The Book of the Wind Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Simon Pulse edition November 2003

  Text copyright © 2003 by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2003 by Renato Alarcao

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Produced by 17th Street Productions, an Alloy company

  151 West 26th Street

  New York, NY 10001

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  For information address 17th Street Productions, 151 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001.

  Library of Congress Control Number 2003110633

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-0369-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-0369-9

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  From the pages of

  Bubble World, a club

  life ’zine from southern

  California

  The members of Japanese drum-’n’-bass outfit Funkitout have a lot of mystery surrounding them. There are rumors that they are members of the yakuza, stunt doubles in street-fighting films, video game champions, or maybe club kids who spend too much time in Shibuya during the day, hoping to make a cameo appearance in big-budget MTV video shoots. (Rumor has it that when Mariah Carey came over to shoot one of her latest videos, Yukio, Funkitout’s lead singer, begged her to listen to a couple of the band’s tracks, but Yukio staunchly denies it, saying he never listens to Mariah Carey, and besides, he wasn’t even in Shibuya the day her video was filmed.) No one knows for sure what they’re all about (they’re more secretive and strange than Jack and Meg White of The White Stripes), and even more speculation has arisen with their underground club hit that’s been growing in popularity, “Heaven’s Gone.” The song tells about a girl who mysteriously disappeared from a rich and powerful family and is supposedly from the point of view of her ex-fiancé. But who is this Heaven girl of the song? Is she really, as some have postulated, Heaven Kogo, missing princess of the Kogo empire? Does Funkitout know who she is, or are they just making a social commentary? And why bring that sort of message to the drum-’n’-bass world? We asked some kids at Club Dragonfly in Los Angeles what they think:

  Girl with multicolored dreadlocks, a pacifier on a string around her neck: “I think this Heaven chick is some ex-girlfriend who realized that Yukio was messing with about six other girls. If you notice in the song it goes, ‘Got my girls in a huddle on the club couch,’ and then it says later, ‘Heaven says it’s over sportin’ keys to my Rover.’ So it’s obvious this Heaven girl wised up and got outta there. Boys don’t know how good they got it when they got a solid girl by their side.”

  Japanese boy in a brightly colored anime soccer shirt: “My cousin lives in Japan and IM’ed me to say that this Heaven girl is actually a real person. The daughter of some dude named Konishi. She sounds like a total ice queen. The song is awesome. Yukio’s probably psyched she’s gone.”

  American boy, hat on tilt à la Nelly, Band-Aid under his left eye: “Dude, as long as the beat’s strong, that’s all I’m trippin’ on. But as long as you’re askin’, this Heaven chick was probably some girl who got sick of waiting around for a guy to realize he was mad crazy for her. So she took off and did her own thing. But he realized, yo. It was like that absence makes the heart grow fonder thing. I’m goin’ through the same thing with this ex-girlfriend of mine. I made a colossal mistake. But don’t put that in print.”

  1

  The flames surrounded us.

  I shivered inside my coat and watched as my house—well, the house I’d been living in for the past month or so—spat and hissed in a mountain of fire and smoke. Fire engines rushed to the scene. Eight men tumbled out of the truck and started rolling the hose toward a fire hydrant.

  “Everyone get back!” one of them yelled.

  Hiro pulled on my arm. “We have to move back, Heaven,” he said.

  I felt cemented to the ground. Cheryl, my housemate, was trapped inside.

  Who set this fire?

  Marcus?

  I had left him back at the subway station. Cheryl had come home by herself in a cab. The driver had promised to walk her to the door. Hiro and I were only minutes behind her in another cab.

  Meaning…if I hadn’t gone back to the club to get my bag…I would’ve been inside the house, too. The heat started to affect my skin. The smoke began to burn my eyes. I felt light-headed and woozy. My whole body ached.

  “Come on,” Hiro said again. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  I stared up at my bedroom window and thought, fleetingly, of my sad assortment of personal belongings trapped inside. The jeans and sneakers I bought when I first got to L.A. My crumpled-up photograph of my brother, Ohiko, which I carried with me in my shiro-maku wedding kimono. Various clothes belonging to Hiro. I didn’t have much—I hadn’t saved enough money yet to really have many material possessions. But still, everything that was mine since I’d come to L.A. was turning to ash and fluttering away.

  My eyes filled with tears.

  “Heaven, we’ve got to move,” Hiro said, tugging on my arm. “Come on.”

  A large piece of the roof cracked and fell mere inches from us. Hiro jumped back, but I stood and stared. The flames leapt and danced.

  “You’re acting foolish!” Hiro said, pulling on my sleeve.

  “Wait,” I said softly. I saw my little bedroom window, behind the branches of the big cedar tree. Flames danced around the window frame. Was it possible that maybe Cheryl hadn’t come home? Perhaps she’d gone somewhere else…like to the diner or maybe to the hospital to get her ankle looked at….

  Hiro dragged me under a tree. “You’re pale,” he said, moving his face close to mine. “Come on. We have to get a cab and get out of this neighborhood.” He pulled at me. “Heaven…you’ve been so strong so far.”

