“Always.”
“I’ll make your specialty to take home later. Be quick.” (He says, “Go fast kine.”)
“No other way to go.”
And then I’m off, pedaling hard. It’s the best part of my job.
* * *
After work, I walk alongside my bike on my way home. I have an open box of pizza bungee-corded to the back—my shift freebie—and I eat slice after slice with my free hand as I hobble along. My legs are killing me. As long as I kept biking, I was fine, but now that I’m walking, I feel like my legs might give out. Every few steps my knee jumps forward as the muscles in the front of my leg betray me. I’m basically using my bike as a crutch.
Even worse, I have gnarly saddle sores. My butt is on fire, like right where butt becomes leg. Every once in a while I get this on a busy night. I may be the top teen consumer of off-brand Desitin. So embarrassing, but it works.
Still. Nothing tastes as good as this pizza does right now, I have 140 dollars in tips zipped into my pocket, thick as a brick, and the air has that amazing ominous electricity that always happens right before a storm.
What an awesome night. Even the hurting is awesome. I can feel it in my lungs, in my heart. I feel…happy.
“Miho!” It’s a voice from across the street. My heart jumps in my chest. I look up, look around. “Hey!” the voice shouts again. This time I spot him. Wyatt.
My brain is playing tricks on me. Wyatt doesn’t sound a thing like Scumbucket.
“What are you doing out so late?” I ask as he jogs across the street to me. He gestures to his backpack. Swim stuff. Wyatt is one of those nerdy swim kids with two hundred plastic meet tags hanging off a dripping bag, shaved legs, and goggle rings around his eyes. At the beach he wears normal shorts, but at the pool he wears tiny lady-style bikini bottoms and is totally casual about it. Doofus. Even so, he kind of looks like a K-Pop idol in his post-swim tracksuit. Almost pulls it off.
“Where are you headed?” he asks.
“Home. You?”
“Home.”
“Cool,” I say. He smiles.
We walk in silence for about thirty seconds before it’s too awkward.
“Want some pizza?” I nod to the open box.
“Sure,” he says, taking a piece. “This why you’re walking your bike?”
I scoff. “Please. I can totally eat pizza and ride a bike.”
“Why are you walking, then? You a mobile restaurant now? Tua’s bike food cart?”
“I leave that to Lani.” I’m too proud to admit I’m sore, so I say, “I felt like walking. Nice night.”
“Wish you were a restaurant. I get so hungry after I swim. Like, eat-a-whole-pizza hungry.”
“I…did not eat all that,” I lie, looking into the box at the solitary slice left. I totally did. Very unladylike.
“Oh, for sure deserved,” he says, holding his hands up. “No judgment. Didn’t you ride over a hundred miles yesterday?”
“Yeah,” I say with a smile.
“That’s bananapants. I’m starving from an hour in the pool.” Bananapants. I smile. Who says that?
“Why are you swimming so late?”
He shrugs. “Helps me think.”
“I get that,” I say. He swallows, eyes me nervously.
“Hey, so, Rei filled me in on the whole Scumbucket saga, and I…” He trails off. “I didn’t get it on Friday. I didn’t get how awful what he did was.”
“It’s fine,” I say as breezily as I can. Good lord, this can’t be the thing that breaks me, not in front of Rei’s boyfriend of all people. But I sense the prickles of tears. I force them down, walk a little ahead of him so he can’t see. My legs hurt. I slow down.
Wyatt clears his throat as we come up even again. “I know we’re all focused on the whole Scumbucket thing, but real talk, how is it possible that you are even standing right now? A hundred miles? Seriously?”
I grin, even though I know that he’s only trying to change the subject so I won’t cry. “As the banner says, anything is possible.”
“What banner?”
“Oh, some stupid banner I found on the beach. I used it as a tent last night.”
“And it said ‘Anything is possible’?”
“Yup. Bright red letters. Felt like a sign. I mean, it was a sign, but it also felt like a sign. Don’t you love the poetry of the universe?”
“That’s the Ironman slogan,” Wyatt says. “Did it have a little M with a dot?” He draws it in the air.
“Yeah,” I say, thinking back. “What is that again? Like a race or something?”
“It’s a triathlon. You swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run 26.2 miles. 140.6 miles. It was invented right here. Well, in Honolulu.”
“Triathlons are from Hawai’i?” I ask, incredulous. I reach for the last piece of pizza, and I see the ravenous look on Wyatt’s face. “Split it?”
“Oh thank god,” he says. “Hold up. I know you can eat and bike and probably spin plates while you’re at it, but I don’t think I can do this in motion.”
We pause as he tears the slice of pizza in two. It’s weird, standing on either side of my bike so close. This is the first time Wyatt and I have ever talked without Rei.
“So you were saying? About triathlons?”
“Oh right,” he says with his mouth full. We start walking again. “No, they’re not from Hawai’i. But the first Ironman was held in Honolulu. These crazy people were arguing about whether swimmers, cyclists, or runners were the fittest.”
“Cyclists, obviously.”
“Swimmers,” he jabs back. Then he thinks, and raises his nerd finger that he always puts up as he thinks through a problem. “Well, actually, it depends on how you define the problem—”
“But the race?”
