Fierce as the Wind

by Tara Wilson Redd

  “Good lord, two years?” Trinity says after the silence gets too long. “Men don’t have enough balls you could possibly kick to make that right.”

  “I beg to differ,” Wyatt says. “Maybe repeat applications would be required.”

  “I mean, what can you even do to get back at a guy for that?”

  “Same thing he did to me,” I say. “Damnatio memoriae.”

  X rolls his eyes, grinning at me. “Show-off. What does that mean?”

  “Erase him. Forget him. Strike his name from history.”

  My friends consider the idea. “I like it,” Rei says at last. “The worst punishment is to be forgotten. And he deserves it. I mean, what a scumbag.”

  “He’s not even a bag of scum. He’s a full bucket,” Lani says.

  “Oh, I like that,” Trinity says. “That should be his name now, if we’re really striking it. Scumbucket.”

  “God, that’s perfect,” Rei says, laughing. She stands. She plays a pretend trumpet, then unrolls a mimed scroll. “Hear ye, hear ye, the cheating piece of garbage formerly playing the role of Miho’s Boyfriend is to be known henceforth as Scumbucket.”

  My friends cheer.

  “What say you, my lady?” Rei asks. “Yea or nay?”

  “Yea,” I say. They cheer again.

  Scumbucket. I play with it in my head. I love it, because Scumbucket loved naming things. My bike was Balius, though I never called it that. Secretly, I never thought my bike needed a name. It’d be like naming my hand. His car was Xanthus. I let him pick my dog’s name. He even named his junk. He called it Byron.

  Scumbucket. I name him for once.

  As though by telepathic consensus, we all turn to the ocean.

  How can anywhere on our planet hold this much color and light?

  I forget, for a second, that we’re all standing here because a boy took my heart and stomped on it.

  “God, what a Friday,” Lani says. “I can’t believe this all happened yesterday. In just one day!”

  “One day can change everything,” I say. “It’s terrifying. Anything is possible.”

  chapter four

  There are no trailer parks in Hawai’i. They rust, and the wind hates them, and people think they’re ugly. Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many people are homeless so long as you never have to see a trailer from your five-million-dollar windows.

  Where I live is the closest spiritual equivalent to a trailer park, so that’s what we call it. The Trailer Park. Dad and his three best friends planned it this way: that they’d all get old living off the grid in these “definitely not a trailer” houses in Hawai’i, away from all the mistakes they made on the mainland. Of course, they didn’t plan on me.

  This morning my friends split up into different cars at the beach: Lani and Trin, Rei and Wyatt, me and X. X dropped me off on his way to school. He’s missing the bell for sure, but it’s spring semester of senior year, and everyone I know is a shoo-in for their dream schools. X got a full ride at Cornell. Rei got her Juilliard acceptance last week, which is tragically far from Wyatt at Stanford—early admission, he’s known since November. Lani will probably go to UH Hilo as a cover for expanding her food truck business because her mom has no imagination. Trinity is headed to MIT, but will be biting her nails until she gets the letter. The school literally paid for her to visit during some diversity outreach program, where they ship in a bunch of minority kids they want to apply. They wine and dine—well, pop and pizza—them for a whole week. They show them all the cool labs, get them talking to current students, sell them on it. She’s obviously getting in. She got to see snow in Boston. It was the first time she’d ever seen snow and it blew her mind. She’s the first person in generations of her family to leave Hawai’i, even for vacation. All my friends are outliers and prodigies. Even Scumbucket got into his dream school: a tiny college called Reed in Oregon. He was planning on taking a gap year to backpack around Europe. Now he’ll spend it drowning in diapers.

  I’m the only one without a plan or a future.

  I stomp up the drive to the cluster of four tiny houses, each a different color. Mine is the purple one on the end. In the big clearing in front of the houses, our three neighbors are in their usual place. Mr. Bu and Mr. Kalani are sitting on overturned buckets with Mr. Oshiro, staring down at the game of Go. They are all drinking beer. It’s eight a.m.

