North didn’t have an argument against his ideas, however, him making the judgment call alone, without consulting anyone else, seemed unlike Kota. He was usually the first one to call in on the Academy, at the very least for some advice.

  Maybe Kota wasn’t sure what to call about. Her mother did this to her, but what if her mother was mentally ill and needed help as well? Not that it justified harming Sang, but there was no sense in pulling Sang out of her home quickly if her mother was...salvageable, so to speak.

  Jumping in head first, not knowing all the details, that’s what made problems like this much more challenging. One wrong move and her family could up and move and disappear and there wouldn’t be anything they could do to stop them. Or worse, her parents could make it impossible to figure out what’s going on and then continue abusing until it was too late.

  The important part, for now, was to observe and wait it out. Which meant earning her trust and allowing them to do multiple things, likely even to set up some surveillance. And eventually interact with her family, slowly, to see if they could do anything to help change things.

  Which meant lots of time.

  “You know what this means,” he said to Kota.

  “We can do this,” Kota said.

  North raised an eyebrow. “Everything?”

  Kota nodded, but slowly. “As long as nothing else blows up.”

  North frowned. Kota didn’t mean just Sang, or the recruit, or the school, or the diner. They also had a few others who still had problems at home. Victor’s parents, sometimes Gabriel had trouble at home with Pam, Silas’s brother...and Nathan’s dad occasionally popping in at random. It was all quiet for now, but it wouldn’t always be and they knew it.

  But without saying a word, Kota exchanged a worried look with North. He hadn’t told Mr. Blackbourne yet, but he was going to have to. Soon, they would face the music with him and admit that they couldn’t do everything.

  But maybe then Mr. Blackbourne would understand. They had a good reason.

  Sang was a very good reason.

  7

  Silas arrived by the afternoon. One look from him, and it was clear not much progress had been made on their new potential recruit at the motel. Nothing to report.

  “No visuals,” he said quietly to North before he turned his attention to Sang, who had come from the kitchen. “Hey,” he said to her.

  Sang did a silent finger wave and skittered back to the kitchen quickly.

  Silas frowned and sent such a dour look of disappointment to North. “She blames me, I bet,” he said quietly.

  North shook his head. “I think she’s more embarrassed.” He could remember a time when Kota hesitated a lot, embarrassed about what had happened to him, when Kota revealed painful recurrences with his father. Whenever some new information got brought up, he avoided talking to people or sidestepped out of range.

  Silas’s eyes darkened and he didn’t say anything else.

  North felt he understood. Silas always had issues with feeling guilty about things. Silas’s own family especially haunted him. He took what happened to his mother very hard.

  Despite what Sang might think, the rest of them were very well versed in troubled family life.

  ♥♥♥

  When the afternoon rolled on and it was starting to look like Kota was reaching the limits of house chores for Sang to do along with him, and North was about to nearly fall asleep as they all watch cartoons. North sat on the floor, having made room for the others to sit on the couch.

  Sang’s leg and foot were right next to him. At first, he just had a hand nearby. Through his sleepy state, he thought he was rubbing the side of his own leg. Eventually, he did realize he’d been rubbing Sang’s foot.

  When he realized this was what was happening, he paused, unsure. She hadn’t said anything, not to stop. And he swore he felt her foot turning into his hand, as if to suggest it was okay and to continue.

  He didn’t trust his own brain, and obviously didn’t want to make assumptions about it. He kept his hand nearby her foot, however, and just remained still and hoped he hadn’t misjudged

  Later, Luke rolled his head back to look at Sang, “Sang, let’s play a board game.”

  North groaned and was surprised when both Silas and Kota did so at the exact same time.

  “Don’t be like that,” Luke said. He did a half folding roll and then knee crawled the rest of the way across the living room carpet to the entertainment center. He opened one of the cabinets and peered inside. “Wait, where did the board games go?”

  “Threw them out,” North said.

  “Stored away,” Kota said at the same time.

  North was about to say don’t bother, but it was Luke who peered at him, pleading silently with that look Luke often gave him when he really, really wanted to do something and he knew there was no reason for North not to approve of it.

  North didn’t say anything further but he mentally prepared himself for this. How could Luke want this to happen?

  Kota seemed to have the same mindset, giving in to Luke’s request. “I’m pretty sure my mom keeps a couple in the downstairs hall closet now.”

  Luke popped up off the carpet and dashed around the corner. The hallway echoed with the sound of him opening the closet and shuffling things.

  “Do we not like board games?” Sang asked quietly.

  North clenched his teeth, not wanting to admit it but it was likely going to come about anyway. “It’s complicated.”

  “Depending on the game, it isn’t too bad,” Kota said.

  “We could watch a movie instead,” Silas said. He’d adjusted himself as he sat on the couch to lean more heavily on the arm. “Or we could go do something outside...”

  Before anyone else could offer up more, Luke returned, beaming, holding a box over his head.

  Trivial Pursuit.

  A chorus of groans echoed through Kota, Silas, and North unanimously.

