Chapter Ten

I didn't stop running until I hit the road, and then I paused to catch my breath and look for road signs. Northampton. It wouldn't be that hard, would it? Maybe a couple of hours on foot.

I had only been walking for a few minutes when the sinking feeling hit me: once I was in Northampton, I would have no idea how to get back to the house. I hadn't paid any attention to the land, directions, or signs when we were driving—I'd been far more fixated on my fear. I couldn't even ask for directions; I didn't know what the farmhouse's address was.

For a while I thought about going back to the theater. Then I thought of the bulky employee and Rob with his broken nose, and how I'd have to ride back in the car crushed up against him and Travis. Shadow would be pissed. And the phones! I'd been recorded, and there was no telling how good the footage was or what it had captured, and no telling what it meant for the safety of everyone in Northampton.

I hunched over and kept on walking.

I kept my head down and my hands in my pockets, and I tried to keep far enough off of the road that I wouldn't attract attention. I relished the dimness between shopping centers, and every time I passed beneath a lamppost, I felt like a convict beneath a floodlight.

I had nearly made it to the dark spaces where fields and run-down houses parted Hadley and Northampton when I heard a car pull into the parking lot behind me. It crawled up beside me, crunching over the pavement, and I spared a single look. Despair welled up in my chest: it was a cop car. But I remembered what Dad had said: "Running is your last option with the police. Be polite, don't step out of line, and tell as much of the truth as you can. It'll help you keep track of the lies."

I scanned the parking lot for escape routes and felt a little ill. There was a lot of open space and it would take quite a bit of running to outpace the car and reach the nearby pasturage, which had been mowed.

The window rolled down and a white man with wobbling jowls leaned out. "Hello there!" he said. "Do you need help, honey?"

Suddenly I thought I was going to cry. "I'm lost," I said. "I need to get to Northampton."

"Northampton?" he said. "Why?"

"I live there."

"Ah. Then how on earth did you get all the way out here?"

"Friends drove me," I said.

"And what happened to your friends? Did they just leave you up here?"

"No." I swallowed. "I… fought with them."

He whistled. "Why don't you get in the car? I can take you home and we can talk to your parents."

"I'm just visiting my aunt and uncles," I said. "I don't remember what the address is."

"You don't have your phone?"

"I forgot it."

"Don't worry. We'll get you home." His face crinkled up into a bright smile. "Come on, now. Get out of the cold." He shifted a laptop over and patted the seat beside him.

So I slipped into the passenger-side door, nervously eying the dashboard full of lights and equipment and the grate between him and the back seat. He rolled up his window, and he started driving down the road. The lights of Northampton twinkled just over the trees, and the hills were undulating, amorphous blackouts against the stars, the spine of some sleeping monster.

"What's your aunt's name?" he asked. "Your uncles?"

Fresh panic swelled up in my chest. April and Casey had never told me their false names. I swallowed and tried to say something, but I felt like my tongue had swollen up. I made a choking sound and pressed my fist up into my mouth. I tasted blood.

"Is something wrong?" he asked. "You weren't hurt, were you?"

I shook my head. "I'm fine."

"I think I'm going to take you to the police department in Northampton," he said. "Maybe your family is already looking for you there."

I nodded dumbly and squeezed up against the door.

"I do hate to bother you," he said, "but can you tell me what their names are? I can call ahead and see if anyone's looking for you."

Here goes nothing.

"Winslow," I said. "April and Casey Winslow. My cousin's name is Evelyn. She writes books and… there's a movie coming out about one of them… and they live in a farmhouse outside of town…"

"Great! That's all I need," he said. "Well, this will be a piece of cake. Don't fret. We'll get you home in no time."

Soon we had slipped up into city limits, passing beneath the yellow lights and through light traffic, until we reached a two-story red-brick edifice with yellow windows, "Northampton Police Department" lit in dull ocher by the lights. I was led into a lobby and deposited into an office, a blanket wrapped around me and a bitter black coffee stuck into my hand. I was given pointed glances for the blood on my sleeves.

I curled up, closing my eyes, and tried not to think about how much I had screwed up. There was some low conversation outside. I turned my mug in circles, pressing my palms against the hot ceramic.

There was a knock on the doorframe. I glanced up. A female officer with her hair knotted into a no-nonsense bun stood there, smiling at me.

"Can I come in?" she asked.

"Sure. I mean, it's your office, right?"

"I didn't want to make you nervous." She pulled up a chair and sat in front of me, smiling kindly. "I'm Officer Jackson, and I'm going to help you find your family. You mentioned the Winslows?"

"Yes," I said, sitting up.

"Are you sure that's their last name?" she asked.

My stomach sank. "I might be wrong. I don't know them very well."

Something flashed across her face. I could have bitten my own tongue off.

"We haven't been able to locate their address," she said. "What's your name, dear?"

"Saya."

"Your full name."

"Saya Winslow," I said. My voice cracked.

"And what's your home address and phone number?"

