Becoming Who We Are Ch. 07

"It's me," Luke's faint voice said.

Mrs. Tang's face lost some, but not all, of its luster. Still, Mark's question pleased her enough that Luke's awkward presence did not affect her the way it normally did.

"Have a nice walk?" she asked in a genial voice when he looked in.

He gazed at her warily.

"Yes. I went down to the college. It's pretty down there."

"Indeed it is. Well, I'm glad you had a nice time. You should hit the books before dinner, so why don't you go do that now?"

It was a definite dismissal, and Luke obeyed, glad to escape with his hide intact. She certainly seemed in a good mood. He wondered what was up.

In his room, he shut the door carefully, took off and hung up his coat, and lay down on his bed. Thoughts of Shelly dominated his mind. What a nice girl! He had never met anyone so sweet. True, she seemed to have a few issues here and there, but didn't everyone? He felt in his pocket for the slip that had her phone number on it. He read the numbers over and over, smiling to himself. A girl had given him, Luke Tang, her number! Life didn't get any better.

He heard the click of his mother's heels in the hall, and bounded to his desk. His opening of the math text just beat his mother's opening of the door, and he turned toward the door with an innocent look.

"What are you doing?" his mother asked without preamble.

"Math."

"Good. You absorbing any of it?"

"I think so."

"About time. Well, I'm off to the restaurant. Your dinner's in the oven -- it ought to come out in about forty-five minutes. You're in charge of it tonight. It'll be just you and your brother; Mary's coming with me since she seems to be able to do her homework at the restaurant. It's too bad you can't; I'd prefer to keep you where I can make sure you're working and not goofing off. Anyway, we'll be home by ten or ten thirty. I expect you to be ready for bed by then."

"All right."

She left without another word. Luke heaved a sigh of relief. He had hated trying to do homework at their restaurant in Queens; he always found the chatter of the waiters and cooks infinitely more interesting than whatever his teachers assigned. He had picked up a good deal of Cantonese that way, and his parents hadn't even realized it until later. He frowned, remembering. His father had seemed quite pleased at his lingual abilities back then, making much of his slender son's talents to his friends and colleagues. Of course, that was before John had died, but still, his death should not have meant the end of his father's approval. Luke couldn't imagine why his father had turned his back on him the way he had. It made no sense.

He put that out of his mind. Hearing the front door close, Luke returned to his bed to daydream about his new friend. Shelly. What a pretty name...

The smoke alarm woke him. Luke sat straight up, first disoriented at its piercing shriek, then panicked. He sniffed, but detected no scent of smoke, and hurried to the door, which felt cool. He opened his door and heard, between the alarm's pulses, the clanging of pots in the kitchen.

"Mark?" he shouted.

"Get down here and help me, you stupe!"

Luke dashed down the steps and into the kitchen. The source of smoke sat on the stove: the now-charred casserole his mother had put in the oven. Mark stood on his tiptoes on a chair, fiddling with the smoke alarm. He yanked it off the wall and jerked the battery out of its housing. The din stopped.

"Take that dish outside," Mark commanded. "It's stinking up the whole house."

Luke obeyed, wrinkling his nose at its scent as he carried it to the back door and placed it to the concrete porch. How had he fallen asleep?

He returned to the kitchen, where he found his brother opening windows to clear out the smoke.

"Go get that big window fan out of the basement," Mark said. "That'll help clear the air in here."

Luke trotted down the stairs and fetched the fan. Back upstairs, he handed it to Mark who fitted the fan into the windowsill and turned it on its highest setting.

"So what happened?" Mark asked, as the fan drew the smoke and blew it outside.

"I fell asleep."

"Oh. Well, what are we going to tell Mom?"

"Maybe she won't notice," Luke suggested hopefully.

Mark gave him a pitying look.

"Don't be dense. She'll notice, all right. I'm talking about damage control. You know if we tell her the truth she'll take it out of your hide, so we need another story."

"Well, where were you?" Luke asked.

Before Mark could answer, the front door opened. Both boys jumped. Mrs. Tang strode into the kitchen, sniffed and glared at the two.

"What happened in here?" she demanded, taking in the sight of the open windows, twirling fan and lingering smoke.

"Um," Luke started.

"Oh, don't bother. I can tell exactly what happened. You stupidly forgot about dinner and burned it. Now, where is it?"

"Back porch," Mark said.

She walked out, took one look at the charred mess in the once-pristine glass dish, and returned, anger spots on her cheeks. She fixed Luke with a fierce gaze.

"That pan is absolutely ruined! And casserole dishes aren't exactly cheap, either. Now, listen up. You'd better find some way to get that pan clean, and by clean, I mean spotless and nothing short of spotless. When I get home tonight, I'm going to look very carefully at that dish. If you really have ruined it, I expect you to pay for it. We don't have money to waste on your mistakes. Do you understand me?"

