Kitabı oku: «Love Hurricane»

LUCAS

Princeton, Kentucky, September 28 th 2010

A hurricane.

That was what Lucas had thought before the braveness of the unknown girl interposing between him and his father.

“Try to hit him again and I'll report it to the police!” that furious tornado shouted, making even Lucas jump; the boy was still pressing his hand on his cheek, made swollen and red by the latest smack he had got. The man laughed soundly, facing that silly threat. That hoarse and biting sound made Lucas feel thrills down his back, pushing him to hide cowardly behind his tall rescuer, who didn't look at all scared by his father's falsely amused behavior. However, Lucas knew him very well and he perfectly understood what would come after that baritone laughter and even more after such unveiled threats. In a rush of courage, he picked up his rescuer's rucksack and tried to throw it away, before his father lost his temper once more and lifted his hands, or worse his belt, also on her.

“Be careful of what you're saying, brat!” the man warned her, turning suddenly serious and moving still closer to her.

“You're the one who must be careful of what you do, or I'll tell mum and she'll send you to prison, together with all the violent parents who beat their children,” she challenged him again in a tender but at the same time fierce voice, decided not to let herself be scared by that scrounger.

“What did you say?” the man burst out angrily, bending on that small creature who turned her nose up at the alcohol-smelling breath coming out of his mouth. And then his father's sigh came. The sigh Lucas knew very well: that vibrant and stiff hiss which always ended up in a violent gesture against anything around him. He cast a furtive glance at the proud and perfect face of the girl, who hadn't even moved an inch back, going on to protect him and to keep him safe behind her back, which was slightly bending under the weight of the books in the rucksack. His eyes lingered on her pink and perfect lips, her small and heart-shaped mouth, without any scar or marks of violence. Her features were a bit strange, according to Lucas, but at the same time curious, and he wished he could see her face better, but his father's panting and trembling breathing had the better on him. Holding back his fear and the moans of pain which kept coming out of his mouth, he took courage and, by a force he had never felt, he was able to push his rescuer aside just in time, before his father's hand flew merciless to the girl's cheek.

“Let her go!” his son screamed, gathering his strength in a desperate cry. He knew he couldn't do anything against his father, but he swore to himself he would do anything he could to protect that innocent girl, who had proved silly enough to face hot-tempered and powerful Daren Scott.

“You can't give me any order, do you understand it? You are just a silly boy who will end up like his bust mother!” his father said angrily, seizing him by the snap of his neck. Just a few months had gone since they had found his mother sleeping in the water tub full of water. He had been taken aback at first, when he had seen his mother completely dressed in the tub, but everything had taken a different meaning later, after his father had come in. He still found it difficult to give order to his memories. He could just remember his father's painful and raging screams, while he took his wife out of the water and called Rosalinda, the waitress, who was crying and shouting that the house was cursed, while running to call the ambulance. Then everything had turned hazy till his mother's funeral.

He didn’t know whether he had cried or not, but he could remember that, when they had come back from the cemetery that night, his father had got drunk more than he usually did and had started shouting at him, telling him he was a loser just like his mother, who had been such a coward as to make suicide, leaving him alone to look after a son he had never wanted and who could even be a bastard in his opinion, considering the shameful and rakish past of the snake he had married ten years before.

That night, shut in his bedroom and hiding under the sheets, he had started trembling and calling his mother helplessly, hoping she would come and rescue him.

Unfortunately, his dream hadn’t come true, as it had never done also when she was alive, so he could just go on crying till he felt his stomach and his head ache.

Now, his father’s words were striking him as violently as that night.

He bit his lower lip to avoid crying, but tears started flowing abundantly at last.

“Dad, don’t hurt her. Please” he begged him, sobbing and hiding his face by the sleeve of his jacket, to prevent that girl who was braver than him from seeing him.

