Chapter Nineteen
I don't remember much of that car ride. A lot of stop-and-go traffic, mostly. The rocking motion of the car every time it stopped and the way it made my whole body ache. The throb of someone's bass, a shout, a honk. The sun burning a yellow square on my legs. The comforting musk of my family, and Dad's hands stinking of lotion and katana oil.
When I opened my eyes, I could only see the curve of Dad's arm. It was an image of Don that I committed to memory: a gap-toothed grin as he leaned back in his seat, one arm relaxed on the window while he steered with the other. He didn't look at me, but I felt like he was keenly aware of me, like I was a variable in an equation that he had to track. I was a little afraid of him in that moment. There was something dangerously impersonal about him.
I also had an odd sensation, an unpleasant one, that there was someone in the backseat. It felt like the rat in the yukata. I didn't look.
Neither Dad nor Donatello said much. I think at one point Donatello said I should be laid on the back seat, but I clenched my fingers into Dad's neck and buried my face into his shoulder. They didn't push me. I felt hot tears on the back of my head. It hurt like hell, but I didn't complain. Dad's chin pressed into my forehead and his throat cupped my cheek. He was murmuring something meaningless, sometimes to me, sometimes to himself. At some point he lifted a water bottle to my lips.
I tried to keep alert, but it was impossible. I could no longer process the world around me. It melted into a meaningless haze of colors and light and sound, all stabbed through with the unending pain. The only way I can describe it is as a passive buzzing agony that ran through every cell. I couldn't quite pinpoint where the pain started and ended; the ache was just always there. I could put it away sometimes, even forget it for a while. But then I would move incorrectly and it flashed up and I would just wish I could die. It wasn't even a matter of trusting in my family anymore; I had transformed into a creature of the present with no capacity for a past or a future. I could have faced a whole squad of Elites then and there and felt nothing but a world-weary inconvenience.
I don't remember the part where we parked, but I remember the cool shadows, the tickle of dust, the stink of tomcats. Metal clanged. A door? The rattle of chains, a complaining hinge? I was too tired to open my eyes and look.
"Careful," Don said, although I didn't know what for.
An unbelievable stench swallowed us up in a cloud. I gagged into Dad's chest and he stuffed a balled-up rag up against my nostrils. Now I smelled the tang of my own blood. My stomach clenched.
"Breathe through your mouth," he whispered.
This didn't help very much. The stink was so thick that I could taste it.
I recalled a wall of slimy bricks lit up in amber by a flashlight and stalactites of slime. I knocked against a wall with my bad leg and cried out, and Dad whispered worriedly to me as his thumb stroked circles on my cheek. More darkness, the stench ebbing as we walked. Doors opening, doors shutting. So many doors.
Then there was the dim yellow light. Pressure on my ears, like I had gone underwater. There was an alien presence at our left. I felt a rough finger on my cheek, a voice so low and deep that I only heard it in my mind.
"Lay her down here," said Don, his voice indistinct.
Dad's grip tightened around me.
"I said to lay her down, Leo. Face down."
He grudgingly lowered me. A bright white lamp flicked on and the weird, unearthly pressure vanished. With its banishment came lucidity and a little burst of energy. I shifted uncomfortably beneath it and pressed my face into a cold metal table that stank of bleach. I was lying on plastic and what I guessed was a cotton towel.
"Can you hear me, Saya?" Don asked.
"Yeah," I said into the table. My voice sounded small, even to me.
"Let me tell you what I'm about to do," Don said in a pleasant voice. There was a familiar squeaky rustle as he donned gloves. "We're going to wash you down. That means we're going to take your clothes off. Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're going to need stitches around your scalp," he said. "And depending on the damage, I might have to shave some hair off."
"No," I grumbled.
Dad's laughter came out like a bark.
"I'm not giving you choices, kid," Don said.
"But I don't wanna."
He tsked. "Thems the breaks," he said.
"Can we use the shots?" I asked.
"The what?" Don asked.
"The black case. The shots. It's Mom's miracle serum."
"Oh?" Don asked softly.
"She said it would help me heal. I've already had one."
Don laughed. "Well. Let's take care of preliminaries before using the magic potions. Ready or not, this shirt is coming off."
The neck of my shirt lifted and Don slipped a pair of heavy shears up against my neck. The metal was so cold that it hurt. When Don snipped and lifted the shirt away, the fabric stuck to my arms, but most especially to my back. I cringed when it tugged at my shell. Something was loose. Something felt wrong. I heard Dad's sharp intake of breath.
"We're gonna remove the clothes carefully, okay?" Don said in a chipper voice. "Shell looks broken and I don't want to miss any pieces."
"Broken?" I asked. My voice was thick and slurred.
"Yep," Don said. "It looks like the inclusion on a star sapphire."
I didn't know what he was talking about, but I thought of Raphael and laughed a little. It hurt.
"All I can say is that it's a good thing you kept your shell." Don patted the back of my neck. "Keep still. We're going to fix you."
"Don't worry. Don has done this countless times," Dad said gently. I couldn't tell whether he was saying it for my sake or for his own.
My jeans came off next, gently tugged off and thrown on the floor. Dad's hands settled on my injured knee first. I yelped and rose halfway from the table. Don pushed me back down.
"Don't!" I said.
"Stop it, Saya," Don said. "Leo. Stop making faces and get the bucket." A pause. "The bucket, Leo!"
