Taylor Before and After

by Jennie Englund

  Why, why, why, why

  Why was Eli driving Koa’s Jeep?

  If

  If he hadn’t, would our lives have stayed normal?

  WINTER

  Prompt: Compare/contrast.

  Tate’s memorial was different.

  There were more pictures. People throwing loose shakas, peace signs, arms around each other’s backs.

  This was Tate’s mom’s group: black vests, black tanks, black tees (“No man is an island”).

  Tate’s mom was: green sundress that tied on the side, her hair in strings, like Mom’s is now. On each side of her were older versions of Tate—his real brothers—holding her up near a vase of handpicked hibiscus.

  The memorial was at his mom’s apartment in Wahiawa, where all the pawn shops and check-cashing places are.

  Stacks and stacks of Costco muffins piled up high in the kitchen—boxes wrapped in plastic that Costco had probably donated. There were all kinds of different dishes on the tables, stuff people had brought. And there were beer bottles everywhere.

  This time Macario, the Wolf Pack, Da Hui even, the guys from Ke Nui Road all huddled together on the little porch. They had red cups, cans of Pabst and Red Bull, smokes. Gabe had a plate of barbecued chicken.

  They seemed happy. Like Tate would have wanted them to be.

  Me, maybe I could have gone to that. They might not have judged me. I could have said goodbye for Eli and for me.

  “Goodbye, Tate,” I whispered to the last picture: shirt off, hat backward, golden retriever smiling beside him.

  FALL

  Prompt: “When you get caught in the impact zone, you need to get right back up, because you never know what’s over the next wave … Anything is possible.”

  (Bethany Hamilton, Soul Surfer)

  The next wave.

  That’s what Eli lives for.

  He balances on his Anderson, dragging his fingers in the water behind him. He gets in the lineup, slices through channels, weaves in and out of the guys from Ke Nui Road.

  “Come on, Grom!” he yells to me when he washes up on shore again. “Next wave has your name on it!” He says I could be the next Carissa Moore.

  “Not my thing!” I yell back.

  Surfing seems cold. Hard. Dangerous. There are currents and riptides. You can get locked in. Or if you get pulled into a closeout, it’s all over, forever. And there are creatures out there. EELS. Sea turtles, jellyfish, tiger sharks, even. In the beginning, Sunset was called Paumalu, which means “taken by surprise,” because forever ago a hunter stole too many octopuses, even though an old chief told her not to, so a shark bit off her legs.

  Sunset’s still a surprise. Each swell changes the whole lineup, Eli says. One day he goes left then right then left, and the next time, he goes right then left then right. You just never know.

  That’s what Eli loves about Sunset.

  Some people say it’s an old man’s wave. That you have to really know it to ride it. And even though Eli’s had some wicked wipeouts from there—stitches, staph, scrapes, stings, and the shoulder I’m not even going to write about—he has Sunset as wired as anyone possibly could. Eli leaves Pipeline to the guys who don’t mind waiting and waiting and waiting for a wave. He doesn’t want to wait. He wants to surf. So he carves out of Sunset’s barrels.

  “What do you even like about surfing so much?” I always ask him.

  And he tells me that out there, it’s only about the water. The moment. About not thinking anything. About “being with the wave.”

  Which to me seems completely boring. Not to mention hard. And dangerous.

  If Eli wants to split open his forehead, get reef rash all down his side, stub the crap out of his toes, rip his arm out of its socket while he’s trying to catch the Big One, that’s on him.

  WINTER

  Prompt: “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

  This is all he is now, I told myself about that picture of Tate—hat backward, golden retriever—This is all he’ll ever be.

  The picture may stay in my mind forever. It’s the saddest, saddest picture in the world.

  Keep moving.

  Keep moving forward.

  “Hey, John,” I can almost hear Tate saying. He was always nice to Dad.

  “How are you doing today, Julia?” he’d ask Mom when he boxed her up at Costco.

  Move forward.

  If I can remember Tate living, I tell myself, maybe I won’t think about him being gone.

