The Book of Heroes Read Free

at sports. They had picked him for the Little League team when he was only in first grade, and he was in regular rotation as a pitcher by fourth grade. Hiroki had joined the swim team in middle school—someone had told him swimming would make his pitching arm stronger—and was already breaking records.
    The only thing she could imagine happening to him was some kind of accident. Maybe a traffic accident, or a freak drowning at the pool. Except it was too cold for the school to be still using the pool. So it must have been a traffic accident. Maybe a car hit him.
    “Mom? Did Hiroki get run over?”
    Her mother grabbed Yuriko’s hands in her own. Her face was streaked with tears. She had been crying so hard she could barely keep her eyes open. She hiccuped. It made Yuriko feel like crying too. She didn’t think she had ever seen her mother look so stricken by grief. Or any adult, for that matter.
    “Is…he dead?”
    Her mother shook her head, her eyes still closed. Yuriko felt the fear that had been stabbing at her chest suddenly slip away. The echoing words in her head faded. Whew. So he didn’t buy it.
    Then why is Mom crying?
    “Your brother—”
    “Yeah?”
    “At school, during recess…”
    “Yeah?”
    “He got into a fight with some friends.” Her mother’s voice was hoarse. “And…he hurt them.” She took a breath and hiccuped again. “The whole thing must have scared him, because he ran from the school. They don’t know where he is now. His teachers and some men from the local fire department are looking for him.”
    Something else lifted off Yuriko’s chest. This time, she wasn’t sure what it was. She wasn’t even sure if it was something she had wanted to keep.
    “Don’t worry,” her mother said, sobbing as she stroked Yuriko’s hair. “I’m sure they’ll find him soon. Once he’s back, we’ll go to his friends’ houses and apologize, all of us together. That will settle things.” She spoke gently, but her face betrayed her feelings. She didn’t think that would settle things at all, not really.
    “Where’s Dad?”
    Her dad and her brother got along famously. Recently, Hiroki had made a show of stepping out on his own to assert some independence from the family, but he was still his proud father’s son. “He must be really worried! Is he out looking for him with his teachers?”
    Her mother nodded, then a fresh round of sobs erupted from somewhere deep inside her.
    Her mom wasn’t lying, Yuriko was pretty sure about that. But she also wasn’t telling the whole truth. Finally, Yuriko found out what had happened that evening.
    Hiroki Morisaki had taken a knife with him to school that day. Not a cooking knife from home. A long knife he had bought somewhere. Someone who saw it said the blade was almost fifteen centimeters.
    Hiroki had stabbed two other boys in his class.
    One in the stomach, the other in the neck.
    The boy he’d got in the neck was dead even before the ambulance arrived.
    It had happened during recess after lunch. The boys had been out behind the gymnasium, where there was no one else to see them. No one even knew it had happened until the boy who was stabbed in the stomach came crawling into the school looking for help.
    By the time the news spread and the school had erupted into chaos, Hiroki Morisaki was nowhere to be found.
    He’d taken the knife with him.
    No one had seen him leave school. They didn’t know whether he’d run or walked away. Whether he’d been crying or laughing. They didn’t even know if he had been angry.
    Or frightened.
    All kinds of people came to their house: parents from the PTA, Hiroki’s middle school teachers. The police came too, and the firemen. And then there were the neighbors. Most of their relatives lived far away, so none of them made it there that day, but the phone was ringing off the hook.
    All Yuriko and her mother could do was wait at home. Occasionally, her father would call her mother’s cell phone. Once, she had