I scrunched my face, instantly suspicious. “What do you mean, you don't know? Was he at practice or not?”
I didn’t like how shifty this guy was acting. And the “Where’s Byron” mini-mystery exploded into a full-on suspense scene inside my head.
“I don't know?” the British guy said again, this time with a question mark. “I really must go now. I’ve a car waiting.”
It was true he was one of those Richie Rich kids on the team who had a limo waiting for them after basketball practice. But a bad feeling came over me as I watched him rush away.
Byron and I weren’t twins. We didn’t have ESP or anything like that. But siblings who start school in a foreign country together have a different kind of bond. And I turned back to the closed locker room door, knowing in my gut, something wasn’t right.
Byron was in trouble. So I pushed into the guys’ locker room, even though it's was super against the rules for girls to go in there.
I heard the laughter as soon as I entered the forbidden space. Snickering and mean, like hyenas in human clothing.
“Hit him again,” a voice with an American accent said in Japanese. “Show that homo!”
I rushed toward the sound of the voices and got there just in time to see Byron take a punch to the gut. He was still wearing his basketball clothes. And two boys with wet hair, fully dressed in their school uniforms, were holding him prone to the locker.
One was Tim, an American who used to be Byron's friend up until this term. And the other was a Japanese guy who never bothered to talk to me whenever Byron dragged me along for one of the basketball team’s hangouts. I think his name was Yoshi. I was more surprised to see them holding my brother down than I was to see the guy who had just hit Byron.
That would be Jake Nakamura. The grandson of my father's boss.
He was saying something in Japanese to Byron, who was doubled over in pain. Words I didn't understand. But the anime term for extreme facial expressions, agego, flashed through my mind. He appeared that angry.
After Jake finished his tirade, he and Yoshi traded places. Yoshi had never liked Byron. Probably because before my brother joined the team, he was the only one who could hit three-pointers.
He was not nearly as considerate as Jake, who hit Byron below the neck. Yoshi drew his arm back, curling his hand into an open fist to hit my brother again. This time in the face.
Meanwhile, Jake had the nerve to say, "Yes, hurt him. Give him what he deserves."
I knew…
I knew that Jake’s grandfather was the only reason we were allowed to go to this school. Our tuition for Tokyo Progressive had been a signing gift to my father. A gift he could take back whenever he wanted. Also, I’d promised my brother I'd stay out of this Jake mess at the beginning of the term.
But something inside me snapped at the sight of them holding Byron down while Yoshi prepared to hit him.
“Let him go! Get away from my brother!” I screamed, throwing down my backpack and rushing at them blindly.
I couldn't say that I had a plan for how I, a five-foot-three girl, would take on a bunch of basketball players. I'm not tough like so many of the other girls I went to school with back in Jersey. I'd never gotten in a fight in my life, and I wasn't even sure how to throw a punch.
But as it turned out, all I had to do to keep Byron from getting hit again was show up.
Yoshi’s fist plowed into my face and sent me flying into the lockers.
And did the humiliation stop there? Nope. I bounced off the metal wall behind me. Then, of course, I had to trip over the low bench welded into the floor between the rows of lockers. I went flying again, this time face forward as I tumbled over the wood and steel structure before landing in an unceremonious pile on the concrete floor.
Ow.
“What are you doing here?” Yoshi demanded in his still not very good English despite the years he and Byron had been supposed friends. “No girls allowed in boys’ locker room!”
I groaned and turned over. Jake and his two friends were standing over me, their expressions aghast. Like me being in the boys’ locker room was way more outrageous than their completely unfair fight with my brother.
“What am I doing? What are you doing?” I demanded back.
Pain from my Melissa McCarthy in blackface routine stabbed at it least five points on my body as I sat up. But I struggled to my feet, determined to look strong, even if half my face felt like there was something hot and pulsing inside of it.
