Short Story: The Backwards Carp (Full)

I. The Backwards Carp

“Once upon a time-“

”No!” interrupts Kristine. “Not a fairy tale. I’m too old.”

She is only six, but she’s already discriminating her bedtime stories. I’m ten, but I still find fairy tales fascinating. Go figure.

I return Mother Goose to the lower level of the bookshelf next to my bed, where I keep all of the picture books that I read to my sister. Then, I search for an alternative. “Curious George Rides a Bike,” “Green Eggs and Ham”-

Kristine nudges me aside to scan the bookshelf herself, her little fingers brushing the spines. She cannot read well yet, but the intensity of her gaze makes me almost believe that she can. After a few moments, she points to a tall, orange hardcover spine on the third shelf, just beyond her reach. “That one.”

“D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths?” I smile fondly. It happens to be one of my favorite books. The drawings, done in colorful pencils and charcoals, bring the ephemeral triumphs and tragedies of Greek mythology to life. I pull the book from the shelf, take a seat on the carpet next to my sister, and open the book before the two of us.

“So many stories,” I murmur, briefly recalling each as the pages turn. “Which one?”

“This one,” my sister says firmly, stamping the page with her palm.

I glance at her selection. “You sure?” I ask. “There are better-“

”This one!” Kristine repeats.

I know my sister well enough not to question her decision. “Okay.” I gently push Kristine’s palm away from the page, exposing a black and white charcoal rendering of a man with a harp turning back to look at a shadowed, sleepwalking woman. “This is the story of Orpheus and Euridice.”

Kristine giggles at the names.

I read to her about the brief happiness of Orpheus and Euridice, about how he would play beautiful, joyous melodies on his harp, to the accompaniment of her light-footed dancing. I read to her about how that happiness ended abruptly with a snake bite.
My sister looks anxious, as she always does when hearing about death. “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “The story’s not over yet.” Still, the look on her face makes me hesitate to proceed. I remember how this myth ends.

I tell her about how Orpheus could not let Euridice go, and how he wandered the earth searching for an entrance to Hades. “That’s where the dead people go,” I explain, anticipating Kristine’s question.

“What about Heaven?” she asks.

I cock my head slightly, thinking of a way to respond. “Hades is where Greek dead people went long ago. It’s different now. Now that Christianity’s popular, everybody goes to Heaven.”

“Is Eu-ri-di-see-“ (she struggles with the name) “-is Euridice still there?”

“Still in Hades?” I frown. “I- I guess.”

Kristine looks even more anxious. “She’s still dead?” she asks. “Or-fee-is” (again, she mouths the name carefully) “Orpheus didn’t save her?”

I shake my head impatiently. “I’m getting to that-“

But it’s too late; my sister needs placation. “What is Hades like?” she asks. “Is it a nice place?”

“Well, no,” I tell her honestly. “It’s deep underground, so it’s always cold and dark there. It’s filled with dead people, ghosts, zombies, demons, all kinds of monsters. And I know it’s surrounded by rivers. I think one of them is the River Styx, and maybe another one is the River Lethe, I can’t remember. And you can only cross those rivers by boat, and there’s only one boat, and it’s run by this guy named Charon, the ferryman-“

Kristine giggles shakily, her mounting anxiety temporarily broken. “Like with wings?”

When I realize what she’s thinking, I can’t help but laugh. “No,” I correct. “Not a fairy. No wings or anything. He just wears a black cloak- a big black blanket. And he’s skinny, almost like a skeleton.”

My sister’s brief amusement instantly drops dead, her expression darkening with worry and dread.

I take a deep breath. I definitely have to clean up the ending of this one, I think to myself. “Anyway,” I say loudly, to break away from this tangent. “Can I continue?”

My sister nods quietly.

I tell her about how Orpheus dared to do what no one else before or after him had done: venture into Hades while still alive. I tell her about how the beautiful music he made granted him access into that dark, lifeless realm, and even moved the cold, pitiless heart of Hades, the lord of the Underworld (“Yes, his name is the same as the place,” I explain briefly). Hades consented to give Euridice back to Orpheus, but only on one condition, that Orpheus not look back upon his love until they had both reached the sunlit realms above. I tell Kristine about how the path back to the land of the living was long and dark and quiet. It was so quiet, in fact, that Orpheus began to doubt that Euridice was really behind him. He began to suspect that Hades had deceived him.

“Deceived?” Kristine asks. “What does that mean?”

“It means to lie,” I answer simply. “It means to not tell the truth.”

“Why would Hades lie?” she asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe Orpheus thought Hades was playing a joke on him. I don’t know.”

“That’s not funny,” Kristine says, irritated.

“No,” I agree. “It’s no joke. But it doesn’t matter. Hades wasn’t lying.”

I look down at the page, hesitating to continue reading the story. If Kristine got upset hearing about Euridice’s death, how would she react when she heard about what happened afterwards, about how Orpheus lost her again, and how the second time it was all his fault? And the part about how Orpheus was torn apart by the wild nymphs? Forget it!

“Well,” I begin hesitantly (I am terrible at improvisation). “Orpheus, he was just about to turn around and look behind him, just to check and see, you know? But he was so close to the surface, he could see and feel the sunlight on his face, that he thought, ‘Well, might as well take a few more steps.’ So he did, he left the cave and the underworld and Hades and everything bad behind him. And then, when he was in the sunlight, he turned around and saw Euridice, alive. And the two of them lived together, happily ever after.”

