and grabbed Donatello, and stretched on the front porch. Thick, cold fog had swallowed up the farmhouse. We crept into the pre-dawn light like a gaggle of ghosts. Dad stood at the head of our group, head down, facing the ranks of trees, bokken hanging in his hand.
"Katas, then?" Donatello asked, leaning on his bo.
"Do you remember any of the katas, Mike?" Dad asked.
Donatello rolled his eyes as he sheathed his weapon.
"Uh, sure," Mike said. "The basics? I think I remember."
"Yes. Just a warm-up."
We took different spaces and settled into stances, and all of us began with the first and easiest katas. Dad was slow and deliberate, putting very little stress on his left side, and sometimes only gesturing lightly to mark the place of a punch or a spin. As for Donatello, he really hadn't lied about practicing. He whipped through his katas with exquisite form and without breaking a sweat. I was sore and stiff and sloppy, and Dad constantly stopped to correct me—wordlessly moving my fists over or pushing a knee down, batting me on the back of the head if I tried to skip anything. Mike paused several times and leaned over to me to ask about what came next, and every time he did, Dad looked over at us and frowned.
"What?" I asked at last. "He doesn't remember."
"Besides, bro," Mike said, "even you said it was light work today."
"Just remember that this is serious," Dad said. "No playing around."
My face flushed and I glanced at my uncles. Mike and Don locked eyes for a second, unsaid things flashing between them.
When the sun burned off the mist, Dad told Mike and me to pair off and practice grappling and throws. We started small—twisting out of a wrist grab, for example—and moved up to leg sweeps and pantomiming joint breaks. Generally, when you're practicing the motions, your partner doesn't fight back. But Mike started slipping out of my grip, or resisting my grabs, or he would plant his feet and not let me knock him down.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm not going down so easy," he said. "That's what."
So I grabbed his arm and swept my leg to flip him onto his back. He dramatically flung himself to the ground at my feet.
"How could you do this to me, little burrito?" he said, thrusting a hand over his heart.
"How am I supposed to practice like this?" I asked.
"This is practice. I'm practicing my falling," he said, and jerked my leg out from under me. I hit the ground so hard the breath was knocked out of me, but when I sucked it back in I found myself laughing. Mike rolled over, cackling, and started tickling me.
I was only aware of Dad a split-second before he was on us. He drove his heel into Mike's chest, knocking him back over the grass, and his bokken was on my throat before my smile had time to disappear.
Mike coughed and rolled over onto his knees. "Whoah, whoah, slow down!" He grabbed at Dad's wrist. "What are you doing?"
Dad shrugged him off. "Do you think this is a joke?"
Donatello shook his head. "You said it was going to be light work, Leonardo."
"Do you think that the Foot will give us quarter?"
"No, man, of course not!" Mike said, staggering to his feet. "But we're not the Foot and this is just—and I quote—'light practice.' Light practice!"
"And it's still practice!" Dad said. "If I'm going to lead this expedition, I expect everyone to follow orders exactly."
"I don't like your tone, man. Don't talk down to me." Mike took a deep breath. "We're not kids anymore, and you're not Splinter."
Dad raised his bokken and staggered to his feet. He'd started bleeding again. I quickly crabwalked back across the lawn before jumping up to my feet beside Mike. I was shaking, hard.
Dad took a deep breath and ran a hand over his forehead. "What do you expect me to do?" he asked. "We are going to face Elites, and Karai alone will be…" His voice faded off.
"No one's arguing about that, man." Mike's voice gentled. "Uh, maybe we need to talk over what this whole training thing means to us individually. Personally, I think we need to lighten up a little because it's serious."
Dad threw down his bokken and stalked off into the trees. His head dropped when he passed beneath the branches, and his shoulders hunched, and then he was gone.
I set my jaw and looked away, my face hot. Mike looked despairingly at Don.
"I'm not going after him," Don said.
"Aw, shit," Mike said under his breath, and trotted off. I followed, but before I could get very far, Don grabbed my wrist.
"No," he said. "Leave them. Let's go have breakfast."
"But…"
"Mike'll get it straightened out," Don said. "Come on."
Don made pancakes: beating the spoon against the mixing bowl, flipping the pancakes with sharp slaps, slamming the microwave door shut. He began humming as he set the pancakes down in front of me, but it was just meaningless noise. There was something heavy and unsaid hovering in the room.
When Donatello set his plate down, my mouth seemed to open of its own accord.
"I'm sorry," I said flatly. "I'm sorry about Dad."
"What is there to be sorry about?" Donatello asked.
"Because he's… he's being so strange." I knotted my hands into fists on the table.
Donatello carefully cut his pancakes into quarters, then eighths. "Saya," he said, "what did Leo tell you about us?"
"Just… that you were a vigilante group, but not a criminal one," I said.
