Love Hurricane

KIRA

Princeton, Kentucky, July 12 ^th,2014

“I can't stand this situation any more! I don't care at all whether Darren Scott is the city boss! Yes, I understood...Yes...yes...Absolutely not! I'm not absolutely going to give up...I don't care if this war has gone on for four years! I'm tired of letting that monster spoil a young boy's childhood! I know he has already threatened to have me fired...He has been trying for ages, but luckily I'm too good at my job, so he couldn't get the Major's authorization...I understand...Yes...Okay, but I can't stand this state of things any more! Lucas is once more in my kitchen, he's hurt and my daughter is treating him! He had a wound on his lip last month, while he has a deep cut in his left eyebrow today!” Elizabeth Madis kept shouting on the phone. She was locked into her study, sure that the two young people in her kitchen couldn't hear her, but unfortunately her anger and her frustration seemed ready to break down the walls. She had been discussing with her boss for some years, about the measures they could take towards the powerful Darren Scott, but it seemed that all the people living in Princeton had family members working for him or renting a house in one of his crumbling blocks of flats. Everybody owed Darren Scott something, so they all feared consequences. Even the head of the Police.

In spite of that, Elizabeth had never given up: she was famous because she always got the best results in her job and for her incredible sixth sense which made her discover what was rotten in every family in town. After four years, she was still trying to obtain justice for that miserable child that she often had to put up and heal, together with her daughter Kira, who had never left Lucas alone since she met him.

Even if Kira was still very young, she had taken her best friend's troubles upon herself and she was very busy in looking for a plaster at that moment, so she wasn't listening to her mother's phone call, which she already knew by heart.

“You'll probably get a scar. Just sit down and go on pressing the gauze,” she ordered Lucas, feeling annoyed and nervous inside because she hadn't been able to prevent that new violence on the boy.

“It's hurting!” Lucas moaned, sitting on the stool in front of the kitchen counter, where all kinds of medicine, gauze, cotton and plaster were spread.

“Just hang on and sit comfortably! I can't get there,” Kira went on, snorting and trying to put the largest plaster she had been able to find on the boy's eyebrow.

“It's not my fault if you're small,” Lucas teased her as he found Kira's threatening look funny: when she screwed up her eyes, she looked like a character of Japanese mangas.

“You're just three inches taller than me and by the way, I wish to remind you that you were a real shorty last year,” Kira immediately underlined. She had realized lately that all her class mates had grown a lot and she was the shortest one now, while she used to be the tallest one in the past. Even her best friends Jane and Roxanne were a few inches taller than her by then.

“I'd better take up basket once more,” she thought, feeling vexed because she hadn't grown at all in the last two years.

“Take off your t-shirt now. It's stained with blood,” she ordered him soon after, thinking about the great amount of blood pouring out of his wound when she had gone and visited him that holiday afternoon. She had had to hold herself back and avoid feeling sick, after she had flung at Lucas's father, calling him “alcohol-addicted butcher” and “Jack the Ripper.” Just her mother's arrival had been able to save them from the furious anger of that man, who was in an alcoholic haze.

“But what shall I wear then?” Lucas got nervous and felt uneasy for being half naked, especially because the marks of his father's violence where still clearly visible on his shoulder blades.

“My mum and I bought a t-shirt for you at the market yesterday. Mum wanted to give it to you for your new school term, but I'm going to do it now! I chose it myself!” Kira exclaimed enthusiastically, making Lucas blush to his ears, but she simply ignored him and, taking him by his arm as she always did, she took him to her parents' bedroom, where her mother had hidden the present in her husband's socks drawer.

When they got into the room, Kira and Lucas locked themselves inside.

“Here you are!”

“Thanks” he muttered feeling moved and unwrapping it.

There was a blue t-shirt inside, with Super Mario's mushroom in its centre, like in Kira's Nintendo, and his name, Lucas, was printed under it.

“As soon as I saw it, I thought about you, because we always play Nintendo when we spend a Sunday together. You really love Super Mario Bross and jumping on the mushrooms in the game.”

“I usually jump on them, while you crash into them and are killed,” Lucas reminded her: he considered Kira like a genius at school, but an absolute duffer at video-games.

As an answer, Kira stuck out her tongue at him and Lucas smiled happily.

“So, how does it fit me?” he asked her, changing subject of conversation before Kira started listing the fields where she had no trouble in beating him.

She hated judging carelessly and not judiciously, so she placed her hands on her hips with her usual lofty air and started looking at him attentively.