I shut the book quickly, perhaps too quickly.

My sister looks at me, puzzled. I can sense the questions buzzing in her little head, and I silently struggle to anticipate them. She could ask me why the picture in the book showed Orpheus actually looking back at a shadowed Euridice. She could even ask me why I seemed to contradict myself, in that I told her that Euridice was still in Hades. But thankfully, she just shrugs and says, “You’re right. That isn’t a very good story.” She gets up to go to her room. “Good night,” she says.

“Good night,” I say. Just before she leaves, however, my bladder twinges. “Uh, Kris?”

Kristine pops her head back through the doorway.

“Can you do me a favor?”

***

At ten years old, my world is filled with ghosts.

My hyperactive imagination, fed by too much of KIKU TV’s Suspense Theatre (and not enough translation), relentlessly populates shadows with anything from a glowing blue doll housing the spirit of a murdered father, to a black bake-neko, lapping up blood from a fresh corpse.

After reading about Hades, my paranoia tonight is so bad that I can’t go to the bathroom alone. A dark hallway lies between my bedroom and the pitch black bathroom with the light switch that has to be blindly groped.

I’ve never told anyone about my problem. Of course, I couldn’t tell my father. He is from Japan, the Old Country, a place where samurai would disembowel themselves with splintered bamboo before shaming themselves to ask their lord if they could take a piss, and could he come along? And telling my mother is worse. At least my father is the silent type. He wouldn’t broadcast my problem to the rest of the family, using shame and humiliation as some sort of negative reinforcement. My older brother, He Who Was Born First, wouldn’t waste a second on the Second (me).

That leaves Kristine. Unlike everyone else in the family, she never uses her cho cho lipped mouth as a barrel to lob derision down upon me. She respects me. No, it’s more than that. She understands me. She knows my weakness, but doesn’t fault me for it.

Without a word, she puts my hand in hers and leads me into the hallway.

It’s amazing. Though only three and a half feet high, her tiny hand nestled in mine like a baby bird, my sister is able to transform a tunnel of nightmares into an ordinary, even quaint, hallway. I know that she’s just a psychological crutch for me, but I can’t help but marvel at how effective she is. Alone, I would creep down this very hallway, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck rise as decapitated heads danced a whispered breath behind; I would steal into the bathroom, and, lights on or no, frantically pull at my zipper and spray everything in the vicinity of the toilet (sometimes not in that order). But together with my sister, I feel no fear whatsoever.

Kristine patiently waits as I take a lengthy piss.

“Okay.” A freshly emptied bladder, and I’m ready to go to bed.

My sister holds out her hand, waiting to take me back.

***

That night, I have a prophetic dream.

I fall into the myth of Orpheus and Euridice. Sort of. Because I’m not sure who I am. Sometimes, it seems like I’m Orpheus, and sometimes, it seems like I’m Euridice. And my sister is in the story too, and it’s the same with her: sometimes she seems like someone, and sometimes she’s someone else.

In the beginning of the dream, maybe I’m Euridice, because I’m stuck in a really dark place, like Hades, and although I can’t see, I know I’m surrounded by terrible things, things that should be dead but aren’t, things that shouldn’t exist but do. And then my sister comes along (she’s Orpheus at this point, I suppose), and for a little while, she makes everything better. When she’s around, the dark place I’m in turns out to be an ordinary room, without any monsters at all.

Then, it seems like we switch places. I turn into Orpheus, and my sister becomes Euridice. And I’m leading my sister along a pathway, next to a river. Maybe it’s the River Styx, or the River Lethe, I’m not sure which. I don’t look back, because I know I’m not supposed to, and besides, I have complete faith in my sister, I know that she sticks to me better than my own shadow. But something weird happens, there’s a noise like a loud splash in the waters of the river, and I turn around by accident.

And that’s where the dream turns really strange, because at that point, it’s like I’m both Orpheus and Euridice at the same time. On the one hand, I become Euridice, carried away by the waters of the river as it plunges into the bowels of the earth, drowned in darkness and smothered by thousands of vengeful and jealous spirits. And on the other hand, I become Orpheus, sad and empty and guilty, wandering the earth until I am eventually torn apart piece by piece, and again, like Euridice, thrown into the river...

***

The next afternoon, Kristine and I pause to park our bikes just shy of the crest of the weedelia field behind our house. A bit above and behind us, running parallel to Meheula Parkway, is the concrete irrigation canal that moves water in a swift three to four foot current from someplace to someplace else. Down below, in the nadir of the weedelia field, surrounded by a chainlink fence, is the rain drainage canal, with broad angled slopes, perfect for skateboarding and tagging. And a bit beyond the rain drainage canal is a long stretch of wooden fences that separates the houses from the weedelia field we’re in now.

Our house is the second from the left from our perspective, a two story dirty yellow. Although we’re looking at its backside, we can just see an intermittent flap of blue beyond the right corner of the house. It’s the tail of the koinobori that my dad put up in honor of Boy’s Day. There are actually several koinobori flying in our neighborhood, some huge monstrous windsocks that crack sharply like whips in the breeze, others so small and fragile that they seem on the verge of being snapped off their poles with the slightest gust. Most are either blue or black, but there are several red and pink ones as well.

“Those are koinobori,” I explain to my sister. “They’re put up on Boy’s Day, May 5th, today, to honor us boys.”

“Cool,” whispers Kristine, deeply moved by the panorama below.