Then came the warm water. Dad gently laved me from the waist down with a sponge. Don washed down my scalp and shoulders. My knee pulsed with a second heartbeat, shot through with arrhythmic twinges, like my nerves had started a jazz band down in my tendons. Every time Dad had to touch it, I yelped.
"How much blood can one little girl have?" Don asked.
"Donatello," Dad said.
"I'm asking an honest question," Don said.
"It's not all mine," I said into the towel.
Dad and Don started laughing in earnest.
"That's my girl," Dad said, patting my thigh.
I passed in and out of consciousness. They flushed out my wounds and applied salves. Don washed down my scalp and shaved off the last of my hair. I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn't have to look at it go. Then they plucked out all of the glass they could find. There was an inordinate amount in my shoulders. Don and Dad went over me with a fine tooth comb, cleaning me down, pointing out wounds deep enough for sutures. Then they brought out the needles. The actual stitches didn't bother me as much as I thought they would. They just took forever, and I cried quietly when the pain was too much.
"You're so strong," said Dad kindly as they worked. "It's okay to cry. Don't worry. You're going to be just fine."
Don snorted and flicked a bit of glass down into a bowl beside him.
Then Don began to flush the crack in my shell out with something warm that stung. I curled my fingers into my palms and this time a whine slipped out of my throat. I hated making the sound, but there was no way to stop it. Feeling anything on that part of me set me on edge, an ice-cream-headache kind of edge. It was a raw, deep, wrong pain, because nerves were firing off that never should have been touched.
Dad's voice rose. There was an edge to it.
"We're making sure no bad germs are in here," Dad said as pink-tinged liquid dribbled off of the lips of my shell and pooled on the floor. "We're going to seal this up now. Nothing is broken underneath and that's the important part."
How do you know? I wanted to ask. But it was taking everything I had just to hold back tears.
So it was that my wounds were cleaned, the shards of my shell fit back together like the pieces of a puzzle, and epoxy poured into the cracks. Don fitted a rudimentary cast fashioned of duct tape and fiberglass across my back. Dad's soft, working dialogue formed a droning backdrop. At some point, the exhaustion and pain overwhelmed me, and against my will, my eyelids sank shut. I was aware of sounds and light shifting away, like I was circling a drain, sinking down into darkness, until the only thing I could hear was the rustle of Don's coat, and then nothing at all.
I was walking between the trees in Northampton. Bright curtains of light streamed through the canopy, warm and liquid. Everything was quiet, but I didn't feel frightened. It was the kind of quiet you feel on a snowy day, the kind of quiet you feel underneath a blanket. I was wandering down a deer path between the trees, dragging my fingers against the trunks. I felt so peaceful. Everything was so right.
I don't know how long I wandered. It was always easy going, just a slow and thoughtless ramble. I was never afraid of becoming lost or falling or being hungry or thirsty. Even the plants were harmless. Brambles did not scrape me and I never stumbled. A butterfly bobbed by and I felt the breeze of its wings on my arm.
The realization came to me slowly: I had made it. Nobody could take it away from me. I was back in Northampton forever.
The farm was mine.
When I woke up, I felt like I was drifting up out of a cloud with the warmth and weight of an embrace. At first I was disoriented. I was not hiking through a sylvan wonderland, but lying on my chest. My eyes and body were unpleasantly heavy. I clenched my fingers into fists, and my fingernails scraped over the rough cotton of an old bedsheet. Beneath me was a futon, and a blanket had been drawn up around my neck.
The outside world crept in despite my best efforts. The sounds were faint—the rhythmic drip of water, the distant rumble of traffic, and a motor humming somewhere. The air was musty and cool, like a cave; the air was close, thick, sluggish, and stank of dust and disuse. Far, far away was the spoor of rats.
Someone was breathing softly beside me.
I cracked my eyes open reluctantly. The room I lay in was dark with vaulted ceilings. Something about it was more like a jail cell or a storage room than a bedroom; there were no windows, only cracked plaster walls and a scarred cement floor. The room had been cleaned and smelled of bleach, but all it contained was a fan, my futon, a yellow LED lamp, and a beat-up cooler. Sitting beside me on a broken recliner was Dad, his face crushed into the palm of his hand and a rough cotton blanket thrown over his knees. I could see scuffs on the floor where he had dragged the chair from another room.
I shifted, testing my joints. My knee was in a brace and I felt hot all over. I slowly rolled over, groaning. That's when I realized I couldn't feel any pain.
Astonished, I sat up slowly. My arms pushed me up without complaint; they were only a little stiff. Not the kind of painful stiffness from a hard workout, either, but the mild stiffness from being in one position too long. I rolled to a seated position and slowly stretched out my legs. A few careful stretches, and I'd shaken out the catches in my knees. Then I tapped the heels of my feet on the floor. It was cool, comfortable, a little granular in places. I glanced across my skin; there were pink puckers where they had dug out the glass and pale scallops across my right forearm where I had been stabbed. I reached around my waist and groped at my shell. I could just barely feel the smooth surface of the resin filling.
I stood, joints popping. An oversized nightgown grazed the tops of my feet. Although I felt light-headed and light-bodied, I also felt no pain. Most importantly, my right leg did not collapse beneath me.