"We just moved up here," I said. "My Dad and me. This is our new home."

"I thought you said you were visiting?"

"We were, sort of." Shit! "We were homeless for a while." Shit shit shit.

"Do you know where you stayed before this?" she asked. There was a new smile on her face, a smile I associated with unwelcome advice.

"Texas."

"Where in Texas?"

"I don't know. Amarillo. We move a lot." Oh, god, why am I still talking?

"What about your mother?" she asked.

I looked away. "She's dead."

"What's her name?"

"I don't remember."

"Ah, all right." She put a hand on mine; I stiffened. "Is everything all right at home?"

"Yes, it's great," I said, jerking away from her. "I just messed up today, that's all."

"How?"

"I went to the movies with Shadow," I said. "I shouldn't have. I should have stayed at home."

"Shadow?"

I swore in my head. "Shadow is Evelyn's friend. We went to the movies with their boyfriends and I got in an argument and punched one of them."

"And why did you punch him?"

"He touched me."

Sympathy passed over her face. "Where?"

I tapped my upper arm without looking at her.

"Why was he touching you?"

"Because he was making fun of my face."

"I'm so sorry. What was his name?"

"Robert. And the other one's name was Travis and there was a guy named Hunter." I shrugged. "That's all."

"So you tried to walk home?"

"Yeah." I tried to twist myself up into a ball. I wondered if I could cover my whole body with the blanket and when she'd go away.

"Well, thank you for talking to me, Saya." She rose to her feet. "I'm going to make some phone calls and fill out a little paperwork. We'll have you home in no time."

I must've dozed off at some point. I woke up to the sound of low talking in the lobby again. There was a gray light peeking through the slats in the windows. My stomach rumbled and my mouth was dry.

Officer Jackson knocked at the door again, and I sat up, stretching.

"Good news! Your aunt just came in," she said. "I'm so sorry that you had to wait."

"That's okay. Thanks," I said, and slipped out of the chair with the blanket wrapped tightly around me. The officer set her hand on my shoulders and guided me toward the lobby. I was already envisioning my plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of juice. What was I going to say to Shadow? I rubbed at my eyes and stifled a yawn. What was I going to say to Dad? I had probably been on YouTube for hours by now. I could imagine the headline: "Ugly Girl Punches Date!"

"Here we are!" said Officer Jackson. "Safe and sound."

I raised my eyes, yawning, and stopped dead.

She leaned against the counter, elegant and relaxed, her hair shorn in a close bob. She wore a no-nonsense black business suit with low pumps and a simple gold necklace like a simple office worker, but when she shifted I could see that her bared arms were crisscrossed with pale and shining scars. She was a shadowy cut-out against the doors.

"Saya," she said in a husky voice. "I am so glad they found you."

My knees knocked together and all the color left my face. I don't know how I kept standing.

A smile twisted across her face. "You must know," she said, "that Aunt Shadow and Uncle Casey are just outside as well, and they can't leave until we do."

The officer leaned down beside me. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

What can I say? I did not say that I didn't know her. I did not fight back. I did not turn tail down the hallway, jimmy a window, slide out, head for the woods. No. I looked the officer in the face and I said, "Yes. Thank you for everything." Then I gave her the blanket and I took my first awkward step toward my mother, then my second, then my third—every joint resisting me, my guts knotting up, until I was as tense as a pressed spring. I stepped out of the white square of morning light and into her shadow. She smelled faintly of high-end cologne.

Gently, her hands cupped my face, and she turned my chin up. She ran her fingers through my hair and brushed it back over the back of my head, then settled briefly on the topmost scute of my little shell and pinched it through my shirt as though to assure herself that it was real. Her twisted smile drifted away, and all that was left was a furrowed brow and pursed lips. Her hand settled over the back of my neck, her fingertips barely brushing my skin.

"Thank you, officers," she said in a dreamy voice. "I will send a generous donation to your organization."

Officer Jackson laughed. "Oh, that's really not nece…"

"This way, Saya," Mom said, and with only the lightest press of her index finger, pushed me outside.

I felt like I was in some kind of fever dream. Everything was unreal; the color of the sky, the vivid morning light, the sound of Mom's heels crunching officiously over the pavement. I felt like I was outside of myself—Mom's fingers tickling against the back of someone else's neck, the swing of my stride someone else's gait, the throb of my heart someone else's pulse. I brutally pinched myself. At any moment, my alarm would go off. At any moment, Dad would be shaking me awake. It would be time for katas. Then there would be breakfast…

My stomach grumbled like a dissatisfied cow and a pang of hunger shot through me. Suddenly all I could think of was Mike's face—then Don with April's old apron, the ties lengthened with shoelaces—and then Dad sitting cross-legged before the pond. I dared to look up at Mom's face, and her eyes met mine. They were flat and black. I couldn't pick out her pupils. I shrank away.

There was a nondescript black car in the parking lot. She opened the door for me. I hesitated.

"Get in," she said. "Quickly."

