Taylor Before and After

by Jennie Englund

  I was up for it for sure—sundresses in December, sandals in January, the beach! It wasn’t like I was leaving a whole group behind. In Oregon, I always just had one friend who had to move after a year or two. First it was Dakota, then Aliyah, then Jade. Maybe in Hawaii, I’d find the group I always dreamed of having.

  Eli wasn’t the same as me though. He’d had his same one group the whole time. To Eli, “home” means friends. They were going into high school. He was worried about making new friends in a place he didn’t know.

  I could tell Mom didn’t want to move, either. The peonies finally had their first buds in our Oregon yard.

  * * *

  “Come see.” Mom patted the ground beside her. Her glove was muddy. Her knees were muddy. Her hair was damp. Torn seed packets lined the row of unturned earth between the yellow house and the soggy lawn.

  “It’s muddy,” I told her.

  Mom took off her glove, ran her bare hand through the wet dirt. “It will take them three years to bloom.” She closed her eyes. “It’s alive.” She looked at me. “My second favorite smell in the world. Right after the smell of my kids.”

  “We should go inside,” I told her. “It’s too rainy.”

  “In a minute,” Mom said. She touched a muddy finger to her tongue.

  “Mom! Gross!” I screeched. Seriously, sometimes she does really weird stuff.

  “This is what we are, Taylor,” she told me.

  The peonies had made it through three winters. The last one was the worst—months and months and months of rain—and Mom had just moved the lavender along the side of the house, out of the shadows. Her friend Valerie from work came over sometimes for coffee, and she liked her day shifts in the recovery unit. If she moved, she told Dad, she’d have to start all over. With peonies. It had taken a long, long, long time to get them to bloom. She’d have to go back to working in the hospital. She’d have to take swing shifts, or maybe even nights, and she’d get stuck in the ER or ICU where all the gossip is.

  But Dad told Mom she could use some sun. He promised the O‘ahu dirt was rich with minerals from volcanic ash. He said she’d have plumeria! Banana trees! Hibiscus! That we’d hike to a new waterfall every weekend, starting with Mānoa Falls the day we got there. ‘Ohana! Dad told us—that’s the Hawaiian word for family. He put his arm around Mom, pulled her close.

  “The hard thing is the right thing,” she said, even though I saw her dirt-streaked cheek twitching. If it was a good move for the family, she would do it.

  Dad said he’d get on the fast track to tenure. To Dad, “home” means his work at the college. This would be just the wind he needed in his sails—the weather, the people, the fresh papaya … Paradise! We had a garage sale and moved to O‘ahu—“The Gathering Place.” We rented a house in Kaimuki.

  All on his own that very first day, Eli went out to try surfing. When he came back, I could tell he’d been crying. I could always tell when Eli had been crying. His eyes got red. Puffy. And his skin was all splotchy at the temples. But even after I asked him what happened a thousand times, he wouldn’t tell me a single thing.

  Finally, last year I found out from Koa what all had happened. Back on that day we first moved here, Eli showed up at Canoe’s, without a board, without any skills. Koa lent him his shortboard, and all the guys laughed so hard when Eli crouched waayyy down, his feet wide. They walked around like that, crouching, wide feet, laughing. “Shark bait,” they called him. And “beach leech” and “haole.”

  That first day Eli went to Canoe’s, he came back crying—I know he did. But he also came back hooked. The next day, he got his own board—a used Quintara for $125—and went back to Canoe’s. He went back again and again and again.

  We’ve lived a lot of places, Eli and me. To Eli, “home” is also ocean.

  * * *

  “You are SUCH a fast writer,” Brielle just turned around and told me. She looked at my notebook. “You write SO MUCH. What are you writing about? Are you writing about your brother?”

  “Yeah,” I told her, “I totally am.”

  She thinks I’m interesting, I can tell. Also, she followed me on Instagram last night!

  WINTER

  Prompt: Collections.

  What is he doing in there? All those hours inside his cell? Is someone in there with him? Does he ever go outside?

