Summer Bird Blue

by Akemi Dawn Bowman

  “But it’s your life,” I say. “You only get this one. Why would you throw it away? Why would you let your dad make you do something you don’t want to do?” I feel the headache growing inside my skull, and Kai is looking at me like I’m spiraling out of reality. And maybe I am. Because a reality without my sister just isn’t fair. She didn’t deserve to die—she didn’t deserve to leave this world before she even got a chance to experience it. “You don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. You could die. He could die. Why would you waste your life for someone else?”

  “That’s dark, hapa.”

  “Of course it’s dark. Life is dark. It doesn’t care about anyone. Yours just hasn’t gone to shit yet. You should care about that.” You should appreciate having a life at all.

  “Are you okay?” Kai asks seriously, and I realize I’m shaking everywhere.

  I shove my hands between my knees and stare out the window. “I’m fine.”

  My mind doesn’t stop racing and my heart doesn’t stop pounding, and the next time I look up we’re in Kai’s driveway and the engine is off.

  “I’m sorry if I upset you. I don’t take this stuff as seriously as you do. It’s not a big deal to me,” Kai says.

  I don’t know why, but I feel anger toward Kai. I hate that he doesn’t care about his life enough to treasure it. I hate that he has a life he can just throw away.

  Lea would’ve made the most of her life. She would’ve followed her dreams. She wanted to be a songwriter. She wanted to spend her life writing music with me. And Mom supported her because Lea was life and wonder and childhood excitement, and it was so fucking beautiful.

  Lea wouldn’t have wasted a single day. She would have lived her life like a star—burning bright and loud until she went out in one giant explosion that would change the world.

  It’s not fair. It’s not fair she’s dead when she deserved life so much more than someone like Kai. Someone like me. And I don’t care if that’s a horrible thing to say.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I say thinly, and I run away from Kai and his car and his wasted future.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mr. Watanabe is outside digging a hole near the pavement. Poi is running around his yard chasing a lizard that’s holed up behind some of the potted plants. When she sees me, she barks and runs to the edge of the grass, the sound as frantic as it always is.

  “What are you doing?” I ask when I approach them.

  Mr. Watanabe doesn’t even glance my way. “Whatchu t’ink I doing?”

  “Digging a hole.” After a pause, I ask, “Why are you digging a hole?”

  “You ask too much questions,” he says, pressing his hand against his back when he straightens up.

  “Do you want some help?” I offer. It’s not because I’m trying to be kind—I’m just bored, and I’m avoiding Kai and Aunty Ani. My grouchy older neighbor is literally the only person in my life right now who isn’t trying to force me to talk. Or feel something. Or do anything.

  We both like the silence. We’re a good match.

  He points to the dirt. “Dig two more li’dis. Dea’ and one ova dea’.” He passes me the shovel and disappears into a nearby shed. When he comes back, he’s carrying several wooden posts.

  I shovel, Mr. Watanabe sets the posts, and Poi skids back and forth behind us like a tornado of hyperactivity. By the time the sun is setting, we’re looking at a fence that encloses the grassy patch behind us. I think it’s a dog run.

  “Did Poi get out again?” I ask.

  Mr. Watanabe grunts. “She like beef wit’ da neighborhood cats.”

  “Beef?” I repeat.

  He eyes me. “Scrap. Fight.”

  “Oh, right.” I look around the yard. “Do you need help with anything else?”

  He makes a face. “Too late. Time fo’ eat.”

  I nod, and the heaviness comes back. I’m running out of distractions—I can feel it.

  “You know how fo’ cook chicken curry?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  “Okay,” he says, not looking like he really believes me.

  We go inside and he chops up vegetables while I stir the ingredients he leaves on the counter into a thick liquid. Then he boils rice and preps the chicken while I keep stirring the curry. At some point we both get distracted by the music playing in the background—the saddest guitar piece I’ve ever heard, like frozen berries and cold, herbal tea that’s been left out for hours—and I’m not sure exactly how much of the food is burned, but when I stir again there’s a layer of blackened curry that floats to the top in bits.