"But, Mom," Mark protested. "Luke didn't mean it."

"I don't care what he meant. He needs to learn that his father and I are not made of money!"

"But you just told me today that we have plenty of money."

"That's different!" she snapped. "Now be quiet, or do I need to punish you, too?"

"No," he said, still resentful. "I just don't think it's fair."

"Life isn't fair," she said. "Don't you know that yet?"

She glanced at her watch.

"I've got to get back. Now why did I come home? Oh, the office. The ledger book. That's right."

She walked quickly out of the kitchen. As her heels clicked up the stairs, Mark said, in a low voice, "I'll help you with the pan. She's being totally unfair."

"Thanks," Luke whispered gratefully.

When their mother was safely out of the house, Mark went to the back porch and fetched the pan. He set it on the counter, where both regarded it glumly.

"I guess the first thing to do is get as much of the food out of it as we can and soak it," Luke said. He found a spatula and scraped the remains of the meal into the trash, then put the pan and the spatula in the sink and turned on the water.

After eating a couple of sandwiches, the boys tackled the dish.

"Sorry about dinner," Luke said after several minutes of scrubbing.

"That's okay. It's not like Mom's the best cook in the world."

Luke snorted. "Remember the meals Dad used to make for us?"

"How could I forget food like that?" Mark rolled his eyes, then chuckled. "I'll never forget the first time I went to a Chinese restaurant other than ours. I ordered one of Dad's specialties, and when it came, I couldn't believe my eyes or my mouth. Gross!"

"I wish he still cooked for us here at home," Luke said.

"Who doesn't?"

Both boys sighed, reflecting on the feasts of the past.

"What do you think?" Luke asked ten minutes later. He held up the pan for inspection after its fifth wash. Mark took the dish and peered at it.

"Looks great to me," he finally said. "I mean, this light isn't the greatest, but I can't find any trace of the burned parts. The Happy Homemaker herself couldn't have done a better job."

"Good," Luke said. "Then maybe my hands can dry out. I hate jobs like this."

"Me too. I don't see why she has to be so hard on you. Melina's mom wouldn't have freaked out over a burned pan."

Luke shrugged.

"What can you do?" he asked philosophically.

"You could stand up to her."

"What good will that do? She'll just punish me more."

"Maybe. But maybe she wouldn't. And even if she did, you'd still have a few shreds of self-respect, and she might respect you more."

Luke shrugged again.

"I've got homework to do," he said. He turned and left.

Mark stared after him, shaking his head.

**

Jeff Rohrbach lay on his bed, reviewing the past weeks. They had not gone well.

His troubles had really started at the Homecoming dance, he decided. He remembered getting drunk and having an argument with Kristen -- no, that was at the keg party -- no, wait, they had fought again at the dance. That's right. She had gone home with a friend, saying he was too drunk to drive. He snorted. He was never too drunk to drive. Drinking made driving more of a challenge, but it in no way impaired his abilities.

So Kristen had left, and he had told his buddies to get lost. Then he had seen that Chinese guy and had a fight with him. Jeff remembered little of that fight, except that he had apparently lost, judging by the scrapes on his hands. He scowled. He had been looking for that kid every day at school, but had not yet seen him. Of course, Jeff thought, the kid might not be a senior, so maybe their paths would not intercept. Maybe he didn't even go to White Rose High.

Then the accident had happened. Just thinking about it made his arm under the cast itch. He glared at the plaster, willing it to stop. It didn't. He found the wire hanger he had fashioned into a hook, slid it under the plaster and worked it back and forth until the itching ceased.

Resuming his analysis of events, Jeff thought sourly of how his old man had brooded and complained about the loss of the scholarship, as if Jeff had broken his arm on purpose. And if that weren't enough, Kristen had managed to escape from him, and Coach had gotten mad at him. Coach had never gotten mad at him before.

The big blond boy frowned as he came to his conclusion. His problems were all that Oriental kid's fault. Nothing good had happened to him since he had fought that kid, so he must be to blame.

The question now was one of revenge, and how to get it. His mood lightened for the first time in days as he turned his attention to this pleasurable pursuit. The kid had beaten Jeff while he was drunk, so his victory was therefore a fluke. Jeff felt certain he could take the kid sober. He glanced down at his arm. Sobriety wouldn't help him if his arm were encased in plaster, so a confrontation would have to wait. He quelled his surge of frustration with the thought that he would have to do a couple of weeks' worth of reconnaissance work anyway. He needed to learn the kid's name, where he lived and what his habits were. It wouldn't hurt, he considered, if he found out who that girl was, too. Just in case the kid proved a stronger opponent than he expected, Jeff could probably hurt him by doing something to the girlfriend. He smiled at that thought.

