Chapter 10

On Sunday morning, the twins and Ayame woke early and got ready for the drive to the music festival. As they had arranged Saturday, they stopped at Ayame’s new school friend’s home to pick her up together with the other girl who was going with them. When they arrived, the two girls emerged from the house and rushed to the car. Ayame’s friend introduced herself to the twins.

“Hi, I’m Michelle. My Japanese name is really Misuko but I’ve adopted an American name,” Ayame’s friend said. “And this is Devin; she’s in a few of my classes and guess what?—she speaks Japanese too. She was born on Okinawa; her mom is Japanese and her dad is a Marine.”

Cynthia greeted them and Roger said, “I wonder just how many kids in the school speak Japanese? I know lots of Marine families spent tours there the way ours did. Michelle, you speak English really well, you know.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “父 [Chichi]—ah, daddy, he went to graduate school in America and I actually was born here but grew up in Japan. Daddy’s company always had plans to eventually send him here so he had me learn English while I was growing up.”

“What do you guys think of the Program, anyway?” Cynthia asked.

“Oh, it’s an awful idea. My parents hate it too,” Michelle said.

“Yes—and mine told me that they won’t allow my participation either because of the general’s order and also that it’s not right,” Devin added. “Michelle, would you refuse—I guess it’s will you refuse when they call you?”

“Yes, if the military kids can refuse, I don’t see why I can’t refuse too. If they don’t let me graduate, I can still go to school back in Japan. Both my uncles live there and one is a college professor, too.”

Soon they arrived at the music festival site and as they had planned, met the others from their high school who were coming too. About a third of the group members wanted to watch the Japanese bands and the others wanted to see some of the other groups perform.

“Ayame, how will we find you?” Cynthia asked.

Roger pulled out his cell phone. “Hey, here’s how. There’s this app I found. It’s ‘GPS Find Me.’ Ayame, can you put an app on your phone?”

“Oh, yes,” she giggled as she pulled her tiny phone out; it was hanging from a cord around her neck. “Remember this cute little phone? Let me look for it. No keys. Works with voice, Japanese only though. GPS 探して [GPS sagashite] ... ah, here.”

She found the app, installed it, and started it up.

“Okay, next you need to register it so your position can be located.” Roger told her. “Just use your name for your id.”

She set that up.

“Now go to the ‘Live Position’ screen and activate it ... Cool,” Roger said. “I see your location on my screen now. And here’s how to find me.”

He showed her the setting. “We can text each other when we want to meet, now, and we’ll know where each other is at.”

The groups parted as Ayame’s friends cooed and fussed over her tiny cell phone. Roger and Cynthia joined their other friends and went off to the shows they wanted to see. All too soon the afternoon concerts were drawing to a close. Roger didn’t want to stay too late because of his early practice session on Monday, so he pulled out his cell phone and looked for Ayame’s location; she was at the opposite side of the festival grounds area. He and Cynthia followed the phone app’s directions as they made their way to her location.

“My goodness,” Ayame said when she saw them walking up to her, “that really works. It’s so crowded here. I’m glad that you knew about that app.”

“There are a few of these locating apps, but I like this one, and best of all, it’s free,” Roger grinned.

The group returned to their car and started home.

“You guys enjoy?” Cynthia asked the girls.

“Yeah, the bands were cool. We got to see a lot of acts, too. Thanks for taking us!” Devin exclaimed.

“Thank you for telling me about this,” Ayame told Michelle. “I had lots of fun there.”

“Ugh,” Michelle commented. “Tomorrow they pick another Program group. I can see that I’m going to be hating Mondays for the next year, too. Maybe they won’t bother me since I’m registered in school as a foreign student.”

“That’s how Ayame is, also. But I think she’s not even really registered, since she’s already graduated. She’s just taking some classes here,” Cynthia commented. “I wish that there was some kind of way we could find out more about how kids are dealing with the Program in their schools. We can’t be the only ones who are putting up such a fight against the Program.”

“I just thought of the blogs and forums that are under the ‘military brat’ category,” Roger broke in. “Remember, Cyn, when we came to Pendleton, you found those sites where people—kids too—posted their experiences growing up as a military kid?”

“Right, Rog. Say, maybe they talk about the Program on those sites?”

“That’s my thought. Since the sites aren’t about the Program, and high school kids don’t go to those sites, maybe the feds don’t keep such close track of them. One of the guys on the U.S. Judo Team was telling me of a group he’s part of—they blog but don’t want outsiders, so they turned off search engine access so those blogs aren’t on search indexes. Maybe that’s why you didn’t get any search results, Cindy.”

“Wow. Cool idea, Rog. Yeah, let’s try looking for stuff like that.”

The other girls suggested that other high-school kids might be doing similar blogs and keeping off the federal radar that way, so they said they’d do some hunting and see what turned up.

At the twins’ home after dinner, the three kids sat down to hunt through the kinds of sites that Roger had suggested. There were plenty of military life stories on blogs mostly written by grownups who grew up with parents in the military. They went through dozens of sites with no results. Some were forums and those too yielded nothing.

Cynthia leaned back from her work. “This way isn’t getting us anywhere. I’m gonna try getting on a few likely forums and posting a question asking if they know blog sites by high school kids that discuss problems in changing schools. That will hide what we’re looking for but may get us some leads.”

“Good idea, Cyn. Hey, maybe you should set up a different email address to use so you don’t give your regular one,” Roger commented.

“Yeah. You’re right. Okay, let me do that first.”

Ayame looked up from her reading. “I too have idea. In my high school we had a group, it’s 学生自治会 [gakusei jichikai]—eeh, self-government student organization...”

Roger interjected, “Yeah, student councils.”

“Yes, that’s it. Every school did. Here too?”

“Here too,” Cynthia agreed.

“So couldn’t the people in your school’s government contact other school government people? In Japan we had councils between schools too.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Ayame! And I know someone on our school council; Danielle, she’s a junior on our basketball team. Let me text her,” Cynthia exclaimed.

Two minutes later, Cynthia got a return text.

“Danielle said I should call her now,” she said and dialed her number.

“Danielle, I’ve been talking with my brother and cousin about getting more info about how kids are dealing with the Program in their schools, and my cousin mentioned how in Japan their councils can talk about what happens at their own schools. Couldn’t you guys on the council discuss the Program with other student councils?”

“Cindy, yeah, that would be great to do. But at January’s council meeting, Davis and Cirota told us that when the Program started at our school, if we were still on the council, there were privacy rules that applied to us and that all council members were absolutely forbidden to discuss Program matters with people from other schools. They told us that the fed Program office had a rule against councils communicating anything about the Program at their schools either officially or unofficially. Everyone was totally annoyed to hear that and after the meeting, some of us were talking about making unofficial contacts with other schools anyway using the council’s listserv to get contact info. We figured that no one would find out.”