My eyes flew to my dad. He still breathed softly in his chair. There were bags under his eyes and his forehead was crinkled up. He appeared heavier and healthier than I had seen him last—thicker-armed, plumper cheeks. His skin was no longer pale and patchy, but a sun-burnished green. His mouth was slightly open and a string of drool hung from the edge of his palm.
"Dad?" I whispered.
His eyes moved beneath his lids and his breath hitched for a moment. Then he began evenly breathing again.
My gaze fell to his side. My blades leaned against his chair. His own weapons lay across his lap, a little white cell phone resting on the sheaths. A bright orange cleaning cloth lay crumpled on its screen.
I didn't know how I felt, looking at him. I didn't feel the violent upwelling of love I had felt in the street. Instead, I felt exhausted. I needed to leave the room. I needed a dark space to curl up and gather my wits and think, somewhere far from Dad and Mom and anything that reminded me of them. At the same time, I was afraid of being alone.
For a while I stood there looking at him, and I didn't think at all. I just was.
I shook myself out of my stupor. First things first. I needed to know what time it was, and I needed to know how Takeru and my squad were doing.
I reached for my pocket and my hand clutched on the nightgown. I whirled around to look at the futon. The memory hit me suddenly. I didn't have my phone. Takeru had it. Panic wheeled through me.
Takeru.
Just as quickly as it had arrived, the panic sank away. Stillness replaced it, and suddenly I felt very sad.
I limped to Dad's side and gently extracted the phone from his lap. If he hadn't been so tired, this would have probably woken him up. All he did was shift a little and hold his breath.
I swiped. As I expected, password protected, and if I knew my father, it would be 18 characters long and completely randomized. What I hadn't expected was that the picture behind the locked screen was one of me at Northampton. I was squatting at the edge of the pond with a stick, drawing in the mud, wearing that oversized t-shirt and an enormous pair of black gym shorts. I didn't remember the picture being taken. I thought I looked so much smaller in that image, little stick arms and little stick legs. I looked down at my arms. They curved with muscle. I had biceps and hips. Even my color had changed. I was brown as a nut in the photo. Now I was a creamy color from being kept inside the apartment all day. My paleness hid my scars, although my freckles stood out starkly.
The home screen said it was three in the morning, and the date told me that I had been out for at least a day and a half. There were a few notifications on the front screen. Thirty-three missed calls, it said. I blinked. The missed calls were from a name written in kanji.
I leaned in and squinted. It couldn't be.
And then, to my shock, the phone started to vibrate. Incoming call. The kanji popped up in its full-sized glory beneath a number with the Japanese country code.
My mouth fell open.
"Watanabe," it said. That was all. No first name.
I was reminded of when Dad told me that the whole family spoke Japanese as young children, but how they'd dropped it one by one as they'd aged. Most of them had found American culture more appealing and immediate than the dusty memories of their father. It was only Dad who had continued his studies in it, speaking routinely to his father in the tongue and learning the alphabets and kanji. I wondered if this name being in kanji was just a way for him to hide something. I glanced at him with narrowed eyes and accepted the call, then raised it to my ear.
Her voice came to me, angry and brusque. But this time I knew what she was saying.
"Where is she?" she snapped. "What have you done? I swear to you, Leonardo, if you run with her again..."
"Hi, Mom."
"Saya!"
Her voice broke. The sound of pain was microscopic, but I heard it.
"Where are you? Are you well?" she asked. Then her voice sank a fraction. Confusion. Fear. Treachery. "You left your squad."
The statement cut me. I winced.
"I can't go to a human hospital."
"You should have gone to the Bunker."
"I was scared of Dr. Hernandez," I said. "And I thought Takeru…." I paused. "How is Takeru? Is he okay?"
"Yes," she said. "He is alive and his healing has terrified the doctors. You did well." There was a note of pride in her voice. "Where are you?"
"I don't know. I think I'm underground."
"Where is your father?" Her voice was frigid. "Satou-san is looking for you. Do you know how to find us?"
Don cleared his throat.
I jerked my head up. He was standing in the doorway, mug of coffee in hand. His eyes were fastened on me in a way I could only describe as an intent predator who has seen movement and is trying to ascertain its purpose. I didn't know how long he had been standing there. I didn't know how much Japanese he understood.
"I can't talk anymore," I said.
"Why not?" Her voice sharpened. "Is he there?"
"Put the phone down, Saya," Don said softly. "Or I will make you put it down."
I slowly lowered it from my ear, swallowing. I could hear Mom snarling on the other end very faintly. Donatello strode over to me, jerked it out of my deadened hand, and lifted it.
"Greetings. Turtle with brains speaking," he said. His eyes never left mine. "As you can tell, Saya is just fine. Just fabulous. I had to take out the stitches in a matter of hours rather than days. Your healing serum truly is a miracle to behold."
Mother's silence was horrible.
"I will never stop searching for her," she said at last. "And when I find y..."
"I'm sorry, this conversation is over," said Don, and hung up. The phone started ringing again immediately, but he silenced it and slipped it into his pocket.
Don knelt down before me. His unblinking gaze didn't leave mine. At first I met his eyes, but they were too penetrating. It physically hurt to meet them. My gaze shifted away to the floor.
"I'm gonna go back to bed," I said in a meek voice.
"I don't think so," he said. "I think you're going to tell me whose side you're on."
He was speaking in fluent Japanese. Not even the smallest hint of an American accent. I swallowed.
"What? Now?" I asked.