  Mr. Oshiro reaches over Mr. Bu’s shoulder. Mr. Bu swats his hand away.

  Mr. Oshiro sighs. “But you could—”

  “If you want to play, you are more than welcome,” says Mr. Bu.

  “Why can’t we play checkers?” asks Mr. Kalani.

  “Because Go is a game of elegance and strategy, and checkers is a game played by kindergartners you must entertain at family reunions,” Mr. Oshiro snaps. “You could learn Go if you only tried.”

  “Did I lose?” Mr. Kalani asks.

  “You both lost and you’re both too stupid to see it,” Mr. Oshiro says with a sigh. He notices me and smiles. Then he looks at his watch. I sprint past them before he can ask me why I’m not in school. I’m winded when I get there and almost trip over the minefield of slippers and shoes outside the door.

  “Miho?” Dad asks. He is scrubbing the sink. He likes things clean.

  I knew I’d have to face him. There’s no sneaking around in this house. The whole layout is a straight shot back down one hall: kitchen, living room, Dad’s bedroom, bathroom, my bedroom. A trailer without wheels. The houses in the Trailer Park are identical. In the others, my neighbors have hobbies at the end of their hallways. Mr. Bu has his workshop, Mr. Kalani his sumi-e painting, Mr. Oshiro his bizarre conspiracy-theory geographical monitoring system that makes me wonder if he is slightly unhinged. I don’t know what Dad originally had at the end of his hall, because by the time I got there, it was all set up for me.

  Achilles comes out and yips hello at me, bouncing off the walls. Even my tripod dog has two up on my monopod dad who has his old battered plastic leg on, the one with the huge crack in it that he literally duct-taped back together, paired with his hideous dad shorts. He has a much nicer leg and many pairs of inoffensive shorts, but god forbid he ever wear them.

  “Silence, Aki-chan,” he snaps at Achilles. “Miho, you should be in school.”

  “It was a rough night.”

  “I gathered. You should be in school.”

  “I’m sick,” I say.

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  “I’ve already asked you. And you need to answer me,” he says. I sit down on the tiny loveseat. Our house isn’t big enough for a couch.

  “I got my heart broke,” I say.

  “What happened with—”

  “His name is Scumbucket now,” I interrupt. Dad stops cleaning and turns around to look at me.

  “What?” he asks. His yellow gloves squeak as he crosses his arms.

  “Trinity came up with it. I never want to hear his name again. I am striking him from the record.”

  “Because?”

  “Reasons,” I say, not sure I want to tell him. “He broke up with me.”

  “I’m sorry, Miho. But you still have to go to school.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Dad. He’s been dating someone else the whole time we were together.”

  “Even so. School.”

  “He got her pregnant. He’s marrying her.”

  “And I believe that you can consider the lesson there from your seat in class.”

  I stare at him, narrow my eyes. He narrows his right back.

  “Do you not have one word of sympathy for your heartbroken offspring?”

  “Miho. I love you. When you hurt, I hurt. But this is not the end of the world, and you must go to school. Think about your colleg
e applications.”

  “I’m not going to college.”

  “You got a sixteen hundred on your SAT. We all know you’re going to college, you stubborn mule of a child. And when you go back to your teachers for college recommendations, when colleges look at your grades, they need to see that you are as exceptional on paper as I know you are.”

  I groan and cover my face with a pillow. We’ve been going back and forth about this for about a year now. My dad didn’t go to college. He says I’m too smart not to. I say we’re too poor for me to go. He says X got a full ride to Cornell. I say X is going to be a Silicon Valley billionaire, and my number one marketable skill is delivering pizzas on a bike. He says art is just as important as computers. Him: loans. Me: debt. Him: investment. Me: waste. He keeps saying, “You won’t even try,” like I’m lazy or something. He doesn’t get it.

  “Time heals all wounds,” he says. “I bet you can still make second period.” He reaches for his keys with the gloves still on.

  “God, could you pretend that my feelings matter for one second? The great romance of my life has ended. Have a heart.”

