Taylor Before and After

by Jennie Englund

  Today, Li Lu gave me back Queen of Babble—I had lent it to her forever ago. She said it was the worst book she’s ever read.

  WINTER

  Prompt: Magic.

  Yesterday, after school, I went over to Henley’s again. This time he made us grilled cheeses, with mayonnaise on the outside of the bread, which I never even knew was a thing, and it was actually really amazing.

  Also, Henley heated us up some tomato soup. He had made it the night before from real tomatoes! We dipped our grilled cheeses into it, and the whole thing together was so, so good. Kit Kat thought so, too. She didn’t leave one single drop on her plate.

  And after that, Henley said he had something.

  “We’re, like, nine months off.” He handed me a paper lantern. “Or three, depending on whether you count forward or back. Which way do you count?” He smiled. “Forward! Definitely forward. I remember about you and those look-backs.”

  “A lantern?” I said. It was lovely. Light. It crinkled in my hands.

  “Krathong,” Henley told me. “For Yi Peng.”

  “What is that?”

  “A festival. In Thailand. When we did it here, we had one lantern left over. I thought you could use it.”

  We went outside on the deck, above the hibiscus and under the palms. A little breeze lifted the fern fronds, and a lizard skittered away across the rail. The sun was pinks and oranges melting together far away. All of it was so perfect, and I wanted to remember every color, every word, the warm Henley’s shoulders made against mine.

  “What do you think it’s like?” Henley asked. “For Eli? In there?”

  “He can’t surf,” I said without even thinking about it.

  “That’s rough,” Henley said with surprising empathy.

  “You surf?” I whirled around and looked right at him. Because if he surfed, this whole thing was totally and completely off. I was over surfers, all of them.

  Henley laughed. “Never tried. You?”

  I told him, “Nope. No way. Nuh-uh.”

  “But you know how it is not to be able to do what you love,” Henley added so honestly.

  I thought about how much I’ve missed watching Gossip Girl and reading People at Li Lu’s, and sneaking off to Waikiki with her, and getting manis at Paul Mitchell. I missed going to the farmer’s market, even to Foodland, with Mom. How much I missed driving to school with Eli. How much I missed seeing Koa and Tate around. How much I wished they could come play Rock Band.

  “When you let go of it,” Henley said about the lantern, “you let your problems go, too.” He lit the candle while I held the paper globe lightly, so as not to crush the thin paper.

  But it turned out, I held it too lightly. The lantern wiggled right out of my hands, and I reached up into the sky to grab it, and Henley jumped to get it too, and our heads smacked into each other’s as the lantern sailed away from us.

  Henley rubbed his forehead.

  “Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” I covered my mouth. I had lost the lantern and headbutted my … boyfriend?

  The whole thing could have been so awkward—the most romantic moment of my life turned potential brain injury.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because Henley started laughing.

  And I started laughing, too.

  “Do you want to come to my house sometime?” I asked him, and he said, “Definitely.”

  We stood on the deck, his arms around me, both of us breathing in O‘ahu’s salt, the sweet plumeria, the earth and ferns, the blue shadow of the mountains.

  And time stretched out in front of us, over the ‘āina, across the ocean.

  SPRING

  Prompt: “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” (John Muir, 1838–1914)

  I was happy.

  And I was happy that I was happy.

  Even the shower water felt different. This morning, it was warm at first. But I wanted more than that. So I cranked the faucet to cold and stood under the water till I froze in my bones. Then I switched it back to hot, and my skin got all prickly, and I stayed there like that till I couldn’t stand the hot anymore, and I made it cold again.

  And like I did at the map in the mall, I wanted to laugh, and I even kind of did.

  What was I laughing at? What was funny?

  For a while, I turned the water up and down, forward and back, hot and cold, the prickle, then freeze, then burn, then prickle.

  Then I opened the window wide, breathed in the Mānoa air, the mana ‘āina—the strength of the land—and I suddenly longed for the boldest Kona coffee, the kind you can only get from Glazers.