The t-shirt fitted him wonderfully and Kira couldn't avoid noticing his muscles, which weren't there some time before. She had always kept silent about that, but she had realized that she was always the looser when they wrestled with their pillows now, or when they pushed each other on the sofa or played basketball in the courtyard. Even if Lucas was always quite thin, there wasn't much left of the nine-year-old boy that Kira had met four years before.

Time had gone by and Lucas was getting stronger, he was growing and becoming more and more defiant and brave. He didn't fear his father's blows any more, he had learnt how to take them without shedding any tear.

Kira stared at him for a long while and was spellbound by his face as it always happened. She had got to love it, even if his look was often different because of his father's blows.

His hazel eyes were always bright under his heap of messy, brown hair, in spite of a melancholic shadow which Kira had seen too often in his gaze.

Knowing that her friend was suffering made her feel very miserable, so she always tried to make him feel better and happy when they spent some time together.

She had even burst out crying in her mother's arms one night, thinking about Lucas.

“You're still too young to carry such a burden, but as you are considerate enough as to realize it, so just try to make him smile as much as possible! Kira, if you wish to help Lucas, you mustn't cry, you have to be strong for him!” her mother had told her that day. She hadn't understood very well what her mother meant by her words then, but she had been trying hard to be always cheerful and caring towards her best friend since that moment.

And now, after some years, she could see a very different Lucas in front of herself: much taller, stronger and very good looking.

“So?” Lucas spurred her, feeling nervous. He wasn't absolutely used to Kira's silence, she was the most biting pontificating girl in their school.

Thanks to her, nobody had ever dared teasing him, even when they had discovered that he found school hard because of slight dyslexia, which the school speech therapist and psychologist hadn't been able to certificate because the boy's father had hushed it up, as soon as they had started talking about back-up teachers and facilitated tests to help his son face his handicap in a better way.

That word, handicap, was exactly the one which had stirred up a mess, sending the speech therapist to hospital with a broken nose.

That day the powerful Darren Scott hadn't been able to get off very easily and had been forced to pay a lot of money in order to avoid being formally denounced

“You're very handsome,” Kira stated keeping her eyes on the t-shirt.

“Handsome?” the boy repeated amused and uneasy, as he wasn't used to such compliments.

Kira immediately regretted using that word.

“Jane says you are handsome,” she underlined, very ashamed since she had just revealed her friend's secret.

“Jane? Jane Hartwood?”

“Yes. I believe she would like to pair off with you,” Kira whispered, keeping cursing herself and wondering how the hell she could have told Lucas those things.

“Really?” Lucas asked her, turning suddenly serious.

That change in his voice deeply annoyed Kira, who felt suddenly very irritated and angry.

“You don't like her, do you? Lucas, don't tell me you want to pair off with her too! You want to kiss her and...” she squealed in a shrill and raving voice.

“No, I don't! I'm just curious. I didn't think Jane liked me,” Lucas stopped her.

“If that's the question, Roxy is crazy for you too,” Kira was going to reply, but a poisonous feeling of jealousy shut her lips.

“What's the problem now?” Lucas immediately got worried as he knew what that small, heart-shaped mouth could hide when it turned still smaller and thinner.

“Nothing.”

“You're angry,” Lucas could understand since he knew her very well.

“I'm not angry at all!”

“Is it for Jane's fault? I think she is nice, but she isn't the one for me.”

Of all his words, Kira could just hear “nice.”

“So, you like her!”

“I just said she's nice, not that I like her!”

“Well, so just get you next Super Mario's t-shirt from her!” Kira burst out furiously; her mind was hazy and she went out of the room slamming the door.

“Kira!” Lucas called her, upset. Kira had never left him alone in all those years they had spent together, so he was feeling deeply guilty at that moment, as if he was responsible for her reaction.

Kira couldn't understand her own behaviour, but she felt shuttered while her chest was hurting.

When she got to her bedroom, she started crying.

She let herself fall onto the bed, feeling miserable and lost because of her deep emotions.

Someone knocked at the door soon after.

She didn't answer, but the door opened anyway.

Her mother was there.

“Can you tell me what happened, darling? Lucas was crying when he walked away! I hadn't seen hin crying for such a long time...Kira, you too! Are you crying?” Elizabeth immediately got worried, because she wasn't used at all to seeing her daughter shedding tears. Kira had always been very Zen and not very emotional, excepted before some injustice.

“I'm not crying!” she sobbed, her face drenched with tears.