"What about Shadow and Casey?" I asked.

She jerked her chin toward the street and I looked up. There was the old black car we'd brought from Texas, hood still banged up to kingdom come. Casey was hunched up in the driver's seat, staring at me with the foulest expression I'd ever seen, and Shadow sat beside him, white-faced, absolutely still. Two men were leaning by each window, both with crossed arms. The one standing nearest to Shadow smiled at me and lifted the crook of his elbow; I saw the butt of a pistol.

I quickly slipped inside, and Mom followed. My new prison was a spacious back seat, charcoal gray with plum accents, and separated from the driver by a tinted window.

"Okay! You've got me!" I said. "You can let them go!"

Mom didn't regard me at all. She cracked her window and gestured with a loose wave of her hand. The two men immediately stepped away from the car. The one nearest to Casey patted the roof and leaned down to say something as he left; Casey's lips curled and his fists tensed on the wheel. And then Mom rolled the window up, and we pulled out, and the two men jumped in another black car to tail us. We hadn't reached the end of the street before two more cars pulled out in front of us—all black sedans with tinted windows, like ours. Soon we were rolling through downtown Northampton like the President's cavalcade. There were the streets Dad had talked about, the little stores all crammed together, a colorful tapestry of people passing beneath the freckled light. They were so close; I had nearly made it. They belonged to other people now.

I pressed myself up against the window, curling into as small a ball as I could. I felt like I could cry.

"Put on your seatbelt," Mom said.

I shook my head.

Her voice deepened. "I do not make requests."

I jerked the seatbelt out and slammed the connectors together so hard that I beat bruises into my palms.

Her silence was terrible. "Is this how he taught you to act?" she asked at last.

I curled up again, staring numbly out of the window.

"Ah, well. It's over now," she said. "That is all that matters."

"I don't want to go," I grumbled into my knees.

"Why not?" Her tone was loaded. I pinched my lips between my teeth and said nothing.

"Once you are back," she said at last, "you will finally understand what your father robbed from you. Your education, your comforts, your language."

"I don't want to go!" I said, whirling around. "You're forcing me! I said I'd come! I just wasn't ready yet, that's all!"

She stared at me without blinking, the morning sun blazing in behind her. "Soon you will wonder why you struggled so much for nothing."

My stomach grumbled again, painfully loud. I glared over my folded arms.

"We cannot stop yet. I'm sorry." Her voice was flat.

I pressed my face against the window. We were sweeping out of the rolling hills, through a wooded valley, over a steel bridge. The trees flashed by. I touched the lock, then pulled on it. Nothing. It didn't move. Child locks, probably. When I looked back over my shoulder, Mom was staring at me again, her arms folded.

A thought crept into my brain then, one I hadn't considered in weeks and weeks. We were alone in the back seat, and the tinted glass prevented the driver from seeing or hearing our exchange. My eye flicked to the seatbelts. Mom's was close enough to her throat… and if she struggled, I could plunge my fingers into her eyes, or my fist down her throat…

Suddenly she began to laugh, a deep throaty mocking sound.

I froze, red-faced. "What's so funny?"

"Do you really think you could overpower me?" she asked.

I opened my mouth and closed it.

"You're too small. You're too weak. Your reach is too short, so you would have to remove your own seatbelt, thus drawing attention to yourself and your intent." She crossed her legs and suddenly I was aware at how long they were, and how easily she could thrust one heel straight into my face from the other side of the car.

I shuddered.

"Yes," she said softly, eyes sparkling. "At least you are attentive."

"I've killed a man before," I snapped. "I've killed several men."

"So have I," she said. "Except mine were not undisciplined vagrants."

I bristled. "I killed a PI."

"Undisciplined PIs are not much better." She smiled at me and pressed her hand against her breast. "There is no need to be angry, Saya. I am not angry at you. I am delighted. You remind me of myself when I was your age."

"Are you going to take away my shell?" I blurted.

"Does it make you uncomfortable?"

"No. I want to keep it."

"Then keep it." She smiled at me again. Oh my god, she gave me a real smile, like the ones with Akemi.

"But you told Dad…"

The smile vanished. "Don't speak of him right now." She reached across the center seat and brushed my hair back again. "Right now it is just you and me. Would you like breakfast? What? Where?"

I started to cry. All I could think of was Donatello in his stupid apron, dramatically holding a cantaloupe aloft against the morning sun, Michelangelo singing a garbled version of the Lion King opening song behind him.

"Shhh. No." She unbuckled her seatbelt and slipped beside me, gently pressing my head against her shoulder. She had hard arms and a hard side, and when she leaned against me, an obscured sheath dug into my hip.

I shrank away. "This wasn't supposed to happen!" I said. "How did you even find me?"

"We've known about your farm for years."

My mouth fell open.

"Don't touch my family," I said in a strangled voice. "If you hurt them, I'll never forgive you."

"My dear, I have already forgotten that they exist," she said. "And so should you."

