Kai pulls a T-shirt over his head—finally—and sits down in one of the single chairs. He picks up the menu at the table, except it’s not for food—it’s for music. “Did you guys turn in the list already?”
“Nah,” Jerrod says, pushing a piece of paper toward him. “It’s here.”
I sit down, listening to them talk about surfing and leg cramps and song choices, until a man comes in with an enormous tray of appetizers. There’s onion rings, fish tacos, jalapeño poppers, ham and cheese quesadillas, and some kind of meatball and pineapple combo pierced with toothpicks. Before the man leaves, Kai passes him the piece of paper.
Hannah spreads out her arms. “Someone please feed me. I’m too tired to move.”
The flat-screen TV hanging on the wall lights up, and a few seconds later a song starts playing. Gareth leaps up and grabs a microphone from the wall.
The rest of us eat while he serenades the room with his own rendition of a Bruno Mars song. Jerrod sings next—an eighties hit I’ve heard a thousand times but can never remember the title of—and after that Kai sings a song in Korean, complete with a rap in the middle.
I’m not going to lie—it’s the most attracted I’ve ever been to him.
Hannah finishes writing down some more song choices while Gareth and Kai duet a Fifth Harmony song, and she slides the paper toward me and points to the menu. “You can pick whatever you want. Just write the number code down.”
“I don’t sing,” I say, pushing the paper back to her.
She shrugs. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind, the list is here.”
Hannah sings an Adele song next, and she can’t stay in key to save her life, but she’s so theatrical and earnest that even though everyone is laughing at her she’s still completely adorable.
I eat onion rings to keep myself busy, but I’m so entranced watching them sing along to the lyrics scrolling across the TV screen that after an hour of them prodding me to join in, I do.
I pick a song by Regina Spektor called “The Call” because it’s one of the first songs Lea and I tried to play together. When we finally got the piano-guitar arrangement right, we didn’t stop singing it for months. Years, actually.
I remember the very last time we sang it. We were in Lea’s room, writing lyrics in our journal, both of us lying on our stomachs against her shaggy purple rug. There was a crunchy bit of fur from the time she knocked over an entire bottle of my nail polish. God, I was so mad at her that day. Why did I have to get so mad? I wasted hours being angry at her—hours I wish I had now—over a few dollars.
When the song came on that day, we looked at each other like everything in the world was falling perfectly into place. We sang and danced around like wood nymphs, spinning and twirling and jumping off the bed until Mom came into the room, yelled at us to be quiet, and then after very little coaxing she was spinning around and singing along with us.
Because that’s how we were, the three of us. We loved each other. We made each other happy.
I’m singing without really thinking. I see Lea, sitting in the room, smiling and swaying and mouthing the words along with me. I can hear her guitar—the careful way she used to strum, like the guitar was made of sand and sugar and water and one wrong move would crumble it into a trillion tiny pieces. And her voice, so soft and doelike. Her voice was always prettier than mine. I sing with a scratchy rasp, like someone who’s been in a room filled with smoke for years and sleeps on the grit of the earth. Lea’s was angelic, like she was literally created from the clouds.
God, we were so different, but so exactly the same, too.
It hurts so much to see her. It feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest all over again. My throat starts to swell, and my voice trails off into nothingness.
This . . . was a mistake.
It’s too soon to sing alone.
I look at Lea’s ghost and mouth the words without really thinking. I need more time.
She smiles like she understands, but I don’t think she does. Because I don’t know if there are enough hours in a lifetime to get used to her being gone.
I will never get used to performing without her.
I will never get used to singing solo.
I will never get used to not having a sister anymore.
My shoulders shake like there’s an earthquake in my core. Every inch of me tenses up like I’m bracing for the room to split apart—for the earthquake inside me to be real. I imagine the room exploding to bits, with pieces of drywall and tile flying in every direction and the tremor of the earthquake breaking the building in half.
But all my rage stays bottled up inside me, with no way for it to get out.
I don’t feel the microphone fall from my hand, but I do hear the thud and piercing shriek it makes when it hits the floor. I see someone get up—Kai, I think—but I’m pushing past him without really thinking.
“I’m sorry,” I think I say. “I can’t be here right now.”
And this time Kai doesn’t follow me home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next time I visit Mr. Watanabe, he hands me a pair of gloves. We spend two hours weeding a strip of yard at the back of his house that looks like it’s been neglected all summer.
Afterward we sit in the shade. I’m drenched in sweat and bits of grass; Mr. Watanabe looks like he’s been sitting in front of a fan all day. Poi’s ears perk up when Aunty Ani opens the gate, and she takes off sprinting like a hunting dog chasing a rabbit.
“Hello?” Aunty Ani calls, keeping a nervous eye on the hyperactive dog trailing behind her.
Mr. Watanabe nods and grunts simultaneously. “Howzit?”
“Sorry fo’ interrupt, but, Rumi, you have one phone call,” she says timidly.
When I look up at her, my face flushes, and in an instant all the effort I made to cool down in the shade goes away.