"Yes, now." He grabbed me by the arm and switched back to English. "Let's get some food."
"But I'm not hungry," I said.
My stomach chose to grumble at that very moment, and his lips turned up in a crooked smile.
We crossed into a wide corridor with pitted brick walls. More rough cement floors, more LED lamps, a few gaping doorways. Not a lot of time to enjoy the view; Don jerked me across the hall. The room we stepped into was identical to the one I'd left in size and construction, although this one was furnished. There were two sleeping bags in it, a microwave, a coffee machine, and a miniature fridge. Two beat-up beanbag chairs sat across from each other, patched with duct tape, and a beat-up card table with a bent leg leaned between them.
"Sit down," he said, thrusting me down into one of the chairs. "Hope you like microwave dinners."
"What did I do?" I asked. My voice came out in a squeak and all the color had left my face. "Why are you so angry?"
"Hmm, I don't know. Why were you talking to your mother?" asked Don. He set his mug on top of the fridge, jerked out a TV dinner, and threw it into the microwave without looking at it. He set it for six minutes.
"Because she called! The phone rang! I mean…"
"Leo put that phone on silent."
"Why does he even have my mother's phone number anyway?" I snapped.
"He had a phone he'd ripped off of a Foot goon down in Texas. It was useful for our purposes." Don slumped into the beanbag across from me. "So, how was time with Mom?"
His voice dripped with sarcasm.
"But Don," I said, my eyes filling with tears. "I didn't do anything!"
When he spoke again, he pitched his voice up high until he sounded like a Muppet.
"'I don't know, but I think we're underground,'" he said. He said it in Japanese and even emulated my accent.
My jaw dropped.
Don's voice returned to English and his normal timbre.
"Why would you give us away?" he asked. "You know she'd kill us, right?"
I stuffed the heels of my hands into my eyes. "Leave me alone."
He was silent for a minute while my face and eyes burned. I think I would have left but for the smell of the TV dinner. Something with cheap cheese and meat. The scent made my throat and stomach convulse.
"Let me make something perfectly clear," Donatello said. "We have sacrificed a great deal to pick you up. If you don't want to be picked up, I will take you to the surface myself. No subterfuge, no giving up our secrets and hidey-holes, no sneaking around. I'll break the news to Leo. He'll understand."
I really started crying then. Just sobbing into my hands, big hot painful tears.
"No!" I said. "Stop it! I didn't do anything!"
"Then what do you want?" Don asked. "Be clear. Tell me exactly what you want."
"I don't know!" I said. "Why are you being so mean?"
He went silent. I didn't care. I pressed my nightgown to my eyes while the microwave hummed.
"You know, Saya," he said at last, midway through one of my hiccups, "this family is all I have. Most of them may be fools, but they're my fools. I can trust them. I know how they tick, as they know how I tick. Once they're gone, they're gone. I have no one. I have nobody. Do you understand what I mean?"
"You mean you don't like me?" I whispered. "But I thought... I thought..."
"Oh, I like you fine," he said. "But, see, I could gamble with your loyalty and lose everyone who means anything to me. So let's make it easy for everyone, including you. Tell me the truth."
"But I am telling you the truth!" I said. "I want to go to Northampton and I want to be with Dad and I don't know what I did wrong!"
"Okay, maybe I'm not being clear. Let me put it like this." He tented his hands and closed his eyes. "For over ten years, I thought I didn't need anybody. Leo was dead to me. I avoided Mike, and Raph went… wherever Raph goes. The only people I saw regularly were April and her family, and even then, I could go days without speaking to them. I thought I was happy. Maybe I was for a while. But these past months?" His eyes flashed open. There was fire in them. "I feel like I've come alive again. I'm making plans. I'm solving problems. I have direction. My brothers don't have to ask me what I need or want. They know without my ever saying a word. I like being understood. I realized something. I realized I wanted them to be nearby and that through this very project I could lose them forever. Do you understand me now?"
I nodded hesitantly. "Y-yeah."
"Good. Then let's talk about you." He laced his fingers together. "I have had the Foot under complete surveillance for a little under a year. I can decipher their codes, I have followed their webs around the world, and yes, I have watched you come and go from Watanabe Tower. I've even been able to see your training, access dossiers about your healthcare and creation, and intercept emails and texts about your tutoring and care. You've been living like a princess in that tower. You've got a grudging respect from authorities you've never seen in your life. You're being groomed to take over the organization from your mother and, by god, I think you could do it."
I nearly choked on my own spit. "What?" I said. And then I really did start coughing.
He opened the refrigerator and handed me a bottled water. The microwave beeped and he turned off the alarm, but didn't pull out the meal. Instead, he turned his laser focus on me. I averted my eyes as I knocked the water back.
"Let's face it," Don said. "If you were raised like your big brother, you'd be a spoiled brat—fat and soft and useless. But Leo hardened you. It's thanks to him you are what you are. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's thanks to him that you and your brother are alive right now. With brattiness… or, better put, entitlement… comes a certain, ah... blindness, shall we say? A blindness as to how other people work and want. A warped understanding of reality and human nature and Mother Earth, red of tooth and claw. You don't really have that entitlement. You know there's something worse than not getting a toy you want. You know how far loss can go. You know that everything dies." He grabbed a bottled water for himself. "Sorry. I'm babbling now. What I want to imply is that your use for Leo is done. What is your future with us, Saya?"
