Fierce as the Wind

by Tara Wilson Redd

  “Zero percent chance.”

  He sits down with a sigh. “Even today, not even a bit of optimism.”

  “I’m just being realistic.”

  “You don’t have to be so realistic all the time.”

  My turn to sigh.

  “Being realistic isn’t a bad thing,” I say.

  “It is when you won’t apply to college because you’re convinced it isn’t realistic. You will get into any school you apply to, Miho.”

  I snicker.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks.

  “You’re not the only person who thinks I’ll get into any school I apply to. Just not because of the SATs.”

  “Because of your art? I think any school would be blind not to let you in after seeing your sketches, if that’s what you want to do.”

  I shake my head. “Not because of the art.”

  His eyebrows mash together as he tries to figure it out.

  So I tell him about this party I went to with a bunch of kids from X’s school a few years ago. About this jerk of a senior in a Vineyard Vines shirt who was actually going to the Art Institute of Chicago. I was so excited to meet him. I told him I thought I’d never get in, though looking at what he called “art,” I couldn’t see how he did either.

  “You should just apply,” he said. “You’re, like, Hawaiian or something? It was really hard for me to get in. I even got wait-listed. But minorities get into all the good schools, like automatically. You’ll probably even get a sweet scholarship.”

  And I said, “Yeah.” I even laughed a little, to show I was in on the joke.

  Dad’s jaw drops.

  “That’s not true,” he says.

  “Yeah, I know it’s not true,” I say. “But it’s what people think.”

  “Well…” He ponders this for a second. “So what? All your friends don’t care. You should stop caring too. Every single one of those kids is going to college. You are just as bright as any of them. How many of them got your score—”

  “Will you stop with the SAT score? It’s one number. On one test. It doesn’t magically make all the problems with me going to college go away.”

  “Then why are all of your friends going to college? Why are you the only one with a problem?”

  I know why. Wyatt, Trin, and X are all STEM. Lani has a business. Rei’s parents can afford to float her lavish life in New York. And yes, some of my friends understand what it’s like to be poor. They know how frustrating that can be. But they don’t know what it’s like to be scared and hungry and totally unsure if you’re about to head to foster care, because one thing Hawai’i does right is ohana. Family. They have never been alone.

  “Poor people don’t get to be artists, Dad,” I say.

  “I looked it up. Your Van Gogh was very poor.”

  “He had his brother Theo.”

  “You have me.”

  “Oh yeah? And what are you going to do?” I say, meaner than I intend.

  “Believe in you,” he says without pausing.

  I open my mouth to say something smart-alecky, but nothing comes out. Dad is my Theo, with his unshakable confidence.

  But he didn’t go to college. I love my dad, but I don’t know if that means he’s right, or can guide me here.

  “Dad. I just…I can’t. How could I ever be a painter knowing that if I ever take one wrong step, the rug gets ripped out from under me?”

  “But that’s true of most people, my flower. All great things require work and risk. It won’t be perfect. But if it’s your dream, isn’t it worth trying for?”

  “It’s not true for everyone. Not in the same way. Think of Scumbucket, Dad. He has screwed up in ways that would completely destroy my life. But no matter what he does, he’s standing on this giant pile of rugs. Some of them are even magic carpets that fly him away from all the consequences. He gets one rug pulled out from under him, and there’s another, right there.

  “I have one rug, Dad. That’s why I’m scared. Can’t you get that? I’m scared to apply. Because what if I did get in? Do I risk it? I’m not just your flower. I’m someone who has to eat and pay rent and have health insurance. And I just want to be okay, you know? I don’t want to be on food stamps and I know, I know, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I…I need to be okay, even if it means not being an artist. I don’t want to end up like Mom. You know I love you, but I don’t want to end up…”

  I can’t say it.

  “You don’t want to end up like me,” he finishes. “I don’t want you to end up like me either. That’s why I want you to go to college.”

  “But maybe I’m supposed to stay here and work at Tua’s and go to community college in a few years and paint as a hobby, you know? Isn’t that a pretty okay life?”

  I feel the knot of helplessness in my throat, the burning of tears in my eyes. It’s not something either of us can fix. It’s not something that’s fair, or right, but it is true.

  “I’m sorry I can’t give you more rugs,” Dad says after a long pause.

  “I don’t need you to be sorry for that. I need you to admit that it’s true. I’m not lazy or chicken, you know? But it’s like I’m standing on a cliff and everyone knows I can’t fly, but you keep telling me to jump because maybe, just maybe, I’ll survive. Don’t you see how much that hurts, to have to kill my own dreams because you aren’t willing to be realistic and kill them for me? You think I’ll never be able to finish an Ironman because I can’t afford a bike, so you try to protect me from it. You think that’s unrealistic? How in the world do you think I’m going to make it through college?”

  Dad is quiet, and for the first time, it seems like he agrees with me. I’m right and he knows it.

  The bird flies back over us. We both watch.

