For the next several days, Natty and I were like zombies. We ate, we slept, we bathed, we went to school. We did everything we were supposed to do in order to not appear as if we lacked supervision. But really what we did was wait for Leo to contact us.
I worried that he was dead. That Mickey had hit him and Leo was bleeding to death in an alley somewhere. I couldn’t get a detailed account of what had happened because it wasn’t safe for me to contact anyone in the family. I felt so isolated. I missed Scarlet. And I decided that it wasn’t a good idea for Win to come visit either.
On the Friday after our fight, Scarlet came up to me. “I’m so worried about Leo,” she said.
I ignored her. I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn’t. As a confidant, I considered her to be compromised. She discussed me with Gable Arsley, after all. And who knew who he would tell?
I went to my classes, but the only subject that occupied me was why Leo had done it. I knew he’d punched Mickey because he’d thought he’d had something to do with Nana’s death. Had Leo been going for Mickey and accidentally shot Yuri? I knew Jacks might have a few answers, but getting in touch with him wasn’t an option at the moment.
I tortured myself by thinking about all the things I might have done to prevent this. I should have found out what had happened to Daddy’s gun. I should never have let Leo go to work at the Pool. I should never have put the idea in Leo’s head that Nana had been murdered. (He was so suggestible. For God’s sake, of course she hadn’t been murdered. She was practically a corpse already when she’d died.) I shouldn’t have brought up the summer program. I shouldn’t have put so much pressure on him about being our guardian. I shouldn’t have let myself be distracted by Win. I should have gone further to discourage Leo’s relationship with Jacks. Anyway, I went on and on with these sorts of suppositions. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was my fault and that I had let Daddy down.
Monday morning, instead of going to Dr. Lau’s class, I went into the chapel to pray. I couldn’t concentrate. So many thoughts were bouncing around in my head.
I sat in a pew and crossed myself.
“Annie,” a voice called in a hoarse whisper. I looked around the chapel. No one appeared to be here.
“In the middle,” the voice called again.
I walked halfway down the aisle. Then I sat in another pew. Lying on the ground was Leo. I did not move to hug him though I wanted to. I focused my eyes on Jesus and kept my voice steady.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “You don’t say prayers as much as I thought you did. A school is a good place to hide. I get food in the cafeteria at night. Then I stay in the chapel all day. No one comes in here, and if they do, they think I’m some kid trying to skip class. When there’s school chapel, I go to the theater. One day, I saw Scarlet kissing Gable Arsley, Annie. Did you know they were together? It makes me like her less. I knew they thought I would go back to the apartment, so I came here instead.”
I wanted to cry. “Oh, Leo, that was very smart of you, but you can’t stay here. Eventually, someone will see you. And then …”
“Pow! I’ll be dead,” he said rather cheerfully. Leo took the gun out of his waistband. Daddy’s Smith & Wesson, like Mickey had reported. I resisted the urge to take it from him. If the Balanchines showed up at school, Leo should have some ability to defend himself.
“Why did you do it, Leo?”
“There were a million billion trillion reasons.” Leo sighed. “Because I’m the son of Leonyd Balanchine and I’m the rightful head of the family,” he said. “Yuri is old and he’s trying to set things up so that Mickey can be the next head. He’s trying to steal my”—Leo struggled to find the right word—“my birthright.”
“Also because Mickey is bad. He set up the Fre … Fre … Fre … chocolate poisoning to make his father look weak so that he could be the head sooner—”
“Wait, how do you know that Mickey set it up?” I asked.
“Because Jacks told me,” Leo replied.
“What else did Jacks tell you?”
“That Mickey and Yuri made us go to the wedding so that they could kill Nana. Yuri controls the power and that’s why the machines stopped.”
“Leo! What sense does that make? Why would they want to kill Nana?”
“So I’d be too busy being a guardian to claim what is rightfully mine.”
