“I already said it was my fault,” I say, standing. “And anyway, I don’t need a babysitter. I can take care of myself.”
“You almost died,” Mr. Yamada yells, and my chest tightens. “I don’t know what they teach you these days to make you think you’re all invincible. This is the ocean. It’s not a playground.” He turns back to Kai. “If you want me to stop treating you like a child, then you need to stop acting like one.”
Kai’s face is red. He pulls his eyes away from his dad.
“Get in the car,” Mr. Yamada says.
Kai pauses, his fists clenched, and then he stalks off toward the blue Mustang in the parking lot.
Mr. Yamada turns back to me, his dark eyes unshaking. “I don’t want you hanging around Kai anymore. You’re trouble—all of you—but especially you.” He shakes his head. “You could’ve gotten my son killed too. You think it’s easy to pull a body out of the water? When I got here he was trying to drag you out. What if I had lost my son today because he was trying to save your life? Use your brain next time.”
And then they’re gone, and I’m shaking and not talking and eventually Gareth talks me into getting in the car. When I get home, I don’t change out of my clothes. I stand in the shower with the water running over me, pinning my eyes to the drain because it’s the only thing that doesn’t seem to be moving.
The rest of the world is spinning.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It’s dark outside when I creep toward the space between my aunt’s house and Kai’s. It’s mostly flat, with a few bushes and patches of grass that the lawn mower couldn’t reach. I look up at his window. The blinds are flat against the glass, but there’s light shining through.
I cup my hands over my mouth. “Kai,” I whisper. When he doesn’t answer, I try again. “Kai!”
There’s nothing. No movement, no sound, no change at all.
I roll my tongue against my cheek. I need him to listen to me. I need to explain.
My eyes scan the grass beneath my feet. I follow the path to a gravelly bit near the back fence and pick up a few small stones. Parking myself far enough away from his window for the stones to reach, I squeeze them in my hand.
I throw one. It clicks against the window and bounces back off.
I throw another one. It misses, clattering against the windowsill and falling somewhere in the bush.
I take an extra step back and throw another stone.
It sails straight into the window with a loud crash, the glass puncturing like someone just punched a hole in it. Glittery bits of window fall to the ground, the blinds swaying in the space they left behind.
Fuck.
The blinds fly open, and Kai stares at the glass in horror before peering down and seeing me standing below.
“What the hell, Rumi?”
“I’m sorry,” I hiss. “I was trying to get your attention.”
“By throwing a boulder through my window?” he growls.
My face twitches. “How was I supposed to know your window was made of rice paper?” I growl back.
“My dad is going to kill me,” Kai groans softly, a wave of realization washing over his face.
My heart quickens. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out, like I’m throwing my words at him. “Not just about the window, but about the whole almost-drowning thing too.”
Kai covers his face with his hands. “I’m dead. I’m literally dead.”
“I can fix this,” I say quickly.
His hands fly apart. “How? Are you as good at house repairs as you are at swimming?”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, you’re mad at me. I get that.”
“Mad at you?” Kai tilts his head back like he wants to scream. “You have no idea what you’ve done. My mom spent the entire night convincing my dad that I should be allowed to hang out with my friends until boot camp. He barely agreed. But when he sees this?” He shakes his head. “I’m screwed.”
I shrug awkwardly in the grass, not knowing what to say. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Don’t,” Kai warns. “I don’t want any help from you. You’ve done enough. Just . . . go home, Rumi.” Not “hapa.” He lowers the blinds, and just like that he’s gone.
* * *
I ask Aunty Ani what she thinks I should do. She tells me to leave it alone. She says she’ll talk to Mrs. Yamada about paying for the window.
I ask Mr. Watanabe what he thinks I should do. He tells me to be quiet and listen to the music.
So I ask the music what I should do.
It answers in ukulele strums and woodsy hums and soft claps. I feel like that’s all the answer I need.
* * *
I knock on Kai’s front door the next time I see the Mustang in the driveway. I’m not sure if Kai’s home, but I don’t care. This feels important.
Mr. Yamada pulls the door open and pushes the screen out in one fluid movement so that he’s completely visible, the same way I am to him.
“What do you want?” he asks without breaking his stern face.
I lean back on my heels, feeling the weight of his presence trying to push me off the steps. “It wasn’t Kai’s fault. I’m the irresponsible one, not him. I’m the one who broke the window, just like I’m the one who decided to wander into the ocean by myself. Please don’t punish him because of something careless I did.”
He blinks.
I hate the silence, so I keep talking. “I don’t really know why I even did it. The surfing, I mean. Not the window. I know why I broke the window. I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose. I was only trying to get Kai’s attention. Not by breaking the window, just by throwing a pebble at it, like they do in the movies, you know? Have you ever seen—never mind; that’s not important. I guess maybe I underestimated the pebble, kind of like how I underestimated my ability to swim. I’m not very good at that, you know. Thinking. My head isn’t in the right place these days. That’s why I wanted to be in the water—to be free of everything clouding my head. But that’s not an excuse—I should’ve been more responsible. I should’ve thought. About the swimming and the window.” I pause and breathe. “And about how it could’ve put Kai in danger. I’m sorry about that part too.”
