Taylor Before and After

by Jennie Englund

WINTER

  Prompt: There is order within chaos.

  (Scientific theory from Edward Lorenz, 1961)

  I can’t stop thinking about it, about how crafty it was, how clever, how precise. It was deliberate, strategic, smart, mean. How Isabelle was watching Noelani, then I was watching Noelani, and then Soo was watching me, which probably meant that at any second, Li Lu would be watching Soo.

  After what Isabelle told me, I put together the Next Cut, the system, how it worked, the long game.

  Brielle played people against each other.

  Li Lu knew it. She tried to tell me when we had that big text fight. Brielle had some kind of agenda—she was using us. And now she was using Li Lu.

  Why, though? What was the reason Brielle worked so hard? I can’t come up with it. But one thing’s for sure. This has to do with way more than Brielle being bored. It has to do with survival.

  “The people closest to us are EXACTLY the ones we shouldn’t be one hundred percent sure about,” she had whispered that day in September.

  Something was going on.

  WINTER

  Prompt: On my mind is …

  It took everything I had to ask Isabelle today, “So, how did you move forward?”

  Since she survived her life somehow, I was thinking maybe she had tips.

  “Volleyball,” Isabelle said, opening up her notebook.

  She gave volleyball everything. She signed up for the AAU league and practiced almost every day, she stayed after practice and lifted weights. She watched YouTube, read training books, got private lessons on Sundays from the assistant coach at University of Hawai’i …

  I wished I played volleyball. I wished I had a thing, a group, like Isabelle, Allie, Ellie, Oliana, Halia.

  Last summer, Dad told me he’d trade me a day of horseback riding at Kualoa Ranch if I played the whole season. But the shorts were tight, and so were the girls who had played together since fifth grade.

  “What are things like with her now?” I asked. “With Brielle?”

  “Oh.” Isabelle nodded. “She hates me. When you’re Cut, you really are Cut.”

  She swirled the prompt onto the page.

  “She turned everyone against you,” I said.

  But Isabelle said she did that to herself. She cut everyone off, out.

  She was sad, she said. She really missed Hailey.

  I didn’t ask her about her and Hailey, if that whole thing was true. It didn’t matter. Losing someone was losing someone.

  Did they ever see each other? Or at least talk? I wanted to ask, but it would just make Isabelle empty again. She had moved forward. She had put the Next Cut and Brielle and Hailey’s leaving behind her. She racked up points with serves and spikes, was O‘ahu’s Athlete of the Month.

  “Thank you,” I told Isabelle, “for.… you know … talking to me.”

  Isabelle smiled. “How’s your brother?”

  I said he was okay.

  Miss Wilson reminded us all to use class time wisely.

  Isabelle was amazing. She was brave and strong, everything I was not.

  All along, I’d missed out on the possibility of knowing her. In the process of trying to get what I thought would be everything, I’d given up what was actually really great.

  Isabelle and me, we could’ve been friends.

  FALL

  Prompt: Climate change.

  The Bransons’ party is over. Off. Canceled. Before it even happened.

  It doesn’t even matter that I was Cut. If I’d stayed on the list, I couldn’t have gone anyway.

  People are talking about the whole thing. Instead of Carnivale, they say, Brielle and the Bransons are going on a family vacation to Australia. The whole family, the four of them together. “To get away from it all.”

  I wish my family was like that. Like we went on amazing vacations together.

  I’m over Brielle, anyway. The party at Ehukai will be everything—people, music, fire, dancing. I have my look: white gauze top, peasant, tassels.

  Yesterday, Dad found out Eli got a ticket on Kamehameha. He was going 42 in a 35. Now the insurance is going up again.

  First Eli tried to say it wasn’t that fast, barely over the speed limit, that the Five-0 all over are just LOOKING for people to pull over.

  Dad said Eli wasn’t even supposed to be UP THERE—the time on the ticket was 9:16 on a school night, and he had no idea Eli was even there. Eli tried to say he must’ve forgotten to let him know.