"My use? For Dad?" I sat up straight, cheeks blazing. "You're talking like Dad is a... a mop or something!"
Don shrugged. "Sometimes people stop being good for us. Sometimes they start holding us back." He looked up at me, eyes cold and dark. "I think you should go back to your mother."
My stomach fell out. My mouth parted a little.
"This assassination attempt is one of the best things to happen to us," he said. "We've saved you and your brother. It's on paper and it's on video. It's irrefutable proof we're not enemies of Karai's Foot Clan. If we return you, everyone will get what they want. All of this will have been done for something. We can start angling for a little peace treaty. Otherwise, it's back to running for all of us. Your schooling will end. Your attachment to the Foot will rot. You will grow too old for them to mold or understand and you will lose your allies. With those losses, you lose your chance to control them. And if you control them…" He grinned and winked at me. "You can go anywhere you want. Northampton included."
"But that would be years from now!" I said. "I want Northampton now. I want to go back now."
"One problem. Karai knows where the farm in Northampton is," he said. "We consider it a complete loss. We've moved back to the city for the foreseeable future. Casey, April, and Shadow are already long gone, and have been for some time."
I felt like the whole world was reeling around me. I closed my eyes. That meant that the stream was lost, and all the trees, and the creaking old house, and Shadow's messy room with the big-screen TV... and worst of all, Mike and Dad and Shadow and April. Everything, everyone... all gone for months and months while I dreamed fruitless dreams. It had all been lost the minute I stepped into Hunter's car. It might as well have been torched off of the face of the Earth for all the good it could do me.
I had used Northampton as my touchstone for so long that I had no idea what to do without it. I had no idea what I could want otherwise. Despair rolled over me. My foundation crumbled away. I felt like a lone spark drifting in a void, unmoored.
"Again," Don said. "What is your future with us, Saya? We live our lives in hiding. We would have to do this even if Karai wasn't after our heads. But you? You can live like humans do. You can walk in the street in the sunlight and go to school. You can have friends and birthday parties and all the money you'd ever want or need. The Bunker is at your service; you can manipulate your body any way you like. Once you're old enough, you may even find love and companionship in a way we never can. The freedom you have is incalculable."
"But I'm alone up there," I said. "I think if I stayed there, I'd always have to be alone."
Don blinked. "Oh?"
"Mom has no friends. I wouldn't get to have friends either. Or family." I looked at my hands. "Do I have to do whatever my parents say?"
He paused. "No, I guess not," he said. He sounded like I had caught him off guard.
That third pathway that I had seen briefly opened up before me again. There could absolutely be a future without either of my parents. That future probably didn't include my uncles or Shadow, and it definitely didn't include Northampton. It was frighteningly blank, a sheet of paper I could color any way I chose. That blankness was a lonely thing.
What would I do if I had no limitations?
I wanted to read, perhaps to have access to a library. I wanted an air conditioner and a bed and food and fresh, cold water. I wanted a little sketchbook and a pencil and a television and a computer and a phone. I had no interest in money except in having enough to meet my needs. And when it came to others, I had two conflicting desires. The first was that I wanted to be quiet and left alone. The second was the joy of a full house, full of muttered conversations and soft domestic duties and clinking dishes in the sink and the excited squawk of a distant television. When I thought of people, when I thought of Mom and Dad and my squad, I liked parts of them, but there were darknesses to them, inconvenient darknesses that brought out the darknesses in me.
I frowned. Was this really all I could think about? A boundless future, and all I could think of was mundane, puttering domesticity. It was like I didn't have enough imagination to think of anything else. This bothered me most. Surely I should want more. Surely I could be more.
"Don? I don't know what to do." I folded my fingers again. "I can't have Dad and Mom. But I don't know what to do on my own."
He shrugged. "No brainer. Go with your mother. With us, it'll be a piecemeal life. With her, you can do anything you want."
"I can not either!" I snapped. "I can't have Christmas, I can't go to the farm, I can't walk around on the street without bodyguards... I… I…"
It hit me in a flash, unbearably heavy: the memory of Fujita-san's body lying cold and still in the kitchen. I choked back a sob. Don's eyes widened. To him it was a sudden shift in mood; for me it was the sudden realization that all the parameters had changed again. My speech continued, strangled and high-pitched.
"It's just that there's always somebody spying on me, or somebody wanting to hurt me, or somebody wanting to use me. Nobody loves anyone in the Foot. But you all love each other. I thought you loved me!"
The way it came out of me—in a great flood, a great rush, a great lightness! My face heated up. I realized I had stumbled upon the truth, the great, bright, blazing truth in all its burning glory.
He didn't answer at once. I wish I had stopped there. He looked so thoughtful. Maybe he could have said something that would have unveiled more of that truth to me. But naturally, I kept stumbling on and into a half-light.
"You don't know what it's like," I said, "being locked up in a little house and not ever getting to leave and..."
His eyebrows rose. His thoughtful silence evaporated. The veil dropped.
"Yes, I do," he said. "The difference is that you can pass for human and will eventually get to leave that house. You have tutors, plenty of food, medical care, and, oh. Yes. Your house isn't located in a tunnel filled with raw sewage."
"I'm not happy up there!"