"Technically vigilantes are criminals, but whatever," Donatello said. "Continue."
"He told me about how you liked to work with technology and how Raphael was undisciplined and Mike was too laid back."
"That's it?"
"Yeah. Well, there were stories, sometimes, like how you killed the Shredder. He didn't tell me about you unless he was teaching me something."
"Did he say anything about Splinter?"
"Not much." I looked down. "He didn't want to talk about it."
"Figures." Don looked out the window. I suddenly realized that I didn't know anything about him, not really. Dad had given me a caricature of Donatello: his long-winded rants, his obsession with details to the detriment of the whole, his skill with tech and the sciences. But when he was sitting in front of me I felt like those details were more like a grocery list than a person.
"I don't know how to help him," Don said at last. "For me, for Mike, we know what we want out of life. We know what to do with ourselves. We are… more or less satisfied. But Leo… he doesn't have any definition unless he's fighting something. If he can't find an enemy, he's got to make one. Do you know what I mean?"
"No," I said slowly. "Not really."
Donatello chewed thoughtfully. "Well… let's just say that Leo doesn't know how to relax. He should've been resting these past days and what does he do? Go straight to work. He's going to kill himself."
"So… why did you mention Splinter, then?"
"Splinter died during Leo's rebellious phase." Donatello stabbed his food and shunted it through the syrup. "Naturally, Leo took it hard, but not exactly in the ways we expected. He started running with the Foot." Donatello shook his head and laughed. "He'd killed Shredder twice and he joined the goddamn Foot."
"Wait," I said. "He was actually in the Foot?"
"Oh, yeah, he was," Donatello said. "He actually wore the insignia. I could definitely tag a few important assassinations on him. I guess we should've seen it coming. Leo copes with trauma by working. Mike and I had Internet-based careers and the family, but all Leo could do well was ninjitsu, and—to put it nicely—there's only one organization in NYC that hires for that. It's rather difficult to see a paragon of virtue flip over like that, and so fast."
"He never said he joined the Foot." I was clenching my hands together so hard that my knuckles hurt.
"Interesting." Donatello turned his fork over. "Well. Everyone makes mistakes; happens to the best of us. Sometimes we murder judges or a politician or two…"
I shook my head. "Maybe this was a mistake. We can't kill Mom."
"Oh, we can," Don said. "It's just a matter of preparation."
"But Dad isn't getting over Mom. He's trying, but he can't."
"He's doing it the wrong way, whatever he's doing," said Don. "Look, I'm not exactly stellar at this entire relationship business, but I don't think that a healthy coping mechanism includes trying to erase an entire experience from your life."
"I don't think so either," I said.
Mike walked through the door, rubbing the back of his head. "Hey guys."
"How'd it go?" Donatello asked.
"Pretty well, actually." Mike dropped down at the table and laid his head in his arms. "He's got some good points, you know? Sure, we can take practice more seriously, no problem. But he agreed that we have to work as equals and he's going to watch his language. Also… I just got him to promise to rest for a week. No work, no katas, just light walking."
"You're kidding!" I said.
"We're going to have to remind him," said Mike. "If you see him doing anything responsible and serious, you've got to throw books at him until he sits down. Make sure that you aim at his right side."
Don wrapped his arm around Mike's neck and laughed. "My god, Mike. Where is he?"
"I left him by the stream. He just needs to think."
"He's going to be okay?" I asked.
"Yeah. He's just exhausted and keeps reopening his wounds. That'll make anybody cranky, you know?"
I clenched the edge of the table and stood straight up. "Don, Mike," I said, "do you think we could just stay here and forget about killing Mom? I could help with the chores, like mowing the lawn, and I could learn how to cook, and you could show me all about… technology and mathematics and writing and painting, or whatever. We could keep on training just in case the Foot finds us. I could watch Shadow's TV and learn from her schoolbooks—maybe we could even have school together. Then Dad doesn't have to worry about killing Mom. If Raphael came by, Dad and I could… could hide. And if that didn't work, we could talk to him… I mean, maybe you could soften him up for us…" I shook my head. "I'm sorry. This is stupid."
Mike's eyes glittered. He squeezed my hand. "No, not at all. I like that idea fine."
Donatello's smile was slow and his eyes disappeared into crow's feet. "Ah, Saya, I wouldn't mind at all. We've hidden away from the world our entire lives. What's a little more hide and seek, eh? We could talk it over with our human friends and see what they'd prefer."
"We could?"
"This is a democracy," Donatello said.
"So you wouldn't mind… not going on the mission?"
Donatello's smile was suddenly sinister. "Haha, well. I won't lie. A little old-school action appeals terribly much to me. I'm ten times the techie I was as a kid, and I'm dying to use it against the Foot. Dying." He rubbed his hands together. "Ah! Which reminds me. Wait here."