  “That’s flat-out irresponsible,” Dad said, and Eli said he was tired of hearing about responsibility, and that really got to Dad.

  “When are you going to grow up?” Dad asked him.

  And Eli said, “You mean when am I going to quit surfing.”

  Me, I was so glad Mom was at work. This whole thing would have killed her. Sometimes when this happens, she gets in her bed, and I worry that someday she won’t get back out of it.

  “Okay, then,” Dad said. “When are you going to quit surfing and grow up?”

  And Eli’s face changed. He went from furious to devastated. Heartbroken. Lifeless, even.

  “Come out with me,” Eli said to Dad in a small voice. “Tomorrow, after school.” His eyes started to sparkle. “Just come see what it’s about. Waikiki, the waves are ankle biters, you can use my old Quintara.”

  I looked at Dad, and Dad looked at the floor. I hoped Dad would go. Eli would love it. He was so happy when people came to watch him.

  Outside, the trade winds howled and the monkeypods shook, and the rains slapped hibiscus blooms into puddles that have become rivers.

  “It’s the end of the term.” Dad had papers to grade.

  And Eli picked up his keys and walked out.

  Like always, he left the door open.

  WINTER

  Henley just opened his notebook and showed me LEMON CAKE!!! above a drawing of a cat.

  Seriously???!!! I show him back, with a cat face, wild eyes, tongue sticking out.

  It’s true. We are something, Henley and me.

  I was eating a bag of Cheerios at lunch, and just like before, Henley fell out of the sky.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, surprised and confused and happy at the same time.

  He pointed at my phone. “‘Luck Dragon Lady’?”

  I gave him an earbud, and after the song, he put his arm around the low part of my back. I closed my eyes. It felt good, like someone had me. Like nothing bad could ever happen if we stayed right there, like that. I didn’t move. I thought if I moved, Henley might move, too. So I closed my eyes to remember, in case it all changed back.

  And while my eyes were closed, his lips pressed into my lips, just the tiniest bit quivery.

  “I can’t get you out of my head,” he said.

  But he wasn’t going to kiss me again. Not then, not there, in the OLR cafeteria.

  “I’m starving,” I said into the bag of Cheerios. “Do you like to get mall chicken after school?”

  “Mall chicken?” Henley smiled. “That’s the kind of thing I love about you.”

  Mullet baby Jesus. Henley said “love.”

  * * *

  It was noodles!

  Henley brought me noodles all the way from Florence. He had wrapped them up in Italian newspaper, tied it together with twine.

  At first, from the shape and size of it, I thought maybe it was a T-shirt—I [heart image] ROME, or something. But it rattled inside. It was noodles! In a paper bag, with a long Italian name that started with an F and ended with an E.

  “Bowties!” I said.

  “Butterflies,” Eli told me.

  He waited so long to give them to me, he said, because he wanted to make them for me. For us.

  While he boiled the water, I sat at the counter and watched.

  “Americans boil pasta too long. And we add too much sauce.” He had picked up those facts in Italy.

  “Kit Kat!” He scooped up a little black kitty, rubbed her
head. “She came in for pasta.”

  Kit Kat had a torn ear and yellow eyes. She had a half of a gray whisker, and her paws were splotched with bright pink polish.

  Henley told Kit Kat it would be a few more minutes, then set her down on the floor.

  His dad and stepmom came in with some groceries. His dad was a happy man. Friendly. I couldn’t see anything embarrassing about him. He stuck out his hand, “You must be Taylor.”

  I could feel the red rush up my neck and to my cheeks. Henley’s dad knew who I was? Henley had told him about me? What did he say?

  “Nice to meet you, Taylor.” Henley’s stepmom shook my hand, too. Her nails were light pink, and I wasn’t sure if I should call her Nisha or Doctor or Doctor Nisha, so I just said it was nice to meet her, too.

  “Hennnnleeeyyyy!” A little girl bounced into the kitchen. She crashed into Henley, her Hello Kitty backpack sliding off her shoulder. She tried to pick up Kit Kat, but Kit Kat ran away.