“Right, the race. So they came up with a race that combined the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, this bike race that used to go all the way around the island, and the Honolulu marathon. And that’s how the world got Ironman. And it got bigger and bigger, year after year.”
“How do you know all that?”
He shrugs. “You can always spot the triathletes at the pool. And I don’t mean that in a good way.”
“How?”
“Race caps. Branded bags. Tan lines here and here”—he points to his thigh and the middle of his arm—“giant egos to match giant legs. Rude as hell to rec swimmers and kids. Insist on swimming in the fastest lane. And the joke is, the guys like that are all mediocre swimmers. At least, compared to actual swimmers.”
I laugh. “Well, that’s just lunacy. 140.6 miles? That’s not even possible.”
But then it clicks. 140.6.
Where have I seen that number before?
On her Instagram account. Ironman. She was training for an Ironman race before she got knocked up. It was all over her account. #imtraining: not hashtag “I’m training” but hashtag “IM training”: Ironman training.
My heart lurches. Maybe anything is possible for her.
“Actually,” Wyatt says, holding up his nerd finger. “The bike is like half the race. A lot of people call it a bike race with a swim warm-up and a marathon for a cooldown.”
“A marathon is not a cooldown.”
“You probably did half that last night after your ride.”
“Walking.”
Wyatt smirks. “I mean, in theory it’s a run. In practice it’s more of a jog and shuffle-o’-shame for most people. So yeah, it definitely is possible.”
Hashtag Swim Bike Run. He’s right, I could totally do the bike part. And I swim all the time, even though it’s not laps. I’m notorious for refusing to run even in gym class, but if I could walk—
I cut off my thoughts.
I wish I was that person. The brand-name version of me. But people who ride del
ivery bikes don’t do triathlons. People on pink Cervélos do. That’s just how it is.
“You okay?” Wyatt asks.
“Yeah.”
“This is my turnoff,” he says. I realize he’s headed for a not-particularly-nice part of town. For some reason I thought he lived in Rei’s swanky hood. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Totally,” I say. “Gonna bike the rest of the way.”
I snap on my helmet and put one foot on the pedal to push off, then go to swing my leg over like a show-off, but my muscles are trashed. I mistime it trying to get my body to cooperate, and the bike starts falling sideways. Before I hit the ground, Wyatt has dropped his bag and caught me. We are standing, my bike tipped halfway out from under me, him holding me up like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, completely ridiculous.
I put my foot down and get off my bike, and we both start laughing.
“On second thought, maybe I’ll go with the shuffle-o’-shame,” I say.
“Whatever gets you across the finish line. You sure you’re good?”
“My pride took the brunt of the fall.”
“May that always be the case.” He turns onto his street.
“See you round, swim nerd.”
“Later, bike nerd.”
chapter six
I wake up on Sunday morning at four a.m. I haven’t been asleep, but at four a.m. I officially accept my lack of sleep as wakefulness.
I lie in bed feeling sorry for myself until 4:15. Get ahold of yourself, I think. Get out of bed. I start to pull out my painting supplies but stop. The case where I keep my art stuff under my bed is open. I look at the wall where I threw brushes, tubes of oil paint, my watercolors, a few canvases, one with a giant hole where I stomped my foot right through it.
I bite my lip. My heart sinks. I’ve been staying so busy that I totally forgot I did that.
I gather up the paint and brushes from the floor. It was mostly drama; nothing but that canvas is hurt. I hold it out in front of me.
Wheatfield with Crows.
I painted it. It’s only a copy. It is not even as good as a good copy of the original. But it’s mine. I made it. Van Gogh made copies too, as he tried to find his way. Copies help you understand the world of another person.
I kept it secret for a long time, hidden under my bed. I’m normally not shy about art stuff—our whole house is plastered with pictures I’ve drawn, each carefully framed by Dad. But this one…was different. Somehow I knew that this was me admitting what I really wanted: to be an artist. Like that’s something you can just be.
The one person I ever showed it to was Scumbucket.
Lots of people love Van Gogh. I know that. It’s not exactly a deep cut. But Scumbucket held it up and got a look on his face I had never seen before. Not a cynical one. He had a lot of those. He was sad. He told me he’d seen it in Amsterdam. He said it was the only time he’d ever cried in front of a piece of art.
“I would love to see it for real,” I told him, looking at my imitation. He told me that I didn’t need to because I already understood what Van Gogh was trying to say, but that he needed more than anything to see it with me by his side. He told me that he had never met someone who could put into colors and lines what he saw when he looked at those colors and lines.
We were supposed to go to Amsterdam this summer. We were going to leave on my birthday. We had “The Itinerary.” It was all set.
I look at my painting. He doesn’t own this. I might not be able to fix it, but I promise myself I won’t throw it away. I shove it back under my bed.
Painting is too much of a mess. No reading because half my books are ashes on the beach now. No video games because…
I look at my PlayStation.
It’s his old PlayStation. I totally forgot.
He bought me Moonslaught, the fourth Eldritch Codex game, when it came out last year. He knew I couldn’t afford it and he wanted us to spend time together there since we usually only saw each other in real life once a week or so. He wanted us to be together in Themria. Now I know why. It’s because he wouldn’t get caught.