  “I thought you said Max ate the cards,” Luke said to Kota.

  Kota pressed his hand against his face and mumbled, “He did eat...one...maybe...”

  Sang sat silently, with a slight hint of perplexed amusement coming over her face.

  Luke brought the game over to the coffee table and showed it to her. “Familiar with this one?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” she said quietly.

  North assumed she’d never played it. Maybe her family didn’t play board games. It wasn’t exactly a thrilling option. “Maybe you should get another one...”

  “Naw, this will be fun,” Luke said, opening the box top and setting it aside. “We’ll at least get a new range of questions.”

  Sang peered into the very worn box. North didn’t remember who had purchased the game, or if it had always been here, but there used to be nights...endless nights...of games that never really finished, only as each one of them got too competitive.

  Especially Kota. And North.

  Mostly when they argued the interpretation of the rules. Or the answers given. Or a number of other things.

  Sang settled onto the carpet next to Luke, sitting on her heels. “How do you play?”

  “We kind of changed the rules,” Luke said. He held up a very bent, pre-printed card from the original game. “We used to use these, but Kota knows all of them now.”

  “I don’t really...” Kota murmured.

  “You do,” Silas said.

  North nodded in agreeance. Even North remembered all the questions. It became too unfair.

  Luke brought out a stack of blank cards. “So we started making up questions.”

  Sang waited quietly as Luke passed her a stack of twenty blank cards. And then handed her a couple of the cards from the original game.

  “Just so you know how to structure the questions and answers,” he said. “And they can be about anything. There’s categories but what do I know about...sports? You know?”

  Great. They finally stopped giving her chores to do and moved on to giving her homework.

  It took them about a half hour to work on enough cards. Sang managed to get in twenty-five handwritten cards. Luke had twenty. North and Silas ended up with thirty each.

  Kota finished with thirty-five.

  “But, we’ll get our own cards, won’t we?” Sang asked.

  “No, we have to trade in a certain way,” Luke said. “And you pull from your stack.”

  After Sang handed over her cards, it was Kota who did the distribution. He was always the fastest. In addition, he pulled cards from the box they’d worked on before, and some from the original set from the box.

  “Just to mix it up,” he said.

  In the end, each player had a set of mixed-up cards that they hadn’t worked on. And Kota’s and North’s stack included none from their original box game. It was the only way to make it mostly fair.

  “Remember, Sang,” Luke said. “This is the most important rule: Our goal isn’t always to get ourselves to win.”

  “Luke...” North started to say. “We don’t have to...”

  Luke continued, unfazed. “It’s just us against Kota.”

  Sang raised an eyebrow. “Just Kota?”

  “Yes,” he said. “So, usually that means helping North win. He’s the only one who gets close.”

  Sang blinked, and then gazed across the table at North.

  North met her eyes. He wasn’t sure if she caught Luke’s meaning fully.

  Kota always won. It didn’t matter the game. Unless the game was pure chance alone, Kota won every time. And most of the time at the chance games, he still won. It made every game difficult.

  And North, usually, was the only one to get even close to beating him.

  They rolled dice to see who would go first. It was Luke.

  Luke rolled again, landing on a brown space. He moved his marker and Kota, managing most of the cards except his own card deck, pulled one from Luke’s stack and read. “What floor covering is made up of Linseed oil, resin, and wood and maybe cork dust?”

  “Ugh, a North card,” Luke said.

  “You should know this one,” North mumbled.

  “Floor covering?” Luke blinked. “Well, if it’s not straight wood...and it’s not...it doesn’t sound like carpet...” He paused. “It’s not linoleum, is it?”

  “Is it?” Kota asked with a small smirk.

  Luke blinked a few times. “It’s linoleum.”

  “It is.”

  North blanked out listening while Luke, and then Silas, took their turns until Silas came across a card that was obviously written by Sang.

  Kota checked the card and read, “The quote, ‘One thing was for certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it: - it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.’ Is from what book?”

  Silas’s face was stone and so hard to read for just a minute, but then he frowned heavily. “I don’t know that one.”

  North didn’t recognize it either. Should he know it?

  After a few minutes and Silas clearly didn’t know, Kota read, “Through the Looking Glass.”

  Sang, instead of looking proud, seemed to blush all over from the result. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Kota said. “It’s great for us to get questions we don’t know the answers to. We know too much about what the others know.”

  When it was Sang’s turn, he pulled out a Luke card for her to answer first. “What’s the name of the Italian dessert made of coffee, mascarpone cheese and ladyfingers?”

  Sang sat so still, staring off at the card Kota held in his hand for so long, North wondered if she was going to answer.

  “I think it’s Tiramisu,” she said eventually. “But I’ve never had it.”

  “What?” Luke said, pressing a palm to his forehead. “It’s so good. You’ve got to try that one.”

  Sang went again, and Kota pulled another question, one hand-written from a long time ago. North wasn’t sure who wrote it until Kota asked the question. “The flower convallaria is better known as what?”

  North guessed Mr. Blackbourne had written it. It had been ages since he played.