  There was a lot going on. Henley’s house was so … alive.

  “This is my friend Taylor,” Henley told the girl.

  She looked at me, her eyes big and wide. “I like those in your hair,” she said.

  “They’re pinwheels, see?” I took out a bobby pin and blew on it. “I like how you painted your kitty’s feet.”

  “That’s Orchid,” Henley said while Orchid skipped off.

  Henley’s stepmom picked up the backpack. “Please call me Nisha.”

  His dad started unpacking celery and rice and coconut milk and a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

  “Orchid’s adorable,” I told Henley when his dad and stepmom left.

  “She’s the reason I’m here,” Henley said.

  “Really?” I said, then tried to backtrack. “I mean, I can totally see why. I just thought you moved here because…” I laughed to myself. Or, I thought I laughed to myself, at myself, but I actually laughed out loud.

  “… Because…” I thought about all the drama people had stirred up about Henley, and at the same time, I had to, tried to, explain my obvious total, complete lack of stability. “You weren’t FORCED to come here? Because you got expelled from school on the mainland for computer hacking?”

  “Computer hacking?” Henley stopped stirring. “That’s what you heard? Because I heard it was for possession.” He laughed, too.

  “I personally never believed it…” I started but stopped. Henley was real. He would know the truth.

  He wiped his eyes with his sleeve: “Hacking,” he said. “That’s so great! Better than anything I could’ve ever come up with. Okay, I’ll give you the plain, true, uninspired truth. I wanted to get to know my only sister in the world.” Henley shrugged. “People would have known if they had just asked.”

  And right then, I knew why I’d been thinking Henley didn’t seem whole. Why he seemed different. Why I’d thought he was missing something. Because he WAS missing something. He was missing DRAMA. He didn’t even watch Top Chef!

  He was real—one hundred percent real. He knew what mattered—sisters and cats and good pasta—and I wanted to be like that, too.

  Henley’s stepmom and dad put away the groceries and asked Henley how school was, like normal families did. Like Mom and Dad used to do at our house.

  Orchid sat on the stool beside me, spinning a smashed pinwheel she’d found in her room. If my family were this great, I thought, I would never ask for anything the rest of my whole life.

  “Okay, Orchid,” Henley’s dad said. “Let’s check out some kittens on YouTube.” He meowed.

  Orchid meowed, too. She pawed, then bounced out of the kitchen, pinwheel in her mouth.

  Nisha asked if she could get us anything before she left for her garden meeting.

  “The plots on Mānoa Road?” I asked. I thought she’d be a good friend for Mom. They could work the dirt together, plant ginger starts, talk about trade winds and blight.

  “Ala Wai, actually,” she said.

  “The big one!” I blurted. Then added less loudly, “Some of those plots are two stories.”

  Nisha laughed. “Yes, they are! But mine’s only one. And it’s mostly sweet potatoes.”

  She left, and it was quiet.

  The water bubbled up and boiled, and Henley put in the pasta. He set the timer for four minutes and got out a strainer and butter and two bowls.

  I sat and Henley stirred, and we smiled at each other.

  * * *

  “Your family,” I said. “They’re amazing.”

  The pasta had one more minute.

  “My dad, though,” Henley said.

  “He’s great,” I told him. I meant it.

  “Yeah, he’s great—I think that now.” Henley looked so good, with his sleeves rolled up like that. “It took a while to realize, though. Did you catch it, his breathing?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t noticed anything.

  “He breathes so loud,” Henley said. “It was horrifying at first. Try going to the movies with him. It’s just better to see something like Inception, with bomb blasts and explosions, than 127 Hours, where he whistles through his nasal passages while James Franco is trapped between rocks.”

  I laughed. We both laughed.

  “THAT’S your dad’s fatal flaw?” I said. “Loud breathing? My grandpa Olie died from pills and whiskey, and my brother—”

  The timer went off.

  “It’s all the same,” Henley said. “We’re completely humiliated by the people who match our DNA. It’s inevitable.”

  He drained the bowties, then tipped them back into the pot with some butter.