"Do you think we're happy down here?" asked Don. "Raphael has longed to be part of the world since before we could speak. It rejected him so often that he moved from embracing it to destroying it, begging for it to forgive him with every blow. Michelangelo can never have the family he wants, can't date, can't travel, can't even put his own goddamn name on his own art. Leonardo gave his whole life and identity to others until he didn't have either for himself. And I..." He sat back, flinging his arms out, eyes shining madly. "I could be the next Nikola Tesla but for this monstrous body. My brain is locked up in an inhuman shell. I am denied the best of human society despite being human in every way but form alone. I am relegated to scrap heaps and pirated texts when I should be mingling with the crème de la crème of Silicon Valley."
"Is that it, then?" I asked. "I'm not allowed to be happy?"
"The Northampton farm is a happy place," said Don, "but it is not the only place to be happy."
"But you don't get it!" I said. "No one can be happy in the Foot!"
"The Foot is not guaranteed to be your prison," he said. "You will still have choices. And I believe you will have more choices beneath its umbrella than we could ever offer you. Listen! It's having choices that is the important factor here. The choices we can offer you are very few. The choices your mother can provide are innumerable. I believe you should think of your stay in the Foot as a trial you must suffer for a short time."
He leaned over his knees, hands knotted together and white-knuckled. His eyes were hooded by lowered brows. Suddenly I felt like I was looking into the truth again, except this time it was armed against me. I licked my lips.
"Look," he said, "I know it's hard for you to conceive of stretches of time, or that bad times can end. But they do end. They pass. Muscle through. Keep an idea of what happiness is inside of you and let its memory guide you."
"But I want to go back to the farm," I said in a little voice.
"You can't," he said.
"It's not fair."
"It never is." He leaned closer to me. "But at least you know what makes you happy, and you know it now, before your adult life even begins. You will recognize it when you see it again. That way you know to enjoy the moment. Because it will be a moment, Saya. It will sneak up on you when you don't expect it, then flicker away without warning. It's like… Faerie, I suppose. You stumble into marvels without warning and you stumble out just as easily. You think that once you've stumbled out, it's all over. But one day you will take a blind corner and its glories will open up in front of you once more, a different facet of the same happiness, and you will think, 'That's it. I'm not taking it for granted this time.' But you always do. You can't help it."
To be honest, I didn't really understand what he was talking about, but I nodded like I did. It made me feel depressed and powerless, like I was a puppet on strings or a dog on a leash.
He leaned away, eyes closing, head cocked as though he were listening to a faraway sound. I realized that there was something like grief on his face, and he was finally sinking into thoughtfulness for his own sake. As for me, my mind was racing. I leaned back and considered the ceiling, blinking slowly. Feelings swirled and settled. I didn't want to be with the Foot. I knew that for certain, even with how much I loved my squad. It was too sterile, too unforgiving, too frightened and too frightening. The thought of leaving my mother filled me with a guilty relief.
This thought led me down an avenue I had never considered. What if Mom had kept me for those ten years? What would I have been without Dad? It was unimaginable at first. Would it have been any fairer for Mom to keep him from me? And she would have kept him from me.
I was startled to realize that I would have grown up thinking I was entirely human. I would have hated my shape; I would have probably had my shell and plastron and half-grown bridge removed and been happier for it. I would have asked for a human face. I would have gone to the Bunker with a smile, probably thinking it was some kind of special doctor's office. I wouldn't have recognized this alternate version of myself if I saw her in the street. She probably wouldn't have been pretty. The inhuman elements of her would have remained in subtle ways. She never would have been hungry or scared or too cold or too hot or too wet. She would have started killing at what, fourteen? Fifteen? Sixteen? Not as a little girl. Death and discomfort would both have alien meanings to her. They would have been exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself.
I thought of Takeru. I imagined growing up alongside him. I probably would have taken full advantage of my mother's love for me; he would have hated me for the love he couldn't have. Maybe, in this alternative reality, my presence would have spurred him on in his studies of ninjitsu; maybe he would have been my enemy. Maybe it would have been him leading Jacob and the other ninja boy into the apartment, knives up their sleeves, all three of them on me at once. Or I would have woken up in the night with his knife in my throat, his arm hooked around my chin. I died in this retelling, and shuddered at the thought of it. Or perhaps I would have come to a terrible realization about my inhuman parentage. Would I have sought my father out? A whole different story rolled up around me: a strange, lumpy, misshapen little girl running out into the streets to find out if what Takeru had said was true, if her father had really been a beast. In this story, she had been stripped of her shell like a prawn in a kitchen, pink and fleshy. My father would have looked upon me with a stranger's eyes, a startled horror. The best parts of both of us would have been obscured by ignorance. The thought filled me with revulsion.
A new, helpless anger welled up in me. In all cases, nothing was fair. Nothing had ever been fair, had it? Nothing had ever been about me. It was all about fighting somebody else—being somebody else's weapon. I was never allowed to fully know one side or the other, not fairly, not well. In all cases truths had been hidden from me because truths would have allowed me to stand alone, leaning not on one parent or the other, but relying on myself and my own judgment. And neither of my parents could stand knowing that I wouldn't choose them.
It was always about control and power. Never me.
How difficult to realize, too, that I could love the people who had damaged me, that their love could be possessive and cruel and wear masks. What would have been fair, anyway? How could they be fair when everything about their relationship was inequitable?