“Yeah,” I murmur. “Koi are supposed to be strong fish. That’s why they’re put up for Boy’s Day.”

“Cool,” Kristine repeats. And then she asks the question, dropping it like a casual A-Bomb. “How come we only have one?”

I’m stunned into silence. I honestly never asked myself that question. Why was there only one carp hanging at our house? There are three children in our family, two boys and one girl. Even if my parents only decided to honor the boys, that still left one of us hanging, and the other one, well, hanging.

The old feeling wells up. The guilt, the inadequacy. The feeling that I’m not really a boy like my older brother, that I’m neither strong nor brave like him. I quickly think of a substitute reason for the lone carp, one that will assuage my sister (and perhaps, for the time being, myself): “Well, koinobori are very expensive. Mom and dad figured they would just hang one big one up for all of us.”

Thankfully, Kristine seems convinced by my answer. Still, she says, wistfully, “I wish I had one.”

“What are you talking about?” I retort. “Remember the big doll in the glass case? That’s for you. That’s for Girl’s Day.”

I am referring to the large, life-like doll of a Japanese woman, clad in a red kimono, with a red umbrella resting delicately on her shoulder. The glass case has one broken panel (horseplay between my brother and I), but other than that, it’s intact and beautiful.

“I hate dolls,” Kristine mutters. “Koinobori” (she mouths carefully) “are cool.” Again, she says, “I wish I had one,” this time with a bit more longing.

“Dolls are for girls,” I argue. “Koi are for boys.” But the look on my sister’s face forces me to give in and offer her comfort. “You know, I have heard a story, I think Mom told me once. She said that sometimes when koi swim up waterfalls, they turn into dragons.”

My sister’s face lights up, as I knew it would. See, my sister was born in 1976, the Year of the Dragon.

“Isn’t that cool?” I continue. “You’re a dragon. So actually, you don’t even need a koinobori.”

My sister doesn’t take my closer the way I thought she would. “Mom and dad should hang a dragon!” she exclaims.

With a sigh, I check my watch. It’s still only 2:10. School finished early, it being a Wednesday, so even after a slow bike ride from Mililani Uka to home, we still have some time to kill before Japanese school starts. Not much time, because it takes at least half an hour to ride to the portables on the far side of Mililani High, but it’s more than enough for one quick paper boat race.

“Come on!” I shout, dropping my bike on its side, and running up to the edge of the irrigation canal, near the concrete bridge that spans the eight foot gap. Kristine joins me.

I pull out two sheets of folder paper from my back pack, and hand one of them to Kristine. Then, both of us begin to fold. I am cautious, matching up corners precisely before committing to each crease; my finished product, I notice, resembles little more than an assemblage of stiffly perfect geometric shapes. Kristine is quick and sloppy, but her boat somehow ends up looking organic, as though folder paper DNA had somehow intended this form all along.

Without a word, we creep onto the concrete bridge and crouch down, each of us holding our boat gingerly by its uppermost corner. There is a pause as we both look down. The canal below is roughly six feet deep, with about three feet of clear water running at a steady clip. The current begins from the grated mouth of a pipe about fifty feet behind us (presumably from underneath Kamehameha Highway), and disappears about fifty feet ahead into the shadows of a tunnel that runs beneath Meheula Parkway. Midway, it runs a little more than an arm’s length below the bridge that we’re currently on.

“Ready?” I whisper, dangling my boat precariously over the edge of the bridge.

Kristine nods, then abruptly tosses her boat into the current.

“Hey!” I shout, letting my boat loose. I look down into the canal.

Kristine’s head start has given her a lead of roughly a foot, but she’s listing badly.

My boat, meanwhile, has landed squarely, its course true.

Kristine scrambles off the bridge, running along the bank of the canal. “Come on!” she shouts, gesturing wildly. I follow silently, eyes glued to my boat.

The boats swiftly approach the mouth of the tunnel, the finishing line. Kristine’s boat maintains its lead, but it’s on the verge of submerging completely, with only one side of the prow and the tip of the triangular “mast” still above water. My boat, meanwhile, has kept a steady pace, and is due to sweep past Kristine’s to victory.

Kristine’s cheers take on a fevered pitch as the boats, neck to neck, approach the shadowed mouth of the tunnel. I lean forward, my right hand raised and on the verge of clenching into a fist, as though with it, I could grasp victory.

Suddenly, there is a blur of motion that ends in an explosion of water. My boat, caught in the epicenter of that explosion, is instantly submerged. My sister’s boat, already 9/10 under, cannot survive the violent ripples that fan outwards.

Laughter betrays the source of the thrown stone. It’s Chad, the kid from next door. He creeps out from his hiding place near the mouth of the tunnel, behind a stand of weeds.

Kristine, ever willful, speaks up first. “Hey!” she shouts. “Why did you-“ Before she can finish, she starts to cry.

“Waah,” Chad mocks, then again breaks into a peal of laughter.

I hug my sister’s shoulders from behind, glaring at Chad. “Shut up,” I blurt.

Chad draws back in mock fear, before restoring his usual swagger. “Make me, pussy.”

“Shut up,” I repeat, as though they are magic words. “Shut up!”

Chad laughs once more, then wheels around and casually strolls away down Meheula Parkway.