“Kira, darling, what happened to you? Did you and Lucas quarrel?”

“I don't know...I...I don't know what seized me” Kira tried to explain and kept whining. “I gave him the t-shirt we bought at the market and then...he said that he finds Jane nice and I...I...”

“Are you jealous of Jane?” her mother suggested, trying to hold back an amused smile in front of what seemed to be quite a jealousy scene. She had been wondering in the bottom of her heart what that very particular friendship between Kira and Lucas would turn into, when the two of them left puberty to enter teenage. Could her daughter's fondness towards him accept the presence of another girl next to Lucas? Would he ever be able to part from his best friend?

She had gotten more and more certain in the last years that the tie between those two children could never break up and that sooner or later she would find them petting behind the garden hedge.

And now, seeing that her daughter had fallen victim to jealousy and was suffering for her first love pain, she couldn't avoid smiling and feeling pleased with her excellent intuition which had never disappointed her.

“I'm not jealous!” Kira got into a huff.

“So, why are you crying? Tell me the truth, are you falling in love with Lucas?” Elizabeth supposed, pretending to be indifferent to the evident blush on her daughter's pale face.

“No, I'm not! What are you saying, mum?”

“I'm just saying that getting so angry because Lucas likes another girl is very strange... By the way, you've grown up now and it had to happen sooner or later. To him or to you...” she teased her.

“Lucas is mine!” Kira got dejected and started crying her eyes out again. “I'm not going to share him with anybody!”

“Kira,” her mother whispered, getting moved and troubled.

“I don't want to lose him! I love him, mum.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Elizabeth sighed and hugged her daughter to comfort her.

They kept hugging each other for a long time, till the girl stopped crying.

“Was Lucas really crying?” Kira asked after a while.

“Yes, he was. I hadn't seen him crying for ages” her mother told her with sorrow, making her daughter feel terribly guilty. “You should apologize to him.”

“Yes, you're right. I didn't mean to make him cry” she just mumbled as she felt very ashamed of her behaviour.

“What about making banana biscuits with chocolate drops and bringing them to him?” her mother suggested, trying to cheer her up.

“Lucas loves those biscuits!”

Wiping away sadness, Kira and her mother started making a large baking tray full of flower-shaped biscuits. Being busy in making perfect biscuits, Kira forgot her conversation with Lucas and just focused on making peace with him.

The biscuits were almost perfectly baked in the oven one hour later and Kira was really looking forward to taking them out and bringing them immediately to her friend. She couldn't wait clearing her conscience which was weighing on her.

“What a sweet smell of biscuits!” a male voice burst out behind them.

They suddenly turned and saw Kenzo Yoshida's imposing and decorated figure.

“Daddy!” Kira shouted in the seventh heaven and rushed to hug her father. She hadn't seen him for almost a month. Even if it took just an hour by car to get to the base, Kenzo could go back to his family just a few times a month or even less.

“Darling!” Elizabeth followed her, running into her husband's arms. “Why are you already back? You said you wouldn't come home before August.”

“I'm on leave and I've got great news for us all!” the man answered smiling.

“Tell us everything, please.”

“We're moving back to Tokyo!” Kira's father exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” his wife asked puzzled.

“I've understood me, Ely. They have moved me again, they are sending me back to the American Embassy in Tokyo. Kira, are you happy? You're going to see granny again. I'm sure she is looking forward to hugging you again.”

“I don't want to go back to Japan!” his daughter burst out, as soon as she realized what that news meant.

“Kenzo, I've got a job here and I didn't think...”

“Ely, you haven't understood how the matter stands. This is not something negotiable, it's orders from above and you can say thanks to your dear friend Darren Scott,” the man explained in an icy voice.

“What a bast...”

“Don't speak like that in front of the child,” her husband stopped her, as he didn't want his daughter to listen to swearwords.

“I'm not a child any more and I don't want to go back to Tokyo!” Kira meddled again, on the verge of tears.

“I want to leave before the new school term begins. I'm going to share my time between home and the embassy, while you can stay at my mother's, like before. I've already contacted Kira's old school and they have place for her! She will just have to pass an exam and she will be able to attend intermediate school” her father went on carelessly, making his daughter get very anxious: she looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“No, no, no, no, no!” the young girl kept shouting, shutting her ears.

“Kira, you knew we were going to stay here just for four years!” her father tried to make her use her head, grasping her shoulders, but she started squirming and crying desperately.

“No, no, no! I don't want to leave! I want to stay here! In Princeton! With Lucas!”