I was startled to realize that it wasn't as though I could have been any freer without them, either. Say I had been raised by some random family somewhere out in America. Grown up speaking with a twang or a brogue or Spanish or Cantonese. I would have still been locked to their lies in some way or another. Lies about themselves, so that they could live with their sins; lies about me, so that I wouldn't hate them for it. How could they not shape me into their own images? How could I not be shaped by the culture of my city, my country, my language? In every case, I would have never been allowed to see myself for what I was. I wasn't even sure if there was a me outside of these overwhelming outside forces.
I closed my eyes and let the feelings rush in and out with every breath. I imagined the entire room as swirling with color, a kind of animated fantasy where I selected the colors I could breathe, and exhaled the colors I didn't want. I imagined myself breathing out the colors black and red, filling myself with bright dawn golds and pale greens and seaside blues. The truth was an overwhelming weight, even in this imaginary world. Almost as soon as I faced that turmoil, I shrank away. It was so vast and unknowable; archaeological in its depth, primordial in its darkness.
"Saya," Don said. "Don't you fall asleep on me."
I opened my eyes. Don leaned over his knees, examining me. His expression had softened. There was the Northampton Don I had missed so much peering back out at me, curious and thoughtful and accessible.
"I don't want to go back," I said, tears gathering in my eyes. "I… I know Mom has more money and she'd take care of me, but… I don't… I'm not happy there and I'm always scared and…"
"We will always be here in the city," he said. "Leo had already decided to live as closely as possible so he could be near you. We've decided to support him. We'll give you our phone numbers so you can call us anytime. Your childhood won't last forever, and we know how turbulent the Foot's social politics can be. Case in point: your exit from the Tower." He cleared his throat. "So. Let's talk about getting you back to your mother."
"But I haven't gotten to think about it yet!"
"It's best for you," he said. "You know it. I know it."
"I want to talk to Dad about it first," I said.
His eyes flashed. "And he knows it."
"And Raph? And Mike?" I asked. "Where are they, anyway?"
"Busy," Don said. "Watching the Tower."
"Why? I'm with you now."
Don's brows rose. "Because Watanabe Tower has been taken by a small group dedicated to the Japanese faction. If I dropped you off there, it would be a death sentence. At this point, it's just a matter of finding out where your mother is." He opened the microwave and pulled out the TV dinner, then stuck it in my hands. "Eat up and rest. You'll have plenty of time to think."
My heart sped up as I held the hot TV dinner gingerly between my hands.
"What if they… what if they killed her?" I asked. "Could I go with you then?"
He paused. "Yes."
And for the first time in months, I hoped she would die. Oh, god, I hoped she would die, my own mother. This time, I felt a rush of guilt.
"And… Takeru," I said. "What about Takeru?"
"Watanabe? Your brother? He's safe, to my knowledge. Takeru left the hospital secretly with members of the American faction sometime last evening. We don't know where he is at this point, although I suspect he's somewhere in the city. He's definitely target number two, though. Which leads to the following complication." Don shoved a spoon into my open hand. "The police have come sniffing thanks to that stunt the Japanese faction pulled at the Tower. This is slowing everyone down on both sides. It's real cloak and dagger shit now. Did Leo ever tell you about the Eastside Massacre?"
I set the dish down on the floor. "That's where Shredder's Elites fought Mom's, right?"
"Right. There were dozens of fatalities… not only of Foot genin, but of policemen and civilians. The fighting took place in broad daylight. The police knew they could blame the Foot but couldn't really pin down the why or a singular who was ultimately responsible. It has remained a huge loss to them, both in prestige and in numbers. Now they're afraid another Massacre is on its way, and I am not sure I disagree."
I knotted my hands up in my pajama skirt. "That would be bad."
"Very. Your mother is a lot less flashy these days, but she's not afraid to bring out the big guns when the occasion's called for. And this time she's in full control. She can easily become their, ah. Singular who."
"Do you know anything about my squad?" I asked.
"They weren't caught by the cops, if that's what you're wondering. I know that one of them went to the emergency room and was kept for observation, but she left late last evening sometime. Where they are now, I don't know."
My shoulders relaxed. "Good."
"Don't relax yet. We have seen some mention of you in the Japanese faction's communiques, but they don't seem to know if you're real or not. Most of them seem to believe that you may be a red herring—with one notable exception. Two old personal guards of your grandfather's, apparently. It looks like your mother only winged them in the first round of assassinations and they're pissed. They seem to think you're a higher-quality target and have some genin and lower-ranked Elites willing to follow them."
Prickles ran down my spine.
"Oh no," I whispered.
"Exactly," Don said. "And what's worse, I think they guessed it was Leo who picked you up. They weren't able to follow us, but I think we should stay low and keep our noses clean." He pointed at the dish sitting on the floor. "Eat up. Believe me when I say that you will need your strength."
I didn't know what to say, so I tackled the lukewarm pasta. I ate slowly while Don watched me. He was thinking deeply; I could see it in his face. His gaze was focused somewhere past me into another world. He unsettled me. I could tell that he was moving all his friends and enemies around a mental chessboard. I didn't like it. I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. I wanted him to go back to calculating the exact ratios of buttermilk to flour for the perfect waffles.
Which was when I realized with a pang that he couldn't go back to Northampton, either. And it was all my fault.
"I'm sorry I made you leave Northampton," I said quietly.
"Huh?" he asked. He flickered back to the room, back to me.
"I'm sorry I made you leave…"
"Why?"