  Mr. Watanabe makes a noise of disgust, but he serves the meal out anyway over a bed of sticky white rice.

  We both eat the first couple of bites in complete silence, chewing carefully and staring at the table. But then he sets his chopsticks down and tilts his head back so he’s looking down at me with his almost-black eyes.

  “You no can make good curry,” he says. “Dis terrible.”

  I put my chopsticks down too and frown. “The curry is fine. It’s the chicken that tastes like garbage.”

  Mr. Watanabe explodes with a laugh that sounds like an elephant, and it’s so loud and out of nowhere that I jump in my seat. When it ends, he’s smiling with only the corner of his face.

  “Okay. We have curry some uddah time.” He stands up, taking both of the bowls with him.

  Five minutes later, we’re sitting on his couch eating coffee-flavored ice cream and listening to a ukulele player on vinyl with Poi sitting between us, asleep but still grumbling, and I’m wondering if Mr. Watanabe is my new best friend.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Aunty Ani makes eggs on rice for breakfast, and after we finish eating she asks me if I want to go to the mall with her.

  “It’s my day off,” she says. “You like go shopping for summah clothes? Too hot fo’ wear jeans all the time, yeah?”

  I tug at the frayed bits of string hanging from the bottom of my shirt. Lea’s shirt. I don’t want to replace her things. She’s not replaceable. “I was going to listen to records with Mr. Watanabe.”

  Aunty Ani tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I not so sure if you should be bothering the neighbor.”

  “I’m not bothering him,” I snap.

  She nods like she understands, but she doesn’t. Nobody does. “It’s just he’s older, you know? He might not like you over there so much.”

  “Nobody else comes to visit him,” I interject. “He’s old. He’s probably going to die soon. Maybe he doesn’t want to be all alone right before he’s going to die.”

  “Just because someone is older doesn’t mean they’re about to die,” she argues. “I don’t think you’d want someone saying those things about you when you get older.”

  “Well, it’s the truth. People get old, and they die.” I pause. “Sometimes they don’t even get old. I’d be happy if I lasted long enough to call myself old.”

  “Rumi—” she starts.

  “I’m not going to stop hanging out with him. He’s my friend.” My voice is wobbly and too loud.

  She sighs. “I’d really like you to find something else fo’ do. You can still hang out with him—but maybe not all the time. What about Kai? I thought you guys were getting along? I heard he goes to karaoke every week with his friends. Maybe you could go too? It might be fun to try singing again.”

  My eyes snap toward her, and she flinches. She doesn’t get it—she doesn’t understand how much music hurts me. Because music doesn’t mean anything to her—it’s just noise.

  But to me music is just as important as the blood running through my veins. It gives me life, and it can take it away too.

  I know I owe Lea a song, but I’m not ready to write again. I’m not ready to sing or play the guitar or experience what it’s like to perform without my sister. It hurts too much. It feels like my heart is made of glass, but her death shattered it into a billion pieces. Trying to make it beat again is agonizing—I can feel e
very shard, every break.

  I’d rather have my heart feel nothing at all than the pain that comes with writing music.

  Aunty Ani takes a breath like she’s ready to try again. She’s as stubborn as I am. “How would you feel about maybe going to talk to someone? They have group therapy fo’ people dealing with loss. It might be helpful.”

  “Hanging out with Mr. Watanabe is helpful.” Music doesn’t hurt at his house, I want to say. It’s the only place that’s safe. “I’d rather punch myself in the face repeatedly than go to group therapy,” I say instead. I don’t have anything against therapy, but I do have something against people. If I were going to share my feelings with anyone, it should be Lea and Mom—not a bunch of strangers.

  I don’t need to talk to anyone—I need to be left alone. Because alone is what Lea and Mom left me, and if I can’t figure out a way to make sense of that, I’ll be lost forever.

  I don’t have my family anymore. I don’t have my music anymore.