  It came yesterday, the thick envelope, blue. CONGRATULATIONS in yellow letters. He got in. How? His GPA was barely a 3.0. Wasn’t it? What happens now? Now that he’s—

  Collections.

  Conch. Sunrise. Moonrise. Triton.

  ‘Opihi. Puka. Harp.

  * * *

  “Are you doing homework?!” It was October. I set my Pumpkin Spice Latte on the kitchen table, where Eli was typing like his life depended on it. He’d always said, “Who gives a rat’s *** about homework?”

  The latte was still too hot. I had a cat’s tongue, Mrs. Tanaka had told me.

  “Nah,” Eli said, not looking up from the screen.

  I moved behind him so I could see. “What are you doing, then?”

  Eli snapped the computer closed. “Writing.”

  I was obsessed with why he wouldn’t let me see.

  * * *

  Thorny oyster. Cowrie. Cone.

  Ni‘ihau. Shiva. Drupe.

  Can he still go? To Santa Cruz? Will they let him, now, after … Will they know? Will he be out by then? How long will he be in there? Months? Years? The rest of his life?

  Collections.

  Eli and Mom have been collecting shells a long time. Mom used to get up early, and Eli could catch the best swells in the morning. They have found cowrie, conch, and even sunrise, which are going for $200 these days if they’re perfect and whole, and if the pickers don’t rake them up first and sell them off to Honolulu shops.

  If you want a good shell here, Eli says, you have to buy it or dive for it yourself. Or you have to get up before the pickers.

  My whole Hawaii life, I’d been trying to find a shell that fit in Mom’s and Eli’s collection. Mom was so happy when Eli came back with a cone, a bubble, a harp. She looked it all over, at every fleck and groove. She studied each suture, the lip. She’d tell Eli, “Good find,” and then she’d set it on the kitchen windowsill between urchin, drupe, and thorny oyster.

  * * *

  “Good find,” Eli told me.

  It was late September last year, at Sandys. He looked over my chipped harp like Mom always did, his long hair dripping ocean on it. “Come on, Grom!” He ran back toward the waves, board under his arm, leash whipping at his calves, leaving me on the shore with a worthless shell in my hand.

  FALL

  Prompt: Influence.

  Miss Wilson said she was in the Peace Corps! That makes sense because of her style. It’s definitely not my kind of style. But it’s a style, I guess.

  Today, she is: long lavender blouse, long orange skirt, and same sandals. MAKE IT MAJOR: Make it a maxi! Tuck in the shirt, pull up the skirt for a high-waisted look, belt with a dark bow.

  Miss Wilson taught English, she told us, in Lesotho, where the people wear grass hats and head scarves and blanket shawls in every color.

  Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps someday.

  Or I’ll start up my own charity. I’ll travel all over, to India, helping thousands and thousands of poor people, just like Angelina Jolie.

  Brielle asked me to sit with her at lunch today! First, we talked about how Kevin Loo called Jasmine Fukasawa “thirsty” on Instagram because she broke up with him and is into Elau Parks now, and then we talked about last night’s Project Runway episode. The contestants all had to go out in the street and sell stuff to buy their own fabric. And nobody wanted to work with Elena. Her shirts came out really bad. Plus, she had an awful sales pitch. She should have been eliminated. But in the end, Alicia was out.

  Honestly, sometimes elimination is just so random.

  I asked Brielle why she isn’t friends with Isabelle anymore. Brielle sh
rugged and said it turns out Isabelle isn’t as straight-up as she pretends to be.

  That was surprising. What I knew about Isabelle was that everyone liked her. She hung out with all kinds of people, not just her bestie, Hailey Iona, not just the volleyball team, either. You’d see her with the Hula Club, with GSA, Brain Bowlers, surfers, even.

  Isabelle was brave. She didn’t care what people thought. Sometimes she didn’t wear makeup to school. She posted more pictures of sunsets than selfies. When rumors went around, like how Hannah Maxwell was getting a nose job, Isabelle was definitely not the person you’d ever trace them back to. If there was one human at all of OLR—middle school and high schools combined—who had no reason to get on anyone’s bad side, it was literally Isabelle Winters.