It was only a matter of time before Mom decided to get in touch. I knew it would happen eventually. She’d wake up from whatever haze she’s been living in and try to check back into reality. And she’d want to talk to me—the daughter who’s still alive—to say how she’s ready to be a mother again.
But it doesn’t work that way. You can’t stop being a mom just because your heart is broken. There are rules. There are consequences, too.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” I say, grinding my teeth together. It shouldn’t be this easy for her—to just call me up and have things go back to normal.
She left me, and she doesn’t get to fix that with a phone call.
“She really wants to speak to you,” Aunty Ani says quietly, her eyes flickering between Mr. Watanabe and me. “She loves you, and even though you’re angry, there are things you need to hear, too. Please—just talk to her.”
“No.” I squeeze the armrests, and I can feel the wood pressing too deeply against my skin.
Mr. Watanabe lets out an irritable cry. “Go talk to your muddah,” he spits. “We finish anuddah time.”
And just like that, he kicks me out of his yard.
I trudge through the house and throw the phone to my ear roughly. “What do you want?” I snap.
It’s quiet for three whole seconds. “Hi, Rumi,” Mom says. It doesn’t even sound like her. Her voice is like a room full of broken glass—unrecognizable. She isn’t the mom I know. She isn’t the mom I loved.
Her two words pierce me straight in the chest. My heart beats violently.
I don’t want to forgive her. I want to fight.
“Did she tell you? Did she tell you I said you’re an asshole?” I growl.
“Rumi!” Aunty Ani exclaims from behind me.
I ignore her. “I don’t want to talk to you, okay? You aren’t here. You haven’t been here for months. I have nothing to say to you.”
“I just—” Mom starts, her voice shaking worse than my shoulders.
“I don’t care. I don’t care if you needed time to heal, or if you needed to grieve without me getting in the way. I don’t
care if seeing me reminded you of Lea, or if you just wanted to be alone. Whatever your excuse is, it’s not good enough. Because I wouldn’t have left you alone.” I pause, and then the heat reaches my voice. “And I don’t think you would’ve left Lea alone if I had died instead of her.”
“Rumi!” Aunty Ani shouts louder this time.
“I only wanted to—” Mom tries to find her words, but I cut them down like they’re nothing more than weeds.
“It’s true,” I bark to anyone who is listening. “You think I don’t feel things as much as Lea did, but I do, you know. I feel a lot. And you didn’t care.” I’m squeezing the phone so hard I almost wish it would burst into ten thousand slivers of plastic and that Mom would hear the explosion and know that’s how I feel about her.
I don’t care what she has to say because I know the truth: She never would’ve sent Lea away. She would’ve grieved with her and been there for her. She would’ve made sure Lea knew she was loved. She would’ve made sure Lea knew the accident wasn’t her fault.
That Lea deserved to survive.
But Mom didn’t tell me any of those things. She was too busy grieving over the loss of her favorite daughter.
I’m the daughter who survived. I’m the daughter who is still here.
And Mom didn’t want me.
“I hate you. Don’t call me again.”
I click the phone off, throw it against the couch, and wander outside.
Aunty Ani doesn’t come after me. She’s probably too busy trying to call Mom back to comfort her, even though she deserves everything she’s feeling and more.
I look over at Kai’s house. I know the last time we saw each other I was running away from him—running away from the music. But I know Kai well enough to know he won’t make me explain myself. He won’t push for answers.
And I don’t want to talk right now. I just want to be somewhere else.
I walk to his front door and knock four times.
His mom appears and pushes the screen out so she can see me better. “Are you looking for Kai?” She smiles, and for the first time I notice how pretty she is. Her makeup is perfect and so is her hair, and her nails look like they were polished and shaped within the last hour.
I nod, and she calls for him from over her shoulder. When she looks back at me, I feel like she wants to talk, but my lips are pressed together so tightly and I’m still so furious with Mom that I don’t think anyone would be brave enough to start a conversation with me right now.
Except for Kai.
He’s already half smiling when he opens his mouth. “You look like you’re ready to hit someone.”
“Shut up. I’m in mourning,” I say sourly.
“Are you the one who killed the buggah? You come here fo’ one alibi?” Kai laughs.
“God, you really are insensitive.”
“My gift to you.” He pauses, his eyes twinkling. “Whatchu want anyway?”
I roll my eyes. “I want to go to the beach.”
“What—now you asking me out on a date, hapa?” he asks.
“No,” I correct. “I’m being neighborly. You said your dad is giving you a hard time about getting out of the house, and I’m practically a walking charity case. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Mmm.” He crosses his arms. “It kinda sounds like you the one asking fo’ a favor.”
“Look, do you want to go or not?”
“Is this how you talk to all your friends?” he asks.
I throw up my hands. “Forget it.”
When I’m back on the sidewalk, he shouts, “Okay, okay, okay. I go get my keys.”
Kai drives to the beach in his mom’s car. After we park, we make our way to the sand before pulling our flip-flops off and gravitating toward the edge of the water.
“Thanks,” I say after a moment. It comes out in one rushed, heavy syllable. I clear my throat. “I didn’t really want to be alone in the house.”