  “I know you are too smart to believe that. Maybe this is a good lesson for you. Maybe next time you will listen before you involve yourself with…a Scumbucket.”

  I engage in another eye-narrowing.

  “Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. You only said that he was pretentious. You didn’t say that he was a Scumbucket.”

  “You will recall, I also said that he seemed untrustworthy. That he wasn’t treating you like you deserve to be treated.”

  “That’s just what all dads say.”

  “All dads are right. A man who won’t introduce you to his friends, his parents, let you be a part of his life except in some video game or on a phone…he is not trustworthy. And now you know.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Now I know.”

  Dad sighs.

  “You can be sick today, Miho, and I will call your school. But come Monday, you are going back to class, and don’t think you’re getting off easy with last night’s escapades either. You smell like drugs.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, even though I do not smell like drugs. I smell like burned shoes. “I mean, our neighbors are getting tipsy on the lawn at eight in the morning like they do every single day, but I spend a night on wholesome vigorous exercise and I’m the delinquent.”

  “You better not be smoking drugs.”

  “Send in the drug dog if you don’t believe me,” I say, pointing to Achilles, who couldn’t find a steak smack in the middle of the kitchen floor. “It’s bike stink.”

  “Don’t you lie to me.”

  “Never,” I say, heading to my room. I do stink.

  “Miho?” he calls after me. I turn around. “I am sorry. I know you cared about him a lot.”

  “I loved him, Dad. I thought he loved me.”

  “I know, my flower. Sleep it off.”

  chapter five

  I wake up before the sun rises on Saturday morning, and it’s all still true. I tell myself not to think about him, swear up and down that he’s not going to take one more day of my life. The drama is done. He’s a jerk and I’m over it. Completely. Who even cares.

  I look at my phone. It’s full of messages from my friends, most of which are Scumbucket hot takes: what a pretentious douchebag he is, how his dick is tiny, how he’ll probably go bald. That’s nothing on the shade they have cultivated for her. My phone is getting blown up with the Shade Olympics. She’s basic, she’s a J. Crew jock, an airhead, and my personal favorite, she “looks like an ugly mushroom.” The crew has texted several convincing examples of fungal specimens. I can see the resemblance. I join in: “Fail that is a cute mushroom.”

  Trin hits back in a minute: “That mushroom kills people.”

  “Confirmed by Eagle Scout,” Wyatt adds. “Do not apply mouth to shroom.”

  “Too late,” Rei chimes in. “RIP Scumbucket.”

  I laugh. I can think of a million catty comments to add, but the worst thing I can think of, I didn’t come up with myself. It’s something Scumbucket said about her whenever she came up.

  He and I had this running joke, that he was a wandering monk and she was his walking hair shirt. His penance. After school he’d text me, “Starbucks with the Shirt. So basic.” Or, “At the Shirt’s race sherpa-ing all her basic Shirt stuff.” Or, “Shopping with the Shirt please kill me.”

  At the time, I thought it was cool how he was nice to her, even if he whined about it behind her back. Being nice to your ex seems like a good thing. I should have known. She was never his Shirt. I mean, maybe I’m the Shirt. I get it now. Guys who are mean like that, they’re never mean about just one girl. They’re dicks across the board. You think you’re the exception. You never are.

  I decide not to tell my friends about the Shirt thing, even though it’s hilarious.

  The truth is, I don’t see how she could possibly be a Shirt. She studied abroad in Japan and she speaks good Japanese. Despite my name, I’ve never been, and I know basically no Japanese or anything about Japan, except for a few family dishes I learned from Dad. She also speaks Hawaiian, and her halau performed at the Merrie Monarch Festival and won some kind of award. I only remember the words you hear all the time, like ono, aloha, mahalo, and the correct pronunciation of “ukulele.” Forget about the dancing. Not even if my life depended on it.

