Summer Bird Blue

by Akemi Dawn Bowman

  But Lea liked practicing on mine. She said it was easier to braid than hers. So I let it grow longer and longer until it slowed somewhere in the middle of my back. And I got used to Lea playing with my hair all the time. It was nice—like she wasn’t the little sister I was still taking care of. Instead, she was the one taking care of me. And I guess that felt nice, to not be the second parent. To be her equal.

  I can feel her fingers sometimes, scraping against my scalp and weaving through the black strands that don’t understand the meaning of the word “volume.” I don’t know how I feel about cutting my hair now—the hair that Lea loved. Once it’s gone, it will be gone forever. I’ll never have hair again that Lea played with and giggled behind and envied at times. I’ll have hair that Lea’s never seen.

  Jae-Jae shrugs. “Nothing is wrong with it. I mean, you do kind of have that Wednesday Addams thing going on.”

  “Who?” I repeat.

  “The Addams Family? Tim Burton? Nineties classic?” Jae-Jae looks horrified.

  I shake my head.

  She sighs, and it’s almost a purr. “You don’t know the joy you’re missing. Everything good came from the nineties, but for some reason it’s the most underrated decade of all time.”

  The door opens and Kai walks in. The light shines behind him, and he almost looks like a shadow with his dark complexion and his sturdy frame. When he sees me, he throws his hand up in a shaka sign.

  “Howzit?” he asks, leaning over the counter. His hair has sharp, angled lines; he looks like he could be one of the hair models plastered all over the room. Even Jae-Jae is staring at him almost giddily.

  Hannah was wrong about Kai being pretty. He’s bordering on unrealistic, even if he does have big ears and a weird freckle. I wonder if anyone else has noticed it before? I kind of hope they haven’t. I kind of want to be the only one who knows there’s a freckle in the corner of his eye, that there’s the tiniest hint of red in his hair when the sun shines on it, that one of his eyes is half a millimeter smaller than the other, that sometimes he smells like burnt sugar and firewood, and that sometimes when he catches me smiling, he looks like someone who made it through an entire piano piece without making a single mistake. Like making me smile is a triumph.

  I also kind of want Jae-Jae to stop looking at him the way she is.

  I swivel my chair back and forth like I’m bored. Mrs. Yamada is rinsing someone’s hair at the back of the salon, and Jae-Jae is waiting for her next nail appointment to turn up. There are two other girls who normally work here too, but one called in sick and the other is on her lunch break. It’s a slow day.

  “Is that Kai?” Mrs. Yamada calls from the back. “Did you pick up lunch?”

  “It’s here,” Kai replies, lifting a semi-transparent white bag onto the counter. “They didn’t have Spam musubi, so I got you the beef curry.”

  “Did you get some for the girls?” she asks, appearing at the top of several steps. A woman with a towel wrapped around her head follows her to one of the chairs.

  Kai nods. “Beef curry fo’ everybody.”

  Jae-Jae reaches into the bag and takes one of the boxes. “Thanks, Aunty Sun.”

  “You’re welcome, my dear,” Mrs. Yamada replies in a singsong voice right before the hair dryer drowns out the noise.

  Kai holds up his hands and jokingly scoffs in Jae-Jae’s direction. “What about me? You think the food walked in here by itself?”

  Jae-Jae taps him on the nose once. “Thank you, Kai. You’re a real sweetheart.”

  I stop swiveling the chair back and forth and feel the coil of something green crawling through me.

  He lets his arms drop and smiles proudly. He pulls two more boxes out and pushes one toward me before flipping his own carton open and digging in with a plastic fork.

  I mumble a “Thank you,” and the three of us eat near the cash register, our eyes following the passing hotel guests outside the window for potential customers, but nobody comes in.

  I’m focused on my food, feeling a weird sense of agitation building up inside me before I realize it’s because I’m trying not to look at Kai. What is wrong with me? Since when did being around Kai make me so self-conscious?