  I have a shattered heart and a haunted guitar.

  And maybe I can’t find a way to fix them, but I do need to find a way to live with them.

  Because this is my life now.

  “Why is it so hard fo’ you to talk to anyone? It doesn’t have fo’ be me. But it’s important you talk to somebody. You have to heal.” She speaks with so much kindness and good intentions that if I weren’t so angry I might actually appreciate it.

  But I don’t. Her words physically hurt me. “I don’t have a cut, or a broken arm, or even a broken heart,” I say, and I feel like there’s a lump of rock and ash moving up and down my throat. I can hardly breathe. “Lea died. Her life was over in a blink. There was no warning. She wasn’t old, or sick, or too sad to keep going. She was here, and then she wasn’t, and there’s no healing from that. Because she was my entire world. I could live without so many things—without parents, without music, without my eyes or ears—but without my sister? How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to get better from that?”

  Aunty Ani stands in front of me, tears streaming down her face and spit forming each time she tries to open her mouth. But I don’t stop. The words keep pouring out of me, hard and unforgiving, and my eyes are as dry as they’ve ever been.

  “Therapy isn’t going to fix me. The boy next door isn’t going to fix me. Singing isn’t going to fix me. Even Mom being here wouldn’t fix me. Because I don’t want to be fixed. I don’t want to heal from this. I want her back. I want Lea to be alive. So stop trying to make me talk about it, or make friends, or have fun on the beach, or go shopping at the mall. I’m coping, okay? I’m still here. But don’t try to change the place I exist now, because besides a few shitty T-shirts and a guitar I can barely look at, the hole Lea left me is all I have to remember her by.”

  The sobs coming from my aunt border on wailing. But there’s nothing inside me that’s soft and warm. I can’t comfort her. Lea was the sand, and I’m the rocks—when a wave washes you to shore, there’s one you’ll always prefer over the other.

  She knew how to fix people. I know how to hurt them. Does it matter if it’s not on purpose?

  “And stop making excuses for Mom,” I say evenly. “I hate her, and Lea would hate her for leaving me here too. And you can tell her I said that, because I know you talk to her, even if you don’t tell me about it. I know because I still talk to Lea, and Lea is dead. Because that’s how it is when you have a sister you love—you never stop talking to them, not ever, not even when they do something horrible, or stop breathing, or exist in some place you can’t see. Because their ghost stays with you forever, and you spend the rest of your life trying to say all the things you wish you had said when they were alive. So, you tell Mom what I said—tell her she’s an asshole for leaving me to figure all this out on my own. A world without Lea is hard enough, but making me spend the summer in a different state, away from my home and my friends and my piano and my mother? She might as well tell everyone both her daughters are dead, because she’s not my mom anymore. She’s just the woman who abandoned me on an island without even saying good-bye.”

  Aunty Ani sucks in her breath and holds it, her eyes darting back and forth like she wishes she could fix everything with words. And it would be so much easier if pain could be healed with the right words.

  But it takes so much more than that.

  And some things just aren’t meant to heal. Some things are so horribly unfair that there’s no coming back from that amount of pain.

  I’ve lost everything. Music. Mom. Lea.

  But I’m coping. This is me coping.

  Bird

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I’m flat on the wooden floor, my arms spread out, my palms faceup, and my legs close together. The record today sounds like the ocean—like I’m floating through the water on a raft, the waves carrying me up and down as the clouds morph above me into so many shapes I start to lose track of them.

  It’s like the ocean and fresh coffee and wood on the fire.

  The vinyl record crackles to a stop. I open my eyes, watching the ceiling fan spin in circles. Poi is looking down at me, breathing so close to my face I can smell dog biscuits.

  Go away, I mouth, but she pushes her nose against my chin and sniffs and sniffs until I have to push her with my hand.

  I’m not sure she would’ve given up if it weren’t for the noises outside. There’s a car door followed by laughter. Probably Kai and Gareth, because God knows there’s nothing happy coming from the other two houses on this miserable cul-de-sac.