For many moments, all I am aware of is my breath and my heart beat. It’s only when my sister sharply hitches on a sob that I wake up and return to myself. In that moment, the guilt and recriminations drown me in a sudden flood. “What’s wrong with me?” I think to myself. “Why didn’t I do anything? Why can’t I protect Kristine?” I stroke Kristine’s shoulders. Her sobs slowly fade, her breath grows even.

“Are you okay?” I say softly.

Kristine nods slowly.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Don’t worry, he’s going to get it.”

Kristine glances up at me. Is that distrust I see in her eyes? Does she think I’m making an impotent promise that karma’s going to work in our favor?

In the distance, I hear carp tales snap in the wind.

“Come on,” I mutter, carefully avoiding her eyes. “We’ve got to get to Japanese school.”

***

I lipsync as the rest of the class recites their AA-EE-OO-AYE-OH’s, their KA-KEE-KOO-KAY-KOH’s, my mind preoccupied with the afternoon’s disruption. And with its countless precedents.

You see, not all of the ghosts in my world are only in my head.

There are real dangers, real threats, living and breathing, scheming and seething.

One of them is Chad, the next door neighbor’s kid. He’s a bit younger than me (perhaps by a year) and a bit smaller than me (perhaps by a handful of inches and pounds), but he more than makes up for these deficits with his insatiable appetite for cruel and vicious acts. I don’t know why I am often the focus of his unceasing campaign. Perhaps it’s because I am such an easy mark; perhaps it’s because I never fight back.

Once, he stole strawberries and tomatoes from my sister’s mini-garden, and threw them full force at our house. Another time, he stood on the hollow-tile wall separating our property from his, and pissed into the barking jaws of our dog, Jackie.

And the last time...

Well, I thought he needed my help. We live in a culdesac, and his house is next to ours. He was crouching down in front of his driveway, groaning, “Help me.” I guess I should have noticed the smell, should have seen the way he was crouching as though he were preparing to spring, like a coiled up snake. By the time I was close enough to see what it was he was concealing with his huddled body, it was too late. He spun around in a blur of motion, and I stumbled backward, shocked. The pain registered a moment later. When I looked down at my right forearm, I saw that it was smeared with something warm and black and greasy, and that in the midst of that smear was a thin swollen gash that swiftly flooded and overflowed with fresh red blood. I looked back at Chad, and saw the jagged bone in his hand, saw the end of it coated in black, saw the steaming pile of dogshit at his feet, and finally, saw the toothy grin on his face.

That evening, as the septicemic fever first began to grip me, I listened from my room as my upset mother talked to Mr. Bulacan, the bear-like, late-working, divorced neighbor. I heard Mr. Bulacan tell my mother, in a gruff voice barely able to contain itself, “I take care of him, I promise.” As I slipped into and out of a restless, floating delirium, I heard Chad scream “I’m sorry!” over and over and over again, as belt and fist rained down upon him. The words were not enough, and it was only when they stopped coming, when the sounds that issued from his lips resembled the bleats that come out of squishy rubber toys, that Mr. Bulacan seemed to tire.

Still, Chad’s cries echoed in my fever-dreams.

And when I awoke the following morning, my mother told me that I had been apologizing profusely in my sleep...

***

That evening, after we return from Japanese school, I approach my mother alone. “I have to tell you something,” I say.

This in itself is unusual. Before, my mother used to sit me down in a chair across from herself at the dining table, and play the game of 20 questions: “How was your day? What did you do today? What did you learn?” My responses were always, respectively, “Okay. Nothing much. Some stuff.” After a matter of months, the game got pretty boring, and my mother finally resigned herself to the fact that her second son was never going to be much of a conversationalist.

So now that I’m initiating conversation, my mother takes a seat, preparing herself for whatever sign of the end of the world I have to report.

“Today, after school,” I begin slowly, hesitantly. “You know the next door neighbor’s kid, Chad?”

My mother nods. “What did he do this time?”

“He, um.” The lie I’m struggling to tell feels like a soap bubble, and my mother’s concerned eyes are like needles. “He- He, um.”

My mother’s face wrinkles with concern. She lays a hand on my arm. “Was it that terrible?” she asks.

“He threw a rock at Kristine,” I whisper softly, swiftly. There, it was out. I look down, waiting for my mother’s response.

“What did you say?” she asks, not in disbelief, but simply because she didn’t hear me.

I sigh, frustrated. “He threw a rock,” I repeat slowly, carefully, my eyes averted. “At Kristine.”

“What!?” my mother shouts. Before I can tell her anything else, for example, that Chad missed, she is up and out of the dining room, calling for my sister down the halls. “Kristine!”

As I wait for my mother’s return, I happen to glance over my shoulder, and catch my brother standing there, studying me. The bright kitchen lights are behind him, and his face is in relative shadow. “So what did you do?” he asks.

“What do you mean, ‘what did I do?’” I ask, instantly on the defensive. “What could I do?”

“Did you chase him?”

“No,” I answer, without thinking. “I mean, I wanted to. But I had to make sure she was okay.”

“And was she?”

“Yeah, the rock missed her.”

“How long did it take to check on Kris?” Dean asks. “Couple seconds?” Before I can respond, he continues his line of interrogation. “You could’ve chased him down and kicked his ass.” He folds both arms across his chest, and leans casually against the doorframe. The light from the kitchen shines through his swimmer’s chlorine-bleached hair, and makes him look like some kind of an aura’d saint. “But you didn’t.”

I’m trying to think of a response to my brother’s criticism when my mother returns with my sister in tow. Kristine looks somewhat confused. “Randy,” my mother barks. “Kristine says nobody threw a rock at her.”