He flung the trapdoor open and slid inside.
"Well, I'm not interested in going!" Mike shouted down. "Like, at all!"
"I don't care," Donatello shouted back.
When Donatello slid out again, he threw a bundle at my feet. My eyes bulged and I dropped to my knees beside it, then flung off the wrappings. There, hilts discolored but otherwise unharmed, were Mom's katana. I gingerly drew one of the blades. They'd been maintained.
"How did you do this?" I asked, turning the sword over in my hands. "How?"
"It just so happens that Casey threw something important of mine in the pond a while back, so I cobbled together a small remote-controlled sub. All it took was luck, sensors, and some really big magnets," Don said. "I recommend hiding them from Leo, though."
"But how did you…"
"I saw the whole thing. I live in the barn, you know, and I have microphones everywhere. What can I say? Finding a good pair of katana is almost impossible in our circumstances, and you'll need something to fight with someday. Those aren't cheap weapons. Probably cost around $20,000 to commission, maybe more."
Mike whistled. "You can keep those in my attic if you want," he said. "I have a million hiding places up there."
I clenched the katana to my breast. My insides were twisting. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."
"C'mon," Mike said. "Let's hide them before Leo comes back."
I didn't walk up the stairs; I floated. Sunlight fell on me from the end of the hall in a dazzling ray.
That night, Shadow had to do schoolwork. She put on her noise-canceling headphones and leaned over her textbooks with a highlighter. I was crouched against the wall watching The Goonies, a bowl of popcorn on my knees. Dad stepped into the doorway. I didn't look at him.
"Saya," he said softly. "Come here."
"Can't it wait?" I asked.
"No. Come to the room, please."
Shadow made a face at me from her desk as Dad turned away. "I'll hold it for you," she said.
This smiling business was getting easier.
As I stepped into the room, I glanced at Dad's face. His expression was unreadable.
"What is it?" I asked, shutting the door behind me.
He sank down on the bed. He looked far more tired than I had ever seen him. "Don and Mike told me what you said about… changing plans."
"Yeah," I said, slowly. "I want to stay."
"We're very close to the NYC Foot here."
"They don't know where we are," I said. "We're safe. The trees hide us and we're out of the way, and if we need goods from the outside world, the humans can help us. Nobody will ever know."
He tapped his index fingers together. "It's only a matter of time before they find us. Raphael is only one of several possible weak points. All it takes is one slip-up—a photo, a video, a story posted on the Internet—and if the Foot are running bots that use facial recognition software, they'll have us. Remember how we were caught in Texas. There could be curious neighbors, commuters, travelers… the house is far more visible in the winter…"
"Dad!" I snapped. "Everyone isn't out to get us!"
"Of course not!" he said. "I just want to be cautious."
"No!" I said. "I'm sick and tired of being scared. I don't want to live like a dog out of the trash can and I don't want to walk all the time and I don't want to kill anyone anymore!"
He clenched his hands on his knees. "So you've made your decision?"
"Yes! I'm staying here. You can't make me go anywhere I don't want to."
"Of course I won't!" he said. "Lower your voice!"
"No!" I balled my hands into fists. "You made us run all over the country for no reason when there was a safe place here the entire time!"
"I couldn't lead the Foot here!"
"You are the Foot!" I said. "When were you going to tell me about that, huh?"
He sat back, shoulders rigid. "I have never, ever been part of the Foot." His fists started quivering. "I selected the missions that best reflected our code of honor."
"What about the private missions?" I asked. "The assassinations?"
There was a catch in his voice. "Who told you that?"
"Someone," I said, lifting my chin.
"I made some mistakes," he said, carefully enunciating each word. "Mistakes which I will not live down. But I recognize that they were... I was wrong."
"You killed them for Mom, didn't you," I said. "Some people get flowers, but ohhh, not you. You cut someone's head off. Did she put them on the mantel?"
He rose to his feet, very slowly, very deliberately, every single muscle tense and straining. I shrank down, folding up like a pocketknife. I was an idiot. I was an idiot. I was a goddamn idiot!
"Get out," he said.
I darted out of the door, but not fast enough: when he slammed it, it bit my heel, and I tumbled into Shadow's room.
Shadow was dragging a futon out of her closet. T-shirts rolled off of it in bundles.
"You wanna sleep in here tonight?" she asked, slinging it down beside her bed. "We can have a Doctor Who marathon."
I nodded, fighting down a lump in my throat.
"Are you going to be okay?" she asked. She gingerly set her fingertips on my shoulder.
I leaned into her side, and she wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
"It's gonna be okay," she said. "It's always hard in the beginning, that's all."
"I hate him," I said. "I hate him."
She didn't reply. She just squeezed my shoulders and reached for the remote.