His voice was harsh. I couldn't help tearing up again. I gulped the last slimy portion and hesitated over the plastic bowl. I could see a dark reflection of my face in the sauce. Then I stood up and, before either of us knew what to expect, stepped over to Don and threw an arm around his neck. He seized up. It was like leaning against a statue. His arm fell around my shoulder, but there was no embrace, only a burden. Then he pushed me away, scowling.
"Where do I put this?" I said lamely, offering the plastic dish. "There's no trash can."
He plucked it out of my fingers. "I'll take care of it. Go to bed. Get some rest."
"Where's the restroom?" I asked.
"First door on the right when you leave," he said.
I nodded, but I didn't look at him. Chin against my chest, I pattered into the hallway. I couldn't exactly stay in the restroom for very long; I wasn't sure when Don would realize I'd palmed the phone off of him, and it would be a definite dead end, with a door he could easily unhinge.
I popped into the restroom, closing the door loudly enough to be heard. The toilet was a dazzling white. The rest of the room was dingy and poorly lit. I could smell the stink of bleach here, too, but the crumbling brick and high walls alluded to those of a prison. I closed and locked the door and then stretched my cupped hand out in front of me. The phone lay there, sleek and gleaming. Thirty-seven missed calls. Maybe if I waited, she'd call again, and I wouldn't have to worry about unlocking it. How quickly could I talk to her? How much would Don be able to hear through the wall?
I lowered the toilet seat slowly so that it wouldn't clank and sat down on the lid. The phone lay inert. The longer I sat there, the more terrified I was that Don would knock. Finally, after no more than three or four minutes, I slipped it back up into my oversized sleeve, flushed, turned on the sink for about fifteen seconds, and then ran out of the door.
I rushed into the bedroom where Dad rested, lunged up into his lap, and threw my arms around his neck. He startled, snorting, jerking back as though stung. For a moment his eyes flashed at me, cold and unseeing, and I gazed upon the face that looked upon his enemies. Then the light of recognition flickered and a great smile crinkled his eyes up into little half-moons. He threw his arms around me. I squeaked in his grip. The recliner groaned dangerously beneath us.
"Saya," he said. "I missed you so much."
Before I could say anything more, the recliner snapped. The whole thing tilted backward and both of us slid back in startled silence, our legs kicking up at the ceiling. For a second we lay smushed against the ruins of the recliner's back, chins digging into our throats. We glanced at each other. Then a weird smile crooked across Dad's face.
"Saya, you've grown!" Dad said.
It was such a startling thing to hear out of him that I shouted.
"Oh my god!" I said, slapping him on the shoulder. "You're so mean!"
He squeezed me tightly. "How are you feeling?"
"Great." I closed my eyes and melted against him. He smelled like machinery and damp earth.
"How many shots did you give me?" I asked at last.
"One." He stroked his hand over my scalp. It was smooth as an egg, a bit lumpy in places where it had healed funny.
"Wow. That's all?"
"Yes. I could almost watch you heal in real time." His voice was dreamy.
"Where are the other shots?" I asked.
"Don has them. For research."
"We should get them back," I said. "I don't think we can trust him."
A smile cracked across his face again, this one a bit sharper.
"Why not?" he asked.
"He wants me to go back to Mom," I said, "and he was really mean about it."
Dad was quiet. Something dark was moving behind his eyes, something I couldn't follow.
"What did he say?" he asked.
So I told him. I told him about the phone call, staring him directly in the face as I did. His expression darkened. When I told him what Donatello had told me, his lips curled back into a sneer. It was an expression I'd never seen him make before. If I had to call it anything, I would have said it was a haughty disgust. The disgust I'd seen before. The haughtiness was new.
"For god's sake," he said softly. "He knows better, Saya. I will say it right now: what he did was not right. And we will talk about it when he gets here."
I felt a burst of satisfaction. Suddenly it was just the two of us again, matching wits against the world. Everything was going to be okay. Just like that, I surrendered my future to him. I was ready to wander off into the wilderness. I was ready to sleep on the ground with the deer ticks and fend off curious raccoons and bear-proof our backpacks for the rest of my life.
I was just about to cuddle up against him again when he released me. He raised himself up on his elbow. Suddenly I realized that something was there that hadn't been there before. Something more authoritative, self-possessed, a pride. Before, when it had just been us against the world, he'd been… colorless, for lack of a better word. Fragile, thinner, somehow. Now he was fully fleshed out. There was a solidity there, a spine, substantiality.
I realized suddenly that I was no longer the sole object of his focus.
Jealousy rushed up inside of me. I bit my tongue.
"What are you going to tell him?" I asked. I struggled to keep my tone even, but it sounded accusatory.
"That conversation about staying or leaving is a conversation for us. 'Us' as in 'you and me,' not 'you and Don.' Any conversation that includes him afterward should include the group as a whole. He's not the only one who has something to lose."
"So it's okay if I stay with you?" I asked quickly. "I want to stay with you."
He paused, held his breath. Then he closed his eyes.
"Dad?" I asked.
His eyes flashed open, pale and steeled with resolve. To my horror, I didn't know what it meant. I'd always been able to read him without speaking. I felt like I was groping in the dark for meanings only he understood. Again the jealousy rose up in me. I had no doubt that my uncles could have read him without problem.
"Saya," he said. "I believe it would be best if you went back to your mother."