  And the towel I took off the rack and pressed into my face was the softest thing in the universe. The palm fronds swished in the wind behind me, and the stained glass bird Mom and I bought last summer from the farmer’s market caught the rising sun in just a way to show off the brightest blues and reds I’d ever known.

  Here in language arts, I’m wide awake, and the Hawaii sun washes the mangoes from green to gold, turns the banana flowers purple, warms the Waikiki water. But me, I’m thinking about snow.

  When I was four, or maybe only three, I got a pink bike for Christmas. It had white tires and white training wheels and flashy pink ribbons coming out of the handle bars. Now that I think about it, it was probably really low to the ground. But back then, it seemed really high up.

  I was too scared to ride it.

  I don’t remember all the things Mom and Dad said or did to get me to try. I just remember I wouldn’t go for anything.

  Eli got on my pink bike, and his long legs pedaled up and down the street in front of me, the sparkly streamers whipping his knuckles as he called out, “See, it’s easy!”

  “I can’t,” I told him. “I’m scared I’ll fall.”

  But Eli said he’d hold on to me the whole time, that he wouldn’t let go. He looked so big, so tall, so strong. He seemed so sure.

  For a long, long time on Christmas Day, I rode around and around in Oregon. It was snowing, but the snow wasn’t sticking.

  And Eli was holding me up.

  SPRING

  Prompt: “You, with your words like knives, and swords and weapons that you use against me.”

  (Taylor Swift, “Mean”)

  “You’ll never get past this.”

  Words like knives.

  Tears are words.

  “How will you ever get over what your brother did?”

  This whole time, I’ve been asking myself the wrong questions. I’ve been wondering how Brielle could have said that to me. How she could be so mean, how she could wreck my life like that. I’ve been asking myself the same question Brielle asked me, how I’ll get over what Eli did.

  But what really matters is why it all got to me.

  Swords and weapons that you use against me.

  Anyone would think the worst day of my life was December 23. The day Koa and Tate died. The day Eli drove them off the highway.

  One second, we were all dancing around the fire at Pipeline, and the next, there were tire tracks across Kamehameha and empty desks in English 12.

  Dad got the call from Wahiawa General that Eli and I were in the ER, that Eli was being charged with all that stuff, that Koa and Tate were gone forever. He picked me up. I didn’t need stitches. They said the cut on my eyebrow would heal on its own—it would just take time. But Eli didn’t get to come home.

  Until then, I had been practicing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 25 every day. It was hard—two hands, timing, tempo—and I was getting really good.

  But that day was the day I stopped. Mom’s legs gave out right from under her in the kitchen when Dad told her. I helped him get her into bed, where she’s stayed for the past three months, except when she went into the place with the courtyard and the koi, and the one day she made banana pancakes, and all of a sudden, Dad had a thousand department meetings and budget committees and curriculum development and changed his office hours to dinnertime.

  Or you would
think the day after, when Eli was charged, was pretty awful, too, when Mom first got in bed. Or the day Dad sent her away to the koi place. Or when my best friend turned on me, then said I wasn’t making my life happen. That was all absolutely horrible. Terrible. Awful.

  But there was one day that was worse than all those, even. One person who could have completely ruined my life.

  SPRING

  Prompt: Which modern invention could you not live without?

  It’s been three months and sixteen days since Dad pulled up by the flagpole the first day back from winter break.

  “Please,” I had begged him, my knees knocking against each other, “I can’t. I’m sick. I’m going to throw up.”

  Earlier that morning, I kept falling back asleep, and Dad kept coming in to wake me up. Finally, he pulled off my covers and piled them on the floor and said, “Get up.”

  “Get up.” Like that.

  And still, I lay there, curled into myself. There was no way I could go back to school and see all those people. Everyone would judge me, label me, hate me. They would think I killed Koa and Tate. They would say things. They would talk about me. They would make stuff up and spread it around.

