Chapter 2

It was Friday, and the spring term would begin on Monday. The twins needed to take Ayame to the high school to register and then they had to stop at the dojo to return some equipment. As they drove through the base, Ayame looked around in amazement.

“This is such big place! When you said you lived in place called ‘Camp Pendleton’ I thought it was like small camp, よ [yo: okay]?”

“Yeah, nothing like Japan, right? Even LA isn’t anything like Tokyo; Tokyo has all those tall buildings. You didn’t get to see LA too well since we arrived at night. LA is big but doesn’t have many tall buildings,” Cynthia said, smiling. “Our school is in a little town just off the base.”

They arrived at the school and took Ayame to the office where she handed her school records to the clerk.

“Oh my goodness, this is too complicated for an administrative transfer. You need to see a guidance counselor for this,” the clerk exclaimed as she riffled through the paperwork. “At least it’s mostly translated. You should see the records that some of the Marine families come in with after they return from a foreign tour. Let me see who’s available to speak to you.”

They were directed to a counselor who spent an hour matching up courses that Ayame had taken with corresponding ones in their program. Finally she had a list completed.

“It looks like you’ve virtually completed all of the high school graduation requirements and have a few areas of advanced standing, too. The only areas you’re lacking are in civics, obviously, and possibly English, although your spoken English is quite good.”

“はい [Hai], sensai ... yes, miss,” Ayame said, “my parents said that for this term I should concentrate on American civics, history, and English. Been already accepted at several colleges and need to visit some ones that I’m much interested in attending—major to be pre-med.”

“Okay, let’s see how those classes can fit into a schedule for you. Do you guys want to be in the some of the same classes?” she asked, looking at the twins. “I could put Ayame into your English class, and let’s see, you’ve got American History too.” Roger nodded yes. “The best civics class for you, Ayame, is this junior class,” the counselor finished.

“Yes, sensai, please, that would be good to be in their classes if you can.”

“Let’s look at electives too. Roger and Cynthia are also in Psychology—oh, yes, Anatomy and Physiology too. Since you’re going to be pre-med and you haven’t had those classes, how about those too?”

“Oh, yes, those would be good.”

“Now it looks like we won’t need to calculate your graduation requirements from this school because your Japanese transcript already shows that you’ve met their requirements. May I ask why you want to take more high school classes instead of just beginning in college?”

“If I stay in Japan I have to study electives anyway and taking entrance exams is draining. Parents wanted me to come to the U.S. for college anyway and told me that starting in high school might help with culture shock a bit. My parents both Americans, you know, so this isn’t new decision, sensai.”

Soon Ayame’s schedule was arranged with her having five periods together with Roger and Cynthia and the trio left the office to give Ayame a tour of the school.

“Cynthia!” a voice rang out. They turned to see who had called.

“Coach Vickers! Hi!” Cynthia answered. “Come meet our cousin from Japan.”

The coach came over to them.

“Hi there,” she said, extending her hand, “I’m Amy Vickers, Cindy’s basketball coach; welcome!”

“Asano Ayame です [desu: I am], ahh, name is Ayame Asano, nice meeting you.”

“What a pretty name, Ayame. You’re visiting us?”

“In some way. I’ll be here until graduation. Then I go to college and have got several to choose from to visit. Thank you for name compliment. Name means ‘iris,’ a flower.”

“A beautiful flower, like the person. Well, you missed seeing our basketball season; Cindy led our team to the state championship last term—oh, right! Cindy—how did you do in the judo match?”

Roger broke in, “She’s the world champion lightweight judoka, Coach. She won the gold medal.”

“Fantastic, Cindy! I’m so glad that the b-ball schedule didn’t hurt your judo training. I remember how intense it was for you during the last few months. What about you, Roger? How did you do, if I may ask?”

Cynthia answered, “Rog took bronze in middleweight. That’s the toughest weight class, too, because there are so many good judokas in that weight.”

“Congratulations, Roger. Well done, both of you. Now you can devote all your attention to the swim team, right, Roger? I’m looking forward to the swim meets starting next month. Ayame, do you have a sport you play?”

“In school only games I played were volleyball and, errr, we call it サッカー協会 [sakkā kyōkai]—but I was not so good, I’m poor runner and not play in games with other schools.”

“Sakka? Oh, soccer! That word must have come from our name, ‘soccer,’” Vickers said.

“はい [Hai], Vickers-sensai. Translates for ‘association football.’ Lots of people still call it フットぼる [futtoboru], that’s ‘football’ in 日本語 [nihongo], err, Japanese.”

“Say, it’s been nice to talk, guys, but I need to get busy now—nice meeting you, Ayame, and congrats again on your judo titles, guys!” And she rushed off.

“Say, Ayame, you mentioned not running very well in soccer—those burns still cause you problems?” Cynthia asked with a concerned look.

“はい [Hai], but now lots better. Several more surgery and treatment happened to break up scar tissue that kept forming after I went into puberty...”

“What scar tissue? Excuse me for breaking in...” a new voice interrupted them as they walked down the hall. They spun around to see who it was.

“Coach Jerter!” Roger exclaimed.

“Yep, it’s me. I ran into Coach Amy and she said you were headed this way so I caught up with you. Roger—and Cindy—congratulations, she told me about your judo. Roger, I just wanted to let you know that we had some team swimming practices during the break so you’ll need to get caught up. But who’s your friend and what’s this about surgeries and scars?”

“Guys, this is Coach Jerter, my swim coach, obviously, and Coach, this is our cousin from Japan, Ayame Asano. She was burned in a fire.”

