Victor: Her Ruthless Crush by Theodora Taylor (beach read book TXT) 📕

had convinced my mother to let me rejoin art club, which met on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Luckily, I had never got around to officially signing back up for that extracurricular activity. And Victor and Byron only had basketball practice on Mondays and Thursdays. That meant on the Tuesdays when there weren’t any games, we could go back to Victor's place in Roppongi and spend time together outside of school without Byron.

Victor hesitated after I asked my question. Then he raised his hands over the table to give me a quick answer in ASL.

“Excuse me?” I signed in response. I was pretty sure I had misunderstood.

But he signed it again in his usual super precise ASL. “I don’t have a tongue.”

“You don’t have a tongue,” I repeated out loud, just to make sure I hadn’t botched up my signs.

“No, I don’t have a tongue.”

“You were born without a tongue? Like a birth defect?” I asked-signed, using the signs for BABY and BROKEN since I had no idea how to say birth defect—even in my native sign language.

“No. It was cut out when I was little.”

“Cancer?” I asked, my chest trembling with hope. I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone, especially a child. But the alternative was just too terrible to consider.

“No,” Victor answered, with a firm clap of his index and middle finger against his thumb. His face was completely neutral like he was providing an answer to a problem in math class as he told me, “It was removed by one of my father’s enemies and sent to him as part of a hostage negotiation…”

He must have misread the utter horror in my expression because he made the last few signs again. “This means prisoner return conversation. Do you understand?”

I did. Too well. My stomach convulsed at the thought of Victor undergoing such torture when he was only a little kid. But I signed back that I understood while trying to think of something…anything to say.

Unfortunately, all I could come up with was, “I guess that explains why you haven’t tried to shove your tongue down my throat like I heard most boys would. I thought you were just being polite.”

I immediately regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. Ugh, could I be more inappropriate?

But Victor regarded me with a sympathetic look. Like I was the one who had suffered a terrible life-altering butchering. Not him.

“No, I am not so polite. I would kiss you like the other boys if I could,” he answered with a slight smile.

But then, his smile faded. “Does this change things between us? Will you still kiss me?”

Would I still kiss him?

I didn’t let him wonder about that for one more second. Laughing, I threw myself across the table at him and pressed my mouth to his when he caught me.

“Tongue or no tongue, you’re still the best kisser on the planet,” I let him know a few minutes later when we finally came up for air.

Having taken a college statistics class since then, I’ll admit that the argument for my claim wasn’t exactly scientifically proven.

He was the only boy I’d ever kissed up to that point.

But even back then, I knew.

No one else would ever kiss me like he did. He was that Chaka Khan song, living and breathing. Nobody else would or could make me feel this way. Nobody but Victor.

I happily lied to my parents even more after that conversation, inventing hikes and outings with made-up girlfriends from school who suddenly wanted to hang with me on the weekends.

And miracle of all miracles, I actually got away with it.

After I sent off all my college applications, my mother didn’t care so much about me studying twenty-four seven. Plus, hiking was good exercise.

“Go have fun and lose some weight,” she encouraged me, her signs happy and light. “Then go to America and become a doctor.”

Byron helped out, too. He owed both of us. I had kept my mouth shut about Jake Nakamura—when it was good and when it turned bad. And Victor not only protected him from Jake, but he’d also given my brother someone cool to talk with at school. Byron was grateful and happy to assist us with any and all cover-up operations.

He often accompanied me to make my outings seem more legit. We went to festivals at Yoyogi Park, played a lot of glow-in-the-dark bowling, and hit up so many of Tokyo’s never-ending supply of arcades. For my birthday in early March, Victor even had Donny drive us down to Kamakura, a coastal town about an hour south of Tokyo, to actually take a hike.

It was a super nice time. I only felt like I would legit die once or twice while doing the trail hike between Kencho-ji Temple and Zuisen-ji Temple. And when we made it to our destination, Victor pulled me behind a tree to reward me for my endurance with many kisses.

It was the perfect day until Byron snapped a picture of us kissing behind the tree with his disposable camera.

“Byron!” I shouted, coming out the kiss to play the role of the annoyed older sister.

Victor simply signed to Byron, “May I see that camera?”

Byron handed it over with a laugh. “I was just joking around….”.

He trailed off when Victor dropped the camera to the ground and crushed it under his hiking boot.

And that kind of put a damper on the whole “let’s go on a fun birthday hike” mood.

“Are you embarrassed to be seen kissing me?” I asked Victor as we made our way back to Kencho-ji Temple.

“Not at all.” He smiled at me as if I was crazy to think that someone who came from a homogenous society where the beauty standard was firmly set on waif-thin would be embarrassed by his chubby half-black girlfriend.

“Pictures are not a good idea for me,” he explained.

I understood. But a dark shiver ran down my spine.

The danger that surrounded Victor had a way of creeping up like that. One moment I was a carefree