  WINTER

  Prompt: How did you meet your first friend?

  Keep writing!

  That’s the note Miss Wilson wrote to me. It’s on a Post-it, has a star at the bottom. I put it right inside the back cover of this notebook. When I get to the end of all these pages, the note with the star will be there. I’ll know I made it.

  Keep writing.

  Move forward.

  After all this time, I can’t believe Miss Wilson isn’t dying to know what Brielle and Isabelle, Henley, Elau, Tae-sung, and me are all writing about our lives. I can’t believe she doesn’t read these.

  Isabelle’s writing and writing and writing. Maybe she’s writing about Hailey. Maybe she hasn’t forgotten her. Maybe she misses her. Maybe she’s sad.

  Words are tears.

  “Forever.” That was my half of the lockets Li Lu and I bought after we made all those fabric flowers. But I’ll bet anything Li Lu doesn’t have the “Friends” part anymore. That pretty much sums things up now.

  But before that, Dad got the job at the college, so we moved. “You can make new friends on O‘ahu.” That’s what Dad had told me.

  All I ever wanted was one friend, one good friend who knew everything about me, who I knew everything about, who I could tell anything, and she could tell me, too.

  I met Li Lu that first day when Mr. Hayes picked her to give me a tour of the school.

  “Just make sure you watch out for the Detention Convention,” she said right away.

  It was the second time I’d heard that, after Koa had told me, too, and I was completely and immediately struck with fear.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “It’s detention,” she said. “The Detention Convention, the teacher, he’s worse than all the people in there, all the ice heads combined. If you say one word or get there one minute late or even move, you get another detention. They say the pink pad is permanently attached to his hand.”

  “What do they do in there?”

  “Nothing.” Li Lu’s tongue pushed against her crooked teeth. “You literally do nothing. For a whole hour, you sit in total, complete silence. With all the ice heads staring at you.”

  It sounded horrible—like it would completely scar you for the rest of your life—and I told myself I was never, ever getting sent there.

  Inside the church, Li Lu pointed out the carving of the Sixth Station of the Cross, “Veronica wipes the face of Jesus,” and showed me that the face on the cloth didn’t look like Jesus at all. It was a baby with a mullet—long hair in back, super short bangs—and Li Lu and I covered our giggles with our hands as we stood before the carving.

  Back then, before her contacts and braces, Li Lu was: glasses, front teeth all crooked, hummingbird hands.

  After that tour, we had lunch together. And again every day after, and all of the next year, too, except the time she blew up at me for “ignoring” her, for being better friends with Jasmine Fukasawa than with her.

  But we got over that pretty quick. After a week, Li Lu just said, “Seriously, this is pointless.” She invited me to Leonard’s Bakery after school, and we stuffed ourselves with malasadas, the cinnamon-sugar snowing down on our white blouses, between the pleats of our skirts.

  Li Lu Wen was the best friend I ever had.

  I totally and completely miss her.

  FALL

  Prompt: Sabotage.
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  Brielle didn’t make it over to my house. She forgot she had “a ton of stuff to do.”

  But then, later that night, Eli said he saw my “rich friend, What’s-Her-Nuts,” at his shop. “Just hanging out,” she’d told him.

  What would Brielle be doing on Kūhiō, down by all the hotels? That doesn’t seem like her thing.

  I asked Eli who she was hanging out with.

  “No one,” he said. Apparently, Brielle was all by herself.

  I wish I had parents like that, who would let me hang out on Kūhiō instead of Dad constantly panicking I’m going to get robbed or kidnapped by ice heads.

  Brielle’s lucky. Does she know? She goes anywhere she wants, and no one tells her she’s going to get robbed or kidnapped, or that she already went out that week, or to be home by dinnertime, or that that road is bad, or doesn’t she have homework.

  She has total and complete freedom.

  We’re planning on doing something again, soon, Brielle and me. Even though Li Lu is trying to thwart our whole lives. She just can’t cope when I’m friends with someone else. It happened in sixth grade with Jasmine Fukasawa. Li Lu thinks I can’t be friends with two people at once. That I’m better friends with the other friend. That I “ignore” her.

