Blueberries.
They’re first on the list of foods that can help with depression. But they’re spendy. Ten dollars for a tiny container, imported because of O‘ahu’s birds.
I wish the best food was bananas or mango or papaya. Those are all over. But it’s blueberries, which aren’t, so I got a bag of frozen ones.
When Isabelle said hi to me today, I said hi back.
WINTER
Prompt: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” (Aesop)
TeenHelp said it was important to get up, get out, do stuff.
Yesterday I was in Abercrombie when someone asked if they could help me.
It was Stacy.
The last time we had seen each other was at Eli’s birthday at Duke’s in the fall.
Stacy was: big bobbly necklace under purple shirtdress with sleeves rolled up, two rings on one hand, dark nails.
“You work here now?” I asked, even though I saw her name tag.
She pulled a top off the rack, turned it around on the hanger, and put it back the other way. “Yeah, I kind of outgrew Claire’s.” Stacy looked at me. “You’re different now. Older.”
“I don’t really brush my hair now,” I said, sweeping it all over one shoulder.
“Can I ring those up for you?” Stacy asked.
“Okay,” I said about the white top that wouldn’t need bleaching for a while. And the pinwheel bobby pins that just seemed kind of like my old self.
“Have you heard anything from Eli?” Stacy asked.
At first, I was relieved. I was glad that someone asked me about Eli, even if it was Stacy. Someone had said his name out loud.
But then, I realized, Stacy had no idea that Eli had been home. Why hadn’t he seen her? Why hadn’t he told her he was back?
She took 30 percent off for the “family and friends” discount and handed me the bag. A customer came up to the counter with some high-waisted sailor shorts, asked Stacy to help her find them in size 8.
On my way out, I passed the map. Downstairs. Main entrance. I’d seen that map a billion times.
YOU ARE HERE, it says. It points to the X with a red arrow. I saw myself in the reflection—droopy eyelid, long hair, macadamia highlights.
Again, I read the words. YOU ARE HERE.
Here.
At Ala Moana, on O‘ahu, in Hawaii. Hawaii, which has quaked, erupted, been infected with rat lungworm and battered by wind. It’s been knocked down by hurricanes, invaded by mosquitofish and mongooses, washed away by monsoons, beat down upon by the sun.
I looked at myself in that reflection and felt a little like laughing. “You are here.” How was that even possible? Like O‘ahu, I was still standing. Surviving. Somehow alive.
And I didn’t want macadamia hair anymore.
When I got home, I took the scissors into the bathroom and watched days and weeks and months and years fall onto the counter and into the sink.
WINTER
Prompt: Look back at the entry from November 6.
Is this still true today, or has it changed?
Blueberries: Check
Get up and out: Check
Vitamin B: Check
Omega-3: Check
Folic acid: Check
Saint-John’s-wort: Check
Try something new:
When I was done snipping, it came out really short.
I swept back the last of my bangs with a pinwheel pin.
After writing the five lines in his notebook, Henley whispered, “You seem different.”
“Yeah,” I covered my naked neck with my hand, “It’s definitely shorter than I meant to go.”
But he said he liked it. And I knew he meant it. He opened his copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which had huge crayon scribbles all in it—big pink flowers and crooked rainbows.
Before I started writing, I looked around the room at everyone else writing. And I wondered how one question could be answered by all of us, me and Henley, Tae-sung, Isabelle, Fetua, Elau, Brielle, even? And I wondered what they’re all writing about, right now, today. And what they wrote on November 6, what got them through a tough time.
Our answers must be so different, everyone’s. Each of our thoughts, our words, our tears comes out on the paper, and they don’t say the same thing at all. Even our letters are different—Henley’s bursts of broken lead, Isabelle’s swirls, and Tae-sung’s taps. Brielle’s billions of lonely, slanty Is, Fetua’s blocky alphabet, my big, round jumble that’s all smashed together.
On November 6, what saved them? What saved Isabelle?
For me, it was my closet. My closet was there when no one else was.
Is it here for me now?
Or does my notebook save me? Has that changed?
FALL
Prompt: What has helped you through a tough time?
I have a seventh sense for fashion, I told Mom.
And she told me that was really something, to have a seventh sense. Because she said most folks don’t even have a SIXTH sense.
“Oh yeah,” I said, “I mean that fashion is my sixth sense.” I can put things together that wouldn’t normally go—just like Tavi Gevinson does. “For example,” I told Mom, “I’ll pair a coral scarf with a navy-and-white skirt, and it looks amazing. It’s called color blocking.”
“That’s great,” Mom said again. She was reading her hospice newsletter.
“I mean,” I went on, “can you even imagine if there weren’t people like me and Tavi and Rachel to mix colors and textures and prints in the world? It would be so boring.”
“You do have an eye for that stuff,” Mom said.
For the billionth time, I wished she would let me give her a makeover, even just a teeny one. I could make her major.
Brielle’s mom has great looks. At the fall festival, Mrs. Branson was: low-cut, short black dress, cowboy hat and open toed half-boots, and all different really long chain necklaces. That’s what pineapple money can buy you. Mrs. Branson’s family goes all the way back to the missionaries. They came and planted pineapple plants, and now Brielle can have anything she could ever want.