“My son is crying for a female! This is real news! You’re spineless. Guess what? You’ll get back home on your own, so you’ll learn not to disobey me and not to stand against me!” the man decided, turning on his heels and walking to his car with unsteady steps because he had been drinking too much that afternoon.

“Wait, dad!” Lucas tried to stop him, scared at the thought of going back home alone, but his father had already walked to the car door and got into the car, without even looking at him and leaving his nine-year-old son trembling and crying at the side of the road.

“Don’t worry. My mum is taking you home by car” the young girl tried to calm him down. She had stood apart, watching the whole scene.

Her sweet and kind voice was able to smooth Lucas’s suffering, so he stopped crying.

Without uttering any word, he felt the girl’s hot and soft hand take his cold and trembling one.

With his eyes still blurred with tears, he let her drag him to the fountain in the school’s empty playground. He saw her taking a Hello Kitty handkerchief out of her pink smock and dampen it under the small fountain’s spout.

Then, with a sweetness unknown to him, she rubbed the wet and fresh tissue on his cheeks and eyes.

“My mum always makes me wash my eyes after I have cried, to prevent them from getting swollen and red” she explained sweetly to him, while she kept wetting his eyes by the drenched cloth.

When the young girl judged the cleaning satisfying, she took another clean and ironed handkerchief out of her rucksack. She unfolded it and used it to wipe his face kindly.

Stupefied and glad for those unexpected and relaxing cuddles, he let himself be washed and wiped, standing still like a doll.

The biting autumn wind was blowing hard that afternoon, but Lucas found himself smiling happy for that new caress that also the sky had wanted to give him.

Peaceful as he hadn’t felt for months, he opened his eyes and he was able to look into his rescuer’s ones, at that hurricane that had turned into a fresh spring breeze at that moment, with her kind and gentle gestures.

He stared at her for a long time, till his memory could remember that girl’s name: Kira. She was the new girl and she sat in the third row behind him in the classroom.

“Your face is strange” Lucas stated, letting his eyes slip on that girl who was more than ten centimeters taller than him. Even if she was thin and very tall, her face was large and round and it stood out on that slim and small body bending under the rucksack’s weight.

Her skin was very fair, but her cheeks were reddened by the cold and her small, heart-shaped mouth was tight and stiff while she was focusing on folding the two handkerchiefs.

Lucas lingered curiously on those small and full lips, wondering whether she could eat anything bigger than a crumb.

But the feature which charmed him the most were his slightly half-open eyes, with their strange almond shape. Even if they were hidden by a straight, slightly too long, black fringe, he could make out two very bright brown eyes with dark green shades, reminding him the woods at Westurian lake, where his father owned a house they had used to spend the summer till two years before.

With an angry gesture and a snort which threw her fringe back, the girl looked at him, slightly hurt.

“And you’re short for being a boy” the young girl replied, crossing her arms.

“You don’t look American” Lucas tried to explain, stumbling while he spoke.

“Sorry, where were you this morning, when our teacher introduced me to the class?”

Lucas didn’t dare tell her he had fallen asleep, because his father had kept him awake all night with his drunkard grumbling.

Placing her hands on her hips in a defiant gesture and filling her lungs by a deep breath, the girl summarized her morning speech, hoping that it would get fixed into her new classmate’s mind this time.

“My name is Kira Yoshida. I’m nine years old. My father is Japanese and works for the army, while my mother is American and she is a social worker.”

“That’s why your face looks strange. You’re Japanese” Lucas exclaimed happily.

“My face isn’t strange! Mum says I took after my father in my features, but the color of my eyes and my character are hers. By the way, I was saying I’m half Japanese and half American. I can speak both Japanese and English well and I attended the International School in Tokyo, till my father was moved her for the next four years, to train the new recruits keeping guard at American embassies in the world. Mum didn’t want to stay alone in Tokyo, so we moved here with my dad, even if he is hardly ever at home. I’m good at school, even if I’m better at writing Japanese ideograms than your alphabet, but mum says I usually learn very fast and I’ve already decided that I’ll be a social worker too when I grow up. I joined the basketball club in Tokyo, even if I never really liked that sport. I hate sports and I love watching cartoons and reading mangas.”