  I try to distract myself in the mess of beef curry instead.

  “You seem quiet today,” he says, taking another bite of sticky white rice.

  “This is how I always am.” I stab a piece of beef with my fork, frowning.

  He shakes his head in disagreement, the stray pieces of black hair moving back and forth against his forehead.

  Jae-Jae nods toward me but looks at Kai. “I’m trying to convince her to let me do something with her hair. I think she’s worried she can’t trust me.”

  He blinks up at her silvery-blond bob. “I don’t blame her.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to make her look like me. You can’t replicate perfection like this.”

  Kai laughs. “Whatchu think, Rumi? You interested in turning into one fairy-cyborg?”

  I drop my fork into the empty to-go box and straighten my back. “I don’t want a haircut. I made a promise.”

  “You promised someone you wouldn’t cut your hair?” Jae-Jae asks, resting her chin in her hand so her glitter-infused nails frame her jawline.

  “Yeah. We were going to get ours cut at the same time,” I say.

  “Well, tell them to come too. I’ll do you both,” Jae-Jae offers.

  “I can’t,” I say, and Kai’s eyes dip down because he already knows I can’t make it through a single conversation without talking about Lea. “I promised my sister.”

  The two of them go awkwardly quiet, and a few seconds later the door opens. Jae-Jae looks like she’s going to explode with relief as she greets her next client and leads her to the nail area.

  Kai scrunches his face and peers at me with accusing eyes. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Did what?”

  “You used the dead sistah card to get out of a haircut.”

  My eyes widen. “I did not!”

  “You absolutely did.” He shakes his head. “You weren’t even trying to hide it.”

  “There’s no such thing as a ‘dead sister card,’ ” I say. “You’re an ass for even saying that.”

  He laughs lightly. “I never said I was sensitive. But I am honest.”

  I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling too.

  Smiling.

  At Kai.

  Who is so obnoxious I want to push his face into the beef curry.

  And then he says he has to leave, but would I want to go to the Coconut Shack with him later tonight because it’s open-mic night and he knows I like music, and I say yes because, well, I don’t know what is going on with me but I don’t have the energy to stop it.

  What is happening to me and why don’t I hate it?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  We’re sitting in the Coconut Shack watching a parade of amateur singers take their turn on the stage, and to my relief, the music doesn’t make me want to run away. It steadies me somehow, the way it does at Mr. Watanabe’s house.

  Two women are singing a duet, their voices like a pair of songbirds perched in an apricot tree. Happy, delicate, and bright. And when I close my eyes, I can feel Lea’s spirit drifting through my thoughts, reminding me what it was like to be up on a stage with my best friend and a piano.

  I might not be ready to perform—I might not be ready to sing—but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it.

  When the song ends, Kai claps his hands beside me. His eyebrows are raised, and one side of his mouth is curled up in a smile. “Was pretty good, eh?”

  I nod but pull my eyes away from him. I know we’re friends, but does he have to smile at me the way he does? With his mischievous eyes and baby-smooth skin and the way his face dimples like he’s always on the edge of a punchline?

  He’s too . . . happy. I’m worried it’s contagious.

  Lea was always the romantic one, not me. Mom says I might be a
late bloomer, but I’m not so sure. Late implies there’s something that’s still going to happen—something I don’t fully understand yet.

  But I do understand it. I can see why some people like falling in love, over and over again, because it’s addictive and it feels good. It’s like opening presents on Christmas—that immense wave of excitement, followed by blissful happiness. I assume love must be something like that; otherwise why would people keep doing it?

  But people fall out of love too, the same way people want different presents the next time Christmas rolls around. Because their tastes change, or they need something different, or they want something new.

  I mean, it’s a lot of pressure to be expected to love someone so much forever. Someone who isn’t a family member or a pet. Someone who isn’t guaranteed to love you forever back.