  But Dad said, “It is time to go NOW.”

  What was I wearing that first day back? How did we get to the flagpole? I don’t remember getting in the car, or driving with Dad.

  “My stomach…” I tried to tell him.

  He reached across and opened my door. “You’ll just have to get through it,” he said.

  Somehow I got out of the car. I didn’t go over to Li Lu’s locker, and she didn’t come to mine, like we had done every day forever. We didn’t swap notes or playlists, or tell each other what happened between last night after we went to sleep and right when we were standing there at our lockers. We didn’t talk about going to my house or her house after school, or the new Topshop shoes Brielle had, or how the guy Li Lu liked told her “Hey,” or that Palakiku Kama was the one who had been stealing everything out of everyone’s lockers, or that someone and someone had made out or broken up.

  Somehow, when Dad left, I didn’t walk back out the door. Maybe deep inside, I knew there was nowhere else to go.

  I floated through the halls like my feet weren’t touching the ground. Like a ghost.

  “See!” I would have yelled to everyone if ghosts could talk. “YOU have nothing to worry about! I’M the biggest failure at this school! I have the worst life ever! My life is way worse than yours! My problems are SO MUCH bigger. Your life could be as bad as mine, but it’s not, so you can feel good about that!”

  Everyone was staring and whispering and pointing. They said I was the one who was driving. They said I was just as wasted as Eli. They said I covered for him with the Five-0. That he got sent off to military school. That the alcohol in his blood was double the legal limit. That this was his third or fourth DUI.

  People said they always thought he was a loser. That he never cared about anything but surfing, that he wasn’t that good anyway.

  Sister Anne pulled me into her office first thing to “check in.” She tried to force me to go to Grief Group, with people like Sachi Manhaloa, whose sister died from leukemia, and Olivia Huang, whose cousin drowned right at Sandys, and Ellie Williams, whose brother was killed in Afghanistan. But I couldn’t go to Grief Group. With all the people who were there because of what happened at Pipeline. Because of what Eli did.

  The teachers tried to act normal. They pretended like everything was the same as before.

  Accidentally, I went to Latin instead of math, and I didn’t realize it until Tae-sung told me to get out of his seat.

  I wanted the day to be over so I could go back home. To shut myself in my room and close my eyes and sleep forever, like Mom. To wait it out, till it was over.

  Nothing made sense.

  After eighty minutes of threes and fives and other hieroglyphics, the bell rang, and math ended—just like that.

  The day was somehow going on.

  Latin made no sense. My body was getting bigger and bigger. I was pretty sure I was spilling all out of my seat, like dough rising all over the place. Everyone could see how much space I was taking up. I was enormous. I was everywhere. People tucked their arms into their sides and pulled their feet under their desks so I wouldn’t pull them into my gross, doughy, sticky mess.

  I tried to keep my arms by my sides and my feet under my desk, too.

  At lunch, I stayed in the bathroom and cried until my eyes were bright red. It smelled like hot pee in there, and bleach, but I stayed in that last stall, so furious that Eli was still in bed, at home, asleep, while I was forced to be in the worst place on earth, because the rehab place Dad was sending him to in Montana couldn’t take him for another few days. He’d had court. He’d been in jail. He didn’t have to deal with any of this.

  After lunch, I went to language arts. I didn’t think it could possibly get any worse.

  But it did.

  SPRING

  Prompt: “Don’t run, stop holding your tongue.”

  (Sarah Bareilles, “Brave”)

  “Are you okay?” Miss Wilson asked.

  The prompt was right there on the board, like it had been every day since September. I could see it, but the letters and words didn’t mean anything, didn’t make any sense. At first, I thought I could copy those letters and words. The pen weighed a thousand pounds. Somehow, I pushed it into the paper, dragged it down, got the first part. I tried to concentrate, studied the letters, the parts to them, arcs, circles, spaces, lines, the three dots that followed. I stared at the words.