“Hello, Jerter-sensai, honored to meet,” Ayame said, bowing her head. “Yes, are cousins but Roger and Cindy aren’t related by blood. Parents adopted me after whole family died in fire when I was little. But hips and belly burned pretty bad and have lot of scarring there. Can walk fine now but still tire quickly if I have to run lots.”

Cynthia continued, “Ayame is here till we graduate and then she’ll be going to college in the U.S.”

“Well, good meeting you, Ayame. You may want to try swimming, you know. It’s a great way to increase your leg strength without having your legs bearing your whole body weight. Roger, I checked your gym schedule and want you in the pool when you have gym, okay? See you all next week, now; take care!” He turned and strode back down the hall toward the offices.

The trio finished their tour at the library and then left to show Ayame the town and some other sights. First they stopped at a mobile phone service provider and Ayame got her phones set up. Then they stopped for lunch and drove to the dojo afterwards. As soon as they entered, Roger and Cynthia were mobbed by the staff.

“The conquering heroes return!” “Way to go, guys!” “I saw the clips of your matches, way cool!” rang out around them.

Some of the students came over, curious about the uproar. Then they saw the twins and realized what the excitement was about.

One of the classes that was being held was for a group of law enforcement personnel from the local police and the sheriff’s department. Cynthia and Roger were among their instructors during the times that the class met after school hours, but because of their fall training schedule, the twins hadn’t worked with the class for the past four months. The group insisted on a demo of some of the moves and throws the siblings used in their matches, so they changed into their gis and drafted the two instructors for their sparring match. Then they took some of the more advanced students in the group and easily flipped, threw, or dropped them each within ten seconds.

One of the cops groaned, as he struggled onto his feet after being flipped by Cynthia for the third time, “Geez, I’m glad you’re the good guys. I can’t even touch you without getting thrown.”

“Yeah, you move so fast I can’t even get my feet planted to resist getting thrown!” another puffed, lying on his back after Roger had tossed him over his shoulder.

“Don’t feel bad, guys,” Cynthia said after the group agreed that they had enough. “You could all outshoot us in a pistol match, right? It’s all just good training. You all really did pretty well against us—Roger and I actually had to work hard to get inside your guards, so keep up the good work. We’ve gotta run now, but this was fun. See you in class sometime. Our schedules will be better now.”

Ayame had been watching the class with interest. When the twins had resumed their street clothes and were in the car, she began to reflect on the differences between what she saw at the matches in Tokyo and in the class.

“There was real difference! You move much more slowly with them in dojo than in match in Tokyo—almost like slow motion. Why was that?”

Roger answered, “With the class, those guys have almost no experience so we have to be really careful not to injure them. We have to throw and drop them carefully because they don’t know how to fall properly yet. So we move slowly and deliberately. It’s also a teaching tool so the student can feel the proper positioning of the attacker. In competition, we’re facing people who know all the techniques for protecting themselves and we can move as fast as we possibly can. Speed is almost as important as strength—maybe even equal in most cases.”

“Ayame, do you need anything for school? Do you have enough clothes till the shipment of your stuff arrives? There’s a nice mall not far where we can shop,” Cynthia suggested.

“Maybe don’t really need anything, but never turn down the chance to see some new shops,” Ayame grinned. “You know Japanese teenie girls just love going shopping malls, right?” she laughed.

The kids spent the rest of the afternoon at the mall and then finally went home. The twins’ dad was already home.

“Hey, guys, you’re local celebrities here now. The camp commander, General Markus, wants to honor the two of you at next week’s formation. He said that a great honor to a Marine family is also a great honor to the Corps.”

“That’s cool, sir,” Roger said, “do we need to do anything special? He doesn’t expect a demo or something, right?”

“No, you just need to stand, smile, and look pretty while the troops pass in formation. They’ll salute you and you’ll acknowledge.”

The rest of the weekend passed with the three teens doing regular teen activities.

Monday morning dawned bright and cool; it was still winter even in southern California, so it was 51 degrees when the teens left for school.

They arrived at school and entered the building with a horde of other kids, used their lockers to stow items not needed until later, and went off to their home room. After the final bells rang, Cynthia, Roger, and Ayame were seated, looking over the syllabuses for their first few classes of the day. The teacher came in and noticed the twins.

“Class, I heard from Coach Amy that Cynthia and Roger Denison won medals at the International Judo Federation tournament in Japan last week. Congrats, guys, well done.”

The students in the room gave them a round of applause. A few minutes later the door opened and a student came in and handed a message to the teacher.

She read it and looked up. “Cynthia and Roger, this message asks the two of you to go to the main conference room. It says to leave your backpacks in your lockers and then go to the conference room.”

Roger looked at Cynthia. “What’s this about, I wonder. Maybe about our judo?”

Cynthia shrugged. “We’ll see.”

They got to the room with a bunch of other kids who were arriving from all directions, kids from all of the grade levels. Roger noticed a sophomore who was on the basketball team and some of the kids looked really young—must be freshmen, he thought. The room was set up with chairs lined up around the walls and there were a number of staff members at the far end of the room.

The principal, Mr Davis, was there; so were two coaches. Roger recognized the football coach and thought that the other husky man was the wrestling team coach. Two additional adults were the school’s security guards in their rent-a-cop outfits and another man whom he hadn’t seen before.

Cynthia looked around the room and counted 24 students and noticed a stack of boxes in one corner. She scanned the boxes and suddenly felt her knees get weak. She clutched Roger’s arm.