  It’s also a lot of pressure to know exactly who you’re looking for. It’s not like saying, “I’d like a coloring book for Christmas,” and being happy no matter what kind of coloring book shows up. Because not everyone is compatible with each other. Love is specific. And if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, you risk wasting months or years getting to know someone who is ultimately not “the one.” What’s the point of wasting all that time?

  That’s the part I don’t understand. Time isn’t replaceable, and you never know how much of it you have left. Why waste so much of it on dating?

  It doesn’t make me a late bloomer—it makes me practical.

  I don’t know what I’m looking for in love. I don’t even think I’m looking for love at all. I don’t see people and feel that rush of excitement Lea always described when she had a crush—the kind of excitement that leads to touching and kissing and whatever else. I just see people that might make good friends, and I’ve always been okay with that.

  Which is why Kai’s ridiculous jawline is bugging the crap out of me.

  I don’t know what it means.

  Kai turns and says something to Gareth, who’s sitting beside him with a can of soda in his hand. Hannah is here too, without her brother. She leans toward me, and I catch the scent of the strawberry body butter she’s always putting on her hands and arms. It makes her smell like dessert.

  “You should go up there,” she urges, motioning toward the small stage where a young man is sitting on a stool with his guitar. “You’d totally kill it.” She’s wearing big silver earrings and her hair is in two braids. They kind of remind me of Lea—she wore her hair in two braids all the time as a kid because she wanted to be Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

  “Last time I tried to sing in front of people it didn’t go so well,” I say sheepishly.

  Hannah waves her hand like what happened the other day wasn’t a big deal at all. “Everyone gets nervous. But you can sing. You belong up there.”

  I don’t know how to explain that I wasn’t nervous—I felt my dead sister’s ghost nearby and I panicked. Because singing makes me feel close to her, and being close to her reminds me of all the things I never said to her and should have. All the things I can’t undo.

  “Maybe another time,” I say instead.

  But after another few songs, being on that stage is all I can think about. Music is what makes my heart beat. The thrill of performing is something that’s impossible to replicate.

  First the room would empty, and then my chest would empty, and then suddenly my heart would dissolve into pieces all around me, swirling like a tornado of everything I feel inside. When I’m performing on a stage I’m connected to everything and everyone, yet somehow it is still just Lea and me in front of the world. And the moment before the first note—the moment before the first piano chord or guitar strum or word—is like closing your eyes during a snowstorm, and the next time you open them you’re surrounded by grass and flowers and the warmth of spring.

  It was like waking up and realizing you’ve landed in Oz.

  I miss the stage. I miss my music. I said I’d never miss anything as much as I miss Lea, and I won’t for as long as I live, but maybe I can miss something in a different way. Maybe hearts have layers, and the layer that misses Lea is simply different from the layer that misses creating songs.

  I look up at Hannah and Gareth and Kai. Am I a bad person for making friends? For wanting to be on that stage, even if it’s by myself? For having fun on the beach and smiling with Kai and maybe wanting to cut my hair?

  Does it make me a bad person for wanting to move on?

  I don’t know what that means about me as a person. I don’t want to move on from Lea—I never could—but moving on from my grief? From the pain? From feeling the overwhelming ache of her loss?

  I guess I want it to stop. I want to go somewhere else—be someone else—and fly away from it all, like a bird.

  I want to be free of my own sadness.

  And maybe I am a bad person for wanting these things when Lea can’t want anything ever again, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing anymore. If I ever knew what I was doing. I don’t know what the rules are for grieving.

  And more important, when can I stop?

  Mom should be the one helping me with this. She should be here, right now, telling me what I should be feeling. But she left me in an ocean of pain and didn’t bother to make sure I knew how to swim.

  A guy strumming a guitar starts to sing. It’s a sad song—like broken marionette puppets and rain pouring down on an abandoned fun fair. But it fills my soul with something powerful—something necessary.

  The music fills me with life.

  I take in a breath of air like I’m coming up from the sea, and the music transports me to a foreign shore. Somewhere high up in the clouds where my thoughts are crisp and sharp and I feel like I’m floating above the entire world.