We only stopped for food once we had passed the state line. Mom cracked the window only long enough to give our order at a drive-through. I wolfed down my cheeseburger. For the first time, I saw disapproval on her face.

"Did he teach you no manners?" she asked.

"I'm hungry," I said through a mouthful of mashed bread.

"Don't talk with your mouth full. Don't take such big bites." She dabbed at my face with a napkin.

I swallowed with effort. "But I'm hungry!"

Anger flashed across her face. "No one is going to take it from you. Eat slowly."

I pointedly crammed a handful of French fries into my face, cheeks bulging like a hamster's, and glared at her. I regretted this immediately. She popped me right in the throat with the edge of her hand. Gagging, I spat French fries all over my lap.

"Do not ever do that again." Her voice was cold. "One at a time. Slowly. Savor them."

Coughing, I leaned away. When I reached gingerly down for the half-chewed food on my lap, she batted my hand away and scooped the remnants into the paper bag.

"One by one," she said.

"But they're still goo…"

"You are not a stray dog," she snapped. "I will buy you more."

I wish I could have stopped eating just to spite her. But god, I was so hungry. I slowly ate each French fry, one at a time, tears in my eyes. The stench of fast food lingered in the cab for an inordinately long time, and my throat throbbed for hours afterward.

Mom cracked the window only long enough to give the driver an address. I caught a glimpse of a small Japanese man as wrinkled as a walnut. He caught my eye without expression. I felt rather than saw his disdain.

Sometime around 10 AM, we broke through a thick gauntlet of trees and passed the first buildings. It was not at all the towering skyline I had envisioned, but rather a jumble of mundane office buildings and stores. I might have thought it was just another town if it hadn't been for an overabundance of yellow cabs and one-way streets.

Then the driver turned, and the squat office buildings gave way to shining towers of steel and glass. They shot into the sky on either side, sinking the streets into a false twilight. The sky was a thin pale rectangle ahead of us, and there was no horizon, not even the suggestion of one—there was always a car in front of us, or the corner of a building, or a mass of people. Everything was concrete and pavement, and when trees appeared, they seemed frail and alien, stranded travelers set adrift in a concrete sea. A cacophony of human beings swarmed down the sidewalks, like ants crawling around the feet of giants. I looked up exactly once: the skyscrapers loomed overhead like many-eyed guardians, dizzyingly vast. My throat tightened, my head spun. I buried my face in my knees.

"Are you sick?" asked Mom.

I shook my head no.

After about an hour of stop and go traffic, our car rolled to a stop, and the doors unlocked with a click.

I seized the handle and flung the door open, kicking out of the seatbelt. For a delicious moment, my foot hit the pavement, and there was nothing that could hold me back. And then Mom's hand clamped around my arm like a vise and she jerked me back against the car.

"Do not run," she said in my ear.

A cacophony of sound greeted us as we stepped onto the street: honking, hundreds of people talking, the screech of tires, far-off music. The stink of vehicles and human filth and salty air filled my nostrils. I squeezed my eyes shut and clapped my free hand over my ear. Mom pushed it down.

"Do not be dramatic," she said.

One of the cars that had been tailing us stopped not far behind, and two women in pastel dresses and ballet flats stepped out, faces wrinkled with laughter. For a second I was baffled. Then one of them pushed her hair out of her eyes and idly scanned the street. Only briefly did her gaze settle on us. She had eyes like a shark. Just down the street, another black car stopped and I saw two men in jeans and t-shirts hop out, one of them carrying a package. There was a vicious scar across his face, and his nose was crooked.

Mom pushed me. "Go on."

"But who…"

"Elites. There is nothing to fear." She rose to her full height and pushed me toward a brownstone shop with brightly lit windows. Little mannequins not much bigger than I was pranced and posed in the windows, clothed in pleated denim dresses and pastel-colored t-shirts and cocked hats.

"Wait!" I said. "Where are we going?"

"To find you acceptable clothes." She pushed me through the door.

I bristled like a bathed cat. Pop music blared from the speakers, and everything was pink and cream. Pictures of perfect white girl-children posing on freshly painted porches hung on the walls beside sales posters. One girl was holding a glass of lemonade, laughing up at a woman with curly hair. Something twinged in my gut, and I looked away.

I met the eyes of an employee, a woman arranging dresses on a rack. She twitched at first, and then a dark look passed over her face. I dropped my eyes to my feet, but I heard someone whisper loudly: "Ugh. People like that need to stay at home."

My face blazed, and I hunched my shoulders. But Mom did not look left or right. She strode up to the jeans section, pushing me ahead of her.

"Stand up straight," she said, pushing my chin up. "Do not shuffle."

"But…"

"You are a daughter of the Foot, whose power goes back a thousand generations. These?" She jerked her chin at the employees tittering at the register. "These will grub in the mud until they die. Chin up."

So I thrust my chin up and bit my lips so they wouldn't shiver.

"Stop thinking about them," Mom said softly. "Does their approval give you anything? Can they provide you with an invaluable or unique service?"