  “My mom,” I said. We were telling each other everything. “She’s not okay. My dad sent her off somewhere with a koi pond.”

  “I heard something about that,” Henley said. He was honest. “Is she back yet? Is she home now? How’s she doing?”

  Henley scooped out some noodles into each bowl, put two on a little plate on the floor. Kit Kat shot right back in, licking the plate clean before Henley even sat down at the counter with me. We turned our stools so our knees were touching, then he poked his fork into a bowtie and lifted it to my lips.

  But the steam! I could feel it, and I shrunk back from the fork, almost falling off the stool. “I have a cat’s tongue!” I cried out louder than I’d intended, covering my mouth.

  “What is that? What?” Henley pulled back the fork.

  It must’ve looked ridiculous, my dramatic recoil from a noodle.

  “A cat’s tongue,” I repeated more calmly. “Mrs. Tanaka told me. It’s when you can’t eat stuff that’s too hot. Like a cat.”

  “A cat’s tongue,” Henley smiled. “I like it.”

  He blew gently on the bowtie, then offered it out to me again.

  “Hey, Taylor,” he said while I let that amazing pasta melt in my mouth. “Can I ask you something?”

  It was about the Thing. He asked me what happened.

  And I told him.

  I told him about Brielle’s game, and how Stacy texted, and how Koa was wasted, and how we all left Ehukai together, and how the Jeep swerved then swung off the shoulder and onto its side. I told him about the blood, the bone sticking out of Koa’s arm. I told him about the broken glass.

  I told him about the noise—the tires crying out on Kamehameha, like they knew how things were going to end up. I told him how Eli’s awful scream bounced off the mountains. How the dirt shook when we hit against it that hard—hollow, like we were going to go right through it to the core of Earth, straight to hell itself.

  I told him how the crunch of metal was as sharp as the edges it made in one second flat.

  How my ears rang and rang, and I wasn’t sure if I was alive or dead, and if anyone else was, either.

  I told him I saw the ambulance lights, the paramedics, and I knew everything was supposed to be really loud, but instead everything got dead quiet.

  And that’s where I stopped. At “dead quiet,” dead, I just sat there.

  And a litt
le bit later, Henley said the most perfect thing. “That’s awful,” he told me. “I’m sorry that happened.” And he meant it. He held out another bowtie.

  It was so simple—those words, that pasta, this boy.

  Our knees still touching, I passed him back the fork.

  “Before it all happened,” I said, “there was just Brielle, watching me and Eli and Koa and Tate all leave together. She was by the fire, holding a red cup, just … watching us. Watching me.”

  For the first time ever, someone wished they had my life.

  FALL

  Prompt: North Korea.

  Everything is completely unraveling. We are all literally on the edge of the apocalypse.

  If Eli ever comes back home, Dad’s going to ground him forever. He goes around the house muttering “grow up” and “responsibility” as he pitches towels into the washing machine.

  Well, Dad will try to ground Eli, anyway. Probably Eli will just go out again.

  That’s WWIII on the home front. Here’s school.

  The fallout. The backlash.

  Getting Cut was just the start.

  She took a long time to get it just right, Brielle did. But it’s perfect, that’s for sure.

  First, she took back All of My Purple Life—it was almost gone anyway, had old peppermint gum stuck to the outside—then, she told Li Lu everything.

  It was the ONE thing I hadn’t thought about, the stuff I’d written about Li Lu. I’d been so hung up on what I had in there about Brielle that I didn’t think about my ex–best friend.

  Li Lu knew Brielle was going to wreck me. She tried to tell me, to save me, and I Cut her.

  And Brielle knew Li Lu and I would be wrecked by all the things I wrote—the unforgettable, unforgiveable things—the meanest words in the world. I’m sick that I wrote them—how ridiculous Li Lu dresses, that she never knows what she’s talking about, that she never gets anything, that she’s annoying, that she’s been in my business forever, that she’s boring.

  Even if there was a chance for Li Lu and me to work things out after the text fight, Brielle ruined that chance forever.