  Sang, again, sat as still as possible, except for her lip movements, and it appeared she was rolling the word convallaria over and over again, silently pronouncing each syllable.

  “I think we should ban Kota-intended questions,” Silas muttered.

  “She can get it,” Kota said.

  “It’s not a Kota question,” North said. “But I thought we tossed the questions asking if you know other languages as unlikely for anyone to know.”

  “You can give her another card,” Luke said.

  North wasn’t sure he agreed with the idea. He didn’t like the idea of cheating so she’d win. “What’s the point of the game if we’re just giving easier questions when we feel like it?” he asked.

  “Precisely,” Kota said.

  It wasn’t typical for Kota and North to agree on game rules.

  “Do you have a guess?” Luke said, nudging Sang in the arm.

  Sang shrugged lightly. “All I can think of is that flower with Valley in the name. I think it’s lily but maybe valley rose?” She paused.

  Kota, very subtly, lifted the corner of his mouth. “Which do you think it is?”

  “You just hinted at her,” North said.

  “I’m trying to encourage her to answer,” Kota said.

  “You just suggested it was one of the two.”

  “She came up with the two.”

  Silas coughed, loudly, just once, an effort to get them to stop before they started up.

  North dropped his next rebuttal, suggesting they ask another question based on Kota practically giving it away.

  Sang made a crooked, unsure smile. “Lily of the Valley, I guess.”

  Kota beamed. “Good job.”

  Sang grimaced, although she seemed pleased. She picked up the die again as it meant she had to keep going.

  The third card was one from the original board game, which only Kota and North remembered the answer, the date the first lavatory was built in London.

  The game continued until it was Kota’s turn. North sat back, assuming this would take a while.

  Kota answered four. Two from Luke, one from North, one an old question from Victor’s card he’d written ages ago.

  The fifth question was from Sang.

  “What do the folds of a chef’s hat signify?” North asked Kota.

  Kota blinked a few times. “I don’t actually know if I’ve come across this yet.”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  North, while holding the card, looked over the answer. “Give up yet?”

  “Not yet,” Kota said. His head tilted back slightly and his eyes went from side to side, as if trying to read books only he could see. “If they signify anything, it’s likely something like...years they’ve been professionally cooking or dishes they’ve managed to make...”

  Sang beamed at the last thing Kota said.

  Kota caught it. “Something they make....”

  North reached over, nudging Sang in the elbow with a forefinger, gently. “No hints.”

  Sang grimaced. “Sorry.”

  “Stop being sorry,” Luke said.

  It honestly surprised North that Kota didn’t know this one. He wasn’t totally sure Kota didn’t know. Was he lying that he didn’t know?

  To be fair, North hadn’t known this one. It hadn’t been in the original box, and he hadn’t come across it yet, so maybe Kota didn’t know. But he wondered, because it was Sang, if he was relenting to make the game last a little longer.

  Otherwise, it was often likely Kota won the game in his first go.

  Kota eventually sighed and shrugged. “It’s how many dishes they’ve made professionally?”

  “Eggs,” North said, reading the card as Sang wrote it. “It’s how many ways they’ve managed to prepare eggs. A master chef has a hundred folds.”

  Luke’s eyes widened. “There’s...a hundred ways to make eggs?”

  Sang shrugged. “I just heard about it somewhere...”

  Out of most of the questions across the entirety of the game, it was Sang’s questions that ended up stumping most of the guys, including North, when he didn’t know, which was that sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins.

  It didn’t matter how much the others knew answers or not, because as always, the first two able to end the game were Kota and North.

  “Here we go,” Silas said when Kota’s play piece landed in the middle of the board. He sat back on the couch, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. “We lost. Again.”

  Before North could reach for the box, Luke jumped forward and grabbed Kota’s question box. “No, I should read these. And judge.”

  North squinted at his brother. “Why?”

  “Because I want to.” He paused and then brightened. “Actually, Sang hasn’t had a turn yet.”

  North had his mouth open to argue but then realized Luke was right. Sang hadn’t once picked out cards or read them yet. She hadn’t seemed to want to and let the others do it.

  Luke aimed the stack of cards at Sang. “Go on,” he said.

  Sang picked up a card from Kota’s stack. It was a question from Luke. “How old are apples from the grocery store?” And before Kota could even answer, she’d flipped the card over, and after reading the answer, her eyes widened big. “Oh wow.”

  “Right?” Luke said with a grin.

  “Well, it must be a long time,” Kota said with a smirk, “if you’re that shocked.”

  “I think he needs another question,” North said. “She’s giving away the answers.”

  Sang pressed her lips together as if in an effort to not give away any more. In a way, it made her pretty face look poised for someone to take a picture.

  And Kota stared. For the longest time, he stared at her face.

  The longer he stared, the more North’s heart sunk in his chest.

  Kota liked her.

  He could feel it.

  As much as North, in the bottom of his heart, was very much growing feelings for Sang as well. In ways he didn’t want to admit at all and would never do so, barely even to himself.