  At lunch, when Brielle asked if I wanted to hang out at the mall or something, Li Lu started right in on me: “This happened LAST TIME. I thought we were going to…”

  And Brielle just got up and left.

  Seriously. Li Lu’s drama is getting so annoying.

  WINTER

  Prompt: Write about a pet you’ve had or wanted to have.

  Before we moved here to O‘ahu, Eli kept saying he wanted a cat.

  Every day, all day long, he asked Mom and Dad if he could get one. He would pay for its food, he promised. He would take care of it, too.

  “There are wild cats all over the island,” Dad kept telling him. “When we get there, just put out some food and they’ll come.”

  But Eli wanted his own.

  Dad told him maybe when we got to O‘ahu. But then, “A cat is a big responsibility,” he said when the plane landed, when Eli asked again.

  Dad didn’t think Eli was ready. Even though he was going to start high school.

  Eventually, I started begging, too. I don’t know if it’s because I actually wanted a cat, or because I just wanted Eli to have it. But I started in on Dad and Mom, too. And after our begging for a cat wasn’t working, we started in on getting a bunny. We could name him Hopper and hold him in our laps.

  One super humid afternoon, Mom gave in and took Eli and me—“Just to LOOK”—to Petco in Pearl City. And there were all kinds of bunnies—white, brown, big, small … Eli wanted to buy one right then. He had his own money, and he kept asking, and Mom always had a hard time not giving in to him. Finally, she said that if he showed he could be responsible by unloading the dishwasher every day and putting away his laundry and making his bed without being asked until the day before school started, he could get one.

  I never thought it would happen. Usually, Mom asked Eli twenty-five times to unload the dishwasher and put away his laundry and make his bed, and he still never did it.

  But Eli ended up unloading the dishwasher and putting away his laundry and making his bed. Every day. He even mowed the lawn. Dad told Mom he’d never seen Eli work so hard for anything in his life. (He said that again when Eli saved up the half Dad matched to buy his truck, the only two times Dad said Eli ever worked hard.)

  And, the day before school started, Mom and Eli and I went back to Petco, and Eli picked out his bunny—brown and white, medium-sized, with round, black eyes and long, floppy ears. I wanted my own bunny, too, but Mom said one was enough to start with. Eli named that bunny Hopper.

  Dad warned him: “Don’t forget to check the latch on his cage. If that rabbit gets out, he’ll be lost in the Mānoa mountains in no time.” The wild pigs would find him and eat him in five seconds flat.

  School had started, and every day Eli got up early and fed Hopper and changed his water and slipped a little of Mom’s Mānoa lettuce into his cage. And after school or after surfing, Eli came right home and got Hopper out and held him on the grass there for hours. He never let me hold that bunny, though.

  “Not yet,” he kept saying. He didn’t think I was ready.

  “Did you check the latch?” Dad asked every night at dinner.

  And every time, Eli said he had. Sometimes he even snuck out of bed so he could triple-check.

  Me, I wanted to hold Hopper so bad, but Eli wouldn’t let me, not even for a minute. He kept saying Hopper was skittish. Hopper didn’t look skittish, though. He lay right in Eli’s lap, and let Eli pet him between his long, floppy ears. When I told on Eli, Mom said that was probably true about Hopper’s being skittish. No one was on my side.

  One day, when Eli had to stay after school to finish the book report he didn’t turn in, I wrestled Hopper out of his cage and held him in my lap with my legs crossed, exactly like Eli always did, but Hopper wriggled around wildly and I had to sort of pin him down. He didn’t like that. He twisted and kicked and clawed at me, and I was so surprised I let go.

  That’s when Hopper ran across the whole backyard, straight into the Mānoa mountains. I chased him as fast as I could, but that bunny was faster.

  I cried when I told Eli, but Eli cried more. His cry was different. Like, out of pain. I’ve only heard Eli cry like that one other time. “The pigs got him!” he sobbed.