  I definitely wanted to know more about it, like what happened, and who said/did what, and if Isabelle’s still invited to Carnivale. I couldn’t really ask Isabelle about it. Even though she sits by me in language arts, she gives off a vibe that she wants to be left alone. She pretty much shut herself off from everyone.

  Brielle asked, “Hey, does your brother still have that girlfriend?”

  My lunch was peanut butter and honey on wheat bread that Mom had made, and it was making me die of thirst on the hottest day on Planet Earth.

  Technically, Brielle had a green tea smoothie and a salmon roll. But really, she wasn’t eating any of it.

  “Stacy?” I asked, hiding my dry, sticky mouth with my hand.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s her,” Brielle said. “Are they still together?”

  “Yeah, they’re still together.”

  “So, what do you think of her?”

  “I think she’s paranoid,” I said, thinking about asking Brielle for a sip of her green tea smoothie. “She’s always thinking Eli’s going to have some winter fling with a big-time surfer girl. My dad isn’t a fan, either, but my mom likes her fine, I guess.”

  “Really?” Brielle bit at the straw in her smoothie. She was into it, hearing about my life. I had important stuff to say, stuff that mattered. I thought about telling her I found the perfect twist on my Carnivale outfit—while everyone would be wearing feathers on top, I was picturing a strapless mini with feathers on the bottom—but it seemed too early. I wasn’t invited yet, I reminded myself. But I could keep talking about the Stacy stuff.

  “Yeah,” I said. “My dad thinks she’s a ‘bad influence’ on him—on Eli, I mean—because she’s not going to school, and she’s older than him, and she’s kind of out of control.”

  “Really?” Brielle leaned forward. “Like, how?”

  “For one,” I said, “she’s always telling Eli how to live his life.”

  Brielle slid her green tea smoothie toward me and asked, “Like…?”

  “Like,” I said between amazing sips, “Eli asked Stacy if she wanted to go to Homecoming—I heard him telling Tate about that. But she has to work, and she doesn’t want Eli to go without her, so now he can’t go, either. So while Stacy works, he’s going surfing instead. When I asked if he was going, he said no, that he doesn’t have to stuff himself into a suit, that he can catch the last waves at Sandys instead.”

  “He told you that? Your brother, like, tells you things like that?”

  I told her Eli talks to me all the time. How he talks all about surfing. How he’d rather surf than go to Homecoming. How he’d rather surf than do anything.

  “What else?” Brielle asked. “About Stacy?”

  So, I can’t say I loved talking about Stacy. But Brielle was into it, so I told her Stacy’s a total partier. That’s what Dad thinks. He was losing it about that last night. But I didn’t tell Brielle that last part.

  * * *

  “Another C in English. Again.” Dad was standing in the kitchen with Eli’s progress report when Eli walked in, kicked off his flip-flops.

  Eli didn’t say anything. But I did hear him kind of snort.

  Dad went on. “How?! How is this happening again?”

  Eli shrugged.

  “You know how to write,” Dad said. He told Eli he writes better than half his students at the college. He said, “You could do something with that.”

  Eli dug through the freezer, took out a frozen pizza. He ripped open the box and stared right at Dad.

  “I’m not like you,” he said.

  FALL

  Prompt: Picture Day!

  “She’s pretty,” Brielle said about Stacy today at lunch. She said she stalked her on social media.

  “Yeah, kind of, I guess,” I said. “If you’re into neck tattoos and the whole ’40s pinup look.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Stacy. Again.

  I wanted to talk about Isabelle, and that whole thing. When was Brielle going to tell me about it? Why was it some random mystery?

  Yesterday in language arts, Isabelle turned and looked at me like she was going to say something. Her eyes were soft, and her mouth opened a little, but she bit her lip and turned back around.

  “She’s pretty,” Brielle said again about Stacy. “What is she, size zero?”

  I had no idea what size Stacy was. I’d never thought about it. But speaking of looks, it’s Free Dress! Picture Day!