I’m surprised when he doesn’t smile. He simply breathes in the salty air. “No problem. But just fo’ let you know . . .” His voice trails off for a moment, and when it returns, his crooked grin makes an appearance too. “I would’ve wanted to hang out witchu anyway. Even if my dad wasn’t giving me a hard time about surfing.”
I pin my eyes to the caramel-colored sand. I know I have to focus on some part of what he said, so I go with the part that isn’t about me at all. “Aren’t you eighteen? He can’t really tell you what to do anymore. You can do whatever you want.”
Kai makes a face, but I don’t look closely enough to know if there’s any disappointment in it. “I don’t know how your parents raised you, but if I talked back to my dad like that he’d slap me upside the head.” He lets out a breath, dragging his feet through the sand. “Nah, it’s easier to keep the peace.”
I bite the side of my tongue. I don’t understand his passiveness. I don’t understand why he doesn’t have more fight in him. It’s his life, after all. Not his dad’s.
“What about you? You have college plans?” he asks.
“I still have one more year of high school,” I say, and a lump starts to form in my throat. This past year was the first time Lea and I had been in the same school together since junior high. We didn’t have any classes together, but that didn’t matter. It felt like we were finally closer in age somehow. It felt like we were finally where we were supposed to be.
I don’t want to go back next year and walk around the hallways where she won’t be. I don’t want to have to see her friends without her there. To pass by the locker that no longer belongs to her.
Sometimes I’m not sure if there is anywhere left in the world I can look where I won’t see the empty spaces she left behind.
Maybe we shared too much together. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to live without her—because everything I did, she did too.
I look out into the ocean. The horizon is aqua and white and so very far away. I couldn’t reach it if I tried. And maybe that’s what I need—something out of reach. Something that never belonged to Lea, so I can do something—anything—where I don’t see her.
Maybe that’s what I need to be able to write again—to play an instrument again. Maybe music is only painful because Lea’s still too close to my heart. Maybe I need her out of my head, even if only for a little while. I need enough time to finish “Summer Bird Blue.” Enough time to keep my promise and finally give her the wish I owe her.
If I never write another song after that, well, at least I won’t have let her down one more time. I already did too much of that when she was alive.
“Hey, next time you guys are all going back to Palekaiko Bay, can I come too?” I ask suddenly.
He looks surprised. “So you do like hanging out with us.”
“I . . . kind of want to go surfing.” Lea’s never been surfing before, and she’s never been to Hawaii, which means she can’t be out there—in the water, beyond the waves. She can’t exist in the place Kai goes to be free.
I don’t know what it means exactly, or what it is I’m trying to do. But it feels like the start of something.
He looks surprised. “You never told me you knew how fo’ surf.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, which implies I mean Yes, I totally do, even though I totally do not. But Lea never knew how to surf either, and right now that’s the only thing I care about.
He rubs the back of his neck. “You’re welcome anytime, hapa.” And then he straightens up and grins with the corner of his mouth. “How about tomorrow?”
I look up at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you going to make me wake up at seven in the morning?”
Laughing harder, he says, “We know each other so well.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gareth’s truck smells like vanilla air freshener. I settle in the back next to a recycled grocery bag of snacks. There’s not a lot of legroom, so I feel like my knees are up to my chest.
Kai looks over his shoulder. “You got enough room back there?”
I nod.
Gareth meets my eyes in the rearview mirror but doesn’t say anything. The three of us eat dried pineapple and granola bars in the truck. I breathe through my nose, the vanilla becoming less overpowering the longer I’m in the car. I’m nervous, and I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s suddenly dawning on me that Kai’s going to find out I lied about knowing how to surf. But I mean, how hard is it to float around on a surfboard and then balance for a couple of seconds? I’ve already watched Kai and Gareth do it. The waves weren’t twenty feet high and towering over them like something out of a movie. They were baby waves. I can do baby waves, right?
This will be good for you, I tell myself. To try something new. To take a break from the nightmare you’re living.
Gareth pulls up in a parking space next to the sand. I help carry a small cooler while he and Kai carry their surfboards toward the beach. Using the blue box as a seat while the boys survey the water, I start rethinking my plan for coming here today.
My fingers dig into my ribs. I watch Kai and Gareth pull their shirts off and toss them onto the sand in a pile.
“You can head out wit’ Kai first if you want,” Gareth says, stretching his arms out sleepily.
I look at Kai. Half-naked Kai who’s drinking out of a water bottle like he’s in a Gatorade commercial.
I’ve never really been nervous in front of a guy before, but I am in front of Kai. And not because of his missing shirt, but because it’s becoming more and more likely that he’s going to find out I know nothing about surfing.
But I need this. I need to have something that doesn’t feel like it belonged to Lea.
Baby waves, I repeat to myself. Maybe I need to watch them surf for a while longer. Maybe I need to build my confidence up.
I mean, I never told Kai I was an expert. I just want to try something new without having to point out to anyone that I’m trying something new.
I don’t want anyone to know I’m doing this to escape from Lea.
“You guys go ahead,” I say, trying to buy more time. “I’ll wait for Hannah to get here.” I shrug casually, when inside I feel like there are bugs rolling around in my stomach. I try to focus on the waves—on what I came here to do.
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