  She’s somehow better at being both Japanese and Hawaiian than me, even though she’s dyeing her red hair black. And I know that’s not true—she’ll always be a white girl pretending to be those things—but like, if you asked a Japanese person if I’m Japanese, or a Hawaiian person if I’m Hawaiian, or a Black person if I’m Black…chances are, they’d tell you no. So am I any better because I’m at least part Japanese? For sure she’s beating me at pretending, at the very least.

  It gets weirder with her too. She loves her bike exactly like I love my bike. Her ride is a sweet pink Cervélo, and mine’s an intermittently mobile garbage heap I found on Craigslist. She probably spends as much time on it as I do, though not for deliveries.

  The problem with trying to hate people is, if you look too closely, you usually find a lot to like. I wish I could hate her. But she’s too much like me. Except, you know, better. Like she’s the brand name, and I’m the crappy store brand no one actually wants.

  My eyes burn with tears. I don’t know why. I should be laughing. No, I should be angry. He doesn’t deserve to make me sad.

  I take a deep breath. Do something. Stay busy. Then I’ll forget him. I’ll ghost him right back. Damnatio memoriae.

  I don’t even look at my room, the mess I made gathering up every single thing that reminds me of him. I get up. I put my headphones on. I leave.

  I spend Saturday morning on basic necessities. I make a list. I borrow Dad’s pickup truck to go get my bike, then spend all morning fixing it. Mr. Bu lends me his tools and attempts to lend me his advice. Something about “finding centeredness” and meditation healing a broken heart. He invites me to come sit zazen with him at his temple. I politely decline. I can imagine literally nothing worse than sitting silently with these thoughts. Hard no. I want to bike as far away from them as I can.

  I pick up groceries. I weed the garden. I wash the windows. I do the laundry. I get all the way into next week’s chores. I make lunch for Dad and the neighbors, and we all eat it on overturned buckets around the lawn table. My neighbors are drinking beer, except Dad, because he’s a reformed alcoholic. I like their conversations, which spiral off in all directions, taking me far away.

  Finally, finally, it’s time for work.

  I bike over to Uncle Tua’s slowly, watching the world go by. I like to look at other people’s houses, and delivering pizzas, I get to see into a lot of doorways. I hate waiting tables, though. People don’t see waiters. They expect you to be inv
isible or, if they’re the bad kind of tourist, to be a parody of Hawai’i. Occasionally, if the punters are sufficiently drunk, they make racists remarks about “babes in grass skirts and coconut bras.” Once when I was fifteen, a guy said that and grabbed my butt, and Uncle Tua beat the living daylights out of him in the parking lot. Uncle Tua is not really my uncle; he’s everyone’s uncle—he just particularly likes me.

  Pizza is my favorite thing, after my dog and my bike and painting. I could work at Uncle Tua’s forever, honestly. I love the food, for one. And I like the way everything happens the same way every day, with little changes. The changes seem manageable, different views out the same windows in my day. I’m perfectly still in a world full of people rushing to and fro. It’s very zen.

  “Delivery already,” Tua says as I coast in toward the outdoor pizza oven. He’s got his apron on, and he’s watching the television news on a smoke-stained old TV. I glance inside. It’s packed. “Want me to send one of the boys in a car?” Tua says. He doesn’t actually say that, but it’s what I hear. What he says exchanges some prepositions, adds in a few yeahs.

  “Miho. Earth to Miho.”

  “Sorry. I got it. Can you clock me in?” I say.

  “I pay you. You think I don’t remember?”

  “You pay me too much every time.”

  “Subjective accounting.”

  “I know you’re a money launderer, Uncle Tua.”

  “Get going. Pizza’s getting cold.”

  Without getting off, I swing my leg over so I’m balancing on one side of the bike. Tua calls this my “circus move” and he always cheers, even though he’s seen me do it a zillion times. I circle around so the rack is facing him, put my foot down while he bungee-cords three pizzas to the back in their padded case. He hands me an address and I don’t even have to look it up. It’s close. I know the street. I can make it in ten minutes if I push hard. It doesn’t improve the tips. I still like the challenge.

  “Gonna be a busy night. You ready to race?”