Our whole group tells Brielle how amazing her mom dresses, but Brielle says, “Oh my god, it’s so embarrassing. She wears the tightest pants in the world. She takes stuff out of my room without even asking.”
Our whole group tells Brielle her mom could be her sister. But Brielle says she already has a sister.
Brielle should give Mrs. Branson a break. Maybe her closet is saving her from something.
When I found out about my group going on the helicopter ride without me, I stayed in my room and put together looks—maxis with belts and big ’60s earrings, a tank with a long scarf and a bobbly bracelet and flats, my long navy-and-white shirt I refashioned as a dress with an orange necklace I hadn’t worn yet.
I had purpose, a future—white T-shirt, gray jeggings, aviators, jade flats.
WINTER
Prompt: Is honesty always the best policy?
Mom’s back!
When I came home after school yesterday, her Adele CD was on! She was in her bed, on top of the green-and-white banana-leaf quilt—not under it, which was something. I plopped right down next to her, and her eyes watered up, and she tucked my short hair behind my ear with her thin, slow hand.
“I’m sorry,” she told me. “I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be gone that long.”
There were five or six pill bottles on her nightstand. Triple what there was before.
“Are you better?” I asked her.
“I’m getting there,” she said.
There was no talking for a little while. We just waited for the trade winds. Then Mom said, “We should have gone to San Francisco. For winter break. It was me, I was the one who didn’t want to go, and then Eli…”
“Mom, it’s not your fault,” I told her.
It was Eli’s fault. That’s whose fault this is.
I asked her, “What was it like in there?”
&nbs
p; “There was a fishpond,” she said quietly. “In the courtyard, with koi.”
“That sounds nice,” I said.
“Not as nice as this.” She smiled a tired smile. “Not as nice as being home.” She propped herself up. It took a lot out of her. “How’s that eye?” she asked.
It would never be the same. The cut had healed up, but the lid would droop forever. “Oh, it’s good,” I told her, instead of saying I stopped wearing mascara because I cried it all off every day and who cared how I looked anyway.
“Short hair now,” she said.
I didn’t want her to worry about my hair, my eye, or me. I didn’t want her to think I was making random, impulsive decisions. I didn’t want her to worry about anything. I didn’t want her to go away again. She had come back this time. But next time, maybe she wouldn’t.
Sometimes the truth can hurt more than a lie.
“It’s the new thing.” I sat up and gave my bangs a little push to the side. “Everybody’s doing it, all the celebs.” I told her about this year’s Oscars looks: Michelle Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow …
“Did you watch with Li Lu?”
I told her no.
“How is she?”
There was no way I could tell her I had no idea how Li Lu was. That I had lost my best friend. I thought about how Li Lu probably tossed her “Friends” locket into the waves at Sandys or something when she went with Brielle. I wanted to tell Mom. I wanted to cry. But the hard thing was the right thing. And the right thing was saying, “She’s good.”
“Whose dress this year?” Mom asked. “The Oscars, whose was your favorite?”
“Viola Davis, definitely.” I was suddenly getting a second wind. “Silhouette cut, so long it swirled around her feet.”
Mom lay back down. “It sounds lovely. How’s school?”
“It’s good,” I went on. “I’m joining the writing club. It’s called Ticket to Write.”
“I love your writing.” Mom closed her eyes. “They will, too.”
I asked Mom if I could make her some toast, but she said no thank you.
“Lilliko’i tea?”
“We’re out.”
“Green, then?”
Mom shook her head.
“Blueberries!”
They weren’t doing much for me yet. Maybe because they’re the frozen kind.
Mom closed her eyes and said, “I’m okay.”
We were both lying. We were doing it to save each other.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I whispered, closing the door behind me.
That was the whole entire truth.
WINTER
Prompt: Keeping up.
Blueberries: Check
Get up and out: Check
Vitamin B: Check
Omega-3: Check
Folic acid: Check
Saint-John’s-wort: Check
Try something new:
The lying is hard. It’s wearing us out.
When Mom got up and went out to water her lettuce yesterday, Dad called up the lawyer. He talked about “vehicular manslaughter,” which made me think of butchered cows and chickens and pigs. The “slaughter” part definitely didn’t fit with Eli. Eli loved animals.
While Mom watered her lettuce, her ginger, her pink hibiscus, Dad said things like, “Do you think we can get those twelve years down to eight or ten? The kid will be thirty when he gets out.” And “Can’t we try for some kind of community service?”
He asked, “How much will that end up costing us?” And “How about the jury trial?”
Then the hose turned off. And Dad told the lawyer he had to go.
That whole time, I was making myself a snack. Someone had gone shopping. It wasn’t Mom. Mom never bought the strawberries and cream kind of oatmeal that had the sugary white powder and came in individual packets. There was orange juice in actual cartons, too, not in the frozen cans, and there were prepackaged southwest chicken strips, and cinnamon rolls in tubes.
I was mixing up the sugary white powder with the flat oats and the bits of strawberry, and Dad had just put his phone back in his jacket pocket when Mom came back in.
“How’s everybody?” she asked.
