Before the Sunday get-together began, Uncle Xu brought me next door to Little Horse’s room to talk. At first it was as if he didn’t know quite what to say.
“Right now we’re drifting, you know?”
I nodded.
“Drifting is like, it’s like…” Uncle Xu thought for a second, reached his hands into his pockets, and fished around for something. Finally, when he fished out a thin, long skeleton key, it appeared that he himself didn’t even know why he had taken it out. He quickly shoved it back into his pocket and said, “It’s like this. Uh, there are a lot of things that we can’t let other people find out about.”
“Like secrets.”
“Right—secrets,” said Uncle Xu. “So you should know that once we are settled with Horsefly, things on the outside shouldn’t be as tense, and then you can return home. What I’m saying is that you don’t have to keep drifting with us…”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the longer you drift the more you will learn. What you learn affects the kind of person you end up turning into. And then after a while it gets to the point where you can never turn back. That’s because you already know too many things that we can’t let others find out…”
“Secrets, that’s what you were just talking about.”
“Right.”
“So the reason I can’t go home is because I know some secrets.”
“Right.”
“But if I keep drifting then I’ll end up learning too many secrets and I’ll never be able to go home.”
“You got it.” Uncle Xu snickered for a moment and then he suddenly took his smile back, saying, “Like what you saw that day, when Horsefly and the rest of them iced that guy…”
“I didn’t see anything, I only heard them.”
“Okay, so you heard them…” Uncle Xu forced himself to show me his teeth. “For the last couple of days Little Horse and the others have been doing a little homework; it turns out that that fellow was iced because he knew too much about something he shouldn’t.”
I nodded, but deep down I started to get antsy. I couldn’t tell if it was on my back or my arms, but I started to get goosebumps.
“Let me give you another example: what happened with Hoop…” Uncle Xu thought for a long time, so long that I finally couldn’t help but yawn before he continued, “Hoop’s case is another headache. Little Horse did some digging around and found out that Hoop has been on Horsefly’s side since day one…”
“So Hoop betrayed you guys?”
“You can’t really say that. Horsefly owns Hoop; if she doesn’t help him, Horsefly could take it out on Hoop’s family. However, as far as we are concerned, Hoop knows way too much, and that’s dangerous. For instance, she’s seen you and she knows that you were in the van that day. Now that you and your family are all over the papers, who knows if she’ll tell Horsefly, and who knows what Horsefly will do?”
“So are you guys going to ice Hoop?” I asked. I figured that Uncle Xu knew that at least part of what I meant was: “So are you guys going to ice me?”
Uncle Xu said there was no way they would get rid of Hoop. He thought for a long time before he said, “You see—now you know another secret.”