  “Prompt: On my mind is…”

  On my mind is.

  Is.

  There was so much emptiness after.

  On my mind is.

  On my mind is…?

  Then Brielle turned around and said what she said.

  “How will you ever get over what your brother did?”

  And when I sat there, frozen, stunned, Brielle answered for me. “How is he still alive? He should be dead. You’ll never get past this.”

  And after, I couldn’t write anything. I couldn’t think or talk.

  Somehow that day, the rest of class happened, and the rest of school happened, too, and after school, I walked home. I took the avocado path. Usually, it took 39 minutes. But that day, it took 188. Or maybe it was five. Macario was right about time. It’s immeasurable.

  All day, I checked my phone to see if anyone had texted. Maybe they couldn’t talk to me face-to-face at school, which I could understand, but maybe we were still friends, secretly. That would be okay.

  But there were no texts from anyone. No missed calls. Nothing, even, from Li Lu. She hadn’t texted or called or IMed me once since that fight we’d had about Brielle.

  While I walked home, the rumors swelled. That I walked into Latin instead of math because I had come to school wasted, just like my brother always did, that I got high in the bathroom at lunch—“You should have seen how red her eyes were”—that I just sat there in language arts so baked, I couldn’t even write the prompt.

  People had a lot to talk about. The more they talked about me, the less other people would talk about them.

  I was by myself in the rain on the avocado path, and at the same time, I was in the middle of it all, of the biggest drama ever in the history of Our Lady of Redemption. There was no way out of it, no getting through it. I had no future.

  I hated my life. I hated myself.

  Brielle was right, what she said that day. Eli, my brother, he ruined everyone’s lives. He sent Mom away and took all my friends and cost us all our money and erased Koa and Tate.

  Eli should have died. Why didn’t he?

  Why does he get to keep on living when everyone else is gone?

  I hated him, my brother, who covered for me when I sent Hopper off to the wild pigs. I hated Eli and have known it since the day he came home and drank out of the faucet. I hated him. I had believed Brielle. That I’d never
, ever, ever get past it.

  SPRING

  Prompt: Without looking back, what do you remember about the national tragedy from December?

  A don’t-look-back.

  This is new.

  But as much as I want to remember, I can’t.

  Why can’t I?

  I know it must be really important. But December seems like such a long time ago. A billion things have happened between then and now, between Pipeline and this, between Brielle and me, and me and Li Lu. There’s been Eli’s stuff, and Mom’s stuff. And Dad. And math.

  I want to remember three months ago.

  But I can’t. I’ve sat here and thought for a long, long time.

  So has Henley. And Isabelle, and Tae-sung, and Brielle. No one knows. We’re all sitting here trying to look back, and none of us can—none of us are writing—and Miss Wilson seems really sad about that.

  FALL

  Prompt: Respond to this morning’s school shooting.

  It’s horrible.

  We were watching it right as it was happening, on CNN in Mr. Montalvo’s class—lines of students being herded out of classrooms, parents waiting to see if their kids were alive, pictures of people calling 911, tears, teachers, stretchers, hugs.

  It’s the day before winter break, and so many kids are just … gone.

  We’ll never get over it. We’ll never forget.

  He was all wrong, that boy, he shot his own mom. There was a picture of him, really bad hair and skeleton eyes.

  What was he trying to show people? That he was fed up? That he was alone?

  We’re all fed up. We’re all alone.

  He hated everyone? He couldn’t keep going?

  We’re ALL trying to make it. He did it to himself, cutting himself off. Hiding in his room.

  He could have reached out to someone. He could have gotten help.

  Why didn’t somebody notice before it happened? There had to have been signs. I mean, who let him have those guns? Plus, he was ALL OVER social media. PUBLIC forums. His parents, his grandparents, his group, teachers, hoalaunas—somebody must’ve known SOMETHING. Pay attention, people. LOOK AT WHAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE!!!!