  It was true—I had been completely strong up until this moment. I had just defended Cheryl from Marcus, who was more terrifying than I’d ever imagined. I’d narrowly avoided death, meeting a subway car head-on. Marcus had dragged Cheryl away from the club knowing I’d follow them. He knew that I’d been suspicious of him from the get-go. And he knew I’d defend Cheryl. He’d lured me down to that subway station. It had all been a plot to corner me.

  And the fire. It was most likely for me as well.

  I breathed in and out, trying to get a grip. The firemen worked on, spraying parts of the house to stop the flames. I stepped out from under the tree and moved toward the burning piece of roof again.

  “Who wants me dead so badly?” I said aloud. Could it be the Yukemuras?

  But it didn’t make sense. The Yukemuras, dangerous as they were, didn’t want me dead. Yoji, the head of the Yukemura clan, needed me to marry Teddy for the agreed-upon “booty.” They had to have me alive. At least for a little while longer.

  “Surround and drown!” one of the firemen bellowed. “The inside’s collapsing!”

  No. It had to be someone else.

  I crept up a little closer. My mind circled back to one person. Mieko.

  Mieko, my stepmother. I’d called her a couple of days ago. I needed to see how my father was doing—he’d been in a coma for almost a month. And when I heard her familiar voice come on the line, she sounded friendly—loving, almost.

  And
believe me, Mieko isn’t the friendly type.

  We didn’t talk about our family. Instead Mieko grilled me about what I was doing. What was my address? she asked again and again.

  “It looks like we’ve got a class B here,” one of the firemen shouted into his radio. “Send us some backup.”

  Marcus had mentioned Mieko. In the subway station he’d said, “Your mother says hello.”

  How did Mieko know Marcus?

  More voices rang out. “Check the window! Is anyone still in there?”

  Bricks crashed to the ground.

  But I hadn’t given her my address. I’d gotten off the phone before I gave away any important information.

  But if she knew Marcus…who was kind of dating Cheryl…who lived with me…

  My head spun. Why did Mieko know Marcus?

  I stared up at the burning house and my hands curled into fists. The heat made my eyes water. The photo of Ohiko up there was burning up, right now, possibly because of Mieko or Marcus. Its sides were at that very moment curling and blackening. The fire would eat away Ohiko’s face.

  All at once, before I knew what I was doing, I ran to the house. The firemen had hosed down the front yard, and the grass squished under my feet. One of the men grabbed my arm with his thick glove as I rushed past.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I shook free of his grip. I heard Hiro’s screams from behind me. The smoke was overpowering, but I pushed my way in.

  The inside of the house was like nothing I’d ever seen. Orange flames shot from the mantel, the couch, the floor. All of Cheryl’s little knickknacks—and she had a lot of random stuff—were charred and blurred into a huge ball of fire.

  I heard noises from upstairs.

  “Cheryl?” I screamed. I ran to the stairway, but the whole thing was lit up in flames. All of a sudden a rush of air shot toward me, and I saw fingers of fire dance down the banister.

  My God. If Cheryl was up there, she was definitely dead.

  I looked around me. I’d never realized how loud fire was. The sound of the crackling and the growing flames was deafening. And it was surrounding me.

  Ohiko’s photo was up there. That was the only thing I had left of him. What if I forgot what he looked like? I wind-milled my arms right and left, lifting my feet, trying to avoid the flames. A loud crash behind me made me flinch. I wheeled around; the chimney had fallen off the far wall. The flames were devouring it.

  Screw it. I had to get out of here. The smoke stung my eyes. I looked down at Cheryl’s end table. Her grand-mother’s necklace, a gold chain with a large antique amethyst stone, was draped over the edge of a small bowl. Nothing was on fire yet.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed it, and rushed out the door. The smoke blinded me.

  I shoved the necklace into my pocket. Firemen rushed around me. “Are you all right?” they screamed. Two men picked me up and carried me away from the house.

  “Why the hell did you go in there?” one of the firemen yelled. “Are you out of your mind?”

  I coughed. Hiro ran up to me. “What were you doing?” he asked.

  I didn’t say anything. I felt deadened. My heart beat fast.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Hiro said. “Fast. This isn’t safe for us.” I could tell he was pissed. And worried. “Come on, try to stand up.”

  I stood up, but my knees buckled. The smoke had made me dizzy.

  “All right all right, sit down for a minute,” Hiro said. “I don’t know why you went back in there—you could have been killed! The inhalation of smoke alone could have knocked you out!”

  “I’m okay,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him about Cheryl’s necklace. He’d ask me why I’d taken it. And I didn’t know why myself.

  I breathed in and out steadily, trying to remember my pranayama breath. I could hear the stream of water hitting the side of Cheryl’s house. Get a grip, Heaven, I told myself.

  I slowly pressed my palms to the ground and lifted myself up. I felt a little better. Hiro chased down a cab. He opened the door for me. “Come on, get in,” he said. “We’re going to get far away from this.”