  I can’t swim, but I’ve taken flight.

  And I know I should never feel guilty about loving music. Not when it means feeling closer to my sister. Closer to myself.

  I need to be myself again, before the person I was vanishes forever. I hope Lea can forgive me for that. For missing the normalcy of being confused, indifferent, cynical old me. The version of me who didn’t know what it was like to lose a sister—the version of me that always existed through music.

  Kai brings back sodas for everyone and a plate of nachos for us to share. At some point we’re sitting so close together our arms graze—twice—and neither of us says anything, but we both look at each other when it happens.

  I don’t know what I feel when I look at Kai. I think he’s attractive, and smug, and really confident, and maybe even a little cool. But I don’t know if that’s an equation for anything at all. Because when I look at Hannah I think she’s attractive, and not smug, and really confident, and very cool. I don’t understand what the difference is supposed to be. Lea always talked about a spark—the thrill of magic or lightning or fireworks.

  But those are the feelings I get from music. Can I just be in love with music?

  Because music is a carnival at night, lit up by a thousand stars and bursting with luminescent colors and magical illusions.

  Music is magic and lightning and fireworks.

  Music is going to help me live.

  I just need to find my way back to it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The next time we’re all at the beach, I finally get to meet Gareth’s sister, Izzy.

  She’s built like a gymnast and probably has more muscles than Kai, Gareth, and Jerrod combined. When she shakes my hand, she squeezes hard. It makes me squeeze hard back, and when I do she flashes her teeth.

  “I like a girl wit’ a strong handshake,” she says.

  “Izzy is da one I was telling you about—da one in da band,” Gareth says. He looks proud of her, like he looks up to her. It’s how Lea used to look at me.

  We sit in the middle of the sand—me, Kai, Hannah, Jerrod, Gareth, and Izzy—and nobody has a surfboard with them today. Instead, they have a red and white cooler filled with ice and drinks and a beach bag f
illed with food ready to barbecue.

  While Hannah and Gareth set the coals and hover over the growing fire, Kai and Jerrod throw a football back and forth a few yards from the incoming waves. Izzy sits across from me, her guitar slung around her neck, and she strums effortlessly while she’s watching their game. She doesn’t have to think twice about what chords she’s playing—her hands just remember what they should be doing.

  She catches me looking at her a few times, and eventually she says, “Gareth told me you have a really good voice.”

  “It’s okay, I guess.”

  She pulls the guitar strap from her neck. “I know dat look. I know a fellow musician when I see one. You looking at my guitar da way one surfer looks at da water—you like jump in.” She holds the instrument toward me. “Go try play.”

  I want to object, but I can’t. Not after watching the stage at the Coconut Shack and hearing the music call out to me. My hand is shaking as I take the guitar from her. I tuck it against me, my thumb hanging above the top string and my other hand forming a chord.

  Breathe. Just breathe.

  The notes rush back to me as easily as they did on the piano, except I’m not hiding in Mr. Watanabe’s spare room. I’m out in the open, surrounded by the entire world, with the ocean and the sky and land all around me. There’s nothing to hide my voice or my notes. I’m exposed.

  I sing the lyrics to Lorde’s “Liability,” change chords, strum a melody, and I’m so lost in the lyrics and the emotion in the song that I close my eyes and Izzy isn’t there anymore—it’s just me and Lea.

  She’s here. She’s right here.

  My chest tightens. I feel like I’m trying to keep my heart from splitting in half. Maybe it will always hurt to think about her—to see her. But I don’t care. I want her here with me.

  I don’t want to be alone anymore.

  She’s wearing a pair of jeans with holes all over them—a staple in her closet—and an Amélie T-shirt we always fought over. It’s so worn and faded that you can hardly recognize the film cover at all. We loved it—we loved the soundtrack, and the movie, and how the T-shirt was one of so many things we just loved the same.