“I'm sorry, child. But that's impossible!”

“No, I don't want” Kira shouted her heart out, pushing her father violently away, rushing out of the back door and to the garage to take her bike.

Her father's reproaching shouts and her mother's desperate ones were completely useless.

Panting breathlessly and with terror deep inside her heart for what was going on, the girl took her bike and, before her father could get to her, she rushed into the street and started riding it with all her strength: she knew the boy's home was five long kilometers far.

When she got to the Scott family's sumptuous and majestic villa, all the muscles in her legs were burning and she felt pain in her throat because of the strain.

Luckily there was a light wind that day, so each tear which had tried to streak down her face, was almost dry before coming out.

Using the small passage Lucas had made three years before by breaking some part of the fencing, Kira was able to walk stealthily into the villa and ran breathlessly into the house.

She knew that Lucas' father would never allow her in, as it had always happened in those four years, but she could identify the window of her friend's bedroom, so she ran underneath and called him, with the little breath that was left to her.

After shouting Lucas's name seven times, she was shaken by tears and fell on her knees on the gravel, praying that it was just an awful nightmare.

She jumped and suddenly stood up scared when she felt a light touch on her shoulder.

She feared it might be Darren Scott or her own mother, but luckily, as soon as she turned, she could see Lucas's drawn and sad face.

She looked at him, trying to wipe away those irritating tears which made the real word around her flickering.

Lucas had taken the plaster away, so Kira could see his wound among the hair on his eyebrow. However, she was still more shattered by his swollen and red eyes, since she wasn't used to them any more.

She instinctively looked for a handkerchief in her pocket, so she could wipe away his scared air, but she had forgotten everything when she had run away from home.

“Kira,” the boy whispered. He felt devastated when he saw his friend crying. That was something unexpected and it made him feel very bad again.

“Lucas,” Kira burst out, flinging herself into his arms. She held him tight with all her strength, as if she feared the wind could take him away from her.

She felt Lucas's arms returning her hug and completely embracing her.

“I'm sorry, Kira,” the boy mumbled dejected, smothering his words through her long and silky hair.

“Oh, Lucas! Please, forgive me. I don't want to lose you,” Kira sobbed, holding him still tighter.

“Neither do I,” Lucas was shaken.

Kira could hear his friend's heart beating faster and faster, while his breathing turned irregular.

She knew he was crying and that made her broken down.

She had been looking after him for years and she had got to know him, to love him and support him. So at that moment she couldn't believe what she was going to tell him soon after.

“My father has been transferred back to Tokyo. He wants my mother and I to go back to Japan with him,” she could say without parting from Lucas, but he suddenly took a step back, as soon as he realized what she meant.

Kira shivered because of that sudden separation. Then she saw Lucas looking at her with a shattered look.

“I don't want, but...” Kira tried to explain to him.

“So don't do it! Don't go. Don't leave me alone...you too. I'm begging you,” Lucas stammered terrified and started shaking. He had already lost his mother and he was going to loose his best friend soon.

Why were all the women he loved going to leave him sooner or later?

“I don't want to leave you alone,” Kira stated seriously, trying to recover a bit of clearness.

“So don't go back to Japan!” Lucas begged her in such a painful voice that it sounded like a stab in Kira's heart.

Her answer slipped out of her lips before she could even think about it.

“All right,” she answered, starting brooding over it to find a solution.

The smile which finally spread on Lucas's face was worthier than a thousand Christmas presents.

“Will you promise?”

Elizabeth usually told her daughter to avoid making promises she couldn't keep, but Kira had no doubts about what was going to happen: she was going to stay in Princeton with Lucas, by hook or by crook.

“I promise” she said, making a cross on her heart.

The happiness rising on Lucas's face became immediately infectious; as they hugged each other once more, Kira swore to herself that she would do anything to stay close to her best friend.

Unfortunately, her mother hooted her car, which was parked outside the estate gate, interrupting them, so Kira had to go back home.

“Put on your plaster again, or you'll get a scar” she worried, brushing her forefinger on his wounded eyebrow. See you tomorrow. At home.”

“Let's have a great Super Mario match, shall we?” Lucas suggested feeling more serene, before his friend went out from the secret passage she had used to get in.

“I'm going to hammer you!” Kira challenged him cheerfully before getting into the car, but as soon as Lucas disappeared from her sight, she felt something breaking inside herself, just in the middle of her chest.

Would she be able to keep her promise to Lucas?