Part One

The light comes on and I hear someone behind me chambering a round. I don’t need to be told to freeze.

“Turn around slowly,” she says.

When I do, I’m staring down the barrel of a shotgun. She has it tucked under her arm with the stock braced against the back of her wheel chair. If the gun goes off, the recoil will send the chair flying backwards to slam against the wall, a comic effect I won’t be able to appreciate.

She’s holding a twelve gauge. The barrel looks about as short as the law allows. From the set of her jaw, I’m guessing that she is spiteful enough to have it loaded with double naught. She isn’t aiming it. She doesn’t need to. If she decides to touch the trigger, I won’t just die. I will come apart.

“Who are you?” she demands.

I’m Hung Low—that’s the handle the Sisters of Satan gave me. My real name is Miko Macarthy. My dad is Scottish-­Italian. My mom is Filipino-Japanese. They met while he was on R&R from ‘Nam. I speak English with a Castilian singsong and Japanese with a brogue. I gesture a lot while I speak. I guess you could say I’m a typical American kid.

Mom gave me almond eyes and lustrous black hair that grows long and thick down my back. I could sell off my braid for a battleship hawser. If you’re starting to imagine some frail Japanese flower—erase that. I have Daddy’s bones. I teach aerobics. Nobody fucks with me.

At least—it’s been that way up till now.

I’ve been riding with the Sisters ever since I decided to drop out of college and come out of the closet. It was no big change, really, just a decision to stop trying to be something I couldn’t. Maybe it was when my boyfriend Jack proposed, and I realized that saying yes would mean spending the rest of my nights staring at the ceiling and pretending that Sharon Stone was between my legs instead of some smelly guy.

Maybe it was when I realized that a degree in comparative linguistics was worth zip out there in the real world.

Maybe I just got tired of being called a “cunning linguist”.

Maybe it was when Mom and Dad told me that they had decided they didn’t have to stay together for the sake of the children anymore. I couldn’t honestly say that it was any surprise to me. The angry whispers that had drifted through their bedroom door when my sister was still home had grown in volume af