“Great!” Dad and I said together.
TICKET TO WRITE
DAY 1
Prompt: Describe a place.
Kokua Market
Tomatoes. Potatoes. Peppers. Papaya.
At Kokua Market, where Mom and I go, there are $10 baskets of blueberries.
Bunches of bananas and bunches of kale lay side by side in greens, purples, and reds.
Boxes of lemons and limes, and bins of blue taro to be boiled, peeled, and pounded into poi. We don’t make it—it’s bitter and bland—but we’ve had ourselves plenty.
Thin skins of mango—bumps and dots sprinkled over the bleeding oranges and golds. The stems, where the sweetness seeps.
Hanging scale.
Star fruit. $.99 a pound.
Lots of plants, but they aren’t for sale.
Bulk takes up one whole aisle—jasmine rice and Bhutanese. Long grain, medium, and short. White and brown, basmati, black. And just as many beans—adzuki, lima, black-eyed, kidney. Chickpeas that look like funny little heads. Northern. Navy. Pinto.
Lentils, too—in shades of soot. Seeds, nuts, grains, dried pineapple.
Pasta. Pretzels.
Coffee. Tea.
Deli—masala, teriyaki.
Meat gets its own room. Chicken, plucked and rinsed and wrapped in plastic: NO ANTIBIOTICS.
Beef—LOCAL!
Snapper. Cod.
Cheese, eggs, milk—almond, soy, coconut, goat.
Rows and rows and rows of yogurt.
Bread so fresh it molds in two days.
Shelves of shampoo, coconut lotion, vitamins—A, B, C, D, E.
Burt’s Bees, Rescue Remedy, lavender soap.
Floor—white, scuffed from carts and slippers and skateboards and longboards (when the guy with the glasses isn’t looking).
Counter, register, flyers all posted up—UKULELE FESTIVAL, KAPI’OLANI FARMER’S MARKET, COMMUNITY GMO MEETING. SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER.
“Are you members?”
We are, Mom and me.
Maui onions—by the door. “Special: $.79.”
WINTER
Prompt: On my mind is …
Blueberries: Check
Get up and out: Check
Vitamin B: Check
Omega-3: Check
Folic acid: Check
Saint-John’s-wort: Check
Try something new: Ticket to Write!
At Ticket to Write, Miss Wilson told us to describe a setting.
I was definitely not expecting to see Henley there. I mean, here in language arts, it takes him all fifteen minutes to get five lines down. Or maybe he writes haiku?
I’m pretty sure he won’t be back, though. Because of how the bus doors shut right in his face.
That’s not what I told Sister Anne when she called me in to see how it all went.
“It was great,” I told Sister. “Miss Wilson put the desks in a circle, and Fetua Tanielu read about giant spiders taking over a human colony on Planet Zithra. The spiders lured humans into their webs with giant TV screens, cell phones, diamond necklaces, and SUVs, and when the humans went to go get those things, the spiders grabbed them and poisoned them and spun them in silk and drained out their blood.”
Sister Anne looked terrified, told me I could go back to class.
“Are there any comments?” Miss Wilson had asked after Fetua had read about the spiders.
We were all sitting there in the circle, speechless over Fetua’s story.
Fetua wrapped her arms around herself.
Her story was going to make her a billionaire. I could see it as a movie, even. Then I started thinking that maybe joining Ticket to Write wasn’t a great idea. I was never going to come up with anything as good as giant spiders trapping greedy people.
Still, no one was
saying anything. Fetua wriggled around in her desk. She bit her bottom lip. I could tell she was wishing she could go back and not read that chapter out loud. I could tell she was thinking maybe she wouldn’t write any more of it.
“It’s really good.” I broke our silence. “The symbolism and everything. It’s really clever.”
“Thanks!” Fetua looked relieved. She wrote some notes on her story.
After that, a few other people read some of their stuff, too. But nothing was as good as Fetua’s. Then writing club was over, and Henley walked with me to the bus stop, and he did the thing where he leaned in and his mouth fell open a little, like he was going to say something.
“On some level—” his lips opened, then closed, then opened again, “all of us are completely mortified by our families.”
Henley wore really nice shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and had good hair and style, and Brielle Branson was totally in love with him. How could he be mortified by anything? How could anything in his life possibly be wrong?
“Even mine,” Henley went on. “Even my family. Completely, unbelievably mortifying.”
“Your mom?” I asked him.
“A little,” he said. “But mostly my dad.”
“Like how?” I had to know. The most perfect boy in the world was telling me his life wasn’t so perfect after all. Did he smell like salami? Have a ton of chest hair or something? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be as bad as my situation. As bad as what Eli did. As bad as Mom being sent away. As Dad working all the time, not wanting to be home with us. As Grandpa Olie just giving up.
“Come see,” Henley said. “You can come see right now. Come have dinner with us.”
Henley Hollingsworth was inviting me to his house. For dinner.
Down Dole Street, the #5 rattled and rumbled, would be here any second.
“You got over me so fast,” I said, without thinking. “For the longest time, you didn’t text me, you didn’t talk to me, I thought you hated me like everyone else…”
Taylor Before and After Page 14