  I fell onto the seat and could smell the smoke on my clothes. Hiro climbed in, too. The cabby idled, waiting for us to tell him where to go.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. The fire lit up his face. The orange glow made him look more handsome than ever. His cheekbones seemed prominent; his eyes were deep-set and sensual. I even got turned on looking at the curve of his forearm. On the cab ride over here, I’d gotten butterflies from the way he looked at me. Our knees had gently touched. Hiro had grabbed my hand. Looked carefully and soulfully into my eyes.

  Despite my delirium, chills ran up and down my spine just thinking about him.

  “I don’t know where we’ll go,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the burning house.

  “Where to?” the cabby grumbled.

  “Wait just a second, please,” Hiro said, then turned to me. “Let’s go back to my place.”

  “No,” I said. “Your house is an obvious target. What if it’s being watched right now? Maybe we should go to a diner or something to sit and figure this out.” I fumbled with the strap of my bag. I also didn’t want to go to Hiro’s because his girlfriend, Karen, might be there. I hadn’t faced her since we’d had a huge fight about Hiro in the park a couple of days ago.

  “I don’t think we should be anywhere well lit right now. Nothing seems safe,” Hiro said, looking out the back window. “What about one of the empty warehouses we’ve done training sessions in? Like the one down on Winston?”

  I thought of the abandoned warehouses in downtown L.A. Creepy. When the Yukemuras had kidnapped Karen (a big reason why Karen and I had been on the rocks lately—that and the fact that she wanted me to “stay away from Hiro”), the “exchange” had taken place at a decrepit parking garage somewhere downtown. It was beyond spooky. I had a feeling the Yukemuras frequented areas like that. Vibe was down there, too. I didn’t really feel like going back into that mess.

  “Nope,” I said. “No way.”

  Great. We’d pretty much determined that I had nowhere left to go. Instantly I was homeless again. “We should just drive out of the city, far, far away,” I said, not very sarcastically. I felt completely drained of energy. Hiro had had to deal with this problem twice before—once when I’d showed up on his doorstep, blood spattered and terrified, and then when I’d had to move out due to a random attack right in front of his apartment building on Lily Place. I mean, he had to be getting sick of shuttling me around so that I would always be safe. No wonder he wasn’t into me.

  “Really, getting out of the city would be the best thing to do,” Hiro murmured.

  “You kids going anywhere or what?” the cabdriver bellowed. “This smoke is getting to me.”

  “One moment, please. I’m really sorry,” Hiro said.

  “Maybe there is somewhere I could go that’s not in the city,” I said softly. But it was such a long shot. I knew Hiro would say it was too dangerous.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “To see my friend Katie,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was even telling him my idea. But I felt nervous sitting there in the cab, not moving. “My tutor, remember? She was my best friend in Japan. She moved to Vegas—that’s where she’s from—after my wedding. I mean, she wasn’t at my wedding or anything. She moved back a couple of weeks before I got here.” I put my finger to my lips. “I wonder if she even knows what happened.”

  “So you’re saying…Las Vegas,” Hiro said slowly.

  “I think that may be best,” I said.

  “Do you know where Katie lives?”

  “Well, no,” I said. I’d called information once before to track her down, but there was no listing for her. And I’d left her mother’s number in the hotel room on the day of my wedding. “But…”

  Hiro didn’t say anything. I would have loved to see Katie again. But I didn’t know where she live
d in Vegas, or where she worked, or if she was even still there or not.

  I pressed on. “I do remember that she said she was moving to Vegas after my wedding to get a job in one of the casinos.”

  Hiro looked at me incredulously. “Isn’t that a strange transition to make? From being an English tutor to working at a casino?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “Katie…she’s a risk taker. She came over from the States to tutor me, didn’t she? Why not go to Vegas after that?”

  “Huh,” Hiro said. I frowned.

  “Besides,” I said. “It’s not like I have much going for me here in L.A.” This was true: I had no friends. Cheryl was dead. Hiro and I could never be together. And he had a beautiful girlfriend who hated me and wasn’t afraid to say it.

  Hiro didn’t say anything. Maybe he agrees, I thought.

  “I could take a bus there and look for her,” I continued. “The bus would be much safer than a plane—more anonymous. And I have some money on me from working, so I could stay in a hotel while I looked for Katie.”

  Hiro cleared his throat after a few moments. “I think that might be the best idea,” he said slowly.

  I nodded. “I think so, too,” I said. But inside, my stomach started to gurgle with anxiety.

  “Take us to the Greyhound bus station,” he told the cabdriver. We zoomed off.

  I looked at him. He shrugged. “You’re right,” he said. “The case you made for going to Las Vegas is a better idea than anything we can come up with in L.A.”

  “Of course,” I said, hiding my shock. “Let’s go, then.”

  I stared out the window as the cab zoomed toward the freeway. Hiro looked out the other window. I longed for the togetherness we’d been feeling on the cab ride to my house (Hiro touching my hand, Hiro telling me how strong and incredible I was, Hiro denying he was moving in with Karen, Hiro’s gorgeous face, his hot body, his delicious skin, his soft hands…)

  But he thought I should go to Vegas.

  We pulled up to a large lot in front of a squat, dimly lit building. A few buses were idling in the lot. The red, white, and blue Greyhound logo flickered on the top of the building.