I put my head in my hands. My poor brother. “Oh, Leo, why would you even want to be the head of the family? It’s a terrible job. Look what happened to Daddy.”
Leo paused. “Because it was the only way to protect you and Natty from the people in our family.”
“But Natty and I were fine until …”
“No you weren’t. You were sent to jail last fall because of our family. You came home like a little broken doll, Annie. That’s when I knew I had to do something. Daddy told me before he died that my job in life was to protect my sisters.”
Stupid Daddy. He’d told me the same thing. “But, Leo, the best way to protect us would have been to stay out of it. Now they’ll come for you. And if they find you, they’ll probably kill you.”
Leo slowly shook his head. “I know you think I’m dumb, Annie. That I’m like Viktor the Mule.”
“Viktor the Mule?” Who the heck was Viktor the Mule? And then I remembered.
“You didn’t know I was outside the door but I was. Nana said I was like him. That he was dumb and good for moving boxes. And you agreed. Dumb Leo. Just like Viktor the Mule.”
“No, Leo, you misunderstood …” But he hadn’t. He had heard exactly right.
“Everyone underestimates me, Annie. Just because I struggle with words and cry sometimes doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Just because I have seizures doesn’t mean I’m weak and can’t protect my sisters. Just because I was hurt doesn’t mean I’m a worthless thing who never got better.”
I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t afford to attract attention to us. “Did Jacks explain this to you?”
“No! You haven’t been listening, Annie. This is me. Maybe Jacks told me a couple of things about how the family works. But I did this myself, Annie. I did this for all of us.”
Leo was delusional and dead wrong. He had been manipulated by Jacks, that much I knew. But it didn’t change the fact that Leo was now an attempted murderer. If the Family got to him, Leo would be killed. If the police got to him, Leo would be sent to prison, which could be even worse than death for a person like my brother.
I had to get him out of the country. But first I had to get him out of this school.
I crossed myself again and said a quick prayer.
I made Leo promise to keep alternating pews throughout the day to reduce the chance of being spotted. I gave him my school scarf to wrap around his head so that, if he was seen, he might be mistaken for someone else.
I left the chapel and went into the church secretary’s office. The office was empty as they had yet to replace the secretary these many months later. I picked up the phone. It was nine at night in Kyoto. I didn’t think it was too late to call, but even if it was, it couldn’t be helped.
Yuji answered the phone in Japanese.
“Yuji, it’s Anya Balanchine. I need a favor.” I explained my situation. “I don’t expect you to watch Leo, but I can’t leave him in this country. He’ll be killed and they’ll be right to do it. Still, I can’t let my brother die, can I?”
“Of course not,” Yuji replied.
“I’m hoping that you’ll be able to arrange a secret transport of some kind for Leo to Japan. Again, I know it would compromise you to have him in your home, so I was hoping you might find an institution of some kind where they could watch him. He’s lost his mind. He has no sense of his abilities, of his limitations. I believe the associate you warned me about, Jacks, has been puffing him up, though to what end, I still don’t know.”
“I will arrange the transportation and a place for your brother,” Yuji said.
“Thank you. Of course, I?
??ll pay you for everything, but it can’t be right now.”
“Not a problem.”
“I … It might seem a little disingenuous coming on the heels of me asking you for such an enormous favor, but I wanted to thank you for your flowers and especially for your note.”
“Yes, of course, Anya. May I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have any idea how and when you’re going to get him out of your school? If it’s as surrounded by media and police as you say, I mean. And since you obviously can’t bring him back to your home either.”
“There’s this school dance coming up in two weeks. It’s a big one. With catering and fancy clothes and lots of people coming in and out. I think I’ll be able to get him out then, though I don’t know exactly how yet,” I said.
“It is my theory that he should go straight from your school to the transport. Less chance of anything happening to mess things up.”
I agreed. We decided that we would talk in exactly two weeks, at which time Yuji Ono would give me the details of where Leo was to go. I would call him from the school. I couldn’t be sure that our home line wasn’t tapped.