"N-no."

"Then think on the task at hand. That is the only important thing. Now." She swung me around by the shoulders in front of a rack of clothes. "You may choose anything you like, taste permitting."

"Taste…?"

"You will not dress like a homeless street urchin. You will not show skin like a cheap whore."

"Mom!" I said. My voice came out much louder than I expected, and the store grew silent.

"I don't want to show skin," I hissed. "I want to do the opposite of that."

Mom cleared her throat. "Very good."

We dug into the racks. Mom held shirts and jeans and skirts up against my body, pursed her lips. Sometimes her hand settled on my hidden shell as though to feel the contours.

"What size are you?" she asked.

Before I could answer, someone cleared their throat. When we turned, it was to see one of the employees, a toothy smile on her face. The two other workers had gathered not far away, diligently folding an already immaculate pile of clothes.

"Can I help you?" she asked Mom. She didn't even look at me.

"I need to dress this girl in something acceptable," Mom said. "We are doing as well as can be expected. Where are the fitting rooms?"

The employee grimaced at me with mock concern. "She… doesn't have anything transmittable, does she?"

I glared at her beneath lowered brows.

"I will ignore your blatant disrespect only one time," said Mom. "Where are your fitting rooms?"

"We really can't let her put anything on if she'll make the other customers sick," said the employee, shrugging. "It's a matter of public health."

"Where is your manager?" Mom asked softly.

"I am the manager, ma'am." She shrugged. "I'm sorry. She looks like she has a skin dise…"

I wheeled on her and I spat on her leg.

She screeched as though I'd stabbed her and staggered out of her heels. The employees squealed together, and a few watching customers chattered nervously. Mom's hand fell on my shoulder. I froze, shoulders rigid, waiting for her nails to dig into my neck.

Instead, she threw her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed. She lifted the clothes she was holding and dropped them into a pastel pile on the floor, and swaggered as she pushed me out of the door.

We wandered through more clothing stores than I could count. At first I was overwhelmed by the colors and sounds and smells, so much so that I could only hear every third word that Mom said. There were more cold words, cold eyes, snickering and tittering, but they were only background sound. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

The first changing room we went to, I forgot that Mom hadn't seen my shell until I pulled off my shirt. Then she took a deep breath and turned me in a circle.

"What happened here?" she said, and rubbed her thumb on one of my scutes. I looked over my shoulder into the mirror.

"Baseball bat," I said.

She hissed through her teeth, checking each scute with officious fingers. I twitched.

"Stop!" I said. "I'm okay. It's armor. I had a bruise for like, a week."

She muttered in Japanese and turned me around again. I glowered up at her.

"I'm okay. It was just once. We didn't get into fights on purpose."

"And what is this?" she said, running a finger along a dulled scar on my plastron.

"I tripped and fell on a railroad tie," I said. "We weren't even fighting that time. I was just clumsy. It's okay."

"It is not okay."

I grabbed her hand and turned her arm over. "Then what about this?" I asked, baring one of the long white scars.

Her arm tensed; corded muscle shifted under her skin. "That is business, which you are not old enough to know." She grabbed a shirt off of the bench. "Now put this on."

We bought five whole bags at that store—socks and underwear and pants and shirts and dresses. Mom made me put on one of the new outfits—a pair of capris with rhinestones on the pockets, a floral pink shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons. When we checked out, she pinched April's windbreaker and Shadow's hand-me-down pants between thumb and forefinger, then offered them to the employee.

"Will you throw these away?" she asked.

I watched them go in the trash with a pang in my chest.

Then she pushed me outside and tossed the bags into the backseat of a waiting black car, offering a curt set of instructions in Japanese; and then we marched to another store.

"But don't we have enough clothes now?" I asked.

She looked me over and frowned. "No."

We filled three more bags. I wasn't even sure if I liked half of what I pointed out. I'd never really thought about clothes before, only in terms of whether or not they fit or hid my shell. When I looked in the mirror at my nice-fitting new jeans and clean pink shirt, I felt odd and detached, like I was looking at an entirely different person. I wasn't sure that I liked her face: she looked sullen and uncertain.

When my stomach grumbled, we settled down against the back wall of a little café and ate sandwiches and salads. I was careful to only take one bite at a time and chew with my mouth closed. She didn't seem to notice, instead looking off into the distance at something only she could see.

More stores, more insipid music, more employees who either wouldn't look at me or looked too long, more flashes of Mom's shiny black credit card. In the furniture store, we bought a bed, a mattress, a nightstand, a desk, a dresser. Home décor: lamps, a clock, bedsheets, pillows. Electronic store: a bunch of movies, TV, DVD player, a smartphone, a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, all the latest products without even checking the prices. Then there were tennis shoes, ballet flats, a pair of stuffy patent leather Mary Janes, a host of socks (some with lace, some ankle-high athletics, some garish pairs with goofy frog faces that I pointed at only to test Mom's limits). My old tennis shoes with the holes in the soles—my cozy old tree-climbing pair—were casually flung into the trash. I bit my knuckles. Mom batted my hand out of my mouth.

