Page 72 of The Gods Will Sing Our Song

I haven’t seen Kai since he grabbed Violet’s drawings. He’s at the warehouse, along with James and the others. Today’s work order is to unload the woman’s fancy cargo, which has just been sitting there in the truck. Each item seems to have a halo, a shiny gloss from my memories of Violet.

Kai acts as though things are normal. I’m relieved. Last thing I want is a problem with my childhood friend, but if he ever lashes out at Violet again, I’ll knock him into next week. Today, he’s practically cheery.

“Eh, Dragon,” he calls to me as he picks up the lamp, “remember when we broke my mother’s lamp? I think it was the same one!”

“How could I forget, Tiger? Last time I ever pitched indoors.” I tossed him a baseball because we were going to play catch at the park, and Mrs. Suzuki’s lamp became collateral damage. “We tried to hide the pieces under the couch.”

“And my father figured it out.” Kai shakes his head. “There was hell to pay.”

“It was your fault,” I say with a smile. I was scared out of my mind. I thought Dr. Suzuki would beat my ass or tell Mama, who would also beat my ass. Or worse, make Mama pay for it. But Kai never told him I was involved. “It was a flawless pitch. You bungled the catch.”

“It’s because I’m the home run king, not an infielder.” Kai sets the lamp down to swing a pretend bat and puts a hand to his eyes to shield them from a pretend sun, tracing the path of a slammer. He cockily pops an imaginary collar and acts out strolling to first base.

“Hey, pick up the pace,” the guard calls to us. For once, he isn’t off smoking or jerking off or whatever he usually does. There’s a moment of silence. James and the other guys glance sidelong at each other and then at the guard. He frowns. “You heard me.”

Leisurely, Kai sidles over to the lamp. The whole time, his eyes don’t leave the guard.

“Do we have a problem, Suzuki?” the guard asks. I grab the lamp by its neck and thrust it into Kai’s hands.

“No,” I respond for us all. It’s not that I like submitting to this prick. But with tensions in the camp reaching a boiling point and those shadows hanging over us like God’s judgment, I’ll be damned if I let things escalate.

“So, it’s like that,” James mutters. He’s talking about me. “Some dragon, Kai. Your friend is a chickenshit.”

“You want to say that to my face?” I ask in a low, even tone. James looks at me and then at Kai. He pats his pocket and grins.

“No, but when the time comes, you better take a side. The right side.”

I pick up a chair and follow Kai outside. Once the warehouse door closes behind us, I stop and turn to him, setting the chair down hard.

“What’s going on, Kai?”

“Nothing,” Kai replies, but I know him too well. He tries to walk around me. I block him, yanking the lamp from him and setting it down on the chair. “Fine. Some of the guys are getting ready.”

“Getting ready. Making weapons?” My mind races. I think about Akira’s shadow and the sort of violence an uprising would cause while we’re all trapped. “Kai, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you understand? If there was a rebellion, it would be doomed. With a snap of their fingers, the authorities could send the LAPD, the military, Captain America, whatever they needed. Forget getting sent to Tule Lake. They’ll kill you.”

For a moment, Kai hesitates. Then resolve settles in his eyes, the sort that comes from someplace so deep inside, there’s no getting rid of it. It’s the kind I saw during our champion baseball game sophomore year, back when I was on the team, when Kai sprained his ankle so badly, he was limping. Dr. Suzuki insisted he sit the game out, but when we needed a pinch hitter, he hobbled up to the plate. Even though he could barely walk, he socked the ball to the stands.

Dread fills me. I want to shake him. I want to punch James. I want to punch every officer and guard and, while I’m at it, President Frankie D. And Akira, too, for bringing his damn shadow.

Instead, I pick up the stupid chair and Kai picks up the stupid lamp and we carry them to the rich lady’s bungalow.

Violet comes by my barrack before dinner. She always only has a few minutes before Mrs. Aratani will come looking for her. I join her and we step outside.

There’s commotion to one side of the barrack. Mr. Wozumi is digging a hole, and the three older Wozumi children gather around. It’s going to be a pond, one made especially for his kids. He says it’s so they can have fun and feed fish. Mrs. Wozumi, though, has told me it’s because Mr. Wozumi used to install them in fancy homes back in Salinas and they had one of their own in their backyard. They had to leave the pond behind, along with their dog and parakeet, so he wants them to have a piece of home here. Every night, he returns from his construction shift with rocks from the Inyo Mountains piled high in a wheelbarrow to line the hole.

“Look at my pond!” Jace says.

“Papa says it’s all of ours,” Abigail protests.

“Hey, hey,” Mr. Wozumi says, and it’s enough for them to stop bickering. Since his return, they’ve been half less wild, spending more time in the barrack as he tells stories and jokes and Mrs. Wozumi reads them books from the library. Jace follows his father closely, as though afraid he might disappear again if he lets him out of sight. Even Akiko recently took her first steps, as though she was waiting for him, and Mrs. Wozumi gets to take long-overdue naps on the weekends.

Of course, not everything is right as rain. Mr. Wozumi works on the pond in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep. He doesn’t say what happened to him in jail, but whatever it is, he tries to bury it by digging until dawn. Makes me think about Violet’s father, being locked up for so long and now so close to coming home but still so far.

“What are you going to fill it with?” Violet asks, peering into the hole.

“Water!” they chorus at once.

“And fish,” Ethan adds shyly.