It’s quiet for a really long time.
Mr. Yamada’s nostrils flare. “There’s something wrong with you.”
I nod. “I can see why you think that.”
He assesses me, and I wait to be assessed. It’s as uncomfortable as it sounds.
“I’ll pay for it,” I insist. “Tell me what the window costs, and I’ll come up with the money somehow.”
He takes a few moments to speak, and when he does his words are drawn out. “You need to learn how to swim.”
I shift my weight to the other leg.
“If you’re going to hang out with Kai,” he says, “you need to learn. You might not care about your own future, but at least try to care about his. Never put him in danger like that again.”
I look into the darkness of his eyes, and I see something I didn’t notice earlier. They’re like marbles, reflecting the world in an obscure, deformed way. I thought he was the kind of person who saw things in black and white, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe he doesn’t see colors—maybe he sees shapes.
And suddenly I understand him more than I did before. Because maybe it’s only when you understand mortality that you see things from so many different angles instead of shades.
He cares about Kai. He doesn’t want him to get hurt. And maybe that’s because he knows what it’s like to lose someone. To watch their life end. Maybe he has his own Lea he carries with him all the time.
Or maybe I’m projecting feelings and emotions that are way more complicated than any seventeen-year-old should be dealing with.
Still. I wonder if I’ll end up like Mr. Yamada one day. Trying to control things I simply don’t have the right to control.
“I won’t put Kai in danger. I promise,” I say, and I mean it.
He nods. “And pay me back for the window before
the summer ends.” And then the door closes and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my chest and replaced with a different weight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’m not really sure why I did it. At first I wanted to get away from her. But then I felt her, out there in the water. It’s like she was calling me. I wanted to be near her.” I look up from the floor.
Mr. Watanabe grunts from his chair and scratches the space behind Poi’s ears.
I relax back into the floor, the hum of the fan above me and the scratch of the record player filling the room. “I don’t want to die.” I pause. “Does that make me a bad person? Because I feel empty, but not empty enough to want to die? Would a better sister have wanted to kill herself?”
“Dat’s a silly kine question,” he says shortly. “Love no mean fo’ you go join da uddah persons in dea’ grave. Mo’ bettah you live your life wit’ honor. An’ dat’s how you goin’ go honor da person dat you love—by living. If you go talk dying all da time, you t’rowing your life away. You t’rowing away all dea’ memories too.”
“I guess.” I take a deep breath. I don’t know how to talk about Lea without talking about death. They kind of go together now. It’s like talking about surfing without ever mentioning the ocean. They’re a two-part deal.
“Now, be quiet. I like hear dis song.” Mr. Watanabe leans back and closes his eyes. Poi settles her head in his arm, her nose tucked into his side.
I wait until I hear the rumbles of Poi’s snoring. I know Mr. Watanabe’s isn’t far behind, and I don’t really like hanging around during their naps. It makes me feel intrusive. And besides, I’m starting to think I’ve done enough sleeping for the time being.
I go back home and find Aunty Ani on the couch. She sits up straight when she sees me, brushing a long strand of hair away from her face.
With two fingers, she pushes a large package wrapped in white tissue paper across the coffee table.
I don’t have to pick it up to recognize Mom’s handwriting. Rumi. As if a single word is good enough. As if one word is going to make everything better.
Aunty Ani stands up and grabs her purse. “I’m going to the store. You need anything?” She’s escaping while there’s still time. It’s probably a good idea.
“I’m fine,” I say, and then it’s just me and the package.
My fingers find the edge, and I rip the top off in one motion. Tilting the package to the side, I slide the contents onto my hand to reveal a journal. It’s white with a small blue bird in the middle.
Of course it is. Because Mom always took our lyric ideas so literally. To her, “Summer Bird Blue” was literally a bluebird.
I wish I had it in me to smile, because I know Lea would’ve laughed too. We would have told Mom she was a nerd, but it’s one of the reasons we loved her so much. Because she was always, always our biggest fan, even when she got it so completely wrong.
She wanted to be a part of us. She wanted to be included.
Which is why I don’t understand why she doesn’t want to be included now, when it’s just me and I need her so badly.
I open the cover. The pages are unlined and completely white, except for the first page. Mom left me a message.
You’ve always had a beautiful voice. Please don’t lose it.
It’s a lyric journal.
I want to be furious at her for getting me such a nice present. I wait for the rage to build and build until it explodes from my chest like there’s lava and fire and millions of orange and red embers all over the room.
But the anger doesn’t come. It’s been replaced with something else. Something that feels like thick cotton lodged in my throat, which disappears when I pay too much attention to it.
A memory
I open my eyes and see Mom flipping through one of our spiral-bound notebooks. We write all our lyrics in the spare pages between school assignments, but we’ve gone through so many notebooks now that it’s starting to get confusing keeping track of everything. There are a lot of bent pages and folded corners and tape stuck to the edges like bookmarks.
