Chapter 63: Pressure Visibly Building

The incident with Hillary left everyone a bit skittish for the rest of the trip. Sunday we packed the vans early and headed for home. Lenore was a bit worried that I would blame Angelique for some reason. I kept telling her that it seemed more a case of bad timing and a desperate woman.

The others seemed to feed off of my indifference. The initial drive back to the hotel had been tense as everyone in the van looked over their shoulders. I had taken the front passenger seat, but made sure to keep my eyes forward. As we got closer to the hotel, the conversation picked up.

Most of the conversation was about how much fun we had. Even my wild dash down the mountain with Hillary in pursuit came up for a ton of mocking. Jason and Maurice both claimed that they could have knocked Jake off his skis and then dodged Boris before pushing Hillary into a tree. Their predictions were deliberately silly, and by the time Morgan guided the van into the hotel parking lot everyone was laughing.

I did insist on taking a shower alone to make sure that no blood from Jake's nose was around. After that I settled into bed with Lenore and Ashley. They spent the rest of the evening rewarding me for entertaining Erica and Angelique all morning.

The following weeks we stayed close to house and school. None of us was afraid, but the incident on the slopes had convinced us to lower our profile a bit.

My brother had also been hiding out. I soon discovered that he had ratted out a couple of his former gang brothers. The district attorney in the city where this happened had no proof that my brother had done anything, but Mike had decided that the continuous surveillance was ruining his chances to meet girls with a good CAP. I avoided the house, so I rarely saw him, but when I did visit, Mike would beg me to find him a high CAP woman. After the second time this happened, Jason and Maurice accompanied me any time I had to visit my old home.

Days passed, and before any of us realized it, Beatrice was calling us to a quick meeting. We gathered in the living room of the house. Liz and Cassidy had almost completely moved in, and they joined us for the meeting as the rest of our group spread out on the couches or the floor.

Beatrice noticed this and smiled. "Tomorrow," she said trying to make it sound significant. "We will be boarding a first class flight to Japan. I have confirmed all of our reservations and also the progress of the cherry blossoms. We should arrive the day the trees in Ueno Park start to bloom."

Cassidy raised her hand. "Where is that?" she asked.

Liz giggled. "Sorry, I didn't even think we were going to be invited." She turned to look at Cassidy. Liz stroked Cassidy's hair as she continued to speak. "Ueno Park is one of the largest parks in Japan. It's a major gathering site during the spring as many people go there to see all the trees. I've heard it has thousands of cherry trees."

Beatrice smiled. "Our plan is to spend two weeks in Japan. The first few days will include visiting Ueno Park and probably some shopping."

"Akihibara here we come," Jason said. "We can definitely get some great items there. Mark, let's find some of those stupid robots Walter loves. He'll hate it if we show up at school with some."

"I'd rather just ignore Walter," I said. "He's annoying, but hardly a significant part of our lives now."

"I'm surprised he vanished so completely," Jessica said. "I mean he used to sit at the same table as you guys. Why is he so different?"

"He was tired of not being noticed by girls," Jason said. "Call it a form of nerd's revenge."

"Like the movie?" Becky asked.

"A bit worse than what they did in the movie, although what they did in the movie was criminal," Jason said. "Walter now almost has a license to abuse pretty girls who would never have talked to him. But now that he has that CAP card, they come to him and almost beg for him to look at them. It went to his head."

"But that hasn't happened to anyone here," Milli said. "Jessica is the closest because she has made demands of us, but she's also kept every promise she made."

Jessica blushed. "I'm sorry I did that to you."

"I'm not," Kathy said. "It helped bond us together. Actually I feel sorry for Ashley and Lenore. When Mark does find two more girls, they have to make that work."

"Ouch," Maurice said. "Mark, speaking as someone who has gone through that. After all, I joined Jessica after she had been with Kathy and Milli for months."

"What about me?" Matti asked.

"You have ten months to go," Maurice said. "But in some ways you are already part of the group. Kathy and Milli look out for you and make sure you never feel too left out."

I whistled to stop the pending discussion. "So you are saying, we are leaving tomorrow. We need to pack for two weeks of vacation. Beyond that, do you know of anything we should be prepared for?"

"Don't talk about your score," Morgan said. "Don't hint and definitely don't talk about Erica's healing if you might be overheard. That and stay together. We know that Japan has seen its share of pickup events."

