The Book of Heroes Read Free Page B

backpack she had used for summer camp the year before. Her mother asked her grandparents to come with them, but her father, who only came home long enough to change clothes before disappearing again, thought there was no point in them being there anyway, and told them so, which only served to worsen the mood.
    The police escorted them to their hotel so that the reporters wouldn’t follow them. It wasn’t like the resort hotel Yuriko had been to once on a family vacation. They told her it was called a business hotel. Inside, the rooms were small, and there were more vending machines in the lobby than there was hotel staff.
    She hadn’t gone back to school once since she had left early that day.
    Yuriko sat on her bed, which smelled faintly of laundry detergent, and gazed absentmindedly at a cheap print of an abstract painting that hung in the middle of a white wall. The frame was slightly askew.
    They had fled their home to seek refuge in the hotel.
    Everything around her that she had always taken for granted was gone.
    Her brother had taken it all away.
    Her mother was in the bathroom with the door closed, talking on her cell phone. When she finally came out, leaning on a wall for support, she looked up at Yuriko. “Yuriko. Some of the police are going to come, okay?”
    Yuriko looked at her mother.
    “They say they want to talk to you. It might help them find Hiroki. Don’t worry; I’ll be with you the whole time. That’s okay, right?”
    There was no point saying she didn’t want them to come. If there was anything she didn’t want, it was everything. All of it.
    The police were there in less than half an hour. There was one man wearing a suit and a female officer in uniform. Yuriko wondered how they would all fit in the tiny room and where they would sit—there were only two chairs. But the police took her to their patrol car and brought her down to the police station.
    Everything that had happened since the taxi ride home seemed like a tremendous waste of time.
    They didn’t bring her to one of those questioning rooms you always see on TV. It was more like a meeting room, with nice chairs and a big table. A woman from the child counseling center, the same age as Yuriko’s mother, was waiting for them there
    Yuriko tensed when she heard who the woman was. Why did they need a counselor? Had her mother asked for one? If her brother did something bad, did that automatically make her a problem child too? Someone they needed a counselor just to talk to?
    Her mother bowed to them, saying she’d do anything to help.
    The counselor began talking to her in a soft, easy tone, but Yuriko didn’t reply. She looked out the window.
    The view from the police station window was no different than what you could see from a taxi. For some reason, that scared her. It would make more sense if the city looked different from here somehow. Wasn’t the police station a special place? Weren’t the people they brought in here, like Yuriko, special?
    “I was wondering if you could tell us a few things, Yuriko,” the man in the suit said. He was smiling gently enough, but there was a strange sadness to him. Why should he be sad about Hiroki? Isn’t he trying to catch my brother? Then she thought it might just be the way his eyebrows arched toward the middle. Like a clown’s.
    They asked all kinds of questions, using all kinds of words, but Yuriko immediately understood there was really only one thing they wanted to know.
    Had she noticed anything unusual about Hiroki lately?
    There was nothing unusual about her brother. Ever since the time she had first realized Hiroki was her brother, that was all he had been. He hadn’t been sad about anything. He hadn’t been in a bad mood. He had just been her brother.
    Just her brother. Nothing else.
    Yuriko said as much in as few words, and as quietly as possible. She thought she should talk a little louder, but she just couldn’t summon the strength.
    “I see,” said the sad clown, and