There was only one thing that I really wanted. We had walked into a hole in the wall full of jewelry, hats with cat ears, beaded headbands, light summer scarves—a preteen girl store of some kind. A handful of hairclips shaped like butterflies caught my eye. I gingerly touched them, turning them over so the light caught the colors, then slowly dropped my hands.

"Do you like them?" Mom asked.

"Yeah, but my hair…"

"Not 'yeah,' 'yes,'" she said. "Get them."

"But Mom, my hair is too thin!" I said. "It won't work."

But she threw them in with the belts and headbands and hats and shooed me into the waiting car. One quick search on her phone and set of instructions to the driver, and we pulled up to a little shop with a window full of disembodied, faceless heads. It took me a minute before I realized what I was looking at.

"Wigs," I whispered.

She didn't have to push me into this store; I sprinted ahead of her. I gaped around me: every style, every color, every consistency, in human hair and artificial fiber. When the shopkeeper brought down a little wig that fit me perfectly, a dark brown affair that hugged my face just right, I blushed and ran my fingers through the fibers with reverential fingers. A totally different person stared back at me from the mirror. She wasn't pretty, no, I couldn't think that, not even then. But she made sense all of a sudden. She had an actual face. She looked like a human being.

The shopkeeper squeezed my shoulders.

"Oh, darling," he said, "you look beautiful."

By the time the sun disappeared behind the skyscrapers, I couldn't recognize myself. I stretched out in the back seat of the car with my new wig on, a pink butterfly clip just above my ear. I couldn't stop staring at my reflection, this stranger with the matching shirt and pants and the pretty white shoes. Every now and then I reached up and tugged at my hair.

We stopped in a gated parking garage, and Mom hustled me out, her hand on my back.

"Shouldn't we get our packages?" I asked.

"Someone will bring them up. Come, now." She pushed me toward a glass elevator, slipped a card into a slot and pressed a button. The elevator lifted off with a soft hum.

"Where are the other floor buttons?" I asked.

"This is a private elevator," she said, and leaned back. "It leads to my apartment."

My eyes bulged. "Is it a penthouse apartment?"

She smiled indulgently at me. "Yes. It is a penthouse apartment."

At that moment, the elevator broke out of the parking garage roof. I pressed my face against the glass and watched the city fall away beneath me. It stretched as far as the eye could see, a Babylon of jeweled lights and glittering windows. The Milky Way did not bare its face here; the sky was a starless haze. Instead, it seemed as though all the stars had lit on the earth. Like, I realized, I had switched places somehow: left the dark hollows of Northampton, where the stars were a faraway rumor, and flown up to the sky to live upside-down.

Mom set her hand on my back, and said nothing.

"What are we doing tomorrow?" I asked.

"A doctor's visit," she said. "You must have a full checkup."

I shuddered and shook my head.

Her eyes flashed. "No one will hurt you there."

"Is it the Bunker?" I asked.

"It is the Bunker." Her voice was sharp.

"I'm not going."

"You do not have a choice."

"I don't have to stay," I hissed. "I can leave anytime."

"And I will find you." She smiled.

My heart went cold, and I turned back to the skyscape. Her reflection towered over me, towered over the faraway blink of the Empire State Building. The girl in the reflection looked down at her hands and tried to think of murder and couldn't.

"Your father has lied to you," she said at last. "The Bunker is not a wicked place. In fact, it is the only place where you will find a doctor who will know how to treat you."

"I'm healthy."

"You're too small for your age. You may be malnourished. There may be hormonal imbalances." She pinched at my arms. "Too skinny."

The elevator shivered to a stop, and its doors drifted open. We stepped into an antechamber where four black-clad men stood, their hands relaxing on the hilts of their katana. They inclined their heads as we passed. Mom nodded to them and pushed me ahead of her.

She slipped her keycard into the door, and we stepped into another foyer, this one with a recess in the floor. I could hear the faint hum of an air conditioner, a refrigerator. There were a pair of men's tennis shoes sitting at the bottom of the step, and house slippers sitting on top of it.

Suddenly a hunched little Japanese woman swept around the corner, bowing repeatedly, saying something rapidly in a concerned tone. Mom nodded back and then they had a full conversation right there in front of me while I stood there and felt increasingly stupid. My eyes flashed from the tennis shoes to the kitchen just beyond. The shifting colored lights of a television flashed on the ceiling in what must have been a living room.

"Saya," said Mom suddenly, "this is Fujita-san, our housekeeper. She's been hard at work preparing your room."

"Oh," I said. "Uh… arigatou."

"Arigatou gozaimasu," Mom said, carefully enunciating.

I slurred it out and grimaced. But Ms. Fujita only smiled and bowed.

"Don't worry. You'll learn it soon enough." Mom jerked her chin at the recess in the floor. "Take off your shoes."

"Take off my… why?"