  Poi leaps over me and scurries outside, the barking at full volume.

  I sit up and wipe my chin with the back of my hand. Mr. Watanabe is asleep in his chair, his arm draped lazily over his lap with his glasses still pinched between two fingers. I don’t want to wake him up by digging through his record shelf, so I follow Poi outside.

  The warm sun hits me in the face, and I scrunch my eyes to get a better view of the driveway two houses away. Kai is there, not with Gareth but with Hannah. They look like they’ve just come back from the beach. Hannah is wearing jean shorts and a turquoise bikini top, her curly hair knotted at the top of her head and a white flower over her right ear. Kai is carrying his surfboard from her truck into his garage. He’s wearing red board shorts, sunglasses, and flip-flops, and his dark torso is completely bare.

  “Hey, Rumi!” Hannah calls, waving from next to her truck.

  My body goes stiff. Kai looks up, realizes I’m watching them, and raises a hand.

  Great. Now he’s going to think I was spying on him like a weirdo. He might even think it has something to do with him not wearing a shirt, and it definitely, definitely does not.

  I reach the gate at the same time they do.

  Kai makes a face and laughs. “Whatchu doing at Uncle George’s house?”

  “We’re friends,” I say.

  “You friends with Uncle George?” he repeats, as if the very concept is completely unfathomable to him.

  “It’s not weird. We like the same music. We get each other,” I say.

  Kai holds up his hands like all I’m doing is proving his point.

  Hannah nervously eyes Poi, who hasn’t stopped yapping through the fence. “We’re all heading over to the Coconut Shack for fish tacos. Want to come?”

  “She won’t want to come. We’re not the right age group for her,” Kai says, leaning his elbow against the fence. He’s lean muscle from his shoulders to his feet, and he has the darkest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a guy. God, he really is pretty. And he knows it too, which makes the whole thing so much more annoying.

  I scrunch my nose. “Why do you have to be so obnoxious?”

  He shrugs. “All I’m saying is I get it now—why you never hang out with us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I challenge.

  He starts pointing to his fingers one at a time like he’s making a list. “You’re always grouchy. You’re obsessed with mortality. Your only friend is a geriatric.
” He looks at Hannah sympathetically. “She’s a ninety-year-old trapped in a teenager’s body.”

  Hannah shakes her head. “You’re ridiculous. Besides, you didn’t even let her answer.” She turns to me. “Don’t feel like you have to come just because he’s trying to pull some reverse-psychology bullshit on you. But you’re welcome to join us, okay?”

  I look at Kai, who is smiling like a child who got his way, and it suddenly doesn’t matter that I don’t want to go with them. I just don’t want him to be right. “Yeah,” I say to Hannah. “I’ll come.”

  “Cool.” She grins and sticks her tongue out at Kai.

  I look down at Poi. “Stay. I’ll be back later.” I have the urge to pat her on the head, but I don’t think either of us has made up our mind whether we like the other or not, so I pull the gate shut behind me and get in the back of Hannah’s truck.

  The Coconut Shack sits across the road from the same beach that leads to Palekaiko Bay. It’s made up of thick panels of wood, all painted with colorful graffiti. The front half of the restaurant is completely exposed to the outdoors, except for the pillars holding up the second floor. There are a handful of tall, skinny tables in all different colors, where people can eat, drink, and watch the surfers from only a hundred yards away.

  When we get inside, Hannah leads us upstairs to the karaoke lounge. There’s a huge open space with more seating, an empty stage, and a bar. We turn the corner and find a long hallway with a handful of private rooms.

  One of the doors is already open, and when I step inside I see Gareth and Jerrod already sitting on one of the couches.

  “Oh, howzit?” Gareth says, holding up his fist with his pinky and thumb sticking out—the shaka sign. He shakes it lightly before dropping his hand. “You hungry? We just ordered da jumbo plate.”

  Hannah falls onto the opposite couch and leans her head back. “My legs are seriously aching right now.”