I look down at the waxy gleam of the faux finish of the dining table. I can feel my mother, sister, and brother staring at me expectantly. I could give in to the pressure, tell them that I made it all up. But something in me tells me that I can’t, I mustn’t, turn back. “No,” I say quietly, looking my sister in the eye. “She wasn’t hit, because Chad missed. But he was aiming for her.”

Kristine looks as though she is going to object, but something in my eyes keeps her quiet.

My mother looks at my sister, then at me. “Well, if Kristine isn’t hurt, why are you making me all worried?” she asks sternly.

Again, I hesitate, and again, I firm my resolve. “If Kristine does get hit by a rock the next time, it won’t be my fault,” I say simply. And then I add, just to be certain: “You know how he is. You know what he did to me the last time.”

My mother sighs. “Alright,” she says. “I’ll go talk to Mr. Bulacan after dinner.” Her eyes continue to linger on me. “But, you know, Randy, you’ll have to learn how to take care of Chad by yourself. I can’t always be fighting your battles for you.” She leaves the dining room to return to her dinner preparations, muttering to herself, “That kid, I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

I feel wounded momentarily until I realize that she must be talking about Chad.

She must be.

My brother stretches his arms above his head, yawning, and follows my mother.

That leaves my sister and me.

She sidles up to me, close, so no one else can hear. “You - deceived - mom,” she says quietly, experimenting with her newfound vocabulary.

“You don’t understand,” I whisper. “Do you remember the last time, when he made me sick? That was supposed to be THE last time he did anything to me. But it wasn’t, it isn’t. He’s starting again. And this time, what if he hurts you? I had to do something.”

My sister is persistent. “You deceived mom,” she repeats. And then, she accentuates her argument: “Hades didn’t deceive Orpheus. So Orpheus and Euridice lived happily ever after.”

My re-telling of the myth is coming back to haunt me. “Yes, I mean, no,” I stammer, shaking my head. “Look, forget the story.” I lay a hand on my sister’s arm. “If you love something, like I love you, then you do anything to protect it. And that’s what I did.”

Her eyes seem to cloud over as she ponders my words. Then, she shakes her head, as if to clear away a fog. “No. Don’t protect me. I’m a dragon!” And she wriggles her arm free from beneath my hand, and stomps out of the room, leaving me alone... at least until dinnertime.

***

I’m stirred from sleep. There are bumps and rumbles coming from next door, the sound of a struggle. And then, the midnight air (for it feels like midnight, all silent and still) is punctuated by a cry of pain, surprise. “What da fuck dis time!?” Mr. Bulacan’s voice. Barely intelligible whimpering, a frantic attempt to form words. “N-nating. I nevah do nating!”

I huddle beneath my sheets, gripping the pillow tightly around my ears. I can still hear everything. And with my eyes closed, I cannot help but imagine a scene to accompany the soundtrack: how Chad is scrambling like a cornered spider in his dirty bedroom, how his eyes flail wildly, as he hunts to recall what it was he did that could possibly warrant this punishment. “I- I nevah do nating!” he repeats, his palms open, as if he were displaying the contents of his heart. But the strikes still come, whether by belt or fist or foot, and Chad soon realizes that it is unwise to argue the point or leave himself open, that his first concern must now be survival.

I crumple the blanket against my face. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot shut out the sounds, those damned sounds, especially Chad’s plaintive cry of innocence: “I nevah do nating!”

After what seems an eternity, the noises, the screams finally die down.

But for some reason, the silence that follows is much worse.

***

The next afternoon, I’m struggling. My backpack feels heavier than usual, and the resistance of the bike pedals makes me feel like I’m walking in molasses.

We’re taking a different route to Japanese school today. Usually, we head home first for a pit stop. Today, though, we’re taking a direct route, one that runs up Anania Drive, past Rec. Center II and the Nob Hill subdivision, up to Meheula Parkway. It’s pretty much all a gradual uphill; even in the parts that look flat, our legs, pumping the pedals, tell us otherwise.

I look back over my shoulder. “You okay?” I call out, half breathless.

My sister, pedaling her pink bicycle, looks up at me briefly, but doesn’t say a word.

“We’re almost there,” I say in encouragement. And we are. We’ve ridden up the length of Anania Drive, keeping the Nob Hill subdivision to our right. We’re about to crest the final hill, up to where it makes a T intersection with Meheula Parkway.
Halfway up the hill, the units of the Nob Hill subdivision, enclosed behind their wooden fences, break away from the street, leaving a sloping weedelia field in its wake. A chain-linked fence divides this field about three quarters up the hill, running parallel to Meheula Parkway. From our vantage point on Anania, we can just make out what that fence is intended to enclose: a concrete irrigation canal. Just before Anania kisses Meheula, it turns into a bridge over that canal, complete with concrete based aluminum railings.

“Is that,” I hear my sister call between pants, “the same?”

I’m too busy pedaling up the hill to actually turn to see what Kristine is talking about, but it’s easy to guess. “Yup,” I holler back, between breaths. “It’s the same as the- as the canal behind our house.”

Near the top of the hill, we blend in with a crowd of walking kids. We accompany them up to the crosswalk at Meheula, and wait as a few cars pass by. A couple of the kids make a game of running across the street as late as possible, at one point inspiring the sinking tone of a car-horn.