"This is the genkan," she said. "Take off your shoes and leave them here. Do not wear them in the apartment."

"What? Why?"

She smiled, but when she spoke, her voice was bitter. "Americans may drag their dirty feet all over their houses, but we do not have to."

Indignation surged up in my chest, but I swallowed it.

"Oh," I said, and kicked off my new tennis shoes.

"Kirei," Ms. Fujita said, smiling, gesturing at my shoes.

"She told you that your shoes were pretty."

"Arigatou gozaimasu," I said, or something like it.

"Straighten them," Mom said. "Turn them around; then you can just step into them when you leave. Good. Ah, house slippers… I knew I was forgetting something. Your socks will do for now." She put on the slippers and pulled me over the step. Ms. Fujita tailed us.

I had never seen an apartment so clean in my entire life. The kitchen looked like a show room, every cabinet with an untarnished brass knob, the sink shiny enough to see my reflection in, everything organized by size and brand and color, everything sterile from the floor to the picture frames on the wall. Just ahead was what I supposed was the living room—a room with sofas and a spotless white carpet. Just looking at it made me itch.

A sullen face rose above the edge of the sofa, phone casting a ghostly light against the jut of his chin. A boy. He was probably in his early teens, with close-cropped hair and a surly expression. His eyes narrowed.

"Who are you?" he said.

Mom flipped the light on. We stared at each other in horrified fascination.

"Takeru, this is Saya." Mom looked at me. "Your sister."

"My…" He threw himself to his feet. "You mean it's true? You really…" His eyes locked on mine. "Oh my god. She looks just like the pictures." He uttered something in Japanese, low and strained.

Mom said a word so sharp that he winced and sat down.

"I'm glad to see you, too," I grumbled.

"Yeah, well. Just don't talk to me," Takeru said.

"Fine," I said.

Mom hissed under her breath. "You will not argue." She turned her hard eyes on Takeru's, and he looked away.

Ms. Fujita bowed and padded off down the hall.

"You would have grown up with her, had circumstances been different," Mom said.

He shrugged. "But I didn't."

"It's late." Mom jerked her chin toward the hallway. "Get to bed."

He sullenly turned off the TV and stormed down the hallway, slamming his door.

"He will need time," Mom said.

I noted the tone in her voice, because I realized it was the sound she made when she lied.

She led me into the hallway, adjusting decor as she walked, and then into a little bedroom across from Takeru's. Ms. Fujita was there, straightening out my comforter. All of my furniture had been assembled, the lamp and clock were on, the computers were set up on the desk. My closet doors hung open, and all of my new clothes hung there, neatly arranged with the tags removed. Everything smelled fresh and untested: showroom floors, stores, the chemical stink of treated leather and new plastic. I shuffled to the window and stared out. The whole city, like an endless maze, stretching and stretching and stretching into infinity…

"Breakfast is at eight," Mom said.

"Oh."

"After that, I will take you to the doctor. And after that, we will meet with tutors to ascertain your education level and we will form a lesson plan. I expect you are behind." She paused. "You will need a shower."

"Where's that?"

"I'll show you," she said.

The apartment was even bigger than the farmhouse. Mom's room was at the end of the hallway, with a bed big enough for four people to sleep in. There was a dining room, a huge library, a tatami-mat room, and a little exercise room with a stand of weights. The living room and kitchen were decorated with a few glass cases of fine pottery, dolls, and calligraphy. Both the tile and the carpet was a brilliant white. It was the kind of place you didn't want to raise your voice in, with chairs you didn't want to sit in, and a carpet you didn't want to walk on… like those houses the ancients used to build for the spirits.

The only place I did not get a good glimpse of was the tatami-mat room. There was a huge cabinet in it with the doors shut, and what looked like a small shrine at eye level with a pair of photographs sitting on it; but then Mom shut the door and told me to move on.

My favorite part was the bathroom. Each room had its own. The entire room was a shower, with a rough grid surface to stand on, and the bathtub was so deep that I could practically swim laps in it. I wondered as I scrubbed at my shell with a bath brush: had Dad ever been here? And if he had, how could he have missed that Karai had a son?

When I slipped out, padding barefoot into my new room, Takeru was waiting for me in the hall. Under the dim yellow light, his skin looked sallow, translucent.

I glowered at him from beside my bed. "You got a problem?"

"Yes. The fact you're even alive." His eye flashed to the end of the hall, where Mom had disappeared into her room. "Is it true? Your father is a turtle-man?"

I pulled my bathrobe down, exposing the jointed plates on my chest. "What do you think?"

He hissed through his teeth and looked away, over his shoulder. "No."

"Yeah, well, I didn't ask for you, either."

"Just don't act like you know me." His brows knotted up, he closed his eyes. "Don't talk to my friends. Don't… don't do anything public, for the love of god."

"I do whatever I want," I said. "And I'm not staying. I'm leaving."

He paused. "You are?"

"Yeah, the minute she blinks."