“Thank you,” I said for maybe the fourth time.
“It’s my pleasure. Someday, and I hope this day will never come, I may call on you to return the favor.”
Yes, I knew what that meant. “And, Yuji, make it as nice a place as you can find for Leo. He’s done this horrible thing, but he’s a gentle soul. He’s just a child.” My voice wavered a bit on child, betraying more emotion than I would have liked.
I went to Fencing. I hadn’t spoken to Scarlet since she’d told me about Gable, so she was surprised when I cornered her in the girls’ locker room.
“Scarlet, are you still on the prom committee?” I whispered.
“Oh, now Miss Balanchine decides to talk to me! Well, I don’t know if I want to talk to you,” Scarlet replied.
“Scarlet, I don’t have time for this. I need you to help me with something important. And you have to swear you won’t tell Arsley about it. If you tell Arsley, people could die or get hurt.”
“I don’t tell Gable everything, you know.” Scarlet lowered her voice to a whisper. “Is it about Leo?”
I made sure no one was watching us or listening, then I nodded.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“He’s here,” I said. “At school. I’ve arranged for him to go far away, but I need to figure out a way to get him out of here. I was hoping to do it on prom night. I don’t want anyone but us to know. I’m not going to tell Win or even Natty.”
Scarlet nodded. “So, you still trust me even though I’m going to prom with Gable.”
“What I believe,” I said diplomatically, “is that you would never do anything to hurt Leo or Natty or me. You’re my oldest friend, and I need your help.”
Scarlet took that statement at face value. She hugged me. “I missed you so much!”
I hugged her back. I had missed her, too.
Scarlet and I whispered plans all through Fencing for the next week. We didn’t resume sitting together at lunch, though. That way, no one would suspect she was helping.
Some of the plans we came up with were too elaborate. For example, build a piñata horse on wheels for decoration and have Leo ride in a cavern inside. Piñatas were overly complicated to build, requiring paper licenses and a knowledge of piñatabuilding, and they were totally inappropriate to the theme of the prom, which was “Hawaiian Paradise.” What we ultimately decided on was very simple: hide Leo in plain sight. We reasoned that since many boys would be going into the dance in tuxedos, why couldn’t Leo just walk out wearing one? At 9:30, about an hour into the dance, Leo would simply walk outside and get into a car. He’d look just like any other boy at the dance. Scarlet and I even arranged for Gable, Win, and Leo to rent the exact same tuxedo. Entirely unbeknownst to any of them, they’d assist in the illusion that Leo was another male student, indistinguishable from any other.
Funny story: about ten days before the prom, Win asked me if I still wanted to go. “You’ve been under so much stress,” he said, “and I know I like these things more than you. I’d definitely understand if you wanted to sit this one out.”
“No,” I said. “I want to go with you. I think it’s best for me not to wallow. To be out and about as much as possible.” This was true, but what I failed to mention was that my brother’s very survival depended on me attending that dance. I had never anticipated a formal event so much in my whole life.
The week of the prom, I called Yuji Ono as scheduled. He had arranged for Leo’s transport as he’d said he would. “A car will take Leo to a boat that will take him to an island off the coast of Massachusetts. From there, I have arranged for a private plane to take him to Japan.”
“And in Japan, what waits for him there?” I hesitated to even ask.
“I found a very suitable place for him. I think you will be pleased. It’s a Shingon Buddhist monastery in the foothills of Mount Koya. There is a lake with fish in it and many animals. I recall you telling me that your brother has a soft spot for animals. The monks who live there are a peaceful people. They eat fish, but no other meats. And even better, the language barrier will not be a problem for your brother nor will you have to worry about the discretion of the community—most of the monks who live there are under a vow of silence. It is not a harsh lifestyle, and I believe the monks will be very kind to your brother, Anya.”
I closed my eyes. I imagined Leo wearing a sun hat, fishing in a wooden bekabune. The sky and the water were so blue you could barely tell where one ended and the other began.