Just when that last car passes, just when I’m about to cross the street, I see him.

He’s not all that far away, weaving his bicycle out onto the street then in near the sidewalk, his head turning from side to side as though he were looking for something. His wiry form is unmistakable.

My sister, unaware, has already taken a few steps into the crosswalk along with the rest of the kids.

I race into the street, and pull her back by the arm. “Come on!” I whisper. Kristine and I awkwardly turn our bicycles around as the other kids shuffle to get out of our way.

“Why are we going back?” Kristine asks, as I furtively glance back over my shoulder. Chad is nearer now, and he seems to be accelerating.

My mind and heart race. We could ride back the way we came, down Nob Hill, but Kristine probably wouldn’t go fast enough if he gave chase. Our best option is to find a place to hide.

My eyes dance wildly about for a moment, then settle on the canal. Although enclosed by chain-link fence, there is a small gap between the fence and the base of the bridge just wide enough for us to squeeze our bicycles through. The only problem is that the weedelia slope leading down to the fence is exceptionally steep.

There’s no time to hesitate. I pull my sister around the side of the aluminum railing of the bridge, onto the top of the weedelia slope. “I go first,” I tell her shakily. “Follow me, okay?”

Before she can respond, I get on my bike and kick off as gently as I can, allowing the slope to pull me down. Just before I reach the chainlink fence, I swerve the bicycle sharply to the left, slowing down just enough to crash gently against it. Leaning my body against the fence, I get off the bike, and pass it through the gap. It slides, riderless, towards the canal, then falls on its side in a shower of red dust.

“Okay, now you,” I call to Kristine.

Kristine, normally so brave, looks down at me nervously. “Why-“

“Come on, hurry,” I urge, interrupting her.

Kristine nods shakily. She gets on her bicycle and pushes off. She gathers momentum quickly down the sharp slope, and tries to slow down and stop by turning sharply, as I did. Unfortunately, she doesn’t turn quickly enough, and continues racing down the hill, only at a slightly different angle. Thankfully, the slope is too short to accelerate much more, and she manages to crash into the fence without much force. Shaken, she gets off her bicycle, her eyes half fearful and half angry.

I pull Kris’s bike around myself, and urge it through the gap, where it falls on its side, slides briefly, and bumps into mine. Then, the two of us scramble through the gap. Soon, we are on the red dirt embankment of the irrigation canal, next to our fallen bicycles.

There’s a four foot clearance under the bridge of Anania Drive, covered in spray painted graffiti. I pull both bicycles into the shadows beneath the bridge, then pull Kristine after me. It is quiet there, almost like being in a cave; the concrete roof muffles and mutes the noises above.

“Why are we here?” Kristine asks suddenly, her voice an explosion of echoes, her face openly angry.

“Shh,” I urge, a finger to my lips. Then, in explanation: “I saw him. Chad.”

“So?” Kristine blurts, her voice (and its echoes) even louder.

“He’s out to get us,” I tell her with cold certainty.

“So?” Kristine repeats, and then points an accusatory finger. “It’s your fault. You lied.”

It takes a moment for me to come up with a counter. “It’s okay if he comes after me,” I tell her. “But I think he’s coming after you. And I can’t let him do that.”

Kristine shakes her head defiantly. “I told you, I’m a dragon! I don’t need-”

“Kris, please,” I urge, a finger to my lips.

“What about Japanese school?” Kristine persists.

I flash a glare at my sister, commanding silence.

Kristine crosses her arms across her chest and pouts. She look away from me, into the waters of the irrigation canal.

I settle back to listen for danger, gazing upwards as though I could see through concrete and asphalt.

Five minutes pass slowly for both of us. For Kristine, they drag like five fingers through solidifying cement. For me, those same minutes are pregnant with the ever present possibility of danger. Although the noise of school kids ebbs and flows innocuously, and the quiet rush of water in the canal is constant, I remain on edge. At any moment, Chad could silently sneak through the gap in the fence and be upon us.

“Look!” Kristine cries suddenly, springing forward towards the canal, her arm outstretched, her finger pointing.

I leap to my feet and hit my head pretty hard against the concrete ceiling. I ignore the pain, looking left and right, searching for Chad. I see nothing. “What?”

Kristine scrambles to the edge of the canal, scattering red dirt into the water. Her eyes look upstream, and soon, her finger points once again. “There!” And before I can do or say anything, she is up on her feet, running out of the relatively safe shadows of the bridge.

“Kristine!” I hiss, then crawl out from under the bridge to follow her, rubbing the crown of my head. I glance up briefly, nervously, over my shoulder. The railing above is empty, as is the expansive blue sky above.

Kristine pauses about ten feet away, then slows her pace to a leisurely walk. Her eyes are still glued to the waters in the canal. I sprint up to her, scanning our surroundings warily.

The irrigation canal is bordered on both sides by chain-link fence, occasionally interspersed with “No Trespassing” signs. Through the fence on our left (running roughly parallel with Meheula Parkway), the weedelia quickly gives way to a jumbled wildnerness of California grass and chalk rock boulders. I can just catch glimpses of Mililani High School through gaps in the grass. Through the fence on our right (across the canal), we can see the Nob Hill subdivision, its enclosed backyards drawing near. To me, the windows of the houses in the subdivision hide invisible eyes, watching us suspiciously.

Kristine pulls on my shirt. “Look,” she whispers, out of sheer wonder.

I finally look into the canal, to see what Kristine has risked our safety for.