"It's no use. She'll catch you." He sucked on his bottom lip, staring at me thoughtfully.

"You mean you've tried?"

"Yeah, lots of times. You'll think you covered your bases, but…" He glanced up at her doorway. "Come with me."

He turned into his bedroom and held the door open. I dropped my dirty clothes next to my door and crept in after him, tensed and scanning everything.

It was a room that could have been anyone's. He had the same array of electronics that I did, plus posters of Bruce Lee and rock bands, and a shelf full of manga and anime. Unlike Shadow's room, it was clean; but books were set at odd angles or halfway pulled out, and there were a couple of socks on the floor, scuffs on the door, a slightly wrinkled bed sheet. To the untrained eye, reasonable imperfection. To the clever one, blatant rebellion.

He shut the door after him and dropped onto his bed, then gestured at his chair.

"So?" I sat down.

"So you want to get out?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He lifted his head. "Then take me with you."

I laughed. "If you don't like turtle-men, you won't like where I'm going."

"I didn't mean I'd go with you everywhere. I just need to get away from her."

"So she's like this all of the time?"

"You have no idea." He crammed his fist into the palm of his hand. There was a tense silence.

"Did… you grow up in Japan?" I asked.

"Only when I was really small. She brought me back up when I was five or so. I barely even remember the place." He was really focused on his hands, cracking his knuckles, twisting his fingers.

"So… who's your father?"

"An Elite. It's why she hates me." He glared up at the ceiling. "I had to find it out for myself, too. She wouldn't tell me at all."

"But how'd…"

"I paid a hacker to crack her computer," he said. "Turns out my father was one of five Elites who tried to kill her in this failed coup or something." His eyes were miserable. "Your… your dad was there. Whatever he is. And he's the only reason she's alive."

I sat up straight, clenching the arms of the chair.

Takeru was still looking at his knees. "I talked to a lot of people who knew my father, and it turns out that he was this easygoing, friendly guy, you know? Fantastic ninja, one of the best martial artists in the country, maybe even the world. He wanted to see me, and she wouldn't let him. He only joined the coup so he could get me back. So she killed him." He glared up at me.

"Two against five Elites?" I asked. "I don't believe it."

"The freak sniffed out the plot and tailed her on a mission, then got three of them from behind. So it ended up being a fair fight, I guess. Who knows." He knotted his fingers again. "Maybe your father killed mine. She probably liked that."

"Ugh." I squirmed in the chair. "Don't talk like that."

"I wanted to kill her for a long time." He opened his hands. "But I'm not good enough."

"Me neither." I chewed on my forefinger. "Why would she do this?"

"I don't know. Why would she sleep with a creepy mutant freak?"

"He's not creepy."

"Maybe only 'cause you're creepy."

"Maybe." I leaned back against the chair. "I don't care. Whatever happened, I'd rather be with Dad."

"Maybe he's not there anymore," he said, squeezing his hands into a fist.

Suddenly I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. The memory from that morning of the Elite slapping the top of the black car, the abject terror on Shadow's face.

"But… Mom gave her word."

"She's Foot, stupid." He was biting the insides of his cheeks. "She's probably searching your old hiding place right now with a whole squad of ninjas."

"They can't be dead," I snapped. "My uncles are great ninjas. Plus, if she did that I would never forgive her."

"You think she cares about that?" he asked.

I bit down on my knuckles and rocked back and forth.

"You mental?" he asked.

"No, I'm thinking," I snapped.

"This was a mistake." He stood up. "Get out."

I threw myself to my feet and shoved his chair back. "Fine with me."

I stalked into my room, slammed the door, and locked it. When I turned to look out of the window, I began to itch all over. A hollow terror began in the pit of my stomach. If I had been back at Northampton, I would have been able to travel the Milky Way. Now my only astral companion was the moon, a mere sickle in the sky.

I pressed my nose against the glass and looked my reflection in the face. She looked worried. After a moment's consideration, I rolled back on my bed, and lifted my new wig off of its stand, then put it on. When I looked back at my reflection, the new me looked back with a fierce frown.

"You can leave at any time," I told her. "All you have to do is walk back to Northampton. You can check all of the farm roads until you figure out which house is which. You have plenty of time, after all."

My reflection stared back at the full closet, the pile of electronics, the plush bed, the locked door… the beautiful wig, the glittery butterfly clip. Then the tiny room. The tiny, tiny room, the tiny, tiny apartment, and outside, vast alien spaces, sheer drops, a stinking, whistling wind: no trees, no horizons, only a mewed manmade maze. Suddenly a fire flared up in my chest and I felt like I could have taken all the walls down myself.

I thought of the laughter in the living room, the family crunched together around the dinner table, April leaning back in the porch swing with her legs kicked back, the house in all its easygoing glory: leaking, stretched thin, chipped paint, stained floors. Suddenly it all seemed very far away. Worse than that, it felt like a fiction.

"You can leave at any time," I told my reflection.

She narrowed her eyes and nodded.