I tell myself not to do the thing I am currently doing, but my hands don’t listen as the creepy loading screen greets me with the circle of invented runes. I only have two allies, and I can see right away that the last time Scumbucket was on was Wednesday, when we met up for a few hours to run around and ride horses. He said he loved me, and it was so weird to be looking at his avatar and for him to say that. He hasn’t been on since.
I shut it down. Stupid. What was I even hoping for?
I look around my room. My heart is pounding for no good reason. I try not to think of him, but everything in my room reminds me of him, and looking at my phone, I want to text him and beg him to tell me it isn’t true and tell me that he loves me and that I matter. What is he doing right now? What are they doing right now? What if, if I had texted him exactly the right thing, at exactly the right moment, none of this would ever have happened and he would have dumped her instead? If I wait, will he come back? If not to the real world, at least to Themria? What if it’s not too late?
These thoughts are just heartbroken synapses firing in my brain. I know that. But I can’t turn off this light show of sorrow and regret.
4:30. My god. Time has slowed down.
I try to shift my focus, but it’s like how my legs kept giving out after my long ride. I just can’t. When you go past your limit, your body fails. So does your heart.
I thought I could outrace this. Burn it on the beach. All I did was delay the inevitable.
I get back into bed. Tears roll down my face as I let every bad thing I’ve been forcing myself not to think roll over me. Worthless. Forgettable. Stupid. Ugly. I cry until I can’t cry anymore. Not angry tears, like that first night. Helpless tears.
4:45. It felt like it lasted ages, the way crying always does. I roll over in bed with a hiccup. I turn on the television and pull my Thin Man movies off the shelf. X pirated them all for me and burned them onto DVDs. I put the first one in and get back under the covers.
X and I watched one of these movies each night over the first week we became friends. Since then, we’ve watched them five or six times apiece in the background while we do our homework, texted each other the best lines in gifs hundreds more. I know every frame. They star William Powell as Nick Charles, a detective, and Myrna Loy as Nora Charles, his rich wife and partner in crime. X loved these movies because they’re how he wished the world could be, all glamour and witty banter. I loved all that too, but for me, it was all about the spark between Nick and Nora. I loved how two people could fit together like that: partners in crime.
When Scumbucket and I hooked up, I made him watch them, and he got it. We were kind of like them, but backward: Nora is rich and Nick is working-class. It became our thing, playing Nick and Nora. At least, I thought it was. We watched all of them straight through in a row once. It was right when we started really dating. He was housesitting for the parents of one of his rich friends, and we had the pool house of this mini mansion to ourselves. It took us sixteen hours and twelve minutes because we kept putting the movie on pause to “chill.”
I remember kissing him goodbye at the gate at dawn. The colors of that sunrise found their way into everything I painted for a month. I remember running through the side yard, marveling at a tacky lit-up fountain with a Buddha statue on it. How much did it cost to run that thing? But for once I wasn’t put off by it. I felt like I had won the universe because I had him, and I loved him and we were perfect.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Right now, these movies are ruined. They’ll never be the same, and neither will Van Gogh, or anything else I shared with him. So many of my favorite things have his fingerprints on them because I trusted him to hold them.
But I watch all six movies anyway.
It take
s me eleven hours and fourteen minutes, including breaks for sobbing into my pillow. Dad comes into my room a few times. He says nothing. I’m grateful. He brings me Thai curry manapua and a blue Slurpee from the 7-Eleven. The food does make me feel a little better. Achilles curls up next to me, ready to protect me from a threat he doesn’t understand. It’s the best thing ever when your dumbbell dog has your back.
As the last film closes, I force myself to sit up. I turn off the television and try to stand. Not even six. Too early to go to sleep.
I pull out my phone, which is full of messages from my friends asking if I’m okay. X texted me four hours ago: “Come out tonight.”
I don’t even wash my face. I just leave.
chapter seven
We always meet on a beach close to Rei’s house on Sundays. It’s usually pretty deserted. Every once in a while a family of tourists or a group of rowdy locals will drop by, but they’re almost never rude to us. We started going there because someone close by didn’t password-protect their Wi-Fi—thank you, owner of Charter_Spectrum11—and by the time they got wise to it, we had fallen into a routine. Now X and Trinity take turns cracking the Wi-Fi of the local mansions, and we mooch until our luck runs out.
I ride over, careful of my toes in slippers. By the time I pull up, I know coming out was the right thing. My friends are talking more than studying around a big picnic table, and I hang back and watch them for a second. They go quiet as I get off my bike. I must look awful.
“Hey, baby girl,” Lani says, but she says it with this weird pity in her voice that makes me want to hide under a rock. It’s obvious I’ve been crying all day.
“What are you guys up to?” I ask in my cheeriest voice.
Trin ticks off the circle, pointing: “Chem, history, Shakespeare, stats, and calc,” she finishes, pointing to herself.
“How are you only in calculus?” X asks.
“We don’t have super-calculus in public school,” Trinity says.
“We also don’t have your fancy lunches,” Lani says.
Fierce as the Wind Page 4