The waters of the canal are clear and swift, the floor the grey of age-mottled concrete. A patch of dark green algae clings to the bottom, with long filamentous stalks trailing in the current like mermaid’s hair. And pushing through those stalks, swimming slowly but powerfully against the current, is the largest ivory white carp I have ever seen.

“Holy crap,” I utter, completely awestruck. “It’s a- it’s a-“

”It’s a carp!” Kristine chimes, jumping up and down.

It is over two feet long, with a perfect coat of silvery white scales, a powerful, fan-like tail, and large, pink-tinged eyes. It almost looks like a ghost, shimmering and hovering in the dull and dark confines of the canal. Yet if it is a ghost, it suddenly seems more real than everything else, the drifting water, the canal, even the two of us.

Incredible as it may seem, the thought of Chad seems to fade into the background, becoming as indistinct and half-forgotten as a bad dream upon waking. The proximity of certain wonder, after all, will trump any uncertain fear. Mesmerized by the carp, I begin to doubt that Chad was ever really after us. Perhaps I was just being paranoid.

“Why does it swim backwards?” Kristine asks, never taking her eyes off the carp.

“Swim backwards,” I repeat dully. I smile briefly as I realize what she means. “Oh, you mean, why is it swimming against the current? I don’t know.”

We slowly follow the carp’s steady progress up the canal.

The canal slowly bends to the right, distancing itself from Meheula Parkway, which is now completely concealed by the field of weeds and California grass, and slicing into the Nob Hill subdivision. The houses of Nob Hill are closer now. We can see details within each partitioned yard: rusty hibachis, broken plastic kiddie pools, and forgotten toys, like a bouncy riding caterpillar with a faded friendly smile, its midsection eaten away by time, rusted spine bare. A few of the houses, perhaps one in ten, hang a small koinobori up. There is no wind today, so they hang limp; I imagine that they are bowing in respect to their king, swimming in the canal.

We begin to hear the sound of rushing water. As we round another bend in the canal, we see the source of the sound: a small waterfall. A five foot high wooden board dams the current. The waters are glassy and smooth with an illusory stillness just before they rush over the edge and crash downwards in thunder and bubbles.

The carp swims into the lightly frothing waters at the base of the falls, but cannot proceed further. The strong current repeatedly pushes it back, twisting and bending its sinuous form; repeatedly, the carp surges forward, reentering the maelstrom.

“Why doesn’t it turn around?” Kristine asks. “Where does it want to go?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Maybe it just wants to get to the other side,” I muse.

Kristine’s eyes light up. “It wants to be a dragon!” she cries. She jumps up and down excitedly. “Like me!”

I smile fondly. “Let’s help it,” I say, kneeling down beside the canal, next to the dam. I visually examine the edges of the board and discover that nothing physically holds it in position; it is the force of the current, combined with the size of the board (which just matches the width of the canal) that wedge it in place. If I apply pressure in the right place, I might be able to dislodge the board.

I lie on the edge of the canal (ignoring the red dirt stains that will undoubtedly cover the front of my clothes) and reach a tentative hand into the rushing current.

Suddenly, there is a dull thudding sound, followed by a wounded cry. I leap to my feet, and discover my sister bent over, cradling her right knee. There is already an angry purple welt forming on her thigh.

“What happened?” I cry. My eyes dance wildly about, and drunkenly lock on a form about twenty feet behind us: Chad.

He is straddling a bike, his left hand holding the bike handle, his right tossing and catching a tennis ball sized chalk rock. His grin chills me across the distance.

“Gotcha,” he croons. And with a grunt, he chucks the chalk rock. I reflexively hunker down, only to discover his real target isn’t me. My sister cries again as the rock strikes her shoulder.

“Stop!” I shout, springing to my feet.

Chad’s smile vanishes. “No,” he says coldly. “I already wen pay for dis.” And he scans the ground nearby, undoubtedly searching for his next rock.

I look down at Kristine, my eyes burning with tears of rage. “Run, Kris,” I urge. “Just run, don’t turn back. Don’t turn back!”

Kristine, wide-eyed and frightened, nods. She lurches to her feet and begins a clumsy sprint along the canal.

Chad heaves another, smaller rock, but this time, I’m able to intercept it. It stings my right palm before ricocheting off the wall of the canal and splashing into the water.

Chad laughs. “Where you going?” he calls to my departing sister. And then his eyes lock onto me. “An’ who you going ask fo’ help?” He spreads his arms out, looking to the left and right. “No one hea. Jus’ you and me.”

I rush up to Chad, hoping to close the distance. For a moment, he seems to blanche. But he just drops the bike on its side, and squares off into a stance. As I slow directly in front of him, unprepared and unsure of what to do, his right fist whips out in a blur and strikes me full in the nose. My head spins, and I stumble backwards, eventually dropping to my knees. When the world settles, I feel the warm rush of blood flowing from my nose.

Chad laughs briefly. “Pussy,” he says. Then, instead of striking me again, he picks up the bicycle and gets on. He starts pedaling.

I get up dizzily, feeling the warmth and tasting the saltiness of my blood. Without a thought, I stumble forward and leap onto Chad before he can accelerate. Chad cries out as the bicycle, overbalanced by our combined weight, tips towards the canal. He vainly struggles to turn the handlebars, but it’s too late. There is a split second of disorientation as we fly/float/fall over the lip of the canal. Then, there is a chilling splash of water, followed immediately by an impact against submerged surfaces.

