Then Suki is on Doi, and there’s the metal clash of blade blocking blade as they charge each other and retreat and parry in open, vicious combat. I clamber to my feet, but I can’t enter the battle without getting injured myself. I’ve never seen people aiming flying lotus spins at each other’s throats with unpadded blades. It’s thrilling and sickening to think that these moves can kill. Their equal skill is the only thing keeping blades from contacting skin further.
Suki uses her parasol to parry and double her reach and springs it open to serve as a shield. She lunges forward and thrusts its point toward Doi’s eye. Doi grabs a lucky-stringed erhu from the rack next to them to block. The point of the parasol pierces into the instrument with a thrum. Suki throws them aside, grabs a spoon fiddle, and raises it to smash on Doi’s head.
Suddenly, the air rings with a deafening bwong!
Everyone freezes and turns to look toward the sound. At the far end of the hall, Sensei Madame Yao is rising from the wreckage of a gong, which she managed to actually crack this time.
“What is going on here?”
Sensei Madame Yao skates toward Doi and Suki with one arm in a sling. Her eyes smolder with fury. “So this is what the legendary Sensei Madame Liao teaches you, to fight in music class like vicious cannibals? Come with me! You are both disqualified from the third Motivation!”
CHAPTER
LUCKYTEEN
There is a feeling when you land on your skate incorrectly and you already know before the flare of pain that you’ve made a terrible mistake. That’s what going to classes is like in the weeks after the other senseis confirmed Sensei Madame Yao’s punishment.
There are only fo—I mean lucky Motivations left this year. Doi and Suki are both going to forfeit a sixth of their grades. Because of me.
Why didn’t Doi just ignore Suki’s taunts? I appreciate her protecting me but not at this price. And now, because Doi protected me—her rival—she’s given me the chance to overtake her in rankings. I know I should be glad that my path to gaining first ranking is clear, but instead I want to vomit.
Doi and Suki have been coming to wu liu class less and less. Why should they risk injury training when they’ll receive zero points at the next Motivation no matter what?
At least the fight seems to have postponed Suki’s plan to punish me for blowing her pearlflute. She hasn’t said anything about it to the senseis. However, I know that she can’t have forgotten. She’s just waiting for the moment when I expose a weak spot so she can shove the spear in as deeply as possible.
That’s why I have to find a way to prove that she was responsible for the attack on the pagoda—to take her down.
* * *
Whenever I think of what Doi must be feeling toward me, I know I need to thank her for what she did for me. Every time I try to approach her in the weeks after the fight, she skates away. But I have to thank her. Even if she doesn’t want to hear it, I need to say it.
Finally, one morning before wu liu class, I knock on her shoji door, as everyone is already headed to the Conservatory of Wu Liu.
“Go away,” she says from within. Her voice is so low and so strained, I can barely hear her through the shoji.
“Doi, I just—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“May I enter?”
“No.”
“I want you to know that I am so, so grateful—”
“Save it.”
“I’m trying to—”
“I said I don’t want to hear it.”
How do you embrace a wall?
“Oooh, you two have so much to talk about!” says Honking Girl as she skates past me.
“Go,” says Doi from behind the shoji. “Before Meizi starts gossiping about us plotting something.”
“Who?”
“That girl. Why do you still not know anyone’s name here except for the top-ranking girls?”
“I know plenty of names.”
“Name them.”
“Suki. And Etsuko. And Mitsuko. And Chiriko. And Mariko.”
She says nothing, as if in victory.
“And Hisashi,” I continue.
Again, her maddening silence. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. She would rather be burned to death than be wrong.
“And Cricket,” I blurt like a fool. She makes me angry and say stupid things.
“And Hong-Wei and Masa!” I say. “Those second-year boys.”
“You mean Hong-Gee and Matsu.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No.”
“So now you know better than I do what I just said?”
Why does she have to win every argument?
“I came to Pearl to become a legend,” I continue. “Not to learn names of random people who no one knows anything about.”
What an irritating conversation. I came here to say thank you, and instead she’s intent on disagreeing with everything I say.
She says, “That knee is never going to last on that broken blade if the third Motivation requires any significant jumping. You’re going to lose and get injured.”
“Thank you. You always know the perfect thing to say.”
“You should get better at Chi healing. You’re pretty weak at it.”
“You should mind your own business.”
“And stop doing those ending flourishes on your moves,” she says. “No one here’s done those for fifty years.”
Why am I having this senseless argument with this impossible girl through a piece of paper? I turn from her shoji.
“Peasprout, remember the first Motivation?” Doi calls out. “Suki cheated and put something in the powder pit that turned into pebbles when it got wet. If she comes at you about the pearlflute, mention that to shut her up. She won’t want to get expelled.”
After some effort, I manage to stuff my annoyance down enough to say “Thank you.”
* * *
Doi’s warning comes back to me that evening, in Eastern Heaven Dining Hall. There is a serious chance that I could lose and be injured, or else I’ll have to allow my left skate to bear the load of all the landings, which