  Brielle is: slate-gray dress with a black belt, a long silver key necklace, AND those strappy Stuart Weitzmans that JUST came out in Vogue. MAKE IT MAJOR: already perfect. Amazing.

  I told her I LOVE those Stuart Weitzmans, and she said I can borrow them!!!

  Me, I’m: striped maxi, black next-level wedges, and a double chain (the look Rachel Zoe just wore in St. Barth).

  “Oh. My. Gosh.” Li Lu completely interrupted our whole conversation when she sat herself down at our table. “Are you talking about STACY—Eli’s girlfriend? You think she’s KIND OF pretty? Um, she’s totally MODEL material!”

  How long had Li Lu been listening? I swear, she has bionic ears.

  Li Lu was: lacy white top with a pointy collar buttoned right up to her neck. She was always interrupting my life, being so dramatic about everything.

  Still, it was my job to protect her, right? What could I do? What could I say? She had put me in such an awkward position. Again. And I was trying to think of something—before Brielle did. I just had a feeling the whole thing could go south, and it would all be so unnecessary.

  Was it possible to be friends with both Li Lu and Brielle?

  Brielle was quicker than I was. She flicked her ponytail, and her drop-down diamonds shivered.

  She said to me, but loud enough for Li Lu to hear, “Who wears a white top on Picture Day when white tops are our regular uniform?”

  Li Lu pulled the collar from her neck. She looked at me, got up, and walked away.

  I couldn’t eat. But the whole thing didn’t faze Brielle. Her eyes popped out and she swirled her finger in the “crazy” sign, then whispered to me, “SHE is a wingnut.”

  WINGNUT! I had never heard that before. It was hilarious!

  Li Lu took everything so seriously. But also, she was tough. She’d get over the white top thing. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

  Brielle and me, we laughed. What everyone said about her wasn’t true. That she’s mean. That she uses people. Obviously, those people don’t know her.

  WINTER

  Prompt: If you were president, how would you reduce the national debt?

  I wish I’d never met her.

  Brielle Branson isn’t even human. She’s a monster. She doesn’t have any feelings inside.

  “So YOU’RE obviously dieting,” she said. She turned around and said that to me, today, right here in language arts.

  “No,” I spat back. What was she even talking about? It doesn’t make sense. Her life is all so perfect, so she obsesses over other people’s everything.

  Honestly, though, my shorts, they have been a little loose around the waist.

  “This is just water weight, that’s all.” Brielle pressed her hands into her cheekbones.

  I hadn’t noticed at all till she said that,
but I guess her face is a little fuller. She was still the most beautiful girl at school. But she had completely changed her look: long white shirt, loose over low-rise khakis. A blowout had replaced her ponytail. She had probably gotten bored with herself, like she did with everything else.

  “I’m just bloated,” she added, turning back around.

  We were friends. Once. Not so long ago. Brielle gave me the Lipglass and told me her secret and said I could borrow her Stuart Weitzmans. And now I would trade all that for math homework and pale pink nail polish and malasadas. But it’s too late.

  And Henley, I was friends with him, too. Maybe there wasn’t anyone better for him at the time, either. Sometimes he looks and I look, and when we see each other looking, we both turn away fast, too.

  Before winter break, I’d look up from these quick writes and see him resting his chin on his fist, looking at me like I was a crossword answer he couldn’t get. And when he caught me staring back, his eyebrows would shoot up, and he’d smile.

  Then we started talking. One day into winter break, he had gotten my number from Brielle. She texted me snarky stuff about it, like i hope u 2 R happy together, and backstabber, and whatever, until she finally texted she never really liked him anyway. But by then the game was over, and Brielle and I had already imploded.

  Write words.

  During break, Henley was in Italy with his family, and all they were doing was waiting in long lines to see naked statues at museums. But the white beans with sage in olive oil were amazing, he had texted. And on the flight over, he’d read The Art of Simple Food. It was old-school, he told me. And I remembered. Somehow I remembered that.