“What are mangas?”

“Comic strips” Kira explained, annoyed by Lucas’s ignorance.

“I like comic strips too!” the child said cheerfully.

“So I’ll lend you some.”

“Really?” Lucas was surprised, because nobody in town wanted to deal with him and even less with his father.

“Of course! We’re friends, aren’t we?”

Friends.

That word made Lucas’s heart miss a beat.

He had no friends.

No child had ever approached him for fear of running into the powerful and wicked Darren Scott. Also all the parents and teachers were afraid of his father’s presence and he had quickly understood that nobody would be his friend. Neither now nor ever.

But that day instead, hurricane Kira had got into his life. He couldn’t remember her family name anymore. It was too difficult to spell.

“Oh, my God! Kira, here I am! Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” a woman fidgeted, running breathlessly in their direction.

“Mum!” Kira exclaimed happily, running to her and hugging her.

Watching that scene made Lucas feel tears in his eyes again, because he had never enjoyed his mother’s love. When she was alive, she divided her time between a cocktail and a sleeping pill, when she wasn’t struck by her husband’s crazy jealous frenzies.

“Darling, I’m sorry I was late on your first school day, but I’ve been taken on this morning, so I immediately had to deal with some matter and take it to the Juvenile Court, before I could come to you. I found a lot of traffic but I came as soon as possible. Sorry.”

“No problem, but we have to take Lucas home. His father hit him and then he left him here” her daughter answered with her usual naïve but merciless frankness, which was a slap both on Lucas’s and on her mother’s face.

“Kira, these are serious charges” her mother warned her, as she spent all her working time fighting against abuses or family problems which were difficult to overcome without a social worker’s help.

“You must report it to authorities, make an injunction and send him behind bars” the young girl got excited, repeating in detail the words she had heard on TV the night before.

“Forget about watching Law&Order with me next time” her mother guessed, before moving closer to the boy. “You must be Lucas, mustn’t you? My name is Elizabeth Madis and I’m Kira’s mother.”

Lucas nodded shyly before that smiling woman, whose green eyes were sweet and brave. Kira was right: she had the same eyes as her mother, but they didn’t look like each other in anything else. Kira’s straight, jet black hair where in contrast with her mother’s caramel and wavy ones.

“Kira says that your dad hit you. Is it true?” she asked him gently.

“Yes, it’s true. His cheek was all red” Kira intruded, getting a dirty look from her mother.

“It happens” Lucas whispered uneasy. He couldn’t even think about what his father would say if he got to know about that conversation.

“I understand. Where is he now?”

“At home. He was angry.”

“What about your mother?”

Lucas took several moments before answering. “She isn’t here anymore.”

“I’m so sorry, darling” the woman immediately comforted him, caressing his face. “Can you remember your home address? If you want, we’ll take you there. My car is parked outside the gate.”

Lucas smiled grateful. Someone had come to rescue him.

He stared at that woman again: she looked like an angel to him.

“Your rucksack must be very heavy, Lucas. Give it to me, so I’ll put it on the back seat” the woman offered.

The young boy turned and Elisabeth made the rucksack slip down his shoulders, but in so doing, she also pulled his jacket and t-shirt up.

“Oh, your rucksack is caught in your clothes. Wait, I’ll set you free” Elizabeth lied and bent to the boy, who was unaware of having just uncovered a long violet mark, running from one hip to the other. The mark of the lash he had got three days before.

Elizabeth's narrow eyes and her tightened and white lips made Kira draw back, since she knew that look usually foretold some terrible scolding, but when her mother got up, she was smiling again unexpectedly, making her daughter feel bewildered.

