Jet Black and the Ninja Wind. Leza Lowitz

      CHAPTER 1

      遊技 Yugi

      The Game

      The party had just started, and Jet stood in Amy Williams’ kitchen, wearing the two-dollar black dress she’d bought at the thrift store.

      “That’s such a cool outfit,” Amy told her, pushing a drink into her hand. The girls gathered, staring as if trying to remember whether they’d seen the dress in a catalog or a store window. Still, Jet knew it would’ve been cooler to have a date or to buy clothing that hadn’t belonged to someone living in an old folks’ home.

      “Yeah,” she said, “just put a hood on this thing, and I’d look like the grim reaper.”

      The girls in their sleek new outfits laughed. Jet could hardly believe it. She knew she’d changed, that people looked at her differently. Even her mother, staring at her one morning, had said, “The tomboy’s gone. You’ve become a woman.” Now Jet wanted nothing more than to spend the evening with the girls who’d always ignored her. But she couldn’t. She had ten minutes before she had to leave. The game. Tonight was the night of the game. Saturday night had been ever since Jet could remember. She hated the game like she hated nothing else.

      She took the drink anyway, not sure what it was—orange juice and something that smelled like rubbing alcohol. Amy Williams cranked the music. Boys were arriving. The girls began dancing in the living room just as the star quarterback threw open the door, a cooler on his shoulder. Jet tried to dance. How did they make it look so easy, swaying and turning gracefully? She’d have been more comfortable doing a spinning kick or a backflip. Now she had to make up her mind. Was it better to awkwardly explain she had to leave soon, or just slip out and invent a story later?

      Her senses stilled. She took in the blaring music, the thudding baseline, the hollering boys, but behind all that, if she focused, there was the battering, off-rhythm engine of the truck turning onto Amy Williams’ street. Kids were crowded around the door, so she went upstairs and into the bathroom. She took off her sandals, lifted the window screen and slipped out onto the roof’s overhang, then jumped to the ground. She caught the top of the fence and swung herself over it. The truck was still moving, nearly to the house, when Jet reached the door and let herself in.

      “Don’t stop,” she whispered to her mother, sliding down in her seat. A duffel with clothes for the game was on the floor, and as soon as they turned the corner, she began to change.

      “Have fun?” her mother whispered, slumped at the wheel, more gaunt than ever.

      “Best time of my life,” Jet replied, “all ten minutes of it.”

      Satoko drove them out of the suburbs and into the mountains, over roads muddy and rutted from a week of heavy rains, though now the sky was clear, and the full moon hung in it as if Amy Williams herself had put it there.

      The narrow road skirted the steep drop, hugging the edge of the mountain whose peaks glowed in the moonlight. As they went around a bend, the back wheels fishtailed. Jet gasped and clutched the seat. The truck almost turned sideways, skidding toward the cliff. Her mother jerked the wheel and hit the gas, and the truck slid back toward the mountain. She brought it under control and pulled it to a stop. She pressed her foot on the emergency brake, locking it in place. Her breathing sounded labored. She’d appeared unwell for months now.

      “This is the last time,” she told Jet.

      “Really? You mean that?” Jet said.

      “Have I ever said this before?” her mother asked. “Have I ever told you it was the last time?”

      “No…”

      “Well, it is. You’ll never have to come up here again. The game will be over.”

      “Okay, Mom. I’m thrilled,” Jet said, but the intensity of her mother’s concentration distracted her.

      Jet tried to keep her focus, staring out over the hood of the truck at the muddy road. Her mother seemed to have calmed. Jet could sense her exhaustion, the slowness of her breathing, even the tired beating of her heart. Satoko had said she had bronchitis, but her cough only got worse and worse, and Jet wondered for the hundredth time whether her mother’s problem might be more serious. All week she would look exhausted and stay in bed, or meditate, and then, on the night of the game, she would pull herself together and become the woman Jet had always known her to be—strong, proud, still beautiful and fierce, like a raven. She would concentrate her energy, focusing herself, stilling her breath, her eyes becoming soft. Even now Jet could feel the slow expansion of calm around her, could see the precision in her movements. On the nights of the game, her mother would even cease to cough.

      “You take the truck up to the parking spot,” her mother told her.

      “What?”

      “Take it up. I’ll get out here. You can find me.”

      “You mean like–”

      “The same rules as always,” her mother said.

      She got out and stepped down into the mud. She slammed the door, and Jet slid over across the old vinyl seat whose split seams trailed bits of stuffing. When she looked out the window there was only the cliff alongside them, no sight of her mother. She released the parking brake and steered the truck up along the mountain. What if it really is the last time? she asked herself, trying not to be angry about the party. If the game is over, what’s next?

      The parking spot was no more than a widening in the road where the limbless trunk of a dead tree stood at the foot of a jumble of immense boulders. Hundreds of times, Jet had climbed the mountain, crouched, pausing to watch for movement. Now, she wrapped her body in black cloth and hid her face, leaving only a slit for her eyes. She got out of the truck, stopped, and stared up at the moon.

      Like a sign written across the sky, it seemed to mock her, saying, “Loser. You’re missing the coolest party ever, and you’re going to graduate from high school without ever having been kissed.”

      She tried to think of a witty comeback. She stared at its face, at the craters like acne, and thought of the unpopular kids, the ones who didn’t get invited to parties either. She’d never even had acne. That was

Скачать книгу