him to excuse Alby.”
Lois was a lovely woman and she clearly adored Alby, but Jack felt she must be exaggerating things—until later that evening when he himself met the sportsmaster, Mr. Naismith.
Mr. Todd Naismith was a great hulking man who wore too-tight tennis shorts and a polo shirt that accentuated his thick biceps. To a kid, he would have appeared gigantic. To Jack, he was just a bigger version of Tyson Bradley—an adult bully.
The big sportsmaster seemed to assess West’s size and stature as he sat down. He pulled out Lily’s file, absently tossing a softball in his spare hand as he did so.
“Lily West…” he said, perusing the file. “Ah, yes. How could I forget. She refused to participate in a game of dodgeball one day. Said it was a stupid game and that I was a ‘dumb jock-moron who didn’t know anything about the real world,’ if I recall correctly.”
Oh dear,Jack had thought. He hadn’t heard about this.
“Geez,” he said. “I’m really sor—”
“Not much of an athlete, your girl,” Mr. Naismith went on anyway, bringing Jack up short. “But her teachers tell me she’s a bright one. Now booksmarts are one thing, and sure, this school focuses on the academic. But between us, I like sports. You know why I like ’em?”
“I can’t imagine—”
“Because they engender a team mentality.Team. The idea of selflessness. If the chips were down and their backs were to the wall, would Lily stand up and put herself on the line for her friends? I would, and I know I would, from my experiences in sport.”
Jack felt his jaw begin to grind, knowing full well what Lily had done on behalf of dipshits like this guy.
“Is that so?” he said slowly.
“It sure is.” Naismith kept tossing his ball and—
Quick as a whip, Jack snatched the softball in midair and held it in his gloved left hand between their faces, his ice-cold blue eyes levelled at the big sportsmaster’s.
“Mr. Naismith. Todd. My daughter, she’s a good kid. And I have no problem with her conceptions of loyalty and team spirit. I apologize for any offense she might have caused you. She gets her stubbornness from me. But then—”
West squeezed the softball with his mechanical left hand…and with a soft crunch, cracked it to pieces, stringy pieces that fell through his fingers to the floor, the ball’s leather cover sliding limply after it.
Mr. Naismith’s eyes went wide, his previous confidence vanishing in a second.
“—perhaps you should try appealing to her on a more intellectual level. You might get a better response that way. Oh, and, Mr. Naismith—Todd—if her little friend, Alby Calvin, doesn’t want to play soccer, don’t make him. You’re making his mother nervous. That’ll be all.”
With that, Jack left, leaving Todd Naismith sitting there with his mouth open.
AND SO LILY lived for holidays and weekends, when she could return to the farm and meet up with her old friends.
Wizard’s visits were a highlight, although as the months went by, they became less frequent. He was at work, he said, on a very important project, one that he had been working on his whole life.
Lily was thrilled to read his notes, filled as they were with ancient mysteries and symbols, and on a few occasions, she even helped Wizard translate some carvings that were written in the Word of Thoth, an ancient language that only she and one other person in the world could decode.
Twice Wizard brought his research partner Tank Tanaka to the farm.
Lily liked Tank. Clever, cuddly, and fun, on his second visit he brought Lily a toy from his native Japan, a little robot dog built by the Sony Corporation, called Aibo. Lily quickly renamed the dog Sir Barksalot and equally quickly set about using him to terrorize Horus. A quick tweak from Wizard enhanced Sir Barksalot’s infrared motion sensors—making him bark if he detected movement, even in the dark. It made for great games of “spotlight” with Alby, with the goal being to belly-crawl past the hyper-alert robot dog.
Tank also had a tattoo on his right forearm that intrigued Lily: it depicted a Japanese character hidden behind the flag of Japan. Ever curious about languages, she tried to look it up one day on the Net, but she couldn’t find it anywhere.
But there was something else that struck Lily about Tank: there was a tremendous sadness to him, a blankness in his eyes that Lily detected on their very first meeting.
When she asked him what was wrong, he answered by telling her about his childhood:
“I was a small boy, about your age, when my country went to war against America. I lived in Nagasaki, a beautiful city. But when the war turned for my country and the American Air Force started bombing our cities at will, my parents sent me away, to live with my grandparents in the countryside.
“My parents were in Nagasaki the day the Americans dropped their terrible bomb on that city. My parents were never found. They’d been obliterated, reduced to dust.”
Lily knew exactly what it meant to lose your parents—she had never known either of hers—and so a special bond had developed between her and Tank.
“I’m not very old,” she said solemnly, “but one of the biggest things I’ve learned in life is this: while it can never replace the real one, you can make a new family with your friends.”
Tank had looked at her kindly, his eyes moist. “You are most wise for one so young, little Lily. I wish I saw the world as you do.”
Lily didn’t quite understand Tank’s final comment, but she just smiled anyway. He seemed to like that.