"Jeff!" his father's voice pierced through this reverie. "Where the hell are you?"

Jeff rolled his eyes. Scholarship or no scholarship, he had to get out of this house.

**

He put his plan into action on Monday morning, waiting outside the school as students sauntered up to the building. Most of the kids came in through the front, but some used side doors. Jeff planned to stand outside a different door each day until he found the kid he wanted.

Shivering in the unseasonable cold, he lasted about ten minutes until he started wondering if this was such a good idea. The temperature had dropped enough that many people wore hats or parkas, making it difficult to identify them. Some of the passing teens greeted him, which distracted him further; he returned their hellos in a perfunctory way, his eyes always scanning clumps of other kids for the face of his adversary.

"Hey, Jeff!"

He glanced at the approaching figure and frowned. Danny Davidson was the last person he wanted to see. The kid had an annoyingly perky manner that never failed to grate on Jeff's nerves.

"Danny," he acknowledged in a flat voice, hoping the kid would keep walking.

"How's the arm?" Danny asked.

"Fine."

"I remember when I broke my leg a couple of years ago. I about itched to death."

"Uh huh."

"Does your arm itch?"

"Uh huh."

Danny looked at the boy's dead expression and decided he had said enough. Funny guy, Rohrbach. Danny couldn't figure him out. The good-looking blond had the kind of body and talent Danny would have died for, and all kinds of girls hanging around him, yet he never seemed happy. Danny had hoped their mutual benched status might break the ice between them, but that seemed unlikely now. He shrugged.

"Okay. See ya."

Jeff wasted no glances on Danny's departing back. Stupid kid. Jeff had never spoken to him voluntarily. What made Danny think anything had changed?

The five-minute bell sounded. Kids swarmed around and past him. He scanned the crowd, admitted defeat for the moment, and joined his peers walking into the school.

As the week progressed, Jeff grew more frustrated. By Friday afternoon, he felt downright hostile. Before and after school, he had waited patiently outside the front, back and two side doors and had not seen his quarry once, he thought disgustedly. He had spotted Luke a couple of times. Jeff smiled at the memory. He had the kid so scared that he seemed to shrink every time he laid eyes on Jeff. As the crowd of kids leaving the building thinned, Jeff's temper rose. Did Scotty beam the damn kid into the building?

A familiar dark head, bent down against the cold wind, passed him, and Jeff opted abruptly to abandon his post. After such a week, he deserved a little fun. He followed the slight figure across the street and into the park, quickening his pace as they approached a clump of evergreen shrubs that would screen them from passing traffic.

"Hey, kid," he called.

Luke turned around, paled and bolted for the open space. Jeff sped after him, catching hold of his jacket and twirling Luke around to face him.

"Not so fast," he drawled. "What's your hurry?"

Luke said nothing, mentally steeling himself for the coming ordeal and tightening his stomach muscles against a possible punch. Suddenly, it occurred to him that Jeff could not do much damage with one arm in a cast. He wrenched himself out of Jeff's grasp and ran. He had not taken five steps before a hand fastened on his coat's collar.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Jeff shouted, his face red with rage.

"Leave me alone," Luke pleaded.

He saw Jeff's cast come at his head, a blurry white arc. He ducked, but not in time to escape the clout to his occiput. He fell, his hands reaching for his head as he did so.

Jeff stood over him, panting.

"Don't ever run away again!" he rasped. "I'll kill you if you do."

He kicked the curled-up body and strode away, his arm throbbing. He winced. Perhaps using the cast as a club had not been the best idea. Still, it had felt so good to hit someone. Had Luke not run to a more public spot, Jeff would have hit him again and again, until he could no longer feel the anger consuming him.

For Jeff, part of the pleasure of beating people up was watching their agony afterwards, so he walked a discreet distance, then turned around. He did not expect to find two figures bending over Luke. Jeff squinted, astonished to see the kid who had fought him! His left fist clenched as the boy extended a hand to Luke to help him stand, then slung an arm around his shoulders. Jeff watched their progress in disbelief. How had the kid evaded him all week, only to appear now, like some kind of avenging angel or something? And wasn't that the girl he seen at the dance?

"Who was that? Who hit you?" Mark asked Luke.

"Some kid," Luke shrugged, having decided the less said, the better.

"Do you know him?" Melina asked.

"Not really."

Mark and Melina exchanged a concerned glance. Neither could figure out Luke's matter-of-fact attitude. He acted as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

As they crossed the street, Jeff decided to follow them. They would no doubt walk home, and that would give Jeff the information he needed to use against them both.

Despite himself, he smiled. He might not have gotten in all the punches he wanted today, but he would.