  “I don’t think that is a crow after all,” he says, looking up at the sky. “No, I guess you’re right. It’s not a crow.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s never really a crow.”

  chapter eighteen

  One of the consequences of training for hours every day is that I can’t go a day without it anymore. It’s technically morning, the day after graduation. I switch on my PlayStation for some Eldritch Codex, but I know that’s not what I need. I switch it off. I pace my room, and the house tilts ever so slightly under me like a boat. I’m jittery. I can’t unclench my teeth.

  I grab my sneakers and hop out my bedroom window.

  I creep around to the side of the house and start wheeling out my bike. The moon is bright. The lawn still smells like the charcoal grill. I hop on and ride in the grass, which makes the best whirring sound, even though my feet get wet. It makes me smile every time.

  My legs are a little creaky as I’m starting out, but I don’t worry about it. I’ve learned that “warming up” is in fact not a conspiracy invented by gym teachers. In a few miles, I’m going to feel like myself. Sometimes you have to sit with the bad feeling in your body until it works itself out.

  As I’m riding, it’s like I’m picking apart all the knots I’ve tied inside myself. All the tangles start to look like string again.

  I wish life were like a video game. When you start out in Eldritch Codex, you build your own character. Even though all the races and classes are different, everyone starts out essentially the same. You may have more strength, but that means you have less dexterity. You may have a wind affinity, but that means you have no cold resistance. No one gets to start out super powerful, and no one starts out with nothing, because then the game wouldn’t be fun.

  Of course, once you start playing, it’s not like that at all. There’s rampant gold farming, and power leveling. But as an ideal, it’s not a bad one.

  I finally convinced the one person who refused to see reason about college that I’m right. Everyone agrees with me now. I guess that’s it. No college.


  They say that people who can spot art forgeries sometimes know that the work is fake before they can say why. Tonight, that’s how I feel. I can’t say why this sensible life I’m setting up for myself is wrong. Yet, I know that it is.

  How far do I have to bike to unravel all this?

  There’s a voice that speaks to me when I ride my bike forever, when the angry, sad, scared person I am most of the time can’t keep up and goes quiet. Maybe that voice is the real me, the one no one else knows.

  As the sun comes up, I see where my bike-brain took me.

  It’s the field. The last dairy farm on Oahu. The one where I painted my copy of Van Gogh. The cows are all standing around near the fence, and beyond it, it’s a green field. My wheat field, with no wheat.

  In this moment, breathless, my heart pounding, I’m okay. Maybe the reason I tried to text Scumbucket at my graduation is because I didn’t go running before the ceremony. Maybe that tidal wave of sadness and panic was a product of my chemical addiction to endorphins. A lie my hormones are telling me.

  There’s nothing more I can get from him. The things I want, they’re not lost in the past with him. They’re somewhere out there in the future, at my finish line. All I have to do is figure out how to get there. Maybe everything until now was the warm-up, and now I’m finally ready to do the hard work of letting him go.

  The truth: I want to go to college. It’s what I’ve always wanted. It broke my heart when I let the deadline for applications pass. But I couldn’t do it.

  Because what if I fail?

  Now I can finally see the other side: What if I live my life knowing I never even tried?

  Dad is my Theo. And so are my uncles, Tua, my friends. All those people are my ohana of Theos.

  And even if Dad can’t help me, he’ll try. Maybe I won’t even need help. I got that 1600 all on my own, just me and a book from the library, working practice test sets night after night, month after month. Not even X knows how hard I worked for that score.

  I’m just so tired of working so hard even to get to the starting line. But one thing I know now, after all the work I’ve put in so far on this race, is that I have endurance on my side. And it’s not a personality trait, it’s a skill. One I’ve practiced.

  I know what I have to do.

  I stop at the library on my way home. I go to one of the terminals. I go to the website I have memorized. I print out the Common Application (at least, the first twenty pages, which is what’s free per day), and when I pick the pages up, they are warm and nice to hold.

  I like seeing this application as a real thing, not pixels on a screen. I like holding this stack of papers in my hands.

  At home, I tape the first page up next to my training plan.

  I glance at the plan. Tomorrow’s workout: easy thirteen-mile run.

  I love the double meaning of run. You can run the world by being in charge, or you can run the world by going from place to place. I don’t want to run the world like Beyoncé means it. I want to run the world by being in it. More girls should get to run the world.

  Running seemed impossible a few months ago. That’s the way you start anything: with a single step.

  chapter nineteen

  It is two weeks later, in Trinity’s garage. Her brothers are inside the house, and you can hear the weight of four grown men moving around. The light hanging from the garage ceiling swings, and I understand why she spends so much time out here. Her house is bursting.

  Trinity lifts up her welding mask. “Science can only do so much.”

  My bike lies on her workbench. She unzips the long front zipper of her dark gray jumpsuit and slips off the arms, steps out of the legs with her shoes still on. Underneath, she’s wearing her favorite galaxy-print swimsuit.

  “Were you swimming?” I ask.