  That night at dinner, Dad asked Eli if he checked Hopper’s latch.

  I froze in my chair. I knew I should say I let Hopper get away. But I didn’t.

  Eli’s chin dropped down to his chest. Mom asked, “Did something happen?” And Eli said Hopper got out.

  Dad had both hands on the table. Part of me hoped he wouldn’t find out it was my fault. And another part hoped he would. I felt awful. I could have said it was me who lost Hopper, but I didn’t. The longer I sat there not saying anything, the worse I felt, and the less chance I had of getting any words out.

  Dad said to Eli: “He’s gone? After only three weeks? Like I told you, pets are a big responsibility.” Dad said there were two kinds of people in the world—those who are ready for responsibility, kuleana, and those who aren’t.

  Eli was ready. He loved that bunny. I saw it when he held him, when he fed him, when he found out Hopper was gone forever. But he covered for me. He covers for people. It’s who he is.

  FALL

  Prompt: Don’t write anything yet.

  Close your eyes until the teacher says “Begin writing.”

  Then write. What did you notice?

  I LOVE writing.

  That’s what I noticed.

  And another thing. Miss Wilson made us sit waaaayyyyyy too long. It was awful, having to sit and do nothing. I’d rather do anything than nothing.

  I can say for sure that it killed Brielle, too. She was sighing, looking all around. I could almost hear her: This is SO boring.

  Brielle’s always doing fifty things at once. Almost every day, Miss Wilson says if she sees her texting in class, she’s going to have to leave her phone in language arts till after school. Brielle always says she isn’t texting, which is kind of true. She’s actually scrolling through topshop.com or Instagram, and once, over her shoulder, I saw her swiping and swiping through pictures of super-skinny girls.

  Sometimes Brielle is sneaky enough to keep her phone. But sometimes she’s not, and today is one of those days. Lucky for her, she has a backup in her locker.

  Some people probably liked it, sitting and not writing. Someone like Tae-sung, who can’t focus on anything and hates writing, and gets Ds on all his essays, and sometimes even Fs. Miss Wilson always tells him to put away the paper clip, to use class time wisely.

  Henley doesn’t write much, either. After the whole fifteen minutes, there’s only about five lines. He writes, then stops, then writes again. He writes in mechanical pencil, and when he pushes
it too hard on his notebook, the lead breaks off, and he tries to put it back in till Miss Wilson tells him to keep writing.

  Our notebooks were right there. Our pens, too.

  I wanted to write. I was DYING to write. I had something to write about.

  She told me, Brielle did. She said she’d never told anyone.

  Last year, she dressed up in green corduroy overalls and a hipster beanie and posted a video of herself crushing on Chance Cameron. Chance was a sophomore. He wasn’t popular or anything. He was on the swim team and worked at Hula Dog. Apparently, Chance found out about the video. He took Brielle to Sandys and kissed her on the lifeguard stand under the stars—

  which would’ve been dreamy if his lips weren’t bleeding from being so chapped.

  “Did you go out again?” I asked. “You and Chance?” I wanted to know everything. I was already in on something so big.

  Brielle said it was just the one time.

  “Did you talk?” I asked. “After? Were you … together?”

  “He’s boring,” Brielle said, then, “Have you kissed anyone?”

  I thought about telling her how I liked Kevin Loo in sixth grade, my first year here. But his tight polo shirts seemed so insignificant to the big thing she had done. So I just said not yet.

  We made smoothies, and hung out in my room, and put together looks, and talked about how hot Henley Hollingsworth is, and how Brielle heard that Koa has one last chance. She heard Sophia saying if he “crosses the line again,” his parents are sending him to military school in Virginia.

  Me, I thought Koa had everything all worked out. He’s trying to make it to the WSL Tour. He’s already a junior pro. Eli says Koa is up riding Pipeline before anyone else’s footprints are in the sand.

  I thought Koa was making his life happen.

  “Really?” I said. “Koa doesn’t seem messed up. He seems like he has it all together.”