“It sounds like paradise. How do you know about such a place?” I asked.
“A long time ago, I once thought I should like to stay there myself,” was Yuji Ono’s reply.
After an endless week that included many secret discussions with both Scarlet and Leo, and my own private worries that Leo’s hiding place might be discovered, the night of the prom finally arrived. Win bought me a corsage with a single white orchid to wear on my wrist. The orchid was lovely but in combination with my black dress the effect was a bit funereal.
“I didn’t want to get you roses,” Win explained. “Too clichéd for someone like Anya Balanchine.”
“Have a good time, you two!” Natty called as she took our picture. She set down the camera. “I wish I was going.”
“Here,” Win said, setting his hat on Natty’s head. “Take care of my hat for me.”
We got to the dance at 8:30. I danced several dances with Win, then I excused myself to the ladies’ room on the third floor where I was to meet up with Scarlet. Scarlet’s job had been to bring the tuxedo and get Leo dressed.
“Is Leo in the tux?” I asked her.
“Yes,” Leo answered for her, stepping out from one of the stalls. Leo looked so handsome and grown-up. I almost wished I’d brought my camera to take a picture for Natty, though the impossibility of this should be obvious.
“Doesn’t he look handsome?” Scarlet asked.
“Yes.” I kissed Leo on the cheek.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t escort him to the car?” Scarlet asked. She placed a black hat on Leo’s head so that his face was obscured. “Just in case someone out there recognizes you.”
We’d gone back and forth on this point several times and decided that since everyone knew Scarlet had gone to prom with Gable Arsley, who was wheelchair-bound, it would be better for me to escort Leo to the car. Leo would probably be mistaken for Win, if anyone noticed us at all. “No, we’ll be fine. It’s only fifty feet to the car.”
“Leo, are you ready?”
Leo offered me his arm and I hooked mine through it. “Goodbye, Scarlet,” he called. “You look beautiful tonight. Don’t let Gable Arsley be mean to you.”
“I won’t, Leo. I swear,” Scarlet said.
We walked down the stairs, past administration, past the gymnasium, where the dance was being he
ld, and past the ticket area. We were almost out the front doors of the school when I heard someone call my name. It was Dr. Lau, one of the chaperones that night. I turned to go speak to her, silently praying that Leo would know enough not to follow me.
“Good news, Anya! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I wanted to tell you in person that I have just received word that your application to Teen Crime Scene Enrichment Summer has been accepted.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great,” I replied. “I … I’m feeling a little light-headed. Would you mind if we talked about this more later?”
“Is something the matter, Anya?” Dr. Lau asked.
“Everything’s fine,” I replied. “I need a little fresh air. I’ll be back in five minutes.” I pushed open the heavy double doors of the school and pulled Leo through them. We walked down the sidewalk. Three boys in tuxedoes were tossing a football around. Girls in long dresses were sitting on the front steps of the school. Chai Pinter was among this group, but she didn’t see me. No paparazzi or reporters in sight, not that it would have mattered if there had been. Leo’s ride was leaving now. There was no time to delay.
As it was a special occasion, several kids had rented cars for the evening. At the end of a row of black limousines, I spotted Leo’s: a black Town Car with a green four-leaf-clover air freshener attached to the rearview mirror.
We walked the rest of the way at an even pace. No one seemed to see us. Once we were standing by the passenger-side door, I gave Leo a quick peck on the cheek. “Have a good trip!” I said. I thought it best if we avoided any sort of lengthy good-byes. “Oh, hey, would you mind giving me back Daddy’s gun?”
“Why?” Leo asked.
“You won’t be needing it where you’re going.”
Leo removed the gun from the waistband of his pants, and I put it in my handbag.
“I love you, Annie. Tell Natty I love her, too. I’m sorry for the trouble I caused you.”
“Don’t be sorry, Leo. You’re my brother. I’d do anything for you.”