“Let’s go home, but what about having a good ice-cream or a slice of cake at Chocoly’s first?” the woman exclaimed cheerfully, making Kira jump with joy, because she had got to known that place on the day of their arrival, when her mother had bought her the biggest ice-cream in the world, full of candies and biscuits.

Lucas knew that place too, but he had never got inside.

When they got to the car, Elizabeth immediately drove to that place, where she let the two children throw themselves on the sweets, getting drunk of candies, biscuits, muffins and cream, while she withdrew in the most secluded place in the café, to make some urgent calls about what she had just seen on the boy’s back.

Lucas ate like a horse under the careful and happy eyes of the woman, who accused him of being too short and thin for his age.

When the time to go home came, Lucas got into the car reluctantly and gave his address to Elizabeth, who immediately set the navigator up, because she couldn’t master Princeton’s streets very well yet.

“Did your father want you to walk eight kilometers?” Elizabeth burst out nervously when she looked at the navigator’s directions.

Lucas kept silent, wondering if eight kilometers were a long way.

Luckily Kira was able to entertain him, so their trip home passed by cheerfully.

Unfortunately, however, as soon as his father’s huge villa turned out outside the car window, every sign of smile disappeared from Lucas’s face.

When the gate got opened, the child started trembling, wondering how his father would react if he knew what he had done.

“Children, wait for me here!” Elizabeth ordered, getting out of the car and walking to the front door which had just been thrown open, to let Darren Scott's powerful shape come out.

“Mr. Scott, I suppose.”

“I am. Who are you?”

“My name is Elizabeth Madis. I found your son alone at school, at the end of lessons. I caught Lucas and brought him home.”

“Well, now just go away.”

“No, I’m not!”

“You aren’t? What do you want? Money? I haven’t asked you to bring him home! He could walk here, as far as I’m concerned!”

“Don’t you feel ashamed? It’s almost eight kilometers! How could you force him to walk such a long way and what’s more, all alone!”

“And who are you to tell me what I can or can’t do to my son?”

“I’m a social worker and I’ll warn you, there are sufficient grounds to take your son’s custody away from you once and for all: child neglect, physical and probably psychological violence, besides, the child looks undernourished…even if you don’t seem to live poorly!”

“How can you dare come to my house and abuse me?” the man burst out, pouncing on the woman and stopping a few inches from her face.

“You’re drunk” the woman guessed from the stinking breathing getting to her face.

“Go away or I’ll call the police and make you lose your job. I’ll have you banished from this town forever,” he threatened her.

“You can't frighten me. Just know that I’m going to send the health service to you in a few days and also one of my colleagues to check that there aren’t any more marks of violence on Lucas, or I’ll have you thrown in jail. Is it clear?” she went on undeterred and decided to get her way.

“Get out of my house!” he shouted at her, frightening Lucas too, who caught his rucksack quickly and rushed out of the car, to run home and make that quarrel end.

“See you soon, Mr. Scott” Elizabeth told him with a veiled threat, then she got back into the car and drove away.

When the car drove out of the huge estate, Darren walked back home, where he found his son scared and sobbing.

“You’ve brought home a social worker, silly bastard!” the man thundered furiously against his son.

“I didn’t know it” the child could just whisper, ready to pay the consequences.

“Does that bitch really think she can challenge and threaten me…in my town? She’ll pay dearly for that! And as far as you are concerned, I won’t be able to beat you in the next days, but be sure you’re going to pay too for what you have done! Clear off to your bedroom now! Forget dinner tonight, so you’ll learn not to bring that dregs to my house.”

Lucas didn’t let him say it twice.

He rushed to his bedroom like a shot, grateful to Kira and her mother, who had offered him that special and gluttony snack. His stomach was still full, so he plunged under the sheets, praying that the morning would come soon.

He wished to meet Kira again, his special friend, that hurricane with a heart-shaped mouth and wood-green eyes, who had turned his day upside down and who would change his life soon, as he knew in the bottom of his heart.