"Let's have a good night's sleep then. Oh, and Mark, this is a commercial flight, no trying to add extra wings to your mile high club ticket," Beatrice said.

Everyone started to laugh as I playfully shook my fist at the room. "It wasn't my idea," I mock grumbled.

The meeting broke up at that point. Lenore and Ashley went downstairs to make sure that they had packed suitcases for everyone. I spent a couple of hours with Erica and Matti before joining them. We cuddled for the night and thought about what fun we might have in Japan.

The next morning we discovered just how easy the charter plane had made our trip to the Super Bowl. We arrived at the airport in two shuttle service buses. At first the skycap wanted to argue with us about unloading in front of the doors, but Letty and Ashley used the short skirts they were wearing to distract him while we unloaded all of the luggage. Becky and Beatrice went hunting for carts to help us transport everything to the check-in desk.

Once we arrived at the check-in desk, the airline employees gave Beatrice a hard time about the number of tickets. They claimed that it was extremely unusual for anyone to book eighteen first class seats at once and that they needed to see each person. We ended up parading past and individually identifying our luggage before they finally started printing the boarding passes we needed.

Armed with our boarding passes, we made our way to security. We had left three hours early just in case there were issues and found them here. The line was already long, and the men working at the front were definitely not going to be leaving Earth with an entourage unless they were part of it. They seemed to understand this, and as the line slowly moved forward, we watched three men get accosted when the guards noticed that they were accompanying beautiful women.

"We're doomed," Jason whispered in my ear.

"Maybe not," I said. "Quick, get Maurice and Morgan. We'll move so we are ahead of the girls. They should allow some people to move ahead, and separate us from them."

Morgan and Maurice moved forward to join us. Morgan was watching the security agents and nodded after they forced one man to accompany them into a separate room. "They are being abusive," he said. "And I like your idea. If they don't think we have a high CAP we might sneak by."

"How do we do that?" Maurice asked.

"So, what do you think about the National League?" I asked Maurice. "I mean, I've always liked the Dodgers, but they still need a couple of good pitchers to really do well, and their closer is useless. What do you think?"

"Huh?" Maurice said. "Dude, what's this about."

Jason smiled. He had a gleam in his eye as he looked at me. "Who cares about the West this year? Saint Louis has finally got the team to beat. They replaced that useless third baseman with a power hitting farm boy. That's all they needed to tear up their division."

One of the security agents snorted. "What are you smoking?" he asked. "Saint Louis had the best hitting third baseman last season, and I know they didn't replace him."

"They didn't?" Jason asked

"Of course they didn't. You don't drop someone who hit forty-five home runs and had one hundred twenty runs batted in. What rock do you live under?" the agent asked as Jason was called forward to show his boarding pass.

The guard barely looked at the ticket. He asked Jason to show identification and once he had matched my friend's face to his photo passed him on to the x-ray station. Maurice was called up next.

The guard again barely looked at Maurice's paperwork before allowing him to pass through. I was next and walked up to hand my ticket over. The guard had a funny look on his face as I approached.

"So what do you do?" he asked. "Why are you travelling?"

"I'm supposed to be part of some student exchange. You know where a high school in Japan sends a student to the US and we send one in return. But there was a mix up, and I couldn't head over in January," I said.

"Why not?" the guard asked. He seemed entirely too interested.

"Oh, I got in some trouble, and until the authorities at school agreed that I could go, I was forced to stay. My grades were under threat, and you know how it is, participation in exchange programs depends on your grades," I said almost flippantly.

The guard looked very carefully at my boarding pass. He glanced back at me and seemed to notice my shoulders. "You play football?" he asked.

"I was on the junior varsity over at Central High. Started at safety by the end of the season," I replied proudly.

The guard looked over his shoulder. "And those two?"

"Maurice was our star on defense, Jason was our best pass rusher," I said. "I just helped."

The man nodded. "You look a bit too small to play. Go on and get in line."

I accepted my boarding pass back and staggered forward to the x-ray machine. It took a moment to get my shoes and belt off, fill two of the plastic trays with my belongings, and send it into the machine.

The other guards gave me a bit of trouble. I was send through the body scanning machine and then forced to return to it. In the end the guards allowed me through with no more hassle, but I held my breath until I had my shoes on and was able to walk a bit deeper into the terminal.