The Easiest Target

How Much?

Toki takes me to a modern apartment complex close to our school located in Sunset Park. It's quiet here. So quiet. Spacious. And this is just the lobby. I hesitate at the door to his apartment. He rings the bell and a vaguely familiar face opens: a girl in eleventh grade like me only much more popular.

I flush and step away from Toki: did he just bring me to his girlfriend's place? Toki dates? No way. There are rumors of him not dating. I feel humiliated all of a sudden with snot dripping from my nostrils and tears still wet on my cheeks.

She shoves Toki, her beautiful face twisting up in anger. "What did you do?" she snarls through barred teeth.

Toki just holds his arm up in defense. "Just let us in, Kate," he says gloomily.

Kate takes my wrist and I tug back so hard I fall flat on my butt. I don't want to be involved in this. Something twists up painfully in the pit of my stomach. More than humiliation or fear. There's something sickening — shattering shaking through me and I don't know why. He's not really doing this to me, is he? There's no way he'd bring me to his girlfriend's house like this.

Toki ruffles his hair and hisses something at Kate in Japanese. "This is your fault. I know it. You're a psychotic idiot! " Kate folds her arms over her chest, sneering down at me. "What did my obsessed brother do? Drag you here against your will?"

Her ... what?

I look up at Toki in disbelief. Figures. I should have known one of the most popular girl at school was his little sister. They actually resembled each other now that I look at them. Both tall, slim, pale, jet-black hair.

Toki keeps his head turned away. Kate goes into the apartment ahead of us snootily. Toki balls his sleeves nervously and holds a hand out to me, keeping his head turned away. I don't take it — which I think relieves him.

He goes in quickly and comes out with tissues and a water bottle. "Come inside...."

He gestures for me to sit on their gray, velvet couches and leaves me there. I have never been so emotional stimulated in my entire life. I sit back when Toki steps away from me and for a while, just a while ... it all goes black.

***

The sound of a door clicking shut wakes me. I jerk into an upright position, moving the gray throw blanket off.

Toki comes over timidly and sit on the coffee table in front of me. My eyebrows shoot down, recollection hitting me fast. He offers me a cup of water but I can't lift my hand to take it.

"So," his sister sighs, sitting down a seat away from me. Her grayish blue eyes watch me with the composure of an eighty-year-old woman that's lost all her cats. "Is what Tokyo said true?"

"Kate," Toki glares.

She shrugs, her silky black hair falling over her shoulder. "Listen, if she's in trouble, she needs to go to the cops."

"No!" I gasp, startling them. "No cops. Please."

"Why?" Kate asks. "Are your parents fugitives or something? Are you guys illegal?" Kate asks.

Toki scolds her in Japanese. His phone vibrates on the table and he answers reluctantly. A few words later, he offers the phone to me. "It's your brother."

I take the phone, staring at him in confusion. Why does he even have Adam's number? "Hadeel, do you want me to call the cops on them?!" Adam demands heatedly.