  “I have more swimsuits than underwear,” she says. Then she breaks into a grin. “Ever since I got my acceptance, I’ve been getting up early to swim. You know how hard it is to do a spacewalk?”

  “Very?”

  “Not quite an Ironman, but it’s all in the arms.”

  Trinity raises the garage door and lets in some real light. While she’s putting things away, I look at my phone. A message from Rei.

  “Where are you?” Rei asks, just to me, off the group chat.

  “Trin’s. Want to come hang?”

  “Are you with Wyatt?”

  “No. Why? Is he meeting us?”

  “Can’t get ahold of him. Nvm.”

  “Who’s that?” Trin asks.

  “Rei,” I say. “Looking for Wyatt.”

  Trin snorts.

  “What?”

  “Trying to catch Wyatt, more like,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Catch him cheating,” Trinity says. I incline my head. “She thinks he’s cheating. It’s so obvious.”

  I shake my head. “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah,” Trinity says. “But Rei’s like super jealous. Sometimes I wonder if she has too much money and time on her hands.”

  “She’s just in love,” I say.

  “Probably,” Trinity says. “Broke people get jealous too. Anyway.”

  All around us, her mad-scientist lab tools hang in chaotic disarray on pegboards. She has enough machinery here to build rockets, which she has done. (And gotten us both grounded for. Apparently, rockets can light things on fire if some idiot miscalculates their trajectory.) This stuff is all junk compared to what’s in her room: her prize telescope, worth more than her oldest brother’s car, and all its accessories. She has it bike-locked to her bed in her own house. She won it in a contest that was supposed to spread good will for the telescopes on Mauna Kea. She wrote about how strongly she felt about respecting her Hawaiian heritage, and being a future astronaut. She never did let me read it, but whatever she concluded, she won. What my bike is to me, Trin’s telescope is to her. I would not let anyone I didn’t trust with my life touch this bike. I don’t care if it’s a piece of garbage. It’s the most important thing I own.

  Trin glares down at my bike, shaking her head. “I hate to break it to you, but you are basically riding a cow catcher. It’s way too heavy, and your handlebar position means you can’t get into a maximally aero position. It’s way too big for you. And what is this disaster here? Did you weld this?”

  “Mr. Bu welded it. After Dad ran it over with the car.”

  “And this is what we’ve got to work with,” Trin says, trying to see past my bike’s history written in raised metallic scars and scratches. I know she’s trying to see its potential, trying to love it like I do so she can see what it could be instead of what it is.

  Trinity sighs. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not about how it looks, it’s about what it can do. Can you even lift it?”

  I grab the frame, pick it up, and try to hoist it over my head like cyclists do on Instagram. I do, but my arms are shaking. Trin grins.

  “Yeah, hold that for a minute,” she says. “I’ll time you.”

  “I would prefer not to,” I say with a groan as I let it down again. “I read that lightweight bikes are overrated anyway, and it’s all about wind resistance.”

  “Woo, someone’s been googling,” Trin says. “That’s true. To a point. But there are other factors. I mean, from an engineering standpoint, it looks like someone repurposed trash into a bike.”

  “Bricolage,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “Bricolage is when you make do with what you have and turn it into what you need.”

  Trin sneers. “Is that from a Scumbucket book?”

  “No. It’s an art term,” I say. I can’t remember if I told Scumbucket about it, or if he told me. But either way, it’s my word now. I happen to like it.

  “Bricolage,” she tries out. She smiles, nods. “Well, as i
mpressive as this bricolaged bike is, I don’t know what I can do with this. I could grab some pipes and build a new one from scratch and we’d come up even.”

  “You could not.”

  “Totally could,” she says.

  “So what do we do?”

  “We need to get you a new bike. A real bike, if possible.”

  “Trin, we have three hundred dollars budgeted for the bike. There is a real bike under here, I swear.”

  “Maybe we can rent a super bike,” Trinity says. “I can MacGyver almost anything we need, but I can’t manifest you a carbon frame.” She looks around at her equipment and throws up her hands.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Keep working with what we have, and hope for a miracle.”

  “Anything is—”

  “Let’s not jinx it.”

  * * *

  Trinity and I ride over to the bike store for the easy stuff we need with her on my pegs. It’s hard to go fast with someone standing over your back tire, but I like the challenge. Plus I’m biking for my bike’s honor. I can’t let Trin see how hard this is.

  “How do you normally get around?” I ask her between panting breaths.

  “Magic,” she replies.

  “But how really? Do you text someone? Call someone? It’s like you get beamed up places. Like Star Trek. I don’t think any of us have seen you pull up in a car.”

  “Every girl’s got her secrets.”

  “I bet you’re driving a pink Cadillac convertible and your parents are millionaires.”

  She doesn’t laugh, which is weird. Her hands tense on my shoulders.

  “What would you buy with a million dollars?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. It’s a question I think about a lot, though. What I would do if I were rich. “You?”

  “Freedom,” she says.

  “You can’t buy freedom,” I say.