For a few seconds, the world is cold, swirling pain. Then my head breaks the surface. I’m where the falls should be, only our impact has dislodged the board so that it slants at an angle now. The cold waters surge down the slope of the board and churn insistently around me, threatening to pull me under. I try to stand, my clumsy feet discovering the unpredictable contours of the metal frame of the bicycle beneath me. Once I manage a secure footing, I search frantically for Chad. Looking down into the swirling water, I see that his right leg is pinned beneath the bicycle. Near the concrete wall of the canal, his head barely breaks the surface of the three foot current.

I place a foot on the bicycle frame to prevent Chad from wriggling free.

The look on his face as he gasps for air dimly reminds me of something. Ah yes, I think distantly, he looks like a carp, his jaws mouthing the letter O over and over again. My eyes momentarily scan the waters. Where could it have gone? There is no trace of it anywhere nearby.

“Get off!” gasps Chad, his free hand flailing towards my arm.

His expression is one that I am unfamiliar seeing in others: fear.

And in response, I suddenly feel something I have never felt before: power.

It feels new.

And it feels good.

I spread my arms out, looking up and down the length of the canal. “Who you going ask fo’help?” I mock, in a crude rendition of his pidgin. “No one hea. Jus’ you and me.”

The water pulls Chad’s terrified face under for a moment, his wide eyes never leaving mine, even as they waver beneath the surface. He resurfaces, coughing desperately to clear his lungs. He makes a sound, inarticulate and unformed, a sound that hasn’t enough air to float it intact through the water in his throat. It is a plea. A request.

In response, I smile coldly. “You’ve had this coming-“ I gloat.

“Stop it!”

The cry is sharp and jarring. I look up.

My sister is standing at the edge of the canal. The expression on her face is one of horror.

As though struck, I take a step backwards off the bicycle frame. As it lifts slightly off of Chad’s leg, he pushes himself up with desperate flailing arms just enough so that his head can clear the surface. He wheezes and heaves and sobs loudly, imbibing air like a fish out of water.

As I look at him, helpless and crumpled, I seem to see him for the first time. I notice the bruise on his pale cheek, undoubtedly made by his father’s fist. And just below the collar of his T-shirt, an angry welt peeks red. Chad must have pursued us despite what he suffered last night. He must have been compelled by a desperate and flawed sense of justice, a crude order he had to defend so that the senselessness of his life could make sense.

I had cheated him of this.

And I had almost drowned him besides.

“Sorry,” I stammer, backing away. “I’m sorry.” I’m not sure if I’m talking to Chad, or my sister, or even myself. All I know is that I want to get away from this ugliness, leave it behind me forever.

I climb out of the canal, feeling the weight of the water that drenches my clothes.

Then I reach for Kristine’s hand. “Come on,” I tell her, “Let’s go.”

She stares blankly at me.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter once more, and start to walk slowly back towards Anania Drive, and home.

After about ten steps, I hear Kristine’s footsteps reluctantly trail me.

Behind her, Chad’s slow sobbing gasps continue. Even after we round the bend, even after we reach our bicycles beneath the bridge, I can’t drown that sound in the distance.

***

The explanation I give my mother for everything, my dirty, soaked clothes, the bloodstains on my face, even our absence from Japanese school on that Thursday is simple, and half true. I tell her that, while we were riding beside the irrigation canal, I had somehow slipped and fallen off of my bicycle, tumbled in the red dirt, and plummeted into the canal, where I hit my nose against the concrete walls. On the way, I caused Kristine to trip up as well, and she fell, injuring her leg and shoulder on some rocks on the ground.

My mother forbids us from riding our bicycles anywhere near the irrigation canal ever again. “They should fence it up completely,” she says, and resolves to compel MTA to do something about it.

My sister doesn’t offer any resistance to my lie, doesn’t question why I don’t mention Chad. Perhaps she understands my thinking, that after today, Chad deserves some measure of mercy. Or perhaps she doesn’t care what I say any more, perhaps she is resigned to the fact that I am a liar, and worse.

***

We never see Chad again. In fact, within a few months, he and his father move out, and are replaced by quiet, conservative neighbors.

As for the carp, well, we never see it again either. Sometimes I wonder if we ever did see it, or if it was some sort of dream.

We never talk about it, Kristine and I.

In fact, Kristine and I never talk period.

I mean, we talk, because we still ride to and from school together everyday. We have to. But we never go beyond that. Kristine never asks me to read her stories at night, for example, and she never offers to hold my hand to go to the bathroom any more.

Oddly enough, I no longer need her to.

***

On some nights, alone in bed, ghosts visit me. They are not the ghosts that used to haunt me on the way to the bathroom. No, these ghosts are different. They are ghosts of regret. They come to me, replaying the same sequence of events over and over and over again. Though I know it is useless to look back, I helplessly do. Perhaps I believe that, in some iteration, I will find the something that I could have done differently. Perhaps I believe that someday I will discover a way back to how things were, to the Once upon a time when my sister still believed in me. Until then, I will dream of paper boat races and the backwards carp, and long afternoons when we lived together happily.

Ever after.

[previously posted the beginning of this one; I think I wanted to incorporate more of what my sis and I used to do in our idyllic days, just to give readers more a sense of the simplicity of that time, and therefore make the "disruption" of the events in the story a bit more poignant... Note that this story is supposed to be somewhat related to Taishokuten.]