Mom looks down at me and smiles. “You guys look comfy.”
I look over at Lea, sleeping next to me in our cocoon of blankets. We took three of the dining room chairs and made a tent in our bedroom with a strip of Christmas lights that didn’t make it on the tree this year.
“She didn’t want to sleep in her own bed. I don’t think she likes fourth grade,” I whisper, careful to not wake Lea.
“Probably because it’s her first time in school without you,” Mom says gently.
“Maybe she could skip ahead to my grade. She’s really smart, you know,” I say.
Mom’s teeth are like two rows of pearls. “I don’t think it works like that, honey. Besides, don’t you like having your own friends for a change?”
I shrug. “I’d rather have Lea.”
She nods and waves the notebook. “You two are running out of space.”
“If Babang sends Christmas money, we’re going to buy a new one,” I say.
Mom sets the notebook on the desk and leans into the tent. She plants a kiss on my forehead and covers me up with the blanket. “You go back to sleep. You’ve got school in the morning.”
My head sinks into the pillow. “Did you just get home?”
She smiles. “I have to go back out. Night shifts are good money. Jenny’s downstairs if you need anything, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Mom kisses Lea on the cheek and waves her fingers at me one more time before slipping out of the room.
When we wake up in the morning, there’s a new notebook waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. And not a spiral-bound one—a thick moleskin one with a black cover and perfectly blank pages.
Lea’s so happy she jumps up and down and squeals like a cartoon character. I want to thank Mom, but she’s fast asleep in her bed, still wearing her makeup because she was too tired to wash her face.
I don’t look at the blank pages now and think of how much I hate Mom. I think of how much Lea would’ve loved this gift.
Something cool fills my chest, like rain after a drought. Maybe this is my answer. Maybe Lea isn’t out in the sea or in the clouds or somewhere out of reach. Maybe she’s here in the blank pages, waiting for me to meet her, waiting for me to find my way back to her.
I try to let the words take over, the way they used to when it was just me and the music. I even find a pen in my room and open the journal to the first empty page.
But the lyrics don’t come.
Lea might’ve loved this gift, but that doesn’t mean I have to. Mom is trying to make up for not being here, the way she always tried to make up for not being there, and it’s not good enough. Not this time.
I spent most of my life looking after my sister. I made excuses for Mom and took care of Lea when she couldn’t be around. I was practically her second parent.
Mom’s apologies and presents and excuses worked in the past because Lea was a child and because I didn’t want Lea to feel abandoned the way I did. She was too young to understand about Dad and too naive to understand about Mom.
But I’m not a child, and Lea doesn’t need my protection anymore.
And it should’ve been my turn to be the kid, not the parent. Not the understanding one, who accepts Mom’s excuses and sees the world through rose-tinted glasses.
All those years I spent looking after Lea . . . Who was looking after me?
Who is looking after me?
Not fucking Mom, that’s for sure.
Without really thinking, I start scribbling words into the journal. Angry, black scratches into the paper. But it’s not a song.
It’s a letter to Mom.
I tell her how angry I am that she left me.
I tell her how hurt I am that she’s more absent with one daughter than she ever was with two.
I tell her she’s the reason I can’t write any l
yrics, because I’m so full of rage that I can’t concentrate on anything except for how mad I am.
I tell her that I need her, but I shouldn’t have to tell her that—she should just know.
I tell her I resent her for never realizing how badly I needed to be a child now and then, instead of always looking after Lea.
I tell her I’ll probably never forgive her for choosing to grieve alone, without me.
I tell her . . .
I tell her . . .
I tell her . . .
I don’t stop writing until my wrist is cramped and I can hardly hold the pen, and even then, my brain is full of all the things I still need to say.
And when I look over my words, my heart pounding through my ears and my breath catching after every sentence, I feel a little bit lighter.
It might not be a song, but at least I wrote something.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aunty Ani asks me how I plan to pay the Yamada family back for breaking their window when I don’t have any money. I tell her that’s a good question.
After lunch she tells me she’s been to see Mrs. Yamada, and that she agreed to let me work part-time at Palekaiko Bay’s hotel salon to pay off the “destruction charge.” I’m not sure if those were Mrs. Yamada’s words or Aunty Ani’s, but when I show up at the hotel the next day, nobody acts like I’ve broken a window at all.
“Howzit?” Mrs. Yamada smiles from behind a woman with foils in her hair. She looks over her shoulder. “Jae-Jae, can you show Rumi around? Show her how everything works?”
“Oh, oh yeah,” says a hurried voice. A young woman with a silvery-blond bob and sharp cheekbones appears from the back room. She curls her finger a few times in the air like she’s trying to pull me toward her.
Up close, I can see flecks of rainbow-tinted glitter along her bottom eyelashes. Her perfume smells like cotton candy, and she’s wearing acid-wash overalls that look like they’ve been hacked off above the knee with a pair of children’s scissors. She also towers over me like she’s a supermodel. Or a Christmas tree.
She smiles at me with just her lips. They’re painted a matte purple. And not a dark, velvety kind of purple—it’s more like a neon lilac.
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